A House in the Sunflowers (6 page)

Each holiday I rush round on arriving to see just what has survived. The occasional disappointment over a shrub that did not make it is compensated for by the incredible growth of clematis and passion flowers. My hardy house leeks, from an original clump which Anaïs, my predecessor, had planted on the
west-facing
roof of the end pigsty, have been transplanted into borders and proliferate and, when conditions are exactly right, flower exotically. One root of a tall yellow daisy brought from my London garden where, to get enough sunlight it would always lean and twist its rough stems, is at Bel-Air part of a thick straight hedge of flowers, and I have a row of Chinese lanterns that nothing can destroy. A hydrangea panniculata which, after a disastrous beginning in the limey garden soil into which I thoughtlessly put it, has this year, from the safety of a pot, rewarded my belated care with sixteen huge blooms. It must rely for watering on the rain which runs off the roof. And my pomegranate which I thought had not survived the bitter winters of ‘85 and ‘86 is this summer shooting madly again. Gardens are full of miracles.

The days flew by and as the Rabinowitzes made their farewells we awaited the arrival of our next
guests, Barry Foster, the actor, his wife and three children who were expected in mid-August. Judith and the children were to stay on when Barry had to return for the filming of ‘The Three Hostages’. On August 14, early in the evening, Mme Bertrand came up to tell us that ‘Monsieur Fostaire’ had just telephoned. The radiator in his BMW had burst and he was stranded near Bergerac. The following day was the Feast of the Assumption and everything, including garages, would be shut.

We borrowed a towrope and set off and some forty minutes later we were hugging, laughing and kissing one another. The rope secured we began the return to Bel-Air. What we did not know was that our braking lights on the camper only worked when the brakes were fully applied and Barry told us later of the constant, unexpected looming of our high white rear, each time dangerously close. Crossing our threshold at last, tired and travel-worn, he looked round. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘this’ll do. I reckon I can lock off here.’ We opened a bottle and drank a toast.

Les Bertrands, who had seen ‘Le Fostaire’ on French television, were delighted to meet him in the flesh. The girls, Joanna and Miranda, mere teenagers then, explored everywhere with shrieks of delight and Jason, who was the same age as Matthew and Philippe, just disappeared with them. We sampled all the local markets. There seemed to be one somewhere almost
every day of the week. We would stagger home with trays of melons and peaches, nectarines and apricots, bunches of fresh basil, baskets of wild strawberries and feasts of mussels, oysters and fresh sardines. Mme Bertrand would bring us French beans and courgettes and eggs with dark yellow yolks. We grilled the local sausages and sweet pork cutlets sprinkled with herbs on a wood fire outside and we sampled each local wine. The
Cave Coopérative
at Monflanquin was in the process of being enlarged and improved and in 1985 won a gold medal in Paris.

One morning the girls, having been warned to tread carefully, decided to explore the attic which ran the whole length of the house. They were intrigued by a yellowing, footless stocking which hung from the ceiling in the main room downstairs. As dust from between the floorboards fell on us below we could hear them laughing and Joanna suddenly reappeared. ‘Watch this, it’s so simple,’ she said. She put a basket on the floor, shouted ‘Right!’ and Miranda filled it by dropping down through the stocking dried corn cobs from a pile they had found. They discovered two old wine racks, crudely made, a wooden rake, a beautiful hay fork, two very primitive tools for teasing out sheep’s wool and a strange wooden object, a cross between a cradle and a sledge, but clearly neither, for which none of us could imagine a purpose. We would have to ask Grandma. By now we were all up in the attic.

There were more boxes full of cobwebbed bottles. Some were the dark blue, flat perfume bottles which had held ‘Evening in Paris’ by Bourjois. We wondered if it had been the son Alaïs who had saved up to buy his mother perfume for her birthday perhaps or had these sad, dusty bottles been presents from her husband Justin before he died. I now knew that Anaïs had woken to find him dead beside her from a heart attack sometime in 1918. There were bottles which had contained Castor Oil, Quinine, Seidlitz powders and Balm and several which were marked Caiffa. This was not to be found in any dictionary and was clearly another question for Grandma. We washed the more attractive bottles and put them on shelves on the porch.

At the far end of the attic, behind all the tools and boxes, was a sideboard, even older and larger than the one downstairs. It had a key in the door but was not locked. It was stuffed with old newspapers, calendars, parish magazines and in one corner was an oval cardboard hat box with a lid. We sat on the floor looking at the mouldering school books, the letters chewed by generations of mice and the folded documents that it contained. These would have to wait until we had both the time and the French to decipher them. In the meantime the sideboard, if we could get it there, would be very useful downstairs. We had an hilarious hour inching the truly massive object
across the uneven, rotting floorboards to the opposite end of the attic and down the crumbling staircase. We scrubbed it with bleach and left it in the sun to dry a handsome colour. Later we saw similar sideboards in an antique shop for several hundred pounds.

As it was our wedding anniversary and also Barry’s birthday in a few days, we planned a celebration. It was an opportunity to return a little of the hospitality of the Bertrands and we also invited the builder M. René, his wife and grandson, and some English friends who were holidaying not far away. We planned a menu. We could not hope to compete with Mme Bertrand, or Claudette as she now was, but we felt that we must, at least, give them sufficient to eat and prove that, contrary to popular belief, the English
can
cook.

In the midst of our planning the weather broke. Our visions of a warm, moonlit soirée under the stars with, perhaps, candles in jars hung from the ash tree faded, as the Westerlies lashed in from the Atlantic bearing dark, rain-filled clouds. The thermometer dropped and dropped. It seemed incredible that only a few days before it had been 85 degrees in the shade. We learned about the unpredictability of August in Aquitaine. It was indeed the land of the waters.

It rained and rained. ‘Les Fostaires’ had two pairs of Wellingtons between them. They had, like us, expected unlimited sunshine. The water ran in torrents down the
fields and became trapped in front of the house where it joined the cascade from the roof. Arno’s terrace it now appeared had not been such a good idea. It was covering the channel to carry away the water. Barry, ankle deep in the muddy river which now threatened to flood the house, wielded a great hoe to cut trenches to divert the flow. ‘I’m afraid Rabinowitz’s terrace is now Foster’s battle field,’ he yelled over the drumming downpour. We realised that something would have to be done about a gutter and a drain.

The house saved from flooding, we returned to our plans. Unknown to Mike or Barry we baked a large fruit cake and went into the nearest town for decorations and candles. It was so damp and cold that we had to light a fire and inevitably that meant many hours enjoying sitting round it. Time passed under the illusion that something was happening as we were mesmerised by its ever-changing form. What could we give them to eat? With the weather so wintry our thoughts turned to hot dishes, but we decided to begin the meal with a great salad Niçoise. It would at least be familiar. Then as a novelty for the French guests we planned to follow it with a deluxe version of Shepherd’s pie with garlic and mushrooms and for the children we made jellies filled with fruit and finally we would serve the cake. It was a somewhat arbitrary menu but once we had decided we felt a great sense of relief and got on with it. We would be twenty in all so
there was much to do and a great deal of improvising with pots and pans. At least we now had a refrigerator in which to chill the white wine and the champagne.

At eight o’clock, bearing flowers and little gifts, they arrived. Simone, M. René’s wife brought two china angels, Claudette, a pair of decorative candles. One pair of English friends gave us a copper ladle and another pair, as a comment on the weather, brought a stone hot water bottle. The party was a great success. Our French guests looked relieved when we served the salad. They had obviously been apprehensive and still looked sideways at the three large Shepherd’s pies keeping hot on trivets at the edge of the fire.

‘
C’est le repas du berger
,’ we encouraged.

‘
Ça sent bon
,’ said M. Bertrand, or Raymond, as we now called him, ‘Mais…’ he hesitated. Claudette was unabashed.

‘
Qu’est ce qu’il y a dedans
?’ What’s in it? she demanded.

The list of ingredients, including garlic and parsley, reassured them sufficiently to take minute helpings to begin with, followed by larger platefuls, until the Shepherd’s pies were no more. Mutual relief!

The biggest surprise was the reaction to the jelly. True it was made with orange juice and stuffed with fresh fruit but the adults enjoyed it as much as the children. Raymond had two helpings and Claudette asked if we would bring jellies with us on our next
trip, and so they went on the list. There is always a list for
la prochaine fois
– the next time.

The lights were turned out, all two of them, and our French guests actually chorused ‘
oh la la!
’ as Joanna brought in the cake with candles blazing. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Happy Anniversary’ and every song we could remember in English and in French. Judith and I, who had first met in the chorus of ‘Kismet’ – light years ago – attempted duets and Raymond tried to teach us local songs in patois. This was difficult as, although he was the only one with the courage to sing solo, he could not hold a tune. With more enthusiasm than accuracy he changed key before the end of each verse. But he loved to listen, clapping like a demon at the end and immediately demanding another. He was a great guest, truly the life and soul of the party. Parties were, in fact, one of his specialities as we were to discover later.

As it always does, the weather improved and the sun was twice as strong as it ever is in London. We took Barry to Cahors, home of the wonderful dark wine, to catch the Paris train. ‘Some of us have to work,’ he said wryly looking up at the cloudless blue. Judith and the children stayed on and as the tobacco was to be harvested we asked if we might help. The dark green rows resembled giant, flowerless gladioli but the leaves were broader and more fragile. Grandpa showed Mike
how to fell each plant with a small axe so that they all lay in the same direction. We lifted them one at a time, balancing each heavy sheaf across one arm like a large bouquet, and were careful not to damage the leaves as we laid them along the edge of the nearby trailer. When the floor of the trailer was covered we walked behind it down to the tobacco-drying shed or
séchoir
.

A large barn, some eight metres high, it had a raised platform near the door against which the trailer of tobacco was carefully positioned. The reason soon became clear. Standing on the platform we were able, without effort, to reach the sheaves. Grandma handed us all a stout, four-pronged hook. ‘Watch,’ she said. Above the platform, at head-height, there was a line strung across the shed with a row of short metal rods suspended from it. She fixed the pronged hook to the bottom of the rod, lifted a sheaf of tobacco by its thick stem and, pushing the hook through it, suspended it upside down. When all four hooks were full we detached the whole thing and carried it across the shed to where Raymond waited with a rickety pulley. He hoisted them up gradually until there were five sets of four sheaves, one below the other. Now the reason for the great height of the shed was clear. As it began to fill with its canopy of dense green foliage it was like some exotic jungle or a set for a commercial for coconut bars.

Again we sang. Raymond started it. ‘
Chantez Philippe, chantez Véronique
,’ he shouted. France had just won the Eurovision song contest with a surprisingly reasonable song about a child and a bird and I remember Véronique’s sweet small voice in that cool leafy interior while the sun blazed outside. Pushing the hooks through the tough stems made my fingers ache and, as I so often do, I watched Grandma and marvelled at the strength in her apparently frail body. Raymond grumbled about the low prices the dealers would give for the leaves when they were dry and taken to market.

‘How long will it take for them to dry?’ we asked.

He shrugged. ‘
Ca dépend du temps
.’ It depends on the weather. The farmer’s universal cry, but we had already begun to appreciate that in this corner of France it was unpredictable.

And, once again, we all ate round the farm table. So many meals we have enjoyed there. Claudette seems to think nothing of working three or four hours in the fields and then preparing six or seven courses for a dozen or more. Grandma scurries about to help her and everything is grown or prepared on the farm. And the melons! This summer was our first real gorging on the local, small, Charentais melon. Round, striped green and yellow with perfumed apricot flesh, once the season has started there is an abundance. That
year was particularly good and our friends kept us supplied.

‘They must be eaten,’ Claudette would insist, bringing us another basketful. We ate them at every meal – especially breakfast. What joy to find a
gourmandise
that did not fatten!

‘Les Fostaires’ left eventually for England and we began to realise that we too would soon have to close up our house in the sun and go back to London. The weather was still perfect. The evenings were shorter but it was still warm enough to eat outside and wait in the silent darkness for the first stars to appear. Sometimes a satellite would trace a path across the universe. How would we adjust?