2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees

by Tony Hawks

  “Fine by me. But don’t these things need more research? I mean, you don’t just come on a skiing weekend somewhere and then buy a house because your mate injures his ankle,”

  “Of course not, but you’ve got to start looking some time, and what else are we going to do?”

  “Fair point.”

  I reached for the map.

  “The nearest big town to here is Tarbes,” I said. “Let’s head there straight away. You have to admit, Mr Ankle, that anything is better than watching other people ski.”

  Kevin agreed.

  §

  Tarbes is not an exciting place. For me, anyway, the distant promise of the mountains left it feeling like a town where you might stop for refreshments before continuing to where you really wanted to be. However, it was pleasant enough and it had what we wanted—an estate agent—just off the pretty main square.

  “I’ll let you do all that stuff,” said Kevin, as I prepared to go inside.

  I could see that he was eyeing a Prisunic store, a kind of French Woolworths, with an obvious yearning.

  “You’re just going to buy lots of pants, aren’t you?”

  Kevin always did this. He likes buying his pants abroad. I’m not sure if it’s a fetish or not, but if it is I don’t know the name of it.

  “I might do,” he said innocently. “I’ll see you back here in half an hour.”

  “What exactly is it that you are seeking?” asked the smug-looking thirty-something agent.

  I toyed with saying that I was seeking ‘enlightenment and spiritual fulfilment’ but then I remembered that estate agents generally aren’t good at that sort of stuff.

  Monsieur L’Agent was smartly dressed in a dapper suit, with a trendy hairstyle that looked neat enough to make the photo in the window at a unisex salon. But for his dark complexion he was not unlike most of the British estate agents I’d encountered—well groomed, polite and adept at a sycophantic charm, undoubtedly nurtured to maximise profit.

  “I guess I want somewhere with views of the mountains,” I replied. “Without too much renovation work to do, reasonably private but not isolated, and within striking distance of a good-sized town where there’s quite a bit going on.”

  “I think that we have one just like this. It is brand new—we only took the instruction the day before today.”

  Yeah, yeah, I thought. When estate agents say they have something that is ‘just like’ your request, it has usually involved them indulging in liberal interpretation. ‘Striking distance’ can be covered by ‘anything reachable in just under an hour on the day when there happens to be no traffic on the roads’. “Private’ means ‘own front door’, and ‘not requiring much renovation work’ is their way of saying ‘sky not visible through first-floor ceiling’.

  “Can we look at it now?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he replied. “Just sign this.”

  He produced a document and pushed it towards me. It was full of complicated French, but I glanced through it quickly. It seemed odd that I was having to sign something so early on in the proceedings but I guess that the agent needed to be sure that if I wanted to purchase the property we were about to see then I would do so through them and not with any other agent. I didn’t bother reading the contract in detail, partly because I wouldn’t have understood most of it anyway, and also I suffer from Formophobia.↓

  ≡ Fear of bureaucratic paperwork.

  “How far away is the property?” I asked, returning the signed form to the agent’s outstretched hand.

  “Twenty minutes,” he replied, smiling. “And we can go right now.”

  §

  “From the particulars, it does sound like it’s exactly what I’m looking for,” I said to Kevin as our car sped along behind Monsieur L’Agent on the way to the house in question. “Usually they just talk bullshit, but I’ve got a feeling that he won’t be wrong on this one.”

  Kevin looked thoughtful for a moment, holding on tight to his big plastic bag full of pants.

  “Tony, if you ended up buying this place, what would you do in it?” he said, as the drive into the mountains became ever more picturesque. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but isn’t there a good chance that you’ll just end up sitting on your own and admiring the view?”

  “I’ll invite friends over,” I replied defensively. “I’ll have parties. We’ll go skiing in the winter and we’ll have mountain walks in the summer.”

  “I see,” said Kevin, who was patently aware of my deficiencies as a social secretary. I’d once invited everyone I knew to a party on my birthday, and then failed to attend it myself. (I’d been invited on holiday at short notice and had judged that to be the far better option. I left the keys to my flat with a mate, and the party was alleged to have been a great success, some of the more unkind guests saying that it had gone better than it would if I’d been present.) Kevin looked over at me with a cheeky glint in his eye. “Yes, I’ll look forward to you organising all that.”

  “I can do my writing there—and it’ll be a good place to practise the piano, too.”

  “What?”

  “No neighbours within earshot. I’ve always wanted that—I can bang away on the keys to my heart’s content.”

  “You’re going to buy a house in France so you can practise the piano?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I replied. “I haven’t even seen the place yet. I might not like it.”

  The omens were good as our car nosed over the brow of a hill, revealing a large sweep of imposing mountains on the horizon. They rose up like white-helmeted granite centurions standing guard over the scores of villages spread out before them like powerless minions in the lush green rolling foothills. Monsieur L’Agent’s car took a left and we followed him down a snaking single-track lane past barns and farmhouses that all seemed to overlook striking landscapes.

  “So far, this is doing it for me,” I said, sensing a kind of adrenalin rush building within.

  After several twists and turns we started to find that the lane changed in character, private residences taking the place of farm buildings. Most of these were modern but all seemed to be built in the characteristic architecture of the region—two-storey houses with high gabled roofs peppered with small dormer windows. We turned one more corner and then followed Monsieur L’Agent into a steep driveway on our right, where we parked and got out of the car. The view took my breath away. The house was perched on the side of a hill with a 270-degree view of undulating greenery, all against a backdrop of dramatic snow-capped peaks.

  “This is it!” I said to Kevin.

  “Aren’t you going to look at the house?”

  “Ah yes, the house.”

  The house wasn’t an old tumbledown farmhouse ready for loving restoration, but a twenty-year-old property that looked ready for immediate habitation. Three things made it special—location, location, location.

  “That is the Pic du Midi,” said Monsieur L’Agent, pointing to a mountain in the distance, and possibly sensing from my open mouth that a quick sale was far from out of the question. “You can ski in this place.”

  I didn’t tell him that we’d already done so—for half an hour, earlier that same day.

  “The villages you can see dotted on the hills are all in the area called Les Baronnies.”

  “Yes. It’s quite a nice view,” I said, trying not to look too enthusiastic and attempting to subdue an ecstatic grin.

  “Also, there is enough flat land to put in a pool if you want. Now, let us go inside.”

  Oh yes. Inside. I’d forgotten about the inside, so enchanted had I been by the scenery that was stretching out before us.

  The inside was pretty damn good too. ‘Ready to move into’ would have been the estate-agent parlance to describe it, but it would have been justified in this case. It had all the features that you’re looking for in a house—windows, doors, ceilings, floors, bedrooms, a bathroom, radiators, a nice wood-burning fire, and all in excellent condit
ion. The kitchen was a little small but that was more than compensated for by the large living room that ran the length of the house and off which was a large balcony that overlooked the view. The fabulous view. Did I mention that at all?

  §

  “You shouldn’t have put an offer in there and then,” said Kevin as we drove towards Bagneres-de-Bigorre, the nearest town. “It makes you appear too keen.”

  “Well, I am keen,” I argued. “What’s the point of not appearing keen if I am?”

  “It hinders the negotiating process.”

  Kevin was right, of course. I’d had enough experience in the world of courtship to know that an element of duplicity in the ‘negotiating process’ was vital. Only the inexperienced reveal their true hand, and they usually pay the price. I often wondered what kind of God had created the absurd human trait that finds ‘keen’ unattractive. A mischievous one, probably.

  “And what happens if they accept your offer?” continued Kevin. “You do realise you’ll be buying a house in France?”

  “Will I? By God! That hadn’t occurred to me. I thought we were just outside Portsmouth. I wondered where all those mountains had come from.”

  “You know what I mean. I love the house too—but I’m just being a good mate and trying to stop you rushing into something that you might regret. Have you thought it all through?”

  “Kev, sometimes in life you’ve just got to go for things. If you think too much, stuff doesn’t happen.”

  “Well, houses in France don’t get bought, certainly,” Kevin pointed out.

  Bagneres-de-Bigorre had seen better days. It was in an idyllic location, nestled in the valley between giant mountains, but it smacked of faded glory. All around were grand, venerable buildings desperately in need of a lick of paint.

  “I like this place,” I said. “Let’s find a hotel and make this our base for the night.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to visit some other estate agents in some other towns?”

  “Of course I’m not sure, but life would be pretty boring if we were sure of everything.”

  We checked into a hotel with a superficially majestic appearance that masked an interior that was borderline decrepit. This hotel had almost certainly been built when the town was at its most fashionable, back in the nineteenth century. In the early 1800s, Bagneres had become established as one of France’s leading thermal resorts, the ‘in place’ for the likes of Rossini and Flaubert. Now, in the early twenty-first century, it was having to make do with a visit from Hawks.

  I spent the rest of the day dragging Kevin around the town, reading to him from my guidebook as we went.

  “It says here that in the twentieth century,” I announced as we stood before Les Grands Thermes, the elegant healing spa that conjured up images of the town’s halcyon days, “the Pyrenees became a haven for people who were on the run, either from the Republicans at the end of the Spanish Civil War, or from the conservative establishment after the failed ‘67 Paris revolution.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I mean, how romantic is that?”

  Kevin pulled a face that seemed to mean ‘not very’, and I detected a hint of resentment that this cultural tour was preventing him from buying more pants. Ignoring this, I dived back into the guidebook and he braced himself for further trudging.

  By dinner, he was exhausted.

  “I feel like Britain’s leading expert on this town,” he said, pouring us a second glass of a slightly heavy red wine.

  “That’s good. You’ll appear very knowledgeable about the place when you come to visit me.”

  “Yes, well, let’s not get carried away. There’s a long way to go yet,” said Kevin, looking rather serious. “The vendors probably won’t accept your offer.”

  §

  The hotel breakfast was rather disappointing. Coffee, French bread and a dollop of jam are often deemed by our Gallic hosts to be a sufficiently nutritious start to the day. I was mid-mouthful when I got the call that proved Kevin wrong.

  “What is it?” he said, when he saw the look of horror on my face.

  “Monsieur L’Agent says that my offer has been accepted!”

  Suddenly, reality had kicked in. I felt weak. What had I done?

  Kevin shook my hand, and I immediately began thinking about how I could get out of things. It wasn’t too late to halt proceedings. A quick phone call to Monsieur L’Agent and it would fall to him to let down the vendors.

  “I can still back out of this,” I said to Kevin as he picked at the crumby remnants of his breakfast.

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he replied with an air of the statesman about him. “I think you’ve got it at a good price and it’s an excellent house.”

  “Oh,” I said, now rather confused with this sudden approval. “I thought you were of the opinion that I’d been too reckless.”

  “Oh yes. You have been ludicrously reckless, but you should still go through with it.”

  By now it was beginning to dawn on me. I worked out what had caused the sudden shift in Kevin’s role from confirmed sceptic to enthusiastic supporter. Two words summed it up.

  Free holidays.

  It all made perfect sense. As one of my oldest friends he knew that he would naturally fall into the ‘keys are yours whenever you want them’ category. Overnight, he’d realised that the biggest beneficiary of my hopelessly ill-prepared lurch into the world of overseas ownership would be none other than his good self.

  “So you think it’s a good deal?” I said, feeling a little emotionally drained.

  “Oh yes,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Just think—soon you will be the proud owner of a home in France.”

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. The big gulp said it all.

  2

  Célibataire

  Back in England I pondered and deliberated. I fluctuated between thinking that this purchase would be the most foolish thing I’d ever done, and giving in to bouts of reverie that saw me lying on the cool tiles of the living-room floor in my Pyrenean home as the sun streamed in through the French windows. These daydreams were vivid—I could even hear the distant reverberating bells of grazing cattle and sheep, and picture the snow-capped mountains towering over them on the horizon. In these dreamy moments it all seemed irresistible. What a contrast to the frantic pace of life in London, with all its competitiveness, noise, pollution, flurry, stress and anxiety.

  However, there were doubts too. Big ones. Surely buying a property overseas was the preserve of the married couple? Hadn’t Kevin been right to ask his question: “Isn’t there a good chance that you’ll just end up sitting on your own and admiring the view?” Also, at a time when more and more English people were moving to France and pushing up the price of property so much that it was becoming difficult for locals to buy, wasn’t there a risk that I was going to be greeted by aloofness and resentment? Would a single forty-four-year-old man be accepted with open arms into a remote Pyrenean village?

  Every night in bed, the doubts and the dreams fought it out in the battleground of my mind, until one further consideration started to tip the balance in favour of returning to France to sign the contracts.

  The small matter of the piano…

  It wasn’t until I was at the back end of my adolescent years that I’d begun to fall in love with the piano. From the age of eleven I’d dutifully done my nightly twenty-minute ‘piano practice’, but this had largely consisted of routinely crucifying the classical pieces allotted to me by my music teacher. However, by the time I was sixteen, I had begun sitting at the keyboard for hours, experimenting with different chord sequences, composing little melodies and trying to hammer out boogie-woogie rhythms with my left hand. I started to teach myself, and I no longer felt bound by the shackles of the musical notation before me. I was playing the music of’Tony’ and whether it was any good or not didn’t matter. I was expressing myself.

  Soon I had made myself a little promise. One day I would find a
romantic location somewhere and install myself therein with a piano, devoting my time to reaching my fullest potential on this instrument—a potential that at the time a combination of peer pressure and youthful foolishness was causing me to squander, hopelessly grappling as I was with the first throes of adulthood.

  Maybe, just maybe, a quarter of a century later, it was time to honour that promise.

  And that’s as good a reason as any to explain why, two weeks later, I was driving down the narrow lane back to the village. I had been invited by Jean-Claude, the owner of the house, to come over to meet him and his family. We would share ‘un cafe’ before heading off together to the notaire’s office to sign the legal papers.

  Rather inconsiderately, the UK and French authorities have completely different methods of interfering in the affairs of those who buy and sell properties. Stamp duty and the solicitor’s fees all get rolled into one payment made to a fellow called the notaire. It’s about 6 per cent of the purchase price, and frankly it’s a bit steep, but that’s the way it works, and who was I to question it? An occasional and quiet whinge would be the way I dealt with this inconvenience, much in the way that the British deal with most problems encountered abroad.

  The system also differs in that the notaire represents both the vendor and the purchaser. One might imagine that this could open up the notaire to bribery—one party might seek favourable treatment by baking him a succession of delicious cakes. How could I be sure that the notaire who was allotted to me hadn’t already been nobbled? How did I know that he wasn’t one of those Frenchmen who allegedly hate the English? What could I possibly do to even things up if I had no access to decent baking facilities?

  As I drove, my thoughts turned from worries about the notaire to concerns about the property I was actually here to purchase. As I turned the final corner, I felt a tingle of nerves. Well, more than a tingle. A veritable knot. What if I went off the place? The fear of the ghastly error returned with a sudden savagery. Being single, I’d had no partner with whom I could talk this whole thing through. Instead of endless pillow talk on the pros and cons of the purchase, I’d relied on ‘trusting my gut’, and now I was seriously beginning to wonder if it had let me down.