by Jamie Ivey
Our problems came to a head the following week. We'd been looking around some houses with Ange, trying to determine what type of wall we would like. The plans Ange had been working with assumed a simple monomur construction, with the insulating material built into the brick, which he was going to soundproof with a layer of special material. After a lot of walking around, banging, knocking and shouting, we decided to opt for a thicker, traditional brick wall. No more was said until I received a phone message from Ange explaining the plans would have to be resubmitted to the engineers, to check that the foundations could take the extra load. There would be a charge of an additional thousand euros, and of course a further delay in Ange producing his final price. Bearing in mind the engineers had taken three months to produce their first report, it was a major setback.
As a result, I sent a carefully worded email to Ange explaining how upset we were at all the delays. Somehow he interpreted it as a direct challenge to his professional competence. Half an hour later his car crunched up the drive and he entered our house, waving a handful of files. There was no kiss for Elodie, no time to offer the customary beer and if Tanya had suggested nibbles, I suspect they would have been flung back across the room.
Ange had clearly not had time to clean up. His work overalls were stained white with paint and plaster and the grime of a day's hard labour clung to his face and in the calluses of his hands. I noticed that he was shaking as he pulled up a seat.
'Do you know what these are?'
I shook my head.
'All the projects I've worked on in the last five years. Look at them: big jobs, bigger than yours. My clients are important people; Parisians, Americans, the English, financiers with millions to spend and they trusted me. Why? Because I am honest. I do what I say I am going to do, and that's a rarity round here, and then you send me this,' Ange slapped a printout of my email down on the table, 'insulting my competence. Tell me what to build and I'll get it built. That's what I do, but not for you anymore. I'm here to resign. I don't want your work.'
Tanya diplomatically left the room. I sat listening, not quite believing what I was hearing. Perhaps when translated into French the language of the email had not been as neutral as I'd imagined. Even so, the aggression and chest beating was inexplicable. If Ange was like this now, how would he be when we encountered problems later on in the build? As he ranted I sat calculating our options. We'd come a long way with Ange and we were nearly ready to start. If we stuck with the existing walls, then the diggers could start rolling soon.
Alternatively, we'd have to find a new builder, new electrician, new plumber and so on. There were a few other names we could try, but the local tradesmen operated a little like a cartel; once one of them had their teeth into a job, the others wouldn't take it.
Despite the unfairness of Ange's reaction I rationalised that it was better, if possible, to stick with him rather than start all over again. There was also the fallout in the village to consider. We saw Ange almost on a daily basis, in the bar, boulangerie or tabac. On the roads he'd hoot his horn as he passed and Elodie had even learnt to recognise his blue van from the distinctive large roof rack. If we were going to work with someone else, we should have chosen to do so from the outset. Now, circumstances made him almost un-sackable.
'I am sorry you misinterpreted my email, it was never meant to be critical,' I began, but Ange quickly interrupted, shoving more photos of his work under my nose.
'See this villa in Saint-Rémy? We did this for a sheikh. Look at the curve on the balcony, look at the finish, the attention to detail. And see this maison de ville in Nîmes, totally renovated in just a couple of months, all the old stone work exposed.'
I nodded along. The pictures were impressive. I also realised that Ange wasn't behaving like a man who wanted to resign. If he'd really wanted to give up his job, he could have just phoned or not bothered to return my call. Instead, he'd come and put on a show. I'd hurt his pride and he wanted me to know it.
'I've never doubted you do excellent work.'
'Then why the email? There's nothing I can do if you change your mind about the walls. And the engineers, these intellectual types from the city – it's not my fault if they sit on their hands for a couple of months, blowing figures out of their arses.'
'As I said, I am sorry if you misinterpreted the email, you have to appreciate that we're in a difficult position – we need to get started, we need to move house.'
'Well, you also need to find yourself another project manager.' Ange made a show of gathering his papers.
'Come on Ange, we can still work together. I've apologised, let's move on.'
Ange stood by the door. His head turned towards his car and then back to us. I've often thought our lives would have been much simpler if he'd walked out at this point, but he didn't. Instead he said, 'If you can live with the walls, we can start in a week.'
Tanya re-entered the room with Elodie in her arms. She'd been listening to every word.
'We can live with the walls,' she said definitively.
'I'll call you Monday.' Ange tipped his baseball cap and departed as if nothing had happened. His jaunty gait needed only to be complemented by a whistled tune and the picture of the carefree labourer would be complete.
Tanya and I were too tired to overanalyse. We were simply delighted that the house would finally get going. Stud walls were better than no walls. Our happiness would have been complete but Snuffle chose this moment to trot over and urinate at my feet. Almost without thinking I let out a rumbling growl of anger. Elodie laughed and copied me. Snuffle fled outside.
Chapter 13
There is a moment every morning when the countryside takes a pause. The sun has yet to fully warm the land but there's enough heat to dissipate the night's moisture, and banish the lingering scents of rooting animals and decaying vegetation. The exact timing of this moment changes every day. Sometimes the interlude is too short for a man to identify but animals always sense it, ceasing their activity and holding their noses quivering to the air, confused by the absence of smells. The birds stop singing, the dogs choke back their barks, and cats pause mid stride. Everything waits. It's in this vacuum that a man working alone has the best chance of finding truffles. Momentarily his sense of smell is heightened and with the help of the flies, it's theoretically possible to do away with the need for a dog or a pig. Or so the experts said.
One early January morning I tested this theory, waiting until I felt the moment was approaching, when the last trails of mist vanished and the first whisper of warmth appeared in the air. I rushed to our plot, parking the car against the fringe of the trees and clambering up the path towards the oaks. Amid the trees everything was pleasingly still. I stood for a while, watching, acclimatising before breaking through the barrier of silence that had held me transfixed. I walked slowly between the truffle trees, sun on my face, stick twitching in front of me. The only sounds were the brush of denim against denim and the crunch of my footfalls. The smell of truffles was ingrained in my mind. At this time of year the scent was always on the air, drifting through the markets, churning from the fans of restaurants, lingering in the dusty boots of labourers' cars. The problem was isolating it.
Now, in this otherwise odourless moment, I imagined I could smell truffles amid our trees. My eyes followed the cracks in the ground, charting their mazy progress, looking for unnaturally large openings that might hint at the development of a tuber. Amid the dusting of crumpled brown oak leaves I searched for bare areas, where grass no longer grappled to reach the sunlight. These telltale burns or chicken feet, as the Provençaux called them, were the quickest way to locate a truffle. I scattered the leaves with my stick, hunting for an absence of growth, squinting for the dizzy flight of flies in the weak sunlight, and sniffing, always sniffing, pulling the air in quick snorting gasps like an addict in need of a fix. I was convinced I smelled the rich earthy smell of truffles. They were tantalisingly close.
The wind shifted and for a sho
rt time I lost the scent. I stood still, waiting, pleased by the absence of sound; another snort of air and there it was again, weaker but distinguishable, somewhere ahead of me. I moved forward, snapping the stick this way and that through leaves. The heavy tools of my new trade clunked at my side – a miniature trowel and pitchfork with which to carefully dislodge the earth from around the black diamonds.
Two flies snapped into the air, one piggybacking on the other in a mating dance. Quickly I squatted down, scattering acorns and dead foliage until I reached the bare earth. I fumbled at the drawstring which fastened my tools in their bag and they came tumbling to the ground. I began to dig, slowly at first, clearing an area the size of my hand, probing deeper and deeper into the soil. Nothing but roots and earth and a woody smell which made it impossible to distinguish the scent of truffles. I widened my search and worked quicker, tearing at the soil, until I had prescribed a semicircle around my knees.
My arms ached from the unaccustomed motion, and yet still I dug, sure that somewhere nearby I would find a truffle. The flies and my nose had pointed me to it, but I'd already searched the immediate area and to probe anymore would be to risk next year's harvest. I'd read that Italians had once harvested truffles like potatoes, churning the soil with heavy machines until the tubers were unearthed. For one year it was incredibly efficient, but the following year no truffles were found.
I rose to my feet, and started to move forward with my stick. The sun was just that bit higher in the sky, and the black shadow of a hawk speared towards the earth. There was a rumble of traffic noise from the distant village, followed quickly by the crack of a hunter's shotgun and the bell of his hound. A gust of wind sent the leaves chasing around my feet. I sniffed the air and smelt nothing but the first puffs of smoke from the hearths of the nearest houses. The moment was gone. Quickly I began to doubt whether it hadn't been a fantasy – me so at one with nature that I could smell truffles. One of my nostrils had been crushed in a rugby accident as a child. Wave smelling salts under it and I wouldn't recoil. Yet foolishly I'd believed that I could smell a truffle buried under inches of soil.
For some time I'd been asking advice on the best method of training a truffle dog. The information should have been easy to find and there was no shortage of amateurs keen to offer their opinion. Market traders in particular were full of tips and suggestions.
'Hide slivers of truffle in a saucisson,' offered Rene at the charcuterie stand.
'Any particular type?'
'Donkey; it's the hardest for me to sell.'
And so it went on – the honey lady advised dipping a truffle in honey, the sock salesman insisted that his pure fibres would pick up and hold the scent of the truffle, and the hat man suggested a small doggie cap soaked overnight in truffle oil, so that wherever Snuffle went he would be accompanied by the hum of the tuber. The most impartial advice we received came from the vegetable vendor. His father had had several truffle dogs and always maintained that the most economical way of training them was with a tennis ball.
Back at home I prepared the ball, cutting the outer casing and inserting the slivers of black diamond. Evolution, at least, was on my side. Truffles were essentially highly developed reproductive organs creating the spores that spread the truffle fungus. Unlike other mushrooms, truffles survived not by releasing their spores but by encouraging animals to eat them and then deposit them in a distant place. To do so truffles had to ensure that they were found; hence, over the years they had developed an overwhelmingly powerful smell – the Chanel No. 5 of the animal kingdom, supposedly irresistible to any scavenger.
'Fetch,' I cried as I tossed the ball towards the distant vines. One bounce, then another and the ball ducked out of sight. Snuffle looked up at me and then settled down on all fours, rolled over onto his back and barked at me to tickle him.
I collected the ball. This time I held it in front of Snuffle's nose. He sniffed and quickly lost interest. 'Fetch!' The ball came to rest in the same area. Snuffle looked after it, looked at me, and rolled over on his back and barked.
Perhaps, I reasoned, I needed to throw the ball into the sunshine rather than the shade. Once more I held the truffle ball out for him to sniff. I noted a little more interest this time. 'Fetch!' I threw it with a gentle high lob, the ball landing no more than 10 metres away. Surely even the most lethargic of dogs would be suckered by the seductive odour of the truffle wafting towards us. 'Go on, fetch,' I encouraged. Looking down I discovered that Snuffle was asleep.
Half an hour later the session continued inside. Tanya held the ball out in front of her for Snuffle to see. I then put my hands over Snuffle's eyes and Tanya hid behind the sofa.
'Find the ball.' Snuffle padded around the house, nosing in cupboards, eating the odd crumb from the floor and then eventually encountering Tanya.
'Well done, good boy,' we both encouraged, handing Snuffle some cheese as a reward. We repeated the exercise, this time hiding just the ball.
'Find the ball, Snuffle, find the ball.' Snuffle immediately jumped up on the sofa and began to scratch vigorously, pawing at the covering and circling aggressively. Putting his front paws down, he raised his head, wagged his tail and barked vigorously. It was a textbook way of indicating that he'd found something. Unfortunately for us, whatever was hidden under the cushion wasn't a truffle. Maybe a previous tenant had had a cocaine habit.
Over the next few days we continued to devote long periods of time to training. The tennis ball, we decided, wasn't effective, and so we tried truffle-laced saucisson and truffle-laced cheese. Nothing worked. At the beginning of one session I forgot to slice the truffle and instead just played hide and seek with a piece of plain old Gruyère. Inexplicably, Snuffle's level of interest was much higher. That evening I offered him a small plate of leftover truffle risotto. Snuffle sniffed the dish and then turned and walked away, curling up in a distant corner of the house.
In desperation the following night I prepared what I believe is a culinary one-off, a dish so extreme that not even the most experimental of chefs could ever have conceived it: poulet fermier de Bresse aux croquants de truffes.
To encourage Snuffle to eat, I'd starved him all day, and shortly before I presented the dish he was circling the house, nose to the ground, desperately trying to find even the smallest portion of food.
'Snuffle,' I called, clanking the dog bowls together to signify supper time. First I introduced small slithers of lightly poached free-range chicken. Then I took out the cheese grater and shaved copious amounts of fresh truffle over the top, before completing the meal with a handful of high quality dried dog food. 'Voilà,' I cried extravagantly as I placed the meal before my salivating pooch.
Snuffle sniffed the bowl, looked plaintively up at me, and then began to whine as if in genuine distress. It wasn't difficult to read his thoughts – why the hell had I wrecked a perfectly good meal, a meal he'd been waiting for all day, by shaving truffle all over it? I looked disdainfully back at him as well – of all the dogs in the world, why did I have to get lumbered with the one stubborn enough to resist the supposedly irresistible scent of truffles?
A week later I happened to be in southern Luberon delivering wine and I stopped off at one of my favourite villages, Cucuron. Offer me a chance to have a glass of wine or a coffee anywhere in Provence, and I would renounce the glitz and glamour of more celebrated villages such as Gordes and instead opt for the simple pleasure of sitting beside the plane-tree-lined étang in Cucuron. The play of the light on water and the arrangement of the chairs, so that dappled sunlight teases the face, has combined to produce the most harmonious place to sit and contemplate life – out of high season, of course.
As I toyed with the ends of my coffee I felt refreshed and upbeat about life. I'd just sold a couple of hundred bottles of wine, the house-building project was finally coming together, Manu had nearly finished the renovation of the new apartment in the farmhouse, Elodie and Tanya both seemed happy – all I needed to complete the positive pict
ure was to show a little more patience with Snuffle. Lost in my thoughts I didn't notice Eric Sapet, the chef of the adjacent restaurant, La Petite Maison, pull up a seat next to me. Years ago I'd written a review of his restaurant for a local magazine and we'd been friends ever since.
'Salut, Jamie.'
'Salut, Eric.'
Over his shoulder, through the open side door to his kitchen, I could see his sous-chefs. One was methodically working his way through a tray of lobsters, picking the meat from each of the claws, another was glazing an army of lamb chops. Shortly after my review Eric had gained a Michelin star. The accolade hadn't changed him and he remained very much a chef's chef. Small and round with a hunchback from bending over too many pots, his physique declared his love of his chosen profession. For the quality of the food, prices at La Petite Maison remained low. The best thing about Eric, though, was not his cooking but his jovial, friendly nature.
