Je Reviens Te Chercher

(I will come back to look for you)

There are no lost sheep

Here is a brief tale of an unusual confluence of events. I love when they happen, these seredipities, connections, deja vues, all the inexplicable moments of the universe that conspire to restore a kind of optimism and hope.

It is 1969 and two of my sisters, myself and the parents are on holidays in Roscommon. We are squeezed into a living room watching an old black and white tv at 3 am. Neil Armstrong is talking with a twang and we are gathered watching the incomprehensible image of the first human on the Moon.

The 1960’s is a kodakchrome age. The snapshots of those holidays are all bright colours (As Paul Simon sings). The Wickham’s are staying in a Bed and Breakfast called Riversdale. It is the former home of Maureen O Sullivan (the Irish Actress who played Jane in the old Tarzan Movies) and is a few miles outside Boyle . Sharing the guesthouse are a family from France and we all get on great and become firm friends. The new friends like fishing and I spend a lot of time with them catching Pike and Perch. At the end of the weeks holiday, my parents swap records with them. Clancy Brothers and Dubliners for Gilbert Becaud and Guy Beart. I listened avidly to the french records when we get back in Dublin. I love them, the passionate language I do not yet understand. The singers sound so emotional, sometimes angry sometimes sad, always singing with great feeling. The melodies are haunting.

Zip forward nearly 40 years and it’s 2006. My new french friend Bruno Caliciuri calls me and asks if I would like to record ‘Je Reviens te Chercher’ with him for a film (F’auteils d’orchestre) The song is from the Gilbert Becaud record that I’ve been listening to since childhood. The record is a success and Bruno asks will I play live with him in Paris. The venue is L’Olympia. Becaud’s record, the one I’ve had for 40 years was recorded in the Olympia. The night is a rip roaring success.

Mid way through another show with Cali a couple of years later in 2008, this time at the Zenith in Paris, Bruno beckons me to join him again on stage with a petite and beautiful woman to sing another song that we’ve recorded together. The woman is trembling with nerves as the three of us face out alone from the stage into the packed Zenith, I smile at her and tell her in my terrible french that she is great and not to worry.

Later, Bruno tells me that the beautiful woman was Emmanuelle Béart the daughter of Guy Béart, the singer from the other record my parents were gifted back in the kodachrome days when humans walked willy nilly on the moon.