Au Revoir (30 page)

We start with an aperitif of red wine laced with cassis and walnut liquor, followed by a cèpe tart with crumbly short pastry and eggs supplied by the local farmer's wife. The braised hare is accompanied by piles of crispy potatoes sautéed in goose fat and followed by salad greens from Roger's garden lightly tossed in walnut oil, then mouth-watering runny Brie cheese. The hare meat is rich, incredibly rich—just a few small cubes are quite enough to eat in one sitting, though the sauce is absolutely sublime, and we mop our plates with bread between courses. Even Jock finds it hard to eat a large portion of hare, pushing it round the plate with some effort. When you consider that the smallest book in the world is ‘The List of Foods Jock Doesn't Enjoy Eating' it really means hare is an acquired taste! When we dine at Roger's we follow common French practice of using only one plate, knife and fork for the entire meal: the idea is to wipe the plate clean with bread between entrée, main course, salad and cheese. Given the number of courses these people love to
eat, it makes commonsense to recycle rather than wash up mountains of dishes.

Carole tells me of a special meal prepared one evening for the hunters at Madame Murat's, using some of their catch. Forty or so strapping men descend on the restaurant at dusk for an aperitif, accompanied by only one or two wives and girlfriends. It's very much a bloke's night out, and the meal is a serious one.

A wild boar's liver, weighing at least eight kilos, is sautéed in a massive frying pan and served with garlic, parsley and a red wine sauce. Next come the boar's kidneys which have also been pan fried, and are apparently extremely rich and tasty. As if sufficient offal has not already been consumed, a third entrée is dished out—boar's testicles poached in wine with capers. Madame Murat is quite red in the face by now, but the blokes are extremely happy. The main course is the roast wild boar itself, glimmering with crispy fat and basted in its own juices. By now it's almost midnight and the party is getting rowdy, as jugs of wine are thrown back and tales of hunting exploits exchanged, but more courses and more wine are to come before Carole staggers home, well after 2 am, with the party still going strong. Heaven knows how the restaurant managed to open for lunch again the following day, or how the hunters managed to rouse themselves to stalk the woods again all weekend.

A couple of weeks into the hunting season, Jock's black tomcat Shagger disappears. The body of another similar village tom is found in Sue and Andy's garden next door, but it's not Shagger; the dead cat has what appears to be bullet holes in the side of its neck, and we can only assume Shagger has met a similar fate. It's common knowledge that bored or frustrated hunters will take a shot at anything that moves, including village
cats on their hormonal rounds. Jock is greatly saddened at the loss of his scruffy old friend. The same week one of the kittens Sue brought from Spain is knocked down and killed by a car in the narrow street out the front of the house—it's the second time one of their animals has been run over in St Caprais.

Meanwhile I mysteriously acquire a ginger tom that comes screaming at me out of the night, demented with hunger, eyes blazing red in my torch beam. I wonder how on earth he has found me here in the middle of the woods, a good distance from the nearest barn or farm. Unlike Pierre and the other village cats in Villefranche, who were being fed by half-a-dozen other people, this stray will be quite a responsibility to take on because I can't just throw him out, close the door and walk away when I leave in December. But it doesn't look as though he has anywhere else to go. I name him Jacques le Roux (Jack the Redhead) and he follows me from room to room, yowling for food and generally being very demanding. It's as though he's suffering from separation anxiety, and yet I have only just met him. I force worm tablets down his throat and apply flea powder liberally from ears to tail tip, and he purrs as if it is the greatest joy of his life. He possesses all the personality of ginger cats, and I find his company very appealing. I would have preferred, however, a half-wild cat to throw the odd scrap to, rather than this limpet that has taken me on one hundred per cent.

The attitude to cats can be hard-hearted here, but I am told a story that is quite reassuring. Danny's neighbour, Monsieur Besse, has a tribe of wild barn cats, originally numbering twenty-six in all, that once belonged to his parents, both deceased some ten years. Since they died he has travelled daily from nearby
Frayssinet to feed these cats. Eventually he decided the only solution was to desex as many as possible and he set traps, catching and carting at least sixteen furious furballs to the veterinary clinic. Now they are down to only seven cats, all plump and healthy, and all still fed daily by Monsieur Besse. They run wildly to greet his car as it pulls into the farmyard every evening, rain, hail or shine. Danny also slips them the odd bowl of cat kibble, but they are still quite wild and impossible to get close enough to give them a stroke.

I seem to be a cat magnet: Jacques le Roux becomes so firmly attached that I now worry about what will happen to him when I eventually leave. Just when I was enjoying freedom from all responsibility, I now have a small creature to consider.

As the weather cools and winter approaches, the festivities of summer wind down and various members of the group peel off in other directions. Miles and Anne have long gone, as he still works full time in London and six weeks is all they can spend at their glorious summer residence. They pop down again for a week in the autumn and when we lunch together at Madame Murat's on their way to the airport at Toulouse, I know I'll not be seeing them again.

Anthony, who spent last winter camped in a makeshift house in one of his outbuildings, has vowed never to endure a winter in the Lot again without central heating. Needless to say, he hasn't quite got that far with his renovations, so he packs up his four-wheel drive and a trailerload of goods, including some boxes of fine wine, and heads back to the UK and comfortable
civilisation. Andy and Sue leave for their house in Spain, with their dog and remaining kitten on board their crowded station wagon. Then Roger decides he must also return to England and close up his much-loved summer cottage for at least five months. We have several farewell dinners including one he prepares for us and one cooked for the remaining crowd by the indefatigable Lucienne.

I start feeling rather sad at the dwindling numbers, especially as I have a feeling that once I leave I shall probably never return. Life is like that. I always intend to come back but I rarely do. I know perfectly well that once I fall into my old routine of work and family and other commitments, it will be very difficult to find the time, not to mention the money, to take another holiday in this part of the world that I have grown to love so dearly. As the days get shorter I feel a certain gloom descending that makes me feel homesick for Australia and my family, yet I am reluctant to leave my present home and my new-found ‘family'.

M
Y MOTHER DIED SUDDENLY
four years ago. It was unusual for a woman of my generation in Australia to have her mother living under the same roof for more than two decades. Certainly it was difficult at times, and we had our fair share of serious arguments—usually about trivial issues—which could take days or even weeks to sort out.

Looking at the old farmhouses in the Lot where extended families of three or more generations all lived together in one small room—cooking, eating and sleeping, making love, giving birth and dying within four walls—reminds me strongly of how it was in our family. The expectations we now have about our quality of life and our relationships are much higher than they once were. In previous generations people ‘put up' with a lot more—less than perfect marriages were common but did not automatically end in divorce. Several generations lived under the one roof if financial circumstances were stretched, and even if there were complaints and bitching, the situation was tolerated. People made an effort to get along with members of their
own family, even if they found them seriously wanting. Now, of course, we expect life to be perfect, in materialistic terms, and in our personal relationships. Marriages are tossed over at the first sign of a crack, and rarely, if ever, do more than two generations co-exist. This shift has even extended into non-Anglo Australian communities which traditionally included live-in grandparents. We simply won't tolerate the inconvenience of sharing a bathroom or having to cook dinner for large numbers of people. We are too busy and probably too self-absorbed to be bothered.

Having Mum as a permanent part of our family was a gift. Her humour and intelligence filtered down the generations and added greatly to the richness of the children's lives. Mum had many passions—classical music, literature, history and politics—and she supervised all the children in their music lessons and nightly practice. They were too much in awe of her to refuse. She drummed Shakespeare into their heads, along with grammar and perfect pronunciation, Latin and poetry—all the things I didn't have the time or inclination or energy to introduce into their formative minds. She loved to cook and potter in the garden, she adored the animals and even liked to chop wood for the open fires before she became too frail to do so. Best of all, she was my companion during David's lengthy periods away from home, and helped provide some structure and discipline in those areas of childrearing where I was totally lax.

In the last few years of her life Mum became very dependent on us all, both physically and emotionally. She was one of those strong-minded individuals who had no time for dying, although she knocked herself around daily with excessive drinking and smoking, which contributed to her final demise. Towards the end she had some terrible falls in the evenings after drinking,
and we installed railings and other safety measures to help her remain mobile. She adored spending time with the children's teenage friends and loved it when people came for dinner, especially if there was some lively debate. She swore loudly and frequently abused people if she disagreed with their opinions. She never lost her passion for controversial political standpoints, and often shouted out ‘Up the Revolution' as she lurched off to bed at the end of an evening.

When Mum died, we were all taken completely by surprise, even though she had been frail for some time. Her death was heralded only by a sharp pain down one side, which she decided not to mention to anyone for at least twenty-four hours. It was typical of her to minimise any aches and pains for fear of being treated like an old crock. She was tough and could put up with terrible agony—like the gout she frequently suffered in her feet—with little or no complaint. But on this occasion the pain became too intense for her to ignore. She joked about it to her youngest grandson Ethan, ‘I think I'm dying, but don't tell your mother.'

So he didn't. Eventually, however, he realised things were far from all right and he contacted me by phone. I immediately returned home. He also called our family doctor who tried valiantly to get an ambulance to take Mum to the local hospital. It was a Friday night and it was raining. There had been a couple of minor car accidents, and all the ambulances were in use. In the end I carried Mum to my car myself, climbing over a pile of bark mulch for the garden that had been delivered outside the front gate earlier in the day, her small, thin body cradled in my arms as I stumbled in the rain and the dark. The casualty department of the local hospital was a chaotic nightmare.
I insisted on Mum being given a bed to lie on, but it was a good four hours before a doctor was able to examine her. Four hours of agony she suffered, while I lay virtually on top of her, stroking her head and trying to keep her calm. Eventually she was given some pain relief and a diagnosis of kidney stones, but as the painkillers started to work she began looking gravely ill, and the diagnosis changed. There was a suspicion of something more sinister, and the medical staff decided she should fly to a larger hospital at the base of the mountains.