The depths of tranquillity

Peace came dropping slow. I have never regarded west Flanders as part of la France profonde, but here we were, only a few miles from Lille, in the depths of tranquillity. Earlier in the summer, there had been an excitement. An enormous wild boar had erupted into the garden. Our host shot him, and excited littlies promptly renamed their grand-père: Obelix. I had entertained Yves at a club table. His reciprocity was embarrassingly more generous than his excuse for it.

Inevitably, the conversation meandered into politics. The house had a complex history. Vauban is said to have billeted himself there before fortifying Lille. It suffered some damage in both world wars. The family lost relatives during that cruel necessity, the Allied bombing of Normandy to expedite D-Day. Other relations perished in German slave labour camps. The younger Yves had been a disciple of Jean Monnet, that most formidable of French federasts. So why could we British not join in the grandeur of the EU? It was not a mere counting-house exercise in computing trade balances. It was a mission civilatrice, to save Europe from its peoples’ barbarous instincts.

There was a simple answer: the Channel. Geography had determined history. Seawater had protected us, at least after Duke William, and his invasion was a felix culpa, since it bound Britain into European civilisation and prevented us from becoming part of south Scandinavia. De Gaulle may have had mixed motives, in that he did not want the British to impede his attempts to dominate Europe. But he was also right to believe that our allegiance was ultimately Atlantic, not European.

Bewildered, Yves shook his head. Apropos de Gaulle, I praised Julian Jackson’s magisterial life, part of my summer reading, a biographical premier grand cru.