Reflections of Sunflowers

by Ruth Silvestre

  While young and energetic guests were still in residence we took the opportunity to do something about our drive, which on all sides of the house was discoloured and badly overgrown. We put down quantities of weed-killer, made a visit to the quarry for advice, and at eight o’clock the next morning a lorry arrived with ten tonnes of small pale stones aboard. The children all rushed out to watch as the driver advanced slowly, tipping the trailer gently as he came. In a transformation scene worthy of a pantomime, a wide, pristine pathway unrolled the length of the drive as far as the front porch. Unfortunately, the overhanging ash tree prevented the driver from completing a circular tour.

  With a grin and a shrug and ‘Je suis désolé, Madame, mais…’ the swarthy, handsome young man raised the angle of the trailer and the other five tonnes simply cascaded into a huge, gleaming heap in front of the porch. We got to work with every available rake and shovel.

  ‘We’re Roman slaves!’ declared the boys, beginning with enthusiasm, but it wasn’t long before they were clocking off for liquid refreshment like modern-day workers. It took us the rest of the day and many barrow loads to complete the job. But it looked really impressive – for this year, at least!

  Adam and Caz and our boys decided to stay on for another few days. Les Fostaires seniors arrived to join their children in the gîte before spending time with us at Bel-Air and we all arranged to meet at Libos market to shop for what had become a regular tradition. There is a market somewhere near us on almost every day of the week, but Thursday market at Libos is the largest in the region. The whole centre of the small town is closed to traffic and filled with stalls, which spread their wares up every side street. The food varies with the season, being mostly grown locally, but you may also buy almost anything from tagine pots from North Africa decorated in vivid colours, to tall grandfather clocks in traditional design; even a small, electric car. Rows of rush-seated chairs and double beds stand next to a trailer containing a brace of squealing pigs. There are swaying tunnels of lurid bath towels with life-size prints of a menacing Bengal tiger or a pouting Marilyn Monroe; awnings of tablecloths in Provencal design. There are baskets of unpainted porcelain seconds from Limoges, bags of pine salt to cure a variety of ailments including ‘douleurs générales’ and long rows of gleaming knives to slit an animal’s throat. We, of course, go to buy food.

  We leave the house as early as possible, without breakfast. While most find it impossible not to linger at the first stalls, one of us heads straight for the boulangerie to secure the last almond croissants. Almost a foot long, and costing only about eighty pence, they are stuffed with almond paste and generously coated with well-toasted flaked almonds – a real indulgence. The boys keep an eye out and soon enough they’ve found Abie and Louis in the eager crowds that come pouring in from every inch of car parking space on each side of town. After spending their money on some highly debated bits of plastic, the boys head for the football table in the central bar, called in this region of rugby enthusiasts ‘Le Winger’.

  With one adult left to keep an eye on them, the rest of us shop for a grand picnic. How easy it is. In twos and threes we return to the café with spit-roasted quail and chicken, and a kilo of crevettes rosé, the succulent, firm prawns which taste so different from those caught in Northern waters. We buy still-warm squares of quiche and pizza, helpings of paella, ten kinds of olives, great bunches of radishes and basil to put on the huge, field tomatoes. Perhaps we choose a few thin slices of jambon de pays to go with the scented melons, the white and yellow peaches, or local saucisson. And after making sure that someone has remembered the salad, the milk and the bread we go to choose cheeses, ripe and ready. Bleu des Causses perhaps, cheaper than Roquefort and just as good, then a local Brie, and for those who prefer a strong, hard cheese, Bocardo au poivre, also made in the region.

  And then that summer it was, as usual, back through glorious countryside to Bel-Air. While Elliot insisted on demonstrating to Abie his three frantic widths without arm-bands, we set up a table under the ash tree and Raymond soon stopped his tractor to join us for a lengthy aperitif. We imagined Claudette looking at the clock and we waited for her remonstrating phone call. Lunch went on most of the afternoon followed by snoozing in relays, swimming and just enjoying each other’s company. Organising everyone, including all the grandchildren, for a group photograph seemed almost more trouble than it was worth, but it was to prove a poignant record of an idyllic day for, the following February, Barry died very suddenly. He was playing in Art at the Whitehall Theatre in a part he much enjoyed and his death was a dreadful shock to the cast, his family and his many friends. We have to be thankful that for him there was no lingering illness or diminishing of his formidable power as an actor. Some of his ashes are now buried in the garden of Miranda and Jonathan’s lovely house in France. He was a very special, immensely generous, shining comet of a friend and we will never forget him.

  We must now make the bed and put flowers in the green room. The umbrella is still there but we hope it won’t rain. Our younger son Matthew will be the first to arrive. It will be good to have him here, he is so much of a part of our finding and buying Bel-Air. Later on Judith will come, alas alone, to spend time with us before joining her children. And we will all meet in the market.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the days before our first guests were due to arrive I spent much of my time in the garden. Up before eight to catch the cool of the morning and busy with the strimmer, the pampas tidied at last, it was beginning to look as though someone lived at Bel-Air. While Mike felt strong enough to cut the grass, I tackled the brambles and the great number of ever-optimistic small suckers from the sumach trees. Grandma planted my first sumach. Although I am quite happy that the original one has now increased to half a dozen, as they are glorious in early autumn; left to their own devices, they would soon take over the entire garden.

  In the market I had bought twenty-five Euro’s worth of bedding plants from the lean, brown nurseryman whose soft moustache and black felt hat makes him look like a South American. As he tenderly rolls the petunias, French marigolds, Busy Lizzies and portulaccas in newspaper, he always slips in a few extra plants. This time, he also handed me a small, rather frail looking plumbago. ‘Il faut bien la soigner,’ he smiled. ‘Look after it well.’ If it survived, I thought, it would be yet another plant for Claudette to look after when we left.

  Later, the whine of the strimmer happily silenced, at least for that day, I could prepare my tubs and make an instant garden – always a satisfying job. I hoisted each tub up onto the wheelbarrow in order not to have to bend. When I pull my back, as I seem to do almost every summer while working in the garden, I do listen when friends advise me to get a gardener. But, apart from the expense, and the fact that I don’t really care for over-neat gardens, on a day like this, with the sweet breeze blowing gently from the north and a cloudless sky, I have no intention of sharing this pleasure with anyone. And, if I do hurt my boring back I can visit Dr Frechet, the strong and skilful chiropractor in Agen, who always puts his finger right on the spot and deals with it.

  By lunchtime it was too hot to work. We opened the wine, enjoyed a salad and sat gazing at the view. This landscape just seems to soothe the soul. How badly we had needed it. Since these two hours are sacred to both eating and repose there was not even the sound of a distant tractor. The only activity I could see on the brow of the hill was the arching silver spout from my neighbour’s water cannon turning silently in a slow, relentless rhythm, the spray catching the sunlight. There was only the whirring of crickets, the warm droning of bees and, higher up from the wood, the occasional staccato burst from a woodpecker.

  Later that afternoon we went to visit our friend Simone in hospital. She had broken her leg and was not very happy being incarcerated in a small room on this glorious summer’s day. We first heard of Simone, or Mademoiselle L. as we then addressed her, from Portugese Maria, one of Raymond’s seasonal workers who came to help with the plum harvest
. Maria was slim and very pretty, and as she picked up the large violet plums under the canopy of trees, would talk proudly to us about her Mademoiselle, for whom she normally worked several mornings a week.

  ‘I have told her about you,’ she would say. ‘She would like so much to meet you. She loves to talk English.’ The next time we met she would continue. ‘Mademoiselle is really hoping you will call. The house is very easy to find,’ she would urge. At that time as well as helping Raymond and Claudette with the plum harvest we were very preoccupied with working on the house and garden, and I’m afraid that speaking English was not very high on our list of priorities. We felt a little guilty but somehow we never got round to paying Mlle L. a visit.

  One Sunday afternoon of the following summer we were on a joint wine-tasting expedition somewhere deep in the wooded hillsides of the Lot valley when Raymond, suddenly looking at his watch, announced that we must soon start for home. Mlle L., he informed us, was coming to call. At the time Mike was far more interested in finding another case of really good Cahors, but clearly Raymond felt the impending visit something of a privilege. We drove home along the great curving river valley back to the farm. There, waiting to meet us was a small, neat, bespectacled woman in her sixties whose English needed no practising, being precise, idiomatic and faultless. She clearly loved to talk. She amused us by recounting that in 1951 on her arrival in Scotland as a very young student of English, she had been completely nonplussed by her host shouting at his dog ‘Git oot ma hoose!’

  Allocated for two days a week as a student teacher in a school in Kirkaldy and thinking she might have time to explore the countryside, she had brought her bicycle all the way from south-west France. But in her spartan lodgings there was nowhere to keep it except in her bedroom and in fact during her whole stay she found the weather so cold and windy that she never took it out.

  ‘I was not awfully happy,’ she said. ‘There was no culture on a Sunday, sweets were rationed and I only got one egg a week. And I think my English was worse when I came back that June. But,’ she brightened, ‘I hitch-hiked alone all over Scotland and thought nothing of it.’

  Simone’s friendship has brought an extra dimension to our time in France. She lives alone in her family home, a large house with a very interesting garden running down to the river. Although retired she is a formidable scholar with an extensive and eclectic library and our French vocabulary is constantly improved from its inevitably limited and somewhat agricultural bias. She is an avid reader, re-reading all the English classics but also keeping up with current writers. She much enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible but confessed that she had finally given up on Zadie Smith’s White Teeth! She also enjoys watching videos, one of her favourites being Yes Minister.

  She taught for two years in America, in Colorado and California, but most of her working life was spent teaching in Africa. She began in Benin, hardly four years after Independence. On one of her first free weeks, intrepid as ever, she set off with her camera and one companion. In a small car, on bad roads and never sure of finding petrol, they completed 3,000 kilometres in seven days. She took pictures of giraffes and of bands of nomadic Tuaregs with their camels. The women wore enormously heavy copper bracelets on their ankles, which were for sale, and they would offer to go to the blacksmith to have them removed with a hammer. Simone bought several which she later used for paperweights. From the banks of the Niger she watched children swimming eagerly to school, their clothes and books neatly packaged on their heads.

  For thirteen years she taught in a college in Togo, which eventually became a university. The people and their culture began to fascinate her. She now has a wonderful collection of carvings, exotic combs, highly decorated masks and small and intricate Ashanti gold weights. We love to call on her after market and sip an aperitif for there is always something fascinating to see or to hear. She described to us how during her time in Togo she would examine the artefacts the travelling pedlars brought her, never knowing what she would find. They soon got to appreciate her real interest in African art. As they unwrapped their tattered bundles, and spread out their wares, she gradually became a connoisseur and it was her delight to discover something really old and of great beauty.

  She had been amused when we told her of our grandson’s new passion for golf. She had herself been a keen golfer. She described the golf courses she played on in Africa, not the traditional green sward but a course constructed of a mixture of sand made smooth with oil, which was laid out onto the bare earth. Sadly she plays no longer. On her return from Africa some years ago, she was treated for ovarian cancer. It was in the early days of radiotherapy and the dose used was far too strong. The cancer was cured but the damage done to the surrounding nerves at that time has now begun to take its toll. She is becoming increasingly immobile. Now in hospital, she urged us to go to her home where her brother had brought up from the cave all her golfing paraphernalia.

  ‘He will be there tomorrow,’ she said ‘I have told him you will telephone and you are to take it all for Thomas.’

  On the way home from the hospital we called into the local DIY store to see if we could find some plain, white, mirrored cupboards for our bathroom, which had been newly refurbished the previous year.

  Most of the very gradual improvements that we have made to Bel-Air over twenty-five years have pleased us. The one exception was the bathroom. Of course any bathroom at all was like a miracle in those early days, when we washed in a plastic bowl on a camping table. We later progressed to china basins and jugs but we still fetched our water in buckets from an outside tap, marginally easier than hauling it up from the well, which Anaïs, my predecessor, had always done. Although mains water had arrived at Bel-Air a few years before we bought the house, Anaïs had never had a tap installed. That water was metered, the old lady and her handicapped son had been too poor to pay for it and, of course, water from the well was free. And at that time, we heated our water, as she must also have done, in an iron pot over the fire.

  Our first concession to modern convenience had been an outside lavatory. This was closely followed by a kitchen corner built into the main living room, with a large, square, white china sink and simple pine cupboards made by a local craftsman. We were still in the very early stages of restoring the house when we finally saved enough money for the bathroom. What to choose? I was very concerned to conserver le style of the old house and reluctant to change what I still saw as its romantically derelict state. I was besotted with the rough thick walls, the hand-hewn granite sink in the earth-floored corridor, the window opening with its nail-studded wooden shutter, the great gnarled oak beams. It was almost hesitantly that we stripped the old varnish from Anaïs’s tall, cherry-wood side-board with the carved board at the base, and gently peeled off the dirty oil-cloth which had been stuck onto the long pine table.

  During those first winter months back in London, we searched in junk shops for old lamps, candlesticks, marble topped wash-stands, pine chests and towel rails and more flowered china jugs and basins; all, of course much cheaper then than now. Friends would give us the odd plate or rug, which they thought might just do at Bel-Air. A definite ‘look’, a sort of faded early-Victorian rustic, seemed to be the most appropriate. But a bathroom was difficult to plan. A self-conscious Victorian reproduction would have looked odd and been far too expensive and, in the end, we settled for the most simple white bath, bidet, and a basin set in a pine surround. But how to finish the walls and floor? We were very happy with the large, traditional, terracotta floor tiles which M. Carnejac had laid in the main room, and I made the mistake of choosing for the bathroom tiles in a similar colour, albeit smaller and roughly glazed.

  At first the sheer pleasure of a bathroom, any bathroom, was sufficient delight. Wallowing in hot water after strenuous days up ladders, painting walls, wrestling with the garden, or harvesting straw bales, potatoes, plums or tobacco, was the ultimate luxury, especially with a generous aperitif! It was only after many year
s and looking at other bathrooms that I had to admit that I had made a stupid mistake. Our bathroom was undeniably gloomy. Even though it faced south and the fierce sunlight, the window was very small and high. The dark red tiles I had chosen so long ago were just wrong.

  M. Carnejac’s tiling was, of course, immaculate. How could we possibly think of destroying it? He had even tiled the small square space that had been cut into the wall beneath where the stairs had once ascended, rickety and uneven, to the attic. According to Raymond, in every old house there had always been a hiding place for gold sovereigns, les Louis d’or, cut in the staircase wall. Alas, we found nothing in ours but dead spiders.

  I wondered if it might be possible to paint over the tiles. But if the paint began to peel it would look even worse. We were slightly embarrassed when, eventually, we explained to M. Carnejac that, beautiful though his tiling undoubtedly was, we finally wished to change it. We had simply chosen the wrong colour. He agreed.

  ‘Mais, ne vous inquiétez pas. Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Pas de problème,’ his favourite phrase. ‘Just choose something lighter.’ He had already unfolded his mètre pliant and was beginning to measure. ‘It won’t take long. I shall retile over the top.’