Farewell My French Love

by Nadine Williams

  But now, the château is the house of widows to me, the place where Diane de Poitiers, Queen Catherine de Médicis and Queen Louise de Lorraine lived their lives as widows. It speaks to me of loss and the transient nature of life and love.

  Millions of tourists come to hear the most famous story of Chenonceau: the intrigue, jealousy and bitterness between Diane de Poitiers and Queen Catherine de Médicis. Catherine believed she should have been given Chenonceau, the most romantic of the Loire châteaux, upon her husband’s coronation, instead of Diane.

  It floods into my mind as I stop to photograph Diane’s bedroom. Here in this lovely room are portraits of the two protagonists. Catherine, wearing black, hangs above the fireplace. History describes her as plain, stout and without any title until she unexpectedly became Queen of France. She is portrayed as a severe woman. And Diane—an elegant, slim, regal woman of exquisite beauty, who had already stolen Henri’s heart even though she was nineteen years older than the prince.

  Unfortunately for the young Catherine, the moment she laid eyes on the dashing young Henri, she was smitten. Instead Henri lived his life as the King of France with Diane, as well as Catherine, at his side. I believe their love story rivals the quintessential love story of France—Joséphine and Napoléon.

  I notice Charlotte waiting for me in François’s drawing room and I join her.

  ‘I have waited to tell you about this painting,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s called The Three Graces, by Jean-Baptiste van Loo. They were the three de Nesle sisters, all of whom slept with Louis XV, sometimes together.’

  ‘It’s amazing nude portraiture of the times,’ I comment.

  ‘They supposedly represent the three graces every good French wife is expected to have: love, beauty and charm. And, of course, we need to be slim.’

  ‘That’s huge pressure, isn’t it?’

  There is that last story though, before we leave, of the widows who lived here and I slip into the waxworks while Jane and Charlotte walk in Diane’s garden. The widows reflect the twin-edged sword that love often brings to our lives as women. Poor Catherine was never loved by her husband, the widow Diane could never publicly exclaim her love for Henri and Louise de Lorraine, who heard of her husband King Henri III’s assassination when she was at Chenonceau, went almost mad with grief.

  Queen Catherine was hardly the weeping widow, using Chenonceau as a base for soirees and licentious receptions to impress nobles for when her son, Henri III, would become king.

  But Diane was the elegant widow—always dressed in stylish black-and-white—who conducted her courtly life with dignity. According to historians, when she found love again, she behaved with discretion as the lover of the reigning monarch. Louise’s morbid despair reflects the devastation grief can wreak. Ultimately, I must be guided by the words of Kay Redford Jamison, ‘Grief, leashed as it is to death, instructs. It teaches that one must invent a way back to life.’ And that is what I’m trying to do here in France. But it is very difficult if I heed the words of Dr Erich Lindemann, a Harvard psychiatrist, who would question if I am making much progress at all. He described five things he saw in acute grief: physical distress, preoccupation with the image of the deceased, guilt, hostile reactions and loss of patterns of conduct.

  What is truth is that I still deeply miss the man I once truly loved. But I must switch my thinking back to this moment or I will become morbid again.

  We are on the drive to the Château of Cheverny when Jane and I present a solution to Charlotte’s quandary.

  ‘We think you should hold a housewarming party for your new unit and along with your other friends, you invite Jean-Luc,’ I suggest. ‘It’s a subtle way of giving him your address and phone number, because he will need to respond to your invitation.’

  She looks at me with an enlightened smile. ‘That’s an excellent idea. I can ask some of my student friends and also some of our mutual friends through tourism. But then what do I do?’

  ‘You wear makeup, buy a pretty dress and stunning shoes,’ I reply.

  ‘You need a good supply of wine and beer to get the party bubbling,’ adds Jane.

  Charlotte has no luck in keeping us together at Château de Cheverny. Again, I spend time photographing the beautiful floral arrangements and I no longer worry about Jane.

  The extravagance of Cheverny, which has been in the same Hurault family for six generations, is overwhelming. There are five priceless seventeenth-century Flemish tapestries hanging on walls. And yet in the prettiest of dining rooms, a mock afternoon tea with precious porcelain is laid out as if we are houseguests. This really is a twenty-first-century home, too, even though it was built in the same era as Luxembourg Palace (circa 1600).

  Outside once more, we walk into the main street and there is Le Pinoccio, the restaurant with its vine-covered terrasse where Oli and I sat, whiling away a few hours on one of the long refectory tables under the vines.

  I cannot bear to return there today, so I suggest we have lunch at La Cour aux Crêpes.

  It’s early evening and I’m immensely relieved. Jane has joined me in the Château de Pray dining room for our gourmet banquet. We silently survey the four-course French menu.

  Last night, I understood the French menu, but with Jane as my companion, I summon the same eccentric maître d’hôtel to explain. Even I have difficulty translating the entrée ‘Homard “bleu” au basilica citron, Tomates de Saint Genough et cotes de romaine’. He glides over to our table as if he is skating on ice, bows towards us and with a flourish of his right forearm, says, ‘Mesdames?’

  ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ I ask.

  ‘Oui, Madame.’

  ‘Could you please explain the dishes?’ And I do try to read from the French menu: ‘Cabillaud “juste” nacré Salicornes, haricots “michelet’’ et oxalis? Ou “Canette fermière rotie lentement, Girolles, persil et raisin Chasselas”?’

  This is surely a pantomime performance as he swings his head from Jane to me in an affected mannerism. At the same time, he reels off that the entrée is blue lobster with lemon basil, tomatoes and cos lettuce leaves. We have a choice of two mains: ‘Cod is cooked just after raw with Salicornia, green beans and wood sorrel, or lady duckling slowly roasted with chanterelles, parsley and Chasselas grapes,’ he says.

  ‘Fromage, of course and your dessert will be Mara des bois—strawberries from the woods. This type is very tasty—prepared with fennel and Atsina cress.’

  Haute cuisine sounds so complicated.

  ‘Cod or duckling, darling?’ says Jane. ‘I’ll have cod.’

  ‘I’ll have duckling, thank you.’

  ‘Merci, Mesdames,’ he says, bowing low. You would think we were royalty the way he skilfully moves backwards almost grovelling, and not turning his back on us until he is a few metres away.

  We snigger quietly.

  ‘He is Manuel manifesting from Fawlty Towers,’ chuckles Jane.

  ‘I can tell you, he is a very highly placed waiter. Waiters have as much credibility in France as CEOs,’ I say. ‘They almost auction their positions on the side to the highest cash offer when they retire or move to another restaurant.’

  We order wine from the sommelier, and when the entrée arrives I survey it with delight. The lobster meat is a work of art reflecting that this is a high-end gastronomique restaurant. Soft, succulent pieces sit in an airy jus with two tiny poached tomatoes accompanied by cos lettuce.

  ‘The French don’t have heavy sauces, they have juices,’ I tell her. ‘So this is very healthy eating.’

  I don’t mind that this is little more than a tasting plate—perhaps four mouthfuls—because this will suit Jane, who watches carefully the quantity of food that passes her lips. It irks me somewhat that in this regard, she is like French women who watch their portion sizes. Naturally, it is she, as a petite woman, who strikes a very French-style pose for my photograph of this moment. Not me. And I do feel envious.

  Here we sit together at the culmination of our Loire adventur
e with fabulous food before us, and I can feel that a page has been turned. I’m now absorbed in my friendship with Jane. And Olivier? Ah, he is still here, but his presence is unobtrusive. I don’t want him obliterated because all of this experience is thanks to him and his French life and culture, which flowed from him. But he has settled more in the back of my mind. I simply carry the warm feelings I had for him into my present moment with Jane. And as our conversation flows back and forth in delicious camaraderie, I do feel as content with Jane as I did back then with Oli. It’s a huge leap forward in my recovery.

  I look at her filled with kind regard. ‘What’s the cod like?’ I ask as she carefully cuts into it.

  ‘Perfect. Cooked just enough, beautifully presented to please the eye and it tastes wonderful.’

  I have my dictionary ready and comment: ‘Here it says nacré means mother-of-pearl, which probably means it’s opaque, not quite cooked.’

  ‘There are no complaints from this side of the table,’ she adds. Wonderful. Because I want so much to share with her the way the French enjoy their food. It is a pleasurable ritual for them.

  As if she can read my thoughts, she puts down her cutlery and says: ‘Tonight I feel hungry because we only had that thin buckwheat crepe for lunch, so I can enjoy my food. You do misunderstand my attitude to food.’

  ‘Olivier has taught me the sheer pleasure of food—preparing it, tasting it, consuming it,’ I say in a measured tone, quite subdued for me. ‘I can understand something of what you say, though, about hunger.’

  I look at her intently. ‘After Olivier died, I could not face cooking food. I don’t know what I ate, but I didn’t prepare my own meals. I don’t think I wanted to give myself pleasure because I was so sad.’

  ‘But now you eat everything put in front of you,’ says Jane.

  ‘Only in France! And for the pleasure of it.’

  ‘Ask yourself when you last experienced the sensation of real hunger and be honest about it—or whether you are just experiencing a yearning to fill, with eating, a much deeper hunger for other things?’

  Goodness! This is the deepest conversation so far in the holiday!

  ‘There are differences in our approaches to food, and it’s taken me years of mindfulness, practice and listening to my feelings to learn to separate these issues,’ she continues. ‘I think this is a good and positive thing I have learnt, and it’s something you should learn as well.’

  She is lecturing me! I could bring up many snippets I read in Charlotte Wood’s delightful book Love & Hunger but I want to keep tonight’s mood of warmth, love and friendship intact. So I listen and say nothing, knowing that grief for me was a reason not to eat.

  ‘What is it in your life that you could be avoiding or not looking at, by eating instead?’ Jane continues.

  What does she expect me to say? She knows everything about my life.

  ‘Jane, I’m delighted simply to feel like eating again. To enjoy taste once more.’

  There must have been something sad in my tone because she stops, picks up her cutlery and eats the rest of her meal.

  Meanwhile, I throw in a little observation of my own excellent meal. ‘Look at the way this duck meat falls off the bone, yet it is so succulent.’

  But what I have felt over the past three weeks is captured in Love & Hunger where Charlotte Wood quoted from one of Matthew Brown’s essays on Food and Philosophy: ‘When you refuse to share food with others and make it a positive experience, you close off one of the most central ways of connecting with people in everyday life.’

  One important element of the success of my marriage, I believe, was that we joined each other at the table in the evening and ate together. What Olivier wanted was a very French way of life—and always with wine. Once when I asked what was more important, the food or the wine, he said, ‘You cannot have one without the other—like you and me.’

  When the enticing autour du fromage cheese trolley comes around, Jane chooses two different types—a Grand Murols from the Auvergne and a camembert from Calvados—and so do I. Each mindful of the other’s expectations, I feel a load lift from my shoulders.

  ‘Strawberries from the woods really means wild strawberries,’ I say, as the exquisite dessert is placed before us.

  ‘They are the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted,’ she replies.

  And with that, we both finish our second glass of wine—hers white, mine red—and head up the stairs to bed.

  We are mellow with wine and I think again how content we are. She reads while I write up my diary.

  ‘Do you know what surprised me most today?’ she suddenly says. ‘The way Charlotte changed the relationship dynamic so dramatically because she revealed herself as vulnerable, wanting to be loved and not quite knowing how to go about it.’

  ‘I was pleasantly surprised too, because she presented as a highly independent woman who seemed so self-contained and she was so charming.’

  I look over to Jane and think, She says so little about anything throughout the day and then at night, when the lights should be out, she’s like a fountain of feelings.

  ‘We are so lucky to have her and to be just the three of us.’

  ELEVEN

  CHARMING CHTEAU OF CHAMBORD

  ‘The day one sets foot in France, you can take it from me, pure happiness begins …’ Nancy Mitford

  When Olivier and I were on our honeymoon in the Loire, we faced an issue of time. Whether to visit Château Villandry with its exquisite Renaissance gardens or travel to Nohant, the country estate of nineteenth-century French writer George Sand, which would need half a day. I regretted missing Villandry from the moment Oli bought me a beautiful big picture book, Gardens in France by Taschen, which featured its glorious restored ornamental gardens and topiary.

  Today, Charlotte is guiding us past Villandry castle itself straight into the decorative kitchen garden.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ says Jane.

  Thinking it’s her ankle, I sit beside her under a rose-covered bower.

  ‘I want to sit and soak up this absolute spectacle; it’s so unexpected,’ she says passionately.

  We are in a vibrant vegetable garden fertile with many vegetables ready for harvest. It is one of the four unique gardens that makes Villandry the only example of a true Renaissance garden in France. The air is filled with market garden aromas of rich, tilled soil and ripened vegetables.

  My childlike heart chuckles thinking of what Peter Rabbit would make of Villandry’s ‘vegetable patch’ and decide to conjure up a story for my grandchildren. The kitchen garden or potager is at ground level, and Charlotte says there are three more terraces of gardens, lawns and amazing topiary. ‘There is a pond in the shape of a Louis XV mirror and a maze on the upper level, so we must move,’ urges Charlotte.

  The whole magnificence, the château at one with the multi-level gardens, was established early in the twentieth century by Joachim Carvallo who focused not only on updating the sixteenth-century château but, using the original plans, restoring the gardens to recreate how the ancient order of monks arranged their vegetables, flowers and fruits.

  Charlotte explains that the rich harvest of vegetables covers about a hectare divided into nine equal squares edged by low oak trelliswork and hedges. Each square features a different colourful ornamental vegetable plot. The Pigeon Red cabbage, for instance, is as pretty as any flower, while cauliflowers and spring onions, beetroot, leeks and parsnips, black radish and tomatoes are others in the summer crop. Their striking patchwork forms a living work of art through which we walk under this stone-grey French sky.

  We take a fine gravel path until we meet a party of gardeners working with wheelbarrows, picks, shovels and hand trowels. Charlotte tells us they are harvesting all the vegetables to donate to the villagers and visitors this coming weekend. They will form quite a bounty because there are hundreds of eggplants and green peppers alone and countless red and white cabbages and artichokes.

  ‘There are t
en gardeners who are responsible for 115 000 vegetable plants and bedding plants,’ she says.

  ‘Does that include that lovely red border of begonias?’ I ask.

  ‘They form the summertime borders of the kitchen garden and there are 21 000 flowers simply for summer—and if you multiply for the four seasons that’s 84 000 flowering plants,’ says Charlotte.

  We silently climb the stairs to walk under trellises of vines groaning with ripened grapes. Into the maze, and out again into the Maltese Cross Garden, the Music Garden, and then the Water Garden with enough water to irrigate all of the gardens and fountains. Surely a peaceful spirit abides here.

  My own favourite is the Sun Garden, because it is relatively new and, like my own evolving garden, is planted in a seemingly disordered fashion. It beams at us with mixed colours of the cottage garden, but there are also exclusive beds of perennials in various tones of orange. We walk in single file down a meandering lawn pathway between the Cloud Room with its blue-leaved shrubs and silvery waving grasses.

  From the third level we admire the four exquisite gardens of love below us, which have made Villandry famous. The topiary garden has box hedges clipped into beautifully shaped hearts, fans, butterfly wings and masks evoking the full story of love, lust and betrayal. Based on the symbols of medieval chivalry, they capture L’Amour tendre, L’Amour passion (hearts broken through the fickle nature of passion), and L’Amour volage, where hedges depict butterfly wings and fans representing the ‘flightiness of feelings’. Lastly, the L’Amour tragique garden has hedges designed in the shape of swords or daggers with red floral plantings, which represents blood shed for women. Very medieval, I muse.

  ‘What about the heartbroken women?’ I cry. ‘We suffer so much in the name of love. I have a file bursting with women’s stories of men’s cheating, treachery, affairs, violence, stalking and of heartbreak—all supposedly in the name of love.’ Then I add, ‘I wish I could remember who summed love up as a “misguided” feeling; it’s so true for many women.’