Au Revoir (23 page)

My friend Carole from Madame Murat's comes to the rescue. She and Bob have friends at Pomarède—Olav and Hannah from Denmark—who have inherited a small stone cottage in the
woods from Olav's father. They can only visit the property four or five weeks a year, four in the summer and one in autumn. During the last autumn while the house was lying empty, their gardening tools were stolen from the barn, so they are delighted at the prospect of somebody minding it for three months. The rental is still within my budget—2,000 ff ($500) a month plus electricity, although I will need to get firewood for the open fires, for it's certain to start getting rather cold in October.

Pomarède is on the way to the shopping township of Prayssac, and it's a route I travel often, whizzing past Madame Murat's popular restaurant. Lucienne also lives in the village, which is little more than a collection of old stone houses, a church and a mairie (town hall) which is in the process of having an halle de fête (festival hall) added for the regular summer parties and celebrations. No matter how small, all the villages seem to want their own hall as a sort of status symbol—some of them are quite grand and would have been costly—even if they are only used half a dozen times a year. The new hall in Pomarède looks as though it will tower over all the other buildings, and it's a cause of some controversy within the village. My little house in the woods is only a couple of minutes from the village as the crow flies, but feels much further away because it is reached through such a series of winding back roads that it takes a few visits to memorise. Once you leave the main road and start weaving through these tiny country lanes you get a sense of being in ‘deep' France.

Carole drives me through these winding country lanes to find the little cottage which is completely hidden from the road by dense chestnut woods. There is a cleared field out in front, but on three sides it is overwhelmed by tall trees that cast long dark
shadows in the autumn light. The house is a typical small farming or woodcutter's cottage: one main room with a vast open fireplace where once all the cooking would have been done and a stone sink for washing up, and one smaller room plus a loft where the tobacco crops once grown so widely in the area would have been dried. To one side is an annexe with two very small rooms that would have been the original pigsties. This area has been enclosed with a log cabin style extension, and the pigsties have been converted into a kitchen and a bathroom. So I've gone up-market. From a kitchen tucked under the stairs and a loo inside a wardrobe to a couple of rustic renovated pigsties. Even though this little house is isolated and could become gloomy during the colder months, the fact that it has a garden and a place to sit out and enjoy what remains of the balmy weather is enough to convince me it will be just perfect for my needs. Having lived in a township and then in the countryside I will have experienced the best of both worlds: village life with bars and restaurants and stray cats, and country life with open fires and wild woods on all sides.

However, before packing up and leaving my small room in Villefranche-du-Périgord I decide to throw a party to thank all my new friends for their unstinting hospitality. It can be quite embarrassing being asked out for dinner repeatedly, and not being in much of a position to return the favour. With a kitchen so small and inadequate, a tiny table, and a toilet inside a cupboard, it's hardly a suitable venue for elaborate dinner parties. But a farewell cocktail party with nibbles and wine should be well within my scope, so I pick a day and start making up a guest list. To my surprise I realise there are more than thirty-five people I would like to invite, and I wonder how on earth I am
going to squeeze them into such a small space—with only three chairs and a bed for sitting down. Someone also warns me that some of the people on my list don't necessarily mix socially, that there are various groups within the group and that I had best not have them all together. I decide to totally ignore this bit of advice, because I don't intend throwing two parties just to satisfy some quirky social hierarchy. They will all have to cope, and so will I.

My guest list includes an eclectic bunch of new friends ranging in age from three to eighty-six. The three-year-old is the granddaughter of Jock's part-time neighbours, Andy and Sue Greif who are also friends of the Barwicks and who have been drawn to the region after making several visits on holiday. In their former lives Andy was a colonial police officer posted to Tonga, Kenya and the Caymans, and after retirement they tried hard to settle down in the UK but found the weather quite impossible after decades of tropical living. They now divide their time between France and Spain—winters in the sparkling heat of Alacante, and summers in the Lot at the time of year when Spain becomes impossibly hot and overcrowded with tourists. They are a good-looking couple who love having people in for drinks, an impromptu game of boules or a meal in the garden. Sue is an accomplished artist and also an animal lover—she has adopted two gorgeous village cats in Spain and brought them to St Caprais for the summer. Their daughter is visiting from England along with her two small children, and will still be here for my party.

The eighty-six-year-old is Godfrey, a fellow resident of Villefranche, also English and also retired. His wife Joyce, affectionately known around the traps as ‘Joyce the Voice', is one of those people who cannot abide a nanosecond pause in the
conversation, and who has taken it upon herself to make sure that a social gaffe such as a pause for breath never occurs. Her jaw is like lightning, zapping up and down and filling the air with all sorts of information that is of no interest to those unfortunate enough to be the target of her tongue. Her favourite subjects are her family and her friends, very few of whom anyone has ever actually met, mostly only known by name, but Joyce does not let this stop her. Her penchant for detail means you must also be told about the offspring of her family and friends, and in intimate detail. Especially their academic achievements and personal triumphs. It's exhausting.

I first encounter Joyce at a drinks party. No more than five feet one inch, she is grasping her wine and nailing her victim with nonstop details of her grandson's latest examination results. She then talks to me for twenty minutes about her sister's husband's niece's brilliant career and after it I am left wondering who the hell she is talking about. At the communal lunches and dinners people fight openly about who has to sit next to Joyce, and it is generally organised so that unsuspecting newcomers take the honours.

Godfrey, on the other hand, maintains an air of quiet irritation combined with a certain resignation. After a few glasses of wine, however, he starts taking swipes about her verbal dexterity, and if she's in earshot, things can get lively indeed.

‘My two worst problems in life are being eighty-six and being married to Joyce,' he once whispers in my ear, but not very effectively because he's deaf and tends to shout.

‘What was that you said, Godfrey?' says Joyce, having heard every syllable. ‘Very funny, I must say. I hope YOU find him amusing, my dear.'

Even though Joyce can be exasperating, as a couple they can be good value and I really want to invite them along to my party, so I call in at their house unannounced late one afternoon. What I intend as a quick visit is
so
exasperating, I almost wish I hadn't come.

‘It's on Wednesday the tenth. Six pm. Bring your own glass.'

Quite simple I would have thought. But first a cup of tea then Joyce consults her diary. An opportunity to expound on the intricacies of her life. She begins two weeks ahead of my proposed party and tells me about the visitors she is expecting on the twenty-fourth.

‘Godfrey's nieces are coming for four days, or is it five? Is it five, Godfrey? I can't quite read what I've put down here. They're coming from Canada, of course, because their parents went there in 1940. She was a brilliant girl, of course, and could have done a lot better if things had been different, and he was a scientist of some note. They lived there for twenty-three years before moving to the Middle East where the children went to school. Well only the youngest, Brian, the others were at college and later they went on to a special university, of course, because they could speak three languages, and her sister also had three children and the last one was a girl. She said later that if she had known it would be a girl she wouldn't have bothered because the boys were both so good, you know. And the girl was hard work. Although I think one of them had motor problems. Motor problems, wasn't it, Godfrey? Anyway they are coming from Geneva and it will take about nine hours, it's a long day, and my problem is how to get all the beds changed because they will overlap with Jeremy. And he never says how long he's staying and I have to organise the beds because then there's Leo and his
friend Joe who are staying in an old house in Brieve with eighteen friends. They've just finished their Bach exams and Leo did very well, which was hard for him because he took French and after all those years at the other college he found things very hard indeed.'

Eventually, after fifteen minutes or more of this, Joyce rolls back the diary to the week in question, unfortunately not to the Wednesday, but to the Monday before.

‘Now this is going to be interesting,' and she launches off again. Who will be staying with them over the preceding weekend. The relatives of those staying. The achievements of their children, and, I think, their nieces and nephews. I'm not too sure because I have stopped listening about twenty minutes ago.

Eventually I summon some courage. ‘But what about the Wednesday? Can you come?' I ask lamely.

‘That should be absolutely fine,' says Joyce, and scrawls it in her diary.

The date finalised and the friends formally invited, I plan a simple menu. I will slice up baguettes and top them with mounds of egg mayonnaise, caviar and smoked salmon. I will track down some excellent pâté and cheese and also layer this onto crusty bread. It's far easier for people to cope with finger food if it isn't large and messy, but can be put in the mouth in a single bite. The cats look very interested in all this food preparation, especially the enticing smell of the salmon, so I need to close the windows and doors until just before the party starts as there is nowhere to hide food platters from their greedy clutches. The day I have chosen turns out to be the hottest day in August, more than 40 degrees, with the afternoon sun belting directly onto my shutters. I clear the furniture back against the wall as much
as possible, chill the wine and beer and make a big bowl of Australian-style punch with pineapple juice, rum and chopped-up fruit.

Everyone seems to arrive at once and as most people know each other, introductions are not required. Before long I have twenty-nine hot and sweaty visitors crammed into my tiny room, although they soon spill out into the corridor and onto the street. My landlord looks a bit alarmed and kindly offers to bring over some extra chairs—he even generously suggests we all move across the road into his walled garden. I don't imagine he ever anticipated this tiny room being a major party venue. However everyone is having fun and even the cats have joined in, skulking around in corners looking for odd scraps of food. Luckily there is a public toilet just a few doors away, so nobody is required to brave my prefab thunderbox. By the time it gets dark the hangers-on decide they are still hungry, so we all wander through the back streets to a restaurant that specialises in thin, crispy pizzas. Next morning my room looks somewhat shattered but the memories of the party are sweet so I don't resent mopping up the aftermath. That same day I start packing for the move from Villefranche to Pomarède.

T
HE DAY I MOVE HOUSE IT'S A
stifling 40 degrees, and very humid. I am really keen to get settled in quickly because I have discovered that there was once a phone line to the cottage and Lucienne has helped me organise with France Telecom to have it reconnected. I will move in the morning and the phone will be linked up between 3 and 5 pm. I am anxious to have a phone because Lorna's baby still hasn't arrived, it's now more than a week overdue. When I moved from Jock's place to Villefranche my possessions easily fitted into the boot of the car, with a few clothes on hangers in the back seat. I can't work out why this move is going to take at least two full car loads. But there are the contents of the fridge and pantry shelf, including half a dozen or so bottles of wine, tinned food and bottles of spirits left over from the party. There's the bedding from Margaret and Jock, the electric wok, a borrowed sewing machine, plus some extra bits and pieces I have bought since I first moved in. It's a sad fact of life that no matter where you live you manage to accumulate all sorts of stuff. I even a have small
basket of odd bits and pieces like stickytape, batteries, toothpicks and birthday candles—just like I have at home. How did it happen?

After I settle I find the main problem with the house in the woods is that it's dark—very dark indeed. The attic room, which has been converted into the only real bedroom, has no window at all, just stone walls and a wood-lined pitched roof with heavy timber beams. Although appealing in a rustic way, walls of natural stone and timber ceilings with heavy beams simply absorb the light. Even when several lamps are glowing it still feels dark and gloomy. In many of the renovated houses around here the owners have wisely painted the timber between the beams pure white with uplights to brighten the interior. However in my little cottage in the woods it's all very natural and old-fashioned, and extremely dim. I cannot read a book even in the middle of the day. Most old stone cottages also lack windows and doors, which would let out too much heat in winter. The Petersens have put candles everywhere, hanging chandeliers of them in the dining area, and placing huge candle stands on either side of the open fireplace in the living room. It's certainly a romantic effect for the evenings but I know that I will need light, for reading and sewing, and also for my mood. Rooms that are dark during the day are depressing, especially when the weather is cold and the sky is overcast. I hate overhead lighting which is often oppressive, preferring lamps scattered through the rooms and realise I may have to buy a few more. I know that the fire will add greatly to my good humour and that I will probably start lighting it in the evenings long before it becomes really cold.