A House in the Sunflowers (10 page)

Raymond was already busy walking behind a slowly moving tractor guiding the ancient,
wooden-handled
plough-share. ‘
Venez
,’ he shouted. ‘
Venoir voir. La charrue d’autrefois
.’ He has a real affection for implements from ‘the olden days’. He proudly showed the plough to Matthew explaining that then it was pulled by an ox.

‘I remember that,’ shouted Grandpa, stomping down the field in his straw hat, as though nothing would be done properly unless he supervised it. ‘Not so fast! Watch what you’re doing,’ he yelled at Philippe, who was driving the tractor. As the blade moved through the dry tangle of potato plants the harvest appeared, pale, silvery and abundant.

‘
Pas mauvais
.’ Not bad, said Raymond picking up a large potato and rubbing it clean on his shorts. ‘The biggest ones are always at the bottom of the field – they get more rain.’ Once all the rows were turned we could begin.

Alternately squatting and bending to relieve either our backs or our legs we began at the bottom of the slope and without stopping worked upwards until midday. After the first hour I was tired but, as usual, determined not to be outdone by either Grandma or Fernande, I carried on and found that the fatigue soon disappeared. During the first half hour we were disturbed by the sounds of an engine in distress and clanking up the drive came the most disreputable old
banger, with several lengths of scrap iron tied to the roof. It was hard to distinguish the driver as the car was crammed with what appeared to be more scrap metal. We glimpsed a dark face under a greasy beret, a cigarette hanging from the lower lip.

‘It’s M. Demoli,’ said Raymond resignedly.

‘Late as usual,’ muttered Grandpa without looking up. This was the infamous husband of poor Fernande about whom we had heard innumerable tales. The couple lived in a two-roomed house in the next village which was easily identifiable by the heaps of rusting metal outside the door. They had no electricity, running water, or sanitation and it was a source of wonder as to how Fernande managed to keep herself so neat and clean. M. Demoli it was said, did not bother. We could not wait to see him.

As he ambled down the field shouting something unintelligible, his swarthy, unshaven face had a wicked, unrepentant air. His bare feet were filthy under his ragged trousers which were held round his waist with string. The pocket of his check shirt bulged with folded papers and a row of pens. ‘
C’est mon bureau
,’ he told Matthew later, patting it proudly. Raymond introduced him with a mixture of embarrassment and affection and M. Demoli’s bold eyes glittered. He was strong and lifted the heavy baskets with ease. He made bawdy comments about each oddly shaped potato and teased the rest of us for wearing shoes. ‘You should
work like me,’ he cried. ‘See how tough my feet are.’ He pulled a pin from under his collar. ‘Here,’ he challenged, ‘stick that in my foot.’ Matthew, laughing, tried unsuccessfully to penetrate his black leathery sole.

We progressed slowly up the long rows, the filled sacks standing like monuments to our labour and we were intrigued by a small decorative beetle that we kept finding among the potato roots. It had a familiar look. Philippe told us that it was called a
doryphor
. Suddenly we remembered where we had seen this distinctive red and black striped marking. We were handling dozens of Colorado beetles! Raymond was astonished to learn that in England posters describing them as villains are displayed outside police stations and that sightings must be reported. His eyes gleamed. ‘Now I know what to do about Madame Thatchaire,’ he said. ‘I’ll send her some in a matchbox.’

The sun was fiercer now and we were all working more slowly, but the end was in sight. Raymond led the way, encouraging us. He recited a fable by La Fontaine. He knew it almost by heart and when he faltered, Grandma prompted him. It was all about hard work.

‘
Un riche laboureur, sentant sa mort prochaine, fit venir ses enfants
,’ he said in his slow, careful French. A wealthy farmer, sensing his death was near, called for his sons to give them this advice.

‘Never,’ he said, ‘sell off this heritage that has been handed down to us. A treasure is hidden here. I do not know quite where, but with a little courage you will find it, in the end. Turn the soil as soon as harvest’s over. Plough it, dig it, hoe it, leave not an inch unturned.’ The father died. His sons worked every field, here, there and everywhere, so hard that in that year their yield was doubled. The treasure they could never find. Their father, wise old man, had shown them all before he died that it is work itself which is the treasure. ‘
Que le travail est un trésor
,’ finished Raymond, his eyes shining. Listening to these words with aching limbs, my nostrils filled with the peppery sting of newly unearthed potatoes and the sun hot on my tired back, I felt a great shared satisfaction. Grandma and Fernande, raking the last few that we had missed, slowly brought up the rear and Raymond called, ‘
C’est fini. Allez, allez manger!
’

As usual Claudette had left the field some thirty minutes before us and was briskly laying the table as we came gratefully into the cool of the verandah room, each blind lowered against the heat outside. I heard her ‘tut tut’ as M. Demoli’s black feet made marks all over the tiled floor and I knew that before she returned to work she would be busy with a mop. Matthew laughed as M. Demoli took off his greasy beret to scratch his head and two boiled sweets and three hand-rolled cigarettes fell onto the table.

Replacing the beret he handed us the sweets. We dared not look at one another as we thanked him and put them in our pockets. As soon as he had finished his soup he poured the wine into his bowl and, lifting it to his stubbly chin, drained it with noisy pleasure. This custom is called
faire le chabrot
but is more often seen on picture postcards. M. Demoli was an incorrigible entertainer. He unloaded his
bureau
to show us his
carte d’identité
and an old photograph of a stolid young woman. ‘
C’est ma fille
,’ he cried, ‘
elle parle très bien l’anglais
.’ We looked at Fernande for confirmation but she said nothing. She just ate and ate with a silent contentment the delicious dishes which Claudette provided.

The soup was, as usual, followed by melon and home-cured ham. Then came a
pâté de canard
with a small circle of her
foie gras
in the centre of each slice. Next she served a baked dish of rice and courgettes covered in cheese and finally, roast pork, green salad and, for dessert,
flan
, rather like cream caramel without the caramel, and highly flavoured with vanilla. By two-thirty, rested and revived, we rose from the table, the men to load the sacks while we remained a little longer in the cool to clear the dishes. Sure enough out came the mop to remove all trace of M. Demoli!

‘
Maintenant c’est le triage
,’ said Claudette, as we followed her across the courtyard. I could not imagine what we were to do next. As we came into the oldest
barn where all the poultry have their ramshackle nesting boxes the remaining hens and ducks shrieked and clucked as they flapped out into the sunlight. Ahead of her Claudette shooed, like a miniature corps de ballet, the twelve smallest ducklings, shutting them safely in an inner sanctum behind the pigsties. The turkeys scolded plaintively as they skirted past us, picking up their feet with a disdainful precision and the three pigs snorted and squealed and trod on each other’s feet. The whole barn was darkened by the bulk of the loaded cart drawn up at the entrance.

Suddenly Raymond appeared, staggering under the weight of a sack which he emptied onto a space which had been cleared at the far end. Onto the beaten earth floor tumbled sack after sack of potatoes until we had a great mound. Folded sacks were placed for us to kneel on and we began sorting them into baskets.
Le triage
was a simple but effective grading system. Everyone yelled instructions. ‘
Pour commencer – les plus grosses
,’ shouted Raymond. He and M. Demoli swung up the filled baskets and carried them into an inner store where they were layered with a preserving powder to prevent rotting. Any bad potatoes were hurled to one side. After we had selected all the largest we progressed to
les moyennes
. From these we had to choose
les plus belles
for resowing the following season, the more ordinary went to be stored with the rest. It was surprising how quickly we demolished
the heap until only the smallest potatoes remained. These, I learned were to be put into a box
pour les cochons
. I asked if I might take some for us. Raymond laughed. ‘Have some bigger ones,’ he said. He seemed surprised when I told him that I really did prefer them. Grandma smiled, ‘She’s right,’ she said, ‘they have the best flavour. They just take so long to peel.’

‘We eat the skins as well,’ I told her.

‘It’s possible,’ she said politely. No sooner was the pile finished than Raymond fetched more sacks and we began again, kneeling in this cobwebbed and chicken-cooped, semi-darkness as generations before us must have done, on this same floor of beaten earth.

At last it was finished, the baskets banged against the wall and stacked inside each other, the sacks shaken and folded. Grandma swept the dust into the corner with a besom. Sensing the end of the invasion, one by one the chickens, calling softly, reclaimed their territory. Claudette took two still warm eggs from a nesting box and put them in her pocket. She emptied a basket of small potatoes for the pigs who squealed and scrunched with joy as we emerged into the blazing courtyard.

‘
Alors
,’ she smiled, ‘
Merci. Les pommes de terres sont ramassées
.’

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

That summer we began to realise that we had a problem with rising damp at the front of the house and that it was getting rapidly worse. Wet patches appeared on the floor of the north-facing bedroom. They started at the outside edge and spread alarmingly across the entire room. Clearly something would have to be done, but what? We peered down the well. The water level was very high, might there be a seepage? We siphoned off gallons but still the damp persisted.

The following Easter things were much the same and we consulted M. René who, after prowling around
for a few minutes, gave us the answer. The house had no damp course and therefore, he explained, the level of the soil outside was critical. Bel-Air, being on a gently sloping hillside, had acted, over the years, as a dam against all the soil which had been washed down. When we measured we found that the ground outside was a foot higher than the inside floor level.

‘I think you really need a proper drive right round to the porch,’ said M. René. ‘I know the very person to dig it out for you. M. Mastero. He’s Italian, but he’s lived here for years,’ he added reassuringly. Remembering his two other young workmen who had so quickly excavated the hole for the septic tank, I vaguely imagined a huge Italian who would do the work of two lesser men. Before the appointed Thursday I moved the kerria bush which, since the chopping down of the box trees, had struggled into bloom outside the north-facing bedroom window, and I dug up a few straggly marigolds and transplanted them into pots. About nine o’clock M. Mastero appeared in a small van. Five feet square, red-faced and very jovial, he did not look particularly energetic.

‘It’s not arrived yet then?’ he cried.

‘What?’ we asked.

‘
La pelle
,’ he answered. We were perplexed. His shovel? Didn’t he normally bring his shovel with him? Suddenly he looked down to the distant road. ‘
Ah elle arrive!
’ he roared. Whatever he had seen had turned
from the road onto the track far below us and was obscured by the trees, but we could hear a heavy engine and over the brow of the hill and into our disbelieving view came a lorry bearing a sign
CONVOI EXCEPTIONEL
and towering behind it a bright yellow mechanical digger. We had expected nothing like this. At that moment M. René’s van appeared from the other direction and he tried to reassure us. ‘
C’est facile
,’ he said. ‘It’s easy, one hour and it’ll be finished.’

Now we began to understand the extent of the operation. The digger was almost as tall as the house and once it began to carve out a deep trench in a straight line from the track along the side of the house I realised I had a problem. I have an antipathy to straight lines, especially in gardens, and clearly
la pelle mécanique
and her handsome driver – M. Mastero was merely the owner – could neither comprehend or cut, it seemed, a curve. And so battle began.

A depth of at least two feet had to be dug to allow for a foot of stones to be laid as a soak-away for the water. Out came the old, romantic tunnel of vines which had so graced the side of the house. The japonica bushes staggered, collapsed, and were no more. Everything, without ceremony, was dumped into the back of the waiting lorry. Compared to my hours of effort with a small spade it was impressive, there was no doubt about that. But I now realised that a small syringa tree which stood at the corner
of the house would be the next to go. I clasped my arms round it and defied
la Pelle. ‘Non! Non! Non!
’ I yelled.

The driver could not hear me but he could hardly miss my demented mime. He climbed down from his God-like height. M. René too came to see what was amiss. They all tried to persuade me. This tree and the next one,
une boule-de-neige
, were both in the way and would have to come down. Even Mike joined this male contingent of ravishers of my garden and, I felt, of Anaïs’s too. I could plant other trees, they reasoned. I didn’t want to. I was adamant. Why could
la Pelle
not go round them? Round was a silly word; she couldn’t do anything round. Only square. Then could she not cut squares at the base of each tree? They looked doubtful. Perhaps, it might, just might, be possible. Not at all reasonable of course, but, perhaps, possible. Clearly they were not exactly eager to try. They shrugged, drew in their breath and looked at each other. They paced to and fro, wishing I had gone shopping.

‘It would be difficult,’ said the handsome young driver.

‘But you could try?’ I pleaded.

Maybe my tears of rage at the whole insensitive lot of them finally moved him but he climbed back up onto his machine and, of course, it
was
possible. It meant a lot of gear changing and backing and turning,
but the ground was cleared right up to the house and my two small trees stood bravely up on their squares of earth, startled but safe.

When the lorry was full with earth the driver asked where he might dump it. The maize in
le grand champ
had not yet been sown and Raymond, who had by now arrived to watch the operation, said airily, ‘You can dump it there on the edge of the field. I’ll flatten it later.’ I do not think he bargained for the twelve loads that were eventually excavated.

Once the edge of the house had been cleared the digger went back to the track to widen the trench that he had cut. Everyone who drove to our front door swung naturally round in a curve but
la Pelle
of course, could only work in a straight line. Our proposed new drive and parking space grew ever wider and our meadow consequently smaller. Not needing to accommodate a fleet of lorries, we stopped him.

‘Right,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll just straighten this bit up,’ gouging out yet another right angle. I have never been so glad to see the back of such a beautiful man.

The next day the stones were laid; eight inches of large stones beneath four inches of smaller ones. We raked them into place. The sun shone and the newness and whiteness of such a large area was horribly dazzling. Now it has mellowed with mosses and the wild flowers have returned. Honesty, love-in-a-mist and marguerites soften those hard edges. The
days after the departure of the ravening digger I spent moving barrows full of earth back from the field to our garden in an attempt to change the straight lines into curves. Raymond teased me. ‘You’ve just paid to have it all removed. Now you’re putting it back again!’ But when I rested he climbed down from the tractor and filled three or four loads for me, piling the barrow high and pushing it as though it weighed nothing.

That summer, in the rough ground at the top of
le grand champ
which, after the lorry had dumped our garden soil, Raymond had left uncultivated, we had a wonderful nursery of small plants. Encircled and protected by the maize in the remainder of the field, small japonica bushes appeared, daisies and hollyhocks, Chinese lanterns, marigolds, tansy and honesty, sweet william, balsam and golden rod; seeds that must have lain dormant in the earth close to the house, perhaps that Anaïs herself had once planted, were now jolted into life. We spent hours transplanting them.

The syringa and the
boule-de-neige
, or viburnum opulus, that I had only just managed to save from destruction, were thriving and have grown more beautiful each succeeding year. This October I watched its leaves turning ever more glorious shades of crimson and I was doubly glad that I had saved it. And we have had no more problems with the damp.

Raymond, our mentor in every local tradition, decided that it was high time that we started our own
cave
. ‘Why don’t you make use of the other pigsty next to the outside lavatory?’ he said. ‘It faces north and should be ideal.’ We already had the old wine racks which we had found in the attic so we gave them a coat of wood preservative before installing them in the dark and cool little store. Now to choose the wine, a serious business.

After numerous telephone calls to a variety of cousins, Raymond arrived one afternoon in his oldest 2CV with a medium sized barrel or
fût
hidden under some sacks. He and Mike went off for an hour or two’s
dégustation
in the idyllic Lot valley, not far from Cahors. The first wine they tasted was, at that time, selling for between four and five francs a litre. Not entirely satisfied, and in any case, out for the afternoon and intent on as wide a choice as possible, they climbed further up into the hills for yet another tasting and, for nine francs a litre, they knew they had found just what they were looking for.

After cleaning it with a sulphur candle, the
producteur
weighed their barrel, filled it with his finest wine and weighed it again. The bill, which we shared, came to just under a hundred pounds. Before they left, the
producteur
, a meticulous man, recommended that they bottle it straight away. ‘
Moi, je connais mon vin
,’ he declared. ‘
Mais je ne connais pas votre fût!
’

At last we had a use for all those dozens of empty bottles that we had found everywhere, in the house, the attic and the
chat
. We cleaned them thoroughly and took them in cartons down to Raymond’s cave where the precious
fût
waited. Although the day was hot, once we had passed beneath the low lintel we entered a world of dark, damp and unchanging coolness. Our barrel was at the beginning of a long row of barrels of various sizes, beyond which were haphazard piles of crates and mysterious curtained cupboards, containing Claudette’s famous preserves.

Raymond pulled aside the dusty lengths of a variety of fabrics to show me the dozens of jars of
foie gras
and
confit de canard
– joints of fattened duck preserved in their own juices and covered with a thick layer of duck fat – the pots of
pâté
and
rillettes
, the bottles of asparagus, beans – green and white, dark red cherries, golden peaches and fat white pears. How many more there must have been before the advent of the deep freeze! On the floor in the darkest corner sat old enamel buckets packed with chicory plants, some sprouting fat cream shoots, others newly cut. Such self-sufficiency and expertise was fascinating.

As we began to unload the bottles, Grandma, flowered apron over her thick cardigan, came to help us stack them neatly in front of our barrel to the left-hand side. To the right she arranged several
wine-stained
planks until she was satisfied that they would
not tip on the uneven earth floor. At last she nodded, placed a small rush-seated stool in front of the barrel and calling, ‘
Venez, venez
,’ she hurried outside.

The smoke gusted from her chimney as we followed her across the courtyard and through the narrow door into her primitive kitchen where a large iron cooking pot bubbled on a wood fire. She lifted the lid to show me the dozens of corks bobbing in the steamy water. ‘
Il faut l’emporter à la cave, Michel
,’ she indicated. She took a very long-handled shovel from behind the door and once Mike had lifted off the pot she scooped a heap of the hottest ashes and trotted ahead of us across the courtyard back into the cave where she dropped them in the far corner and helped to lower the pot on top. She explained that as we used the corks we must add others and that the water must remain warm. ‘
C’est le système
,’ she smiled. Grandma has a
système
for almost everything.

She squatted on the stool, turned the tap on the barrel and the bottling began. Each filled bottle she handed to me, and I became part of
le système
, standing each one carefully on the planks within easy reach of Mike and Raymond who banged in the corks which would later be sealed with wax. Naturally we had to make sure that the wine was still good and inevitably we spilled a little from time to time. The whole cave smelled of
Cahors
and wood smoke and, crouching to avoid cracking one’s head on the low,
beamed ceiling, it was a strange, troglodite experience. After we had filled some one hundred and fifty bottles we were quite glad to emerge and straighten up in the warm brightness outside but we were also very pleased to think that our
cave
had really begun.

We labelled our odd assortment of reclaimed bottles Cahors ‘79, and proudly arranged them in our
crudely-made
wine racks. Later that year Raymond telephoned us in London to say that he had the opportunity to buy a
fût
of Corbières and would we like to share it. So another sixty litres of good red wine went into our cobwebbed pigsty. The only problem we have is keeping it long enough to reach its full maturity.

That summer, Adam, our elder son, sounding more than usually depressed on the telephone, said that he thought a visit to Bel-Air, which he had never seen, might be just what he needed. Delighted, we went to Bordeaux to meet him and were shocked to see how thin and unhappy he looked. Clearly all was not well. In the days that followed we watched the space and calm of our house in the sun begin to put him together again. The unreal world of rock and roll receded as he collected wood and mended fences with Raymond who treated him with a kindness and sensitivity I shall always remember. Claudette did her best to fatten him up, his French improved daily and he and his brother got to know each other better.