My Grape Escape (23 page)

I could tell as I brought the steaming dish of
morteau
sausages and fingerling potatoes into the living room that this evening was going to take every single ounce of tact and diplomacy in me. Paulo was keeping up a constant stream of tall tales. Franck and Gégé, who was dressed in an ironed dress shirt and dress shoes with his best jeans, were a receptive – meaning completely silent - audience. It would have been a relief to stay pinned in my chair by the centrifugal force of Paulo’s never-ending monologue. Momo, however, was the problem.

After a few minutes in his company it became clear that this reputedly well-endowed specimen liked to be the centre of attention himself. He, unlike Franck, Gégé, and
I
was not content to sit back and let Paulo steal the limelight for the evening. The more Paulo talked, the more Momo fidgeted in his chair.

Franck kept our glasses of
Ladoix Premier Cru
topped up but this didn’t seem to mellow the two men at all. Rather the contrary, in fact.

“Those Pauland idiots came by every day for a month,” Paulo rambled on. “They had bought up every house around me and had all the land to build their new winery. I kept telling them that I couldn’t make up my mind and to come back the next - ”

“I know the guy who did the electrical for that build,” Momo interrupted.

“I had them over a barrel,” Paulo turned his voice up a notch, talking right over Momo as he continued to tell his excruciatingly detailed story. “So what I did next was - ”

“Do you know what happened to me when I was fencing the other afternoon?” Momo asked us. I stood up and began to clear the plates.

“…tell them I would
never
sell my house to them - ” Paulo’s voice got even louder.

Momo’s eyes kindled. “There was this woman - ”

“But they came back the very next day with their lawyer. Can you believe that?”

I scurried off to the kitchen and took a long time assembling my cheese platter of
Époisses
,
Cîteaux
, and
Comté
. When I could avoid it no longer I went back into the living room just in time to hear Momo yell belligerently at Paulo, “I think you could have gotten them to pay you a lot more for your house!”

I stood frozen a few feet from the table. Paulo’s muscular forearms flexed. “What did you just say?”

Gégé and I exchanged worried looks. Franck looked mildly interested for the first time since lunch.

“Your story is boring.” Momo spread out his sinewy hand on the tablecloth that I had hoped would add a touch of civility to the proceedings. “If you had held on longer you could have got those rich idiots at Pauland to pay you double that amount.” I stared at Momo, incredulous. With the exception of Gégé, the men were behaving like little boys in the schoolyard.

Paulo curled his fingers into a fist. “Say that again. Go ahead. Say it!”

I wanted to crawl underneath the table. It reminded me of the time we were having dinner at our newly engaged friends’ apartment in Lyon and they embarked on a marital spat of such epic proportions that it ended with the fiancée twisting off her engagement ring, flinging it out the window to the courtyard below and stalking out of the room. I had often wondered if French people felt the compulsion to misbehave in front of me precisely because I was such a well-behaved audience.

“Your story is
n’importe quoi
.” Momo tossed this smouldering log on the fire. Franck made no attempt to mediate. On the contrary, his eyes widened with delight at the prospect of a pre-dessert brawl. Paulo knuckled the tabletop and stood up.

“You are a
petit merde.”
Oh dear. Not so much the “shit” part but the “little” part. Momo was on the small side, even for a French man.

Gégé threw me a desperate look. We needed them both to keep working with us, but I didn’t know what I could do now to save the evening. It was too late.

Momo stood up, cocky as a rooster. I was fed up with Gégé and me being the only well behaved people around. I threw the cheese platter down on the table.

“Stop it!”

Neither Momo nor Paulo seemed to hear me. They remained standing; their eyes did not leave each other. My fist came down hard on the table.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

The four men stared at me and then glanced at each other, not quite sure what to do. Gégé roused himself first and gave me a little grin. Why should I be the one who felt embarrassment when other people were behaving rudely?

“I made you all a nice dinner tonight even though I’m exhausted and the house is a disaster and Franck has been in a funk for most of the day.”  Paulo opened his mouth but I held up my hand and adopted the French technique of speaking even louder. “All you do is bicker with each other while Franck sits in the corner, enjoying the show. I will not have it! Paulo, Momo, Franck - you have a choice. Either you start behaving or I am going to kick you out of my house!”

I glared at each of them, daring them to talk back. After a moment, Momo and Paulo sat down.

“Gégé, you can stay,” I added.

None of them uttered a sound. Gégé caught my eye and made a silent clapping gesture with his hands. The other three men studied the olive branch print of our tablecloth as though it were a lingerie catalogue. Why had I never tried yelling at rude guests before? It was a revelation.

After a minute or two of stony silence Gégé began to chuckle. “What’s wrong
les gars
?” he chided his fellow men. “Cat got your tongue?”

Franck looked up at me and cracked a sheepish smile. Paulo and Momo began to laugh as well, and finally relaxed their shoulders.

“Are you going to start behaving yourselves?” I demanded. “Otherwise you will get no dessert from me.”

They nodded like schoolboys – obedient schoolboys now.

“
Bien
,” I said. “In that case, help yourself to the cheese.”

The
Époisses
was creamy and stinky, but it did not even come close to the deliciousness of allowing myself to tell everyone off.

When I glided into the kitchen to get the
tarte aux poires
that I had bought from the
patisserie
, I heard Momo say to Franck, “You’ve got a real hellion for a wife.”

“I know,” Franck answered, pride in his voice. “Isn’t she great?”

Chapter 23

Today we found a possible solution to our window problem. His name is Antoine.

Michèle, Franck’s mother, and Antoine met at Lourdes several years previously while Michèle was searching for a miracle to cure her cancer. Antoine was a volunteer there. He became not only a close friend but also one of Michèle’s pillars of support during her treatment and recovery. When he wasn’t busy facilitating miracles on behalf of the Virgin Mary, Antoine - a compact ball of energy with a round head and thin moustache - worked as a window installer.

His personal life had always been a mystery to Franck’s family. Like a modern day saint he went through life helping the sick, the desperate, and the lonely; he usually had at least one person recuperating at his home. Franck had warned me early on not to ask too many questions.

“He is from Brittany,” Franck said by way of explanation.

“Why can’t I ask questions of people from Brittany?”

“A
Breton
will be the best friend you could ever have,” Franck said. “But they value their privacy and they have
du caractère
. We must respect that.”

Antoine blew into our house three days after our almost disastrous dinner party with Momo and Paulo who, after my chastising, both got sauced and bonded over the extortionate taxes the French government imposed on small business owners and the excellent
Ladoix
Franck was serving (made by one of his many distant cousins,
bien sûr
).

Antoine looked like an eager gnome. His work pants were a well-worn azure and a tool belt of strange looking implements hung around his waist. He surprised me by refusing coffee.

“Work first!” he declared, then sallied into the living room and subjected our weather-beaten living room window to a vigorous inspection. “Disgraceful!” He clicked his tongue. “You must be freezing.”

Even though it was now almost April the weather was still unseasonably cold. I looked down and realized I had my arms wrapped around my torso again. I didn’t even notice the cold anymore.

“We do what we can to keep ourselves warm.” Franck kept an admirably straight face.

Antoine let out a hoot of high-pitched laughter. “Maybe you don’t want me to replace them,
hein
?” He took out his tape measure and went from room to room measuring and making note of all of the windows that needed replacing - the three along the front looking out to the church and then two tiny ones up in the attic.

Franck and I exchanged worried looks as Antoine scribbled on his paper. I thought back to our budget meeting of the night before as we lay in bed, and began to run through how much money we had to finish and the corresponding list of things still to do.

The harsh reality was that we only had twenty five thousand francs left. It sounded like a lot, but really it only amounted to a little more than five thousand dollars. We had thought we would save a lot of money by Franck plastering the walls by himself, but the holes were so deep and so plentiful that we found ourselves buying new bags of plaster every day. Each bag didn’t cost that much but they added up. Still, we knew that we had no choice but to replace our windows. They were rotting, after all. We also knew that this would prove to be an expensive proposition – Gégé took exquisite pleasure in reminding us of this fact several times a day.

“So, how much do you think they will cost?” Franck asked Antoine. Just then Gégé, with his unerring radar for catastrophe, sauntered in from the bathroom where he had been busy installing the new fixtures.

Antoine tucked the pencil behind his ear and studied his notepad. “I think it will come to about fifteen thousand francs.”

That was a huge chunk of our remaining budget. It would leave us with only
ten thousand francs to finish the rest. A pittance.

“
Merde.
” Franck’s index finger twitched. “That was more than I was hoping for. Does the price include installation?”

Antoine grinned at our worried expressions and slapped Franck on the shoulder. “
Ne t’en fais pas
. I can do the installation. I’ll just need to add a little extra for my materials, silicone for the joints and such.”

“
Merci
,” I said. It was generous of him. Maybe the Virgin Mary really had sent him to perform her miracles on earth.

“They would not be our top-of-the-line windows, you understand,” Antoine said. “But they are really the minimum of what is required in an old house like this. So should I add up the total? Fifteen thousand francs per window multiplied by three large windows and - ”

Franck made a choking noise. “You meant fifteen thousand francs
per
window?”

“But of course! Doing it for any less is
impossible
.”

Neither Franck nor I could speak.

Gégé watched us, delight illuminating his narrow face. “The three main floor windows alone would cost almost double the budget you have left for the rest of the house,” he calculated. What? He was a math genius all of a sudden?

“
Merci,
Gégé,” Franck said through clenched teeth.

“Could we somehow make do with these ones?” I asked, fingering the splintered window frame. A large chunk of wood crumbled off in my hand, answering my question. I turned to Antoine. “We just don’t have the money.”

Antoine sniffed. “Windows are the most important things you can install when doing renovations. Windows are always where you should go high end.”

“But we can’t afford to go high end anywhere.” I tried to make him understand.

“The price I quoted you is the price for the least
expensive window that our company manufactures.” From his huffy expression I knew I was raising the ire of his
Breton
blood.

“What about going with windows from a different
company?” Gégé suggested. “I know a lot of people that have installed windows from that store Lapeyre on the route de Dijon. They seem fine.”

Antoine turned the same shade of crimson as a young
Pommard
wine. “
Eh oui
, Lapeyre windows are just fine if what you like is
la merde
! They are the McDonalds of windows! The joints are made in China and the wood will warp in twenty years!” He shook his fist at the infamy of Gégé’s suggestion. Ah…here was the Breton
caractère
Franck had warned me about.

Frankly, Gégé’s suggestion sounded wonderful. Franck sent me a look that told me he felt the same.

“I could live with the windows warping twenty years from now,” he said, finally.

“So could I.” Maybe in twenty years’ time we would actually afford to get new windows from Antoine’s company, but these renovations had a way of transforming me into a
carpe
diem
kind of person.

Gégé tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a grin of triumph.  

“Fine!” Antoine ripped out his measuring tape and began to measure the window as if it was his mortal enemy. He scribbled something else on a fresh sheet of paper and shoved it over to Franck. “These are the measurements you’ll need to order. Call me when they’ve arrived and I’ll come and install them. I warn you now though; I can’t make any promises with such inferior materials.” He began to storm out of the living room, but caught sight of our mammoth stone fireplace.

“What are you going to do with that fireplace?” he demanded.

Franck folded up the paper carefully and slipped it in his back pocket. “We can’t afford to refurbish the chimney and even if we did it would still be a fire hazard that would affect our insurance. We had the idea of making some sort of bookshelf in there but we have to find a carpenter.”

“And more money,” I added.

Franck nodded. “And more money.”

Antoine raised his eyes to the heavens. “Find a carpenter! Why would you do that when you’ve got me?” He took out his measuring tape again and, thus armed, accosted the fireplace. “I see that I’ll have to stay. You’ll never be able to pull this off without me.”

I was ready to take salvation in whichever form it arrived, even a volatile
Breton
.

It was official. We had only three weeks left before our first guests arrived. I had discovered, strangely, that all this time I had been harboring a hidden gift for Internet marketing. Incredibly, I had booked twenty groups of guests for our next year. We were now completely booked up from April 30, when our first guests arrived, until the end of November.

My fingers were poised over the keyboard of my makeshift computer station in the corner of the living room. The white plaster walls around me looked smooth and pristine thanks to Paulo coming up the past two days to help Franck. They were almost finished the front bedroom too.

I opened my email and clicked on a message from our first group of guests:
Bonjour Laura! We are gearing up for our trip to France. How are the renovations going? We’ve bought our tickets now and should be arriving at your house at around 8:00pm on April 30. Can you please send directions and how to find the key? We’re getting very excited!

Today was April 7. Yesterday Franck had bought our train tickets to travel to Oxford, leaving Dijon at 6:12 a.m. on April 30 to get there in time for my graduation ceremony on the morning of May 1 and the festivities of May Day in England. In front of the keyboard I invariably experienced a manic surge of optimism. For those few moments I truly did believe it would be possible to get the house ready for them in time. It was when I stood up and looked beyond my computer screen that my optimism fell down around my feet. I still had to paint the entire house as well as the shutters and some pieces of furniture. Antoine had to install our windows (which had just arrived) and we needed to install our newly purchased electric radiators. The bathroom wall needed to be tiled… May Day. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. The voice in my head plummeted into a nosedive.

I was dying to begin painting the living room but Franck insisted that the radiators had to be installed first. Besides, he wasn’t exactly sure how long the plaster took to dry
completely. When he wasn’t looking I would run my hand over the silky smooth surface of the new walls, trying to decide on what color paint to choose. Beige didn’t tempt me in the slightest. Would I paint the walls the lavender shade of the dusty part of a pinot noir grape? The yellow of the canola fields in full bloom? Or the crisp apple green of the vineyard’s leaves when they first unfurled?

Before paint came the radiators and before the radiators could be installed, the windows had to be changed. Antoine, who had gone to Dijon with Franck to pick up the windows from that den of iniquity known as Lapeyre, was now busy installing them. Antoine truly knew his way around a window. He cut, sealed, and wielded the silicone gun with the same nonchalance as a solicitor in London marking up a multi-million dollar contract.