Unit 5

TEXT I

The Light at the End of the Chunnel

Text

In a hotel lobby in Sandgate, England, not two miles from the soon-to-be-opened English Channel Tunnel, stiff upper lips trembled. For the first time since the last ice age, England was about to be linked to France.
"I'd rather England become the 51st state of the U. S. A. than get tied up to there," said a retired civil servant with a complexion the color of ruby port. He nodded toward the steel gray Channel out the window, his pale blue eyes filled with foreboding.
"Awful place," added his wife, lifting a teacup to her lips. "They drink all the time, and the food is terrible. When I go to the Continent, I take my own bottle of English sauce."
"We don't care much for the French," her husband concluded. "But the French. ..." Here a pause, a shudder, as the gull-wing eyebrows shot upward. "The French don't care for anybody."
On the other side of the Channel, the entente was scarcely more cordiale. In Vieux Coquelles, a village a beet field away from the French terminal near Calais, Clotaire Fournier walked into his farmhouse.
"I went to England once," he said, sinking into a chair in the dining room. "Never again! All they eat is ketchup. " A tiny explosion of air from pursed lips, then the coup de grace. "You can't even get a decent glass of red wine!"
Well, by grace of one of the engineering feats of the century, for richer or poorer, better or worse, England and France are getting hitched. On May 6, 1994, Queen Elizabeth of Britain and President Francois Mitterrand of France are scheduled to inaugurate the English Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel" for short), sweeping aside 200 years of failed cross-Channel-link schemes, 1,000 years of historical rift, and 8,000 years of geographic divide.
The 31-mile-long Chunnel is really three parallel tunnels: two for trains and a service tunnel. It snakes from Folkestone, England, to Coquelles, France, an average of 150 feet below the seabed. Drive onto a train at one end; stay in your car and drive off Le Shuttle at the other 35 minutes later. Later this year [i. e. , 1994] Eurostar passenger trains will provide through service: London to Paris in three hours; London to Brussels in three hours, ten minutes.
The Chunnel rewrites geography, at least in the English psyche. The moat has been breached. Britain no longer is an island.
It's June 28, 1991, and I'm packed into a construction workers' train along with several dozen other journalists. We're headed out from the English side to the breakthrough ceremony for the south running tunnel — the last to be completed.
The Chunnel is a work in progress. The concrete walls await final installation of the power, water, and communication lines that will turn it into a transport system. White dust fills the air. The train screeches painfully. "Makes you appreciate British Rail," someone jokes.
Finally we reach the breakthrough site. The two machines that dug this tunnel started from opposite sides of the Channel and worked toward the middle. Now we're staring at the 30-foot-diameter face of the French tunnel boring machine (TBM), "Catherine."
In one of those vive la difference quirks that color the project, the French gave women's names to their machines. On the British side, it's by the numbers — like TBM No. 6. Another difference: French workers wear chic, well-cut, taupe jumpsuits with red and blue racing stripes down the sleeves. The British uniform is pure grunge: baggy, bright orange.
Looking up, I imagine 180 feet of Channel above my head — ferries, tankers, a Dover sole or two. ...
The grating of the TBM interrupts my reverie. Its cutterhead — a huge wheel with tungsten-tipped teeth — chews into the last trace of rock separating England from France.
Music blares, and lights glare. Several Frenchmen scramble through. Thunderous applause erupts as dozens more follow. Strangely moving, this connecting of countries. Champagne corks pop, and French workers hug British counterparts.
"I might have opposed it 30 years ago, but now it's my tunnel," an Englishman says.
French tunnelers are still climbing through. "So many," I say, turning to a French official.
"And there are 56 million more behind them," he replies.
Apres le tunnel, le deluge? Eurotunnel hopes so. It predicts eight million passengers a year by 1996. The flow will be lopsided. Only 30 percent of the traffic will be headed to Britain. "The French don't take holidays in England," explains Jeanne Labrousse, a Eurotunnel executive.
Hmmmm. Why do the French visit Britain? For the food? The weather? Fashion?
Mme. Labrousse seemed thoughtful.
"Of course," she brightened, "we will work on selling the idea."
From National Geographic, May 1994, by Cathy Newman.

TEXT II

Travelling

"What a lot of travelling you have done in your day, Aunt Augusta."
"I haven't reached nightfall yet," she said. "If I had a companion I would be off tomorrow, but I can no longer lift a heavy suitcase, and there is a distressing lack of porters nowadays. As you noticed at Victoria1."
"We might one day," I said, "continue our seaside excursions. I remember many years ago visiting Weymouth. There was a very pleasant green statue of Geroge III on the front."
"I have booked two couchettes a week from today on the Orient Express."
I looked at her in amazement. "Where to?" I asked.
"Istanbul, of course."
"But it takes days..."
"Three nights to be exact."
"If you want to go to Istanbul surely it would be easier and less expensive to fly?"
"I only take a plane," my aunt said, "when there is no alternative means of travel."
"It's really quite safe."
"It is a matter of choice, not nerves," Aunt Augusta said. "I knew Wilbur Wright very well indeed at one time. He took me for several trips. I always felt quite secure in his contraptions. But I cannot bear being spoken to all the time by irrelevant loud-speakers. One is not badgered at a railway station. An airport always reminds me of a Butlin's Camp.
"If you are thinking of me as a companion..."
"Of course I am. Henry."
"I'm sorry, Aunt Augusta, but a bank manager's pension is not a generous one."
"I shall naturally pay all expenses. Give me another glass of wine, Henry. It's excellent."
"I'm not really accustomed to foreign travel. You'd find me..."
"You will take to it quickly enough in my company. The Pullings have all been great travellers. I think I must have caught the infection through your father."
"Surely not my father... He never travelled further than Central London."
"He travelled from one woman to another, Henry, all through his life. That comes to much the same thing."

From Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene