Reflections of Sunflowers (9 page)

In three days’ time we would go to collect our younger son, Matthew, from Agen. He was part of the stage crew on the new West End musical ‘
Bombay Dreams
’ and could only manage a week with us. His brother and the rest of the family would join him on the following day and, we hoped, stay longer. In any case, Bel-Air would soon be
complet
. Matthew always preferred to sleep in our fourth bedroom, which we had made in the
chai
. We called it the green room, not in any theatrical sense, but because many years before in a wild spasm of decorating we had stencilled twining green leaves the length of a painted beam and even, for good measure, trailed a few more leaves up the wall behind the bed. Although the walls and floor were white, the room gradually acquired green bedcovers and rugs and the odd green and white plate adorned the walls. As I dusted, removing the latest spiders’ webs, and squeezed the lavender bags, which hang from the beam, I prayed that we would not get any heavy rain, as we still had done nothing about roofing over the corner of the house directly outside the green room door. The heap of old tiles that the boys had uncovered kept reminding us.

Early that evening Jean-Michel came by to catch a cow that was calling forlornly from the edge of the vineyard. There always seems to be one young animal more curious than the rest that will eventually push its way under the electric fence and wander off. When
the herd move on and it suddenly finds itself separated from the others, it becomes worried. We could hear the older cow, which acts as ‘mother’ to the nine or ten young ones, answering, but it was clear that Jean-Michel would have to switch off the current and lead the young cow back. He climbed down from the tractor and, baton in hand, strode up through the long, lush grass. There was quite a chorus from the cows as they saw him and we heard him calling soothingly as he approached ‘
Bene, bene
.’ Cows hereabouts must be called in the old language, Occitan, which Grandma and Grandpa still often used when they chatted to each other.

The young cow rescued, Jean-Michel appeared round the side of the house. ‘
Le bar est ouvert?
’ he demanded with a grin.

‘
Bien sur!
’

Looking bronzed and fit he took a beer from the fridge, and sat down, taking off his orange baseball cap, which was stained with sweat. Although he is very dark-skinned his deep-set eyes are an amazing blue. He and Véronique, with Océane, had been to Cap d’Agde the previous weekend. Véronique has a job in Villeneuve, at Auchan, the hypermarket. She works shifts, sometimes not getting home until after ten at night. They both work extremely hard but also enjoy themselves in ways that to previous generations would have been inconceivable. They think nothing of
driving for three hours through a Saturday night down to the Mediterranean to spend Sunday with friends and relations in their tiny apartment overlooking the busy harbour, only to drive home again in the early hours of Monday morning. Raymond mutters about farmers not expecting to be free at the weekend and what Grandpa would have said had he, Raymond, suggested such a thing, but as long as he is fit to keep an eye on the animals the youngsters will take an occasional break.

‘There’s rain forecast for tomorrow and the day after,’ said Jean-Michel, draining his beer. We grimaced. ‘We’ve got Matthew coming to stay in the green room and we’ve still done nothing about getting that corner roofed over. It’s not much fun having to go out in the rain to the bathroom.’

Jean-Michel laughed. ‘
Matthieu? Il est solide lui
. A bit of rain won’t bother him!’

‘Perhaps not, but we’ve got others less
solide
coming in a few weeks. It’s getting someone to do it – even if it’s possible. Raymond says old M. Lecours has retired.’

‘
C’est vrai
. And in any case he was always more interested in his pigeon shooting than his roofs. You should have a word with M. Carpentier,’ urged Jean-Michel. ‘He’s been helping me during the winter. He and his son are good workers. And he’s reasonable too, especially if you pay
en liquide
,’ he grinned,
rubbing thumb and forefingers together.

We hadn’t even considered M. Carpentier. He was a near neighbour. We had met him and his family at the village fête the previous year but we had imagined that he wouldn’t have a minute to spare, so busy was he on his own project.

Until M. Carpentier’s recent arrival, nothing has ever been done to an overgrown ruin that lay at the bottom of our track about a hundred yards in from the road. It was the first building we passed on turning into our long, winding
chemin rural
that led down over a stream, climbed between Jean-Michel’s house and barn, and curved on up the hill to our house. Although very close to the track, the old ruin always seemed withdrawn, being an L-shape with the long windowless side of a barn abutting directly onto the track and the shorter section of the house hidden from view. It belonged, we learnt, to M. Guyou, whose own farm lay in the dip between two nearby fields where his large herd of black and white milking cows moved leisurely over the horizon at regular intervals. While he stored great rounds of straw in the barn, he did nothing to maintain it. The house, completely abandoned, became almost entirely obscured by wild plum trees and brambles. Gradually the roof began to deteriorate and one spring when we arrived, we saw that the corner of the barn wall had collapsed.

Raymond shrugged. ‘
C’est dommage
,’ he said,
‘
mais
…he won’t spend the money. They do say he’d like to sell it but…’ he shook his head. ‘
C’est trop près du chemin
.’ It’s too near the track. That summer we did have an unexpected visit from a lost English couple clutching a map and an estate agent’s leaflet. When they realised that the house they were looking for was the ruin they had driven past without a glance, they soon disappeared. M. Guyou, it seemed, was overoptimistic.

However, the following year when we arrived we were surprised to see that all the brambles had been cleared, the house was visible, and stakes now marked out a large piece of land on three sides of the property. A gravel path had even been laid. We were curious.

‘
Oui, c’est vendu
,’ said Raymond at supper that night as we caught up with all the news. ‘
Aux Anglais?
’ we asked.

‘
Non, c’est un M. Carpentier qui l’a achetée
.’ He then explained that M. Carpentier and his family had been renting a small house not far away. ‘He’s had his eye on it for ages,’ said Raymond. ‘Waiting for the price to come down, or the roof to fall in completely.’

‘Or both,’ laughed Claudette.

‘
Oui
,’ Raymond agreed. ‘
Mais, il est maçon
. He’s a builder and so is his son.
Ils sont gentils tous les deux
.’

As we drove by we caught glimpses of a dark, handsome man, but the work on the house seemed to
be very spasmodic. More obvious was the beginning of a garden on which Madame Carpentier soon began to make an impression. We learnt that both her husband and her son were employed by a large, building company and, as a consequence, work on their own project could only be done at weekends and in their holidays. However, by the next time we came it was clear that M. Carpentier had ambitious plans for the once derelict building. A large picture window had been cut, and a covered terrace built, the roof supported on slender, very white, columns. This Grecian effect was not universally approved of locally where traditional designs are favoured and there were mutterings in the village shop, but he was clearly a skilful builder.

Jean-Michel drained his beer. ‘
Merci
,’ he said, picking up his cap and striding off again. ‘Il
faut parler à Monsieur Carpentier, Michel
,’ he shouted over the roar of the tractor. And so we did.

The following evening M. Carpentier came up to look at our problem. ‘Mm,’ he frowned. ‘
C’est pas facile
.’ We rather suspected that to be the case. The two roof edges, which needed to be joined to make a porch, sloped at right angles to each other. M. Carpentier explained, however, as he and Mike drew endless diagrams, that that was not the main problem. He nailed a string to the highest point between the two sloping roofs and pulled it out on a diagonal. We began to see that what was needed was a stout wooden
upright at the far corner, to support a diagonal beam. What was in effect a rectangle could be divided and incorporated into the other two roof edges. The larger problem was the height, or rather lack of height, as both roofs sloped down very low.

‘The covered terrace would be perfectly accessible from the bedroom door,’ said M. Carpentier. ‘People would not get wet when they came out to the shower, but,’ he frowned. ‘Because the ground is higher out here, if you roof it over, no one will be able to get into the shower room or the lavatory from outside without bending very low.’

Bending low not being recommended for problem backs, it was clear that we would have to think again. M. Carpentier scratched his head.

‘What I could do,’ he said, pacing about and squinting up at the roof, ‘is dig the ground out further back to here.’

‘What about the water channel?’ Our water channel, which M. Duparq had made all round the house many years before, only just managed to cope with the great volume of water that cascaded down from the long slope of the roof of the
chai
during heavy rain.

‘I’ll cut some steps going down so that you won’t bump your head,’ said M. Carpentier, ‘and then create a new channel for the water. A drain and a perforated pipe under the drive here will carry the water right away.’

It made sense.

‘And, the upright,’ we hesitated. ‘It will be of wood?’

He grinned, realising that we had his Grecian columns in mind.

‘
Oh oui. Ne vous inquiétez pas. Très rustique!
’

‘When could you start?’ we asked hopefully after he had quoted us a price –
en liquide
of course – which seemed reasonable. He looked apologetic.

‘I can’t even begin to think about it. Not until the middle of September,’ he said with a shrug. ‘
Désolé, mais…
’

It looked as though the heap of tiles would stay where they were for a while yet, and the umbrella remain at the ready by the green room door.

Although rain was forecast Jean-Michel was taking no chances. I was awoken the next morning by the swish of the water cannon. During the night it had been working its way up the great field of maize just behind Bel-Air, which seemed to grow taller every day. As the jet completed its final sweeping arcs before winding itself back onto the revolving drum to stop, I knew that the spray would just reach my garden. Pleased at the prospect of a free
arrosage
, I nevertheless got up to close the shutters. The hissing water grew louder each time it turned towards the house and soon the first heavy splashes sounded on my bedroom door. When the cannon is not in use I am still able to get free water by attaching my garden hose to Raymond’s hydrant at the corner of the orchard. This new system brings water to all the surrounding farms from the river Lot.
It smells strongly of river, but is much cheaper for the farmers than using mains water. Raymond is generous and claims that even if I put my sprinkler on all the afternoon, it is just a dribble compared to his
canon à eau
. I don’t argue.

He had reminded me the previous evening that it was the
fête votive
at St Aubin the following day. Later in the year, on the second Sunday in September, the celebrated
Foire aux Pruneaux
would be held in this small village about six kilometres away and would attract about four thousand visitors. The main winding street would be arched over with paper garlands made during the winter months and in this region of plum orchards people would come from all over Lot-et-Garonne to taste and buy prunes,
les pruneaux d’Agen
, presented in every conceivable way. There would be prunes in tarts, in cakes, covered in chocolate, cooked on skewers with bacon,
en daube de boeuf
, or steeped in an almost lethal
Eau de Vie
– also distilled from prunes! The Bishop of Agen would come to say a special Mass in Occitan and to bless a tray of the most beautiful prunes presented by small girls in local costume. There would be folkdancing and donkey rides.

Today’s fête would be a much smaller affair but Raymond was exhibiting the old Citroën, and hoped we would go. We arrived in time to see him, dressed in a striped jersey and peaked cap, posing proudly with
other owners for a group photograph. Our Citroën stood between a 1929 Ford Cabriolet and another Citroën, 1936 vintage, called ‘Rosalie’. The cars gleamed from every surface. The photographic session complete, Raymond began to enquire about the menu
pour le repas de midi
.

‘They give you lunch?’ I asked.

‘
Naturellement
,’ said Raymond. ‘
On n’exhibite pas pour rien!
’ Now I began to understand another reason for his enthusiasm for
Le Club des Vieilles Voitures
.

The cars looked positively modern compared with another exhibit; a really ancient, wooden threshing machine, which was being coupled to an old tractor. A group of sturdy young enthusiasts rushed about with sheaves of wheat. When three brand new hessian sacks were hooked onto one side of the thresher to catch the grain, I realised that I hadn’t seen a hessian sack for years. Although plastic sacks would not have been appropriate, these, although made of natural fibre, were so pristine they also looked incongruous hanging against the well-worn, battered wooden machine, as though a careless property master had forgotten to age the props. As the machine began to shudder into life, sending up great clouds of dust, it looked as though it might fall to pieces at any minute. More sheaves were brought. The sacks began to fill with grain, the oldest watchers in the crowd smiled with pleasure and turned to tell of how their fathers had known such a machine.
There was much talk of
les beaux jours d’autrefois
, ‘the good old days’, but after the machine had broken down for the third time the crowd drifted away to watch a game of
rampeau
being played nearby.

I am told that this game predates
pétanque
, which, in any case, originates from south-east France. A simple, local game, it is similar to skittles and is played on a bed of sand about four metres long and a metre wide, with a board for a back-stop. The skittles, or
quilles
, are very thin wooden pegs, and are placed one behind the other in the sand about forty centimetres apart. The ball is also made of wood. As we watched one attempt after another it appeared much more difficult to down all three pins than one would have imagined. After each throw the pins were straightened and the sandy channel was solemnly reshaped using a curious kind of wooden implement – a half-circle on a long handle. The curved underneath edge smoothed the channel along which the ball had to be rolled. We had, many years before, found just such a tool in our attic and could not imagine what it had been used for until we saw our first game played, also at a local fête. We wondered then whether, long before Anaïs married and came to Bel-Air, her husband Justin and his two young brothers had once played
rampeau
in our garden.

Part of the fun of the game is the thwack of the ball against the wooden board, in this case an old door lain on its side. At each attempt there were
shouts of approval if two pins fell, commiseration at near misses.

‘
Deux sur trois! Pas mauvais Jean-Claude
,’ is the shout. Others step forward to try, but no one manages to down all three. When the ball misses altogether and slams into the door there are jeers and ironic ‘Bravos.’ The keeper has a satisfied gleam in his eye as he comes forward yet again to rake the sand. I begin to wonder if the final pin is more firmly fixed than perhaps is permissible until the little crowd stands back to allow someone who, from the whispers, might be a champion to try his luck. He is a short, solid, unsmiling man. Under his brand new flat cap, each section cut from a differently patterned fabric, his eyes narrow. He takes the ball and shuffles it from hand to hand. The crowd grow restless then quieten as he squints, bends his knees. His arm flashes back, the ball is hurled with great force and all the pins fly out of the sand.

‘
Trois, sur trois!
’ they yell in delight to the hero of the hour and crowd round to congratulate him. He permits himself a brief smile, adjusts his cap and strides away. The keeper rakes the bowling channel anew but there are no challengers.

The next morning there were 25 swallows on the electricity wire, the air was definitely cooler and banks of cloud moved slowly toward us from the west. From the orchard I could hear much shouting of explanations by Jean-Michel over the roar of the
tractor, but as there was no loud, protesting response, I thought it unlikely to be Raymond working with him. It was, unusually, Philippe, unshaven and wearing what looked like his father’s straw hat, who greeted me. He was driving the tractor with a great round bale of straw balanced on the
fourche
in front. Jean-Michel, with customary aplomb, was showing him how to lower the bale into a small trailer, fitted with a rotating disc. This sliced up the bale and spewed the straw out at the side like a motor mower. When they had coordinated their efforts, Jean-Michel drove up and down between the rows of plum trees, covering the ground with straw.

‘It will stop the plums bursting when they fall on the hard ground, or getting muddy when it rains,’ he told me. It was the first time I had ever seen this done and was clearly another of Jean-Michel’s new ideas and probably why Philippe, rather than Raymond, was involved. Philippe, who lives in Toulouse, works for a sugar company, but most weekends during the summer, he and Corinne with young Clement return to the countryside where Philippe keeps a hunting dog. He is a very good shot and also enjoys fishing. The young couple divide their time between their parents’ farms, returning to the city late on a Sunday evening with enough fresh produce to last until the following weekend.

I left them hard at work, took my breakfast and sat by the pool. Two swallows were now dive-bombing the bubble plastic cover, which we pull over at night to maintain the water temperature. After I rolled it back, a third swallow joined them and they entertained me with spectacular whirling and diving to take small sips from the surface of the pool at speed. They then flew up to preen themselves on the wire, showing their pale underbellies with just a hint of darker blue. Suddenly there was a flurry and the wire was bare. A squadron of birds took off, swooping and diving close to the water. The whole formation rose, turned restlessly, now skimming over the maize, now flying low over the house, always returning eventually, to sit like a row of thick dark commas along the length of the wire.

This unusually early display presaged a sudden and very real change in the weather. The sun made a last, brief appearance during the afternoon but that night the temperature dropped dramatically and for the next few days the rain was continuous. This dire and unseasonal weather was apparently all over Europe, reaching as far as Russia. That evening we lit the fire in the wide
cheminée
and, as we watched the water cascading off our roof and pouring down the water channel round the house, we heard on the radio that the rain in London was so heavy that even some underground stations were closed. And the following day, still it rained.

It was our village fête at the weekend. It looked like being a very damp affair. Mike’s convalescence was sufficient excuse for us not to attend, but Raymond, indefatigable as ever, was busy trying to work out how he could combine going to the fête with attending a golden wedding on the same day. Rico, Claudette’s cousin, the
ancien mécanicien
who had restored the old Citroën, was celebrating with his jolly wife. Raymond felt obliged to go and, of course, the menu was sure to be special.

‘
On a commencé avec un apéritif et des amusesgueules
,’ Raymond began next day as he gave us a report, his eyes shining. The aperitif was a
pousse rapier
, guaranteed to get any party going. This is a Gascon aperitif, named, it is suggested, after D’Artagnan, who was pretty handy with a
rapier
. The aperitif is often served in a special glass with a
rapier
drawn on the side, by which the amount of liqueur, an orange-flavoured Armagnac, is measured. This is then topped up with a sparkling white wine, sometimes referred to as
un vin sauvage
. At three o’clock the meal proper had begun with
crudités
, then
foie gras, poelé avec un feuilleté
. Next, said Raymond, they had barbecued a whole lamb, his eyes glazing over as he described its succulence. He did comment briefly on the fruit dessert, but extolled the
pièce montée
, the French version of a wedding cake. This consists of dozens of small round éclairs filled with
crème pâtissière
, glued together with
caramel to form as high a concoction as the skill of the chef will allow. The meal was followed by a
grand concours de pétanque
.

Raymond was, apparently, doing very well until, as he explained, he had to drag himself away to be in time for the
repas
at the village fête, which of course he couldn’t miss. He then sat down to roast pork, sautée potatoes and haricots, followed by cheese and fruit tart. As Raymond and Claudette and the rest of our not-to-be-defeated village then danced in the rain, we had lain in bed with hot water bottles and listened to the music drifting up across the maize. Perhaps
l’année prochaine
we would be more
en forme
. The weather improved. The sun reappeared, the fields steamed and the orchard was carpeted with great violet plums. As we watched the pickers bending to fill their baskets we realised that Jean-Michel had got the straw down just in time.

The next day we went to collect Matthew. The road from Villeneuve to Agen is treacherous with many dangerous bends. In a real effort to reduce the large number of accidents, the French have recently decided on an imaginative, albeit chilling, strategy. We were startled when we saw our first, life-size, black figure silhouetted against the green hedgerow. By the time we reached Agen we had passed fourteen such macabre cut-outs marking the spot where fatalities had occurred. It is a sobering and, I imagine, much more
effective remedy than a simple speed restriction.

Matthew decided that one of his first tasks must be to tackle our much overgrown wisteria. Although, sadly, we had not been here to see it flower, by the number of pods hanging all along its length it had clearly been very beautiful. Now long, looping tendrils had already reached out to encircle the Cyprus tree and, more worrying, were pushing their way up under the roof tiles and winding into a stranglehold round the chimney. It seemed impossible to believe that some years before, I had been worried about losing it altogether. It had endured very rough treatment when we finally decided to have the rendering taken off the south-facing outside wall where it grew.

We had by that time already stripped off much of the old earth rendering inside the house. This was not so much a deliberate choice as the fact that the surface was so loose that each inadvertent knock as a piece of furniture was repositioned resulted in another clod falling to the floor. When, in our bedroom, we finally took a mallet and finished the job, we uncovered very attractive stones, which we then had sandblasted. Re-pointed with cream-coloured cement, they still give us pleasure when we wake up.

Outside the house, however, we had done very little, especially on the south side, which faced the track. The very oldest section with its patched rendering stones just visible here and there, had a certain charm and
also, I reasoned, made it less likely that any passing burglar would expect to find anything of value in such an unkempt dwelling. In twenty-five years we have only been burgled once. They were clearly professionals. They simply removed the only object of any real value, a hanging brass lamp. A nearby chateau, which they next visited, was not so fortunate and a great deal of valuable furniture was taken.