A House in the Sunflowers (8 page)

This, his first visit, was made on a giant motorbike. He picked the only wet night that summer and sodden and exhausted, having ridden all the way from Northumberland, could not find our track in the dark. About midnight, utterly lost, he finally arrived
chez Bertrand
and gallant Raymond got out of bed to bring him up to us. Since that first visit he has returned in a variety of ways; by car with his family, and once, unexpectedly, by air, as the only non-devout passenger on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. That night, since we were out, he rolled himself in a blanket to doze in a deck chair on the porch from which, on our return, he rose spectre-like in the moonlight, declaiming something or other – I forget what. On another occasion, in a Herculean effort, with Nancy his indefatigable wife,
he came by bicycle. We now await his arrival by balloon.

This first visit, after his wet arrival, coincided with a spell of spectacular weather. The sun shone all day, every day, in a cloudless heaven but we were refreshed by a gentle breeze from the North. ‘
Le grand beau temps est arrivé
,’ pronounced Grandpa when he trudged up, staff in hand, to check the fences. Day after day it continued and how we revelled in it. The air was heavy with the drone of insects, butterflies with pleated wings flitted through the poppies and blue chicory that lined the track, and lizards, immobile but for the pulse under their throat, lay on the hot stones. There was a great sense of peace and completeness.

Mike, who tans in ten minutes’ sun and was dubbed by Tony ‘old teak face’, sat drawing the field of maize. It whispered and crackled in the heat shimmer and grew so fast that eventually Mike had to sit on the top of the stepladder to finish the drawing. Matthew asked if he might pick some sweetcorn to eat. Raymond looked horrified. ‘
Bien sûr
,’ he cried, ‘
mais, c’est pour les bêtes!
’ We did cook some and it was quite good but we could never persuade Raymond to try it. As far as he was concerned it was on a par with another English abomination, mint sauce.

This holiday we had brought with us a large leg of English lamb. We knew that it would be a treat for
les Bertrand
, being firstly an animal that they did
not
rear and secondly, at that time, more than twice as expensive in France. We planned to invite the whole family for Sunday lunch to give Claudette a free day and to return just a little of their incredible hospitality. With my limited kitchen facilities I planned a menu, aware of the need for quantity, as well as tastes, to intrigue them.

It was – and still is – a marathon, making Sunday lunch
pour toute la famille
. Soup, even on the hottest day, was
de rigueur
. The fields being awash with huge sun ripened tomatoes, tomato soup seemed an obvious choice and happily turned out to be Grandpa’s favourite. As on the first occasion when they ate with us they all begged the merest taste of each dish before, reassured, returning for a second helping. To follow the soup I had simply whisked a large tin of red salmon with half a pound of melted butter, black pepper and the juice of two lemons, decorating it with cucumber and parsley, to be eaten with thin slices of
pain complet
. Raymond had never tasted wholemeal bread before and was not impressed but Grandpa, reminded of his days in Germany as a prisoner of war, enjoyed it and gave us lurid accounts of the bread he ate then. The salmon was declared
extra
, Grandma’s highest praise.

All the morning I had hovered over the
gigot
in my crazy oven. To date no one can explain to me the reasons for the different methods of heating in French and English gas cookers. I have peered into
gas cookers, from the earliest ones at the new Gas Museum at Bromley by Bow, where I learned that the first experiments in cooking by gas were made by a Paris-trained chef in 1809, to the latest models in French hypermarkets, and the difference between them never varies. The gas jets are differently positioned and this results in the floor of the oven being cool in an English cooker. Not so in a French one. In my French cooker the gas jets are in the form of a ring similar to those on the top, but under the oven floor. They are lit through a small hole and the flames fan out sideways to make the floor of the oven extremely hot. There are two slender slots on each side of the oven floor presumably to allow the heat to rise, but I have found that a great deal of it seems to prefer to stay where it is. Hence the problem. It is clear to me that this is the reason that the French make superb, open tarts with crisp, firm bases and we make equally good, but different, pies with covered, golden-brown tops, but whether the tarts are the reason for the different ovens or vice versa, I have still to discover.

While the
gigot
was anxiously watched, removed, repositioned and re-basted, I also attempted an approximation of roast potatoes, the local variety being so waxy and flavoursome. At the top of the oven they refused even to change colour. Exasperated I tipped them onto a foil covered baking sheet and put them at the very bottom. Oven-sautéed rather than roast
potatoes were the result but constant turning made them brown rather than burn and they were a novelty to
les
Bertrand
and eaten with relish. Three vegetables were eaten with the
rôti
: I had braised in butter tiny carrots and
navets
, a completely new idea – as was the mint sauce which Mike had made. Claudette, always more adventurous than the rest of the family, tried the sauce and quite liked it but Raymond would have none of it. The
gigot
however had clearly been a treat and we were pleased.

Salad, cheese and a passion fruit sorbet from the local supermarket was finally followed, for a joke really, by mince pies. We explained that normally they were only served at Christmas. ‘What a shame! Only once a year,’ murmured Raymond, as he reached for yet another one.

It was a happy lunch. Indoors it was cool, our metre thick walls protecting us from the blazing mid-afternoon sun which covered
le grand champ
in dancing heat haze. Grandpa taught us to say
fai calou
– it is hot, in patois. ‘
Fai calou!
’ he roared, the children copying him and giggling. Both grandparents are fluent in Occitan, the
langue d’Oc
, the ancient language of the Troubadours and the whole of southern France. When they talk to one another they use it most of the time. Raymond and Claudette understand but rarely use it, and the children are not really interested although there is, as with many old
languages under threat, a revival of interest. Classes are held in the summer and there is a serious study of Occitan at Toulouse University – an event little dreamed of by the southern children of sixty years ago who, during their first weeks at school, were beaten for being unable to speak French.

Occitan is much more like Spanish or Italian and though the younger generation do not use it, their famous accent
du Sud Ouest
shows its influence as they invariably pronounce the final syllable as in Italian. Raymond told us the story of the Gascon, newly conscripted and stationed in the North. The expression on his face as he told it made it clear that it might as well have been the North Pole as anywhere north of the Loire. This Gascon is invited by a fellow soldier to visit
la mer
for the weekend. Accordingly, with keen anticipation, he packs his swimming trunks and towel only to find that his new friend has merely taken him home to meet his mother. Bitterly disappointed he cries, ‘
Mais – tu n’as pas dit
LA MER-RE
. Tu m’as dit
LA MER
!
’

Raymond told us about local customs. One in particular seemed to be concerned with newly-weds. It appeared that after the ceremony and wedding breakfast they did not disappear on their honeymoon but spent the first night nearby at a neighbour’s house. ‘Then,’ explained Raymond, his eyes shining, ‘Everyone must go round to find which house and then, in the middle
of the night, they return to surprise them.’ This seemed rather unsporting to me but it did not end there. The visitors take with them food and wine – after all it is a French custom – and also a huge pot of a soup called
le tourin
from which the whole affair takes its name, to
faire le tourin
, and the hapless couple have no alternative but to get up and begin the festivities all over again. ‘Does this happen at every marriage round here?’ I asked incredulously.

Raymond shook his head. ‘
Ca dépend des gens. Ce n’est pas toujours pour un mariage
,’ he grinned. ‘
Ca pourrait arriver ici
.’

Towards the end of the following week when Tony was reluctantly considering the long journey back to the north of England, the temperature climbed every day until a
canicule
or heatwave was officially declared. The thermometer on our north-facing porch reached 93° that afternoon, and by midnight it had barely fallen. Crickets whirred in the hot still air and the moon was brilliant. We talked, as old friends do, and drank deeply while watching for satellites to pass in the vast, magical heavens. In a mad moment we decided on a moonlit stroll up past the pond to the brow of the hill. Laughing at some absurdity of Tony’s we lurched somewhat unsteadily along and were rather surprised when Matthew suggested that we were much too drunk to continue and ought to be in bed. ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ we thought, unaccustomed to
such solicitude from our younger son. We should have known better.

About an hour later, deeply asleep and naked but for a sheet, which, I realised later as Raymond retold the story, barely covered either of us, we were awakened. Stupefied, we heard voices and footsteps close by and forcing open our heavy eyelids we saw what appeared to be half the village. Led by Raymond they laughed, sang and capered about our bedroom like characters in a painting by Brueghel. Coming from the kitchen were smells of food and the clink of bottles. Dear God! It was the dreaded
Tourin
. What were we supposed to do now?

We stumbled out of bed as onto a film set in action in which we had not the slightest idea of the script. Everyone else, it was clear, was thoroughly rehearsed and Raymond was the director. Clutching our flimsy dressing-gowns we were led from the bedroom. In a dazed dream I recognised the Mayor backing through my front door with a wooden bench covered in a tartan rug. I tottered to a seat as Simone, the mason’s wife, began to unwrap a great dish of hot sausages. The tureen of soup was steaming on the table and a giggling Claudette scurried up and down laying cutlery and glasses, followed by a small dark woman with tight curls who turned out to be the Mayor’s wife, setting the plates. Sitting in the chimney corner, could it be? Yes. It was the schoolmaster, his baby son on
his knee. His wife was taking sponge cakes out of a basket, as if it were four o’clock in the afternoon. In staggered M. René and the insurance man with a carton of wine while people I hardly recognised ran back and forth with folding chairs and yet more bottles. As the whole scene rolled with a gleeful precision Grandpa sat himself formally at the head of the table, his watery old blue eyes alight with mischief.

A cheer greeted a befuddled Tony as he emerged from the other bedroom led by a triumphant Philippe and Matthew who had known all along. My tolerance to alcohol is low and I had already drunk far more than usual before going to bed but there was no way that night that more could be refused. The next few hours remain a boozy haze. I remember the soup, hot and full of garlic and bread with cheese melted on the top. It was wonderfully recuperative which was just as well for it was to be a long night. Even if one had started sober there was a routine to ensure that one did not remain so, especially the women who were, on the whole, very abstemious. An ancient drinking song, which may well be a medieval corruption of the Latin Mass, began the proceedings. They started on me.

‘
Ami Rus. Ami Rus
,’ they chanted.

‘
Bois dans ton verre et surtout ne le renverse pas
.

Et porte le au frontibus, au nezibus, au mentibus

à l’aquarium, au sexibus. Et glou et glou et glou et glou
…

Then followed a great cheer as the glass was drained.

‘
Elle est des nôtres. Elle a bu son verre comme les autres

C’est une ivrogne. Ça se voit rien qu’à sa tronche
.’

‘Friend Ruth friend Ruth.

Raise your glass and above all don’t tip it over.

And with it salute your forehead, your nose, your chin,

Your belly and your sex, and drink and drink and drink…

She’s now one of us. She’s drained her glass like the rest.

She’s a drunkard. It’s obvious if you look at her face!’

No one escaped, the wine flowed as everyone drank the toast. When it was Véronique’s turn, the only virgin, the word
sexibus
was delicately omitted.

After the toast everyone sang, the Mayor, the schoolmaster and Grandpa who made his grandchildren laugh as he roared out old songs from the war without any recognizable tune. In a low, sweet voice Grandma sang an old ballad,
Le temps des Cerises
– cherrytime, which she has since taught me. Raymond kept yelling ‘
Chantez Rus, chantez
.’ I have no idea what I sang. My entire repertoire three times round I should imagine. Mike is not a great one for singing. He seemed to spend most of the time hanging on to the sideboard with one arm and holding me up with the other. I do not remember going to bed for the second time that night. Next morning, about midday, when we finally emerged with extreme care, there were forty-seven empty bottles on the table to explain why we felt so fragile.

Once again the holiday was almost over and we began the last minute organising of work that would, we hoped, be completed during the winter. We had decided to have the floor of the main room tiled in terracotta and the tiler agreed to come, although he lived some distance away, so that he could eat with his sister at midday. What a very French arrangement.