by Tony Hawks
“What do you want for dinner tonight?” he called up to me without seeing my visitors, who were gently observing all from behind me. “I’ve made some lovely soup.”
“Er…right. Yes, soup would be nice,” I called back, somewhat awkwardly, trying to avoid the eye contact of my guests.
“Brill,” said Ron before disappearing through the side gate, the place where I knew he liked to take his own al fresco pees.
I felt an urgent need to get everyone out of the house in order to save them the uncomfortable experience of having to see the almost naked Ron when he returned from relieving himself.
Even at the time I think I knew that I was panicking, probably unreasonably.
“Well,” I said, moving round to Marie-Laure’s father, grabbing his wheelchair and starting to lead him off to Fabrice’s car. “It’s been lovely seeing you. So, until the next time. A bientot!”
“Au revoir ,” said my guests as they quickly gathered their things, slightly surprised at the speed with which proceedings had been called to a halt.
“Yes, au revoir ,” I said, just beginning to realise how badly I’d handled the situation.
Well, it was too late to take a different approach now. I hurried them out of the door and off to their car, keeping up the mood of urgency until I was able to watch them drive off, bemusedly waving goodbye as they went.
I would have to get better at this entertaining thing.
11
Trees, Holes and Pilgrims
I awoke to the sound of cowbells. Not a bad way to start the day, especially for a city boy. When I looked out of the window I could see that the shy farmer’s cows were not far from the boundaries of my land.
“They’ll be in my garden soon!” I said, even though there was nobody else with me.↓
≡ Talking to yourself is said to be the first sign of madness. I’m sorry, but I have to question this. What if, before you’ve done any talking to yourself, you start foaming at the mouth, shouting at passing cars and hopping round Sainsbury’s? Do these not count as preliminary signs?
Ron was toiling in the garage and Kevin and Nic were having a lie-in when Mary, the widowed Irish lady I’d met at the village dinner, called round. I’d seen her several times since then, but usually just for a brief neighbourly exchange. Now she had some interesting news.
“You’ll probably hear Miles playing the piano at my place in the next few days,” she said. “He’s over for the music night. The other boys will be over soon, too.”
“Mary,” I replied, “why don’t you have a cup of coffee and tell me what on earth you’re talking about?”
Mary soon had me up to speed. Miles and the ‘boys’ were her sons, and they were all musicians. They combined coming over to see their mum with visits to the Marciac jazz festival, and last year Malcolm and Anne had seized on the opportunity to exploit their talents by putting on a music night in the village. Local French musicians had joined forces with these Irish guests to create ‘une soiree musicale Franco-Irlandaise. By all accounts it had been a great success.
“The boys are looking forward to it this year,” said Mary. “You play piano—will you do a little turn yourself? I know that Malcolm and Anne want you to. They’re organising it.”
“Well, I could do,” I replied, “but I don’t want to muscle in on someone else’s gig.”
“Heavens, you won’t be doing that,” said Mary, sipping on her coffee, sitting back on the settee and relaxing into full ‘chatty’ mode. “I’ll tell Malcolm and Anne that you’ll do it, then. They got me to play last year and no doubt they will this year, too. I don’t like doing it because I’m best when I’m just playing to accompany others. That’s what I do up at the hotel in Lourdes. Actually you must come up and listen one night very soon—there’s a priest who is with the present party of pilgrims who says he wants to meet you. He’s read your fridge book, you see.”↓
≡ Round Ireland With A Fridge. Available from all good bookshops.
“I’d love to come, Mary,” I said. “We haven’t made any plans for tonight actually. I’ll suggest it to the others when they get up.”
“Well, it would be lovely to see you up there, and you must come round for a beer when the boys arrive.”
“Thanks. I will.”
Just as Mary was saying her goodbyes another caller arrived. It was Malcolm—just too late to be the first to give me the news of the impending music night. He did, however, have some other interesting information.
“I’ve just been talking to Serges,” he said.
“Moustachioed Serges?”
“No, the other Serges.”
“Ah, Serges II? Brother of Roger the mechanic—the one with the mechanical digger?”
“Yes, him. Well, you know you said you might want him to dig the hole for your pool?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s just had a job cancelled and he can do it this morning. He says if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t have any more time for a month.”
“Blimey, this is all a bit sudden. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.” Suddenly my hand was forced. Although I’d purchased the polystyrene blocks and all the additional pool equipment, I still hadn’t yet quite come to terms with the concept of digging out a massive great hole in my back garden. I was in denial. Part of me wanted a pool. I loved the idea of improving my fitness by doing lengths before hoisting myself out and lounging poolside, basking in the sun with a cool drink in hand. However, I was also afraid of creating a millstone around my neck—a monster that would constantly need attention, with its nitration systems, pumps and complicated prescription of chemicals. I was worried that every time I left it for a few weeks I would return to find something resembling a stagnant cesspit. Yes, I’d made the purchase but somehow I still hadn’t fully committed.
“What shall I tell him?” asked Malcolm.
Damn. I had to make a decision right now. I hated that.
“Er…well, can you tell him to pop down and we’ll talk the job through and agree a price?”
“Sure.”
I’d bought myself another ten minutes.
§
Ron was just emerging from the woodshed as Serges pulled up in his van and got out. It was strange, but the two men seemed to like each other instantly. I watched from the balcony as they shook hands and engaged for the first time. They had no language in common (Ron had not been spending his ample downtime with his head buried in Teach Yourself French) and yet there was much communication taking place. There seemed to be a kind of instant male bonding going on. Perhaps they saw themselves in each other. Serges was younger and slimmer than Ron, but he shared the same characteristics. A durable face with a no-nonsense expression, grubby overalls which are the builder’s battle fatigues, and a muscular upper body cultivated by years of heavy lifting rather than gym membership at a poncy sports club. A lot of pointing and gesturing was going on by the time I made it down to join them.
Serges wanted to know who was going to build the pool. I hesitated. I had a feeling that he was going to be surprised by my answer. And he was.
He raised an eyebrow and cocked an ear. He wanted to hear this from me again. I confirmed the facts. We were going to build it ourselves. There now followed an extraordinary display of face-pulling dexterity. I had thought that Roger, his brother, had excelled himself with his performance after I had asked him to find me a nice ten-year-old estate car, but it was nothing compared to what now followed. Serges grimaced, winced, shook his head, closed his eyes, scowled, laughed, threw his head back and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. He simply couldn’t believe that we were going to take the job on ourselves, and in the following few minutes he did everything in his power to persuade me to do otherwise. Did we know how difficult these kinds of jobs were? Did we not realise that if we built it ourselves then we wouldn’t be covered by the manufacturer’s insurance if anything went wrong? (No, I hadn’t realised, but I wasn’t going to tell Serges that.)
/> “Ce n’est pas de probleme ,” I said.
Serges threw his head back again, aghast. I told him that I was an eccentric and that I liked adventures. Ron looked on, bemused. Meanwhile, Kevin and Nic slept on upstairs, unaware of the momentous events now unfolding. Serges looked around him, shrugged, and then marched off to inspect the small tree that had afforded us valuable shade from the summer sun. He paced out just how far it was from the edge of the proposed pool, the dimensions of which Ron and I had hastily marked out in the ten frantic minutes before his arrival.
Serges stopped, looked at the tree, stared down at the ground and then turned to me, somehow managing to form yet another new expression. He sighed, shrugged again, and then ran his finger quickly along his throat. The tree, it seemed, would have to go. I tried to defend it, but Serges was adamant that it would be a huge problem if allowed to remain.
“He’s right,” said Ron. “Those roots will eventually destroy the pool’s walls.”
This was a blow. It was a nice tree and there was no doubt that it added to the garden. But we were in one of those spaces in time where everything was in fast motion. The kind of decision that needed days of mulling over was required to be taken instantly. I felt some sympathy for world leaders who must be forced into this kind of position on a regular basis, particularly during wartime. I’m not sure it would have suited me.
“Prime Minister Hawks, we have to drop those bombs in the next ten minutes otherwise all will be lost.”
“Errmm, right, er…yup, gosh…right, yes…important stuff, yes…um…er…Look, I’m busy right now with my cornflakes—I’ll have an answer for you when I’m done.”
A few minutes later all was sorted. Serges had quoted a very reasonable price for the job, and he was to come back with his mechanical digger in half an hour. By the end of the day, there would be no tree and a bloody great big hole in the garden. Scary stuff.
Still Kevin and Nic slept on. The lie-in. One of the joys of being on holiday. I’d never come to appreciate this fully, never having held what could be commonly termed a proper job. Apart from the odd day here and there, I’d worked largely from home, relying on self-discipline to kick-start the day’s work. I’d rarely made use of my alarm clock, knowing that I would wake up when I was ready. The lie-in was all too available for me and consequently had never become a treat. But Kevin and Nic were enjoying it now, the length of their slumber a sign that they both needed this rest, and that they were relaxing into the new pace that life here demanded.
The same was not true of me on this particular morning. This was the closest thing to stress that life here could engender. Ron soothed my nerves by pouring me a comforting cup of tea in the kitchen. We made a pot of coffee, too, ready to offer to Serges when he returned with his digger. This, as we were soon to discover, was rather naive of us. Serges was not the ‘sit around and have a cup of coffee before you start work’ type.
Moments later we heard the distant hum of a large piece of machinery.
“That’ll be him,” said Ron.
I poured Serges a cup of coffee and we both moved outside to greet him, only to see the digger turn the corner from the road and head straight down the steep drive. Serges didn’t even glance at me or Ron, but simply aimed his speeding contraption directly at the tree and let gravity bolster his speed. The poor tree was then duly and unceremoniously rammed. BANG!
Ron giggled. A nervous kind of giggle.
“Oh well,” he said. “That’s the tree sorted anyway.”
“Bloody hell,” I said in amazement. “What if I’d changed my mind about the tree in the last twenty minutes?”
“Well, he would have just changed it back again for you.”
I heard a commotion upstairs and looked up to the window to see Kevin and Nic, sleep still in their eyes, staring down at the extraordinary scene below them.
“Tony,” said Nic. “Someone’s knocked your tree over.”
It’s always good to have someone around who’s on top of what’s going on.
“Yes,” I said. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
The tree was now at a forty-five degree angle, roots exposed to the sun, with a good proportion of the lawn having been hauled along with it. Serges was oblivious to the adjacent astonishment. He simply reversed his digger—or battering ram as it might be more accurately described—and rammed it straight back into the stricken tree. This successfully reduced its hanging angle by a further twenty degrees.
“Blimey,” said Kevin from the upstairs window. “He doesn’t muck about, does he?”
Serges dismounted his yellow monster and reached inside the cab of his machine. This seemed like a good moment to take over the cup of coffee that I was still holding for him. However, just as I started to move towards him, he spun round from the cab brandishing a huge chainsaw. For a moment it seemed like I was facing a character from a horror movie. I retreated to safety immediately.
“Coffee can wait,” I whispered to Ron.
“Yes, he doesn’t seem to be the hot-drink type,” said Ron with a dry smile.
We watched in awe as Serges reduced the tree to manageable-sized pieces of wood, and I could have sworn that I saw Kevin lick his lips. Soon the tree was firewood. I felt guilty. Had we done something environmentally wrong? Would it be OK as long as we planted another? And who adjudicated on these issues anyway? I decided it best to adopt a local approach to the matter, and so I shrugged my biggest shrug and sat down to drink Serges’s coffee for him.
Once the tree was history, Serges wasted no time in getting on with excavating the hole. His approach was brutal. He used his machine like a ruthless general might use an army. Any obstacle was removed or destroyed. No prisoners were taken. In, out, in, out, went the huge claw of his mechanical digger, and soon a huge pile of mud was building up on the boundary with my far neighbour.
“You’d better have a word with next door about that,” said Ron. “It’s not exactly going to look pretty by the time Serges has finished.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I replied. “His car’s there now. I might pop round in a minute.”
“And what do you want to do about those dead pine trees?”
Oh dear. Another major decision was looming. Two tall trees had died during the previous summer’s drought. Dead though they were, they offered valuable privacy from the outside world. Without them, this particular part of my garden—the pool section—would be visible from the village road. Unusually, I became bestowed with a sense of both authority and clarity.
“Let’s leave them,” I said. “We can always cut them down a bit, or remove them completely at a later date.”
“Righto,” said Ron.
§
I’d only spoken to my neighbour Bruno once before. I’d been told that he was a private man who worked terribly hard running a mountain restaurant, and he had no time or inclination to participate in village events like the dinners or fetes. When he was lucky enough to get some time off, he liked to spend it with his wife and children. All I’d managed thus far was a short and genial exchange with him when I’d driven past once and had seen him getting into his car. We’d chatted briefly and established a positive neighbourly relationship, and so I was anxious not to upset that now with the creation of the huge and unattractive pile of mud on his borders. Bruno was organising things in his garage as I walked down his drive to explain. He greeted me warmly and offered up some reassuring small talk about the weather, possibly in deference to my Englishness. He proceeded to quiz me about the pool and when I explained about the imminent mound of soil he said that he had no problem whatsoever with it, and he wished me luck. I thanked him and strolled back to my place, in splendid spirits, largely as a result of this highly successful conversation.
The feeling was short-lived, however, as I was immediately intercepted by Ron who pointed towards the boundary of my land. It looked very exposed somehow. Serges was still spinning around in the cab of his digger, its claw feverishly pound
ing this way and that.
“There’s something missing,” I said.
“Yes,” said a sheepish Ron. “The pines. I’m afraid Serges took an executive decision.”
“What?”
“Serges seemed to decide they were dead and that they needed to be removed.”
“So he just rammed them?”
“Yes.”
“Without asking?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
“What was I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of the digger?”
“Well, kind of, yes.”
“How can you kind of run in the way of a digger?”
“I don’t know. You improvise.”
“Yes, you improvise, and you get knocked over by a digger.”
Ron was right, of course. There was nothing he could have done other than wave his arms, which no doubt he had done. I’d already seen that Serges, when in full ‘digger mode’, was not the sort of chap who pays a good deal of attention to external influences such as arms. Even as we spoke he was decimating further parts of the garden.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do,” I offered with yet another shrug. “Once a tree has been uprooted, that’s pretty much the final word on the matter.”
“Yes,” said Ron. “Especially when it’s dead already.”
A fair point, I suppose.
“Some of our privacy has gone,” I announced. “Our bungling attempts to build a pool will just have to be visible to anyone who drives or walks by.”
“Should be good for village morale.”
The rest of the excavation went off largely without incident. Ron continued to oversee proceedings with an occasional authoritative thumbs-up or pointy gesture, and he and Serges continued to bond in spite of being locked into a world of improvised sign language. At 3pm Serges shook my hand and headed off home, seemingly content with his day of destruction. He was leaving us with a massive hole, two huge mounds of mud and a large pile of ex-trees.
