A Year in the Château

by Sarah Long

  Mary picked up the feather duster, which she kept propped up in the corner, and started flicking it around.

  ‘Darling, I promise you there is not a speck of dust in this room,’ said Dougie.

  ‘You know as well as I do that dust mites are invisible to the human eye.’

  She brushed the duster over the top of the window poles.

  Dougie started slowly clapping his hands.

  ‘Why are you applauding?’

  ‘Not your housework, exemplary though it is. I am awarding you first-class honours for an outstanding thesis. It takes me right back. I’ll never forget the moment I walked into the room for my viva. All the dons lined up in their gowns. I thought I was being interviewed to decide whether to award me a first- or second-class degree. Then they all stood up and applauded and one of them shook me by the hand . . .’ His eyes filled with tears at the memory. ‘It was a congratulatory first, Mary. The finest moment in my career.’

  Mary had heard the story many times.

  ‘You’re a clever old stick and you’ve had many glories since. That was only the beginning.’

  ‘That’s kind of you but you know it’s not true. My star has been sinking for some years.’

  ‘Which is why we are better off here, away from the academic microcosm. We can enjoy the joys of scholarship without the rivalries and unpleasantness of the system. We’re both getting so much more work done here than back at Cambridge, aren’t we? I think it’s something about not having to look your rivals in the eye every day.’

  ‘Not much rivalry here, to my relief.’

  ‘Exactly. Simon’s writing, a book of course, but it’s not in our field.’

  ‘Not in any field from what I can work out. He seems to change the premise on a daily basis.’

  ‘It will be fascinating to see what he comes up with in the end.’

  ‘You’ve inspired me, Mary. I’m going to write about the Great War, now we’re in the territory. I know it has been extensively covered, but with a little persistence I hope I shall uncover an aspect that until now has been little explored. We’ll start by touring the battlefields, if you’ll accompany me?’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘I see this new life of ours as a semi-retreat, don’t you? I’ve always disliked the self-absorption of those going into complete retreat; utterly pretentious to lock yourself away in a cave and think only about yourself. But here we have the opportunity to live within a small community like modern monks. I’m so glad we took the plunge.’

  ‘Me too. I particularly like not being hassled by people knocking at the door. Do you remember how we used to play dead to avoid the Jehovah’s Witnesses?’

  ‘Ha! Remember when you lay down on the floor after peeping through the eye-hole and seeing them standing on the doorstep. Didn’t dare to move in case they looked through the window and saw you!’

  ‘Imprisoned in my own home and wracked by guilt at my mean-spiritedness! Much easier to hide away here where we have thirty-two rooms to choose from. Speaking of which, I’m going downstairs now to have a quick clean of the kitchen.’

  She kissed the top of his head.

  ‘I’m so happy you like my thesis.’

  *

  In the turret room, Leo was listening to the whirring of the sanibroyeur in the bathroom below. It was a specialty of French plumbing, he had read – they liked to install them in unfeasible places, where the usual downpipe was not available – which required a macerator to chop everything up. Very often it went into overdrive and the sound of it was the background music of his otherwise enchanting haven at the top of the château. On rainy nights, when he escaped to the watertight attic room, he even missed its soothing rhythmic hum.

  He flicked through the copy of yesterday’s Times that he had bought earlier from the newsagent. The foreign papers were always a day late, which gave the impression that you were slightly out of kilter with news from Old Blighty, which he didn’t mind. It reinforced the feeling of being in a safe bubble, at one remove from what was happening in the real world. He had also bought a copy of today’s Libération, but French news did not seem so pertinent to him, even though this was now his adopted country.

  The Times had a feature on nature, which he found hard to get too worked up about. Apparently, there were 400,000 plant species in the world, a fifth of them under threat of extinction. But surely 320,000 was plenty to be going on with? Leo thought he could name maybe a hundred, if he was lucky – he hoped that didn’t mark him out as a climate-change denier. Rather than worrying about the world, he found it soothing to focus his attention on his immediate surroundings – it was the only sane response to the general madness out there.

  Mind you, his immediate surroundings were not without their challenges. The château had turned out to be in a far worse state than they had hoped, which was going to be a terrible financial burden. And as Chief Aesthetic Officer, he felt compelled to bring some kind of harmony to the reception rooms in the short term, even though the overarching grand scheme would have to wait. But how on earth could you combine Simon and Beth’s huge modern leather sofas with Will’s rustic farmhouse buffet – a legacy from his divorce – and Mary’s eighteenth-century Dutch burr walnut and marquetry inlaid coffee table, without making it look a complete shambles? He had visions of setting up a beautifully curated salon – one that potential clients would fall in love with and hire him on the spot to bring the same blend of Anglo-French style to their own homes. But he couldn’t let paying customers see him with a leaky roof and his friends’ furniture looking like the leftovers from a house clearance sale. Instead, he’d concentrated on putting only carefully cropped shots of the château on his website and hoped for the best.

  It was easier, really, to make an impact outdoors. He had claimed a row in the vegetable garden for his own use to raise rare salad leaves, sourced from specialist seed suppliers. Mustard Red Giant, lamb’s lettuce, nasturtium leaves, dandelion – whimsically named pissenlit in French, because of their diuretic effect. You eat with your eyes, and his goal was to present plates of salad as paintings, so sitting down to dinner became a similar experience to walking round an art gallery. In London, David had been in charge of the garden, and woe betide Leo if he meddled with the planting. Now he was free to do as he liked. The salad bed was his way of moving on, to use that terrible expression.

  He was hoping this afternoon’s date would be an arty type, in view of the venue he had suggested. One night, after being a little too liberal with the calvados, the friends had persuaded Leo it was time to take the plunge and they’d agreed this guy looked perfect for him. They were to meet at a Renaissance château museum, located in a village a few kilometres away, because Bertrand said he wanted to show him the fifteenth-century frescoes. He was a lover of history, looked about the same age as Leo and sounded more up his street than any of the others who had presented themselves on the app. No tattoos, for a start. The château museum was set within a moat, clad with glazed green tiles that were untypical of the region, a legacy of the former chatelain’s Italian wife, who missed her native land and hired workmen to recreate the luminous beauty of her home city – or so it said on the website, anyway. At least it will be an aesthetic delight, no matter how the love interest turns out to be, Leo thought.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘You know what’s the best cure for a broken heart?’ said Beth the next morning. ‘A bracing dose of sea air, to blow away the cobwebs of disappointment.’

  She and Leo were taking early morning coffee on the terrace while the rest of the household were indulging in a grasse matinée, as Leo called it, enjoying the judgemental tone of the French term for a lie-in. A fat morning – that was enough to ensure you never had one again. Only Dougie had been up with the lark as he wanted to speak to the builders when they arrived with the scaffolding. He was amazed the others had slept through it, with all that clanking and shouting.

  ‘I’m not exactly heartbroken,’ said Leo. ‘
Just disappointed by Bertrand’s utter lack of charisma.’

  ‘That’s the downside of internet dating: someone can sound the very soul of charisma on the screen, and then you meet them and find they have no spirit. I think that’s the most important thing, don’t you, to have spirit? That would be top of my list if I was on the hunt.’

  ‘You’re not on the hunt, though, are you? Is Simon behaving himself?’

  He couldn’t help noticing the friction between them.

  ‘Simon is being Simon.’

  ‘That sounds mysterious.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Beth. She wasn’t minded to share her marital problems with Leo. Today was to be a glorious trip to the seaside, she had decided. Pack all your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.

  ‘Don’t you agree it’s the perfect weather for an outing? We haven’t been to the beach yet. It’s only an hour away and it will be beautifully quiet – out of season and midweek, what could be better? Escape all these builders coming in to do the roof too.’

  ‘Yes, the sky is periwinkle blue. Vinca minor, excellent ground cover with sky blue flowers – I was reading about it earlier, now I’m embracing gardening. Look, here comes Nicola. I’m sure she’ll love the idea, won’t you, darling?’

  Nicola took his outstretched hand as she stepped sleepily out to join them.

  ‘What idea is that? I hate this invasion, don’t you? I didn’t think they’d be starting quite so soon with the scaffolding. It’s like living in Big Ben.’

  ‘I’ve got just the answer. An outing to the seaside,’ said Beth. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘Oh yes!!!’ Nicola said. ‘That is exactly what we need!’

  *

  The others didn’t take much persuading, although it was a couple of hours before they were ready to leave. Dougie and Dominic were very engrossed in supervising the scaffolders, while Leo kept changing his outfit and Mary had to be dragged away from her cleaning duties. Simon insisted on an hour of quiet concentration on his writing before throwing in the towel for the day.

  ‘Write every day,’ he said. ‘It’s the first rule of authorship, and I intend to be too wasted to do any later. You’re driving us back, Beth.’

  ‘It’s like organising a party of children,’ Beth complained. ‘I supposed I’d better ask everyone if they’ve been to the toilet.’

  ‘Don’t say toilet,’ said Leo with a shudder.

  Finally, they were on their way, sweeping through the château gates in a convoy, Will leading the fleet in his vintage sports car with the roof down, Fizz beside him in a glamorous hat, tied under her chin with a floaty chiffon scarf.

  ‘She looks better than most folk you see in open-top sports cars,’ said Simon to Beth. ‘Have you noticed it’s only ever vintage people who drive vintage cars?’

  ‘Will told me he’s gone off his car,’ said Leo, who was in his preferred place in the back seat, playing the fake son. ‘Ever since he read a review of a French château hotel that began, “We came in our vintage cars”. It was about a bunch of middle-aged Brits arriving in their show-off old Bentleys and sucking up to the aristocratic host. Will said he’s worried the car might make him look like a bit of a tosser.’

  ‘It’s true that vintage cars are generally driven by tossers,’ said Beth.

  ‘He thinks he may get a Fiat 500 instead,’ said Leo.

  ‘That’s a girl’s car!’ said Simon.

  ‘Don’t be such an old chauvinist pig!’ said Beth. ‘It’s a sexy Italian man’s car. Just because you’re too fat to fit in one!’

  ‘Come off it! When did you ever see a real man getting out of a pistachio green Fiat 500?’

  ‘You’re sounding terribly unreconstructed,’ said Leo. ‘I don’t approve of this sexual stereotyping. Remember you’re in the company of a member of an oppressed minority.’

  ‘Nobody is less oppressed than you, you old queen,’ said Beth.

  ‘If anyone’s an oppressed minority, it’s the white, middle-aged heterosexual male,’ said Simon, pulling a faux woe-is-me face. ‘The tide has turned against us.’

  ‘Drive on, you old mutton,’ said Beth, opening her window to wave at Nicola in the car behind. Dougie and Mary were safely installed in Dominic and Nicola’s car, always happy to take a back seat.

  *

  The route to the coast was a glorious drive through woods and fields. Will chose the smaller roads, so their approach to the sea was through narrow lanes beneath a canopy of sun-dappled trees, arriving at a harbour fringed with cottages and enticing restaurants with tables set out on the pavement. He parked alongside an MG Midget sports car, rather similar to his own, with British registration plates.

  ‘They stopped making them in 1979,’ he told Fizz, ‘so that car is older than you.’

  They sat on the wall, waiting for the others to catch them up.

  ‘This is pretty nice,’ said Fizz, looking down at the fishing boats moored beneath them. ‘Salty air, seagulls, old fishing nets – exactly the place for Mademoiselle Bovary to let her hair down. Would you mind?’ She took off her hat and shook out her hair, then passed Will her phone and posed in profile, chin cupped in her hand and with one foot resting on the wall to present an interesting triangular form.

  As Will was focusing, an elderly man tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Please, allow me,’ he said, taking the phone and ushering Will towards the wall. ‘I will make a beautiful picture of you and your daughter.’

  The man’s wife, wearing the local aubergine short-back-and-sides, nodded her approval as Will sat awkwardly next to Fizz.

  ‘Ouistiti! ’ said the self-appointed photographer. ‘Smile, please.’

  ‘What a cheek,’ said Fizz, after Will had thanked him and said goodbye. ‘Your daughter!’

  ‘Technically possible, I suppose.’

  ‘But you look nowhere near your age, I’ve made sure of that. Oh look, here come the others. OAP outing, with their sexy young carer.’

  Leo stepped out of the car and waved at them. He looked magnificently out of place in his powder blue suit and dove-grey lacy shirt. Fizz would definitely feature him on her YouTube channel – she’d get him talking to camera about his clothes.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Will. ‘It’s only Dougie and Mary who look their age; the rest of us are in pretty good shape.’

  Dominic and Nicola had parked further down and walked up to join them, hand-in-hand, followed by Dougie and Mary.

  ‘Look at these restaurants, actually serving food at three o’clock in the afternoon,’ said Nicola. ‘You wouldn’t find that inland; it’s only when you reach the coast that the usual rules are thrown out the window.’

  The rigidity of French dining hours was something they had remarked upon, because the culture shock of all-day dining had been firmly resisted in a country where everything revolved around meal times. Lunch at 12.30 and dinner at 7.30; anything else was an abomination, unless you were at the seaside where, it seemed, anything goes.

  ‘Let’s work up an appetite first,’ said Dominic. ‘Oh look, Will, someone’s admiring your car.’

  They turned to watch a tall, eccentric-looking figure with wild grey hair inspecting Will’s car in great detail, bending down to peer inside at the dashboard.

  ‘Does this belong to one of you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s mine,’ said Will. ‘And you’re a fellow Englishman, from the sound of you.’

  ‘There’s a lot of us about! You know, the mayor here tried to ban the sale of any more houses to les rosbifs, claimed it was ruining the atmosphere. Not me, of course, I’ve been here for decades. I am the atmosphere of this town – he told me that himself!’

  He was wearing a yellow jacket, a floral-patterned shirt and bright green trousers, the walking embodiment of the French idea of English style – bizarre and strident.

  He held his hand out.

  ‘Quentin, pleased to meet you.’

  ‘You’re the first Brit we’ve
met since we moved here,’ said Nicola as they introduced themselves.

  ‘Well, I certainly won’t be the last,’ said Quentin. ‘Normandy’s crawling with them, most of them ghastly. Mind you, they probably say the same about me.’

  He beamed at them.

  ‘The reason I noticed your car, Will, is that I have something similar, right there.’

  ‘Ah, it’s your Midget.’

  ‘Can’t beat a classic car, especially if you don’t use it much. I hardly go anywhere, have everything I need right here. I paint portraits – my studio’s up there, you can come and take a look.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Beth, and Nicola and Fizz followed, leaving the others to explore the town.

  They followed him away from the harbour, along the narrow, cobbled streets of the old town until they arrived at his shop front. A life-size full-length portrait of Quentin was displayed outside, easily recognisable.

  They followed him into the cluttered interior. A work-in-progress featuring a woman holding a dog was propped up on an easel and other portraits were hanging on the walls. Heightened realism, Nicola thought. Larger than life in their vibrancy.

  ‘They’re very good,’ she said. ‘Have you always been a painter?’

  ‘No! I trained as a thatcher and came over here in my early twenties to work on the roofs of French cottages. That’s where the word comes from: chaumière, from chaume, which means thatch. Then I decided I was too old to be scrambling over houses, so taught myself to paint. Nothing like moving abroad to enable self-reinvention, as you’ll all find. I couldn’t go back to Britain now; I wouldn’t fit in. My most recent wife didn’t feel the same, though. She moved back last year.’

  ‘Your most recent wife? How many have there been?’ asked Nicola.

  ‘Four, at last count, and several petitioners for number five. That’s the great thing about being an artist – the women love it! I’m not in any hurry, though. The last thing I need is another divorcee with baggage and kids; I’ve had plenty of them to be going on with! Isn’t that right, Sylvie?’