Our voices and footsteps reverberate, and I feel the rumble of lives lived here. Tugging aside the netting, grazing a finger in the process, I gaze out at eloquent views over land and sea, and mountains to the west. Sun-drenched summers by the Mediterranean. Appassionata. Yes. I am seized.
Charpy watches impatiently, fussing at the sleeves and shoulders of his jacket, while we open doors, shove at long-forgotten cupboards, run our fingers through layers of dust and disintegrating insects and flick or turn switches and taps, none of which work. He does not comprehend our enthusiasm. “Beaucoup de travail,” he pronounces.
Back outside, the late-morning sun is warm and inviting. I glance at Michel, and without a word spoken, his eyes tell me he sees what I see: a wild yet enticing site. Still, even if we could scrape together the asking price, the funds needed to restore it make it an act of insanity.
WE HEAD FOR A bar Michel frequents in the old port of Cannes. The patron strolls over to greet him. They shake hands. “Bon festival?” he enquires. Michel nods, and the patron nods in response. The conversation seems complete until Michel takes me by the arm and introduces me. My future wife, he says. Mais, félicitations! Félicitations! The patron shakes our hands vigorously and invites us to a drink on the house. We install ourselves at one of the tables on the street, and I feel the heat of the midday sun beat against my face.
Although it is only late April, there are many foreigners bustling to and fro laden with shopping bags. Several wave to Michel, calling out the same enquiry. “Bon festival?” He nods. Occasionally, he rises to shake hands or, in French fashion, lightly kiss another’s cheeks. Mostly, these fleeting encounters are with executive types in sharply cut blazers, lightweight slacks, Italian soft leather loafers. They talk of business. It is the closing day of the spring television festival which precedes the Cannes Film Festival. Both festivals are dominated by the markets that run alongside them. The world of television, the filming of it rather than the selling of it, seems to me a million miles removed from these markets. I marvel at how Michel can survive in such a milieu.
A lithe waiter zips by with our glasses of Côte de Provence rosé. These are accompanied by porcelain saucers filled with olives, slices of deep pink saucisson and potato chips. He deposits the dishes on our table and departs without a word to us. We clink glasses and sip our wine, silent, lost in our morning’s visit. Both musing upon our find, buried aloft in the pine-scented hills way above this strip with its glitzy hotels.
“I wish we could afford it,” I say eventually.
“I think we should go for it. They want to get rid of the place, so let’s make an offer.”
“But how could we ever…?”
Michel pulls out his fountain pen, takes his napkin and we start scribbling figures and exchange rates; the ink bleeds into the soft tissue. The answer is clear. It is way beyond our price range. There are Vanessa and Clarisse to consider, daughters from his previous marriage.
“The pound is strong,” I say. “That will work in our favor. But it’s still way more than we can afford.” I glance at the clock on the church tower up in the old town. It is after one. Charpy’s immobilier office on the Croisette has closed for the weekend. It is just as well. We will have left by Monday. I am returning to London, where it is raining, Michel to Paris. I turn, peer up the lane that leads to the old fish market and tilt my head skyward. Only rounded summits of green hills are visible above the blocks of crab-colored buildings. I cannot tell which of them harbors Appassionata.
“Let me talk to Charpy on Monday,” says Michel. “I have an idea.”
“What?”
“Perhaps they’ll sell it in stages.”
“Of course they won’t!”
OUR PENSION OVERLOOKS the old port. I pass the afternoon watching the to-ing and fro-ing of yachts and the ferries plying a path to the islands. Michel has disappeared for a final, postfestival business meeting. He will not return before evening. I am seized by a desire to slip back up to the hills, but I know that, alone in the car, I would never find my way. Instead, I idle away the afternoon reading and jotting in a notebook.
I didn’t come to Cannes to look for a house. Michel was flying down for the festival and invited me to come along and spend the week with him. It’s true I have always been drawn to “my house by the sea,” and whenever I am at the coast, whether it be Finland, Australia, Africa or Devon, I browse the estate agents’ windows, visiting occasional properties, hungry to discover something unexpected, to walk into a space where I belong. No other property I have ever visited has felt this close to belonging. Even so, to buy Appassionata would be an act of madness.
Every bean I have ever earned, I have spent traveling, crossing borders, roaming the world. I have been intensely restless, hungry to live a hundred lives in one lifetime. I have never settled anywhere. I have no capital to speak of. I am not fluent in the language; schoolgirl French is my limit. And as for farming? My mother’s family owns a farm in Ireland where I spent childhood holidays, and I played a country vet’s wife in a television series: hardly an agricultural pedigree. Still, to restore this old olive farm, with views overlooking the sea—to create roots, and with this man, who proposed the day after I met him. A coup de foudre, he said… an act of insanity, but since we met, life has been giddy. We’ve been spinning like tumbleweed. It may be illogical, but it feels right.
I begin to scribble several to-do lists, which is out of character, simply an attempt to contain my excitement, to comprehend the enormity of the venture. I’m drawing the possibility of ownership closer to me, to quieten the fever.
Finally, about six in the evening, as the church bells chime the first of the Sunday masses celebrated on Saturday evening and after I have exhausted all avenues to make-believe ownership, I stroll the beach to swim. The water is bracing. I am alone in it, which pleases me. I savor the salty taste on my lips. I flip over on my back and scan the waterfront, the coastline which stretches as far as the cap of Antibes, and the hills behind. I drink in its foreignness. The cream and salmon tones of the buildings, the softly evocative light that has drawn so many painters here. I notice the observatory on a hill to the right of me for the first time. I begin to put myself in the role of habitant. Could I really live here? Yes. Yes!
SUNDAY, WE DRIVE out of town. We head inland, up into the hills, making for the pretty old town of Vence, perched atop a hill at the end of a long winding road. Michel wants to show me the chapel the Dominicans commissioned Matisse to redesign when he was living at Cimiez, an elegant quarter in the hills above Nice, but when we arrive, it is closed. How disappointing! I had expected a discreet mass to be in progress, with monks and incense. We shove our faces through the fencing, clamoring for views of the garden and building, and Michel directs my eyeline toward the chapel roof. The tiles are a brilliant azure blue. So simple, so unlikely and so pure.
And then, drawn like nails to a magnet, we head for the villa.
There is no gate or fencing to prevent us from entering the land, so we do. Without Charpy at our side, we can explore the site more thoroughly. On the tarmac driveway, I find several dead shells from hunters’ rifles and look around, wondering what they were shooting. Rabbits?
“Wild boar,” suggests Michel.
I laugh. “This close to the coast? No way.”
Once up on the top terrace, we decide against going inside. Charpy forcing the door is one thing, but alone, we will not contemplate it. Instead, we press our faces against filthy, sticky, cracked panes of glass and peer in through the windows. The sludge-brown shutters are bleached and peeling.
“We’ll paint the shutters the color of Matisse’s chapel,” says Michel. Azure blue. Côte d’Azur. The blue coast. I lift my eyes heavenward. Blue sky. Cobalt blue. Vanilla walls and blue shutters. I try to picture it. A cool yet vibrant combination. “Yes, let’s,” I murmur.
Many of the slats are splintered and broken, forced by squatters or robbers. “They will need to be replaced,” s
ays Michel.
“Everything will need to be replaced. Nothing is intact.”
A curious feature we hadn’t noticed yesterday is a bread oven that looks like a monstrous beehive. It has been added, stuck on, to the main chimney breast at upper terrace level. “That will have to go!”
“Definitely!”
“We haven’t seen inside the garage.”
“I bet it’s locked.” And yes, it is. Alongside it are two stables with the upper and lower doors hanging loose on heavy rusted hinges. I expect them to reek of hay, but they are stacked with misshapen cardboard boxes crammed with disintegrating papers and files. On the ground are a few broken bits of gardening tools, rusting and useless, a cracked cup with no handle and a row of dusty dark green bottles lining the walls. I wonder whose life those objects belonged to. And what became of that person, those people.
A HOUSE IS SO MUCH more than a house. And a house in a foreign country pushes the learning experience that much further. It expands, promises to expand, the psyche; the inner journey. We are two embarking on this path together. Newly in love. Thrilled by each other. The house that Monsieur Charpy saw with us yesterday and the potential farm, the regeneration we are picturing, are two different properties. We are purchasing a dream. We will nurture it through the pruning of trees and the harvesting of fruit. We will celebrate our union by extending invitations to friends and family worldwide…
WE SIT OUT IN THE afternoon sunshine at the pool’s edge, side by side, fingertips touching, and dangle our feet in the vast, empty basin. We walk down the steps, enter, stand within it, calling loudly, hooting and singing. Our voices echo. We run around its perimeter until we are out of breath. Swallows wheel and swoop high in the sky above us. We close our eyes and listen to the stillness. I have never walked in an empty swimming pool before. With the soles of our shoes, we shove thick plaits of ivy out of our path and find puddles of sludgy muddy rainwater seeping into the deepest crevices of the basin. Drowned black insects float among speckled ivy leaves. The walls are so much taller than we are. I press my back against the bleached blue cement and feel as though I have fallen into the very heart—no, we will be the heart—the watery womb of the property. We linger and kiss, our pulses racing. We look deep into each other, smiling, overwhelmed. Two tiny excited people in this vast expanse of space. I think of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. I feel as big as Tom Thumb. Rather, as tiny. I am Alice in Wonderland. Like Alice, the adventure, the challenge, has shrunk us in preparation for our journey. We will grow bigger and taller as we inhabit this space, as we reach into it and learn from it; learn to farm it and to know its myriad secrets. And in its restoration, we will discover each other.
I love this place already. I love this man at my side who has tumbled into this crazy dream with me. He seems to want to make it work as much as I do. He appears to be as energized and bowled over by the prospects as I am.
Although we have known each other only a few months I feel safe with Michel. I trust him. He loves abundantly, with risk, and is tender. I needed that. I was losing faith. After a series of short-lived affairs, one rather public relationship—I lead a life in the public eye, albeit at a modest level—I had become isolated. I was losing myself. I was hurt and growing brash. I was independent, driven and alone.
THE SUN IS MOVING to the right, preparing to slip behind the hills. The sky is changing color, augmenting its palette to include tawny orange, pastel red and soft purple. “Where is that?” I ask. “There, where the sun is setting?”
“Mougins.”
We are back on the upper terrace. Michel is smoking a cigarette—I wish he wouldn’t—and it is time to go.
“We’ll follow the sun to Mougins and have dinner there, it’s too soon to return to Cannes.”
Yes, too soon to return to Cannes and its gaudy lights, its meretricious festival nightlife.
We descend the drive slowly, pootling past the olive terraces to the right and left of us. My attention is drawn to flowers on the olive branches, tiny white specks, little crocheted blossoms, delicate as finger lace. We build the future by enlarging upon our past, Goethe wrote.
AT THE ENTRY to the hilltop village of Mougins, where cars are banned, we find an inviting petit hotel restaurant. It has a terrace with extensive views which nosedive into the deep valley and sweep toward the sea. We take our places on the terrace.
Michel orders us deux coupes. Our patron nods approvingly and disappears. We notice a hand-painted sign that reads 140ff la chambre, parking inclus. “It’s a good price,” says Michel. Less than fourteen pounds. “We must remember this place for our next visit. It’s closer to the house, quieter than Cannes and cheaper.” The monsieur returns with our two glasses of champagne, and says, “I am the only one, le seul, in the village with my own parking.”
We nod encouragingly.
We eat ravenously. Our meal is delicious and an excellent value as the set menu at 70f. I begin with warmed goat cheese melted on toasts of baguette and dressed with an arugula salad, while Michel chooses une petite omelette au briccio, omelette with goat cheese and mint. I follow with gigot d’agneau, succulently pink, with tian de pommes de terre, a dish of potatoes and tomatoes cooked beneath the roast leg of lamb. Michel orders veau aux olives noires à la sauge, veal casserole with black olives and sage. The owner recommends a Bandol rouge to accompany; a wine from the neighboring Var region. Michel, although a faithful Bordeaux man, decides we should go for it. It is fuller-bodied than I would have expected, but it complements the meal and our mood of discovery. Michel accepts a slither of brie de Meaux to follow and then the tarte au citron et aux amandes. I decline the cheese but am tempted by a dessert I have never come across before: lavender crème brûlée. It is heaven, one of the most sensuous foods I have ever eaten. We set off into the night replete and happy. The patron has wooed our stomachs and won our hearts. To my amazement, as we are leaving, he introduces us to his very glamorous wife. She, he announces proudly, is the chef!
ON MONDAY, AFTER several phone calls to and from Brussels—where the vendors, Monsieur and Madame B., reside—a deal is struck. We will buy the house and the first half of its terrain immediately and will sign a promesse de vente for the second five acres, to be paid within four years of the completion date of the purchase of the villa. On top of this, Michel has beaten down the original asking price by almost a quarter.
Now we must leave the south of France. We have stayed over a day longer than we had planned, in order to set the purchase of the house rolling. Although we are leaving the sun and the sea, the bustle of Mediterranean life and, tonight in Paris, I must say au revoir to Michel for several weeks, my heart is sailing like a kite. A house in the south of France. More than a house: the restoration of a disused farm, a canvas to paint on, a new life to forge and someone to share it with. In my mind’s eye, I can already picture the pouring and bottling of liters of olive oil, lashings of nature’s liquid gold.
BACK IN ENGLAND, I am barely able to contain my excitement until a friend takes me to lunch and invites me to ponder some well-meant advice. I am warned about the horrors of the French tax laws, property laws, by-laws and the black holes of the Napoleonic system. Should I decide the whole affair has been an aberration and choose to sell, I am told that the French will hold on to my money for five years. I leave the restaurant shocked and weak at the knees.
This is followed by an encounter with another longstanding chum who flummoxes me entirely by telling me for my own good that all these difficulties come of having been too secretive. Next, my family wants to warn me against being hasty. “Have you considered the pitfalls?” my father asks, and begins to list scenarios of corruption and deception, summing up with “You’re too impetuous. You don’t want to get landed with a pig in a poke, now do you?”
I am still trying to catch my breath when my mother phones, confiding that while out shopping with my sister in Bond Street, she broke down and cried. “I had to been taken into Fenwick�
��s coffee shop. I couldn’t stand up.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“You.”
“Me?”
“How could you? We are Irish Catholics,” she wails.
I say nothing. What can I say?
“And he’s a foreigner. You’ve always been the same. You’ve got no common sense!”
I replace the receiver. Slumping into uncertainty, I begin to stew. Yes, I am impetuous, I probably lack common sense, I hadn’t been aware that I am particularly secretive and I certainly have not troubled to investigate the pitfalls of the French system. On top of which, we cannot afford the farm. It is an unachievable fantasy fed by a whirlwind romance which is probably destined to go the route of all others. I should pull out. So, my frame of mind when Michel telephones from Paris to say that he has received a call from Brussels is one of mounting hysteria.
“What?” is my amorous greeting.
“Madame is insisting on ten percent of the selling price up front, in cash.”
“Absolutely not. It’s illegal.”
That kind of request is quite common, I am hearing, in French property transactions. It is known as the “deposit.” The buyer pays a percentage of the agreed asking price in cash, and the vendor declares a sale price lower than the property’s true total. It helps to alleviate the astronomical frais levied against both purchaser and vendor.
“It’s black-market money,” I shout insanely. “She can’t do that.”
“I’m afraid it is a generally accepted practice.”
I refuse to discuss it. In fact, I refuse to discuss anything and replace the receiver rather too abruptly. I know, though, that if we don’t agree, we will lose the olive farm. A decision that felt organic a month ago is now driving me over the edge with doubts. Virtually everything I own, including the cashing in of my one and only insurance policy—much against my accountant’s advice—is going to be sunk into this enterprise. What if it all goes wrong? What if everything my friends and family are telling me is true? I am woken by appalling dreams. I pace the nights away, jabbering to myself. Terror is taking hold.
Olive Farm Page 2
