A Short Walk from Harrods

by Dirk Bogarde

  It is highly likely that Fraj, Plum-Bum and his wife were all ‘illegals’, that is to say Arabs from Tunisia or Algeria who had managed to slip into France via Marseille and melt, tactfully, into the population. They had no papers, but Monsieur Rémy shrugged that off and said that as long as they worked hard, as his two did, got paid in cash, and there was no record, on paper anyway, of them being employed by him, then tant pis! He’d pick up another couple if anything went wrong: there were plenty just hanging about waiting to do any kind of work in order to survive. No one could possibly keep a check on them all. Fraj was the only real worry. He could do nothing but build stone walls, at which he was amazingly good, placing stone upon stone with astonishing accuracy. He was kept busy on my terraces for nearly all the time I lived on the hill. It was rather like painting the Forth Bridge, never ending. Sheep skittering across the terraces leapt a wall and brought down a boulder. Fraj patiently rebuilt it, a trace of dribble on his chin, his dull eyes keen for the size and weight of the stone. The only other job he could manage was sweeping up with a long-handled broom. It took him hours.

  However, with the Troupe under the eagle eye of Monsieur Rémy, with me offering my untutored assistance, and Forwood on the terraces, we all managed very well. In time the dark pit with the stone sink in a corner was gutted and transformed into a spanking modern kitchen, a garage built against the north wall, a pond dug where the cesspit pipes had cracked and leaked into a green mossy bog, and the mistral finally deflected, anyway from the front terrace, by a stone and beamed porte d’entrée hung with a big oak door salvaged from the original kitchen.

  The house, as far as I could see, was secured. All that was needed were some trees. Although I had an hectare of ancient oak wood climbing up the hill at the back, there were no trees round the house itself, save for two old pollarded limes planted to shade the terrace. What I wanted was a frame of cypress trees. I didn’t want to wait for them. I wanted instant timelessness.

  I got it. The trees were carted up from a nursery in the valley, thirty to forty years old, secure in enormous wooden tubs or, rather, bacs. These were then inched towards the pits, dug by Fraj and Plum-Bum and lined deep with manure and heavy gravel. The staves of the bacs were eased apart and the trees manually slid into place. I bought three originally. Monsieur Rémy insisted that three was the correct number for a Provençal house. Faith, Hope and Charity – or, if I preferred it, the Holy Trinity. Anyway, they guaranteed luck, health and prosperity, and, as he was quick to point out, with no damp-course, the walls built on living rock, the roof riddled with beetle, and the tiles unfixed, at least I would need the luck.

  In time, more cypress trees were planted: a grove of five down the slope of the track, one outside the kitchen window, one at the edge of the pond, so that it was reflected in the still water to remind me of the peace and elegance of Hadrian’s Villa outside Rome. All nonsense, of course, and vastly expensive.

  In order to achieve all this bounty I had to go off and work again. Two depressingly awful films earned me enough for the kitchen, the pond, the trees and a new electric light system. The poteau had at last been stuck down on the boundary between Madame de Beauvallon’s land and mine, but the EDF (Electricité Departmente Française) agreed to paint it green to match the olives and it really hardly showed. But we were at least now connected for the first time to the mains. So I bought a refrigerator too … And, apart from breaking my self-imposed rule of ‘no more movies’, no great harm was done. No one ever saw, or remembered, them. I don’t think they even made it on to video.

  Florette Ranchett pushed a copy of Nice Matin towards me: ‘You see? Soon I will be behind bars. Like a beast of prey. Ouf! What has happened to the world?’ A black, banner headline: ‘ATTAQUE BRUTALE!’ TWO youths, masked and on a moped, had stabbed, bashed on the head, and then robbed the postmistress over at Saint-Matthieu, not far away. She was near to death in hospital, the youths had escaped, the countryside was in shock. Naturally enough. If the bureau de poste in a tiny hamlet could be attacked, what hope was there for the rest of the area? The age of innocence had finally ended in violence. Within a few weeks (after the unhappy death of the Saint-Matthieu postmistress) every small village shop, every post office, had iron grilles slung along their counters. The simple, easy, trusting village life had finally finished.

  Florette Ranchett said sadly, ‘Innocence and kindness have gone. This was a village which the world forgot. We were bypassed completely! They nearly forgot to liberate us in 1944 because they were up on the main road and we were down here. And now; after all that, the Germans, the Italians, the Resistance … after all that, our own begin to destroy us! I know what it is, of course …’ She got up and went to get an ice-cream for herself, from the freezer. ‘It’s the fault of television. The kids see all this terrible American stuff. They copy, we have not enough police, et voilà! It is the end of familiarity, of friendliness, of trust. You’ll see!’

  Of course I did. Madame Pasquini down at the post office was equally sad, but, at the same time, resigned. Jack could bark but Jack didn’t bite. No longer was it possible to lounge against the counter and chat away about the vines, the snow, the heat or the cold, or just about the cost of seed potatoes. Ordinary politeness remained, of course, but village trust faded. No one was ever encouraged to linger by Madame Pasquini, but she had become very much a friend since Jack and was vastly curious about the letters and packets that kept on coming to my address, even though I had made a valiant effort never to reveal my exact location to anyone apart from family and important business links. I suppose it is fair to say that I was her best client. I was in her bureau almost daily and spent a modest fortune. Naturally that was appreciated also.

  Across the road, facing the post office, set in an immaculate vegetable garden, stood a hideous little modern villa, Les Sylphides, shaded by a great fig tree. Its owner was a retired postmaster. I never spoke to him. He was always, summer and winter, occupied in his garden. Every year the walls of the villa were a smother of morning glories, his roses were bigger than cabbages, his onions ranged in rows as precise and elegant as the dancers whose ballet had given his house its name. His wife, a tiny creature, with neat little feet, cropped white hair, huge round wire-glasses, wrapped about in a spotless floral pinny, was known to me at least, as Madame Moineau. For a sparrow, plucked, was exactly what she resembled. And she twittered and cheeped, tucked into a corner of the counter at the bureau de poste. She and Madame Pasquini were inseparable friends. They both, I was to learn, had a burning passion for the tarot cards. Madame Moineau was the absolute queen of the pack, and people from all about came to consult her, even from as far away as Cannes, Nice or even Avignon. She was famous for her readings.

  However, she had not foreseen the disaster about to befall her way of life in the post office. Now she was on the outside of a great iron grille and poor Madame Pasquini (plus Jack) was locked away behind. Lounging on the counter, idly talking away about the harvest, the price of knitting wool at Monoprix, the dark rumour that a Dutchman had been asking about the empty farm up at Le Foux, all this comforting chitter chatter was now somehow inhibited. If you had a packet to mail it had to go on a revolving plate which took it into the secure part of the office. No longer could you weigh your own goods on the brass scales, stamp the thing, and hand it over to the expert hands of the postmistress. The intimacy had vanished. Madame Moineau still hunched herself into her corner, she was still constantly a presence, but somehow it was not quite the same any longer.

  To speak to Madame Pasquini she felt forced now to raise her voice, and this grievously embarrassed her. So she sighed, nodded about at whoever was present, and curtailed her conversations. Her tarot cards had not revealed, either, the enormity of the real disaster which lay ahead in her gentle, fragile path.

  One day she was not in her corner … the next day … and the next. I asked if she was perhaps indisposed? On holiday? Madame Pasquini, certain that no one could overhear us (there
was only one noisy English tourist in the telephone cabin trying to get a call through to Flaxman. I heard him spelling it out alphabetically in desperation: ‘F for … France, um … L for Londres, A for, umm … Au revoir …’), said, ‘M’sieur is ill. Very ill. They don’t know what is wrong. Perhaps a thrombose.’ This continued for a week and then one day he was whipped off to hospital.

  Madame Moineau spent all her days there, tending her beloved man. The garden slowly became neglected, the dead blooms hung on the morning glory like dirty handkerchiefs, weeds sprang up among the onion rows, the roses budded, opened, were spent and fell, the shutters remained closed.

  ‘Why is she always at the hospital? Does she stay there?’

  ‘Until the evening. Then she comes here to sleep. She has to help the nurses.’

  ‘I don’t understand? Doesn’t she get in the way?’

  ‘He wants her there. He is very alarmed. She takes her crochet. It comforts him. It is his first time in hospital.’

  ‘Is it grave?’

  She shrugged, stamped a pile of tourists’ postcards, a job she detested. Bang! Bang! Bang! ‘I think perhaps it is. They do not say. She helps to change his sheets and so on …’

  ‘Change his sheets? Can’t the nurses do that? She is so tiny …’

  Madame Pasquini gathered the cards into a bundle and bunged them into the thick sack ready for the evening collection at five-thirty. ‘How can the nurses change his sheets if he is in the bed? Madame gets him out, he trusts her, and sits him on a chair while they do their work.’

  ‘I see …’ I didn’t, of course. French logic. How can they make your bed if you are lying in it? Worrying. But I asked no more, and during the next few days we did not speak about the owner of Villa Les Sylphides, until one afternoon I heard dreadful, wrenching cries coming through the open window of the bureau. Madame Moineau was clasped tightly in Madame Pasquini’s arms. She was destroyed with sobbing and every now and again uttered terrible howls of grief. I was about to quietly leave but Madame Pasquini called me to please stay. She would take Madame across to the villa. Perhaps I would telephone Madame Ranchett to come quickly to Les Sylphides – the number was on the wall? … And mind Jack?

  I was left alone in the post office. I could have robbed the till. Anything. But I called the Mini-Market; Florette Ranchett said she would come down right away, was it grave? I said yes. And serious. There is a distinction in France.

  Fortunately for me, no one came in, no one asked for a stamp, no one wanted to use the telephone or demand their pension. I just sat on a stool beside the dog until, in a few moments, looking pale and naturally distressed, she returned briskly, shut herself firmly behind her cage. She thanked me and said that Madame Ranchett was now in charge, the doctor was on his way with a sedative. Fortunately they had found a bottle of cognac to calm her down. Later on, she said, she would go across and stay overnight in the villa. ‘Jack will keep me company. Hein? Jack? Guard Maman?’

  I asked for the stamps I needed. She tore them out from the stamp-book, pushed them under the grille, did a little sum on a piece of paper. Back to business.

  ‘Twenty-five francs.’

  I gave her the money. ‘Can I ask you what has happened? Can you say?’

  She looked at me sharply, her eyes were red. ‘Si. Si. I can say. It is catastrophic. Catastrophic! Sweet Saviour, give us help …’ She shut her eyes tight.

  ‘His heart? Has something happened because of that? Thrombosis they said?’

  ‘I told you that. Yes. But it is not so. He is not dead … better that he were …’

  ‘Not his heart?’

  Suddenly she came from behind her counter and cage, crossed the tiled floor, slammed the front door, turned the key, and leaning against it, head down, she said: ‘They have cut off his legs. Both his legs!’

  ‘Oh God! But why…’

  ‘An error! There was nothing wrong with his legs! An error …’

  ‘An error!’

  ‘They didn’t know who he was. The papers were mixed up. They thought he was someone else. There was nothing wrong with his legs!’

  She unlocked the door, went back to her counter. ‘Voilà!’ she said, now composed.

  In a daze of dismay I began to stick stamps on my envelopes.

  ‘You recall? His garden?’ she said suddenly. ‘He worked in his garden every day, winter and summer. Nothing wrong with his legs. Nothing! An error!’ She was collecting my letters in a pile, picking up her franking seal.

  Out in the car park I looked across to Villa Les Sylphides. The shuttered windows, the ragged garden, a teacloth and an apron twisting listlessly in the soft wind. From behind me, through the open window, Madame Pasquini was preparing for the evening collection.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Chapter 4

  I remember the moment that I first saw the house. I remember the date, even the precise hour. We drove up into Saint-Cyprien for the first time on a crisp, gusting morning. The trees were turning, leaves spinning up and off into tossing thickets. The sun was high, the sky that intense Ricketts blue of childhood: brilliant, hard, washed clean by the recent mistral, it sparkled like a polished mirror. In the square outside the mairie, a tricolour snapped and pulled at its white pole, people clustered round the war memorial; collars up against the wind, hands thrust into pockets, they were joined by a wavering procession from the church. I saw the wreath of blue cornflowers (for the French it is the bluet, for us the poppy) for remembrance. Close companions. Round the base of the heroic bronze soldier, the glinting medals on the best suits of elderly men shuffling along behind the priests, sombre in wind-whipped lace and billowing vestments. It was November the 11th.

  Unlike the British, the French hold the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month as sacred. A day for remembrance. We just shove everything together on the first convenient Sunday of the month and have an official procession in Whitehall. The personal, family, village and small-town feeling of loss, intimacy and continuity has long been lost to us. Not so in France.

  We eased slowly through the procession, running dogs, laughing children, choir boys clattering. The church clock began to strike the hour. We stopped. Moments later, the tinny sound still held, wandering on the air from the final stroke. We sat silent. Then Claire, the agent who was taking us around to view properties, moved on again down a steep lane, slowed her car to inching-pace, and stabbing her finger to the left indicated the next location was below. Through a wood of ancient oaks (with trunks too wide for two men to embrace) hung on the side of a steep rock-faced cliff, I saw, far below, the rippled red-tiled roof of a modest, compact farmhouse, standing four-square to the winds on a green plateau below which spilled terrace upon terrace of great olive trees. Beyond the terraces a little pointed hill crowned by a chapel. Beyond that, a valley. Beyond the valley, golden with fading vines, the jagged line of the Estoril mountains, lilac against the harsh, scoured blue of the sky, and, to the far left, distant, sparkling, dancing in the light, teased by the wind, the mistral-whipped sea, creamed with little flickering waves. I knew then, following behind Claire down the hill, that I must have it. And by the end of December, after many battles, fears, panics and terrors, I got it.

  Driving back to Saint-Paul that morning, unwilling to view any other house, I found Simone Signoret at her accustomed place behind the olive wood table in the bar of La Colombe, playing Scrabble. She looked up squinting through cigarette smoke, a Bloody Mary in one hand, a scatter of letters in the other. ‘Et alors? Any luck?’ I sat on the end of her bench while she placed her letters on the board carefully. ‘U, et E, et T. Voilà! “Taquet”. A word. I win.’ She put the cigarette in an ash tray.

  ‘I’ve found a house. The house.’

  She nodded slowly, took a sip of her drink, put the cigarette back between her red lips. ‘With land? How much land?’

  ‘Twelve to fourteen hectares. Four hundred olive trees, an oak wood. A well. Isolated.’ ‘Price?’


  ‘About 75,000.’

  Her eyebrows rose an inch. ‘Francs?’

  ‘No. No. Pounds. About.’

  ‘Make an offer. It is agricultural, eh?’

  ‘Agricultural. Yes. In poor condition.’