A House in the Sunflowers

by Ruth Silvestre

  We drove down as usual without an inch to spare. Matthew and the indomitable Durrell hung onto a secondhand fridge insecurely wedged between more beds, a chest of drawers, and boxes of those things which were, at that time, twice as expensive or unobtainable in France; tissues and toilet rolls, orange juice and butter, tea and Marmite. It is interesting that now prices are almost comparable except for cheese which I still find inexplicably more expensive in France, milk being much the same price.

  There were no clouds and a brilliant full moon rose to light our way. We sped through the silent villages, their traffic lights set at winking amber, and as the sun came up and slowly climbed round to face us we rejoiced to be going south. Before midday we drove past the château and round the last bend to our village. We turned by the church and as we swung into the drive up to the farm Mme Bertrand waved to us from the kitchen garden where she was weeding. The courtyard was full of flowers, boxes of tumbling geraniums beneath the veranda windows and a lemon tree covered in fruit in a tub by the door. M. Bertrand climbed down from his tractor with a broad smile and, across the yard, wiping his hands on his trousers, came Grandpa to greet us, his dogs at his heels.

  ‘Was the roof finished? Did the lavatory work?’ M. Bertrand would not say but his face gave us the answer. Grandma took me by the hand and led me through the farm yard, past her small house, past the silo and the chicken barn and, at the far end, she pointed across the fields and up beyond. I had not realised that Bel-Air was so clearly visible from there. I could see the roof, an attractive mottling of old and new tiles. She smiled at my relief.

  We drove up the now dry and firm track to the house, turned in and stopped before our porch. On the low walls were yellow plastic washing-up bowls filled with petunias and geraniums. Pots of huge scarlet begonias draped the top of the well. The shutters had been opened and the sun streamed in on the long table laden with vegetables, eggs and wine. There were fresh flowers, marguerites and asters, and even a little bunch of parsley tied with cotton. We could not have felt more welcome.

  The roof looked even better close to. The rotten cross beam on the porch had been replaced with an old but solid telegraph pole and all the jointing was with stout wooden pegs. I was so pleased that the charpentier had conserved le style. It had had to be repaired but its very dereliction had held such charm for me. The two bedrooms were now habitable, and after unloading, what had seemed in the van a great deal of furniture was soon lost. The following day we gave the bedroom walls a coat of flat white but further work indoors was impossible.

  We needed the sun. That was why we were there. We decided to attack the great pile of old broken tiles that the charpentier had simply left on the grass on the south-facing side of the house. Hammering them into small pieces was a satisfying task. In bucket loads I carried them to help fill in the holes in the track and, even in a bikini, it was hot work. Grandpa came up on a tour of inspection.

  ‘Oui. Elle est vaillante,’ he nodded his approval. ‘Elle travaille bien,’ he said to Mike. I felt he might give me a lump of sugar at any moment.

  In the smallest pigsty, the floor and walls newly cemented, sat our brand new lavatory and a hand basin with a single cold tap. These simplest of conveniences gave us enormous pleasure. Indeed the joy of a lavatory from which one could contemplate several miles of gently sloping meadow was to later inspire our friend the poet to many a verse. The field at the back of the house had already been harvested and was covered with straw. All day long M. Bertrand worked on the baler. A somewhat ancient machine with a leg at the back like a manic grasshopper, it would periodically stop its clacking when it either ran out of twine or broke down altogether. Then M. Bertrand would come up to Bel-Air for a cold drink, the sweat trickling down from under the brim of his hat. The straw dust sticking to his hands and arms he would drain two or three long glasses. ‘Ah, ça fait plaisir!’ he would sigh and then off he would go and the baler would clatter down the next row of straw.

  At last it was finished and le grand champ, as he always called it, was scattered with square bales.

  ‘Eh Alors,’ he said, ‘demain on ramasse la paille.’ Tomorrow we harvest the straw. (Ramasser, to harvest, was one of the first verbs I learned.)

  ‘How many of you?’ we asked.

  ‘Toute la famille,’ he replied, ‘et…quelques amis aussi, sans doute.’

  ‘May we help?’ we asked.

  He smiled. ‘Bien sûr! Mais…vous êtes en vacance.’

  On holiday? We laughed. Breaking up tiles, painting, plastering? Le grand champ was blurred in heat haze and looked inviting.

  At eight-thirty next morning the sky was like that of a travel brochure and the air sweet and cool. As instructed we all wore gloves. Already in the field were M. Bertrand and the rest of the family, Grandma and Grandpa both wearing large brimmed straw hats and we were introduced to a handsome moustachioed newcomer who, it turned out, was the Mayor. Pitchfork in hand, M. Bertrand stood on the trailer to which was attached a mechanical arm. He showed us how to drop the bales of straw so that they would be propelled upward where he would catch them on his fork and arrange them neatly. It seemed simple and we began to work. Grandpa watched us for a few minutes then came towards us shaking his head. ‘Pas si vite!’ Not so fast, he shouted. ‘For one hour perhaps but for all day – no!’

  As the sun rose higher we understood. It was necessary to establish a rhythm. The men, scorning the mechanical arm, hurled the bales up on their pitchforks, M. Bertrand worked like a demon on an ever-mounting pile. The cart full, Mike was eager to drive the tractor. He was allowed to fetch the empty trailer, but once M. Bertrand had seen that he was competent he soon entrusted him with a full load. The separate braking system on a tractor is very similar to that on a tank, Mike explained to the boys. It was obvious to me that he was in his element.

  There was no mid-morning coffee break; we worked solidly for four hours. Now we really appreciated Grandpa’s admonition. The dogs chased the mice which ran through the stubble each time we started on a new pile of bales and, just before twelve, Mme Bertrand disappeared to prepare the meal. The bell for midday sounded from the church and half an hour later we stopped, very tired but filled with fresh air and sunshine.

  ‘Alors!’ called M. Bertrand from the top of the loaded cart, ‘Allez manger!’ We demurred. ‘Mai si!’ he shouted. Grandpa stuck his fork in halfway down the load enabling him to jump down. ‘Ceux qui travaillent doivent manger. C’est normal,’ he continued. The boys did not need telling twice, they were already climbing up on the tractor to ride back to the farm.

  What exquisite pleasure to peel off sweat-filled gloves and wash my hands under the tap in the cool kitchen. After an aperitif we drained glass after glass of water. The meal began with slices of melon and home-cured ham. Then we ate cucumber and onion salad. A dish of white beans in tomato sauce which delighted the boys and was pronounced much better than Heinz, was followed by grilled steaks and a green salad. We were ravenous. Peaches picked the previous day and pears, the first from the orchard, completed the meal. It was not until after two-thirty that we left the table and, rested and refreshed, went back to finish off le grand champ.

  So began our tradition of helping the family whenever we could. It gave us a much greater insight into the life of the people amongst whom we were living and an awareness of the crops and the weather. A heavy fall of rain which we might have considered merely a nuisance became instead just what was needed to swell the plums or the maize and we learned so much; M. Bertrand was a wonderfully patient teacher – he never appeared to tire of our endless questions.

  Our first visitors being due any day we decided that we must buy a cooker. Obviously it would have to be the cheapest one we could find and so we made our first real exploration of our nearest town of Monflanquin. Until then our forays into town had been swift, for fresh milk or meat, the only two things not sold in our village shop. This afternoon we took time to walk up the steep street – each small house decked
with begonias, geraniums or strings of morning glories – through the arcaded square and past the originally fortified church to the highest point, the Cap del Pech, from where there is a wonderful panoramic view. It was a clear day and some twelve kilometres distant the Château of Biron lay like a great liner on the blue horizon.

  How safe the original Monflanquinois must have felt. Those ‘new-towners’ of 1252, encouraged to come and build a house in this Bastide – one of a chain of such fortified towns built across south-west France. Monflanquin was the creation of Alphonse de Poitiers, Comte de Toulouse and brother of the King. He planted his staff, complete with escutcheon, at the centre point of the proposed town and the streets were then marked out at right angles in furrows. Until the houses were built the whole place must have looked like a great market garden.

  Each inhabitant, who had a year and a day in which to complete his house, was allocated also two pieces of land for cultivation outside the walls. Under the protection of the Seigneur, Monflanquin had its own charter devised to cover every conceivable problem which might arise in such a close-living community, from damage or theft of crops or livestock, the settling of dispute by fines – five sols for a blow by fist or foot, twenty sols if blood were drawn, sixty if a weapon were used – to the obligatory running naked through the town of those caught en flagrant délit and unwilling or unable to pay 100 sols.

  Before Monflanquin was fifty years old the King and his brother were both dead and Aquitaine was handed back to the English. One can only wonder what the then six hundred and twenty inhabitants thought as Edward I, King of England, and his procession wound their way up the hillside to make solemn entry through the gates in 1289.

  We dragged ourselves from the mesmeric view and went in search of our cooker which, with its accompanying bottle of Calor gas, was delivered the following day.

  ‘Where shall I put it?’ enquired the sleek-haired shop keeper. Just inside the door seemed at that moment the easiest place. It looked incongruously new and rectangular against the sloping wall. ‘Formidable!’ he exclaimed when he tested it. I have used many words to describe it since that day; formidable is not one of them.

  Our visitors arrived. Arno Rabinowitz, his wife and son, all confirmed Francophiles, seemed delighted with Bel-Air, les Bertrands and the region. Arno soon endeared himself to Grandpa by proving to be a dab hand at belote, the local card game; their fluent French (they had lived in Lille for two years) put my attempts to shame and I resolved then and there to find somewhere in London to study seriously on my return.

  Arno, then the chief psychologist for south London schools, as his own therapy chose to clear an area outside the porch where we always ate breakfast, it being the first corner touched by the early morning sun. He hacked out the tough grass and weeds and small seedling ash trees, laid sand and gravel, and raked it smooth until we had a small passable terrace on which to put their camping table and an assortment of chairs. There we would daily break our fast and sit in the sun until it eventually turned the corner and we, picking up our chairs, would follow it.

  We discovered the joy of having a garden on four sides where one could always follow the sun or avoid the wind. In my imagination four different gardens were planned, the south-facing one tropical with bananas and poinsettias, but alas, even after twelve summers I am far from achieving it. Dealing with a garden which is left to the whims of nature for months at a time demands a certain resignation. Progress is snail-like. But the satisfaction of disinterring it from weeds, and rampant Virginia creeper, and the sudden abundant flourishing of forgotten plantings are, I have decided, my kind of gardening.

  Each holiday I rush round on arriving to see just what has survived. The occasional disappointment over a shrub that did not make it is compensated for by the incredible growth of clematis and passion flowers. My hardy house leeks, from an original clump which Anaïs, my predecessor, had planted on the west-facing roof of the end pigsty, have been transplanted into borders and proliferate and, when conditions are exactly right, flower exotically. One root of a tall yellow daisy brought from my London garden where, to get enough sunlight it would always lean and twist its rough stems, is at Bel-Air part of a thick straight hedge of flowers, and I have a row of Chinese lanterns that nothing can destroy. A hydrangea panniculata which, after a disastrous beginning in the limey garden soil into which I thoughtlessly put it, has this year, from the safety of a pot, rewarded my belated care with sixteen huge blooms. It must rely for watering on the rain which runs off the roof. And my pomegranate which I thought had not survived the bitter winters of ‘85 and ‘86 is this summer shooting madly again. Gardens are full of miracles.

  The days flew by and as the Rabinowitzes made their farewells we awaited the arrival of our next guests, Barry Foster, the actor, his wife and three children who were expected in mid-August. Judith and the children were to stay on when Barry had to return for the filming of ‘The Three Hostages’. On August 14, early in the evening, Mme Bertrand came up to tell us that ‘Monsieur Fostaire’ had just telephoned. The radiator in his BMW had burst and he was stranded near Bergerac. The following day was the Feast of the Assumption and everything, including garages, would be shut.

  We borrowed a towrope and set off and some forty minutes later we were hugging, laughing and kissing one another. The rope secured we began the return to Bel-Air. What we did not know was that our braking lights on the camper only worked when the brakes were fully applied and Barry told us later of the constant, unexpected looming of our high white rear, each time dangerously close. Crossing our threshold at last, tired and travel-worn, he looked round. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘this’ll do. I reckon I can lock off here.’ We opened a bottle and drank a toast.

  Les Bertrands, who had seen ‘Le Fostaire’ on French television, were delighted to meet him in the flesh. The girls, Joanna and Miranda, mere teenagers then, explored everywhere with shrieks of delight and Jason, who was the same age as Matthew and Philippe, just disappeared with them. We sampled all the local markets. There seemed to be one somewhere almost every day of the week. We would stagger home with trays of melons and peaches, nectarines and apricots, bunches of fresh basil, baskets of wild strawberries and feasts of mussels, oysters and fresh sardines. Mme Bertrand would bring us French beans and courgettes and eggs with dark yellow yolks. We grilled the local sausages and sweet pork cutlets sprinkled with herbs on a wood fire outside and we sampled each local wine. The Cave Coopérative at Monflanquin was in the process of being enlarged and improved and in 1985 won a gold medal in Paris.

  One morning the girls, having been warned to tread carefully, decided to explore the attic which ran the whole length of the house. They were intrigued by a yellowing, footless stocking which hung from the ceiling in the main room downstairs. As dust from between the floorboards fell on us below we could hear them laughing and Joanna suddenly reappeared. ‘Watch this, it’s so simple,’ she said. She put a basket on the floor, shouted ‘Right!’ and Miranda filled it by dropping down through the stocking dried corn cobs from a pile they had found. They discovered two old wine racks, crudely made, a wooden rake, a beautiful hay fork, two very primitive tools for teasing out sheep’s wool and a strange wooden object, a cross between a cradle and a sledge, but clearly neither, for which none of us could imagine a purpose. We would have to ask Grandma. By now we were all up in the attic.

  There were more boxes full of cobwebbed bottles. Some were the dark blue, flat perfume bottles which had held ‘Evening in Paris’ by Bourjois. We wondered if it had been the son Alaïs who had saved up to buy his mother perfume for her birthday perhaps or had these sad, dusty bottles been presents from her husband Justin before he died. I now knew that Anaïs had woken to find him dead beside her from a heart attack sometime in 1918. There were bottles which had contained Castor Oil, Quinine, Seidlitz powders and Balm and several which were marked Caiffa. This was not to be found in any dictionary and was clearly another question for Grandma. We washed the more attractive bot
tles and put them on shelves on the porch.

  At the far end of the attic, behind all the tools and boxes, was a sideboard, even older and larger than the one downstairs. It had a key in the door but was not locked. It was stuffed with old newspapers, calendars, parish magazines and in one corner was an oval cardboard hat box with a lid. We sat on the floor looking at the mouldering school books, the letters chewed by generations of mice and the folded documents that it contained. These would have to wait until we had both the time and the French to decipher them. In the meantime the sideboard, if we could get it there, would be very useful downstairs. We had an hilarious hour inching the truly massive object across the uneven, rotting floorboards to the opposite end of the attic and down the crumbling staircase. We scrubbed it with bleach and left it in the sun to dry a handsome colour. Later we saw similar sideboards in an antique shop for several hundred pounds.

  As it was our wedding anniversary and also Barry’s birthday in a few days, we planned a celebration. It was an opportunity to return a little of the hospitality of the Bertrands and we also invited the builder M. René, his wife and grandson, and some English friends who were holidaying not far away. We planned a menu. We could not hope to compete with Mme Bertrand, or Claudette as she now was, but we felt that we must, at least, give them sufficient to eat and prove that, contrary to popular belief, the English can cook.

  In the midst of our planning the weather broke. Our visions of a warm, moonlit soirée under the stars with, perhaps, candles in jars hung from the ash tree faded, as the Westerlies lashed in from the Atlantic bearing dark, rain-filled clouds. The thermometer dropped and dropped. It seemed incredible that only a few days before it had been 85 degrees in the shade. We learned about the unpredictability of August in Aquitaine. It was indeed the land of the waters.