Arriving in Lyon: adventures with my All Black husband

A famous view of Lyon from the top of Notre Dame de Fourviere. Photo / 123rf

In an extract from her collection of essays, Someone's Wife, Linda Burgess – author and wife of ex-All Black Robert Burgess – describes arriving in Lyon, where he was to play rugby, in the early 1970s.

We get off the plane in Lyon. The man at Customs says, "Vous venez de Londres?" And Robert says, "What?" I've had a few years of being barely adequate at French at school and university but he has managed to be in the A stream all the way through school yet avoid a second language. In his 3rd Form year, someone pushed him in the direction of accounting. Sadly, futilely.

Robert's going to play for the LOU rugby club. LOU stands for the Lyon Olympique Universitaire, yet strictly speaking it has nothing to do with either the Olympics or any particular university. Marcel Astic, our patron, 50-ish, is at the airport to meet us. We've come via Toronto where we stay with my sister Wendy in nearby London, Ontario, then spend a few days with our friend John, who's doing his PhD in Toronto. John takes us shopping and we manage to dissuade Robert from buying a pair of knee-high fur-lined boots to go with his freshly acquired full-length denim coat lined with cobalt-blue sheepskin.

Linda Burgess, author, and wife of former All Black Robert Burgess. Photo / Robert Burgess

Robert's in his coat, with just a glimpse of his sleeveless Fair Isle jumper, his velvet trousers and his keep on trucking shoes, while, seven months pregnant, I'm in my long black skirt, the zip held together with a piece of elastic. I'm in a patchwork top made out of dozens of pieces cut from old frocks that I bought from the market in Portobello Rd the year before. It's actually lovely. But knowing it's cold in France, I'm also wearing a fur jacket, same Portobello Rd market. Dozens of different-coloured rabbits have died for it to be made and it repays them by surreptitiously shedding. My black skirt looks like I've spent the trip cuddling a moulting Persian cat. I am a vision in various patchworks. Eyes darting from side to side, Marcel Astic ushers us quickly to his car, grateful that the plane is so late that the press photographers he's arranged to be there to meet us have given up and gone to another job.

In his Peugeot 504, driving faster than I have ever been driven, Marcel takes us to his restaurant, the Chez Rose, where Madame Astic awaits us. She is fiercely, traditionally, French groomed. She's even less able than he is to hide her What. Have. We. Here? expression. I speak to her in my horrendously accented French and she relaxes. Negligibly. Robert just smiles at her. Later she is to say — I think — that with those blue eyes, Robert could've had her at any time.

The other New Zealand rugby wives she knows are recently arrived Lyn de Cleene, trim in her neat A-line knee-length skirt and Chis Laidlaw's wife, Helen Kedgley, in Lyon with Chris the previous season. Helen too is inclined towards the hippie, but she's also beautiful in a French way, with those fine eyes with sculpted eyelids that film stars have. My relatively ordinary eyes are surrounded by the regrettable John Lennon glasses; I haven't been able to wear my contacts on the plane.

Madame christens us "les bohemes" and sets out to make the best of a bad job. She and Marcel organise someone from the club to take Robert to buy a genuine sheepskin coat—no, lambskin, it's as soft as cashmere—thigh-length, and a delicate light brown with darker wool inside. With conservative Presbyterian bank manager's daughter genes still hovering close by, I actually prefer it to his denim one; he looks more like a film star than a rocker now. Being so pregnant, I'm clearly seen as a lost cause.

I go to the rugby. Behind me sit a few players not on the field that day. One goes immediately into French auto-flirt. "My name," he says in English, leaning right in to what is now known as my personal space, "is 'Appy tits." He's Jean-Luc Guenichon. Gay then means 'appy. What nichon means is clear from context. Apart from flirting numero 8s, the rest of the crowd's not that different from a New Zealand one, except the cigarettes are Gauloise and if anyone pretends to be hurt, which the French players do with impressive flair, they get Cinema! not Hollywood!

Robert has the great good sense to be an immediate hit. He scores a try or two, not to mention the odd flamboyant field goal. Flamboyant goes down well in France. Bur-jes! Bur-jes! roars the crowd. If a New Zealand crowd were even remotely likely to chant a player's name, it would be Burjuss! which doesn't sound nearly as good. We also like how they say his name: Rob-airrr . . . Now it is considered courteous to pronounce anyone's name as it's pronounced in their own language but we are so pleased to hear it sounding so much more glamorous than "Robbut".

It's the first away game. Chalon sur Saone. Light sleet is falling. Robert is yet to learn that you never win an away game. The referee has already been bought an excellent lunch, several courses, along with the best Beaujolais, by the local club: it's a done deal.

Possibly because of Robert's assistance, the LOU does the unthinkable: it wins an away game. The crowd surges on to the field. They are not after Robert's autograph. Joel, centre, tugging off his boots, mimes that Robert should do the same. Robert doesn't, instead following closely in Joel's wake as Joel, his boots spiky side out, pushes through the loyal locals.

Robert's making friends: he's their very own All Black. He's learning French quite quickly. Whereas I know the French equivalent of "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," Robert knows "Why didn't the f***ing arsehole throw the ball in f***ing straight?" When I pick up a word from him — vachement, literally cow-ly, which seems a mild version of bloody— Madame Astic scolds me for my use of it, saying nice young ladies do not use this word. Language is not straightforward. Ostensibly genteel women called their babies "petit con". In English c*** is one of the most offensive swear words; in France it's a compliment when applied to a baby but an insult if used to another rugby player.

Gardens of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon near the Place des Terreaux. Photo / 123rf

While Robert's learning the intricacies of the language, and of winning away, I'm learning the reality of being described as one thing only: a wife. A rugby wife. Soon I will be a mother, but in Lyon that will define me even less than my wifehood.

I'm also pushed into analysing what friendship means for the first time. I've changed schools as a child, but new friends have always turned up. Sometimes the moment of meeting imprints on the memory. I'm in Standard 5. The new headmaster arrives to open the District High School in Pātea; teenagers will no longer be bussed to Hāwera for their secondary schooling. I've been in Pātea for just a few months. We're milling outside on the first day of the first term, and Susan Smith, the headmaster's daughter, is the new girl. We are readers, writers of stories, amateur artists. We are prepared to role play being French spies. She has had her photo in the paper with Opo the friendly dolphin. She talks about up north. Satisfyingly, we are immediately best friends.

In Lyon, I'm not linked to an educational institution, which I have been since I was 3. Institutions are busy places and they provide easy friendship. Now, I'm going to have to make an effort to find my own.

Joel's wife likes reading and my heart tentatively expands. She pulls a book from her nappy bag and my heart stretches out another hopeful centimetre, only to deflate immediately. Just by looking at the cover of her book, and seeing the raised gold lettering, the look of lust in the eyes of the hero, the downcast lids of the heroine, I know she's not reading France's very own Fay Weldon.

There's Mireille, who teaches English and who's married to Jean-Claude, a proud communist. Both good things. I like her, but she has already been bagsed by Lyn de Cleene, whose need is greater than mine, as she has no French whatsoever. When people present as best friends, it's not easy to push in.

I like Christiane, who teaches French at a high school, the equivalent job to the one I've just left. Eventually we become lifelong friends. She's a strong, beautiful woman who met her husband, the team's captain Jean-Louis, when they both played rugby for the LOU. They both have some English. But only people who are as short as I am will understand how difficult it can be to befriend someone who is nearly a foot taller, how like an awkward child you feel trotting along beside them, skipping to keep up.

And I'm used to being articulate. I have talked too much all my life. Our family doctor, when I'm 3, tells my mother my talking in my sleep means I have an over-active imagination. My teacher in the primers, Mrs Langman, has written on my school report,
"Linda is a joy to teach, but oh how she talks." My Standard 6 teacher introduces me to alliteration when he calls me "Long-tongued Linda". Five years later, my quotation in the school magazine reads, "Generally speaking, she's generally speaking."

Now, I can tell how hard the people I meet are finding it to talk to me. They're kind: they do their bit, grow perceptibly exhausted, excuse themselves to go to the lavatory, then reappear and sit next to someone else. I don't blame them, I've done exactly that myself when confronted with someone foreign. I sit there trying to look as if I don't care.

It's school dances all over again. It's Standard 1, when I wasn't invited to a girl's birthday party and everyone who was invited couldn't stop talking about the kittens in the barn.
And then there's the question of what we're actually going to live on. Without really discussing it, we decide if we ignore it, it will go away.

It's an odd situation. We have money, mostly because the club has paid us back for our tickets to France and we've brought a couple of thousand with us. They're paying us in kind — there's free accommodation; any bill that arrives in the mail is passed on to Maurice, the club's treasurer; there's a car provided, and free petrol as long as we buy it from the Peugeot dealer in Lyon; and boxes of provisions from Astic's restaurant. These have a wonderful randomness. There's fruit and vegetables, meat, a variety of cheeses and several thin blocks of dark Swiss chocolate.

Like many New Zealanders, we have had it firmly imprinted in us that we must not sponge. It takes months for us to truly see that the Astics see providing us with meals as perfectly normal. After all, for years they've been feeding Vincent Graule—who played for France in the 1930s, drop-kicked a crucial goal in some important match, became known forever after as M'sieur le Drop, and has never worked a day since. One night we go to another restaurant in Lyon that has some vague link to the club. Monsieur Lambert is a supporter. Robert is recognised. A fuss is made of us, we're ushered to the best table, a bottle of Champagne is uncorked, a marvellous meal is spread in front of us, and our attempt to pay is refused. Years later, we realise they really wanted us to go back. We never do, because we're afraid they might think we're after another free meal.

Someone's Wife by Linda Burgess (Allen & Unwin, 37) is available from September 3.