About ten years ago, on one of my annual trips to Texas, Robin and I were sitting around her dining room table musing happily about about my staying with her in France. She laughed and said it was one of the happiest times in her life. I said I felt the same way.
The stars were aligned for me in the fall of ’70. I was an unfocused student at the University of Texas confused about what I should study for the next two years. And I had just ended a four year unsettling relationship with a girl I was afraid I might go back to. I was looking for a fresh start with a true love. I thought a bit of traveling might help me find way. Robin heard of this through our mother and invited me to stay with her and her family in Versailles, just outside of Paris where her husband Malcolm was an attorney for a global oilfield service corporation based there.
I arrived at Orly Airport, famished, at dawn on a 747 redeye from JFK. I quickly took the train to the city, where I found a café. I ordered the only thing I could say in my Texas French: “Deux croissants e café au lait, s’il vous plait.”
An hour later Robin picked me up in her spongy blue Citroen, and we sped off to Versailles, a grand suburb where every building is elegant, multi-story and real stone. Her house proved to be no exception. It even had a pool in the basement.
Good grief, I fretted. Had my dear affable Texas sister joined a higher society than I could or would want to join? Was this the woman I saw in Blake’s Cafe in Luling devour a chicken fried steak the size of a competition Frisbee? Was this the singer who could belt out “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” like Kitty Wells at the Grand Ole Opry?
Yes.
That was the magic of Robin. She was at home anywhere. She could be a mischievous and adventurous Southwestern girl by day and perform as a mezzo soprano with the New York Choral Society that night
The next ten weeks were wonderful. I stayed in Paris the first week. Being a suburb, Versailles was really very ordinary, unless you like the palaces, which I don’t. I took the 9:30 train every day to Paris to see the art, architecture and history of the city. I returned in time for dinner with Robin, Malcolm, young Malcolm, Angus and Wil, who were wonderful kids. As an early teen I would offer to babysit the boys so I could stay over. Each was an individual and very much like they are today. Being an early riser, Robin usually went to bed around eight. Malcolm and I stayed up late drinking and talking, often about the two years he spent in Europe in the Army, where he and Roy Kiesling became friends. The thing I loved about Malcolm was that despite his proper international lawyer façade, he had a love the absurd, which we shared.
I think it was in Paris where Robin began to write novels and poetry. She would sequester herself every day behind the tall, provincial doors of her office off the living room. She was very dedicated to her work from then on.
Having seen what I wanted to see in Paris I went on to London but returned, by Robin’s request, for my birthday. Robin and her cook Virginie arranged a birthday feast (pictured) and a beautiful American birthday cake. The boys enjoyed my birthday immensely. Robin did too. She was happy in France but lonely, I expect, for someone from home, which I was delighted to be. One of Robin’s best qualities was listening. It never failed that when I returned from anywhere, she would sit me down and eagerly ask all about it, and not just what happened, but why and what was my reaction to each occurrence. I felt like a brother in a Jane Austen story. I suspect everyone who knew her well did. Her gift to us all was her attention.
In November I visited Copenhagen. Our brother Grainger had done his thesis work on the genetics of Danish field mice. My understanding is that in doing so, he proved that they had migrated from Russia by following the spillage of the people who brought the grain that the Russian mice were so fond of. Grainger had been aided by a fellow named Claus Schroder who was doing a masters degree in biology at the university in Copenhagen. Claus turned out to be an generous and energetic guy my age. He found me a space in his graduate house where I had a terrific time with him and his friends. To put the time in context, I heard the Bridge Over Troubled Waters album there first.
On a return trip to England I bought a very affordable green MG-B roadster. (See receipt photo.)
It was a British racing green left-hand drive roadster with a black convertible top and tan interior. The thing I most remember about the day was leaving the dealership, receipt in hand, and looked up to see the famous actor Rex Harrison, dressed in impeccable steeple-chase attire, riding a magnificent horse serenely across the street amongst the black taxis and the red, double-deck busses.
Nearly all of my memories of that trip were pure comedy. I arrived with my gear, which consisted of a large, tan canvas backpack on the top flap of which I had earlier stitched as large an American flag as would fit. The flag of my country at that moment in time, as seen from abroad, was much as it is now were you to substitute Richard Nixon for Donald Trump. With my longish hair and my pack I got a lot of looks and not a few thumbs-up signs. I stayed in a small, cheap Victorian B&B where you needed your shillings to pay for heat. There I met a Greek my age who introduced me to ouzo by producing a bottle of it from his greatcoat in a showing of Seven Brides and Seven Brothers. We drank most of the bottle and were forced to watch the movie twice due to our inability to walk and think properly. I met a beautiful Canadian girl who announced straight-off that she was saving herself for Randy Bachman of the Toronto-based band the Guess Who. It was never clear, however, that he was saving himself for her. I spent several of days with a young Canadian guy. We became fast friends immediately. On the fourth day he got a call from his mother saying that his dad was very ill, and could he come home right away. Being the weekend, she couldn’t put together the $350 he needed for the flight home. I loaned him the money. He left. Four days later the amount was delivered to me via American Express, with a sweet note of thanks from his mom and news that her husband was recovering well.
I returned to Copenhagen in late November and picked up Claus. We set off on a trip to Italy via Paris where we were entertained generously by Robin and Clan McCorquodale. Completely taken with Robin, Claus said he wished she had a younger sister.
Claus and I threaded our way down to Lyon where we witnessed a night, riverside firework show celebrating the American moon landings. A few days later we were in Rome where I was pinched on the bottom by a pretty signorina as she passed by on the Spanish Steps with her mother. Half of the nights on the trip we slept in the bucket seats of the MG zipped up in our sleeping bags against the cold – especially in the snowy Black Forest of Bavaria. It was there, in Hitler’s beer cellar in Munich, that we were refused service, I expect, for the length of my hair, which I hadn’t cut in months. German youth were in the midst of prying ex-Nazis out of their government. At breakfast on the ferry to Denmark we were stared down by a bullish old sailor. On the drive to Copenhagen, we visited two nursing students on the Island of the Moon whom we knew from my first visit.
By mid-December I was getting homesick. When I told Robin and Malcolm, they graciously invited me to live with them. Malcolm said I could learn French, finish school, and he would help me find a job, perhaps with his company. It was very tempting. Europe had been interesting and exciting, and I had always loved to stay with them. But Texas was calling me back.
Christmas was a white one in Paris that year. We had a wonderful feast and a festively lit tree. I romped with the boys in the snow. I left a few days later already missing Robin. She and Malcolm were warm hosts. And Robin was Robin, who everyone who knew her, loves to this day.
Oh, and by the way, I did find that true love six weeks after my return. I proposed to Springer three weeks later. Here we are the next summer (pictured with my marvelous mother-in-law). We’re at Love Field flying off to San Francisco for our honeymoon, without my marvelous mother-in-law.
