Tout Sweet

by Karen Wheeler

  There are, I have to admit, many things that I miss about my life in London: my twice-weekly Pilates sessions; playing tennis in Holland Park at weekends; impromptu coffees with Kim, my high-powered banker neighbour, on Saturday mornings. I miss being able to meet friends for a glass of champagne or watch a movie at a moment’s notice and I miss wearing high heels and cute dresses (there are opportunities for dressing up here – mostly when invited to other people’s houses for dinner – but not so many as in London). I badly miss being able to pop round to my local gastro pub for sausages and mash on the spur of the moment or when the cupboards are empty. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by living in London but contrary to expectation, dining out in the French countryside is not all pillows of foie gras, pungent dribbling cheeses and delicious carpaccios of this and that. Possibly it is in Peter Mayle country, but I seem to have landed in the only corner of France where the food is borderline inedible and the meat often tough enough to pull out your molars. I have found one restaurant where the food is half-decent but the menu never changes and vegetables rarely feature on it.

  If I’m being really truthful, I also miss the shops – above all not being able to jump on a bus to browse around Selfridges. This surprises me, as part of the plan when I moved here was to lead a less consumerist life. But what I really miss, I realise, is looking rather than actually buying. There is a Zara in Poitiers and a Princess Tam Tam boutique, which sells wickedly sexy French lingerie (not much use to me at the moment), but that’s about it.

  In London, my day as a freelance journalist began with a twenty-minute walk to Prêt a Manger on Kensington High Street for a cappuccino (another thing I miss, for although it sounds sacrilegious to say it, the coffee in rural France is often bitter and acrid tasting). Then, after a quick browse around the shops, I would return home (as if arriving at the office) and spend the rest of the day working. Here in this French village (unless of course, there is a refuse collector banging on my door) I can wake up anytime I want, there is nowhere to walk to with a purpose, and frankly, the freedom is frightening. And so I establish a new routine. It’s similar to the London one but without the twenty-minute early morning walk and without the work. Instead, I start each day with a two-minute stroll up to the square for either an organic, fair trade coffee at the Liberty Bookshop, or une petite noisette (an espresso with a splash of milk) at the Café du Commerce on the square. The Liberty Bookshop has become, in many ways, the focal point of my life. Dylan is my DIY guru – he has the answer to every dilemma I present to him and gives me advice on everything from the best broadband connection to gas bottles. Gas bottles, incidentally, are by far the most worrying thing about moving to France alone. Since mains gas does not exist in most French villages, it’s necessary at least once a year to wrestle home an enormous gas bottle – even when empty they are as heavy as a slab of concrete – and then hook it up to the oven. (I’m not alone in worrying about this: a female friend recently confided that replacing the wretched thing was her chief concern when she split up with her boyfriend shortly after moving to France.) I still don’t have an oven but when the time comes I have no idea how I will get the gas cylinder home, let alone connect it safely. The answer, I suspect, as with most things, is to ask Dylan.

  As well as being the source of all my DIY advice, the Liberty Bookshop is, ironically, an excellent place to meet other French people, many of whom come from surrounding villages up to 25 kilometres away to sample British delicacies such as PG Tips and buttered scones. On Wednesday afternoons, the Liberty Bookshop hosts an informal Anglo-French conversation group. The people I meet here, French or English, are all lovely, friendly and invariably over fifty. They have all the time in the world to sit and chat.

  There is one exception: Jon Wakeman. One afternoon in November I walk into the bookshop, hoping for Dylan’s help slotting a tube of silicon filler into a metal gun, and find a guy I have never seen before, with long, unruly hair, chatting with Dylan at the counter. He seems to be relaying a funny anecdote and because he has a very attractive laugh I go and join them.

  ‘Hi,’ says Dylan. ‘Have you met Jon?’

  ‘No,’ says the man with unruly hair, holding out his hand. ‘Jon Wakeman.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say, with a (possibly over-eager) smile. I am thrilled to meet someone my own age. Unfortunately, the stranger’s body language suggests that the feeling is not reciprocated. He shifts on his feet and crosses his arms defensively.

  ‘Karen lives in the village too,’ says Dylan. This is usually the cue for a mini-interrogation: How long have you lived in France? What made you move here? Are you here on your own? And so on. But the man with the long hair looks very uneasy, wary even. It’s as if Dylan had said: ‘This is Karen. She’s got avian flu.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he says in an off-hand way, before continuing with the story he is telling. I hover by the counter for a few minutes but feel uncomfortable as Jon Wakeman does not make any attempt to include me in the conversation. Eventually, I take the hint and go and sit down at a nearby table listening to their raucous laughter as I wait for Dylan to come and take my order. I feel miffed and very left out. I want to be part of their conversation. Instead I pretend to read Ex Pat France, an amateurish news sheet filled with ads for British builders and auberges that have been taken over by Brits offering ‘fish and chip evenings’ or ‘quiz and curry nights’.

  ‘He’s a nice guy, that Jon Wakeman,’ says Dylan, when he has gone.

  ‘What’s he doing out here?’

  ‘He’s renovating an old farmhouse. He’s planning to turn it into a B&B.’

  ‘Really? Whereabouts?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten the name of the village but it’s about ten kilometres away from here. I’m not sure if he’s got a girlfriend or whether he’s out here on his own. But he goes back to the UK for work from time to time. I think he’s an IT consultant.’

  ‘Good for him,’ I say. Touching though it is that Dylan appears to be carrying out such reconnaissance on my behalf, I don’t want to appear too interested in Jon Wakeman, given that he was so uninterested in me.

  Other encounters in the Liberty Bookshop are more successful. One rainy Saturday morning in late November, I am quietly reading the latest anti-cellulite tips in Madame Figaro magazine, when an attractive French woman in her forties approaches my table and asks if I would like to meet up to exchange French/English conversation. I am a little alarmed that she can so easily identify me as an Anglaise, but I agree readily to her proposal. Her English is already very good – she is training to be an English teacher and is clearly an Anglophile – so it looks like I will get the better part of the deal. She introduces herself as Mathilde and suggests that I come to her house the following Saturday at 12.00 noon. It seems like a strange time for a French person to arrange a rendezvous, being on the cusp of lunch hour, but I take down the directions and on Saturday morning drive the 8 kilometres to her village in crisp winter sunshine. I feel incredibly happy as I drive through the countryside. If I still lived in London, I would probably be wandering aimlessly along Kensington High Street right now, indulging in ‘shop research’ – my euphemism for mindless shopping – and steadily increasing my credit card debt.

  In truth, I’m braced for some rather stilted conversation chez Mathilde but what I get is a very convivial lunch. Mathilde lives in a house converted from the old village school. Inside, it is an effortless homage to the shabby chic style that Londoners pay interior designers a fortune to recreate. The kitchen smells deliciously of something stewing in garlic and onions. She shows me through to a room with gloriously ‘distressed’ leather armchairs, a huge fireplace with log burner and crackling fire and a long wooden refectory table, unexpectedly laid for lunch. Everything in Mathilde’s house feels warm and friendly and bears the patina of age and character.

  She introduces me to her partner, Sebastian, an artist. He has a weather-beaten face, kind, laughing eyes and l
ong grey hair that he wears in a ponytail. I like him immediately. He clasps my hands and greets me like an old friend. He is older than Mathilde – although it is obvious that he was devastatingly attractive when he was younger – and I later discover that they met when Mathilde enrolled on one of his art courses. Together they have created a series of paintings, based on a Mozart symphony, which add intriguing bolts of colour to the walls of their home. Their other artistic endeavours – sculptures, pottery and painted papier mâché vases – cover all available surfaces. The overall effect is utterly charming.

  Mathilde has a ten-year-old son, Albert, but he usually spends the weekend with his father, her ex-husband. Sebastian offers me a glass of red wine and signals for me to take the place at the wooden trestle table, closest to the wood-burner. We speak in English at first, then switch to French and then after a while speak a mélange of the two, switching (in my case) from one to the other in the same sentence. Mathilde’s English, though not perfect, is far better than my French. She is also an excellent cook – we have avocado salad followed by coq au vin and cherry charlotte. It is all the more delicious as it is my first proper meal in months. She asks why I moved to France and I explain about the unlikely set of coincidences that brought me here.

  ‘Did you move on your own? Or do you have a boyfriend?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m looking for a French husband,’ I reply, secretly thinking how ironic it would be if I met a British one instead.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Sebastian, throwing his head back and laughing.

  It is 5.00 p.m. and dark when I leave. Our ‘language exchange’ has been so successful that Mathilde invites me back the following Saturday and I instantly accept. ‘I would invite you to mine,’ I say, ‘but there is nowhere to sit.’ Mathilde laughs. ‘So we will meet here again,’ she says. She also asks if I will be free on Wednesday afternoon as she has a friend, a poet, who will be giving a poetry reading at the Liberty Bookshop. ‘That sounds great,’ I say, though in fact I can think of few things – crossword puzzles and potholing maybe – that appeal to me less than a poetry reading.

  On the way to the Liberty Bookshop for the poetry reading, with my head down against the cold, I bump, almost literally, into Victor the estate agent outside the boulangerie. I have not seen him since Miranda’s dinner party, where he was surprisingly cool. Today, however, he ambushes me with two whiskery kisses on the cheeks. ‘Ah, Ka-renne, how is it going? Where have you been hiding?’ he says.

  ‘Le Vieux Chateau,’ I say. ‘While work was being done on my house.’

  But Victor is not interested in the work being done at my house. His voice low and furtive, he asks, ‘And what are you doing this evening?’

  ‘Um, nothing,’ I say, desperately trying to think of something. The problem is that in a small French village it is difficult to claim a packed social life.

  ‘Then I am inviting you for an aperitif,’ he says.

  I can’t carry on avoiding Victor forever. What with trying to avoid him and dodging Dave, My New Life in France is starting to feel like an episode of ’Allo ’Allo! or a French farce. So I accept Victor’s invitation. It seems like the polite thing to do – after all, he did secure me a big reduction in the purchase price of my house – and I will make it clear that I am not interested in becoming his next wife.

  ‘OK, where?’ I say.

  ‘My house,’ he says. ‘And I will make you dinner. I am a very good cook.’

  The thought of a hot meal is very tempting but dinner alone with Victor – I’m guessing that there won’t be any other guests – is not.

  ‘Maybe we could meet in a cafe for an aperitif instead?’ I say.

  ‘I live near Beauchamp,’ he says, ignoring my suggestion, ‘but my house is quite difficult to find, so it’s probably easiest if I meet you outside the church in the main square in Beauchamp, say at six-thirty.’

  Since moving to France, every experience (even getting your telephone line connected or organising an oil delivery) feels like an adventure, but I am annoyed at the way that I have allowed myself to be bulldozed into this impromptu arrangement. But it’s too late to backtrack. ‘See you at six-thirty outside the church,’ says Victor and he is halfway across the square before I have time to argue.

  It’s only 4.00 p.m. but already getting dark as I slip into the Liberty Bookshop, which is warm and brightly lit. A small group of people has already assembled for the reading. Mathilde and Sebastian are chatting to Dylan, who is dressed in a thick alpaca sweater, a purple scarf wound around his neck. With them is Henri, Mathilde’s poet friend, who is tall and thin and wearing an anorak. He is in his mid-to-late thirties and smiles a lot, and when he does so his eyes have a wide, rather manic look about them. Sitting at a table in the window are members of the Anglo-French conversation group; an elderly contingent of mostly French people and a charming couple from Yorkshire, who have a problem with rodents in their roof. I am surprised to find Jon Wakeman sitting among them, although, judging by the expression on his face, he would rather not be.

  ‘So you’re a poetry fan?’ I say.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I came in to use the Internet but Dylan insisted that I stay.’

  ‘Hello darling,’ says a cheery voice behind me. It’s Elinor, the glamorous yoga teacher that I met at Miranda’s dinner party. She throws three kisses on my cheeks. ‘Heard from your boyfriend recently?’ she asks playfully.

  ‘Boyfriend?’ I say, mystified, as Jon Wakeman takes the opportunity to escape from the table and look at a new delivery of cookery books.

  ‘Victor!’ says Elinor. ‘I hope you don’t mind but Miranda told me that he had a crush on you.’

  ‘Actually, I just bumped into him,’ I say glumly.

  ‘Ever since the dinner party, he keeps asking about you,’ continues Elinor. ‘And I thought you ought to know that he’s started to monitor your movements. Apparently, he spotted you on the road to Beauchamp the other evening and wanted to know where you were going. I’m afraid he’s rather obsessed by you.’

  ‘Oh dear. I thought Miranda had explained that I wasn’t interested in him like that.’

  ‘Oh did she? Well, it hasn’t cooled his ardour.’

  I tell Elinor about his invitation for this evening and am surprised when her mood switches from jocular to outraged on my behalf. ‘He invited you to his home for an aperitif did he? That’s absolutely not on,’ she says. ‘In France, to invite a woman that you hardly know to your home for an aperitif suggests only one thing.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I say. I tell her about the plan to meet him in front of the church in Beauchamp.

  ‘He will probably have a vicar waiting,’ she deadpans.

  ‘And the wedding rings…’ I say.

  ‘But really, what a bizarre plan, to make you hang around outside a church in the middle of winter.’

  I look over at Jon Wakeman, but he is studying a book entitled One Pot Cooking.

  ‘If I were you,’ says Elinor. ‘I would think very seriously about going there alone. I mean, why can’t he meet you in a bar, for heaven’s sake? Look, it’s only an idea, but if you like I could wait with you in Beauchamp. We could pretend that we’ve just bumped into each other and that way, you can suggest that the three of us go for an aperitif.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say, thinking how nice it is of Elinor to take me under her wing like this (but then yoga teachers, in my experience, are always nice people). It would certainly take some of the pressure off if she came along. ‘That would be absolutely brilliant, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she says.

  ‘OK, people, we’re about to start,’ shouts Dylan, banging a Tibetan gong. We all pull up seats around the big table in the window. Henri takes his anorak off to reveal a patterned sweater over a shirt and tie. My cheeks are flushed and I feel very nervous, for I have a pretty good idea of what is g
oing to happen next. I really, really wish that I hadn’t agreed to come to the poetry reading.

  ‘This is a series of poems based on the emotions I felt when my lover left me,’ he says, pushing his glasses up his nose and clearing his throat. I know I shouldn’t, I know it makes me seem deeply immature, but the reading hasn’t even started and already I am fighting back tears – of laughter. I don’t know why but I always get very nervous and giggly in group situations where I am supposed to look serious and thoughtful.

  The poetry is in English, but it might as well be in Punjabi. Dylan has been seconded into reading some of the poems and, although he starts off reverentially enough, he doesn’t look too happy about it. A dozen very opaque poems later, he looks pained. I scan the faces of the assembled group. The couple from Yorkshire are a study in inscrutable blankness; Mathilde looks like she is concentrating hard; another elderly member of the Anglo-French conversation group has his eyes closed, and I realise it is because he has fallen asleep. Dylan is struggling with some of the words, which do not exist in English. I look at Jon, who is sitting directly opposite me. If I am not mistaken, the corner of his mouth is curling upwards and he too is trying very hard not to laugh. My face is flushed and my breathing is shallow, and suddenly I’m transported back in time to A-level English in the headmaster’s office where my fellow classmates and I played a secret game of spotting the double entendres in Jane Austen. Week after week, I suffered physical pain trying not to laugh out loud at sentences that described a young man of twenty-six as ‘very well endowed’ – which to a group of hormonal seventeen-year-olds seemed like the last word in hilarity.

  Suddenly, I can’t help myself. The wave of laughter that I have been holding back comes out as a large snort and everyone looks at me. I lean forward and just in the nick of time manage to turn the snort into a coughing fit. Mathilde silently offers me a glass of water. Jon looks at me and raises an eyebrow. I am choking back laughter and it is excruciating. I am terrified of offending Mathilde and Sebastian and their friend. If I start to laugh, I won’t be able to stop and will probably set everyone else off. So I breathe deeply and force myself to think the most miserable thoughts possible – my credit card debts, eighty-year-old spinsters being carted off to nursing homes, Eric married with two children. It does the trick.