THE CHÂTEAU IS ABOUT TOURISTS trying to be more than tourists. They fail because their French is not good enough and their own culture too different. The young American couple are more comfortable when doing what tourists do; gazing into shop windows and out of train windows and soaking up what is going on around them. It is their interaction that fails.

I spent two long holidays in France. I was there long enough to regard myself as much more than a tourist but, of course, I was simply another English girl who thought that O-level French and enthusiasm could forge friendships. I would often be mistaken for a Scandinavian and when it became clear that I was English the disappointment was palpable.

When a local was kind the encounter almost always ended on a sour note. Being given a lift between cities, I made an effort to follow the drivers’ stories. He seemed to be saying that his brother was a terrible swimmer so I laughed at what I took to be a punch-line about him falling off a boat and ruining a day trip. The brother had drowned days before. My French had improved to the point that I sensed the drift of the story, but I was distraught that this pleasant chap thought I was an insensitive, ignorant English cow.

Maxwell’s descriptions of how Harold Rhodes strains to understand the conversation at supper must ring true to anyone who has dined abroad with the natives. You formulate a sentence, speak it carefully and it is understood. Hurrah! Your fellow diners relax and chat animatedly, assuming that you can understand. You want to say, hang on, that was a carefully prepared sentence; I am not fluent, you know. But you do not have the skills and mutter “ Je ne comprends pas” once too often.

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