A Year In Provence

by Peter Mayle

"Formidable. The pipe must be clear."

  He made his repairs, and went home to watch the rugby on television.

  We started mopping up, telling each other that it really wasn't too bad. The carpet would dry out. There was barely enough rubble to fill a bucket. The scorch marks from the blowtorch could be painted over. All in all, as long as one disregarded the jagged, gaping trench, it was possible to look at the rooms and consider them finished. In any case, we had no choice. Sunday was only hours away.

  We weren't expecting anyone before 11:30, but we had underestimated the magnetic appeal that champagne has for the French, and the first knock on the door came shortly after half past ten. Within an hour, everyone except Didier and his wife had arrived. They lined the walls of the living room, awkward with politeness and dressed in their best, darting away from the sanctuary of the walls from time to time to swoop on the food.

  As the waiter in charge of keeping glasses filled, I became aware of yet another fundamental difference between the French and the English. When the English come for drinks, the glass is screwed firmly into the hand while talking, smoking or eating. It is set aside with reluctance to deal with calls of nature that require both hands-blowing the nose or visiting the lavatory-but it is never far away or out of sight.

  It is different with the French. They are no sooner given a glass before they put it down, presumably because they find conversation difficult with only one hand free. So the glasses gather in groups, and after five minutes identification becomes impossible. The guests, unwilling to take another person's glass but unable to pick out their own, look with longing at the champagne bottle. Fresh glasses are distributed, and the process repeats itself.

  I was wondering how long it would be before our supply of glasses ran out and we had to resort to teacups when there was the familiar sound of a diesel engine in labor, and Didier's truck pulled up behind the house, and he and his wife came in through the back door. It was strange. I knew that Didier had a car, and his wife was dressed from head to toe in fine brown suède which must have sat very uneasily on the gritty seat of the truck.

  Christian came across the room and took me aside.

  "I think we might have a little problem," he said. "You'd better come outside."

  I followed him. Didier took my wife's arm and followed me. As we walked around the house, I looked back and saw that everyone was coming.

  "Voilà!" said Christian, and pointed at Didier's truck.

  On the back, in the space usually reserved for the cement mixer, was a bulbous shape, three feet high and four feet across. It was wrapped in brilliant green crêpe paper, and dotted with bows of white and red and blue.

  "It's for you from all of us," said Christian. "Allez. Unwrap it."

  Didier made a stirrup with his hands, and with effortless gallantry, his cigarette between his teeth, plucked my wife from the ground and lifted her to shoulder height so that she could step onto the back of the truck. I climbed up after her, and we peeled off the green wrapping.

  The last strips of paper came away to applause and some piercing whistles from Ramon the plasterer, and we stood in the sunshine on the back of the truck, looking at the upturned faces that surrounded us, and our present.

  It was an antique jardinière, a massive circular tub that had been cut by hand from a single block of stone long before the days of cutting machines. It was thick sided, slightly irregular, a pale, weathered gray. It had been filled with earth and planted with primulas.

  We didn't know what to say or how to say it. Surprised, touched, and floundering in our inadequate French, we did the best we could. Mercifully, Ramon cut us short.

  "Merde! I'm thirsty. That's enough speeches. Let's have a drink."

  The formality of the first hour disappeared. Jackets came off and the champagne was attacked in earnest. The men took their wives around the house, showing off their work, pointing out the English bathroom taps marked "hot" and "cold," trying the drawers to check that the carpenter had finished the interiors smoothly, touching everything in the manner of curious children.

  Christian organized a team to unload the great stone tub from the truck, and eight tipsy men in their Sunday clothes somehow managed to avoid being maimed as the lethal mass was maneuvered down two sagging planks and onto the ground. Madame Ramon supervised. "Ah, les braves hommes," she said. "Mind you don't get your fingernails dirty."

  The Menicuccis were the first to leave. Having acquitted themselves with honor among the pâtés and cheeses and flans and champagne, they were off to a late lunch, but not before observing the niceties. They made a ceremonial tour of the other guests, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, exchanging bons appétits. Their farewell lasted fifteen minutes.

  The others looked as though they were settled for the remainder of the day, eating and drinking their way steadily through everything within reach. Ramon appointed himself the official comedian, and told a series of jokes which became progressively coarser and funnier. He stopped for a drink after explaining how to determine the sex of pigeons by putting them in the refrigerator.

  "What made a nice woman like your wife ever marry a terrible old mec like you?" asked Didier.

  With great deliberation, Ramon put down his champagne and held his hands out in front of him like a fisherman describing the one that got away. Fortunately, he was prevented from going into further revelations by a large piece of pizza which his wife delivered firmly into his mouth. She had heard the routine before.

  As the sun moved across the courtyard and left it in afternoon shadow, the guests began to make their tours of departure, with more handshaking and kissing and pauses for one final glass.

  "Come and have lunch," said Ramon. "Or dinner. What's the time?"

  It was three o'clock. After four hours of eating and drinking, we were in no state for the cous-cous that Ramon was promoting.

  "Ah well," he said, "if you're on a diet, tant pis."

  He gave his wife the car keys and leaned back in the passenger seat, hands clasped across his stomach, beaming at the thought of a solid meal. He had persuaded the other couples to join him. We waved them off and went back to the empty house, the empty plates, and the empty glasses. It had been a good party.

  We looked through the window at the old stone tub, bright with flowers. It would take at least four men to move it away from the garage and into the garden, and organizing four men in Provence was, as we knew, not something that could be arranged overnight. There would be visits of inspection, drinks, heated arguments. Dates would be fixed, and then forgotten. Shoulders would be shrugged and time would pass by. Perhaps by next spring we would see the tub in its proper place. We were learning to think in seasons instead of days or weeks. Provence wasn't going to change its tempo for us.

  Meanwhile, there was enough foie gras left over to have in warm, thin slices with salad, and one surviving bottle of champagne cooling in the shallow end of the swimming pool. We put some more logs on the fire and thought about the imminent prospect of our first Provençal Christmas.

  It was ironic. Having had guests throughout the year, who often had to endure great inconvenience and primitive conditions because of the building work, we now had the house, clean and finished, to ourselves. The last guests had left the previous week, and the next were arriving to help us see in the New Year. But on Christmas Day we would be alone.

  We woke up to sunshine and a quiet, empty valley, and a kitchen with no electricity. The gigot of lamb that was ready to go into the oven had a reprieve, and we faced the terrible possibility of bread and cheese for Christmas lunch. All the local restaurants would have been booked up for weeks.

  It is at a time like this, when crisis threatens the stomach, that the French display the most sympathetic side of their nature. Tell them stories of physical injury or financial ruin and they will either laugh or commiserate politely. But tell them you are facing gastronomic hardship, and they will move heaven and earth and even restaurant tables to help you.

&nb
sp; We telephoned Maurice, the chef at the Auberge de la Loube in Buoux, and asked him if there had been any cancellations. No. Every seat was taken. We explained the problem. There was a horrified silence, and then: "You may have to eat in the kitchen, but come anyway. Something will be arranged."

  He sat us at a tiny table between the kitchen door and the open fire, next to a large and festive family.

  "I have gigot if you like it," he said. We told him we had thought of bringing our own and asking him to cook it, and he smiled. "It's not the day to be without an oven."

  We ate long and well and talked about the months that had gone as quickly as weeks. There was so much we hadn't seen and done: our French was still an ungainly mixture of bad grammar and builders' slang; we had managed somehow to miss the entire Avignon festival, the donkey races at Goult, the accordion competition, Faustin's family outing to the Basses-Alpes in August, the wine festival in Gigondas, the Ménerbes dog show, and a good deal of what had been going on in the outside world. It had been a self-absorbed year, confined mostly to the house and the valley, fascinating to us in its daily detail, sometimes frustrating, often uncomfortable, but never dull or disappointing. And, above all, we felt at home.

  Maurice brought glasses of marc and pulled up a chair.

  "'Appy Christmas," he said, and then his English deserted him. "Bonne Année."

  About The Author

  Peter Mayle spent fifteen years in advertising, first as a copywriter and then as a reluctant executive, before leaving the business in 1975 to write books. His work has been translated into seventeen languages, and he has contributed to the London Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Independent, as well as Gentlemen's Quarterly and Esquire.

  A Year in Provence won the British Book Awards' "Best Travel Book of the Year" in 1989. Its sequel, Toujours Provence, was published in 1991. Mr. Mayle's most recent book is Chasing Cezanne. He and his wife live in Provence.

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