Le Havre to Rosslare
Clowns in cafés and surviving a ferry across the North Sea
It was the spring of 1991 and after three weeks bumbling through Europe, Pete and I were flat broke. The two of us made our way to the Paris St-Lazare station and boarded a train north to Normandy. We arrived without incident in the early morning. The ferry back to Ireland, which neither of us was pleased to board again, wasn’t leaving until the afternoon.
We wandered the streets of Le Havre, the ferry’s port of call, and soon began to notice strange things. First, rounding a corner, I saw what appeared to be a medieval court jester ducking into an alleyway. I chalked it up to a lack of sleep and said nothing.
I was forced to reconsider — but relieved I might not be losing my mind alone — when Pete saw the next one.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
“What was what?”
“Just saw something really strange.”
“What?”
“A circus clown walked into that café.”
“Seriously?”
“Pretty sure. What time is it, anyway?” he asked, as if a time check would clear things up.
“Almost eight,” I answered.
Seconds later, we watched a six-foot orange lion and a woman in a purple tutu exit the café and walk around the corner.
“Tell me you saw that,” Pete asked nervously.
“I did.”
“What’s going on?”
It’s funny how information one has stored in their mind can fuel paranoia. When I was a child back on the farm in Maine, a local art-house cinema, The Railroad Square, asked us to store their theater seats in our barn while they renovated a local building for their grand opening. We stored the chairs for a year or so, and when the theater opened, the owners gave us a family pass.
I remember sitting in the barn-scented seats in the dark theater eating popcorn and viewing short-run screenings of cult classics like The Atomic Café, Harold and Maude, and my favorite, The King of Hearts, a French film, starring Alan Bates.
In this film, set during WWI, as the German Army retreats, an allied Scottish soldier enters a booby-trapped French village on a reconnaissance mission, carrying a cage of messenger pigeons. The town is deserted save for a group of exceedingly eccentric patients from an asylum, who have taken over the village, unaware of the surrounding war, much less the bomb our allied soldier has been sent to find and diffuse.
The unwitting soldier is crowned “The King of Hearts” by the group and finds himself in a surreal world of whimsical pageantry.
That morning in Le Havre, perhaps life was imitating art.
Several more sightings, a race car driver, alchemist, wizard and medieval knight, spurred us to investigate. We entered the café and took a table amongst the circus for a coffee and a croissant.
The costumed patrons recognized our consternation and chuckled as we begged the waitress for clarity. She took her time to answer while the café had a laugh.
We were not crazy. It was the last morning of Carnevale. Everyone was still in costume and recovering from an all-night celebration. The party was set to kick up again that afternoon, but our boat was leaving. We boarded the not-so-trusty Sealink ferry for the trip back across the North Sea to Rosslare, Ireland.
Once aboard, Pete noticed a section of the boat with comfortable-looking sleeper cabins, some of which were unoccupied as the boat left port. Recalling our harrowing journey to France a few weeks prior, we were not surprised there were vacancies. I stood lookout at the end of the hall, while Pete popped the lock to a cabin and we snuck in and locked the door behind us.
There were two sets of bunk beds in the sleeper cabin and after hitting the bar for a late lunch and a few beers, we returned to our beds and settled in for the voyage. Our long days and restless nights in Europe caught up with us and we crashed, sleeping like stones well into the night. But then our sleep was interrupted more abruptly than a switch-wielding Italian train conductor could have managed.
I awoke in mid-air, having been thrown from the top bunk, before slamming into the opposite lower bunk and crashing to the floor. Pete, who had suffered a similar jolt, was already crawling to the door.
“Not good,” he said grimly, “when a boat this big is rocking.”
“What the hell!” I wailed, still half-asleep. “We were in a storm on the way over.”
“I guess the North Sea is stormy, Doug.”
My stomach rolled as my legs wobbled and gravity fluctuated unnaturally under my feet. I sat back down.
“Damn,” Pete continued. “This is some shit we’re in.”
“What should we do?” I worried. “No one knows we’re in here. What if they already evacuated?”
“Evacuated to where? We’re in the middle of the ocean!”
“Good point,” I conceded. “But we better see what’s going on. I’ll be sick if we stay here.”
We rose unsteadily to our feet and managed to get through the door and into the hallway. We walked no more than two or three steps when the motion of the boat slammed us hard into the wall and we collapsed.
“Holy shit,” Pete said. “This is bad.”
“Keep moving,” I yelled. “Let’s get to the deck and look outside.”
I don’t know why I wanted to look outside — maybe the same phenomenon as being unable to turn away from a horrible accident. Oddly, in this case, we were angling for a look at our own horrible accident.
Pete got to his feet and I followed. If it weren’t so frightening it would have been comical, as the boat slammed us into the walls mercilessly and we fell and rose and crawled to the end of the hall.
Pete entered the lobby first and made his way to the starboard doors for a look outside. I’m not sure what our plan was, but going outside for a look was impossible.
“They chained the doors!” Pete yelled over his shoulder.
“What?” I asked, and then saw for myself. The deck doors were secured with a steel chain and padlock.
“That can’t be legal!” I yelled over the din of ocean waves. “They expect us to just go down with the ship!”
“Guess so,” Pete screamed. “Maybe so idiots like us don’t go out on deck!”
I saw the logic, but after a few minutes of rolling around on the carpet and smacking into chairs and tables, the sea calmed for a moment so we decided to try for the bar.
Other passengers had the same idea and we ordered doubles of Irish whiskey with fellow petrified seafarers.
“Never again,” one croaked, guzzling his drink.
“Goddamned Sea Link,” said another. “Don’t these morons have radar? Can’t we sail around it or some shit?”
“Bullocks!”
Pete and I nodded in agreement, unable to speak and slugging down drinks as fast as possible. The hope was the alcohol would lessen our fears and fortify some sense of sea-going bravado, but it didn’t work. After an hour, the storm was worse, and though we were drunk, we were still petrified.
We left our fellow seasick dogs to drown their sorrows on their way to (actual) drowning and body-slam-crawled back to the cabin where we sat staring at the ceiling and walls as giant waves passed underneath, praying the storm would end.
Thankfully, the storm did finally subside and we sailed into the harbor at Rosslare ten hours late and got off that godforsaken boat. I can’t remember if I kissed the ground, but I may have. I couldn’t believe that ferry was an actual choice of travel for so many. I wouldn’t ride the Sealink again if you paid me. Two years later, even fewer would likely choose that ferry again because the boat rolled to within four degrees of sinking in a force-ten gale and put dozens in the hospital in a storm similar to ours.
We should have stayed an extra day with the clowns and wizards in Le Havre.
