‘Maman, what kind of lunch is this? Where is our entrée? We are used to having a nice little salad with fantastic dressing, isn’t that right, Mims? We always have a hot meal of meat and vegetables followed by a good selection of cheeses and some fruit. And everyone knows that you don’t serve milk at lunchtime if there is some cheese, otherwise you are overloading in the dairy department. This is not a balanced meal.’
Mimi chimed in, barely letting Harry pause for a breath. ‘Maman, pick your game up or we are going back to eat at the canteen and you can have your horrid sandwich by yourself.’
I knew immediately that my genes had bypassed my children and that their grandmother’s genes and character had manifested in them. They both made me feel pathetic and not at all worthy to be their mother: I would have to pick my game up, as they said. I had to try harder.
It was clear during the first few weeks without Raymond that a major decision affecting our lifestyle had to be taken. Would I take the easy road and join the expatriate community and spend my days talking to semi-retired couples about the intricacies of living in France, joining the canasta group, the walking group or the drinking at the bar on Saturday group? There was even a small core of Australians who lived part-time in the Luberon, with a few putting down roots permanently. Deirdre and Geoff lived in the neighbouring village of Roussillon and were in the throes of a full renovation of their home. Kit was tall and rangy and good-looking, with piercing blue eyes. He wore R.M. Williams boots and jeans and always took pride of place beside any barbecue that was going, beer in hand and joke at the ready. Although Kit was nearing his sixtieth birthday, he still had a hell-raising side that was definitely alive and well. Kit worked for a company based in Amsterdam that dealt with international gaming laws in casinos, giving seminars all over Europe, and more recently spending a great deal of time instructing the burgeoning markets of Eastern European countries. Due to his peculiar work demands, Kit divided his life between Sydney, Amsterdam and the tiny village of Saignon, where he had created the perfect bachelor’s palace of dreams. Kit came from Manly and knew many of Raymond’s friends, and drank at the same bars in Manly. Although he had a heartbeat and was without walking canes, I had no intention of joining the queue to have a dalliance with him. All of the English-speaking community had a wealth of information about living, renovating and surviving the tsunami of paperwork required in France, but they were at a completely different stage of life to me. I certainly did not want to join — or be the subject of — weekly gossip sessions at the bar. It was a safe move to be friendly but distant to the English-speaking community.
If you listen to parents at the school fence, you can solve most of the problems of the world; my biggest problem was home renovating on a minuscule budget. Not for the first time in my life, I started by asking questions — lots of them. My new school acquaintances just rolled their eyes and licked their lips, as there is nothing a Provençal woman likes better than to hand out advice. They are proficient and resourceful in a wide range of subjects, particularly:
1. Work.
2. Husbands.
3. Cures and remedies for childhood illnesses.
4. Fabulous Provençal dishes on a budget.
As far as they could see, I did not work and had no husband, so we were restricted to the last two subjects, which they attacked with gusto.
‘Ah oui, bien sûr, you English do not know how to cook with fresh vegetables or good-quality meat like we have here in Provence.’ Already the advice was faltering on the starting blocks. In Australia we have an abundance of every type of fruit and vegetable, fresh herbs and Asian greens — and we don’t have zee Mad Cow disease! But I was forced to think all of these things rather than utter a word aloud because on one crucial matter they were right: I didn’t know how they ate a big main meal at lunchtime and still remained so svelte. This was one topic that was assiduously avoided. No Frenchwoman ever discusses her slimming secrets.
The next few family lunches were slightly more successful, though the children were unable to hold back the comment that there were no féculents to accompany the roast beef I had slaved over all morning.
‘Well, Harry, what would you call a féculent, anyway?’ Harry looked at me blankly, as though I had gone completely and utterly stark raving mad.
‘What did you ever learn at dinosaur school? You know, things like white beans, lentils, red beans, chickpeas; I don’t know what you call them in English but the list is endless. Anyway, a nice little lentil salad is what we eat at the canteen to go with a hearty beef dish.’ I was now spending more time in the kitchen whipping up little culinary delicacies for my darlings than progressing with the wallpaper stripping.
Eventually, the walls were totally denuded and prepared for the first onslaught of paint. I thought that it would be easy to buy some paint and start the job. Of course, I was wrong. The other passion close to a Frenchwoman’s heart is giving advice on home maintenance. They know the best brands of paint, the best techniques for applying paint, where to buy the said brand of paint for the best price. I nodded in agreement as my eyes glazed over. I had learnt at an early age that it is always best to agree with everything and then do as you please.
During the frenetic period of buying the houses in Saignon, it had been suggested that I should meet Monsieur Daniel Perrard, a clever man who dealt with financial planning, who could perhaps iron out some of the looming problems heading my way — things much like the iceberg in the path of the Titanic. I had discovered the previous year that his office staff also had some tremendous hints when it came to renovations.
Monsieur Perrard had an office in Apt, ideally situated next door to Bricomarché, a DIY supermarket, where I had already spent hours the year before searching for the perfect colour blue to paint the shutters at Rose Cottage, one of our Saignon houses, so that it wouldn’t provoke the ire of the village people. An hour or two could be spent with Monsieur Perrard discussing French tax, budgets and my latest difficulties coming to terms with French life, and then the rest of the morning could be passed just thirty metres away in the handyman shop, sourcing all of my requirements for an afternoon’s work with the paintbrush.
Valérie, an incredibly skilled and adept young woman, was in charge of Monsieur Perrard’s office management and was also systematically advancing through the preparations for her forthcoming September wedding. Nothing fazed Valérie as she, too, spent what seemed like hours when Monsieur Perrard was unavailable explaining to me some foible of the French system that I was not coming to terms with: the opening and closing hours of shops, the French health system, the French taxation system, France Telecom, local councils. Every week I would arrive waving a ream of accounts or forms that had to be urgently filled in and completed, along with a board splattered with paint samples. She would calmly look through my papers, putting them into priority order — most went into the garbage bin. As she shook her head in disapproval of my paint colours, I, too, couldn’t resist offering advice on wedding dresses and colour schemes. Finally, after buying brushes, along with matt, low-sheen and high-gloss paint across the entire colour spectrum, the family council decided in peace and tranquillity in front of the bare walls: eggshell white.
The painting was keeping me beyond busy. I could barely breathe. There was no chance of missing Raymond and the so-called perfect life I had given up in Sydney, or time to think about how my life was unfolding. My thoughts were in a neutral holding pattern — and it was not a bad feeling for a change. Amid the chaos that followed me constantly, a funny irregular rhythm of harmony was emerging. The children seemed to be positively thriving in our unusual life.
The first stage of the interior work was almost done. It was time to begin the work in the garden. The gardener had installed the watering system and hardy plants had been chosen at the local nursery, though the gardener gave a snort of derision when 100 blue and white agapanthus were put next to our truck.
‘They will never grow in the microclimate of St S
aturnin les Apt, madame.’ Commonsense tells you that the locals know what kind of plants will flourish and which will suffer long and painful deaths. Once again, my heart ruled my head and I insisted that a garden full of bobbing white and blue pompoms waving on top of tall stems was just the thing for me. I made a mental note that on my next visit to Monsieur Perrard’s office I should ask if their competency ran to gardening advice. A compromise was found and I bought twenty agapanthus as a trial. The gardener loaded the pots into the truck, along with masses of lavender and rosemary bushes, standard and climbing roses and a whole range of Provençal shrubs and trees that needed next to no water — guaranteed to survive the harshest summer. The gardener was right about the microclimate of St Saturnin: it is completely unsuitable for agapanthus. In the subsequent years, I discovered that they managed to survive but they certainly did not flourish.
Less than three months later, the ugly duckling was no longer ugly, though nor was she a raving beauty. Our house would never have the old-world charm of the two Saignon houses, but there was a lot to be said for a huge sunny private garden and no stairs. The white roses were already in full bloom and threatening to take over a large section of the garden, as were the pink ballerina flowers in little pots that had been thrown in the back of the truck as a giveaway. The ballerinas had gone forth and multiplied in profusion. My fingers were crossed for the health of the agapanthus because we had decided to rename the house Villa Agapanthe.
Wandering through the house late at night while the children were tucked up in bed in their freshly painted rooms, relief flooded through me that I had finally kissed goodbye to that hideous brown paper, the beige stripes and the psychedelic blue and brown flowered paper in the main bedroom. There was still something missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until Harry was reminiscing about the bedroom in Sydney that he had had as a baby; he just loved all of my drawings of fish and mermaids on the walls. Poster paint and a small palette were bought from the art supply shop and I decided to draw and stencil ivy, grapevines, lavender and wisteria, making a colour theme in each bedroom.
Claire, a Frenchwoman whom I had met at one of the end-of-year school functions the year before, occasionally helped out my neighbour Pierre — a recent widower with three sons still at home. Nine-year-old Benjamin was in Harry’s class at school, as was Raphaël, Claire’s son. Pierre was struggling to keep his two older sons in line and was eternally grateful when Claire popped in with a cooked meal or to help out with some light housework. She was always arriving or leaving with armfuls of torn jeans and shirts that the three boys had managed to ruin during the course of their day. It didn’t surprise me that she would be an excellent seamstress. She was whippet thin, always on the move, putting on a load of washing, doing a quick basket of ironing and rearranging the kitchen so that when Pierre came home at night it looked like the fairies had visited. On one of her visits to their house, I watched as she leant perilously out of a window, cleaning and polishing the tiny panes. Apparently her curiosity had also been piqued: what was the mad Australian doing with so much paint? Paint that, even from a distance, she could tell was incorrect according to her years of experience and Frenchwoman’s know-how.
Invited down from her high perch, Claire arrived at the back door ready to give an appraisal of my paintwork. She gave me a ten-minute diatribe on how she could have transformed the house for very little expense due to her limitless expertise. Admittedly, all of her comments were valid, but I was not accustomed to anyone querying my work methods. The children and Raymond knew that I was never wrong. Claire was the sort of person who rubbed me up the wrong way. She rushed out of the house and I breathed a sigh of relief; she was a very bossy and forthright person, whose company was irritating and infuriating. My first impressions of her had been correct; she was incredibly generous and kind but far too domineering and strong. I was very glad when she returned to her window cleaning, leaving me in peace and quiet. The kettle was whistling, a warning that the water was boiled but also a sign from above saying, ‘Lock the doors. Take care. She’s back!’
Claire returned brandishing her tape measure and small pocket note pad, ordering me to hold the measure and jot down numbers. I basically succumbed to all of her commands. We had to make a list of what needed to be done, starting with the top priorities of carpet removal and checking that the electrical circuits were up to standard. Given that her husband was an electrician, she would make sure that he was available to help. The punch line was that all the curtains and slip covers for the chairs and sofas should be re-done — and of course upholstery was her speciality.
Every comment on colour and design that she made was correct. In fact, she was accurate about everything, but that did not stop her being a very scary person. Thin and wiry and very scary. Made even more so the next day when she started to wield the pneumatic drill, blasting through the concrete walls to install the new curtain rods. And the day after, when she arrived to lay the carpet with Patrick, her husband. While he lifted and dragged the carpet, we ripped off the skirting boards and carried the beds and the rest of the furniture into the hallway. Somewhere during the day, I became Claire’s assistant electrician, as that was yet another of her part-time professions. Somehow, we worked like a team forged together over many years. Instinctively I knew when to hand things to her, measure, drill and stand out of the way. Neither of us knew that a pattern for our friendship was now set for life.
CHAPTER THREE
The Wild Thyme Patch
It was time for a pause. My days had been eaten up with home decoration and nonstop painting, leaving little room for leisure time or friendships. Tired from the constant running around, it was time for a weekend break. A change of scenery would give me the lift I desperately needed. Porquerolles, a small island in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Toulon and fewer than ninety minutes away by car, was the perfect solution. Deirdre, one of the local Australians who was always on the move, knew what I would need and where to go on the island. She also reminded me to leave as early as possible to avoid the traffic. The moment school finished one Friday afternoon, the children and I piled into the car, the boot overflowing with food, fishing equipment, swimming things, bags of clothes and bottles of wine. We had enough equipment to cover all eventualities for the next forty-eight hours. Weaving in and out of the traffic like a demented mosquito through the thick congestion of Toulon during peak hour, the children cheered me on, knowing that there was the barest of margins to park the car in the little car park and catch the last ferry of the afternoon.
Porquerolles is a jewel undiscovered by foreign tourists. It is mainly frequented by French people who relish the luxury of the warm Mediterranean water and long sandy beaches, no cars and a vast variety of restaurants and accommodation for all budgets. Our little apartment was ideal for our needs: nothing luxurious, but clean and comfortable. Early the next morning we were at the port hooking up fishing lines ready to catch a couple of the fish that were tormenting the children, swimming in large schools under the surface of the crystal clear water. Within moments, Harry had caught his first fish. Jubilant from his fishing triumph, he was ready to conquer the next challenge on his list. At the ripe old age of eight-and-a-half he had decided that the time had come to learn to ride a bike successfully. Standing on his hands and juggling three oranges would have to wait a couple of years. The weekend continued to be a series of triumphant events, marred only by the slightly inclement weather. We cycled and hiked all over the island, enjoying long leisurely meals munching on steaming bowls of mussels and chips; wine was savoured and books were started but never finished. Forty-eight hours somehow stretched into what felt like a week. Rejuvenated, we headed home ready to make some plans about our life directions.
The next day, over our two-hour lunch and between courses, I called an urgent family meeting, pouring out some of my concerns to the children. I told them that it was time to reassess our life decisions; what I really meant was that I needed to reco
nfirm them. I had worked out early in their childhoods that it made more sense and probably would give rise to more harmony than discord within the family if I allowed other people to help in the decision-making process, namely Mimi and Harry. So Mimi and Harry sat at the table and called the meeting open.
My finances were completely tied up in the three properties, so that for the first time in my life I had no escape hatch. My heart told me that I had committed to a period of three years maximum, my head told me at least five years, and Monsieur Perrard had dared to whisper ten years — or fifteen for maximum returns. I knew that there was no way we could return to Sydney, and certainly not into Raymond’s arms, but I needed affirmation that the children could cope. Fibs, if not bare-faced lies, sometimes have to be told. I had never actually mentioned to Mimi and Harry that we were in Provence for a minimum of three years. Since our return from Australia I had learnt a great deal more about my financial standing, and it was obvious that there was really no choice in the matter.
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