Reluctantly, I tore myself away from the hot pink flowers and followed Dave and Victor up a rickety staircase to an enormous attic. It had stone walls, wooden beams and two windows with a fantastic view over the village and surrounding fields. Dave gasped. ‘Just think what you could do with this. You’ve got another three bedrooms here, if you wanted.’
I imagined the grey stone walls painted white, the grey beams sanded back and tinted chestnut brown and the attic converted into an enormous study.
‘So the house costs how much?’ I asked Victor. He handed me a piece of paper with the details: €49,000. I thought I had misread it at first, but no, that really was the price.
‘Christ,’ said Dave, looking over my shoulder. ‘Where in the UK can you find a house for thirty-five thousand pounds?’
‘The price might seem a little high,’ said Victor, misinterpreting the look of amazement on my face. ‘But I am certain I can get the owners to reduce it.’
‘Possi-bili-tay doon reduction?’ asked Dave.
Victor nodded. ‘Pas de problème.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Dave. ‘You’ve lucked out there. I’d jump at it if I were you.’
I didn’t need to be convinced. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to borrow the money, but it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made. ‘Yes,’ I said, turning to Victor. ‘I want it.’ We agreed that I would return that afternoon with my passport, so that he could prepare the preliminary documents. And as we walked back up to the square in the hot sunshine, I even thought of a name for it. For some reason ‘coquelicot’ sprang to mind. It sounded like ‘coquette’, had a nice ring to it and suggested bright colour. And so, even though there were only weeds growing in the stone flowerbed for the moment, I named the house Maison Coquelicot – or ‘house of the wild poppy’.
Chapter 3
Miranda
Later that afternoon, Dave, Gerry and I walked across the square to Victor’s office. The village was now completely deserted: no old men in flat caps playing boules and not a single soul sitting under the parasols outside the Café du Commerce. Everyone, it seemed, was sheltering from the potent Poitevin sun behind closed shutters. But Victor was waiting for us, with the paperwork ready. I signed the compromis de vente, which meant that, just a couple of hours after seeing the house for the first time, I had committed to the purchase. Then Victor lent us the keys and we went back over to Maison Coquelicot. Gerry’s reaction was very gratifying, especially when I showed him the attic.
‘I can see why you have jumped at this,’ he said. ‘This space is amazing. You could have a huge office up here with views of the church and the surrounding countryside.’
‘Exactly what I thought,’ I said, secretly imagining Gerry installed there with his laptop, gazing out over the rooftops at the green and golden fields. And what a great story it would make: how, thanks to one errant email, we met randomly one languid summer evening in France, fell in love and decided to stay.
‘I’ll certainly be back to visit,’ said Gerry.
‘I hope so,’ I said, trying to sound like it would be no big deal.
We returned the keys to Victor, who promised that he would phone as soon as he heard back from the owner. I would have been happy to pay the full asking price – the house would still have been a bargain – but Victor seemed confident that he could secure it for less.
‘He didn’t bloody well suggest that to me when I bought my house,’ grumbled Dave as we left, having invited Victor over for dinner that evening.
As the aperitif hour approached, Gerry and I sat at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes, while Dave searched in his cupboards for his fish steamer.
‘Do you think one of you could lay the table?’ said Dave. ‘There are some napkins in the bottom drawer there.’
‘Consider it done,’ said Gerry jumping up from the table with mock enthusiasm.
‘I’ll help,’ I said, following him into the dining room.
‘How do you think he would like the napkins folded?’ asked Gerry.
‘I don’t know. I’d just sort of put them flat on the table, if I were you.’
‘What? Not folded into fancy shapes or anything? Dave’s probably got a special napkin-folding device stashed away in one of his cupboards.’
‘Shall I check?’ I said, laughing. It was certainly true that Dave had a gadget for every culinary eventuality. ‘Or shall we just use our initiative?’
‘OK, but you take the rap if we get it wrong,’ he said.
Side by side we finished laying out Dave’s best silver and crystal wine glasses.
‘Your knives aren’t straight,’ said Gerry. ‘And I’m not impressed by your napkin folding.’
‘Oh really?’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve spaced the water glasses evenly.’
Gerry narrowed his eyes in faux scrutiny and then flashed a disarming smile, causing my heart to perform a pole vault of excitement. We headed back to the kitchen for a drink. Dave, looking a little pink in the cheeks, stood near the hob, scrutinising a recipe book displayed in a special plastic recipe book holder.
‘What do you think I should do with the green beans?’ he asked.
‘What do you normally do with them?’ replied Gerry, opening a bottle of Bordeaux.
‘Boiling them in water is always good,’ I suggested.
‘Unless you’ve got a special green bean steamer?’ volunteered Gerry.
‘What?’ asked Dave, looking mystified.
‘How about just lightly boiling them and sprinkling a little chopped garlic on top?’ I suggested.
‘Good idea!’ said Dave. ‘In fact, I think I’ve got an electric garlic press somewhere.’
Gerry winked at me and I smiled back at him as Dave started to rummage around in the cupboards again. As he did so, I spotted a box containing a ‘stainless steel egg pricker’ and a brand new crème brulée kit complete with blowtorch, and had to stop myself from laughing. It was as if Dave had equipped himself with all these gadgets ready to embark on a bachelor’s life.
Through the kitchen windows we could see villagers emerging for an early evening stroll, having hidden away from the boiling sun all afternoon. The sun was still shining brightly and every now and again the scent of jasmine would drift in through the window. Occasionally, one of Dave’s neighbours would stick their head through the open window to say a cheery ‘Ça va?’ or wish him ‘Bonne soirée’. I knew without a doubt that I was doing the right thing in buying Maison Coquelicot. I, too, wanted a slice of life in this little village and, with Dave two minutes away on the other side of the church, I had a guest pass to an instant social life.
It turned out that Dave had also invited an English friend, Miranda, to dinner. ‘I think you’ll like her,’ he said. ‘She’s been living out here for about ten years and she’s hilarious.’
‘How do you know her?’ I asked.
‘She’s helped me out a lot with translation. I met her in the estate agent’s office when she was doing some translating for Victor.’
I heard Miranda before I saw her. A voice as melodic as wind chimes shouted ‘Coucou! Anyone at home?’ and then a small, delicately boned woman in her early fifties appeared, clutching a bottle of wine. She had dark, bobbed hair, twinkling eyes and was wearing sequins and high heels – in the French countryside! I liked the look of her immediately. Here was a woman who wasn’t going to sacrifice glamour for la vie rurale.
‘My darling boy,’ she cried, planting two rosily glossed lips on Dave’s cheeks. ‘It’s been too, too long.’ She did the same to Gerry, saying ‘Gosh, isn’t he handsome! Where did you find him?’ And then she turned her attention to me, brushing her lips against my cheeks. As she moved, I detected a hint of something heady and expensive, which I recognised as Guerlain’s Shalimar.
‘I’d love a Scotch please. No ice,’ she said, though Dave
had not yet asked. ‘So,’ she said to me, ‘I hear you bought a house this morning. Will you live out here?’
‘I hope so.’
‘And where is it?’
‘Here. In Villiers.’
‘Darling girl, that means we’re going to be almost neighbours! I live in the next village. How marvellous. I’m thrilled skinny for you! Here’s to us being almost-neighbours.’ She raised the tumbler of whisky that Dave had just handed her. ‘So,’ she said, turning to him. ‘How was Victor?’
‘Fine. He’s coming this evening,’ said Dave.
‘He is?’ said Miranda looking surprised. ‘You do know what’s happened?’
‘No?’
‘Well, you didn’t hear it from me, dear boy, but quel scandale! His wife ran off with the local butcher about two months ago, taking their five-year-old daughter with her.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Dave.
‘Yes, he completely went to pieces. He was off work for over a month. Went completely doolally. The last time I saw him, in the supermarket, he looked dreadful. He was wearing carpet slippers and looked like he hadn’t shaved for a week.’
‘Well, he wasn’t wearing carpet slippers today,’ said Gerry. ‘That’s the sort of detail I would have noticed.’
Miranda threw her head back and laughed, her brown eyes twinkling, her wide smile revealing perfect white teeth. ‘Well, maybe he and his wife are back together,’ she said. ‘Or maybe he’s met someone else. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘Come to think of it, he did seem a little distracted,’ said Dave.
‘Well, he’s playing the injured party in all this,’ said Miranda, her voice conveying disapproval. ‘But I’ve heard that his wife didn’t just run off without good reason. Apparently, he’d had quite a few affairs – some of them with women that he’d met on the Internet.’
‘Blimey,’ said Dave, looking impressed.
The discussion of Victor’s love life was cut short by his arrival. Dressed in pale cotton trousers and a crisply ironed blue shirt (and thankfully not carpet slippers) he did not look like a man on the edge. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and a box of cakes tied up with ribbon. He planted three kisses on my cheeks, his bushy moustache tickling my skin; and then, after a moment’s hesitation, he did the same to Miranda. ‘Bonsoir, Meer-rranda. How are you?’ he asked, quietly.
‘Still alive,’ she replied.
When Dave announced that it was time to sit down, Miranda assumed pole position at the dining table, in between Dave and Victor and directly opposite Gerry. ‘Isn’t he a handsome boy?’ she said to me, nodding towards Gerry. ‘I bet you’re taken, aren’t you, darling?’ I couldn’t quite believe the directness of Miranda’s approach, but I have to admit that I waited with interest for the answer.
Gerry looked at her intently. ‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.
‘Good-looking chaps like you are never single,’ she replied. ‘Not that I’m interested myself you understand. I’m through with men and tout ça and quite happy on my own, thank you very much. I’ve got my cat Napoleon for company and I’m entirely self-sufficient. The last thing I want is a man queering my pitch.’
Despite her small frame, Miranda was an athletic drinker. After limbering up with neat whisky, she moved on to white wine and continued drinking at a steady pace for the next few hours, before moving into a sprint finish with a glass of champagne (which Victor opened with dessert) followed by two whiskies by way of a nightcap. You had to admire her form. She was also an accomplished flirt and a brilliant and funny raconteur. She told us a hilarious story about how she had been banned from quiz night at a bar run by Brits in a nearby village. ‘But I deserved it,’ she said. ‘I was so badly behaved that I would have banned me, too. Apparently, I told one woman that she had a face like a bag of spanners. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.’
I didn’t mind that she was dominating the conversation – thereby depriving me of the attention that I felt I rightly deserved having bought a house that morning – as she was so entertaining. She was also very interested in other people and not at all competitive with me. ‘Now, my darling girl,’ she said, at one point. ‘What do you do that is going to allow you to live out here?’
She became very excited when I told her that I was a fashion and beauty journalist.
‘Oh, how wonderful! Does that mean that you get lots of free beauty products?’
‘Not as many as I used to get, but yes.’
‘Oh, aren’t you lucky!’ she said. ‘Now, écoute! If ever you are looking for a guinea pig for cosmetic surgery, be sure to let me know, because I wouldn’t mind an eye lift.’ I told her that it was unlikely but I would bear it in mind. ‘Oh isn’t she just darling?’ she said, looking directly at Gerry for affirmation, and I couldn’t help but warm to her.
But she was, I noticed, very scathing about les Anglais. ‘Honestly, present company excepted, I can’t bear them,’ she said. ‘Polluting the French countryside with their bad haircuts and washed-out looking clothes. Fortunately, most of them go a bit crackerdog after two years and run back home.’
‘Crackerdog?’ asked Gerry.
‘Yes, they love it at first – la vie française et tout ça – but then, when the novelty of it has worn off, they get bored and depressed. Some of them develop a drink problem. Others go a bit mad. Or get divorced. Or else they die. We’ve just lost a whole load recently. I’m not joking. I bought a discount pack of condolence cards from Lidl a few months ago – there must have been at least half a dozen – and they’ve all gone.’
This was news I really didn’t want to hear. I was hoping to move to the French countryside and live happily ever after – not end up mad, dead or with a drink problem. At least divorce wasn’t on the horizon. ‘So crackerdog or six feet under! Either way, it’s good news for you, isn’t it, Victor? All those houses to sell,’ continued Miranda.
Victor was very quiet, probably because the conversation was mostly in English. While Miranda held forth with Dave and Gerry, I took the opportunity to practise my A-level French on him and, as if that wasn’t torturous enough for the poor man, I bombarded him with questions about my house. Who were the current owners? How long would the paperwork take? Was it connected to mains drainage? (I hoped so, as I wasn’t sure I could handle a fosse septique.) On a few occasions when I couldn’t follow what he was saying – for Victor spoke very quickly – Miranda would come to my aid. Although she liked to be the centre of attention, there was something very warm and lovely about her.
‘Victor is very impressed by your decisiveness,’ she told me at one point. ‘He says he has never had a client like you, who made a decision after only seeing one property.’
‘I bet,’ said Gerry.
Victor nodded. I noticed that he hadn’t eaten much. He poked around suspiciously at the overcooked salmon and Dave’s limp green beans, and he left a mound of new potatoes on his plate. But by the time we reached dessert, I was confident that he would not dare sell my house to anyone else. (Until he had heard from the owner, I was terrified that another interested party might come along and snatch my future away in front of my eyes.)
Miranda had turned the conversation around to her ex-husband, a barrister. She described how she had danced around the hotel bedroom on the first night of their honeymoon, wearing a very expensive set of lingerie. ‘I was so thrilled to be married,’ she recalled. ‘I was dancing round the room in my new lace knickers trimmed with rosebuds and little blue ribbons at the side, shouting ‘I’m married! I’m married!’ and can you imagine what my husband’s response was?’
Victor and I stopped talking about drains in order to find out. Miranda paused for dramatic effect.
‘He said…’ She took a gulp of wine and looked around the table. ‘He said… for God’s sake, pull yourself together, woman.’
Gerry looked at a loss as to
what to say. Victor stared at his plate of untouched beans. Dave shook his head in sympathy. I wasn’t quite sure of the appropriate response, but fortunately, Miranda was laughing as she delivered the punch line.
At the end of the evening, Victor offered to drive Miranda home – to everyone’s relief, as she had drunk her own body weight in alcohol. ‘That’s awfully nice of you, Victor. I’m going to say yes,’ she replied. And then, with a peal of laughter: ‘I always knew you were a gentleman – despite what other people say about you.’ Fortunately, Victor did not seem to understand.
‘Now listen, sweet girl, I hope to see you again before I’m very much older,’ cried Miranda as she teetered out of the house, a blur of cobalt-coloured sequins, her tiny frame struggling to balance on spindly heels. ‘And don’t forget, darling, if ever you’re looking for a guinea pig for cosmetic surgery, I’d definitely be up for an eye lift…’
‘She seems like quite a character,’ said Gerry, as we watched her swaying up the street, like a small, colourful bird, on Victor’s arm.
‘How does she survive out here?’ I asked Dave.
‘She lives on an allowance from her ex-husband. I think she was once an actress or a dancer, but whether professional or not, I don’t know.’
‘It sounds like she and her husband were very mismatched,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Dave. ‘I think she got drunk once too often at his firm’s dinners. But she’s a good laugh. Anyone for a digestive?’
‘Oh, go on then,’ said Gerry.
Dave took an opened bottle of wine from the table and the three of us sat down in front of the fireplace. We talked for well over an hour, mostly about life in France and my new house. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to look at any other houses?’ Dave asked. ‘Just to see what’s out there?’
‘It’s a bit late now,’ I said. ‘I’ve already signed the contract.’
Tout Sweet Page 4
