But first, the contracts are passed around the table, Michel followed by me, Madame B., the notaire and his assistant Madame Blancot, silently and concentratedly initialing and signing.
It is after midday when we finally get out of there, say our au revoirs to Madame B., whom we will meet once more when we go through the whole process again for the purchase of the second five acres of land.
The rain has grown heavier, if possible. The sky is dark and brooding. Madame B. disappears in a chauffeur-driven limousine, and we huddle tight beneath the notaire’s porch. We had planned an early lunch at the farm: a toast to our new, elevated position, to our home, the hillside, the new bed we found waiting for us the day before, but none of this is possible. We look at each other and smile.
“The airport?” Michel asks, and I nod. The drive is horrendous, the roads silted with mud and rivers of water. Everyone is driving with headlights on full beam, and the corkscrew hills and bends are treacherous. Descending through Grasse, where there are danger signs painted on the roads at the best of times, is a muddle of impatient, bad-tempered motorists. The journey is slow going, but we still have time. I try not to be anxious. We are silent because Michel is concentrating and I am sorry to be leaving, knowing that I won’t be returning until the end of June, which feels a lifetime away. There is so much I want to begin.
Upon arrival at the airport, I run ahead to check in for the flight while Michel returns the rental car. When I arrive at the desk, there is no one about, neither staff nor passengers. It is ominously deserted. I look at my watch. The flight is not due to leave for another thirty-five minutes. It is tight, but surely the check-in has not already closed. They should only begin boarding about now. In a frenzy, I spot the British Airways inquiry desk, where there is a worryingly long line and gaggles of troubled or angry passengers. At the desk, I learn that, due to the weather, the flight has been canceled. My stomach feels as though it has just been punched by Muhammad Ali. Everyone, including myself, is scrabbling to book the next flight. While doing this, I upgrade to business class, figuring that should there be any further problems, it will give me an advantage. Michel arrives. I explain what has happened. His flight to Paris is not for another hour and is due to take off from the terminal for national flights. He hurries over to the Air France desk and changes his flight to one that leaves around the same time as my new scheduled departure.
“Well then, let’s have lunch and celebrate,” he says, and leads me to one of the airport cafés. We decide not to go into Nice because the car has been returned, and in any case, I do not want to stray. I feel I must keep a careful eye on events here, though, after some mental arithmetic, I am reassured. Even traveling on the later plane, there is plenty of time to reach the theater comfortably before curtain. Still, I would have felt calmer if the earlier flight had not been canceled.
After a simple meal, we kiss a passionate, heartfelt good-bye, and Michel waves me off through security toward passport control. As I look back, I see him hurrying for the bus that will carry him away to terminal one. We will not see each other for three weeks. In spite of the events of the day, the securing of the house after almost a year of delays, my heart feels heavy. I am torn between two worlds—the past and present and the present and future—and two countries; my heart and home are in France now, but my work is still in England. It is confusing and unsettling for a child of the earth like me, who needs to know where her roots are. During these musings I have been only vaguely aware of information coming over the loudspeaker. It is repeated in English, and this time I pay attention. Due to the weather, the British Airways flight has been delayed.
“No!” I cry and run to the boarding gate, where a pretty young French woman is switching off the microphone she has just used for the announcement. “How long is the delay?”
She shrugs. “We do not know.” We both stare out of the window at a waterlogged runway and a fleet of planes standing idle. Should I telephone the theater? Could I hire a private plane? But if the Boeings cannot take off, what hope has a small jet? I decide to ask anyway. My fears are confirmed. All air traffic has been grounded. I return to the departure lounge. There is nothing to do but sit it out. The delay turns out to be a little over an hour, during which I am going over mental calculations involving arrival times, moving through passport control, finding a taxi. Fortunately, I have no luggage. Should I book a taxi to the theater from here? But I do not know when we will be departing. My brain is beginning to scramble. It is going to take a miracle…
Should I telephone the company manager? But if I do, what can she do? I have no understudy… I am going to be fired. Throughout a career spanning almost twenty years, I have never yet missed a show, not even due to illness and certainly not because of an act as irresponsible as this one. I am still berating myself when the boarding is announced.
As the fllight attendant directs me to my seat, I mention to her that I have a show, and I ask if there is any possibility of being given priority disembarkation.
“We all have problems. You should have taken an earlier plane.”
Chastised, I spend the flight trying to rest. I am exhausted with worry. A plump American woman from Texas tries on several occasions to engage me in conversation, but I am in no mood and close my eyes firmly until I am stirred by a hand resting on mine. “Honey,” she says, “I wanna tell you something…”
I open my eyes. “What is it?” I snap.
“You sure as hell are worried about something, and I want you to know that I know about it.”
“Know about it?” I rejoin weakly, for if she has some secret, I am so desperate I am ready to hear it.
“I see things,” she continues. “And you have nothing to worry about. You’re gonna make it.”
“I am?” I look at her in amazement, then realize that it is only my need trying to take heart from this utterly vague statement. “No,” I say, “I can’t make it. There is no taxi in the world that can transport me across rush-hour London in time for curtain.”
“Oh my God! You’re an actress! Have I seen you in anything? Anything on TV that shows in the States?”
I wish I had never been drawn in, but she is well meaning enough, and it is I who am foul-mooded and anxious. I give her the name All Creatures Great and Small, for it is usually the key that unlocks the door to my curriculum vitae. She is thrilled and “sooo happy! Let me tell you, honey, you will make that show, I have no doubt about it.”
I smile and thank her for her optimism, then close my eyes; whatever she says, it is now a physical impossibility, and I have decided that as soon as we land I must call the theater, which is what I should have done from Nice, and explain to our very dear company manager that she has two choices: to hold the curtain or cancel the show. Either way, I am finished.
We fasten our seatbelts and the plane prepares for landing. As we hit the runway, the flight attendant makes the usual announcements and follows them with: “And would Miss Drinkwater please make herself known to the cabin staff.”
I press the overhead button, and she approaches.
“We’ll be disembarking you first,” she tells me. “Please have your bags ready.”
I nod gratefully, even though I know this assistance cannot help me now.
My Texan friend brushes my hand and wishes me well, reassuring me once more that she knows I will make it and beaming with the pleasure of having met me (!) and how she will tell everyone that I am equally charming in real life (!).
As I exit the plane, a member of the British Airways ground staff stands holding a card with my name on it.
“Miss Drinkwater?” he inquires.
I nod. “Follow me, please,” he says, and strides on ahead with singular purpose. I follow obediently. “We have a short car ride across the tarmac, won’t take more than a couple of minutes. Your pilot is ready and waiting.” He smiles with professional reassurance.
“My pilot?” I am completely confused.
I am driven across an a
rea of Heathrow Airport I have never crossed before, and deposited alongside a very capacious helicopter. I step out and the man shakes my hand and says, “Nice to have met you. Good luck.” Off he goes. The pilot waves and sees me aboard. I settle into the helicopter, which is equipped to seat ten. We prepare for yet another takeoff. “Sorry it’s so large. We had nothing smaller available.” I shake my head because I am speechless. “It’s fine,” I mutter. Have they made a mistake? I am thinking. I dare not ask. “We’ll be across London and landing at Biggin Hill Airport in ten minutes. All being well, there should be a taxi waiting to take you to the theater.”
This is a miracle!—which I am trying to figure out. That rather uncharming, or perhaps harassed, flight attendant must have thawed during the flight and notified the pilot, who notified ground staff. Or has the Texan woman some miraculous powers she only hinted at?
Finally, I ask, “Did British Airways arrange this?”
“No, your husband booked it.”
“My husband?” Thoughts whirl about in a flurry. I am not married. Have I taken someone else’s place? But no, my name was written on the arrivals card, and they have a taxi waiting to take me to the theater.
And there it is, a taxi waiting on the tarmac. Into it I fall, gratefully. The traffic is heavy because we are hitting rush hour, but my driver seems to have been briefed and knows that this is an emergency. He shoulders his way in and out of lines of vehicles with a cutthroat purpose usually known only to the French, depositing me fifteen minutes later outside the stage door. We are twenty-five minutes before curtain. My knees are weak, I am soaking with perspiration and feel little better than a damp rag, but I am here. I walk in the door, collect my dressing-room key and stagger along the corridor. The company manager finds me. She looks ashen. Officially, contractually, all actors are due at the theater by what is known as “the half.” The half is a theatrical abbreviation for half an hour before curtain up, but curiously, the half is actually announced thirty-five minutes before curtain up. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that, right now, it makes me ten minutes late.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Thank God you’re here,” she whispers, shoving me into my room and closing the door behind her. “No one knows a thing, but Christ, I have been having kittens.”
I nod. I cannot speak. I am trembling like a leaf.
“Are you OK?”
“Fine,” I manage.
“Want anything?”
“Rescue Remedy,” which is a Bach herb-and-flower homeopathic tincture for shock. I know she keeps a bottle of it in her first-aid kit.
“You got it.” She nods and rushes to the door. “By the way,” she throws after her as she exits. “He’s in the foulest of moods.”
I nod again, taking this in. “Make that a double brandy.” I never drink before a show, but tonight I doubt my knocking knees would transport me to the stage without it.
Later, once the performance—which has gone surprisingly well—is over, I pour myself a large glass of wine and ring Michel in Paris from my dressing room.
“How did you do it?”
He laughs and recounts his afternoon. He had been sitting in the national terminal waiting for the departure of his Air France flight to Paris when, by sheer chance, he glanced up from his laptop and noticed a British Airways plane sitting on the sopping tarmac. He inquired and was informed that it was the delayed Heathrow flight. There was no way he could reach me, but what he did know was that every second that ticked by without that plane leaving the ground lessened my chances of reaching the theater in time. With the brilliance and agility of mind of a film producer—a breed who lives by the motto that every catastrophe must be turned to advantage if financial disaster is to be avoided—Michel understood that what he had to buy me was time. He checked himself off his own flight, purchased several phone cards and began ringing helicopter firms operating out of Heathrow. It was the helicopter company that gave him the name of the taxi company who frequently services the private airport to which I was delivered.
And delivered I am! When the bill arrives, the whole exercise costs every penny I am to earn from the out-of-town contract, money that might have purchased us a gate or contributed toward the laurel-bush fencing we have decided upon, but I am no longer counting. My professional reputation has been saved and the show has gone on.
As night falls and I curl up and close my exhausted eyes, the extraordinary catalog of the closing day’s adventures (and misadventures) plays out again before me. In all the gut-wrenching and stress, I had almost forgotten that today we bought ourselves an olive farm in the Midi, overlooking the Riviera coast.
Pride and contentment wash over me for the first time, and the reality of our act sinks sweetly home. Then I contemplate the strikingly generous gesture of Michel. Reflecting on this, as my eyes grow heavier and my body slips warmly and safely toward sleep, I am lulled peacefully by the certainty that I have finally secured the shambling house that I have sought during so many years of travel and searching, and what is even more delicious, along the way I have encountered the one person with whom I desire to share that corner of paradise. What remains is for us to find the means to transform that crumbling shell into a home and, later, an olive farm. For the foreseeable future, until my West End run is over, I must set such dreams aside, because there will be no more snatched escapades in France.
CHAPTER SIX
A MELON AND LEATHER BOOTS
The instant I step out of the plane, I feel that whoosh of heat envelop me and the sun beat like a great fan against my tired features. What a welcome relief to be back. To be home. Michel, who flew down from Paris a couple of days ago, is there to greet me. He takes my bag and leads me to the car while I breathe deep the scent of eucalyptus wafting from the towering trees that dominate the airport parking. I take in the distant frantic honking of horns, gently listing palms, pure white buildings, clean blue skies and settle back into my seat to watch the Mediterranean world flash by. And then he breaks the news: the villa has been broken into. It’s as though he has just slapped me. “When?”
Michel has known of the burglary for several weeks but chose not to mention it to me because there was nothing I could do about it. Worrying about it at a distance, he argues, would have been both distressing and frustrating. “I would have preferred to know,” I state emphatically. I have been looking forward to this day for three months. I cannot deny that the news has clouded the pleasure of my return.
Once at the house, Michel unloads the car—my luggage and the fresh salads he bought before collecting me—while I roam from room to room, assessing the extent of the damage in our dusty foreign home. Little has been stolen, but then there there was precious little to steal. I am very relieved to find that our new bed has not been soiled, not even touched, but our cassettes and tape deck, modest as they were, are gone. Every tune had a place here, a memory. My fusty workspace is bare. My books, my precious books, have all been stolen, every one of them—dictionaries, guides, a history of the islands, manuals on local horticulture, even the dog-eared, beach-stained paperbacks—as has a brand-new espresso machine, a frivolous purchase I made the day before our New Year’s departure. I hid and locked it in a cupboard, and due to the brevity of our last stay, we never even found an opportunity to use it. Curiously, the bed linen and tablecloths from the market at Nice have not been snatched though they are surely more valuable and salable than my paltry writing gear. Angry as I feel, I am grateful we have not been denied at least a few souvenirs of our first days here.
Michel finds me standing alone in the salon. “How did they get in?” I ask. He points to splintered spaces, where our old peeling shutter slats have been hacked out and replaced, windowpanes that were smashed by the thief when he made his entry as well as to a newly fitted lock on the main door through which he made his escape. Who repaired them and when? Amar, he answers, regarding me. I think he is taken aback by how hurt I am. Though the damage has been made good and the lo
ss is minimal, I want to cry. I take it personally. It is an intrusion, a despoilment and, more crucially, a warning.
Outside the kitchen window, I come across an empty, discarded Marlboro packet. Should I keep it, present it as evidence? I try to picture the character and face of that smoker, but its discovery is five weeks too late. I ditch it in the wastepaper basket. Best to let it go.
Still, the cropping of the land has exposed the property. We are vulnerable now. It forces us to address the need for security. The hill where we are situated may never have been fenced in before, but we cannot afford to remain romantic about these matters. In the beginning, there was nothing else, no other property for miles in any direction. As far as the naked eye could see, it was owned and inhabited by one family, our predecessors—the Spinotti clan. Life was probably less cutthroat then, but more importantly, in the dependencies, the mazets of Appassionata, the gardeners and permanent staff lived, a cluster of people who tended the place all year round. We are not as privileged, so another solution will have to be found.
After lunch on the terrace, Michel telephones Amar, who arrives before evening and quotes us for the laurel bushes we have decided to plant to border the grounds. For the time being, we do not have to face the enormous expense of fencing in the entire property, because flanking either side of our terrain is the same overgrown jungle we had here. We have no idea who owns these two plots, but unattractive as the weeds and climbers may be, they are a burglar deterrent.
My behavior toward Amar is antagonistic. This is partly due to my frame of mind, but mostly because he knows we are beginning to count on him and I feel him taking advantage. His estimation of the number of bushes required far exceeds mine, and I tell him so. Eventually, over a fruit juice, aided by Michel’s appeasing charm, we settle upon a more reasonable figure and a price. Even after hefty negotiating, he is expensive, added to which the cash we give him to settle for the land clearance, he now informs us, is insufficient.
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