Last week we were in France and stopped in a village in Touraine for lunch. I asked the young man who greeted us if he could do us a table for two. He said something in a language that wasn’t French and sounded a bit like wind coming under a door. I repeated my request and he finally led us to a table.

“What language was that?” I asked Penny.

“I think it was English,” she said.

Oh lordy, I thought: here we go again. Every time I go to France I’m beset by people who insist on practising their English on me. I normally win this battle, often being tempted to add that I haven’t spent hundreds of pounds and travelled hundreds of miles in order to pay for meals, drinks or hotel rooms, and give free English conversation classes into the bargain. Ici, unless it becomes impossible, on parle français. The customer, or visitor, is after all always right.

So far I’ve been too polite, or perhaps too timid, ever to say any of these things, though they must often have been clear from my manner.

The young woman who took our order suffered from no such lingusitic ambitions. The food order was simple enough – there were only two main dishes to choose from – but the problem came with the beer. There were about ten listed, none of which we’d heard of.

“The least strong that you have,” I said , “as long as it has some alcohol. But we don’t want any powerful Belgian stuff or anything like that.”

I realised that – not for the first time during that meal, as matters turnred out – a number of people had stopped eating and were looking at me. I wondered if I should make their day and ask, in English, for two halves of Watney’s Red Barrel each with a maraschino cherry and a bag of pork scratchings.

She rattled off the name of several brands, possibly at random. “You choose,” I said. “You’re the expert.”

She didn’t seem able to process this idea. Instead, with one hand holding the tablet used for the ordering, she then did something really strange; squeezing the edges of her mouth together between thumb and forefinger so she resembled a catfish and making strange blowing noises, staring down at her screen. She stayed like this for about ten seconds: which, in the circumstances, was a long time.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

No reaction. Another ten seconds passed. It was as if she’d powered down. Penny couldn’t see any of this as the woman was standing behind her: only my expression, which must have resembled that of someone trapped in a lift.

The waitress snapped out of her reverie and dropped her hand. Her face reverted to normal. She read back the detail of the order, accepted my nod and swished away.

Penny and I chatted for a bit and then, as I often do in restaurants, I sat back and looked round at my fellow diners.

On the opposite side of the room, was a party of four, one of whom looked very like someone I’ve known for about thirty years. But what was she doing here and now talking, and gesturing, in French?

Then the owner came in: and, blow me down, he was the spitting image of someone else – the hair, the smile, the gestures were all a match for a man known to me for even longer but who was, to my certain knowledge, not running a restaurant in central France.

I glanced to my right, There – as large as life and twice as French – was someone we’ve known for about ten years. She has young children and so did this version,. Hers were getting bored with the grown-ups’ meal and tiring of their picture books.

I drew Penny’s attention to all this. Perhaps because it was easier to agree, she conceded that, yes, perhaps these people had some superficial similarity with those I suggested.

It was when I looked slightly to my left that I became seriously alarmed. What the hell was he doing here, chatting in a language I knew he couldn’t speak to a woman I know wasn’t his wife? I mentioned this to Penny as well. She nodded, as politely as before.

At this point, the food arrived: as did the beer, which was pink and tasted like, and perhaps was, Kronenbourg with a grenadine top. I realised how hungry this parallel-universe experience was making me and crammed pasta, bread and pink beer into my mouth. I gabbled for a while about something or other – perhaps our route; perhaps the view; or perhaps who else I was going to spot whom I thought I recognised. Penny only paid attention to the first two.

I don’t often see doppelgängers. To meet four in almost as many minutes was surprising. I considered why this might be.

The least interesting explanation was that, having found one seeming similarity, my mind was primed to hunt for more. This would have made more sense if I’d been on drugs or bored with my circumstances or partner, none of which applied.

The second was that a charity administrator from North London, a Hamburg-based musician, a social-media maven from Oxfordshire and a former Hungerford Town Councillor should all somehow have, over many years, convinced me that they were these things, and unknown to each other, and British; and then turned up, as French as you like, in the same restaurant in Touraine at the same time.

As Sherlock Holmes observed, when you eliminate the impossible then whatever remains,  no matter how improbable, must be the truth. It therefore seemed that I had – perhaps through the the waiter’s strange words or the waitress’s even stranger facial contortions – been drawn into a parallel universe.

I cast my eyes around the restaurant, looking at each person I’d identified. From face to face my gaze went, seeking confirmation of the resemblances or, the very least, explanation of my confusion. Each one now seemed maddeningly both more and less similar to their originals.

That was what I saw. What they saw was a preoccupied-looking man, who’d previously had an odd interface with the waitress, staring at them in an intense and rotational way. More than once I caught their, or their partner’s, eye which increasingly returned a glare of bemused hostility.

I knocked back the rest of my pink beer and asked for the bill.

There was, however, still a piece of unfinished business at the table next to us.

This was a man of about fifty whom I couldn’t place but who seemed in an odd way even more similar to someone I knew than were any of the other four, spitting images though they had to me now become. He had a habit of pushing himself onto just the back legs of his chair and rubbing his face with one hand, both of which seemed even more maddeningly familiar than did his face.

But who was he? His half-recollected figure and gestures have haunted me since but are now starting to fade. He might, perhaps, have provided the key to the whole preposterous or whimsical mystery. If so, as with the origin of dreams, it’s perhaps better not to know.

For the same reason, I’ve avoided trying to identify the restaurant, or even the town, on a map. Part of me hopes that I’ll find them and part of me hopes that I won’t. Even the most slender magic is rarely glimpsed: but when it is, how much better then to look away and move on, briefly touched by something unexpected.

In any case, you don’t make reservations at Chez Doppelgänger. If it wants you, it’ll find you.

So, we drove away from somewhere that had already turned into something other than what it was, or ever had been, to anyone else. Perhaps that’s what travel is meant to do. If so, it worked, in whatever universe this meal actually took place – if, of course, it really did…

Brian Quinn
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