2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees

by Tony Hawks

  Nevertheless, however well you get on with your builder, it’s still not normal to get him to move in with you. Certainly not if you’re a heterosexual man who is not instantly drawn to beards and bellies. However, because we both have a decent sense of humour, we like our own space, and we were both Piscean men living without a woman in our daily lives, I thought we could make this work.

  I must admit, though, that recently I’d noticed a deterioration in Ron’s general condition. He’d not had much work lately, mainly because he hadn’t picked up the phone and chased it, and he’d spent too much time alone on his boat, slowly letting his self-confidence ebb away. By his own admission, his appetite for building had disappeared and of late he’d tended to perform the role of foreman, preferring to point at work and direct others rather than actually knuckle down and do any hard graft himself. Secretly I hoped that removing him from his boat and dumping him in the Pyrenees might lift his spirits and herald the era of a ‘New Ron’—vibrant, cheery and eager to get on with things.

  The day of our departure arrived. The airport was packed, and it felt different somehow to my previous trips. At first I was confused as to why, but then I realised. The school holidays had begun and most of those around us were families going on their annual fortnights away. At check-in, instead of being surrounded by the relative calm of the business traveller, Ron and I were subjected to the constant whine of children’s questions: ‘MUM, WHY DO WE GIVE OUR SUITCASES TO THE LADY?’, ‘DAD, WHY DID HE WANT TO KNOW WHO PACKED OUR BAGS?’ And then there were the weary appeals of exhausted mothers: ‘DAMIAN, PLEASE STOP PULLING YOUR SISTER’S HAIR,’ topped by the occasional raucous bellow from a short-tempered father: ‘DEAN, GET OFF IT RIGHT NOW! IT’S A LUGGAGE TROLLEY NOT A BLOODY DODGEM CAR!’

  These people looked dog-tired and it was a pretty good bet that they were all going to return from their two weeks away desperately in need of a holiday. Occasionally a father would look at me with an envious glint in his eye. I’m afraid I had little sympathy. It had been precisely the weary expression that this poor fellow was wearing that had always put me off the idea of starting a family. Why put yourself through the grief?

  If Ron and I weren’t the original ‘odd couple’, then we made a splendid second best. From time to time people looked at us with an expression of curiosity, no doubt trying to work out who we were to each other. Just why were we travelling together? Were we relatives? Or work colleagues? Or did they think we were lovers? I quickly encouraged my mind to move on. This last image was one that I wasn’t keen to have linger.

  We completed the journey quietly, enduring the mayhem of migrating families with good grace and great forbearance. Soon enough we were exposed to the heat and humidity of late July in the south of France, and before long we were driving down the winding narrow road that led to my new home.

  “Nice views,” said Ron, who had been in fine spirits for the journey.

  “Yes—good, isn’t it,” I replied, proudly.

  Ahead I could see a small old lady with grey hair, shooing some chickens into an adjacent dilapidated barn. She immediately looked up at the sound of an approaching vehicle. I could now see that this was Marie, the sweet elderly lady with whom I’d played belote on the day of the village dinner. She beamed and waved to me. Well, it was more than a wave, really; it was an instruction to pull over the car and chat. An instruction that I duly followed. I leant out of the window and kissed Marie gently on each cheek. She looked a little taken aback and then I remembered that the etiquette in France was generally to kiss women younger than you, and shake hands with the older ones. Oh well, maybe it fell to me to change all that.

  “Voici mon ami Ron”, I said, pointing to my passenger.

  Marie tried to reach across and shake his hand, but it was too far. Ron nodded meekly and made eye contact with Marie for only the briefest of moments. It reminded me just how painfully shy the man was.

  Perhaps it was the two kisses, but Marie definitely had a twinkle in her eye as she fired questions at me. How was I? What was the weather like in London? How long was I here for? She chatted freely, regardless of the fact that all the chickens she’d diligently shooed into the barn were now slowly making their way back out again. She began to rave about how nice my car was but I quickly explained that this was rented and that I would be looking to buy a second-hand one soon. Ah, she said, then I should talk to her son. He would find me one. He repaired cars and often found good second-hand ones for people in the village. I thanked her and said goodbye.

  “What was all that about?” asked Ron, who didn’t speak a word of French.

  “Oh, she was just saying how she’s captain of the village volleyball team and that you looked like you’d be a useful addition to the squad. She’s expecting you at training tonight.”

  “Oh right,” he said, not really taking in what I’d said. “There was a nice mechanical digger parked round the back of the farmhouse, did you see that? That could be very useful to you if you want to get the hole dug for your pool.”

  “Good thinking, Ron.”

  I called out to Marie, who was only too pleased to chat further and let more ‘shooed’ chickens leave the barn again. I learned that the digger belonged to her son Serges. I announced that I’d met him at the village lunch, but Marie put me straight. There were two Serges in the village and her Serges never went to social events. I was delighted to learn, however, that her Serges might be up for digging a big hole for me—he was very busy but it could be fine if I caught him at the right time.

  “How did that go?” asked Ron as we drove away.

  “Pretty well. The digger belongs to her son. He’s captain of the volleyball team. If you play well at training tonight we could be in there.”

  “Oh, right.”

  We didn’t get much further down the road before we were flagged down again, this time by a thin, middle-aged man in a blue peaked cap, sitting aloft in a beaten-up old tractor. I got out of the car and greeted the man, his hardy face ravaged by the sun, before shaking his hand and asking what he wanted. Somehow he seemed to know that I was the new Englishman who had moved to the village, and he was anxious to learn if I wanted to carry on with the same arrangement as the previous owner, Jean-Claude. The question confused me a little. Seeing my bewilderment, the farmer explained that there was a traditional agreement that during the summer he could bring his cows onto the bottom piece of my land to graze. This effectively meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about mowing this grass, as the cows would munch it all away for me.

  Was I all right with this?

  Too right I was. Less work for me, and from time to time I got a herd of cows in my garden.

  “Une bonne idee” I said with a big smile.

  The farmer, who I took to be as shy as Ron, nodded uncomfortably before starting up his tractor again and disappearing back into his world.

  “I’ve got my own cows!” I announced to Ron, somewhat overstating the case.

  “Well done,” said Ron supportively.

  Just as the tractor was reaching the brow of the hill behind us, a grey-haired man in blue overalls appeared at the top of the drive to the house that nestled below us. It was ‘bonhomie’ Roger, the cheerful man I had met briefly at the village lunch and dinner. He was sporting his trademark grin and twinkly eyes.

  “Hello, Tony,” he said, shaking my hand. “Welcome back to France. How long are you here for?”

  “A long time,” I replied. “I am going to be a part of your village now.”

  “This is good, you are most welcome.”

  Roger’s face showed that he meant this. It wasn’t just some sycophantic remark that he’d made to pass the time of day. Conversations I’d shared with Anne and Malcolm meant that I knew this man to be genuine. He was one of the stalwarts of village life, working hard behind the scenes for all the village social events, and generally taking neighbourliness to new heights. I was pleased that he seemed to like me.

  “I saw from the
window in my house,” he said, still beaming broadly, “that you were speaking with my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes. Up the road. She lives in that house—where you stopped one minute before.”

  Of course. I knew this from the village dinner. Marie was Roger’s mother. And now I knew that Roger had a brother called Serges. And he had a mechanical digger. Serges probably lived with his mother Marie because he was single. Evidently Roger and his wife had built a new house on the family land, so he now lived next door to his mother and brother. In only a matter of minutes I was beginning to unravel the plot of the village’s soap opera.

  “Your mother tells me, Roger,” I said, “that you might be able to find me a second-hand car?”

  “But of course. What would you like?”

  “An estate car would be good. About ten years old? A Peugeot—or a Renault.” I wanted to ingratiate myself by buying French.

  “Don’t worry. I will find you one,” he said, not altogether convincingly. “And if you need help—you must knock on my door.”

  With those words Roger disappeared back down his driveway, and Ron and I drove on, hoping to make it to the house this time. Our stomachs were calling for lunch.

  “Very friendly round here, isn’t it?” said Ron, somewhat amused by all the attention we’d already received even though we’d only been in the village a matter of minutes.

  “Certainly is,” I said, smiling broadly.

  “Were Roger and that farmer on about volleyball too?”

  “No, Ron,” I said. “They’re president and vice-president of the Village Independence Party and they’re arranging a march on Paris tomorrow morning.”

  “Right.”

  Just as we turned the final bend before my house, Irish Mary, who lived next door but one, waved to us from her terrace.

  “Shall I stop and say hello?” I asked Ron.

  “No, I’m starving. She’ll have to wait till after lunch,” said Ron, unaware that he was missing out on the one conversation with the locals that he would have understood.

  §

  “Yeh, I’ll be happy enough in there,” said Ron, with trademark monotone delivery.

  We were busy sorting out where Ron would sleep whilst he was at the house.

  “Are you sure?” I said. “I mean, there’s plenty of room inside.”

  “Nah, this is probably better. It means that when your friends arrive, I’ll be out the way.”

  “Only if you’re sure.”

  “Yeh, I’ll be all right in there.”

  And so it was, with perhaps an oblique nod towards the Nativity, that Ron moved into the woodshed.

  It was a good woodshed, mind you. Better than a stable, anyway. It had electricity, it was dry and it had a decent roof. Once we’d put a bit of carpet down and given the walls a lick of paint it was fit for…well, it was fit for Ron. He confirmed that he’d be happy enough in this bolthole, preferring to be out of the way of house guests. Ron liked his own space, but didn’t necessarily need a lot of it. Life on a narrow boat had cured him of that indulgence. For him, the woodshed was relatively spacious, and after we’d finished moving in items of furniture it definitely resembled a hut which hardy young travellers would happily rent on a beach in Thailand or Goa. The only real difference was the lack of adjacent sun-soaked beach populated by scantily clad women. But no matter, Ron’s imagination was as good as the next man’s.

  §

  In the coming days we were kept very busy. Ron began tiling the downstairs double garage, the first stage of making it a habitable overspill for when the house was brimming with guests. Meanwhile I drove around the region buying materials and calling in on swimming pool shops, all the time wondering for how long I’d be stuck with the hire car. Was Roger seriously going to find me a second-hand estate car? Genuine though he may be, there had been nothing about his demeanour to suggest that this would be a priority for him. And why should it be? He had a full-time job as an engineer in nearby Tarbes, and he tinkered with cars at the weekend. He’d hardly have much spare time.

  One morning as I drove towards his house I decided to drop by and make further enquiries. As I negotiated the steep driveway and neared his garage, I could hear the gentle tinkering of spanner on carburettor. Or screwdriver on alternator. Or similar. Well, you get the gist.

  “Roger? Tu es la?” I asked, eager to announce a new presence.

  An oil-covered man slowly revealed himself on a little trolley from beneath the big Peugeot estate before me. He could have been a diver emerging from the depths of the sea for all the knowledge I had of the world whence he had just come. The World of the Mechanic. An alien, scary world and not one where you’d choose to spend your holidays. Roger proffered his arm, since his hand, as he ably demonstrated with a brief flourish, was too oil-caked for the conventional grasp and shake. I smiled, shook his elbow and enquired as to how he was getting on in the ‘finding me a nice ten-year-old estate car’ stakes. He threw his head back, rolled his eyes and bent his bottom lip. A possible sign that he hadn’t lined up a choice of six for my inspection.

  “Ah, c’est difficile ,” he said, adding a shrug to his vast range of gestures. “The estate cars are hard to find—but do not worry. I am trying.”

  Somehow I doubted that he’d done much vigorous phoning around or scouring of the local ads—or that he was about to do so. He just looked too laid back. Almost unhealthily so. I strongly suspected that his ‘finding’ an estate car would have had to involve someone driving one round to his place and handing him the keys.

  It had been the shrug that Roger had given me when we’d said goodbye that led me to take such drastic action later that same day. It had been a gesture that I took to mean that although he wanted to help, he just wouldn’t be able to find the time. That’s why I pulled the car over when I spotted a nice little red Peugeot 106 for sale, parked outside a car spares shop. Ron and I had just liberated ourselves from another particularly confusing session with a pool retailer in which we’d endured a long and baffling speech on the differences between sand and chlorine filtration systems. Now I was going to invest time in something else that I knew nothing about.

  “I think we should take a look at this car,” I said to Ron. “It looks in good nick.”

  “But I thought you wanted an estate.”

  “I do, but Roger assures me that they’re difficult to find, and I can’t hire forever so maybe I’ll have to compromise.”

  Soon Ron and I were giving it the once over and Ron bestowed upon it his seal of approval.

  “Sounds all right to me,” he said, as the owner jammed down the accelerator pedal. “I think you’ve got a nice little runner there.”

  The owner of the car appeared to be the proprietor of the shop as well, and I took this to be a very good sign. Provided that he wasn’t a crook (and he didn’t look like one—no stripy top, mask or sack over the shoulder marked ‘swag’) then the vehicle surely would have had spare parts showered upon it whenever it had needed them. Indeed, the owner reeled off a list of recently fitted new parts, all of which sounded impressively expensive.

  “Sod it,” I said to Ron. “I’m fed up of driving a hire car. It’s a waste of money. If he’ll accept a cheque, shall I buy it straight away?”

  “Yeh,” said Ron. “I think it’s a good bet.”

  I circled the car once more, trying to erase from my mind the fact that it had been Ron who had sanctioned the purchase of the White Van. To be fair, though, he hadn’t given it an enthusiastic final appraisal. A ‘piece of shit’ had been his eloquent judgement upon it, and one that time had all too speedily borne out.

  France is an excellent place to keep a pied-a-terre, have tete-a-tetes, use double entendres, arrange a menage a trois or discover one’s joie de vivre and raison d’etre. It is also a smashing place to experience deja vu. And that is precisely what I felt as I drove the red Peugeot away with Ron following behind in the hire car. The road ahead of me could e
asily have been in a suburb of Croydon and the wheel between my fingers that of a Luton van. Bereft of confidence, I drove on with a growing feeling of trepidation and impending doom. However, the kilometres rolled by and the car motored on, eventually delivering me home—accident and breakdown-free, and in fine style. Quite extraordinary.

  “There,” I said from the balcony, as I viewed my recent purchase glistening in the midday sun. “Now I have a house and a car.”

  “All you need now is a bird and you’ve got the set,” said Ron, succinctly evincing his uncomplicated view of the world.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I said. “But cars and houses are so much easier to find.”

  “And cheaper to run.”

  I changed the subject. I like to view myself as a ‘New Man’↓ and this conversation was heading in a direction where maintaining that position would have become increasingly difficult.

  ≡ Male readers might like to test how much of a ‘New Man’ they are. In the street, if there is a woman walking towards you to whom you are greatly attracted, then your ‘New Man-ness’ is measured by the distance you allow her to continue walking past before you turn round to see what she looks like from behind. I’m about a five-yarder. Dock a point if you mumble ‘nice cul’ under your breath.

  §

  With each passing day my French improved. My vocabulary expanded to include the French words for obscure items within the building trade. And if we needed any more aluminium foil, I was well on top of that task too. I was building superficial but nonetheless agreeable relationships with a coterie of shop assistants. The only frustrating thing about the French shopping experience was the number of times I was caught by the midday closing. Exhausted by the three hours of toil between nine and twelve, staff would down tools and head off for a healthy lunch followed by une sieste. For someone who didn’t necessarily get his act together to jump in the car and go shopping till 10.30am, this gave me a tiny window of opportunity to make my required purchases. If, as usually happened, I failed to make all the stores on time, then I was subjected to a couple of dead hours whilst I had to wait for the dozy gastronomes to open back up again.