My Grape Escape (19 page)

Her husband ducked under the doorway, his head festooned with a few very mouldy pieces of straw. “It smells like rat poison up there. Your
maman
must have doused everything in it.”

The elder brother followed. “She did. I’d forgotten how she loved her rat poison.”

“Rat poison?” I echoed.

The elder man waved away my worried look. “Doesn’t kill people. At least…I don’t think it does.”

Franck came in just then with another bottle of
cassis
and the fresh bottle of
crémant
I had retrieved from the cellar. One dark, rueful eyebrow was raised.

“I don’t envy you the job,” he sighed as he poured everyone fresh and very generous drinks. He crooked his finger at me when he was done. “Laura and I will just go into the kitchen to cut up some
saucisson sec
.”

We scuttled to the kitchen. I passed Franck a
saucisson
out of the fridge and watched as he skillfully, but far more slowly than usual, peeled away its thin skin and cut it up into delicate, paper thin slices.

The murmur of voices in urgent consultation came through the wall.

“What do you - ” I began, but Franck shushed me with a
cassis
-laced kiss.

Finally the murmurs began to die down. I spread out the
saucisson
slices on a small wooden cutting board. Franck armed himself with a basket of freshly cut bread and we shared a smile before gliding back into the living room. Franck topped up everyone’s glasses and I passed the
saucisson
around to the general praise of all.

“So,” Franck began. “When would you like to come and pick up the furniture? I imagine you can take some of the smaller things today and get started with some of the boxes from the attic, but I suppose you’ll need to rent a small truck for the bigger items.

On the other side of the table all eyes went to the tallest brother. He lifted his glass. “Actually, we are not sure that…well…how much would you pay us for it?”

“For what
exactement
?” Franck asked.

The man swept his hand around the room. “Everything.”

“Everything?” I asked.

“Except these chairs,
bien sûr
.” He wrapped a hand around the wooden leg of the chair he sat upon. “I still want these.”

Franck delicately inserted a
saucisson
in his mouth and took his time chewing. All eyes were riveted on him but I spoke first.

“To tell you the truth, after buying the house and with the reno…I mean, the re-decorating we have planned, we really don’t have much money.” I wasn’t trying to be some kind of brilliant negotiator. In fact, that had been one of my big problems in law school - I would always just blurt out the truth.

“We could use the fridge and the stove,” Franck reminded me. “We’d have to go out and buy those anyway.”

“And the kitchen buffet,” I added.

 “But we want to leave it all!” The smaller man slapped his palm on the table to underline his point.

“Except my chairs,” his brother reminded him.

Silence descended on the table. We chewed on our
saucisson
, eyes darting from one to another.

“The fact of the matter is that none of us have the
courage
to clear out the attic,” the sister explained at last. Her husband and brothers nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “So if we can agree on a price it would be for everything – except these chairs. It would mean we wouldn’t have to come back and get any of it.”

Franck considered this. “That’s going to be a lot of work for us, going through the attic. I don’t know if we have the time.”

The elder brother cracked his knuckles. “We understand that, but to compensate for your troubles we would give you a deal on the rest.”

“Did you have a number in mind?” Franck’s eyes gleamed. He loved negotiating. Not so much for the cheaper price, but for the sheer sport of the activity. He had visited Tunisia with his aunt and uncle when he was a teenager and wiled away many afternoons sipping mint tea at the
souk
while watching the lively negotiations bounce back and forth over the rugs.

The elder brother fingered the stem of his wine glass and met the eye of his brother and sister, who both gave him infinitesimal nods. “Twenty thousand for all of it.”

“We don’t have twenty thousand!” I burst out, and under the table Franck’s foot trod again on mine.

“Fifteen then,” the sister said quickly.

“Ten thousand,” Franck said. “That’s all we could possibly pay, and even that would be a stretch for us. We’ll give you a moment to chat.”

I picked up the now empty cutting board and followed Franck into the kitchen. He pulled me close.

“Good negotiating,” he whispered in my ear. “It’ll work. You should have seen their expressions when they saw the
bordel
in the attic.”

The murmured, urgent voices from the other side of the wall died down once again and we walked back into the living room together. The elder brother slowly pushed his chair back and put out his hand.

“You’ve got a deal, but I’m taking these chairs with me today.”

Chapter 20

It was the beginning of February and things seemed to be turning our way. Paulo was back from Portugal and due to call on us in a few days’ time. We had been able to keep all the furniture and even found a few spare rickety wooden chairs in the attic to replace the ones that were taken. The baby snakes in the cellar had apparently been frightened away, as Olivier had surmised, by Gégé’s
shrieking, and Franck and Gégé had only the two bedrooms left to eviscerate before Paulo could show them how to patch up the walls again with plaster.

Even more phenomenal was that Franck had managed to talk to the surveyor on the phone that morning, finally convincing him to pay us a visit to discuss the zoning dilemma at two o’clock.

At one thirty, after a quick lunch of green salad and leek and goat cheese quiches bought from the
boulangerie,
Franck pushed himself back from the table.

“What time is it?”

Gégé burped softly and consulted his watch. “One thirty.”

“We should go and wait outside for him.”

“He’s not due for another half hour,” I said. “It’s not like you to be early for anything.”

“He’ll take any opportunity to leave again,” Franck said. “We’ll have to lie in wait and leap out in front of his car if necessary.” Now that Gégé had finished his lunch with us, part of me expected him to beat a hasty retreat and let Franck and me deal with the elusive civil servant. Instead he followed us outside, lit yet another cigarette and leaned against the wall of the passageway, waiting for the curtain to go up on the next act of the Laura-and-Franck-and-their-falling-apart-half-owned-house show.

The wind howled underneath the passageway where we huddled in the cold. I leaned into the blessed comfort of Franck’s ski jacket. His warmth and faint scent of apples flowed through me and my thoughts drifted back to an Open House day at one of the top solicitors’ firms in London.

Oxford shepherded its final year law students around all of the City’s legal institutions. We had a choice to make – become a barrister or become a solicitor. One had to be either ridiculously brilliant or brilliantly well connected in order to become a barrister, so the huge majority of us had reconciled ourselves to becoming solicitors. After months of wearing jeans and wool sweaters to my tutorials I wrestled myself into a pair of pantyhose and heels. That in itself was enough to make me feel resentful toward the officious trainee solicitor who had been assigned to show me around the firm.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked me. I scurried to keep up with her as her chic pumps stalked down the carpeted hallway from the corporate to the litigation department.

“Yes, actually…”

“You won’t for long,” she shot back.

“Actually, I have a husband. We got married last summer.”

She paused with her hand on the handle of a heavy oak door. “It makes no difference. You’ll end up divorced by the time you finish your articling. I guarantee it.”

I could not hide my scepticism.

“You don’t believe me?” she cross-examined. “Just how do you plan to maintain a relationship with anyone outside of work if you never see them?”

“There’s always the weekend.”

“You’ll be working.”

“Evenings?”

“You’ll be working.”

“Not
every - ”
I began.

“I sleep here at least twice a week. Usually more.”

“So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I do.” Her sharp features rearranged themselves in a smug expression. “He works here. It’s the only way.”

With that she swept me into a buzzing department of lawyers who seemed to live on a strict regimen of coffee and contention. The youngest ones – the articling students – could be identified by their pallor and the black circles under their eyes.

I tried to convince myself that my guide was spouting nonsense; Franck and I were stronger than she could possibly know. As the tour wore on, however, I chatted with more trainees and freshly qualified legal eagles: a fleshy cheeked guy probably younger than me who was already working on the prodigious beginnings of a beer belly, a nattily dressed East Indian woman, and a dandy in a pin-striped suit and pink tie. They all confirmed what she had said. Affairs between colleagues were rampant. Spouses and significant others had a way of drifting away due to sheer neglect.

“Is it worth it?” I asked the dandy with an earnestness that seemed to give him pause. “Do you actually like your work?”

He tugged on one pinstriped lapel. “To be perfectly honest, I loathe my job but I’m sticking at it for the same reason as everyone else around here does.”

“Which is?”

“Money, of course. Once you make partner, you’ve got it made.”

Franck’s arms tightened around me now, but despite my jacket and his warmth I began to shiver.

“Go back inside,” Franck said to me. “There’s no point in us all freezing out here.”

We had already been waiting ten minutes and, without saying a word, Gégé had proved his theory about the passageway being a formidable wind tunnel. I consoled myself with the fact that the wind chill factor probably diminished any satisfaction he felt about this fact. Just then Gégé leapt out into the icy road and in front of a slowly crawling white
camionette
.

“It’s him! I’m sure of it!”

I blinked. Gégé was ready to risk life and limb for our cause. Employing the same imperiousness with which he had chastised Olivier for his sub-floor, he waved the
camionette
over towards the parking spots in front of the church.

The driver of the
camionette
wore a distinctly cornered look on his middle-aged face. I hadn’t really believed it when Franck and Gégé swore that the
cadastre
would use any excuse to drive off, but it looked like they were right.

The
cadastre
had rearranged his features in an expression of strained civility by the time he wrapped his scarf around his neck and unfolded his lanky body out of the car.

“
Bonjour
,” he said and regretfully shook all of our icy hands.

“Let’s go inside.” Franck ushered everyone back into the house again. Once inside, the
cadastre
extracted a roll of drawing paper from his jacket and unrolled it on the kitchen table. He didn’t take his jacket off. Clearly he did not plan to bestow much of his sacred time on us. His preamble came in the form of a majestic sigh.

“You have a problem,” he said. “According to this, your neighbour owns more than half of your house.”

Franck’s smoking finger twitched. “We know. How could this happen? How could this mistake be carried on when it is clearly not a reflection of the actual division between the houses?”

The surveyor cleaned his glasses on his scarf and let a puff of air escape between his lips. “It happens. Either nobody has noticed or, if they have, nobody has cared enough to do anything. Maybe they just figured there was an understanding between neighbours.”

“So it’s easy to resolve?” Franck asked.

“That all depends on your neighbour.” The
cadastre
cocked an eyebrow.

Gégé, who was familiar with the neighbour in question, snorted.

Franck’s mouth tightened. “I haven’t had any problems with him so far, but he has a…certain reputation. According to the other neighbors, he is quite intent on acquiring more property around his house.”

“Isn’t he in for a nice surprise!” The surveyor laughed. Franck lost no time in giving him an “
oeil noir
” which quickly snuffed the hilarity. The
cadastre
smoothed out his plans.

“You need to talk to your neighbor about this. That is where you must start.”

“I did quite some time ago, but we weren’t able to conclude anything. Maybe with you here- ”

“
Attendez
!” The
cadastre
stood up, his face pink with alarm. “I meant
after
I leave.”

“I’ll go get him right now.” Franck was quickly out the door. Le
cadastre
looked at me accusingly.

“This is highly irregular. You know I am a busy man. I am already late for another meeting.”

“He won’t be long,” I assured him. “Our neighbour probably isn’t even home anyway.”

The surveyor looked as though he was about to leave. Gégé was blocking the doorway, but he was much smaller than the
cadastre
.

“I don’t quite understand where the two houses are separated. Can you show me on the plans again?” I stalled.

He had just begun tracing the outline of our house on the plans with his finger when a heavily accented voice overpowered the bell across the street chiming three o’clock.

“
Bah
! It makes no sense!” Monsieur De Luca bellowed as he strode into our kitchen, Franck in his wake. His massive shoulders and red face seemed to suck the air from the room. His fists, clenched to his sides, were like two medium-sized cabbages. Even the
cadastre,
who had stood up to shake the neighbor’s hand and introduce himself, didn’t dare make any attempts to leave now.

“Would you like a coffee?” I asked. Monsieur De Luca turned to me with wide eyes as though seeing me for the first time. “Please sit down,” I ushered him to chair, making the most of the fact that he seemed unnerved to find a woman in the midst of all of this. “Do you take sugar?”

Franck slipped into the third chair and indicated to the dazed
cadastre
that he could begin with the explanations.

“It would appear as though, according to our plans, you own two thirds of Monsieur and Madame Germain’s house.”

The idiot! There were a hundred better ways to present the problem.

The
cadastre
pushed the set of plans under Monsieur De Luca’s nose and, shrinking away slightly, traced his finger over the red line that showed the separation of our two houses. Everyone except Monsieur De Luca held their breath. Our neighbor traced the line on the plan with a finger roughly the same diameter as a
saucisson sec
.

“How can this be?” he said, finally. “My house is my house.” He waved a fist at Franck. “His house is his house.”

I suppressed a sigh of relief. Was saying that in front of the
cadastre
sort of like saying it in court? Could he figure out that he actually did have a legal claim to our house and change his mind? I was tempted to ask Gégé for one of his cigarettes.

“Yes, well…you see there has been an error somewhere along the line,” the surveyor explained. “Legally it could be argued that part of this house is yours.”

I wanted to grab a dishtowel and muzzle the
man.

Monsieur De Luca glanced up at me and gave me a rueful smile that quite transformed his face. “That does not change the fact that this house is not mine and never has been. What must be done to set it right?”

The
cadastre
straightened his spine proudly, taking credit for this swift and amicable resolution. He drew some red lines on the plan he had in front of him, and then scribbled something indecipherable at the bottom.

“Can you just sign here then?” He pushed the paper towards our florid neighbo
u
r who shrugged his belligerence at such a stupid mistake, scribbling his name in a signature that was as small and cramped as he was large and imposing.

“French civil servants, eh?” He winked at me. The room seemed full of oxygen once again.

Franck took out the bottle of
cassis
from beside the fridge.

“
Apéro
anyone?”