by Sam Juneau
‘Bud, I can’t find the tapes from Blue’s birth. Have you seen them?’ I asked, somewhat panicky.
‘No. I’m sure they’re around, though.’
‘I can’t believe this. I placed them very particularly in the box with the video cords. They’re not there.’
‘You’ll find them. Keep looking.’
Bud wasn’t too worried so I continued my quest. Throughout the next few days, it became clear the tapes were gone. As I said, we really had nothing of any monetary value, but in the whole scheme of things, these tapes were the single most important material possessions we owned.
‘Bud, I can’t find the tapes. I think they’re gone.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ Bud’s eyes welled up. ‘Why would someone take those ones? What was written on the tapes?’
Then it struck me like a flash of lightning. ‘You know what, all the birth tapes were labelled “Blue Tapes”.’
Some miscreant, some violating desperado thief had probably mistaken the birth tapes for ‘blue’, or pornographic, tapes. Someone somewhere along the long journey from New York had entered the container, rummaged through our things, found nothing of real value. Yet, for kicks or sexual curiosity, they had taken the only things that really mattered to us. Irreplaceable things that were valueless in one sense, yet invaluable.
We felt like our lives had been desecrated. The least of the violation was the fact that the tapes showed Bud nude and heavily pregnant, wandering around the birth room in full birthday suit just waiting to pop. Bud was not modest or shy. The real offence came from the taking of the tapes.
I once came upon a small quote from a writer who had spent years as a patient in psychoanalysis. He wittily described the ups and downs and dramas of his stern, Freudian analyst who acted more as drill sergeant than confidant or comforter. At his final session, the sometimes insensitive taskmaster-cum-analyst shared these words with our sensitive hero:
‘So you see… in retrospect…’ he went on, and stirred, rose, on the sofa, trying to force his full authority on his disobedient frame. ‘In retrospect, life has many worthwhile aspects,’ he concluded quietly, and then we had to stop. He sat looking ahead, and a few minutes later, with a goodbye and a handshake, I left.
In a very real sense, the mundane and anticlimactic feel and tone of this pronouncement is calming, liberating even. No matter what difficulty or pain or violation or displacement life throws at us, in the end, it can be affirmed, life has many worthwhile aspects.
We had chosen to leave our friends and family and jobs and lives and former aspirations for the great unknown of life in a foreign country. We were immigrants. We had gathered all of our belongings and set off for greater opportunity – not the chance to work, like most immigrants, but the chance to live a more authentic life. And, with our first steps toward a different path, we were robbed.
We went to bed that night still quite upset. We spoke of many things. All the little changes, the little losses, in our lives weighed heavily. I had effectively quit my job; we had moved, deserting our cosy, rundown apartment; we had left a life back in the States; and we had said no to everything that was. After a bit of whingeing, our talk turned to plans for the bathrooms and paint colours and the beauty of the woods in the spring. Then, imperceptibly but defiantly, we said ‘yes’ to the future at the Château du Bonchamps. Like life in general, the chateau had many worthwhile aspects.
CHAPTER NINE
Sowing
Didier arrived at the front door of the chateau in his neat, small, colourfully painted artisan’s van. It is a nice touch in France that workmen – skilled workmen at least – are referred to as ‘artisans’. In English, the word refers to a skilled manual worker or craftsperson. Its Latin origins translate as ‘skilled in the arts’. It’s nice to think of your plumber, painter or carpenter as an ‘artist’. Reassuring. Not always accurate, but a comforting thought.
I had spent the past few weeks looking for painters and other workmen to start whipping the chateau into shape. I collected three or four names each for plumbers, painters carpenters and plâtriers, or plasterboard workers. This was our first devis, or estimate, for paintwork.
I shouted, ‘Entrez!’ Our first potential painter came directly into the great hall. I went to meet him, happy that my poor French could lure someone into the house. Didier had long hair just below his shoulders, kind, searching eyes, a fleeting smirk, and stood at just over five feet. We shook hands in that French way that is not firm and manly in the English-American manner but a bit tepid and nonchalant. It consists, usually, of touching hands briefly and wagging one’s arm from side to side. Often I manage only to get hold of a couple of fingers before the whole thing is over.
I offered Didier a drink but he seemed keen to begin the tour.
‘Can we start in the south wing?’ I asked.
We headed down the full length of the gallery and started up the south wing stairs. Our Liverpudlian workers had completed the gallery, these same stairs, the one bedroom on the ground floor, the dining room and the main stairs. Thankfully, they had also well prepared the first-floor bedrooms by scraping wallpaper off and filling in some holes in the plaster.
Didier and I slowly made our way around first one, then the second bedroom, aiming to go all the way through the ten large rooms on the first floor. After about three or four, Didier’s eyes started to glaze over.
‘There is much work to do,’ he said, somewhat unnecessarily.
‘Yes, but it’s pretty straightforward. Sanding, painting.’
‘Of course, but do you want the doors painted, the radiators, the ceiling, everything in the room?’
In my inexperience, I had not thought of all these details. Didier explained, logically, that all of these things are done at extra cost. I started to get scared.
‘And there is much plaster work to do,’ he added helpfully.
‘You can do this?’ I asked, pleaded.
‘Yes, but there will be a surcharge.’
‘Fine.’
Things were looking bleak for our little budget. We had briefly, every so briefly, considered doing some of the work ourselves. But it was clear, from my very few and sporadic attempts at minor renovation jobs, that I had absolutely no skill nor inclination to do the work. As the former owner, Monsieur Pernod, had indicated, this was unfortunate. One must learn to do repair jobs if one is to own a chateau, he had admonished. C’est la vie. Not possible under current ownership.
We finally made our way through the warren of bedrooms and small adjoining dressing rooms, many of which would become bathrooms. By the time we reached the second floor, Didier looked punch-drunk and utterly overwhelmed. As was I. Luckily, the second floor consisted of only two rooms and two bathrooms with a nice view over the pond to the front of the house, the outbuildings to the south side of the house and the woods to the rear. We stopped to admire the pond. An elegant grey heron landed majestically in the shallows on the north side of the pond and began his daily fishing expedition. He picked the hapless perch out here and there with ruthless efficiency and boundless grace.
Didier and I retired to the front of the chateau with a small aperitif before his departure. We sat at a white, rusted wrought iron table and chairs, looked out over the pond, watched the sun slip slowly behind the trees in the distance. It is always odd dealing with workmen. In one sense, you have all the power, the power of the purse. You are paying, you should be in charge. Yet the artisan always gives the impression it is he who deigns to alight on your property and do the work, as if he is dispensing a favour. We, the grateful payer-owners, are happy to have the harried, always busy workmen. But you are dealing with your house, your home, a very vulnerable spot, and you don’t want to be taken advantage of. The stories of cowboy builders and the weak position of foreigners ordering work abroad played heavily on my mind. I thought of the predatory heron.
‘I will have to come back and get precise measurements,’ Didier noted casually.
‘Perhaps you can go around by yourself and take them, yes?’
‘No problem. I will be back at the end of this week.’
‘Then you can meet my wife, Brigid, and talk about colours.’
I liked Didier. There was something kind and open and honest in his face that inspired me to want to hire him. There was at the same time something slightly discomfiting about his appearance that I couldn’t quite get my head around. It wasn’t anything serious, just irrational. It would have to wait. Bud would meet him too and give the verdict.
***
It was early June. The boys from Ireland had arrived, Hercule the gardener was beginning to wander the property looking for something easy to do and Bud was plumply pregnant. We had made a few visits to the midwife in Manhattan to confirm everything was OK. After the move, we had been so frazzled that further care and trips to the doctor were ignored. This was fine with Bud as she has an inherent distrust of the medical establishment. Of course, she always says, you’d want a doctor in case of a broken leg or accident, but for pregnancy, most things go smoothly and normally, so why intervene? Let the baby grow and go his course, eat well, avoid the obvious bad things like alcohol. A simple philosophy but it worked beautifully for Blue, our firstborn.
Bud had been immensely busy in the months leading up to and surrounding the move. She is a designer by trade and has a great sense of colour and harmony. How she decided the colour scheme of the chateau came to her in a typical Budian way. She is great at taking other people’s ideas and making them her own. I think it’s in the DNA of fashion designers to search far and wide for something new and good and unique, modify it and make it one’s own. Her choice of colours came from a somewhat unlikely source. In fact, French design purists might be horrified at Bud’s idea of what today’s chateau should look like.
By now, many people know the infamous story of America’s expert of domestic bliss and decoration. Martha Stewart’s rise and fall and rise again is well documented. Regardless of the rumours surrounding her, we have both enjoyed her work greatly. Bud and I would sit some days and watch the precision and focus of Martha’s homemaking on her television show. There was something about her singleness of purpose, her dedication to perfection, her good taste that served as a soothing balm to the half-hearted and frenzied modern world we lived in. She’s sort of Nigella Lawson meets Anthea Turner.
Martha brought something to American culture that was sorely lacking – authenticity. She made real things with her own hands and created objects that in some deep way struck a resonance in the hearts of millions of Americans. She had touched upon something essential and profound.
Like many design icons, Martha had turned her sharp business eye to the masses. So Martha did a deal on her home furnishings line with Kmart, the Carrefour or Tesco of America, and Bud found Martha’s paint colours at Kmart in Soho.
Let’s call it Martha meets chateau. Chateau Kmart chic. Bud fell in love with Martha’s pastels. She felt these would create a light, airy effect in the massive, well-lit chateau bedrooms. Nothing Victorian or neo-Gothic or dark or old. Fresh and light and free. She chose light yellows and the palest of greys and robin’s egg blue and some darker, earthier tones for larger rooms. Of course, as is the fashion, every colour seems to have a name that is almost edible, like Sea Oats, Heavy Cream, Pudding Mould, Sourdough, Bee Palm Red, Oat Straw, Cornmeal, Quaking Aspen, Dill Flower, Buckwheat, Quince Blossom. A lot of oats and straws.
I can’t say Bud was being a purist. She simply liked these colours, liked the lightness of it all, and, just maybe, the pastels and softness of the scheme was a violent reaction to what we came to call bordello chateau. There is a tendency in French chateaux, an authentic, reproductionist tendency, to match pillowcases, drapes, toile, wallpaper and all prints in an explosion of flowers, fawns, nature scenes and jolly peasants. The typical French chateau room, if it makes a pretence to be a chateau at all, greets the visitor with a riot of prints that could blind an unsuspecting soul. Old-world, the châtelain might argue. Garish, one might respond. Sensory overload. Tiresome.
We were trying to be purists in all of the essential ways – leaving the original structure intact, highlighting original features, using mostly original materials. But in this one, albeit important matter, Bud just couldn’t capitulate to the tired, clichéd, mostly tasteless remakes of yesteryear. Call us heathens, but so it was. We would find over the coming months that the young French and northern European visitors (mostly Dutch and Scandinavian) loved Bud’s taste while the older French were simply baffled and disappointed.
Once the rooms were painted, Bud planned on putting up drapes throughout the chateau. At first, I didn’t particularly see the need for drapes, given the cost, but Bud pointed out that the vast windows, without dressing, looked like gaping holes. Bud had worked strenuously to keep costs down by sourcing the fabric in New York. Most things in Manhattan were amazingly expensive but if you knew where to look, you could find a rare bargain. In harmony with her pastels, she chose Irish linen in ivory, subtle greens, light yellows and white. One day in the city, she had found a wholesale manufacturer of Irish linen, turned on her brogue and pleaded poverty. She managed to buy hundreds of yards of fine linen for around $1,200 (£650) and craftily arranged with a Chinese sewer in Midtown Manhattan to sew the drapes. Each hanging measured around two to three metres.
We had visited the sewer’s shop and were only slightly taken aback by rows and rows of industrial machines spewing out the latest fashions for New York’s top designers. But Bud was desperate. Faced with so many windows, she had to damp down her misgivings and get the job done. So, for about the price of one professionally fitted pair of window treatments, Bud fashioned miles of curtains.
As we waited for Didier’s devis, we talked to Monsieur Mocques, the local plumber. He was happy to fit the bathrooms and we knew his prices were exceptionally fair. There was one small problem – he was booked solid until late autumn. We hadn’t foreseen this. Of course, we would wait for this kind, fastidious man who knew the chateau so well. His help with our first guests had saved our skins. He gave us verbal prices of around 500–1,000 euros (£345– £690) for each of the eight bathrooms. And he would let us buy the installations, or fittings, so we could avoid the normal 25 per cent mark-up when the plumber supplies the goods. We sat tight.
We had delayed too long in contacting the artisans. Overwhelmed and underequipped with poor French, I dallied and delayed until most of the good workmen were débordés until the colder months. We weren’t aided by the fact that everyone, every single human in France, artisan or not, took their holiday from late July to early September.
When we bought the house, we hadn’t put much thought into a schedule. I think naively we planned on opening that very summer. Now with news that the work would not commence, earnestly, until autumn, we were left to plan and talk and dispute the coming invasion.
Anyone with the minutest experience of renovation knows two things: it always takes longer than expected and a budget is just a suggestion. These immutable laws caused us a bit of grief and not a little worry. We had escaped New York with about $100,000 (£55,000) – but this was for everything – bathrooms, paint, carpentry, furniture, tiling… simply everything. Oh, and we had to live on this until the business got up and running. We had set ourselves a nearly impossible task.
As we collected a few more devis and waited for the summer to pass, I spent the days with the lads from Ireland and the French gardener from Cape Cod. They certainly did most of the work, and I served an advisory role. Unfortunately, Hercule had also assumed this role for himself. It appears his plan was to oversee the work crew and make sure things were done right. Funny, we had planned on him doing some work. On the odd day, I dug in and helped with pruning, replanting, clearing brush and nettles, cleaning out outbuildings and knocking down temporary 1970s walls that split up large bedrooms. We mowed the lawn and strimmed and hedged and trimmed and sprayed weeds. The days were long at
Bonchamps. The boys seemed to delight in the work, their first time away from home for an extended period of time. In the evenings we would all sit at the back of the chateau round a large wooden table and eat and drink and talk about the day’s events together. Bud was occupied mostly with Blue and caring for our new unborn baby, so delighted in the lively chatter of these late, sun-filled evenings.
Andrew became the de facto leader of the boys. He was 17 and had worked at the Irish Roundwood House with Richard, the owners’ son (also 17), for several years now. He and Richard were always great on offering advice on how things were done at Roundwood and what might work best. Andrew struck us as a very mature teenager. He had a thick head of red hair, a nice smile and a quiet conservative manner. Every evening before dinner, he would take a shower and come down in his slippers. The others teased him and his old-man ways lightly, but they respected him. Our two other charges – John, 15, and Tom, 18 – were sons of close friends who had helped Bud financially in tight times through college. They were not as used to hard work as Richard and Andrew but they were strong and eager. The four worked well together. Always something to do. And they performed admirably. Occasionally, they would all slip into the local town and play pool and drink beer. But because they were young, it never seemed to affect their work.
Meanwhile, Hercule continued to ‘oversee’ the work and drink secretly during lunch, which at forty-odd years of age did affect his work. I would meet with him each afternoon to talk about the day’s progress. Inevitably, he smelled of alcohol. As the weeks of the summer wore on, Hercule began to take Fridays off. He would inform us, usually on Thursday, that he had worked a long, hard week and he was owed a day off.
