Last Tango in Toulouse

by Mary Moody

  Through all this difficult stage of our relationship David remains supportive. He could easily have lost patience with my instability. Many men, in the same situation, would have assumed that the marriage was over and would have taken flight. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. But he doesn’t. From time to time he shows his frustration and sometimes even his anger at my erratic behaviour, but he stays and tries to improve the situation by being mostly upbeat and positive. It’s a strange role reversal. After all those decades of my keeping things on an even keel, suddenly he’s assuming the role of holding everything together.

  20

  Every weekend the children come to the farm, bringing their own children and their dogs. Our two younger sons, Aaron and Ethan, have both agreed to work around the farm in return for some financial help with establishing their own homes and businesses. Ethan is establishing a wholesale nursery in one of the paddocks behind the big old shed and, with a partner, intends to grow tubestock of local native plants for large-scale bush regeneration projects. Aaron, who lives and works in Mudgee with his wife Lorna and two small children, loves the farm and should probably have been brought up on one himself. He wears a battered bush hat and thrashes the old ‘paddock basher’ Dodge ute around the back blocks of the farm, cutting up wood for the fires and repairing the wobbly fences. Between them the boys have an impressive list of horticultural qualifications and have followed in my footsteps in their love of nature, the soil and growing things. It’s very gratifying.

  I spend most of the weekends playing with my grandchildren and preparing huge family meals that we eat under the cherry tree if the weather is warm, or at the vast table in the formal dining room when it’s cold. The house is fully set up for small children, with cots and highchairs and bath toys. I have even started to accumulate a collection of ‘farm clothes’ for the children, including stacks of gumboots and spare outfits for the inevitable accidents when they get smothered in mud or fall in the creek. These weekends are sheer bliss, and I realise that the only time I feel truly, deeply happy is when I am surrounded by all the little ones. I feel safe, and needed, and well loved when there are six small people swinging around my ankles. How can this be so? By this stage of my life I should have got over this urgent need to be loved and needed. But I haven’t. When I am here alone with David I feel somehow hollow and wanting. When the entire gang is around, laughing and talking full belt and drinking beer and wrangling with the children, I feel like my old self again.

  My daughter and daughters-in-law all love to cook and these weekend get-togethers are triumphs of teamwork. When I first returned from France I lugged back heavy tins of confit du canard (preserved duck) for which I paid exorbitant excess baggage charges because Air France had decided to start weighing every passenger’s hand luggage. When we finally decide to open them I tell the children this will be a very expensive lunch, but worth every mouthful.

  We start with an aperitif called Fenelon, which is very typical of the southwest of France. It’s made from splash of eau de noix (walnut liquor) and a splash of cassis (blackcurrant liquor), topped up with dry red wine. I have found a recipe on the Internet for making eau de noix from green walnuts and I plan to start a batch the following season if our trees escape the frost. One less thing to carry back from France.

  Next we have a clear soup made from good chicken stock, just as it’s made by Mme Murat in Pomarede. It’s light and fragrant and, instead of filling the pot with remnants of stale bread, I provide crusty fresh bread so people can do their own dipping. The broth doesn’t even need salt or pepper, so rich and clear is the flavour.

  We skip the charcuterie course because I realise that these unaccustomed bellies simply won’t have space for the main attraction of the meal – the duck. Confit is sold in all the markets in France, displayed in glass cases alongside other savoury delicacies. Our local butcher in Frayssinet, M Didier, also has portions of preserved duck in his window – coated with a thick white film that is the goose fat in which the duck was cooked and therefore preserved. The tinned confit isn’t quite up to that standard, but it’s still mouth-watering. Cooking it is simple. I heat up several large cast iron frying pans then scrape away most of the fat. Some of the fat goes into another large flat frying pan, for sautéing the potatoes, and the rest I store in an airtight jar in the fridge for later use. It’s like precious gold.

  The duck portions just need to be heated through, then turned so that the skin becomes deep brown and crispy. It only takes about ten minutes. Meanwhile, the potatoes, which have been parboiled, are being fried to a crisp golden-brown. Nothing on earth tastes as good as these potatoes cooked in goose or duck fat. They are sublime.

  We don’t have any other vegetables with the meal, just the duck and potatoes, and the table is silent as we crunch our way through this feast. The only abstainer is Lynne, now heavily pregnant, who developed an aversion to rich French food early in her pregnancy and is still feeling more than a little queasy. She has grilled fish instead.

  After a lengthy pause, more wine and conversation, we have cheese. It’s excellent local cheese, but not as flavoursome as the unpasteurised camembert and Cantal that I have grown addicted to in France. Lastly, I produce a rich duck-egg baked custard served with strawberries that have been soaking for several hours in sweet red wine. It’s a struggle to get up and leave the table.

  Our grandchildren seem to enjoy adventurous eating and join enthusiastically in these gargantuan Sunday repasts. They are developing sophisticated tastes and often ask for special meals of rabbit stew with prunes or barbecued octopus or char-grilled capsicum. They even enjoy the vegetables normally loathed by small people, so I plant rows and rows of broad beans and cabbages and brussels sprouts, knowing full well that they will be widely appreciated, even by the two-year-olds. It makes me very happy to feed them and see them enjoy their food. The way they belt around the farm after lunch, riding bikes or swinging from the gum tree, reassures me that there’s no chance they will become overweight and sluggish like children given a diet of fast food, computer games and television. They can stuff themselves with goose fat and broad beans to their heart’s content and still be as lean and lithe as children are meant to be.

  As a young mother I used to think that a child’s environment was the most important factor in determining their character and future happiness. I believed that my own personality had been strongly shaped by my childhood and this made me determined to give my own children the happiest and most carefree childhood possible. Over the decades I have changed my view somewhat: now I believe that children are born with an imprint of personality that will stay with them forever. The way they are brought up will make a huge difference to them in terms of confidence and feeling loved, but I now believe that people are what they are. My four children are so different in personality and character that I can hardly believe they all grew up under the same roof. Now I am watching my seven little grandchildren emerge as individuals and it gives me great joy to develop a very special and personal relationship with each of them. I try to have them to stay overnight one at a time so that I can concentrate on that particular child – it’s like a madhouse when they are all here at once, noisily vying for attention.

  As the farm has some good sheds for keeping poultry, I expand my chicken flock of brown Isers (French hens that are particularly good layers) and purchase a muscovy drake and three ducks from a local breeder. They are an excellent line, having won numerous firsts at the Royal Easter Show, but I make the mistake of putting them in with the chickens instead of isolating them in their own separate area. There’s a lot of squawking and fussing but I figure it will settle down when they get used to each other.

  Some old neighbours from the mountains ask if we can provide a home for their muscovy drake, affectionately known as Laurie. Short, they tell me, for Duck L’Orange. They arrive with him in a large travelling cage and he emerges in a foul mood, with his beady eyes angrily surveying the territory.

 
‘He has a bit of a personality disorder,’ my friends tell me sheepishly. ‘He sometimes gives people a nip, but he means well. He’s really very affectionate.’

  They leave quickly, saying they’ll come back and visit him from time to time. They never do.

  Laurie is anything but affectionate. He’s a demented and confused creature who has been reared as a child instead of a drake, and is accustomed to being picked up and carried around and kissed and fondled. At his original home, I later discover, he was allowed to wander in and out of the house, and his favourite pastime was gazing at his own reflection in a large gilt-edged mirror. Most chickens and ducks and geese avoid close contact with humans. When you go into the poultry yards they move away while the water is being changed and the hoppers filled with fresh grain and pellets. Not so Laurie. He immediately sidles up to anyone who enters and hisses loudly, jerking his large head back and forth. If he isn’t given attention immediately he leans forward and viciously pecks the skin on your shins. Even if you do pay heed to his advances by stroking his head or picking him up, he’s just as inclined to repay your kindness with another sharp peck. He is, in fact, a totally unlovable fat bully of a bird, and I can understand why my Leura friends were so keen to offload him. I decide not to put him in with my muscovy breeding stock, but I notice he spends most of the day pacing up and down the fence that separates the yards, hissing and trying to goad the ‘well-adjusted’ muscovy drake into a confrontation.

  When Miriam and her family visit the farm they usually bring their Jack Russell terrier Ulysses. He’s a good-natured dog and an excellent companion for the children but he has one major fault. He is overwhelmingly attracted to the notion of killing poultry, and as he emerges from the car each Sunday he makes an immediate beeline for the chicken runs. We aim to keep him safely indoors during the visit but, as the children are constantly going in and out of the house, he always manages to duck between their feet and slip under the big gate into the paddock where the ducks are swimming on the dam. Usually the first we know is the panic-stricken quacking that tells us the ducks are in danger and en masse we run to the rescue. The scene is one of ducks swimming wildly in circles with Ulysses paddling as furiously as his short legs will work, which fortunately isn’t very fast. From time to time he actually manages to catch one by the throat, so when he is visiting I decide the only way of maintaining calm is to muzzle him from the moment he gets out of the car. Nothing is more pathetic than a dog that is muzzled. It must be the origin of the expression ‘hangdog,’ because Ulysses sits with eyes downcast and hunched shoulders, looking utterly miserable. If we weaken and remove the muzzle he shakes his head, rubs his nose along the grass then instantly takes off in search of some poor bird to attack.

  The pasture in the paddocks is growing at such a pace that we need some livestock to graze and keep it down or it will be waist-high by the end of summer. A neighbour has a large mixed herd of cows and poddy calves and we agree to agist a few in return for some rudimentary fencing work. He turns up with a large truck on Sunday morning when all the grandchildren are visiting, and they watch with delight as this odd little herd of seven is unloaded through our small cattle yard. The friendliest is an old white cow called Snowy, heavy with possibly her eighth or ninth calf. Miriam’s son Theo, who is three at the time, is enraptured with these large, slow-moving animals and I spend half my time taking him up into the back paddocks to look for them. When we get close, Theo is nervous and hides behind my legs, unwilling to hand-feed them as the other children do. But he just loves them.

  ‘I’m going to be a cowboy when I grow up, Mutie,’ he informs me, showing me a photograph in a book of a man on horseback lassoing a steer with massive curved horns.

  It’s a curious career choice for a small boy who’s not only frightened of cows but also terrified of horses. Every time we try to get near the horses at the local agricultural show, Theo starts to sob and asks to be taken further away. Still, I let him have his dreams.

  The three pregnant cows are all due to calve around the same time and I keep a close eye on them, checking first thing in the morning and again in the late afternoon. I have no knowledge or experience of livestock, but I feel confident that they will give birth without any trouble, just as women do if they are left alone to get on with it and not hooked up to machines or knocked out with painkillers.

  Early one afternoon I wander around to the back paddock, where the grass is very long. I see the cows grazing in the distance then suddenly come upon two tiny, damp calves curled up asleep in the long grass. There are still remnants of afterbirth around them, and as I approach they wake up and bleat. The two mothers, one of them Snowy, immediately bellow loudly and come towards me in a protective manner. I move away quietly and watch with delight as the two newborns stand under their mothers and feed. Miriam brings the boys out to see the babies that very afternoon.

  Both are female and I allow the boys to name them – Flossy and Luce. A few days later the third calf is born, a small grey male. They call him Bubby Gorgeous. Having baby animals around is lovely, and I am happy for the children to have the experience of watching the calves and being able to handle them. We have a huge old apple tree, laden with fruit, and we feed the windfalls to the cattle. By the time the calves are big enough to eat the fruit they are also wise enough to notice us heading towards the tree with baskets and they gambol with pleasure as they cross the paddock towards the gate where we feed them. It’s a lot of fun.

  Our chicken run has two roosters, which is one more than is strictly required. The brown and white speckled rooster is timid but extremely handsome, with a brilliant red comb and graceful arching tail feathers. The white rooster, a leghorn, is just as handsome but devilishly aggressive; he takes any opportunity to strike, targeting small children in particular with his wicked spurs. When we go in to gather eggs in the afternoon he often flies at the children, aiming for the head, specifically the eyes, and I decide that he is too dangerous to keep in the flock. We shall have to eat him.

  The following weekend Aaron neatly despatches him with a sharp axe and I sit on a plastic chair under the cherry tree, plucking him for the next day’s lunch. Aaron’s son Hamish, aged four, watches the killing of the rooster without concern and is fascinated by the plucking process, standing close to me and chatting cheerily while I remove the last of the fine feathers from the bird’s belly. He asks for a couple of long tail feathers to play with and I oblige. I think it’s good that children understand where food comes from and don’t feel squeamish about it. I then enlarge the vent with a sharp knife so I can remove the gizzards, which I do by hand. The bird is still warm and very soft. Hamish is particularly interested in this part of the process but, as I plunge my hand into the cavity, I force air inside the bird and it travels all the way up the windpipe to the small voicebox, which is still intact. The headless rooster promptly crows loudly in his distinctive, pre-decapitation voice. A look of total horror comes over Hamish’s face and he takes off towards the house at full pace, dropping the tail feathers on the ground. Lorna brings him back outside a few moments later and I explain to him what has happened. But it doesn’t reassure him much. He asks me repeatedly, ‘Is the rooster dead, Mutie? Is the rooster really dead?’

  But when it comes to the crunch the following day, Hamish doesn’t hesitate, enjoying a thick slice of the rooster’s breast with baked potatoes and rich gravy. So do the other small boys (I usually have to cook two or three chickens when the whole mob comes to lunch). Hamish happily tells his cousins about the dead rooster who could still crow.

  Later that afternoon when we are gathering eggs, young Theo leans over and speaks confidentially to one of the plump young hens. ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ he says. ‘I ate your Dad!’

  I guess that none of them has been traumatised by the realities of life on the farm.

  Our cats have become outside cats, which is more appropriate on a farm. Because of the flies I can’t leave a window open so that they can hop in and out at will,
and because they are all quite geriatric they can’t be left inside with the doors closed – they will make a mess on the carpet. I set up the laundry with baskets and boxes filled with old towels and blankets, and they quickly adapt to this more rugged lifestyle. The oldest cat is a black and white male that the children named Marilyn, after the famous actress, because when he was a tiny kitten we thought he was a female. The name stuck, but his personality never quite matched his effervescent namesake. A few months after arriving at the farm, Marilyn starts to look very scrawny and drink a lot of water, a sure sign of the kidney disease that seems to be the downfall of most domestic moggies. One morning he doesn’t show up for his breakfast and I spend most of the day looking for him. I take a torch and go under the house, and together David and I scout around the garden and look in the shed, but Marilyn isn’t to be seen.

  David is convinced that he has taken himself off somewhere to die but I don’t give up, spending the next few days searching and calling, even into the night. After several weeks we feel certain that Marilyn has done exactly what David predicted. One weekend when the boys are working in the toolshed, sharpening the blades of the chainsaw to collect more wood for my fuel stove, they notice huge blowflies going in and out under the door of the locked storage shed where most of our office equipment and books is still stored in boxes. Then they detect the most hideous smell.

  ‘Think we’ve found your cat, Mum,’ says Aaron, and fetches the key for the shed.

  Sure enough. Marilyn must have crawled through a small gap in the timber door and simply curled up and died. But that was weeks ago and in this hot weather he has turned into black and white soup. What follows is funnier, in a macabre way, than a circus. There are three adult males – David, Aaron and Ethan – and none of them is capable of dealing with the dead cat in its current condition.