Easter the following year was early and cold but there was no snow. We spent many hours collecting firewood, there being, alas, no floorboards left to burn. Now we understood the neat woodstacks adjoining local houses. Fortunately Matthew and Durrell enjoyed dragging dead trees from the wood and sawing them up. They whittled sticks to make individual, decorated toasting forks. These normally centrally-heated youths were endlessly fascinated by the great open fire.
The house was full of vases of wild daffodils and Grandma had planted the yellow washing-up bowls with great purple pansies. We cleared the straggly hazel hedge which obscured our view up the meadow from the front door and I began to dream about a terrace on the opposite, south-facing side of the house. This became my special project but, due to sheer incompetence, it took me several years to finish. The preliminary clearing of the ground was made difficult by stubborn lengths of old chicken wire embedded in the soil. It seemed probable that this was where Anaïs’s poultry had once scratched and squawked and each time I thought that I had removed the last tenacious piece, another buried end taunted me. The clean sweet air and the view which greeted me each time I straightened up kept me going.
The debate continued about where to put the kitchen. Now that the other two bedrooms were habitable, should we make use of the small, low-ceilinged room which adjoined the main room? We might, perhaps, knock through a hatch, or even remove the upper half of the wall completely. We simply could not decide and eventually we did nothing. Just inside the front door where, after scraping the green lichen from the wall to paint it, we had first installed the cooker, became the kitchen’s permanent place. The ever-open door provided an extractor and all we needed now was a worktop and a sink.
We consulted M. Albert the plumber. Yes, it was possible. The long runaway out to the septic tank which we had thought might be a problem did not seem to bother him. As he pointed out, the floor of the corridor was still earth. We chose a large, plain white china sink and M. Albert recommended a carpenter to build us a pine surround. A kitchen corner began to take shape. I felt that in a holiday home where all were encouraged to help, a separate kitchen was not a good idea and I had noticed that most of the simple local homes into which we had been invited were so arranged.
M. Brut, the local menuisier or carpenter was clearly impressed by Mike’s rough designs for two wall cupboards and a worktop. ‘Pardi!’ he exclaimed, switching off his saw and brushing the mountain of wood-shavings off his desk to clear a space. Pardi, an archaic corruption of Par Dieu – By God – is one of M. Brut’s favourite expressions. He also undertook to replace those of our shutters which were beyond repair and when we returned that summer we were delighted to find all the work completed.
What joy to wash up under hot running water! One of the bonuses of having lived so primitively in the beginning was the enormous pleasure at each improvement. The pine cupboards and surround were, like M. Brut himself, handsome and solid, the long ornamental hinges were very French and, most important of all, the cupboards were totally mouse-proof. Et voilà, a kitchen corner. In fact most of the preparation of food is done out-of-doors, sitting on the porch or in the sun. The only thing we had not bargained for was M. Albert’s unfortunate positioning of the water heater. With about eighteen feet of wall to choose from he had fixed it right beside the original hand-hewn granite sink that we had uncovered. Its handsome edging stones were now partially obscured by a modern multipoint that would clearly at some time have to be re-sited, but I consoled myself with hot soap suds.
As it was now not needed for a kitchen we thought again about the small, low-ceilinged room which faced south. One hot morning after breakfast we stood looking up at the badly worm-eaten false ceiling of tongued and grooved pine. Were the worms still active? Was it worth treating? We wandered out into the wide earth corridor behind it and looked up. There, at least two feet higher, were the original oak boards and massive beams which must surely run across above the worm-eaten pine. We looked at each other and, as with most jobs that we have done ourselves at Bel-Air, the decision was mutual and, once voiced, instantly begun.
Down came the dusty slats. Leaves, cobwebs, mouse and bat droppings filled our hair and eyes but, as we had hoped, we uncovered the original boards and beams. Gleefully we worked all morning, carrying out the worm-eaten slats to form a welcome stack of firewood. The plaster on the exterior wall of the room was loose and crumbled away as we brushed against it. We realised that it was simply a crude earth mixture that would have to come down at some time and we were in a demolition mood. We had a ten minute break for food (how un-French!) and then began, gently at first, to knock away the earth.
What excitement! The floor was soon covered with dry clods and through the choking dust we could see the wonderful stones emerging. They were far too handsome to be plastered. We could have them cleaned and leave this wall in pierres apparentes as it is called. The joins between the stones we would fill with a light-coloured cement and leave the stones proud. Once begun it was compulsive. All afternoon we worked, dragging the rickety ladder from the barn to supplement our small stepladder. There were far more urgent tasks waiting but we did not care. When the wall was almost finished we heard Raymond chugging up the track. He switched off the engine and wiping the sweat from his eyes climbed down from the tractor. ‘Viens, viens!’ we shouted. His face made me laugh aloud. His mouth dropped open as he gazed alternately up at the ceiling and down to the chaos on the floor.
‘Mais…qu’est-ce que vous faites?’ he cried, his dark eyes round as marbles. It was plain that he considered us quite mad but did not like to say as much.
By now we had seen that the pattern of the stones continued on the other side of the newer, thin wall which divided this room from the bottom of the staircase, and would extend to the original window with the iron-studded door above it. We explained that we thought of moving the interior wall back to include this window with its hand-cut stone opening and transom. Raymond nodded gravely. ‘Oui, la fenêtre est jolie. Elle est tellement ancienne.’ He looked suddenly relieved. Perhaps these English were not entirely crazy.
Needing something with which to clear the floor I looked up the word for wheelbarrow. I followed him to the barn where he unearthed for me the oldest wooden barrow I’d ever seen. He smiled as I tugged at the handles. ‘C’etait avec celle-là que Anaïs faisait ses commissions au village’, he said. It takes me fifteen minutes at least to walk to the village shop and it is downhill all the way. I imagined having to pull this barrow, loaded with shopping, back up the bumpy track and I was once more humbled by the hard life of my predecessor. I longed to know more about her.
I felt her presence strongly, there were so many of her things still in the house. In the drawer of the sideboard which she had polished I found her rusted needles in a wooden case, dusty spools of thread, worn wooden spindles and dozens of rolled up strips of material torn from shirt tails. The boys, imagining they might contain treasures, unrolled a few but they were simply scraps for patching, a sign of her poverty and thrift.
As she had promised, Grandma had brought me the photograph. Anaïs must have been in her early thirties when it was taken. A strong, handsome woman in a dark dress and white cap she stands protectively behind a sturdy boy of about twelve years, who is holding a hoop. Was this taken before he caught polio or was it just a thoughtlessly cruel photographer’s prop? They look confidently enough into the camera, unaware of the tragedies to befall them; a sad contrast with Raymond’s description of the last days of a frail and bed-ridden, ninety-two-year-old Anaïs and her semi-paralysed, reclusive and elderly son. I had the photograph copied and now they hang beside the sideboard where I feel they belong. After all, Anaïs lived at Bel-Air for over fifty years.
As I now turned on my tap for unlimited hot water I thought about the tiny water compartment in Anaïs’s stove that we had removed. I imagined her chopping the sticks to light it, as my own Mother had done on those far off Monday wash-days of my childhood. (I remembered too the mad scrambles to unpeg everything when the first shout of ‘raining’ was heard across the back gardens.) Here the washing dries so quickly. I stretched a line from Raymond’s barn to the ash tree and nothing smells sweeter than clothes dried in a hot sun and a strong wind blowing across flower-filled meadows.
Of course, it does rain here. On such a day when I had been finally driven from the garden by heavy squalls at twenty minute intervals, I remembered Anaïs’s battered cardboard hat box which we had found in the attic. It seemed a good moment to take a closer look at the contents. My French was improving for I had found a course at Morley College and had gone right back to the beginning with a very young and equally fierce Mme Rousseau whose teaching methods were, to me, a revelation. Simple but amusing texts, the dramatising of scenes transposed from one tense to another, extracts from current magazines and newspapers, poems by Prévert and songs by Brassens, and the severity with which she corrected us in the language laboratory kept me enthralled. It is due to her hard work and the later inspiration of Madeleine Enright and Georgette Butler, also at Morley, that I have at last progressed to the joys of Flaubert and Victor Hugo, Molière and Anouilh. But I still make idiotic mistakes and would dearly love to be truly bilingual.
Almost the first thing I opened, after I had dusted everything in the box and shaken out the mouse droppings and dehydrated spiders, was Anaïs’s school reader. A ‘new’ edition of La Petite Jeanne published in 1876 with her maiden name ‘Anaïs Mauriac’ laboriously written inside. Although tattered it had not actually been chewed by mice as had so many of the letters beneath it. Blessed and approved by no less than a cardinal, an archbishop and three bishops it is, as one might expect, the most moral of tales and yet has a simplicity that reminded me of Flaubert’s Un Coeur Simple. It is Jeanne’s story from early childhood to the grave and the four sections into which it is divided, childhood, in service, wife and mother, and widowhood, prophetically chart the life of Anaïs herself and, I imagine a great many other girls of that time.
It is illustrated with charming engravings, and Anaïs had clearly read and re-read it, absorbing its moral and practical precepts. She had glued a strip of flannelette down the spine to hold the fragile, muchfingered pages together. As I began to read I was amazed by the scores of household hints woven into the story and the tips on animal husbandry and crop rotation. There is a passage describing the astonishment of the village women at the way Jeanne looks after her children; ‘Comme s’ils étaient les enfants de bourgeois!’ Because they are peasants should they be dirty? is her reply, explaining that each night she folds their clothes before laying them in a chest and at mealtimes ties a napkin round their necks. Growing flax she spins cloth which, in hard times, keeps her out of debt. On the last page of the wife and mother section, are the words with which the Curé tries to comfort Jeanne on the sudden death of her husband. ‘Ma fille, comme c’est la volonté de Dieu que vous soyez séparés, il faut bien s’y soumettre.’ There was something written in the margin in faint pencil and I moved to the window to try to decipher it. I felt her presence very close at that moment as I read what Anaïs, a widow at fortyseven, had written in her school reader which had clearly served her for so many years. ‘Mort de Justin’ was the simple statement.
The following week M. René, the maçon, came up to advise us on enlarging the small room with its bare stone wall and newly exposed beams. Yes, it was certainly possible to move the modern, interior wall, in fact he would recommend it as it was none too stable. He became quite excited at the thought of including the ancient window and suggested that we might also move the other wall back some three feet into the corridor, thus making a splendid main bedroom. The narrow space remaining beyond the window was now taken up solely by the crumbling staircase which would, in any case, need replacing. But did we really need a staircase? With three large bedrooms on the ground floor and the possibility, at some stage, of converting the chai, the attic would seem to be of more use as storage space. In that case a loft ladder would do and the staircase area could be used for a bathroom.
A bathroom. What a wonderful thought. The pleasures of a long, hot soak after hours of back-breaking work came nearer when we discussed our plans with M. Albert. He also suggested that while he and M. René were at it, they might build an indoor lavatory in the space at the far end of the corridor. Two lavatories. Heaven. But we still prefer the one with the view, as does our first friend to arrive that summer, the poet, Anthony Saville White. A firm friend since student days, king of puns, word-spinner and enthusiast, he was moved to write a series of verses while gazing, seated, admiring the sweep of meadow up to the woods beyond.
This, his first visit, was made on a giant motorbike. He picked the only wet night that summer and sodden and exhausted, having ridden all the way from Northumberland, could not find our track in the dark. About midnight, utterly lost, he finally arrived chez Bertrand and gallant Raymond got out of bed to bring him up to us. Since that first visit he has returned in a variety of ways; by car with his family, and once, unexpectedly, by air, as the only non-devout passenger on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. That night, since we were out, he rolled himself in a blanket to doze in a deck chair on the porch from which, on our return, he rose spectre-like in the moonlight, declaiming something or other – I forget what. On another occasion, in a Herculean effort, with Nancy his indefatigable wife, he came by bicycle. We now await his arrival by balloon.
This first visit, after his wet arrival, coincided with a spell of spectacular weather. The sun shone all day, every day, in a cloudless heaven but we were refreshed by a gentle breeze from the North. ‘Le grand beau temps est arrivé,’ pronounced Grandpa when he trudged up, staff in hand, to check the fences. Day after day it continued and how we revelled in it. The air was heavy with the drone of insects, butterflies with pleated wings flitted through the poppies and blue chicory that lined the track, and lizards, immobile but for the pulse under their throat, lay on the hot stones. There was a great sense of peace and completeness.
Mike, who tans in ten minutes’ sun and was dubbed by Tony ‘old teak face’, sat drawing the field of maize. It whispered and crackled in the heat shimmer and grew so fast that eventually Mike had to sit on the top of the stepladder to finish the drawing. Matthew asked if he might pick some sweetcorn to eat. Raymond looked horrified. ‘Bien sûr,’ he cried, ‘mais, c’est pour les bêtes!’ We did cook some and it was quite good but we could never persuade Raymond to try it. As far as he was concerned it was on a par with another English abomination, mint sauce.
This holiday we had brought with us a large leg of English lamb. We knew that it would be a treat for les Bertrand, being firstly an animal that they did not rear and secondly, at that time, more than twice as expensive in France. We planned to invite the whole family for Sunday lunch to give Claudette a free day and to return just a little of their incredible hospitality. With my limited kitchen facilities I planned a menu, aware of the need for quantity, as well as tastes, to intrigue them.
It was – and still is – a marathon, making Sunday lunch pour toute la famille. Soup, even on the hottest day, was de rigueur. The fields being awash with huge sun ripened tomatoes, tomato soup seemed an obvious choice and happily turned out to be Grandpa’s favourite. As on the first occasion when they ate with us they all begged the merest taste of each dish before, reassured, returning for a second helping. To follow the soup I had simply whisked a large tin of red salmon with half a pound of melted butter, black pepper and the juice of two lemons, decorating it with cucumber and parsley, to be eaten with thin slices of pain complet. Raymond had never tasted wholemeal bread before and was not impressed but Grandpa, reminded of his days in Germany as a prisoner of war, enjoyed it and gave us lurid accounts of the bread he ate then. The salmon was declared extra, Grandma’s highest praise.
All the morning I had hovered over the gigot in my crazy oven. To date no one can explain to me the reasons for the different methods of heating in French and English gas cookers. I have peered into gas cookers, from the earliest ones at the new Gas Museum at Bromley by Bow, where I learned that the first experiments in cooking by gas were made by a Paris-trained chef in 1809, to the latest models in French hypermarkets, and the difference between them never varies. The gas jets are differently positioned and this results in the floor of the oven being cool in an English cooker. Not so in a French one. In my French cooker the gas jets are in the form of a ring similar to those on the top, but under the oven floor. They are lit through a small hole and the flames fan out sideways to make the floor of the oven extremely hot. There are two slender slots on each side of the oven floor presumably to allow the heat to rise, but I have found that a great deal of it seems to prefer to stay where it is. Hence the problem. It is clear to me that this is the reason that the French make superb, open tarts with crisp, firm bases and we make equally good, but different, pies with covered, golden-brown tops, but whether the tarts are the reason for the different ovens or vice versa, I have still to discover.
While the gigot was anxiously watched, removed, repositioned and re-basted, I also attempted an approximation of roast potatoes, the local variety being so waxy and flavoursome. At the top of the oven they refused even to change colour. Exasperated I tipped them onto a foil covered baking sheet and put them at the very bottom. Oven-sautéed rather than roast potatoes were the result but constant turning made them brown rather than burn and they were a novelty to les Bertrand and eaten with relish. Three vegetables were eaten with the rôti: I had braised in butter tiny carrots and navets, a completely new idea – as was the mint sauce which Mike had made. Claudette, always more adventurous than the rest of the family, tried the sauce and quite liked it but Raymond would have none of it. The gigot however had clearly been a treat and we were pleased.
Salad, cheese and a passion fruit sorbet from the local supermarket was finally followed, for a joke really, by mince pies. We explained that normally they were only served at Christmas. ‘What a shame! Only once a year,’ murmured Raymond, as he reached for yet another one.
It was a happy lunch. Indoors it was cool, our metre thick walls protecting us from the blazing mid-afternoon sun which covered le grand champ in dancing heat haze. Grandpa taught us to say fai calou – it is hot, in patois. ‘Fai calou!’ he roared, the children copying him and giggling. Both grandparents are fluent in Occitan, the langue d’Oc, the ancient language of the Troubadours and the whole of southern France. When they talk to one another they use it most of the time. Raymond and Claudette understand but rarely use it, and the children are not really interested although there is, as with many old languages under threat, a revival of interest. Classes are held in the summer and there is a serious study of Occitan at Toulouse University – an event little dreamed of by the southern children of sixty years ago who, during their first weeks at school, were beaten for being unable to speak French.
Occitan is much more like Spanish or Italian and though the younger generation do not use it, their famous accent du Sud Ouest shows its influence as they invariably pronounce the final syllable as in Italian. Raymond told us the story of the Gascon, newly conscripted and stationed in the North. The expression on his face as he told it made it clear that it might as well have been the North Pole as anywhere north of the Loire. This Gascon is invited by a fellow soldier to visit la mer for the weekend. Accordingly, with keen anticipation, he packs his swimming trunks and towel only to find that his new friend has merely taken him home to meet his mother. Bitterly disappointed he cries, ‘Mais – tu n’as pas dit LA MER-RE. Tu m’as dit LA MER!’
Raymond told us about local customs. One in particular seemed to be concerned with newly-weds. It appeared that after the ceremony and wedding breakfast they did not disappear on their honeymoon but spent the first night nearby at a neighbour’s house. ‘Then,’ explained Raymond, his eyes shining, ‘Everyone must go round to find which house and then, in the middle of the night, they return to surprise them.’ This seemed rather unsporting to me but it did not end there. The visitors take with them food and wine – after all it is a French custom – and also a huge pot of a soup called le tourin from which the whole affair takes its name, to faire le tourin, and the hapless couple have no alternative but to get up and begin the festivities all over again. ‘Does this happen at every marriage round here?’ I asked incredulously.
Raymond shook his head. ‘Ca dépend des gens. Ce n’est pas toujours pour un mariage,’ he grinned. ‘Ca pourrait arriver ici.’
Towards the end of the following week when Tony was reluctantly considering the long journey back to the north of England, the temperature climbed every day until a canicule or heatwave was officially declared. The thermometer on our north-facing porch reached 93° that afternoon, and by midnight it had barely fallen. Crickets whirred in the hot still air and the moon was brilliant. We talked, as old friends do, and drank deeply while watching for satellites to pass in the vast, magical heavens. In a mad moment we decided on a moonlit stroll up past the pond to the brow of the hill. Laughing at some absurdity of Tony’s we lurched somewhat unsteadily along and were rather surprised when Matthew suggested that we were much too drunk to continue and ought to be in bed. ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ we thought, unaccustomed to such solicitude from our younger son. We should have known better.
About an hour later, deeply asleep and naked but for a sheet, which, I realised later as Raymond retold the story, barely covered either of us, we were awakened. Stupefied, we heard voices and footsteps close by and forcing open our heavy eyelids we saw what appeared to be half the village. Led by Raymond they laughed, sang and capered about our bedroom like characters in a painting by Brueghel. Coming from the kitchen were smells of food and the clink of bottles. Dear God! It was the dreaded Tourin. What were we supposed to do now?
We stumbled out of bed as onto a film set in action in which we had not the slightest idea of the script. Everyone else, it was clear, was thoroughly rehearsed and Raymond was the director. Clutching our flimsy dressing-gowns we were led from the bedroom. In a dazed dream I recognised the Mayor backing through my front door with a wooden bench covered in a tartan rug. I tottered to a seat as Simone, the mason’s wife, began to unwrap a great dish of hot sausages. The tureen of soup was steaming on the table and a giggling Claudette scurried up and down laying cutlery and glasses, followed by a small dark woman with tight curls who turned out to be the Mayor’s wife, setting the plates. Sitting in the chimney corner, could it be? Yes. It was the schoolmaster, his baby son on his knee. His wife was taking sponge cakes out of a basket, as if it were four o’clock in the afternoon. In staggered M. René and the insurance man with a carton of wine while people I hardly recognised ran back and forth with folding chairs and yet more bottles. As the whole scene rolled with a gleeful precision Grandpa sat himself formally at the head of the table, his watery old blue eyes alight with mischief.
A cheer greeted a befuddled Tony as he emerged from the other bedroom led by a triumphant Philippe and Matthew who had known all along. My tolerance to alcohol is low and I had already drunk far more than usual before going to bed but there was no way that night that more could be refused. The next few hours remain a boozy haze. I remember the soup, hot and full of garlic and bread with cheese melted on the top. It was wonderfully recuperative which was just as well for it was to be a long night. Even if one had started sober there was a routine to ensure that one did not remain so, especially the women who were, on the whole, very abstemious. An ancient drinking song, which may well be a medieval corruption of the Latin Mass, began the proceedings. They started on me.
‘Ami Rus. Ami Rus,’ they chanted.
‘Bois dans ton verre et surtout ne le renverse pas.
Et porte le au frontibus, au nezibus, au mentibus
à l’aquarium, au sexibus. Et glou et glou et glou et glou…
Then followed a great cheer as the glass was drained.
‘Elle est des nôtres. Elle a bu son verre comme les autres
C’est une ivrogne. Ça se voit rien qu’à sa tronche.’
‘Friend Ruth friend Ruth.
Raise your glass and above all don’t tip it over.
And with it salute your forehead, your nose, your chin,
Your belly and your sex, and drink and drink and drink…
She’s now one of us. She’s drained her glass like the rest.
She’s a drunkard. It’s obvious if you look at her face!’
No one escaped, the wine flowed as everyone drank the toast. When it was Véronique’s turn, the only virgin, the word sexibus was delicately omitted.
After the toast everyone sang, the Mayor, the schoolmaster and Grandpa who made his grandchildren laugh as he roared out old songs from the war without any recognizable tune. In a low, sweet voice Grandma sang an old ballad, Le temps des Cerises – cherrytime, which she has since taught me. Raymond kept yelling ‘Chantez Rus, chantez.’ I have no idea what I sang. My entire repertoire three times round I should imagine. Mike is not a great one for singing. He seemed to spend most of the time hanging on to the sideboard with one arm and holding me up with the other. I do not remember going to bed for the second time that night. Next morning, about midday, when we finally emerged with extreme care, there were forty-seven empty bottles on the table to explain why we felt so fragile.
Once again the holiday was almost over and we began the last minute organising of work that would, we hoped, be completed during the winter. We had decided to have the floor of the main room tiled in terracotta and the tiler agreed to come, although he lived some distance away, so that he could eat with his sister at midday. What a very French arrangement.
Later that week we paid a last quick visit to M. Albert the plumber, to pay some bills and to make the final plans for the bathroom. It was a glorious evening and we found him and his wife in their garden admiring their vines which grew as a pergola and were heavy with bunches of purple grapes. We told him of our midnight visitors of the week before and asked if such a thing happened in his village. He chuckled, ‘Mais bien sûr.’ He looked at us as though sad at our ignorance. ‘Quand il y a du soleil,’ he said, ‘il y a de la joie!’ When there is sunshine there is joy.