by Janine Marsh
Going back to Normandy for the first time without Dad was going to be a bittersweet experience. We decided to go to places we had not visited with him and, although there’s plenty of choice, number one on my to-do list for some time had been to visit the house and garden of Claude Monet in Giverny. We left at dawn, leaving Annette to feed the animals, and arrived in time to be the first into the gardens, which we had to ourselves for a while. There are some places that don’t live up to all the hype – Monet’s garden is the complete opposite. It surpassed my expectations. Inside the house, it feels just as if the great artist has popped out to take a wander round the flowerbeds or collect eggs from the chickens. Copies of his paintings hang in the rooms, and vases of flowers scent the air. His bedroom window was thrown open to reveal the glory of the garden and, as I stood there looking out, I could see why he was so obsessed with colours.
By the time we got home late that night, four more ducklings had hatched. By now I was starting to worry that we were going to be overrun as there were still five ducks nesting. I knew we wouldn’t be able to keep them all and finding homes in which they would be pets and not dinner wasn’t going to be easy. But I had to start somewhere and put out the word that there were ducks going free to those who wanted a pet. My first takers lived close by – a British couple who were vegetarians and had a big house with a pond. We took Delilah, Fenella and Henri, who dived into the pond as soon as we arrived, taking to their new home like ... well, ducks to water.
‘Can we call them different names?’ asked the woman. ‘He looks like a Bill to me.’ I knew that the ducks would be fine there. A week later, however, their new owners were on the phone asking if we could come and get Bill. ‘He’s rocket-fuelled with the ladies,’ they said. ‘We love him, he’s super friendly and eats out of our hands already, but he’s incredibly frisky. All our ducks are now sitting on eggs!’
We found a few more homes for the girls but no one wanted males. It seems everyone except me knew just how randy ducks are! In the meantime, I had gone into Sherlock Holmes mode in my search for new eggs to make sure no more new nesting took place. I offered the eggs to my neighbours and friends and had a good take-up rate. Everyone knew that duck eggs are fabulous for making all sorts of dishes from creamy custard to rich ice cream and golden omelettes.
I took some eggs to Annette and on the way home stopped off in the village of Hesmond at a farm run by a woman known to locals as ‘the goat lady’, though her real name is Valerie. She was making cheese when I got there and invited me to join her. Before we could start, the goats needed milking.
‘The first milk is always for the cat,’ she said as she milked with ease, and on cue a fluffy grey cat appeared from nowhere and began lapping up the warm milk from a small dish, licking her lips greedily afterwards. Then it was my turn to have a go at milking. I have to tell you, some goats will look you right in the eye when you approach them, and it’s not always a friendly look. Milking a goat is not as easy as you might think; they are fidgety creatures and easily distracted, and they were quite happy to wander off while I was still hanging on to them.
Afterwards, we donned Smurf-blue-coloured plastic slippers, white lab jackets and hideous hairnets that made us both look quite demented before racing to her tiny cheese-preparation room. Valerie is always in a hurry and rushes everywhere. I had to run to keep up with her.
‘It’s best to use the milk when it’s really fresh,’ she explained as she showed me what to do. Everything was done by hand. No fancy equipment, just hard work and expertise. We squeezed and groped curds, we poured and stirred, topped up moulds, turned the older moulds over and rubbed some salt on some of them in their tins, which were heart-shaped, round or pyramid style.
I have eaten a lot of cheese in my time, but I have never had cheese quite like Valerie’s. The locals say she has a secret ingredient – passion – and I’m sure they are right. My reward for helping out was a round of an intoxicatingly tangy cheese, covered in fresh herbs and edible petals.
As we progressed through June, the first set of ducklings were growing fast and had become quite delinquent. They frequently escaped from the pen, had learned to climb trees and were happy to eat everything in the garden. I had taken to covering all the vegetable beds with twigs to keep them off. There’s no other word for it – it was mayhem. They watched the older ducks pecking at my boots and jumping into the food buckets I carried down to the bottom of the garden, and they all followed suit.
In all the time we had kept chickens we’d never had a chicken egg hatch, so we started to think it would never happen. Our girls are all far too lazy, we thought. But that month, everything changed. Tallulah Pompom Head (she has a fluffy feathered hairdo) sat on eggs in a bucket and Joan Crawford would hardly come out of the coop – she was seriously obsessed.
Claudette added warnings to the ones Jean-Claude had been giving us for a while now. ‘You need to get control of this garden,’ she counselled, adding that one male duck and ten female ducks could easily become many, many more in just a year. She leaned over the fence and surveyed the birds, who were clearly ruling the roost. She had bird problems, too – her goose had escaped and, finding rich pickings in the hedgerows in the road in front of her house, was reluctant to come back home. After I’d chased it in and Claudette shut the gate on it, we stopped in her ever-hot kitchen for a tiny glass of wine. Even worse than usual, it tasted like it was made in a smelly old bucket at the bottom of a thousand-year-old well. But I always drink it.
Claudette loves to talk, especially about anything to do with the Queen. I told her about visiting my nan, who lived near Windsor when I was a kid, and the polo matches to which she would sometimes take me. I remembered, when I was eleven, Prince Charles gave me a polo ball and I just stood open-mouthed like a total idiot, unable to speak. And the time I was sitting in a square near St Paul’s Cathedral on my lunchbreak, when a Rolls-Royce pulled up and the Queen hopped out and disappeared into a nearby sweetshop!
I made my visit to Claudette shorter than usual as I had to go to church. There is an enormous eighteenth-century church in the village, which harks back to the days when there were many more inhabitants and everyone went to church. A tall Gothic-looking building with a black slate roof and colourful stained-glass windows, it looks abandoned and is only opened on the thankfully rare occasion of a funeral. When one does take place, a formal notice is dropped in all mailboxes so that people can go and pay their respects. In such a small village as this, as in so many in France, it’s simply not economical or practical to hold services and heat the church on cold days. But among the usual weekly special-offer brochures had come a notice that, for one night only, the church would be opened to host a gospel choir from America and everyone in the village was invited.
Mark and I arrived early and, for once, so did everyone else. The church was absolutely packed. We sat perched on the thinnest pews ever, hundreds of years old and, I suspect, made like that to keep churchgoers from dozing off. There was no napping that night, that’s for sure. A full-blown professional choir, beautifully dressed, with their state-of-the-art microphones and music mixers, filled the ancient church with their songs of hope and praise. It wouldn’t have been any less strange if the Rolling Stones had taken a wrong turn on their way from London to Paris and pitched up at the town hall to perform. The audience sang, danced and applauded wildly. It was an uplifting night that didn’t end when we all filed out of the church with broad grins on our faces.
In honour of such an illustrious visit, someone had laid on fireworks. Rockets were tied to some of the gravestones and pinged off across the rooftops, leaving a trail of colourful sparkles behind them. Bizarre for sure, but as someone said, a celebration of life among those departed. The next day, the church was closed again.
Summer had begun but, as expected in northern France, this also meant rain. It seemed that every conversation we had involved the weather (or Brexit, but I’m not going there). We talked about how much it w
as raining, and about getting caught in the rain; we wondered how much it might rain tomorrow, and sighed at how much it rained yesterday.
Jean-Claude popped by one particularly wet day that month and stood dripping in the hall as he took off his boots before coming into the kitchen for coffee and to chat to Mark.
‘Let’s talk wood,’ he began.
‘Huh?’ said Mark.
‘Wood, firewood. Do you have enough for winter?’
‘Well, we’ve got some on order from the Wood Man at Azincourt, coming in July,’ said Mark, wondering where this was leading.
‘We wondered if you wanted to join our Wood Club,’ said Jean-Claude. ‘My copain [mate] is leaving the club – he’s got too old and his son put central heating in for him – so there’s a vacancy if you’re interested.’
‘I could be,’ said Mark, though he didn’t sound too sure. A former policeman, he’s naturally suspicious. ‘What do you do in the Wood Club?’
‘For one week each year, we cut down damaged trees on Claudette’s land, chop it up into firewood and stack it in the big barn behind the Parisians’ house to season it.’ Claudette is the biggest landowner in the village and has fields that cover quite a distance. ‘Then we share out the seasoned wood from three years ago to the club members when it’s just ripe for winter.’
He explained there were a total of six places in the club. He was the leader, of course, as Claudette is his belle-maman. Then there was Claude Sr, aka ‘Claude at the top of the big hill’. He drives a skinny tractor, which is at least as ancient as he is, its once vibrant red paint a mere memory. His son Claude is known to all as ‘Claude at the top of the small hill’ and lives three farmhouses up from us. There is a big dip in between the two hills. Every day ‘Claude at the top of the big hill’ visits ‘Claude at the top of the small hill’ (I hope you’re still with me) in his tractor. I can set my watch by the journey. Lunch starts precisely at noon as the tractor splutters down one hill and finishes precisely at 2 p.m. when it returns down the other hill. Little else moves outside during this sacred two-hour recess, except for Bernadette’s chickens who forage under the hedgerows for their lunchtime treat. Apparently every first son and every first daughter in the family has been given the name Claude for two hundred years.
Petit Frère was also a member, as well as Monsieur Durand and Monsieur Rohart, both former farmers. Jean-Claude made getting into the club sound as if it was an exclusive and coveted achievement. And he told Mark, with a big smile, that all the members agreed it was time for new blood and thought Mark would be ideal. ‘Claudette’s land is kept tidy and we get wood to use for ourselves – it’s a gagnant-gagnant, a win-win,’ he said. We were honoured to be included (well, Mark, rather than me – it’s men only, much like the hunting club. But I could go without being a lumberjack for a week).
This being France, Mark was invited to meet everyone – even though he knew them all already – at a formal meeting in Jean-Claude’s garage. He arrived at Jean-Claude’s house at the appointed time and knocked at the door – there was no answer. He knocked again, loudly, and heard the creaking of the up-and-over garage door being lifted. Jean-Claude stuck his head out and beckoned Mark in. We’ve both spent plenty of time in there at parties hastily moved inside along with the barbecue, sound system, chairs and tables when it rains, but today there was just one small plastic table and six chairs. Mark was asked to sit down and Petit Frère dished out bottles of beer.
‘Right,’ said Jean-Claude, ‘we need to set the date for the Wood Club to convene this year. Is everyone free next week?’ Round the table everyone pulled small diaries from their pockets, except for Mark.
‘Hmm,’ said Monsieur Durand, ‘no good for me. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’ Monsieur Rohart had an optician’s appointment and Petit Frère had to go to the chiropodist. ‘I’ve got my annual check-up that week,’ said Claude Sr.
‘Last week of June then?’ said Jean-Claude.
The old men turned the pages of their diaries and miraculously were all free of medical appointments that week. They turned to Mark, who told me later he was tempted to come up with an excuse just for fun, but thought better of it. Later Jean-Claude told him they always do the woodcutting in the last week of June (whatever the pretence of checking other dates) and to make sure he kept it free in the diary he doesn’t have.
It never ceases to amaze me that, although French people never arrive when they say will, drive like maniacs because they are always late and hardly start anything on time, the administration and planning of events is a national obsession. Even train strikes are planned to a timetable days in advance and nearly always logged on the SNCF website the night before so that travellers can plan around the strikes.
The rest of the meeting was largely unrelated to wood, but Mark was told that he shouldn’t share details of what they do with anyone else, or they would all want to be included.
On the morning the Wood Club was due to convene, Mark presented himself at the longère barn as instructed and Jean-Claude showed him the barns where the three-year-old wood was stacked. He estimated there was enough for everyone to have around 10 tons and the first job was to deliver it by tractor so the barn was freed up for the new wood to be cut.
Jean-Claude’s trailer was first to be filled. Mark was paired with Petit Frère, who works as a part-time tractor mechanic and is as strong as a small ox. Jean-Claude sat in the cab of the tractor, directing and making sure the tractor was ‘properly loaded’ before taking his allowance up to Claudette’s house to be stored in her barn. While this was being done, Claude Sr’s tractor was loaded by the other team who, despite clearly competing with Mark and Petit Frère, couldn’t keep up with the younger duo, who were working on Claudette’s own allocation.
Three hours later, they stopped for lunch at Claudette’s, each removing their boots before entering her spotless kitchen in their socks. As is the law in France, they stopped for two hours. Okay, it’s not the law, but it often feels like it is. Claudette served French onion soup, thick with melting cheese, and crusty baguettes, as they all teased Jean-Claude about sitting in the tractor instead of helping. ‘Non, non,’ he said, ‘my heart, I have to be careful.’ Petit Frère said he’s been saying the same thing since they were both young.
Claudette dished up a pile of buttery fondant potatoes with a green salad from her garden and rôti de porc au lait, pork roasted in milk, and finally a tarte tatin aux abricots, all washed down with a bottle of wine (thankfully not the deadly homemade stuff). Mark said he could quite easily have gone to sleep all afternoon after that. But the Wood Club had to finish emptying the barn by lunchtime the next day or they would run out of time. The men lifted, loaded and delivered all afternoon, and the next morning our wood was dropped in the front garden ready for us to stack.
The next day’s lunch was at the home of Monsieur Durant, as Petit Frère was single, Claude Sr was a widower and Monsieur Rohart’s wife was at her mother’s house in Cassel, a pretty little town on top of a hill in the far north. I did offer to cook in the evening but, as the whole village knows, I can’t cook that well so I was told that a barbecue on a Saturday night in July or August would work for everyone, as they were sure to be too tired after the long hard days of being woodcutters.
Mark told me that Madame Durant served an equally expansive lunch of mackerel in white wine followed by a steaming bowl of poule au pot, a chicken stew (said to have its origins in the sixteenth century when King Henri IV of France allegedly said that he would ensure that ‘every Frenchman should be able to have a hen in his pot on a Sunday’ at a time when poor people rarely ate meat). This was followed with a melt-in-your-mouth chocolate tart. That afternoon, the Wood Club visited the fields and made notes about which trees would be cut and where new ones would be planted. It is a system that has worked well for years.
On the third day, the chopping began in earnest. Petit Frère wielded a chainsaw almost as tall as him. Cutting large wedges into the bo
ttom of the chosen trees, he was covered in woodchips and, with seeming indifference, leaned against the trees to make them crash down exactly where he wanted them. Then they chopped the tall trees into smaller pieces with a saw attached to the back of Jean-Claude’s tractor, and stacked them into the trailers to go to the barn.
As Madame Rohart was back from her mother’s she provided lunch that day. Mark came home and described it to me in great detail: mushrooms and girolles fried in butter, white wine and cream with garlic served on toasted slices of brioche, beef cooked in beer with herbs, and a heavenly crème caramel. I was starting to feel envious of Wood Club.
On the fourth day, the men chopped, loaded, unloaded and stacked, with a short break when Bernadette came home from work with freshly baked baguettes, cheese, ham and pâté. As the last day loomed, apparently the mood had changed somewhat. The men were tired and just wanted to get the work finished. There was no long lunch that day. When Mark returned home, he admitted that although he was happy to be involved in his first village club, he was pretty sure it would be easier just to buy wood and have it delivered.
JULY
All hail – it’s a disaster
THE WEATHER IN northern France can be mixed in July, but we were on the home run with the shutters and the painting of the house. Although there was a time when I thought we would never ever be finished, it did feel like maybe, just maybe, we were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. Bit by bit, the neglected old house was starting to look like the beauty I always dreamed it could be. We joked that by the time we actually finished, we’d have to start all over again. But we felt optimistic, and the finish line was in sight.
At least, that’s what we thought. But fate had other plans. On the 6 July, at six minutes before 6 p.m. (a detail I will never forget), a freak hailstorm hit our tiny area of the Seven Valleys.
