Just Me Page 2

  In August we decamped to their villa in Fouras, which was then still a mere village near La Rochelle. In Monsieur's absence, no sooner had one lover departed than I put fresh, sweet-smelling linen on Madame's bed ready for the next to arrive. In between she would share her romantic secrets with me and stroke my face with tears in her eyes, muttering, 'Ah, la jeunesse.' She contrived a romance between myself and the student who sang with the café band. We danced under the stars to 'La Mer' and I still have a melting spot in my heart for the gentle Claude. France awakened me to the sensual pleasures of life. I have loved it ever since.

  Numerous years and visits later, I went on a painting course in Les Bassacs, a hamlet in the Luberon, the name given to the valley between and including the Luberon mountains on one side and the Plateau de Vaucluse and the Ventoux range on the other. On the first day, under the tutelage of a professional artist, I attempted to draw a little flight of steps. It was the beginning and end of my artistic aspirations. I reckoned if Cézanne had had sixty goes at capturing the unique Provençal light on nearby Mont Victoire, on the evidence of my first attempts, I was not going to get far in a week. I bear the cross of perfectionism; being a good amateur painter held no charm for me.

  So I downed my brush and basked in the sun, scenery and food. At night I guiltily joined my erstwhile fellow students around a candlelit table overlooking the pool, which in turn has a view of the valley and mountains beyond. Savouring the Provençal food and Ventoux wine, on a balmy night, listening to the cicadas was, I decided, my nirvana. I phoned John, stuck in London filming Morse, to wax boozily lyrical about the sun, the landscape, the poppies, the sunflowers, and the gracious local people. My daughter Ellie Jane was filming a Bergerac out there at the same time and also had a go at him. He reluctantly came over for the weekend. He instantly fell under the Luberon spell, which was to enchant him for what was left of his life.

  We knew at once that we wanted to spend a lot of time there but the thought of buying a house abroad seemed a bit scary and grown-up, so we enlisted the help of our new friends Liz and David Atkinson who ran the painting course. They lined up several possibles and we came over to inspect them, eventually choosing one in the commune of Saignon, in a small hameau of five houses surrounded by vineyards, lavender fields and cherry orchards. It was a little way up the Grand Luberon mountain, so cooler than the valley in summer, where the temperature can hit over forty degrees.

  The orchard below our garden was obviously neglected but our efforts to buy it were foiled by the complicated French inheritance laws. Instead we have, over the years, watched the cherry trees being strangled by ivy which every now and then John and various sons-in-law have hacked away. The whole thing is very Chekhovian. The upside of this neglect is the wealth of wild flowers to be found there, untroubled by vicious pesticides. Rare orchids, violets, primrose and most bewitching of all a carpet of sweet-smelling narcissi, which arrives to synchronise with the sunbeamed canopy of cherry blossom above.

  Alongside the house was a less pleasing fragrance, given off by a field in which a flock of ducks, geese and chickens had killed the grass with their foraging. The French are not sentimental about their animals and the fowl were not a pretty sight. I tried not to worry about their mangy, grubby appearance; they were not pets, but had to provide eggs and eventually dinner. And the smell was tolerable when the wind was in the right direction. Anyway, the stink of the village septic tank, which was also in the field, made chicken shit seem like Chanel.

  The smells we learnt to live with, the noise was more of a problem. The clattering of the cicadas is deafening. Sometimes they get into a throbbing rhythm that drives you mad. The frogs come from far and wide to the raucous orgies down by the stream. The dogs have a choral society to rival the Philharmonic. André's tenor hound usually starts the cantata, to be joined by basses and sopranos echoing all round the valley. This cacophony we could tolerate. But the cock went too far.

  The sound of a rooster greeting the dawn might be considered picturesquely rural. But not if the bird is tone-deaf. This creature was all right with the cock-a-doodle bit, but its doo was teeth-clenchingly flat. It grated on our nerves so much that we seriously considered putting the house back on the market. Then a miracle happened. One day when Caruso, as we called him, had desperately tried to hit the right note for about half an hour, I put on a tape to drown the noise. It happened to be Mozart's Requiem. Instant silence. We went out to look. He was standing on one leg, neck stretched up, ear cocked (is that where the word comes from?) in the direction of the music. He stayed in this trance-like position all the time the tape played. It somewhat limited our selection of music, as Bach and Beethoven left him cold, but Mozart did the trick every time. John believed he was the reincarnation of Salieri, trying to learn from his rival's genius, but sadly it didn't improve the cock's musical ear. He continued to sing flat till he and all the rest of the coop were slaughtered by a music-loving fox one bloody night. When I expressed my hypocritical regret to the owner, she just shrugged and said, 'C'est la campagne.'

  It was a phrase Christiane, our neighbour, who was to become a close friend, used often. Swarming bees, scorpions, hornets, vipers and mosquitoes were accepted with the same insouciance – working on the theory that they were harmless unless you annoyed them. A pretty good philosophy of life really.

  Christiane was the first person in Saignon I managed to communicate with. She originated from the Basque country, so her accent was less impenetrable than the local Provençal dialect – think Cornwall. Always plumply neat, with cropped hair, a ready smile and quick wit, she subtly kept an eye on things. It was not a good idea to cross her. One woman moved into the village and, when the Romany pickers in their caravans arrived for the cherry harvest, she complained to the mairie. Christiane was incensed that these loyal workers, known and respected by everyone, should be so insulted. The woman, not the gypsies, moved on not long after.

  Christiane liked a gossip and filled me in on all the villagers. In our first week in residence, we were alarmed to see a bearded tramp with a sack over his shoulder, carrying a gun, wandering in the orchard. At his feet were two slavering hounds. Dogs are not my favourite animals, especially in a country where rabies is endemic and there seem to be a lot of frothing strays, but Christiane laughed when I told her of my anxiety. The man was out hunting, one of two brothers who live together in the next house to ours. Gentle souls both, André and Denis have the grand surname Empereur and a big family tomb in the ornate Saignon graveyard. For years they lived in thrall to their mother, whilst they worked in the local glacé-cherry factory. Now they were on their own.

  Denis tends the allotment that provides all their fruit and vegetables. During la chasse season, André and his dogs (who the rest of the year are kept in a pen with the chickens) catch rabbit and wild boar to store for their meat supply. Although they lived next door, it was many years before these timid men would talk to us, and then I had to guess at a lot of the conversation, although John, who refused to speak French, seemed to understand them more. We have never been in their house or they in ours, but I will sometimes find beans or tomatoes on my doorstep, and I put any leftover wine or food on theirs when we leave.

  John was not completely incognito in France – some of his programmes are shown, with a wonderful guttural French voice dubbed on – but our neighbours made no mention of his fame. The only indication we had that they knew we wanted to guard our anonymity was when some reporters discovered where we lived and ventured down the track. We were away. Sensing an invasion of our and their privacy, André got his gun and saw them off. We were never troubled again. Nothing was said by the brothers or us about it, apart from a mumbled 'merci' from me next time I saw them, and a lot of shrugging and blushing from them. I was told about the incident by Christiane, not by André or Denis.

  When we first moved to Saignon, Christiane's husband Roget was the vineyard owner. Not as glamorous as it seems, because the local wine, in his own opinio
n, is pretty inferior stuff (it has to do with the soil), although he did once open a fragrant bottle that came from one secret field that was saved for family wine. Out in the sun all day, he was wizened and bent from stooping over the vines; a smiley troll. He always wore an incongruous naval peaked cap as he rode his tractor into town, laden with grapes for the commune co-operative wine collection. One of their many sons, Frédéric, was then a beautiful young man. He did all sorts of jobs for us, as well as sharing a beer with John in amicable silence. He usually picked us up at the airport in our car but one day an emergency arose and he sent Christiane and Roget instead. They trundled all the way to Marseilles in their ramshackle old jalopy, and drove us home at a sedate thirty miles an hour. Seeing sunbeaten Roget in his cap and Christiane in her best dress standing nervously in the arrivals lounge in a swirl of tourists was a touching sight. We felt so welcomed by what was, for them, a brave undertaking on our behalf.

  Frédéric disappeared from our lives when he married an older woman. Apparently she has cramped his style somewhat, much to the dismay of the local lasses and my daughters and, I have to admit, myself. I miss the sight of his glistening bare torso rippling in the sun as he chopped the firewood. 'Yes all right, calm down, dear,' as John would sigh.

  We were not the only people that spoke English in the hameau. Judith is one of those pioneering American women who feel drawn to Europe. She left her native land to come on her own, to a part of the world where she knew no one, and set up home there. I think she was relieved when I came on the scene and her brain could have a rest from speaking French.

  We were both doing up our houses at the same time. Ours was in a dilapidated state, with no bathroom or kitchen. We had a lot of barbecues. Studying scripts gave John the perfect excuse to absent himself from dealing with French bureaucracy, and shopping for furniture in the searing midsummer heat, so I was grateful for Judith's assistance with crafty maçons, uncooperative France Telecom and dodgy electricians. We shared a phlegmatic plumber called Monsieur Montegard. He was baffled by our need to see numerous toilets and test their seats before choosing one. He took us to a huge warehouse and was visibly mortified when we got in and out of the baths to assess their comfort level. I saw him mouthing 'anglaise' to his fellow plumbers and his explanation seemed to satisfy them.

  The French do like the English. Despite our football hooligans wrecking Marseilles. But it took several years before we were really accepted in the hameau. We didn't make a good start. Things have to take their time, like the seasons, but we were eager to make friends. So, in what, in retrospect, was a presumptuous gesture, we invited everyone in for drinks. A little research would have revealed that the whole concept was alien to them. The women didn't drink at all, and the men, apart from André, only with meals. Our elegant titbits were eyed with suspicion, and then totally spurned. The men did not utter a word to us but eventually made the best of a bad job and rabbited away amongst themselves. The women were just embarrassed, refusing to sit down or say much apart from 'non' and 'oui'.

  The next day Christiane assured me that, despite their reticence, everyone was glad when we arrived, because we were not German or, even worse, Parisian. Their attitude to Germans was understandable. The wartime history of the area is somewhat ambivalent, and people are reluctant to discuss it, but there are some clues. In St Saturnin d'Apt there is a wall with bullet holes preserved to commemorate the occasion when the eldest son from every family was shot as a reprisal for a Resistance sabotage. You have to be French to understand their dislike of Parisians.

  There is not much in the way of entertainment – the telly is awful – so friendship is important, if not given easily. We learnt to know our place and bide our time. John and I would listen to them, sitting in the sun, talking, talking non-stop. They had known one another all their lives, and do not have a drink to oil their tongues, yet the talk is as passionate as I remembered from my au-pair days. Especially over a game of boules.

  At weekends, families visit and boules is played on the bumpy patch of ground that serves as a pitch: bodies contort as they follow a shot; emotional mumbled approval of a good move and the howls of despair at a bad one ring out. We would watch from a distance. Then John's father made a big breakthrough. He stood by the game, arms behind his back, watching intensely, nodding and shaking his head silently. Maybe it was his Lancashire cloth cap, similar to those worn by the old men of the village, but they invited him to join them. He played bowls in Stockport, so had a strong arm. For one radiant afternoon he had the time of his life. No one spoke the other's language but for two happy hours they gestured and grunted and laughed uproariously with each other.

  Granddad took to France like a canard to l'eau. Strange for a man who was deeply suspicious of Abroad. Usually any variation from chip butties or pie and chips was greeted with 'aw no, not for me', yet in France he would try anything: crème brûlée and goat's cheese were downed with delight. He seemed to shake off all his English inhibitions and embraced the 'froggie' lifestyle. As did John.

  John loathed public scrutiny, so that in England he was virtually a recluse. In France he was free to be himself, rather than some image based on the characters he played on television. This self was someone who liked the simple things of life. There, he could wander the lanes, and sit in cafés unaccosted. He could even join the crowds in a market without causing a commotion.

  We were partial to a nice market and there are dozens of them in the Luberon. The biggest is on a Saturday morning in Apt, when the whole town is taken over with stalls. Just to walk amongst the sights and smells of fruit, goat's cheese, herbs, flowers, lavender, local wine and honey, and the spices in the Arab section, is an uplifting feast of the senses. In French markets you see proper shopping. Women with newly coiffed hair, arguing with the stallholders, sniffing, squeezing, prodding the produce. The Gallic shrug is much in evidence, as is companionable laughter when the deal is struck. Our shopping always ended in our favourite pâtisserie, where the girls would giggle when Monsieur Um Er arrived, so called because of John's solemn dithering whilst he chose his daily teatime gâteau.

  We relished eating out without being stared at, although there are not that many grand restaurants in the Luberon. However, everything stops for lunch. Apt closes completely between twelve and three and everyone rushes home or to a café to eat. On one occasion we were lunching in the Café de la Gare in Bonnieux when a helicopter landed in the garden. Out stepped some electricity workers, who ate their three-course lunch with wine before setting off again to repair a fallen cable in the mountains. No wonder power cuts are accepted as the norm. Let's get our priorities right here. Lunch or lights? No competition.

  What gave us most pleasure was being at home together. Without the pressure of work or our hectic city lives, we valued domesticity. The house, even after the building work, was unsophisticated. We shunned central heating, although winters can be cold. The ritual of lighting the stove was more fun than clicking a switch. The Man of the House allowed me to twist newspaper into complicated faggots, under his expert direction. He raked out the ashes and put them on our spindly rosebush, which didn't seem to like them very much. Then he would collect twigs for kindling from the cherry orchard, to go on top of the paper, carefully grading them upwards from small to large. Lots of manipulating of dampers and frantic blowing followed, whilst one by one he added the logs. His pleasure at the resulting fire was more than for any BAFTA award. If it didn't take, it was, of course, the fault of my faggots.

  Our new kitchen was pretty basic. Except for the oven. He read somewhere that all the top chefs had a Lacanche. They cost the earth, but aiming slightly au-dessus de sa gare, he wanted one too. It is a monstrous iron thing that for some chichi reason doesn't have automatic lighting, so you have to fiddle around with matches, which, of course, you can never find. The oven takes ages to warm up and makes loud clicking noises as it does so. He defensively swore it cooked beautifully. Especially his signature dish. This was Elizab
eth David's coq au vin, involving complicated operations with the giblets you'd do well to find in a British supermarket and a spectacular moment of flambéing the chicken in brandy.

  I insisted on a dishwasher but he ignored it, preferring to demonstrate his washing-up skills. He even brought his own Brillo pads from London because he deemed the French version inferior. He was triumphant when, after searching the bric-à-brac stalls, he came home with a sink tidy. These were common when we were kids for collecting tea-leaves and potato peelings, before the dawn of waste disposers. He spent many a happy hour scouring pans and polishing glasses with his special linen tea towel.

  I, in my turn, revelled in washing the heavy, antique sheets we used instead of duvets in the summer heat. The two of us pegging them on the line, to dry in the lavender-perfumed air, was marital bliss.

  Our children were desperate for us to install a swimming-pool, but that would alter the whole nature of the house. It would become a poncey villa. Besides, we enjoyed our visits to the local piscine. An old-fashioned lido, it has three pools: for babies, youngsters and grown-ups. The changing cubicles are stalls with a wooden bench and tiled floor. You hand your clothes in on a heavy, steel, hanger contraption and are given a rubber wristband in exchange. Boxer shorts are forbidden, strangely, for the lads' skimpy trunks are much ruder. The water is crystal-clear and unheated except by the sun. The lifeguards are strict but friendly. No anti-social behaviour is allowed and the children are polite and solicitous of those younger than themselves and old codgers like me. There is a café on a gallery for spectators, where John would sit with a coffee and croissant, reading his paper.