Our House is Certainly Not in Paris (26 page)

For the first time in three years, the weather stays fine for lunch on trestle tables laid out under the walnut trees in Marinette's orchard. There are hundreds of people gathered from the outlying hamlets, and as the matriarch of the village, Marinette stands on the terrace outside her
maison
and gazes down with a sense of proprietary pride. The Cuzance band plays vigorous tunes and
La Marseillaise
is particularly fervent and stirring.

We settle with Françoise to enjoy our
déjeuner
in the walnut tree shade and as always, I turn to Françoise with our latest request; not a tablecloth or a hose or wire cutters this time. No, Stuart has actually agreed that we need help with the paving. This for me is the surprise of the century. Stuart absolutely never outsources anything. It is a huge concession on his part. I ask Françoise if she knows of anyone at all in the village who may be able to help.
Voila
; their neighbour, a sculptor, is looking for extra work. As always, they swing into action on our behalf. By early Monday morning, Jean-Claude has spoken to Jean-Louis'
maman
and found out that he is due to return home from
vacances
that very evening
.
By seven Monday evening, Jean-Louis comes to visit us to talk about the concreting. He even gives Stuart extra tips – we need to get a waterproof additive for the concrete as well as a water repellent finish for the pavers. He will start on Friday morning. I am elated. Help is at hand at long last in the unexpected form of a shy, silent sculptor.

By now our work clothes are beyond grimy. They are layered with sweat stains and encrusted with dirt. My socks are so dirty they could walk by themselves. After a cooler period for a week, the heat once again surges. By Friday, the very day we finally have someone to help us find our way in our world of crazy paving, it is thirty five degrees. I push and push myself each day beyond the borders of weariness. My obsessiveness with the ebbing of the weeks leaps the boundaries of exhaustion.

In the most surreal of coincidences, in my stolen moments under my precious walnut tree, each new book I choose to read is about gardens. Not just any old
jardins
, but splendid, magnificent ones. The first,
Capability's Eden
by Diana Saville, centres on a reproduction on a sweeping scale of the garden of Eden. The next,
The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills is a monumental tribute to Italianate style. And my favourite book of my French summer,
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield, also has an exquisite garden as a central motif. What all the books have in common is that the gardens are grand and elegant. I keep wondering if there is a subliminal message.

By the middle of August, the morning light is already perceptibly softer. The evenings draw to a close more rapidly. The sun sinks earlier and subsides more swiftly on the horizon beyond the fields. The
jardin
remains thoroughly
rustique.

Lunch at our
vide grenier.

Our driving force, both against the heat and time, is to now lay all the paving before we leave. Surely our soon-to-be team of
trois
, will make all the difference in the world?

As with restoring the
jardin
in previous years, by now I have a far greater degree of familiarity with the size and shape of the pavers in the six crates than Stuart does. This is because not only have I unloaded them all, but by now I have arrayed them all in rows, virtually single-handed. Since I have failed miserably at applying concrete, as with everything, we have to continue to divide our skill sets. Once again, mine remains unskilled labour.

Stuart too proves to have a better eye for their intricate layout. You could lay crazy paving a thousand times and each time the configuration would be different. In yet another piece of irony, it falls to me to pass the huge slabs to Stuart so he can mix and match them and fit them all together in our enormous, outside jigsaw puzzle. As some of them weigh about a third of my body weight, this is no mean feat.

There are literally thousands of pavers on the six pallets. After a week of laying
castine,
we have now sifted and sorted through them all, trying to find perfect sizes and shapes. Each has a completely different identity, as if each one has its own DNA. Just in time, we find the perfect ones for the sweeping entrance at the back of
la forge's
enormous wooden doors. They are the thickest and heaviest. Even more special is their imprints of
petite
fossils – leaves, ferns and perhaps even tiny creatures from the Palaeolithic era.

As well as unpacking the six huge crates, I have also used four pallets to sort and divide shapes and pieces of about the same size. I am now able to readily identify the categories that I have devised: very large, large, medium and medium-to-small. I am not entirely sure that my crazy paving sorting skills will ever come in to play in any other part of my life.

I start to feel like a trader at a horse auction. As I bring the pavers out one by one from their pallets in the barn, I call out the size, shape and pedigree of each paver, to present to Stuart for his larger-than-life jigsaw. It is not lost on me how me how my actions would appear to Martians, peering down, examining our earth-based activities.

We start laying the pavers at the back of
la grange
on a blistering August afternoon.

Our hopes though are as high as the temperature. Indeed, our expectations are well-founded. While the sides of
la piscine
are yet to be
fin,
we have reserved the best and biggest pavers for the back of the barn. As they are enormous, we are hoping it will give us a great sense of progress to see them go into place quickly. And indeed, they do look
magnifique
. The golden colour of many is a perfect match to
la grange
while the reddish hue of others complement the natural ochre pointing between the limestone blocks of stone in the barn walls. finally, the
castine
pile starts to diminish as we move more and more into place as a solid base under the pavers.

After a mere hour, we have to take a break, not simply because the sun sears us.

It becomes altogether too confusing trying to merge and marry the intricacies of each individual piece of paving. Once again, the term ‘crazy' is not lost on us. It is clear that we need to return to its intricacies later, with fresh eyes.

The job is never-ending. And this time, we don't reach our target... The job is not
fin
when we leave by any means. I greedily count the remaining weeks like beads on an abacus.

Towards the end of our stay, one day when Jean-Claude drops in, he informs us that we have been summoned to see the
Maire
. We are full of trepidation. ‘We are the slaves of administration,' Jean-Claude declares emphatically.

Our
maison
and
jardin
remain in full view of the
Mairie's
office. I urge the new plantings to hurry up and vigorously flourish. Every single thing we do can be clearly observed from the upper windows of their office and all our
rénovation
is subject to scrutiny. Our fear is that we will be subsumed by piles of perplexing paperwork and will need to get approval for our paving before it can continue. Like the mountain of
castine
, it is unlikely to simply disappear. Shades of our roof the previous year and the imperative paperwork resurface. Although work had already started on
la grange
roof, it too had seemed as if it would grind to a halt. However, through some guiding intervention, the source of which was completely unknown to us, it all smoothly unfolded and fell in to place and work was able to seamlessly proceed.

We are faced with two choices. Simply ignore the summons or, face the music.

It is not without some degree of apprehension, that Stuart nervously sets off the few short paces to the
Mairie's
office. We have hastily constructed several possible scenarios and sequence of plausible responses, depending on the outcome of his visit. All feasible responses are to be of course conducted and conveyed with the utmost compliance and courtesy. One – to plead ignorance of the bureaucratic process required; coupled with secondly, ignorance of the French required to engage in the conversation – feigned if necessary.

I await in a state of anxious anticipation of the outcome of the visit. Will work have to grind to a shuddering stop? How long will the possible paperwork take? Will it be completed before we have to leave? Will there be a
très cher
fine for contravening some unknown
rénovation
requirement? The possible outcomes – none of them good – seem to be endless.

Within just a few minutes, Stuart returns with a palpable air of relief. Yes, paperwork was indeed required – but, it was for last year's work on the roof and
la piscine
. It is now all signed and in order. Let the paving continue!

An unlikely hero has appeared to save the day, in the form of a steadfast sculptor. He arrives fully prepared; he even has tools and equipment for the job that we have quite overlooked, like a huge sponge to wipe the concrete off the paving after each piece is laid. Jean-Louis works methodically and patiently. Just like the roofers the previous year, he works for four hours straight, only downing his tools when the church bell strikes the
déjeuner
hour.

By now, drowsiness hangs in every particle of heavy summer air. At least the weight of our overwhelming workload is alleviated by the fortuitous appearance of Jean-Louis in our lives. We discover through their fragmented conversations, for Jean-Louis does not speak English, as Stuart and he work side by side, some fascinating insights into his life. To supplement his meagre income as a sculptor, both Jean-Louis and his wife work at the factory near Martel that produces Chanel perfume bottles. Perhaps that is where the intact perfume bottle came from that I unearthed one day in the garden?

It would seem that original owners of our little house were highly successful in their truffle searches, for Chanel perfume is esteemed the world over and not a find I would usually associate with the farmers who once lived in Pied de la Croix.

The more I work in
le jardin
and disturb the earth
,
the more relics from the past rise to the surface. I remember my first forays into our garden, when I was overcome by the wonder and surprise of my archaeological discoveries. Each and every one, I carefully placed aside. In just a few years, these discoveries, while still delightful, have become almost – but not quite –
passé
. Another ancient glass bottle, another twisted old spoon, another bent fork. After only three years, I no longer hoard them so scrupulously. The shards of shattered pottery, do however, make it to my cache to be kept. Somehow, they tell another story, of
dîners
long past; of a family who once long ago lived within the walls of Pied de la Croix.

My drive to bring the garden back to life, means that I start to clear the rampant growth along the stone boundary wall. My exertions allow me to rescue more
petite
oak trees that are being smothered by blackberries. Encouraged by such finds, I continue to wrench back the smothering weeds and brambles, heedless of the trailing branches of ferocious thorns that whip me in the face. I spray ferociously – secateurs in one hand, industrial spray bottle in the other. I have recently improved my process of eradication for I've taken to decimating them at their source in the dry, stony ground. My constant incantation is: ‘Chop off their heads, chop off their heads'. The lines from the old children's nursery rhyme
Oranges and Lemons
, once again reverberate in my mind:

‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
Chop chop chop chop
The last man's dead!'

I am more determined than ever to halt the progress of their grasping, greedy tentacles as they march invasively across
le jardin
. It is always a fortunate thing that my vision sustains me. If it didn't , it would be oh so easy to simply give up; for after all, as I have been told countless times, it is a
rustique jardin
.

I ‘garden' at times in the most ungraceful and unorthodox of ways. I sit in the dirt.

It is simply the only way I can summon sufficient strength to wrench out the wretched weeds. I also clamber on the high stone wall, struggle with the ivy, and throw down discarded old farm rubbish.

The Queen Anne's lace forms a floating sea of delicate white heads under the heavily laden branches of the orchard trees. The weight of the fruit now pulls the boughs down to fully meet the scorched ground. The
petite
apples are drying into brown wizened forms before my very eyes. I place cairns of rocks to mark the places for new trees, two
mûrier-platanes t
hat will grow straight and tall, to form an umbrella arch of shady leaves. One day, my walnut tree will no longer be with us and I will miss it like a much-loved friend. It is with this in mind, that I plan for future days. The black cat slinks past on her mysterious meanderings. The days draws to a close with a final flurry of swallows swooping while a last surge of gold from the setting sun infuses the evening in a soft glow.