The French House

by Nick Alexander

  As the wall disintegrates, and as stones and kitchen cupboards continue to crash onto the counter beneath, I step backwards away from the house, unsure as to how far the chaos might spread.

  The crumbling process happens slowly, in little sporadic bursts, and the pause at the end of each of these gives hope that that’s the end of the disaster, hope that is dashed, again and again as more of the wall falls in.

  During one of these pauses, I hear Victor shouting and the engine noise from the digger ceasing abruptly. A ghostly snow-muffled silence ensues.

  I edge back to the front door and peer in to get a better look. The kitchen is full of rubble and crushed wall cupboards, and I can now see straight through a hole in the rear wall about the size of a door. Beyond this, standing in the mudscape, Victor and Stéphane are staring back at me.

  No one moves for a few minutes. Victor is covering his mouth with one hand and Stéphane alternates between looking at the hole, and glancing, warily, at Victor. He looks like a gazelle sniffing the air, alert to danger and ready to run. It seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to say something.

  Stéphane is the first person to find his voice. ‘Désolé,’ he says. Sorry.

  Neither Victor nor myself reply to that.

  I step across the threshold into the kitchen and glance up at the roof to check that it isn’t about to come down upon me. And then I sweep the room, wide-eyed. It crosses my mind that I must look a bit like Distira.

  I see a corner of the quiche I made yesterday sticking out from underneath a collapsed cabinet, and, unexpectedly, tears well up. It isn’t, I know, brave, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Victor makes to climb through the hole towards me but I shriek with fear and tell him to go around the back way, which, thankfully, he does, vanishing from sight then reappearing moments later, scrambling over the woodpile towards me.

  He takes me in his arms and I think, OK, I have to let this out. I’ll pull it together in a moment. But not just yet.

  ‘I was just starting to like it. I was just starting to like the place,’ I sob.

  Victor squeezes me in his arms. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Me too.’

  ‘And then that . . . that . . . idiot!’

  Victor sighs. ‘I think the wall was fucked,’ he says. ‘I think Distira was right.’

  We hug like this amid the snowy, muddy silence for a few minutes until Stéphane appears around the side of the house, sidling towards us with his hands in the pockets of his fluorescent trousers. He looks like a guilty adolescent who has broken a vase.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again when he reaches us. ‘But I didn’t touch the wall.’

  Unable to even look at him, I close my eyes.

  ‘It’s . . .’ Victor says, and the thought that he might be about to say, ‘OK,’ makes my blood boil. But he doesn’t. Thankfully he doesn’t say anything at all.

  ‘Vous voulez que je termine?’ Stéphane asks. Do you want me to finish?

  I gasp in disbelief, and then have to separate from Victor and get away from both of them before I lose control and scream at Stéphane or, worse, slap him.

  ‘Just . . . get rid of him, will you?’ I mutter to Victor as I stamp my way through the snow towards the wall at the edge of the property. When I get there, I clear a space just big enough to sit on. In the distance I can see Victor and Stéphane talking calmly, and then Stéphane turns to leave and I hear Victor shout, ‘Doucement!’ Gently!

  The noise of the digger fills the air again and then it comes back into view, moving – for the first time today – slowly and with grace. As if proof were needed, even now that it’s too late, that it had been possible all along.

  As the digger crosses our land and then swerves and starts to vanish into the distance, I sit and watch Victor staring at the house, and think, What now? Eventually he turns and crosses the field to join me. He looks pale. When he reaches the wall, he turns around without a word and leans back so that his back is between my knees. We remain like this for maybe ten minutes, silently surveying the desolation of the front yard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says eventually. ‘I didn’t even imagine that the wall might collapse.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. But I’m aware that I don’t sound convincing. In some way this disaster is precisely the fault of the men here, and their gung-ho attitude. That and their inability to listen to the voice of caution. My voice of caution.

  ‘Better to find out now rather than later, I suppose,’ Victor says.

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘That the wall was fucked,’ he says.

  ‘You reckon?’ I say flatly, unable to disguise my sarcasm.

  Victor sighs, and I squeeze his shoulder. It’s the best I can manage for the moment.

  ‘So what now, eh?’ he asks.

  I want to say, ‘Can we go home?’ But of course, home no longer exists. This, for better or worse, is home. ‘I was going to ask you that,’ I say instead.

  He shrugs.

  ‘Insurance?’ I ask.

  Victor shakes his head. ‘Stéphane’s working on the side. He shouldn’t even have borrowed the digger.’

  ‘That’s not our fault though, is it?’

  ‘No, but it means that he doesn’t have insurance.’

  ‘But what about our insurance?’

  ‘I doubt they’ll cover us for accidentally knocking down our own wall,’ Victor says.

  ‘No, knowing insurance companies, I doubt it too,’ I agree. ‘I think that this might be beyond Clappier’s remit too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor agrees. ‘Yes, I think we might need a proper builder.’

  ‘Do you think we can still live here?’ I ask. ‘I mean, is it safe? Is the bedroom OK?’

  ‘Let’s look,’ he says, turning to offer me a hand down. ‘Let’s go see how bad it is.’

  The short answer to my question is no, we can’t still live here. The bedroom wall is bowing inwards, looking as if it could collapse any minute onto the bed, while the bathroom wall – the only wall in the entire house to be plastered – is now criss-crossed with fresh cracks.

  ‘I just finished that wall,’ I whisper, and Victor slides an arm around my waist and says, ‘I know, I know.’

  I slump onto the safest edge of the bed and Victor joins me.

  ‘One step forward, one step back,’ he says.

  ‘A small step forward and giant leap backwards, more like,’ I say. ‘What now? I mean, what are we actually going to do?’

  ‘I think I should phone Georges,’ Victor says. ‘See if he knows a proper builder.’

  ‘Sure, but where do we stay? We’re effectively homeless. Maybe we should go and fetch the van,’ I say, attempting to head off a different solution that I can sense is hanging in the air.

  ‘How?’ Victor says. ‘We’d never get it back up here through this snow.’

  ‘Well, we could bring it halfway,’ I say hopefully. ‘And use the car to drive up and down.’

  ‘CC . . .’ Victor says.

  ‘Or we could sleep at Georges’. In the van, I mean.’

  ‘But we’re gonna need to be here.’

  ‘We can commute. I’ve done it all my life.’

  ‘Not in six inches of snow you haven’t. I’ll just go ask—’

  ‘No!’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You don’t even know what I was going to say,’ Victor laughs.

  ‘Yes I do. You were going to suggest we stay with Distira.’

  ‘OK. I was. But it’s the only reasonable option.’

  ‘Well, I’m not being reasonable. None of this is reasonable,’ I say, starting to sound a little more frenzied than I intended. ‘I’m not staying with Distira. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to.’

  Victor raises his palms in submission. ‘OK. Whatever the lady wants,’ he says.

  But whatever the lady wants quickly turns out to be an impossibility for the simple reason that the little Panda will not budge from
the spot where it is parked. With Victor pushing and me driving, we manage to move it three feet, but as soon as we pause to swap seats, we are stuck all over again.

  Victor opens the boot and finds a pair of devilishly complicated snow-chains, which we spend a finger-freezing half-hour attempting to fit. With these finally in place, we try to leave once again, and for ten yards it seems that we could just have the problem licked. But then the car spins out of control and, engine revving, wheels once again slipping in a mixture of mud and snow, it stops dead. When we climb out, the reason becomes apparent. The chains are lying just behind the car.

  Victor retrieves them and good-naturedly saying, ‘Round two!’, crouches down beside one of the wheels to try again.

  But with a growing sense that my obstinacy may end up transforming a disaster into a human tragedy, I reluctantly decide to capitulate. ‘Leave it,’ I say. ‘It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what we’re doing.’

  ‘There’s only so many ways these fuckers can go on,’ Victor says. ‘I’ll get it in the end.’

  ‘Have you ever driven a car with snow chains before?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure,’ Victor says.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now. For . . . erm, twenty feet. It was fine.’

  I shake my head. ‘You are cute,’ I say, ‘but I want you alive.’ I nod towards Distira’s house. ‘Go ask her,’ I say.

  ‘You sure?’ he says, hesitating with the chain.

  I grudgingly give a small nod.

  He reaches for my hand. ‘Come on. We can go together.’

  We wade through the fields to Distira’s door and Victor explains to her what has happened. In all fairness, the old dear looks genuinely concerned and when she offers immediately and without reservation to prepare the chambre d’amis for us, it’s such a relief that I feel a fleeting urge to hug her. It fleets, thankfully, before I do so.

  We trudge back to our open-shell of a home, where I pack two overnight bags while Victor phones Georges.

  Georges insists that Clappier is perfectly able to rebuild a wall, citing their garage, which he built single-handedly, as proof. Victor then phones Clappier, who not only seems unfazed by the task, but also insists that, ‘The snow never stopped him doing anything yet’, and that he’ll be here tomorrow.

  I step into the open doorway to leave but then stop dead in my tracks. ‘Oh!’ I say.

  Victor joins me just in time to see Distira’s Lada vanishing over the brow of the hill. ‘Aw, bless, she probably had to go buy more food,’ he says.

  ‘I hope she left the door open.’

  ‘I’m sure she did,’ Victor says.

  ‘Well, you know what car to get, now, anyway,’ I say.

  ‘They haven’t changed the design for forty years or something.’

  ‘You peoples may laugh,’ I say in a dodgy accent, ‘but Russian technology, best in world!’

  Victor smiles. ‘You may be right.’ He starts to pull our own front door closed, but then laughs sourly. ‘Not much point closing it, is there?’

  ‘Close it anyway,’ I say, taking a last glance at the devastation.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because it’s bad feng shui or something.’

  ‘Or something,’ he says, pulling the door shut and reaching for my free hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go watch Auntie’s telly.’

  ‘You know,’ I comment, nodding at the mud-hill that Stéphane has created, ‘it looks like a Siberian wasteland now anyway. A Lada would be ideal.’

  Distira hasn’t, by accident or design, left the front door unlocked, so we dump our bags in the porch and for the first time properly explore the grounds behind her house. For the most part these provide a tableau of decay, if not of actual despair: a farm, once rugged and productive, long since beyond the capabilities of its single, ageing owner.

  We pass a collapsed shed, the rusty handle of some piece of farm machinery sticking out, a vast pile of car tyres, an almost entirely disintegrated pushbike, and – overgrown with weeds – a tiny three-wheel car, the body of which seems to be made out of plywood.

  Beyond this, a path rises up over the hill, so with nothing better to do we crunch through the snow until we reach the summit. We look down on the view of the plateau. From here, Stéphane’s mud-pile appears to be even more of a blot on the pristine white landscape.

  Beyond the brow of the hill, Distira’s land has been carved into wide steps. As we zig zag our way down the far side, each level reveals something of its past life. The first is a flat field, perhaps a vegetable patch, the second has a tool shed and a large, jacuzzi-sized water reservoir; and the third a small, partly collapsed greenhouse next to a criss-cross of wires, perhaps once used for training French beans.

  ‘She has much more land than we do,’ Victor comments.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll let you use some of it. It looks like it’s all getting a bit beyond her. I bet she doesn’t even come down here any more.’ But just as I say this, we come across proof that she does still come down here, even in winter. Because the next step down contains a vast chicken coop. Standing beneath a sheet of corrugated iron lying on top of the mesh, on the only square of land to be protected from the snow, stand three scrappy-looking chickens. The second they see us they run through the snow to meet us.

  I push a finger through the chicken wire and say, ‘Hello, chicken.’ One of them nips at it.

  ‘Ouch!’ I say. ‘They look hungry.’

  ‘How does a chicken look hungry?’ Victor asks mockingly, crouching beside me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘They’re sort of asking for food, aren’t they? This one wants to eat me.’

  ‘My guess is that chickens always want food,’ Victor says. ‘Anyway, look, there’s a feeder thingie over there.’

  ‘Don’t they get cold out here in the snow?’

  ‘What, you mean more than all the other birds in the forest?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I concede.

  ‘Anyway, they have their little house over there, don’t they?’

  ‘It would be nice to have chickens,’ I say, straightening up.

  ‘Once everything else is sorted,’ Victor says.

  ‘Of course, walls clearly take precedence,’ I agree.

  We carry on down until we reach the edge of Distira’s land. Beyond this begins a forest, and the silence and lack of life amongst the pine trees is surprising.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘And so quiet in there.’

  A huge pile of snow falls from a branch with a thud and lands on the forest floor below.

  ‘It’s kinda spooky too,’ Victor says. ‘It’s a bit Blair Witch Project.’

  ‘It is! Shall we go back? My feet are freezing.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Victor agrees. ‘I think we need those padded snow-boot things.’

  ‘Ooh yes, moon-boots. I want ABBA ones. With shaggy fur around the outside.’

  ‘I always thought they were kinda sexy.’

  ‘You see,’ I say. ‘We agree!’

  ‘Hmm, sex in shaggy moon-boots,’ Victor says. ‘There’s something to look forward to.’

  We climb our way back to the top of the hill and then back down to Distira’s house, but because she still hasn’t returned, I suggest raiding our fridge to provide a contribution to dinner. I’m also aware that if she attempts to foist vol-au-vents upon us again, whatever we bring may be all that I get to eat.

  It’s 5 p.m. and the sun has just vanished behind the mountain when Distira’s Lada appears, slewing confidently through the snow towards us. Seated beside her is Carole, and it quickly transpires that it was to fetch Carole, not food, that she left.

  We spend another surreal evening with Distira, who is visibly trying to be charming, while Carole visibly isn’t. In fact, within the first ten minutes, I’m pretty certain that Carole’s fiery eyes and near-silence can only make sense if she is furious about something. But Victor takes charge of stoking the fire and just about manages to remove the ch
ill from the room. He also makes a double effort to be jolly and calls Distira ‘tatie’ repeatedly, even resorting to tickling her waist at one point, which only serves to make Distira’s eyes bulge even more than normal. Carole looks even more furious about this and Victor, I notice, doesn’t repeat the gesture. But by the time we have drunk two bottles of wine between us and eaten Distira’s reassuringly ordinary macaroni cheese, the atmosphere could almost be described as relaxed.

  Once the washing up is done, Distira apologises and says something about ‘sleeping’ with ‘chickens’ before vanishing from the room. Carole silently follows her.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I ask, the second we are alone. ‘Elle dors avec les poules?’

  ‘It means she goes to bed when the sun goes down,’ he says. ‘The same as chickens do.’

  ‘Right. I was thinking that the chicken coop was going to be a bit of a tight fit!’

  I cross the room to the fire and turn so that I can warm my back on it. Victor joins me. ‘I’m a bit pissed,’ I whisper, leaning into him.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Do you even know where we’re sleeping?’

  Victor shakes his head.

  We stand there for another ten minutes until it becomes clear that neither of the women are returning, and then head off on a slightly tipsy exploration of the house.

  We ignore the first two bedrooms, the doors of which are closed and I peer into the third. The bed is made up and Distira has carried our bags up and dumped them on the bed. The only problem is that Distira’s overweight Rottweiler, thankfully absent during the meal, has also chosen our bed.

  ‘Victor, the dog’s in here,’ I whisper. ‘You have to move him.’

  ‘Why do I have to move the dog?’

  ‘Because I’m scared of it,’ I say.

  ‘But I’m scared of it too,’ he protests.

  ‘Jesus,’ I say, heading into the room, and switching on a light. ‘OK, we’ll do it together.’

  Victor follows me into the bedroom and closes the window, which is wide open. ‘No wonder the house is cold,’ he says.