Grape Expectations

by Caro Feely

  The weeks of farewell parties and tying up loose ends flew by. Colleagues and friends were incredulous. Our GP said, 'You're brave… or mad… or both.' An accounting friend said, 'That's risk with a capital "R".' Both were right. The excitement was mounting but so was the stress. On the eve of our move to France, Sean ignored me, drank too much and watched television instead of packing.

  'How can you watch TV when we are making the most important move of our lives?' I yelled. I had been packing and cleaning non-stop for what seemed like days. 'There is still a mountain to pack!'

  'It's my life. If I want to watch this film I will,' he said, turning back to the TV.

  'It's not only your life,' I screamed. 'It's all our lives. We're moving country in a few hours.'

  It ignited one of the severest fights we had ever had. We yelled stinging insults at each other until Sean said dismissively, 'Just go to bed.' I decided to bow out before things turned even more nasty. Sean continued to watch his movie and I stomped upstairs to check on Ellie and Sophia.

  Was this the way Sean would handle our new life? How could we possibly get through our first harvest if we couldn't keep our heads while packing our cases?

  Sean was the love of my life. I had known from the moment we met fifteen years before. Back then, he was a handsome journalist covering the momentous political change in South Africa. Creative and tall, with long, blonde, wavy hair, he was my ideal man. I was besotted. He took me to parts of Johannesburg I had never heard of, to jive to African reggae in colourful rooms thick with marijuana and hope. He helped me to see life through a wider lens. He never accepted the status quo.

  Sean was happier as a journalist than as the financial writer he had been for the last eight years. He had committed himself to it and succeeded, acquiring the coveted and gruelling certified financial analyst title. In the last year, along with a full-time job and a very young family, he held down a second part-time job lecturing to Masters in Finance students in the evenings at a local university. It had meant more pressure and less time at home but it added to our savings and helped realise our dream – that was rapidly turning into a nightmare…

  The girls were sleeping peacefully despite our screaming match. I got into bed exhausted and switched off the light. My mind continued to churn. If this move was going to jeopardise our relationship, I did not want to go through with it. Sean was more important to me than following this dream.

  But it was too late. The high-pitched beep of our alarm clock exploded through my brain and I scrambled to switch it off. In a few hours we would be on French soil.

  Still smarting from our fight I jabbed Sean aggressively in the ribs then went downstairs to brew strong tea. The kitchen was pristine and everything was packed. Sean must have stayed up almost all night after his film ended. I felt contrite.

  Soon we were staring blearily over mountains of luggage at a timid dawn through a taxi window. Sophia and Ellie looked remarkably wide-eyed, despite our best attempts to keep them asleep. As we passed familiar streets filled with memories from almost a decade of our life, tears welled up in my eyes.

  We arrived at the airline counter with our two-storey trolley of luggage. The airline representative looked at us with mild amusement and I muttered something about moving country. Her eyes flicked over the stratospheric total on the scale and she handed us our boarding cards. She hadn't charged a cent for excess. Soon we were in France, navigating our luggage mountain out of Bordeaux airport.

  'I think we should go straight to Haut Garrigue,' said Sean.

  'I want to go to the B&B. We'll see it in a few days,' I replied.

  I had booked a B&B on a local vineyard that was a few kilometres from Haut Garrigue. It looked authentic and clean but most importantly I hoped that staying with winegrowers meant we could learn something.

  'But it's on the route.'

  Sean was naturally desperate to show me our new abode. But I was in denial. I wanted to go home.

  I was scared. I didn't want to be disappointed. By the time we reached the Bergerac exit on the Bordeaux ring road, thanks to Sean's persuasion and my own curiosity I capitulated. Before long we were climbing the hill into Saussignac. It was a postcard-perfect French village with a magnificent château looking onto the main place, or square, with a restaurant on the opposite side and a second square with a small park, post office, bread shop and church. A few houses later we passed the school and a few vineyards and took a well-worn road past the cemetery and three new-looking houses. Then Château Haut Garrigue was in front of us. No warning, no avenue of trees, no signs, just a bunch of dishevelled buildings at the end of a short, bumpy dirt road.

  The owners' dogs thrashed around the car. There was broken equipment lying around the yard. The house looked worse than the photos had promised. The shutters were eaten away by rot and termites.

  We got out of the car and were offered a tour of the property. The fence around the 3-metre-high terrace was rusted away, making it a deathtrap for children. The place was thoroughly rundown. I looked at the date, 1737, etched above the cellar and thought 'Oh my God, what have we done?' then swallowed back a wave of tears and tried to concentrate on the view. The natural splendour of the valley sprawling below, decked out in the bright greens of summer, was breathtaking.

  The owner continued the tour inside. It was beyond a nightmare. The main house was filthy. The renovation required was terrifying. The potential of the place, with its views and deep history, was clear, but the prospect of living in it with Ellie a mere five months old filled me with horror. After the visit we sat at the outdoor table to talk through the final details for the property transaction that was due to take place the following week. The dogs rollicked over to Ellie's buggy and slavered on her tiny hands. I grabbed a wipe and cleaned them before she could put them into her mouth. On my way into the kitchen to throw away the wipe, I saw a pack of gastroenteritis dog medicine on the table. I sprinted back out and lifted Ellie from her pram well out of the dogs' reach, wiping her hands frantically. We couldn't risk Ellie's health another second.

  I made an excuse about needing to feed the kids and strapped Ellie into her car seat, motioning to Sean to leave urgently. 'Sweet divine, it's much more rundown and dirty than I recall from my visit,' said Sean as we took off.

  'I liked the doggies,' said Sophia.

  I filled Sean in on the gastroenteritis tablets I had seen, a small ball of angst for Ellie forming in my stomach. It was clear to both of us that the first priority once we moved in was cleaning and disinfecting the house.

  As we drove to the B&B that would be our home for ten days as we waited for the property transaction to complete we discussed plans for the coming weeks. Despite the horrors we'd seen we were remarkably upbeat. While the filth and renovation were more daunting than I imagined, the natural beauty, views and history of the property created magic that far exceeded my expectations. We were embarking on the adventure of our lives and we were both excited.

  The B&B was run by a family who had a vineyard the same size as the one we were about to purchase. We arrived at our apartment on their farm and found it to be the perfect antidote: spotless and with everything we needed including delightful toys for Sophia. She was developing a nurturing instinct and took great pleasure in looking after the baby dolls complete with accessories – cots, pushchairs, baby bath and clothes.

  When we sat down to dinner that night with our hosts, Bernard and Myriam Barse and their teenage daughter Élodie, I explained in halting French why we were there.

  'We are buying Château Haut Garrigue in Saussignac. The purchase goes through next week so we are staying here while we wait for that to happen. We left our city jobs and moved country today. We saw on the website that you have twenty-five acres like we will have so we thought it would be useful to stay with you to hear what it is like.'

  Their eyes popped out on stilts.

  'C'est très dur,' (It's very hard) said Bernard.

  Myriam could not believe
that we had chosen to swap the comforts of city life for the tough life of winegrowing. She explained that they both had day jobs off the vineyard, Bernard as an electrician and she as a teacher's aide at the local école maternelle, to make ends meet.

  Bernard, a quiet, compact man, considered our story a little longer then added: 'Prudence. You must be very careful. Costs are high and sales are difficult.'

  He was a man of few words and not given to offering advice lightly. Perhaps our financial plan wasn't a reflection of reality.

  Four delicious courses ensued, helping to remind us why we were here: baguette and rillettes de canard, a local delicacy of cold shredded duck in its fat, matched with the Barses' Saussignac dessert wine; lamb chops from their own herd of sheep, cooked to perfection with rosemary and matched with their red; then home-grown green salad with a selection of fine fromage, finished off with a home-made fruit compote. It was a local feast extraordinaire.

  'Would you like anything else?' asked Myriam as we finished.

  'No thank you, that was delicious, je suis pleine,' I replied, using the only French words for 'I have had enough' that I could think of.

  Élodie, the Barses' teenage daughter, almost fell off her chair laughing.

  Myriam giggled politely. 'Used like this, "Je suis pleine" means "I am drunk",' she explained.

  That evening Sean and I sat outside our apartment enjoying the warm evening air once the girls had fallen asleep. The first major step had been taken: we had moved country. The fight we had the night before was a result of stress and fatigue and while we were still raw from it we had begun to forgive each other. If we were going to take on the challenges that the Barses had indicated were to come, our relationship had to be strong.

  This move was a chance to put down roots and to pursue our passion together. Since meeting in Johannesburg we had lived in Vancouver, Cape Town and Dublin and worked even further afield. Our longest sojourn so far had been Dublin and with our ancestry – we grew up in South Africa but Sean's grandparents were Irish and my great grandmother too – we had felt very at home there… but there were no vineyards.

  I made a list of what we needed to do over the next few days. We drifted onto our dreams for our new life and our vineyard, our fight almost erased from our memories. I would have stayed up later had I not known I would be woken to breastfeed Ellie within a few hours.

  The next day, warned by Myriam and Bernard, but undaunted, we tackled the practicalities of setting up our new life: getting an operational bank account; registering Sophia with a local école maternelle, the pre-primary school; buying supplies and purchasing the necessary furniture and equipment to survive at Haut Garrigue while we waited for our belongings to arrive. The heat was extreme. Sean found me sobbing in the supermarket car park. A few minutes at 44 degrees and I was in meltdown. Little wonder. Back home a heatwave was anything over 24 degrees.

  Ellie got her first tooth complete with vomiting and fevers. Our apartment didn't have a washing machine so Myriam offered me the use of theirs. In the evenings when the temperature eased we revelled in the warmth, sitting at our outdoor table eating picnics and waving at Bernard's ancient uncle feeding their sheep. Each day we got another brick of our new lives in place. On our moving-in day Myriam kindly offered to take Sophia, Ellie and me to our new home while Sean collected newly purchased furniture from Bergerac. We had formed a bond over the ten days, discovering that they had had a similar experience when Élodie was born to the one we had with Sophia. They were generous and big-hearted.

  Myriam loaded us up with gifts, hand-me-down toys for Sophia and bottles of fig jam. We arrived at Château Haut Garrigue and hauled our luggage inside.

  'Bon courage,' called Myriam as she left. I felt mine fail.

  The dark, shuttered house didn't feel like home. It felt empty and rundown. There was dirt everywhere. The shower hadn't been cleaned in decades. It had black fungus centimetres deep down the back corners and up the sides. Opening the shutters to let in the sun and air helped immediately. Ellie, settled in her bouncy chair, watched Sophia buzz around settling her baby dolls from Myriam into their new place.

  I started cleaning the kitchen. The sink had brown gunk ingrained into the supposedly stainless steel. After an hour the sink was stainless and I was feeling better. The view out of the kitchen window offered much needed succour, raised as it was above vineyards plunging down towards the Dordogne valley: a picture postcard of green vines, golden sunlight and a village in the distance with a classic French church spire and beautiful tones of local stone. Just as the dirt was starting to drag me down, my hero, Sean, looking like a happy cowboy in his leather Stetson, drove into the courtyard in a large truck hired for the half-day. We heaved our newly acquired double bed, fridge-freezer, washing machine and dishwasher inside and Sean left to return the truck. An hour later he was back installing the equipment.

  By the end of our first day we were exhausted but we had a makeshift table and chairs, beds made with fresh linen, cupboards clean enough for our new crockery and a working washing machine, dishwasher and fridge. Sophia fell asleep instantly but Ellie, despite my efforts with her new travel cot, would not settle. She had been sleeping in her bouncy chair instead of a cot since this life-changing purchase started. I moved her into the chair and her little leg started kicking, offering her the soothing bounce that helped ease the tumultuous change. Minutes later she was asleep.

  Relieved, Sean and I sat down and drank a toast to our new home with a bottle of our Château Haut Garrigue red. It tasted great. Thank God, since we'd bought 4,000 bottles of it with the property.

  We had done it. Tired as we were, we took a few moments to soak in the atmosphere of the 300-year-old room with its enormous beams and metre-thick walls, to appreciate the silence of our new surroundings, and to enjoy a selection of fine cheeses that were becoming a daily habit. Creamy Camembert, nutty Comté and salty Bleu d'Auvergne with slices of apple tasted like heaven. Through the window the light of the moon highlighted the contours of the vines, reminding us why we were here. An owl hooted in the barn across the courtyard. Our city life felt a world away, although it was only ten days since we left.

  I fell asleep as my head hit the pillow. At three that morning I woke to the lashing rain of a summer storm and found Sean running around the kitchen placing pots and potties in strategic places. Our one-day-old home was a leaking ship.

  The next morning droppings in Ellie's pram confirmed a mouse infestation. We soon realised they were everywhere, eating our food and Ellie's milk-stained clothes in the washing bag. My days became consumed with the Mouse War. I opened the bin and they leapt out at me, bungee-jumping over the edge. They woke us at night. Each time a grey blur streaked across the floor I jumped three feet in the air and screamed. I couldn't bring myself to pick up a dead one let alone deal with a live one; so much for a less stressful life.

  At first we encouraged them to leave with expensive sonic devices. When it became clear that they would not take the hint we moved on to other methods. As the week progressed we deployed mousetraps, rat traps and mouse 'chocolate', a supposedly irresistible but lethal mouse snack, carefully placed behind skirting boards where we were sure that Sophia could not get them. In between trips to France Telecom to try to get our phone connected I bought all the mouse-killing devices I could find. My French was improving as fast as my blood pressure was rising. France Telecom wouldn't connect us because the previous owners didn't officially disconnect their phone line.

  As a counterbalance to these stresses of our new life I found chocolate in the supermarket which offered une touche de sérénité, a touch of serenity. This dark chocolate, filled with bits of cherry, promised to aid the fight against daily stress thanks to high levels of magnesium. Two 100-gram slabs were all that was required for my daily dose.

  For more healthy fare I discovered the Gardonne market 4 kilometres away, its stalls groaning with vegetables and fruit, farm-raised chickens and more. I relished the seaso
nal produce, loading up on the bounty of late summer: punnets of plump tomatoes dressed with large sprigs of basil, myriad different lettuces from purple and smooth to bright green and frizzy, ruby plums and early apples. There was something therapeutic about shopping there, enjoying the banter between stallholders and the care they took with finding exactly what I was looking for.

  Fortunately the two girls were taking the mice and the move in their stride and I wasn't even sharing my cherry delight with them. Sophia started school two days after we moved in. She walked confidently into the classroom, delighted to find her name above a coat hook especially for her. Despite speaking no French she settled in remarkably smoothly. The smooth entry was not to last. On the fourth day, as we arrived at school, she started sobbing inconsolably but bravely went into the classroom despite tears pouring down her little cheeks. I choked back my tears as I got back into the car, anxious not to upset Ellie who was strapped into her car seat in the back. Sophia was a courageous little character. Given the start she had it was no wonder.

  That night, worrying about her having too much change to cope with at such a young age, I overdosed on stress-buster chocolate. Still bleary-eyed from my bad night, I took her to school the next day expecting another difficult morning. As we arrived, a brave voice in the back of the car declared, 'I am not going to cry today.'