The French House

by Nick Alexander

  Whether it’s the crisp mountain air, the quality of the ingredients, or simply the joy of being on holiday I couldn’t say, but that sandwich is the finest meal I’ve had in a long time.

  Back at the farmhouse, we drag the roofing supplies from the van – I have serious doubts whether we will be able to get them onto the roof – and then in less than an hour Victor manages to screw the Daffy Hot-Torrent shower heater to the bathroom wall and run a long length of wire to the fuse box.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Victor says, ‘just in case I get electrocuted.’

  I laugh and watch him strip and climb into the tiny sit-up bath. But just as he reaches for the unit to switch it on and says, ‘Here goes . . .’ I shout, ‘Stop!’

  ‘What?’ Victor asks, looking alarmed.

  ‘Can you tell me the number for an ambulance? Because I wouldn’t even know who to call.’

  ‘I’m only joking,’ he says. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK!’ I say, raising a hand to stop him continuing. ‘But just in case something happens, what is the number?’

  ‘One-one-two works,’ he says.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Do your worst, Mister Dodgy Electrician.’

  He turns the switch and water starts to flow.

  ‘Hot?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says, running one hand under the spray. ‘Hang on. Give it time . . . ooh, it’s lukewarm . . . getting warmer . . . Yes!’

  The second I see steam rising, I start to strip. ‘Make room!’ I shout.

  ‘In here? Are you joking?’

  ‘Nope. Love is never claiming that the bathtub is too small for two.’

  Victor laughs. ‘Come on, then,’ he says, momentarily pointing the shower head at me and wetting the floor.

  They should probably have named the Daffy Hot-Torrent the Daffy Warm-Spray instead. The jet from the shower is barely enough to keep us both warm at the same time. But being the first shower in thirty-six hours, not to mention the first shower in five years where I have had my back soaped by someone else, it feels brilliant.

  THE GREAT CONTRACEPTION DEBATE

  The process of fixing the roof turns out to be far more elaborate than either of us had imagined. Motivated we may be, but roofers we aren’t.

  We first have to remove all of the red earthenware tiles from around the hole. Victor clambers around precariously on the roof, and I climb up and down the ladder a hundred times to ferry them to the ground, all the while reciting the emergency number – one, one, two – like a lucky chant. Once the tiles have been removed it transpires that the top edges of the underlying sheets are concreted into place, so Victor spends half a day smashing that to pieces whilst I build a huge, incredibly satisfying bonfire from everything that will possibly burn. Bits of wood that will fit inside the range I move to a covered area beside the entrance.

  It all ends up being dirty and physical and tiring, but it’s so far from the purely mental stress of my job in advertising that, surprisingly, I find myself enjoying it all. Whether it’s carrying tiles or burning old sofas, I find myself somehow lost in the process of it all, and that is strangely restful. Every now and then I become aware of myself and notice that I’m humming, or singing, or simply that two hours have passed, and I realise that in some way, this process of being physically busy is precisely the thing that I sensed, but couldn’t name – precisely the thing that has been missing from my London life. A change, as they say, really does seem to be as good as a rest.

  By the end of the fourth day, the new panels have been manoeuvred up onto the roof, screwed and concreted into position, and the tiles replaced. Though the ceiling is still damaged, the house is, in theory, watertight and – from the outside at least – looks whole again.

  Victor climbs down and we stand side by side to stare at it, and I feel incredibly proud, as proud, in fact, as I have ever felt.

  ‘I didn’t think we’d manage it,’ I say.

  ‘Nor me,’ he laughs, slipping one arm around me. ‘It can rain now.’

  ‘I’d still rather it didn’t.’

  ‘Me too. But at least then we’ll know if we’re any good as roofers.’

  ‘A gynaecologist and an advertising exec,’ I say. ‘What a team!’

  I look down at my hands. Despite gloves, in only four days they have started to look like farming hands, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. ‘So what are we doing tomorrow?’ I ask.

  ‘I think we deserve a day off,’ Victor says. ‘Maybe a trip to the coast?’

  ‘Ooh,’ I say. ‘Are you taking me to the DIY store again?’

  ‘You make me sound like a slave driver,’ he says. ‘No, I was thinking more of a wander round the shops and a nice restaurant. A nice, romantic restaurant.’

  I lean into him and he kisses the top of my head. ‘That sounds fabulous. You are clever, you know. I mean, gynaecologist, electrician and roofer . . .’

  ‘So are you,’ he says. ‘Advertising exec and builder’s buddy.’

  ‘We can take another load of this shit on our way down, can’t we?’

  Victor laughs. ‘You see,’ he says. ‘You’re worse than me.’

  That night a wind gets up, buffeting the van enough to make it creak on its suspension. My back aches from too much unaccustomed lifting and, combined with the full moon and the fact that my camping approximation of spaghetti carbonara spends the entire night repeating on me, I end up having a thoroughly lousy night’s sleep.

  In the morning, when Victor wakes me by sliding one arm over me and pulling me against his ready-for-action dick, the only thing I’m in the mood for is more sleep.

  I doze for what seems like a few more minutes but could be much longer, and then hearing the door to the van slide open, I roll onto my side and watch Victor climb in.

  ‘Morning,’ I say.

  ‘Morning,’ he replies. His voice sounds unusually flat and lifeless.

  ‘Jesus, I slept badly,’ I groan. ‘Did you hear the wind last night?’

  ‘No,’ he replies, loading coffee into the espresso pot.

  I sigh and stretch, and then realise that he hasn’t caught my eye yet. ‘How are you this morning?’ I ask, suspicious now.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, in a tone of voice that leaves no doubt that he isn’t. Something knots in my stomach. The first inkling of tension reaches my slowly wakening mind.

  ‘Victor,’ I say.

  ‘Hmm?’

  I wrinkle my brow and sit up. ‘Victor!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I rub one hand across my face and glance outside. ‘God it’s all grey outside, is it early?’

  ‘No. The weather’s changed,’ he says, still without glancing my way. ‘All grey.’

  ‘Something is wrong,’ I say. ‘What’s up?’

  He finally turns towards me and his eyes look, for the first time since I have known him, cold and unsmiling.

  ‘Come here, babe,’ I say.

  ‘Just let me do this,’ he says, sounding irritated now.

  I watch him light the stove with a match, and then he turns to face me again, sighs and forces a tight approximation of a smile. ‘Right,’ he says, flatly.

  I pat the bed and he crawls towards me, rolling his eyes. He lies beside me with his head on one hand, a definite frown creasing his forehead.

  I lean forward to kiss him, but because he doesn’t in any way facilitate this, it ends up being nothing more than a peck.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ I repeat. ‘Tell me.’

  Victor sighs, and I’m reminded of how little I know him. I have absolutely no idea what is wrong, or how this is likely to pan out.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m just being an arse.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘But unless you tell me . . .’ I reach out and stroke his hair.

  ‘I’m just being a twat,’ he says. ‘Because you pushed me away.’

  I frown. ‘I pushed you away?’

 
‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t even remember that.’

  ‘I tried to cuddle you and you elbowed me in the stomach.’

  I try to remember but it’s hopeless. ‘I was asleep,’ I say. ‘And I slept so badly, I probably just wanted to stay that way.’

  Victor nods. ‘OK,’ he says, his voice cold.

  ‘I’m sorry. But sometimes you’re just asleep and . . .’ I shrug. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  Victor shrugs back, as much as his position will allow. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Well . . . sometimes I get in a hump about nothing. It doesn’t mean much, either.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  He nods and his features soften a little. ‘I’ll be fine in a bit.’

  ‘Would a cuddle help?’

  ‘It might, I guess,’ he says, sulkily.

  ‘Come,’ I say, beckoning him with a sideways nod of my head.

  Victor swallows. ‘I can’t,’ he says.

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘I’m too stubborn.’

  I laugh. I have never heard anyone explain so clearly that universal, but oh-so-destructive mechanism of pride. Such self-awareness strikes me as unique and refreshing.

  I shuffle towards him and I see him fighting the desire to smile. ‘Is that better?’ I ask.

  ‘A bit,’ he says.

  I kiss him lightly on the forehead. ‘And that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s definitely heading in the right direction.’

  And then he inclines his chin towards me slightly and I kiss him on the mouth.

  ‘See,’ he says. ‘Stubborn.’

  ‘Too stubborn to make up, but not too stubborn to be made up to.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m glad about that. That was almost a row.’

  ‘Yes. Almost.’

  ‘Come here,’ I say, linking one arm behind him and pulling him with me as I roll onto my back, a manoeuvre that he allows but doesn’t exactly contribute to. ‘You can stop that now.’

  He pulls his head far back enough to look at me. ‘What?’

  ‘That I’m-all-rigid-so-you-can’t-cuddle-me-properly thing.’

  ‘Oh, this thing?’ he says, turning his body into an uncomfortable plank of wood.

  ‘Yes. Stop it!’

  Victor laughs in spite of himself, and then collapses against me.

  His weight is hurting my back – still sore from yesterday – but I decide that it probably isn’t the moment to mention that, so I grin and bear it, and kiss him until I can discreetly roll over and swap positions. We kiss and cuddle for a moment, and then I nod over at the condom box on the side. ‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘Do your enveloping business.’

  ‘If you don’t want to, that’s fine,’ Victor says.

  ‘Of course I want to!’ I say, reaching for the packet myself.

  The blanket grey sky darkens as we eat our croissants and then shower in the freezing ‘bathroom’.

  ‘Are we really going to Nice today?’ I ask, as I energetically attempt to dry myself on a damp towel.

  ‘Sure,’ Victor replies from the bathtub. ‘Unless you want to go somewhere else?’

  ‘It’d be good to see the sea,’ I say.

  ‘Nice, Antibes, Monaco, Cannes,’ Victor says. ‘They’re all pretty close. They’re all by the sea.’

  ‘Somewhere new, then,’ I say. ‘Somewhere I have never been.’

  ‘Somewhere you have never been on a mysterious date that you won’t tell me about?’ Victor says.

  ‘It was a bad date with a pervy guy. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says, soaping himself. ‘Pervy. Now I really need to know more.’

  By the time we have loaded the van, unloaded the van at the dump, and driven back past the track leading to our house it is already twelve, but we agree to wait and have a late lunch rather than delay our departure any further.

  Victor takes a different route down today and the roads are even steeper, even more precarious than before. The mountains today are swathed in mists – low clouds, in fact – and look like Japanese prints.

  ‘Do you think it’s going to rain?’ I ask as we pass a sign saying Villeneuve Loubet Village.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Victor replies. ‘There have been a few days when I thought it might – before you arrived – but so far I’ve been lucky.’

  ‘We’re lucky it didn’t rain when we were doing the roof.’

  ‘Very lucky. Look!’ Victor says, pointing. ‘Blue sky!’

  ‘Is that where we’re going?’

  ‘It is now,’ he says.

  We continue south until we hit the coast and then head west, chasing better weather, fleeing the dark clouds over Nice. We drive past scrappy industrial zones and vast stretches of empty pebble beach and on through the outskirts of Antibes, which Victor promises we will visit another time.

  ‘I want to show you the Cap,’ he says. ‘It kind of starts here.’

  And suddenly we’re in millionaire land, where the crinkling coastline has been preserved for the coastal gardens of isolated villas and their gleaming jewel-like swimming pools.

  ‘Wow,’ I say, pointing up at a vast rectangular window overlooking the bay. ‘Imagine waking up to that every morning.’

  ‘Imagine cleaning the salt off the windows,’ Victor says, leaning over the steering wheel to peer up at it.

  ‘I think they can probably afford a window cleaner.’

  At Juan-les-Pins, we park the van and manage to find a pizzeria still willing to serve us despite the late hour.

  ‘I wanted to treat you,’ Victor says. ‘I was thinking of something a little more sophisticated than pizza.’

  ‘A pizza in the sun on a beach in January? Are you joking?’

  ‘Cheap to run then!’ Victor says. ‘As well as being beautiful, easy-going and good with building materials.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘Which?’

  I shrug. ‘Any of them actually.’

  The pizza when it arrives is entirely average, but it being two-thirty, I’m ravenous, and with the sunshine, the sound of the sea and the gulls swooping overhead, it feels like a perfect holiday moment.

  ‘I’m sorry the holiday has been so full on,’ Victor says, clearly not picking up on my sense of contentment. ‘I do realise that it’s probably not the best way to seduce you into coming back.’

  I fork a huge lump of pizza into my mouth as cover for not replying immediately. Because what I want to say is that what we have been doing – building a home together – feels so special that I can’t think of a single thing that I would rather be doing. I want to say that because of the fact that we have worked together and sworn together, and even good-humouredly sworn at each other and got over it, I feel like I know him a thousand times better than when I arrived four days ago; that with manoeuvring around each other in the cramped van and eating long-life croissants, I now have a real sense that this can work, that we are good together – good enough to negotiate the humps and bumps that life inevitably brings. And I want to tell him that for so many reasons, including my past, my aching desire for a child; the fact that I’m running out of time, that my friends in London are moving on and my career is floundering as the recession bites; and because, quite simply, I really, really like him, he no longer needs to seduce me. It’s a done deal.

  But I know men or, at least, I think I do. I know that their desire for flattery is proportional to their fear of entrapment. So now is not the moment to say all of that. Even a tenth of that would have half of the men on the planet throwing themselves from the nearest cliff.

  ‘I’m loving it,’ is all I finally say. ‘Every minute.’

  After lunch we walk along the deserted beach for a mile or so. I’m aware that with the dipping sun to the west, we must look like some absurd cliché from a romantic comedy, but it feels no less wonderful for that.r />
  We sit for a while behind a permanent windbreak belonging to a closed-for-winter restaurant and watch cormorants dive-bombing the waves for food. And then Victor glances at the setting sun and says, ‘We should head back. Before the roads freeze up.’

  ‘It’s so easy to forget we’re in January, what with this sunshine.’

  ‘It’s getting cold already though,’ he says, holding out a hand.

  I take his hand and he pulls me upright. ‘Take me to your château,’ I declare.

  ‘I need to go to the pharmacy quickly,’ he says as we start to walk back along the beach.

  ‘What do you need?’ I ask. ‘Because I have half a hospital in my suitcase.’

  ‘Condoms,’ Victor replies. ‘We’re almost out, and we can’t have that, can we?’

  For ten steps, I say nothing. As we walk on in silence I even stop breathing, desperately trying to calculate whether now is the right time for that conversation. And then I stop walking and grab Victor’s arm. He spins to look back at me and grins quizzically.

  ‘Can’t we?’ I say simply.

  Victor frowns. ‘Can’t we what?’

  ‘Have that?’

  ‘Oh. Well, no . . .’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. He coughs. ‘Well, that’s quite a big conversation, isn’t it?’

  I shrug and smile. ‘Is it? Or is it a simple one?’

  Victor smiles vaguely. ‘Unless you’ve gone on the pill or something?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I say.

  ‘Right . . . then . . .’

  I purse my lips and blow out through them. ‘God, this is harder than I thought. This is where I want to be. You know?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No, not here. With you, silly.’

  ‘But you’re going back. You’re just on holiday.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to go back. I want to be here.’

  ‘So . . . You’re coming back then? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘If you’ll have me. Yes.’

  ‘Are you saying that you want to come back . . . permanently?’

  ‘I’m not sure about permanently but . . . as long as, you know . . .’ Victor looks confused, so I continue. ‘As long as we both want to be here.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think I do.’