At first, Andrew was not enthusiastic about the cornucopia on offer. The dealers were too professional for him to get the thrill of finding a real bargain, and the French taste in antiques, for anything twiddly, frilly, gilded, encrusted with carved rosebuds and looking as if Mme Pompadour once sat on it, was too much in evidence. He drifted grumpily up and down the aisles, complaining that all the furniture was over-restored.
Then he found a painting. It was big, about eight feet by six, late-Impressionist-going-on-Modernist, definitely from the early 1900s, mostly chalky beige and light olive green, and its subject was the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Not framed, but prominently signed. It had been carelessly propped against the side of a stall, and the dealer wanted €600 for it.
We considered it for some time. On the plus side, it was a really nice painting and we liked it. Also, thanks to Baz Luhrmann, every air-head model in London would be able to recognize the Moulin Rouge. No damage and a signature – these were also good. On the minus side, Andrew didn’t know enough about paintings from the period to feel confident that the price was right, and I wondered if the dominance of neutral colours on the canvas might not mean that the whole thing blurred into the middle distance when it was hung on the stone wall of the studio at Maysounabe, which was the only place with space to hang it.
We went for a coffee and discussed these matters. On balance, it was a great painting, €600 was a good price for a painting of that quality and size, and the subject would make it easy to sell on if it turned out to be a mistake. Andrew wasn’t 100 per cent convinced, but we decided to go back and take another look.
The painting had gone. Utterly desirable and seriously underpriced, of course it had gone. Andrew was peeved. Now that the painting had vanished, he was 100 per cent convinced that he wanted it.
We made a final sweep, bought some sexy little water-colours (me) and some massive stone urns (Penny), and intended to meet up on the steps of the hall before going to lunch. As I approached the main doors, I saw the painting, now more respectfully displayed, on another stall.
‘The Moulin Rouge hasn’t left the building,’ I said to Andrew. ‘It’s on another stall, just inside the doors.’
The three of us went back inside. The Moulin Rouge looked better than ever. We asked the price. It was € 1,000. Andrew offered €700. The seller, a slightly built man with thinning hair, dismissed the offer immediately. It was a really nice painting, he didn’t really want to sell it, he wanted to enjoy it himself for a while. Anyway he’d only just bought it.
‘We know you’ve only just bought it,’ Andrew explained, his French now up to the task. ‘We looked at it with the man you bought it from, and he only wanted €600. You probably got it for €500. If you take €700 now, you’ve made €200 in half an hour. That’s not bad.’
The seller looked stricken, possibly because the three of us were looming over him from our superior height. He could see our point. We could see his point. Since he had a mobile, sympathetic kind of face, I decided a bigger guilt trip might swing the deal.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if we’d bought that painting when we first saw it, we’d have got it for €500. All we did was go for a couple of coffees. If we buy it from you now for €700, those cups of coffee will have cost us €100 each. It’s hardly fair, is it?’
An agonized expression crinkled the seller’s eyes. Eventually, Andrew bought the Moulin Rouge for €800. I think I was right about the colours against the stone wall, but he’s so devoted to the painting he doesn’t care.
The Last Flight of Fancy
We planned a final trip to the flea market at Ahetze. I embarked on one last round of trying to persuade people to come with me for a truly spectacular day out, and recruited a new friend, Sue, who was waiting out the end of a career with the NHS before planning to live in her pretty little house next to the church in Burgaronne. Living in France, as we have seen, can be hard on an English marriage, especially when the wife speaks degree-level French and the husband doesn’t, so Sue was taking a break on her own and was glad to have company and a new experience.
We took off in the morning with the mountains crystal clear, the snow on the top slopes matching the white clouds above. Strong winds were stripping the leaves from the trees, and flocks of wild pigeons, called palombes, were wheeling through the air above us. They were bang on time. The palombe season runs from All Saints Day at the end of October to St Martin’s Day, 11 November. For this frantic fortnight while the birds migrate south the hunters take to the woods and set about enticing them within range of their guns. Or, if they’re determined to exterminate the species, their nets.
Hunting has reduced the numbers of palombes so drastically that it is now rigorously controlled. Once, flocks of thousands of birds darkened the sky every autumn, and they were hunted as far north as the Gers. Baskets of them were sent up to Paris every day. Now most of the old sites have been abandoned, a mere trickle of birds fly past and it’s unusual to find them on a menu outside the region. The hunters can only gather at a few designated sites, and only use the traditional methods to catch them.
For two weeks, the palombe-spotters, called paloumayres, spend all the hours of daylight up in their tree houses, on the lookout for the flocks of birds. They climb up a long ladder to little wooden cabins, pulling up their supplies – a casserole, a bottle of wine and some water, the camping gas and a coffee pot – in baskets after them. They also carry up some tame pigeons in a wicker basket. The cabin has a makeshift bed with a mattress of dry moss and a rough table covered with oilcloth. They take turns to scan the sky for the tiny black dots of the palombes approaching from the north.
The tame pigeon, who spends the rest of the year at ease in a makeshift aviary erected next to his owner’s chicken house, is taken out of his carrying basket and installed on a small wooden see-saw high in the branches. A light string attached to his leg ring stops him flying away. Another string runs from the free end of the see-saw to the hand of the paloumayre.
The palombes fly so fast that the hunters have only a few seconds to get their attention. Once a flock is spotted, the hunter tweaks the string attached to the see-saw, causing it to rock, which makes the tame bird flap its wings as it tries to balance on the moving plank. The wild birds, seeing the telltale flapping below them, assume that one of their number has found a good source of food. Unwarily, they bomb out of the sky – the palombes have a lovely tumbling motion in the air – and within range of the hunters’ guns.
Ahetze was a picture postcard as ever, with the sun shining on the terracotta roofs, the ox-blood shutters, the white walls and the double bell tower of the church rising above the crammed stalls. A small flock of palombes was twisting and turning in the sky as we approached, and the shots of the palombe hunters echoed over the murmur of the market all morning.
We browsed for a couple of hours, then ate lunch on the tree-shaded terrace of the village restaurant. The dish of the day, of course, was salmis de palombe, much appreciated by the multinational Lovejoys, and by us. The palombe is a finer, more delicate meat than a woodpigeon; it’s delicious, especially if simply roasted, but eating one is nowhere near as thrilling as watching the living birds spiralling through the crisp autumn air.
We lingered over a last coffee and headed back. By then the clouds had rolled in from the mountains, a giant grey duvet with cinnamon uplights at the horizon. I helped Sue clear up her garden, then we had a last glass of wine while a spectacular sunset took over the whole sky, turning gold, then teal blue, then bronze, then fading to rose before the darkness fell.
We talked about stray cats and complicated men, and how I felt about going back. I still had a long list of unrealized ambitions in the Béarn. There was still so much I wanted to do, so many places I wanted to explore, so many events I wanted to witness. Thanks to my injury, I had hardly been able to walk in the mountains at all. Margaret took me for a mercy stroll near the little village of Laruns for an afternoon, but my ankle wasn’t str
ong enough for anything ambitious.
There were things I was distinctly looking forward to in London:
1. being in the same country as my daughter
2. my friends
3. my great big good-looking sofa
4. my own bed
5. people ringing up and saying they had theatre tickets and was I free?
6. fish and chips
That was it.
There were also many things I was dreading in London: the everyday violence and nastiness of the people, the vast ugliness of the city, the chaotic transport, the draining difficulty of accomplishing even a simple thing, the cynical, ignorant youth and the despised and despairing old, whose ranks I would inevitably join soon.
In London, I had happily passed days inside my house because outside it I would find nothing but people spitting, swearing, abusing, attacking and exploiting each other. But a year of tranquillity had made me feel guilty. After all, I was not without talents, or influence. If my country was turning into a sewer, I could do something about it. I could not justify simply escaping to another country which had taken greater pains to maintain a good quality of life.
Besides, there were things I was not going to miss in France. I was longing to have a simple, casual conversation with someone who dared to think, whose conscience was still in working order and whose brain had not yet been overpowered by cheap booze. As if to make me feel good about leaving, I was invited to a dinner party from hell.
The table was dominated by a businessman, who suddenly announced that literature was all rubbish and that J. K. Rowling was all washed up and couldn’t finish Harry Potter V. He didn’t know Rowling, nor had he read any of her books. He didn’t know anyone in publishing and couldn’t remember who had told him the gossip he was passing on with such authority. He did know that I was an author, but obviously saw this as no reason to speak with caution.
I flexed my vocabulary, got ready with a magazine of ‘effectivements’ and ‘de toutes façons’, and pointed out that nothing is more difficult than to top a success, let alone a global-phenomenon-sized success. Think of Edmond Rostand, half-killed by the success of Cyrano de Bergerac. Furthermore, the Potter series was approaching the toughest part of the narrative cycle, so a hard time for the author was normal. The books were, in my opinion, a magnificent achievement, they thoroughly deserved their success. As the critics had said about Cyrano, it made you feel good just to know there was such a great talent in the world. Furthermore – this clinched it with the other women at the table, some of whom had been looking thoroughly alarmed – the author, having been a single mother for so long, was now enjoying the happiness of a new marriage and was about to have a baby. So possibly she had a few things besides writing on her mind.
My antagonist listened carefully, then reverted to his favourite topic, the pan-global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Didn’t I realize that Tony Blair was Jewish? And Jack Straw? For a moment, I was happy to be going home. There are probably plenty of people in London with such objectionable attitudes, but it is much easier to avoid them.
A la Prochaine . . .
I gathered my final crop from the potager, the Jerusalem artichokes. By then, they were mighty plants with woody stems and wilting yellow flowers. I stuck a fork under the first one and levered it out of the ground, revealing a clutch of white racemes nestling in the root ball. These I arranged artistically on a spade for a Monty Don-style photograph, but in the chaos of packing I couldn’t find the camera.
The owner of Maison Bergez hoped to rent it to a Danish couple who were looking for somewhere to stay while they were house-hunting for their retirement. There was no need to restore the knickknacks to their former homes. Amandine did a final clean-up, while I weeded the rest of the vegetable plot and tucked it up under a layer of black plastic for the winter. The first compost heap – by now I had two – was ready-rotted, and I could use some of its rich russet compost on the stony borders around the house.
On my last night, Annabel and Gerald took me to dinner at their favourite auberge, in a little village in the valley called Audaux. Garbure, Jurançon, confit, a Béarnais last supper.
Gordon was going to drive for me. He wanted to go to Scotland to scatter his father’s ashes near the place where he had been born. The urn, in its discreet travelling box, would join my computer in the back of the car. Since my ankle still wasn’t strong enough for eight hours on the road, I was immensely grateful. I paid a last visit to Tarmac’s grave, left a bag of biscuits and a bowl of water for Henri Cat, loaded Piglet and the Duchess into their baskets, locked the door of Maison Bergez and set off for the caravan in Bellocq.
The Pyrenees did their best to make me stay. On my last night they were grey silhouettes with a mother-of-pearl sky behind them, rounded shapes in the distance, a herd of fossilized dinosaurs, one humped dark back after another.
In the early morning there was mist in the valleys, so the peaks looked as if they were resting on pillows of silver silk. There was a strip of brilliance at the horizon, backlighting the whole chain. The second range, which is most often hidden in a haze, suddenly came clear, a series of steep, rounded hills, all a brilliant green, with wisps of mist lingering around their shoulders. By the time I was ready to go, the highest peak, the double-pointed Pic du Midi d’Ossau, was as clear as day and again I had the illusion that I could see every snow-covered stone.
The most haunting of all the Bearnais songs is ‘Aqueras Montanhas’, a local variation of a lament that is sung in all the provinces that made up the Pays d’Oc, the land of the troubadours. It is attributed to Gaston Fébus himself; somehow the melody evokes the sense of wonder which the mountains inspire, the longing to grasp an eternal mystery that lies up there somewhere in the mists and crags. That was the feeling that brought me here, and I still had it when I left. So of course I promised to come back.
Aqueras Montanhas
Aqueras montanhas,
These mountains
Qui tan hautas son,
They’re so high
M ‘empachan de véder
They’re hiding all my sweethearts
Mas amors ont son.
And everyone I love
Si sabi las véder
If I knew how to get to them
On las rencontrar
Where they could be found
Passeri 1’augueta
Fear of drowning wouldn’t stop me
Shens paur de’m negar.
Crossing the rivers
Aqueras montanhas
These mountains,
Be s’abaisharàn,
They’re really going to fall
E mas amoretas
And I’ll be able to see
Que pareisheràn.
All my sweethearts again
Devath ma frinèsta
Under my window
I a un auseron
There’s a little bird
Total la nueit canta
It sings all night
Canta sa cançon
Singing its own song.
Epilogue
I looked different. It was hard to define exactly how, apart from the bad highlights done by a French hairdresser who’d sploshed on the bleach as if he was plastering bricks, but one of my friends said, ‘There was a darkness in you and it’s lifted.’
I felt lighter. I had more energy – that lasted about nine months. I could see that my face was softer, my eyes were brighter. I discovered a deep reservoir of serenity and a new capacity for patience. There is still a subtle sense of being centred, which allows me to make decisions about my life and work more calmly. They seem like better decisions than those I made before my year away, though of course only time will tell. But I care less. I seem to have acquired that sense of being in the moment, as my Buddhist friends would say.
Some of the qualities which I know that I used to have, before the long struggle of lone parenthood and the suffocating pressure of a semi-public life, seem t
o have reasserted themselves. I have a sense of fun, and of adventure, and of possibilities. The suspicion that life is completely futile doesn’t seem well founded any more.
Some of my friendships are stronger, although I don’t think Gill will ever forget how her sun-kissed summer holiday turned into a week of non-stop rain and no beaches. I’m still aware of the pressure on a friendship in a city. If you don’t fancy a Carrie Bradshaw life, out in bars every night, it’s hard to create another context of relaxation and shared experience. Some old friends have drifted away. I didn’t fall over myself to pick up with the chaps – two of them – who rang me up in Orriule only once, to ask me how much I thought my London house was worth.
Before my year in France, I was sure that I didn’t want to live there permanently, not least because I would be too far away from Chloe. She gained a year of unfettered independence while I was away, and enjoyed a lot of adventures in a new culture, but I suspect that I made the classic mistake of a baby-boom parent, and assumed my child was longing to be free of me when actually she was perfectly happy to have me around. She looks rosier now that I’m never far away, and seems to have more confidence. ‘I’m gloriously happy that you’re not in France,’ she said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you’re here,’ she said.
Coming home was always the plan. Even a year ago, I had seen enough of ex-pat communities to know that full-time lotus-eating is not for me. One thing above all which I’ve always found scary is the degree to which these enclaves are so detached from reality that they are almost a parallel universe. Deliberately or not, people acquire fantasy identities. They lose the ability to discriminate between fantastic gossip and verifiable facts. Ridiculous vendettas take up all their attention, while important realities fade from their consciousness, so they suddenly wake up to find they’ve inadvertently broken the law or lost their savings.
Deep France Page 30
