Perfect Freedom (9 page)

Stuart sat with M. Giraudon in front of Maître Barbetin's desk while the notary droned endlessly through the act of sale. Stuart didn't attempt to follow it. Generations of Giraudons were named, dates reaching back into the eighteenth century cited. When he reached the end, the notary looked at the two men.

“That's as satisfactory as it can be in view of certain discrepancies,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” Stuart muttered hastily.

M. Giraudon leaned forward. “I shall have to read it myself,” he said.

“But I've just read it to you,” the notary snapped.

“How do I know what you read is what's in there, eh? I know my rights. I have the right to read it myself.”

“No one questioned your right.” The notary's voice was raised with indignation. “You're not going to bore us with your talk of rights now?”

“Bore you? You think I care whether I bore you?”

“
Crétin
. What good would it do for you to care?”

Stuart began to fear for the outcome of his business and was about to intervene when the notary picked up the document and held it out to M. Giraudon.

“Read it, if you know how to read,” he said witheringly. The two old men glared at each other for a moment, then M. Giraudon snatched the papers and began to read. Stuart watched intently. Were there to be more complications? Was the absurd creature going to make some objection? At last M. Giraudon came to the end and handed the document back to the notary.

“Quite satisfactory,” he said as if no words had passed between them.

The notary turned to Stuart. “You are sure you wish to sign before I terminate my inquiries about the boundaries?” he asked.

“Yes, indeed.” Stuart didn't attempt to keep the urgency out of his voice.

“Very well.” Maître Barbetin rose solemnly, picked up a quill pen, dipped it into a brass inkwell on his desk, and held it out to Stuart with a ceremonious bow. Stuart was reminded of the Great Powers at Versailles as he moved around the desk to put his signature on the document. M. Giraudon in his turn attacked the paper as if he were an artist confronted with a virgin canvas:

Stuart's fate was sealed.

He returned from the notary's office bursting with his victory. Helene was dazzled by the blaze of his enthusiasm. He herded his family into the car and they drove out to the place and sat in the sun beside the olive trees, looking over the sea, and drank to the future from a bottle of champagne provided by Boldoni. Robbie got quite drunk on one glass and went to sleep in the back seat of the car. His parents looked around them with new eyes. Everywhere they looked belonged to them. Every tree, every rock, every vista acquired a unique value by being theirs. The property seemed suddenly enormous.

“Well, what do you think?” Stuart asked with a touch of awe in his voice.

“It's totally unbelievable. We've talked about it so much, I suppose I began to think it couldn't happen.”

“It's happened, all right. Wait till you see all the documents. When we go back, I'll take you to the office so you can sign and then everything'll be registered. We'll finally have a legal paper with both our names on it.”

She laughed and reached for his hand and gripped it. “We hardly need that after all these years but it's rather marvelous to know that we own it together. It's ours. It'll be Robbie's. How extraordinary. Think of what people at home would say. It
is
unbelievable that we can buy so much beauty for so little.”

“I don't suppose we can, really. We're going to have to work for it. I'm glad we can't afford to do anything elaborate with the house. You don't mind?”

“Good heavens, no, darling. I'm going to love our little house. You're right. It'll be so good for Robbie, growing up simply out of doors. Heaven knows what'll be left of the world when he's a man. They say the depression is only just beginning in Europe.”

“Well, I'm not depressed. Incidentally,
this
is home.”

“So it is, darling. I suppose we ought to be doing something about Robbie's school.”

“There's no hurry. I want him to do his share getting settled in. He can start next term or however it's arranged here.”

The next day work began. With two men recruited by Boldoni, they started with the road. Stuart had never chopped down a tree but he quickly learned to manage the smaller ones. It was an act of possession. Robbie and Helene were assigned to the brush and to stacking branches and although Helene broke most of her fingernails and scraped her knuckles, she didn't mind. It was such a joy to watch Stuart, stripped to the waist, his bronze skin gleaming with sweat, his muscles bunching up in his back as he swung his axe. The workmen obviously admired him, too. He was more devoted, more charming, more considerate than Helene had ever seen him, with his special capacity for making everything seem fun.

In less than a week, they had cleared a road down to the olive grove, in the process chopping enough wood, Stuart figured, to last them the winter, and filled in the badly rutted stretches. As an inauguration ceremony, the Coslings and the workmen climbed into the Rolls-Royce and drove grandly through the woods down to the sea. The place was taking on a new shape, their shape. It really belonged to them now.

Next it was the mason's turn to pull the house together, with Stuart quickly learning to be a useful assistant. They had a few days of gray weather and there was a new chill in the air and they were aware that the sun was beginning to set earlier. There was no longer any question of plunging naked into the sea.

After another few weeks, the work was terminated, including a shelter of cane reinforced with pine timbers for the outhouse and a garage of similar construction where the road ended some hundred yards from the house. They bought beds and a table and some straight-backed chairs and dishes and pots and pans. He had the feeling that all St. Tropez was smiling encouragingly on their homemaking efforts. Villagers whose faces were only vaguely familiar spoke to them like old friends.

One morning at the end of October, they moved in. It was an easy move for it took place piecemeal over a period of several days and when they said good-bye to Boldoni, none of them could quite believe that they wouldn't be back that evening.

“Are we ever going to eat at Boldoni's again?” Robbie asked rather wistfully as they carried their few light bags and bundles across the sunny glade to the house. Stuart laughed at the note of regret in his voice.

“You beginning to worry about the cuisine out here?”

“Well, Mum hasn't had much practice, has she?”

“It's going to be all right, darling,” Helene reassured him. “After all, I
am
French. We're born cooks. Just remember that when you're thinking about getting married.”

“You're going to have a hard time making us forget Boldoni, old girl,” Stuart warned her. He unlocked the front door and threw it open. “Shouldn't I carry you over the threshold or something?”

“Thanks to Boldoni, I don't think you can,” she said.

They spilled into the house, strewing their luggage about them. The whitewashed walls were bright with sunlight. In the big fireplace to the left a fire had been laid the day before. Next to it, in the corner, was Stuart and Helene's big double bed for which she had made a cover of black rep, piped in rose, so that it could be used as a sofa in the daytime. Curtains of a stout rose fabric hung at the big window looking out to the sea and the table at the other end of the room was painted white, as were the cane-bottomed chairs around it. Behind the table was the wood stove, a sink, a cupboard, shelves on which were ranged dishes and glasses. Copper pots hung in a row beneath them. The effect was gay and cozy, with a touch of the quaint that pleased Helene.

Robbie headed for the new door leading to the only major addition. “I want to get my room all arranged,” he said importantly. They watched him fondly as he withdrew and then turned to each other. Stuart spread his arms with a smile.

“Well, here we are.” She went to him and put her hands on his chest and he held her lightly. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“It's marvelous. I feel like a child playing house.”

“I rather suspect that there's going to be more work than play.”

“Well, I better get at it if we're to have any lunch.” She laughed and turned to her cupboard.

Stuart was right. There always seemed to be something to do. There were the household chores, the water to haul, the wood to split for the stove. And there was the problem of turning the land to some profit. In front of the house the rocky wooded ridge descended to the sea. A narrow path twisted around it and came out on several miles of beach, which also belonged to them. Behind the beach was a wide sweep of open land, an extremity of the central plain of the peninsula, broken by clumps of trees. It had once been farmed but all that was left were the few acres of vineyard that M. Giraudon had allowed to run almost wild.

As Stuart understood it, it was over this whole area, some eighty acres in all, that a controversy had raged at some time or other and about which Maître Barbetin had continued to be concerned until the papers had been signed. Stuart proposed to nurse the existing vines back to health and little by little to return the entire area to vines. With eighty acres of vines in production, he would be rich.

Aside from the site of the house, this was the part of his property that he liked best. The wide sweep of the beach bordered by clumps of tall cane offered a prospect that was peculiarly Mediterranean, both romantic and austere. A mile or two behind it, the land was a gently rolling panorama of neat cultivated rectangles, squat blank-faced farmhouses guarded by cypresses and great umbrella pines and, against the near low hills, the tracery of retaining walls. Beyond, the hills rose in receding bands of lavender and blue, and in the distance Cap Camarat was visible, topped by the white column of its lighthouse.

He particularly liked the lighthouse. It gave him the sense of being on an island although the sea wasn't visible on that side. A number of years passed before he learned how crucial this view of the lighthouse was to him.

They quickly established their routine. The heavy labor was of course reserved for Stuart, but Helene displayed an unexpected and gratifying readiness to help. Her mornings were given over to Robbie's lessons. The weather turned increasingly cold and it was disagreeable sometimes working out of doors, but Stuart was determined to make the best of it and Helene seemed positively to enjoy it. Robbie found that whining wouldn't get him anywhere with either parent and he was too pleased to have escaped school to draw attention to himself. In his spare time, Stuart paced his acres until he felt he knew every foot of them by heart. So much land. So damn much land. He didn't know where to begin.

For advice, he walked over to visit his nearest neighbor, whose name was Antonin Roquiètta. Stuart was aware that his purchase of property that had been coveted in the neighborhood might have created some hostility toward him, so he went with trepidation.

Roquiètta turned out to be a short wiry man with dull black hair. His dark ruddy skin and his slightly beaked nose made him look like an American Indian. He invited Stuart into the kitchen, where he was received by Madame Roquiètta, a good-looking woman with soft humorous eyes.

“Won't you sit down?” she said formally. Everything in the kitchen was clean and bright and ugly. Stuart sat at the table and Roquiètta sat beside him. The woman placed two glasses before them and an enormous jar of cherries floating in a pale amber liquid. She remained standing as they talked about the weather. When he told Roquiètta that he would like advice about his vineyard he was aware of a lightening of the atmosphere. Roquiètta was full of his agricultural exploits. He had a happy grin, childlike in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that he had no front teeth.

“The monsieur doesn't want to hear all your stories,” his wife interrupted. “Give him something to drink.” Roquiètta looked hurt but obeyed. They drank the cherry liquor and with a little encouragement from Stuart, he was off again.

Roquiètta had a habit of making disparaging statements that seemed like willful rudeness at first. When he came over to see Stuart's vines he shook his head. “They're not worth bothering about,” he said. When Stuart protested, the other insisted until Stuart could say no more. “But maybe Antonin has an idea. We'll see about that,” he finally agreed. He referred to himself frequently in the third person.

“That? That land's exhausted,” he said when Stuart showed him where he planned to start his vegetable garden. There was another argument, which ended the same way. “We'll see. I think Antonin has an idea.”

Stuart learned that once Antonin had convinced himself of the hopelessness of a project, he was ready to tackle it. He had a store of practical folklore. At his instigation, Stuart bought a rifle and a small rowboat for hunting and fishing. He sold the furniture stored in New York to have a little extra money to play with. Also at Antonin's suggestion, he bought a dozen chickens and half a dozen pairs of pigeons and some rabbits, after building suitable housing for them. The total investment was more than he had expected but he told himself they would quickly pay for themselves.

He put Robbie in charge of them and passed on what Antonin had told him about their mating habits. The boy did not connect this information with the mystery that remained at the heart of adult life. Animals were different from humans. Animals didn't have to get married to have children.

Stuart thought Robbie too young to handle a rifle but he did take him fishing the first time he went out in the boat. Since they didn't catch anything and it was frightfully cold, Robbie couldn't see why they didn't buy fish at the market in St. Tropez, but his father seemed to think they were enjoying themselves so he played along with him.