On paper at least, my life in London was a success. I had a packed social diary (if I wanted to I could have attended fashionable parties every night of the week), I owned so many handbags I could open my own boutique and I earned enough money to pay off the credit card bills in full at the end of the month. And yet at thirty-five I was bereft of responsibility. I was the centre of nobody’s universe. My life felt shallow and materialistic – as empty as the spare closet after Eric left. I’d spend the money I earned in order to compensate for the emotional void in my life. But, as I learned, you cannot buy your way out of unhappiness. And so I tried other routes. I did courses – lots of them. At least it would fill up my weekends: salsa dancing, poetry writing, Keralan cooking and learning to swim the Alexander Technique way – I signed up for them all. I even (on the ill-judged advice of a friend) submitted myself to a weekend of abseiling and fell-walking in Wales with members of the British military. This included a fully clothed walk up a gorge, up to our necks in ice-cold water, and culminated in a jump off the top of a waterfall. That, let me tell you, was almost as traumatic as splitting up with Eric.
After quitting my job on the magazine, for the first year it was a huge relief to be my own boss again, with no petty office politics or unpredictable editors to deal with. Instead, I had a calm, very predictable life working from home. Evenings I would either go to yoga or the gym, or meet up with friends for drinks or dinner. Then the next day I did the same thing all over again. It should have been the ideal lifestyle but it wasn’t. My life lacked any goal or clear purpose. And that’s when I started to have the dream, where I am lost on a dark country road, running out of petrol and with nowhere to turn off. I drove and drove, hoping that morning would arrive and it never did. It didn’t take a psychologist to work out that the dream was trying to tell me something.
The house in France offered me an escape route and gave me a new focus. After buying Maison Coquelicot, I continued to live in London for another year, earning the money to do the house up. But I didn’t waste that year. I signed up for twice-weekly French classes in the evening and I read every book I could find, fiction or otherwise, on moving to rural France. Most of them were plodding, middle-aged memoirs about septic tanks, elusive artisans and epic meals. But I devoured every word, and loved their soporific, calming effect. I fell asleep each night dreaming of sunflower fields and rustic interiors. Sitting at my desk in London, I wrote lists of the work that needed to be done and the furniture that I needed to buy. I spent evenings and weekends studying paint charts and ripping pages out of country interiors magazines for inspiration. The house became my hobby and suddenly I had a goal, something to work towards.
It meant that I would always have something to do at Easter and on Bank Holidays, when the spectre of Eric, and the loneliness of life without him, loomed largest. It also served another purpose: it gave me something to talk about, and suggested that my life had moved on in some way, when friends or acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a while asked the inevitable question: ‘So, what have you been up to?’ I would listen to their news – that they’d got married, reproduced or met their soulmate – and, while I wasn’t able to match any of that, I was at least able to say that I’d bought a house in France and was planning to move there soon.
Meanwhile, I set about acquiring the accoutrements of the rustic French lifestyle with a passion. It became my favourite Saturday morning pastime. Laura Ashley, I discovered, had an interesting, souk-like approach to pricing, suddenly, with no warning, offering thirty to fifty per cent discounts. And from time to time they sold off the old display furniture. I even went so far as to befriend the manager of my local branch, hoping for advance tip-offs. In this way I acquired a wrought-iron bed, a distressed leather sofa, two velvet tub chairs, a huge wooden refectory dining table with benches and a mirrored chest of drawers – all at hugely discounted prices, and then shipped them out to France at vast cost, since there was nowhere to store them in my London flat. I also bought, among other things, floral eiderdowns, willow log baskets, an old-fashioned cake stand, an enamel breadbin and watering can, and tasselled curtain tie-backs. I was kitting myself out for My New Life in France. And with every purchase it seemed a step closer.
And now, here I am, a year of acquisitions later, with all these carefully chosen purchases sitting in boxes around me. I am living the moment that I dreamed of for so long. And I am more than a bit scared. What if I start to miss my London life? There is no going back now, and I won’t even be able to go and take solace in Selfridges shoe department or call up a friend on the spur of the moment and go out for a glass of champagne.
Having finished my breakfast, I leap over the hole into the kitchen floor and climb the narrow, dusty staircase to the main bedroom. I open the tightly closed shutters – a struggle, as if the house does not want to open up to me – throwing sunlight into the brown room. I imagine Madame Mauboussin sleeping here, reading, possibly lying in bed all day as illness and old age eventually got the better of her. Did she have a lover? I wonder. I really hope so. I can’t bear the idea of her growing old here, alone and unloved. I go into the bathroom, looking for clues as to the former occupant. There is no natural light, and the speckled beige floor tiles are reminiscent of a particularly unappealing public lavatory. I open the bottom drawer of the old, surgical pink bathroom cabinet half hanging off the wall above the wash basin. Inside, there is a half-used pink Guerlain lipstick and a gold powder compact. I am struck by the poignancy of this. Madame Mauboussin was keeping up appearances right until the end. Did she like clothes? I wonder. Was there a reason why she didn’t marry? Did she have a happy life?
The doorbell rings, taking me by surprise. I stick my head out of the bedroom window and see Claudette standing in the sunshine with a man in a flat cap and blue overalls. ‘Coucou , c’est moi!’ she calls. ‘And this is Monsieur Joffré, the plumber.’ I’m suddenly immensely cheered. Who needs Sarah Beeny when they’ve got Claudette as a neighbour? ‘Alors, you can tell him everything that you need doing,’ she says, after the usual civilities. And so I show Monsieur Joffré up to the dingy bathroom and explain that I need a new boiler, loo and washbasin. (The shower and retiling will have to wait for the time being as I do not have the money to do everything at once.) My spirits soar each time he says ‘d’accord’ or ‘pas de problème’. Before leaving, he tells me he will post a devis through my door in the next day or so, detailing the exact work and the cost. After years of dealing with London builders, who shake their heads as if you are asking them to recreate the Pyramids of Giza or suck in their cheeks and tell you ‘It ain’t gonna be cheap’, Monsieur Joffré is as refreshing as a citron pressé.
‘Thank you so much,’ I say to Claudette, after he has gone.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she replies. ‘And don’t you worry. He will do a very good job. Or he’ll have me to answer to. Et voilà. I must get going too.’
‘Claudette, did you know Madame Mauboussin?’
She nods her head. ‘Oui.’
‘What was she like?’
‘She was very nice,’ says Claudette, clearly not wanting to discuss her. ‘Now écoute. If you want, my husband can help you clear the rubble in the backyard and also the garage.’
Once Claudette has gone, I am seized with a sudden desire to do something, so I go upstairs and rip up the brown carpet in the main bedroom. It is nailed down at the edges but I manage to yank it up, releasing alarming clouds of thick dust into the air in the process. I roll it up into a giant sausage, reminiscent in colour of raw andouillette, the famous French delicacy made from pig colon. Whenever I imagined My New Life in France, I saw myself floating around the local market dressed in a selection of splashy floral prints, a straw basket swinging over my arm, not wrestling with a giant carpet sausage. This is not so much self-actualisation as self-flagellation. With great difficulty, I drag the rolled-up carpet into the rear bedroom and stuff it through the window so that it lands on top of
the rubble heap in the courtyard. Just as I am brushing the dust off my clothes, the doorbell rings again. I rush downstairs to find Victor the estate agent standing on the doorstep, his bushy moustache obliterated by a profusion of brightly coloured flowers and cellophane.
‘Victor, hello. How are you?’
‘Not bad,’ he says, looking shy. He thrusts the flowers towards me.
‘They are very beautiful. What a surprise!’ I say, hoping the fact that I am sweating and covered in dust and grime might cool his ardour. Instead, he invites me out for an aperitif that evening. ‘But I am very busy with the house,’ I say, mindful of Miranda’s earlier warning. I do not want to give Victor false hope but he looks so morose that I find myself adding: ‘But I will call you when I am free.’
‘When?’ he asks. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘I am not sure,’ I say. ‘But I will call you soon.’ As I close the door I feel bad for him. Nothing, I know, hurts like rejection.
I put the flowers in a plastic Evian bottle with the top crudely cut off and then go back to the Libertys’ to phone France Telecom and get my phone reconnected. Even though the debacle is France Telecom’s fault for sending the bill to the wrong address, I am forced to pay a ‘safety deposit’ of €150 to get the line reconnected. It is galling but at least it means that my phone will be working within twenty-four hours, which feels like a huge achievement. Tomorrow, I will be able to phone around and chase Monsieur Picherou and the other artisans.
But what to do for the rest of the day? The truth is that I would like to lie down in a dark, cool room and seek refuge from the afternoon’s heat. But, since I am staying with Lola and Dylan, I must look busy – like I am getting on with things – so I walk back round to Maison Coquelicot and wonder what to do next. Alain arrives just after lunch with an apology. Scrupulously polite as ever, he asks me if I have dined well. ‘Yes,’ I lie, as I don’t want to upset him by telling him I haven’t had any lunch. He tells me that he couldn’t come this morning as Chantal, his girlfriend, is pregnant again and had to go to the hospital for a scan. Chantal is about 15 stone and fierce, with a permanent scowl, so I don’t blame him for dropping everything to do her bidding. He puts on a mask and starts to sand away the gloss paint that he so carefully applied to the walls a few weeks ago. The noise is deafening, there is white dust everywhere and it soon becomes apparent that this is a job that could last a lifetime.
I decide to escape for half an hour and go over to Intermarché to buy some basic supplies. Crossing the square in the fierce afternoon sun, I do not see a single soul and when I arrive, the supermarket is closed. I look at my watch – it’s 1.45 p.m. – and then remember that in rural France all the shops close between 12.00 and 2.00 p.m. Bloody marvellous. I stand in the fierce sun for fifteen minutes, tapping my heels in frustration, worried that I am too much of a type-A personality to live here.
When the supermarket finally opens, I search in vain for an ‘organic’ or ‘bio’ section but there isn’t one. Instead, there are rows and rows of junk cereals and biscuits. It’s very depressing. In London, I only shopped in M&S food hall and I scrupulously ate five (organic) fruits and vegetables a day. In France, I might have to let standards slip for a while. I throw a couple of bottles of Evian into the basket along with a packet of biscuits, a large bar of chocolate and some Brie. Then I join the checkout queue, which is very long. There is only one cashier, and even though there are other staff around, they do not bother to open any more tills. Again, I tap my feet and force myself to breathe deeply. But my fellow shoppers – all comfortably over sixty – do not seem to have a problem with the slow-moving queue. It’s a similar story over at the newsagents, where I stand in line behind ten people buying lottery tickets. There is absolutely no sense of urgency. Despite the fact that the queue is out of the door, several customers linger for a long chat with the proprietor, oblivious to the line behind them. I return to Maison Coquelicot thinking that perhaps I have opted out of my dynamic London lifestyle a decade too early. And since most of the local population is comfortably over sixty, it is already obvious that I have more chance of climbing Everest in a pair of Manolos than meeting the man of my dreams here.
By the end of the day, Alain has made negligible progress in blasting the white gloss off the walls and I have a headache from the noise of the sander and not eating lunch. What I would like most right now is comfort food: roast chicken and mashed potato with lots of organic vegetables. But I am a guest in someone else’s home. The Libertys have very kindly allocated me a shelf in their larder for food but I do not want to mess up their spotless kitchen. And since they are both vegetarian, it’s probably not very diplomatic to start roasting a chicken. To cheer myself up, I stop off at La Cave Poitevine, the wine shop on the square, and buy a bottle of wine. The owner, Gérard plants a generous four kisses on my cheeks. ‘Ah bonjour, Ka-renne,’ he cries, throwing his hands in the air as if it has been an age since he last saw me, when in fact, it was the previous evening. (He has, I think, already identified me as potentially a very good customer.) I ask him to recommend a good red wine for around €6. ‘What are you going to be eating with it?’ he asks.
‘Er… pizza,’ I say, since it sounds marginally less tragic than a cheese sandwich.
‘OK. This one is very good,’ he says, pulling a Médoc off the shelf. ‘And I see your husband has now arrived too?’
‘Husband? I don’t have a husband.’
‘Yes, yes, your husband,’ Gérard persists. ‘The tall man who lives on Rue du Bac and sometimes wears a hat.’ I realise that he’s talking about Dave.
‘Ah no, he is not my husband,’ I say, horrified. ‘I do not have a husband.’
Gérard looks unconvinced. He gives me a knowing wink as he hands me the bottle of wine. And right on cue, as I am crossing the square to return to the Libertys’, I bump into my ‘husband’. I am dismayed to see him but not as dismayed as he is to see me. ‘Hi Dave,’ I say, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. He turns pink, mumbles something inaudible and walks away. My one hope of a social life in the village cannot even bring himself to say hello to me.
Chapter 6
Camping Out
When renovating a house in France, the standard advice is to make one room habitable, and then camp out in it while you do the rest. But I am planning to do some camping of the real kind, as I have to vacate the guest room above the Liberty Bookshop. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Lola’s mother is coming to stay for a month; the second is that Lola and Dylan have been lovely to me but I am in danger of becoming the house guest from hell. A few days ago, I crumbled at the idea of bread and cheese for dinner again and, while Lola and Dylan were out at a French lesson, cooked a steak. Unfortunately, they came home early and I was caught in the carnivorous act, thereby offending their vegetarian sensibilities. Lola rushed to find a ‘detoxifying’ aromatherapy spray, which she sprayed intermittently for several hours afterwards. It didn’t help that I carbonised their frying pan in the process. For my part, I have still not mastered their terrifying pump action shower and I cannot wait to have heating (the Libertys are so concerned about global warming that they never have the heating on) and to cook real food again.
So I pack up my possessions and prepare to move to the campsite in Beauchamp, 12 kilometres from Villiers and on the banks of a tranquil river. At least I won’t have to worry about bumping into Dave and him blanking me again. A couple of evenings before I leave for le camping, I arrive back at the Libertys’ after a day of sanding floors to find him sitting at a corner table, chatting to Lola and Dylan. My first instinct is to keep on walking, to the back of the bookshop and up the narrow staircase to my room. Instead, I boldly (or, as it turns out, stupidly) go over to join them. Dave carries on talking – recounting some funny story about bringing his microlight over on a trailer – and does not stop to acknowledge my presence.
‘Hi Dave,’ I say, pulling
up a chair next to him. ‘How nice to see you.’
He looks pained but mutters ‘Hello’ in a strange, strangulated voice.
‘So how are you?’ I persist, determined to make him talk to me. (I figure that with Lola and Dylan present he doesn’t have a choice.)
‘Fine thanks,’ he says, and carries on with his anecdote. Lola and Dylan looked extremely uncomfortable but I stay for another ten minutes and in that time Dave manages not to look at me once. Instead, he converses solely with Lola and Dylan. Every now and again, I ask him a direct question – I must admit, I am enjoying the challenge of making him talk to me – and he answers in one, possibly two words, as if speaking some binary language.
‘So how have you been?’ I ask, as cheerily as possible.
‘Fine thanks.’
‘And how’s the job going?’ I persist.
‘Not bad,’ he replies, staring pointedly straight ahead at a wall of bookcases, marked ‘romantic fiction’.
‘How long are you here for?’ I ask at another juncture in the conversation. I’m particularly interested in the reply to this, as I want to know how long I’ve got to avoid him.
‘Don’t know,’ comes the economical reply.
After about ten minutes I give up with a cheery: ‘Well, really nice to see you, Dave. Hope to see you again soon.’
His reply is inaudible but his look tells me everything I need to know. From it I deduce that there is no chance of reinstalling myself in Dave’s affections (or his flowery guest room) anytime soon.
And so, to the campsite I must go. But camping can be very glamorous with the right accessories. I feel suitably equipped for this experience, since, somewhere, in one of my hastily packed bin bags, there is a floral tent, sent to me several years ago by a fashion PR. And in a strange, masochistic way, I am quite excited by the impending exercise in self-sufficiency. I will, at least, have access to hot water, showers and a loo at the campsite – all still sadly lacking at Maison Coquelicot – and I will be experiencing la vie rurale at very close quarters. Even if I do have to rough it a bit, it will only be for a week or so and it will give me a powerful incentive to get things moving on the renovation front.
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