‘Oh, isn’t this house just darling,’ says Miranda. ‘This table just seems so… friendly. It’s made a huge difference to your kitchen. Aren’t you just thrilled skinny with it?’
I nod enthusiastically. The table is a major step forward. It means that I can now invite friends over for dinner and start repaying some of the many meals that I owe. To thank Miranda and Desmond for their help, I offer to buy them lunch in the Café du Commerce, but Desmond declines. ‘You don’t need to buy us lunch,’ says Desmond. ‘We’re your friends and happy to help out. That’s what friends are for. And anyway, I promised Miranda that I’d drive her into Poitiers to visit Lidl. Her favourite shop.’ He winks. Miranda beams. And I wonder again why Elinor is so relaxed about her husband spending so much time with another woman – particularly a woman whom she herself appears to have fallen out with. I am curious to know if they managed to kiss and make up after the angry scene on Miranda’s birthday, but neither Miranda nor Desmond make any mention of it, so it doesn’t seem right to enquire.
One Thursday morning towards the end of March, I spot Jon Wakeman looking at tomato plants at the village foire. I haven’t seen him since I bumped into him in the boulangerie on Christmas Eve and he gave me the money that I needed to pay for my bûche de Noël. He never did call as promised, so to save him the embarrassment of excuses, I walk past pretending not to see him. But he catches up with me as I am buying some hyacinths.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Oh hi,’ I say, pretending to be surprised. ‘I haven’t seen you for a while. I still owe you three euros.’ I fumble in my bag for my wallet to repay him but he waves his arm to stop me.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he says. He tells me that he has been in the UK for work and is back for a couple of months to work on the B&B. After some small talk about a rotting beam in one of his barns, he says, ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’
‘Nothing that I know of.’
‘Do you fancy a drink in the bar in St Secondin?’
‘OK,’ I say, trying not to sound enthusiastic. The bar in St Secondin, not far from Villiers, is one of the few in the area that is still French-owned and the liveliest for miles around. (In other words, it stays open after 7.00 p.m.)
‘I’m actually meeting one of your neighbours there to discuss a little business deal but I would be free around seven.’
‘One of my neighbours?’
‘Yes, Dave Cole. I think he lives in the same village as you, doesn’t he?’
‘Dave is back from Hong Kong already?’ I say, trying not to sound too alarmed. I wasn’t even aware that they knew each other, but I suppose I know most ex-pat Anglais within a 30 kilometre radius of my village, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t too. I’m intrigued as to what kind of business deal they might be discussing, and wonder if Jon knows about Dave’s recent financial troubles.
‘Yeah, I think he’s back for a few days’ holiday,’ says Jon.
‘Actually, thinking about it, I did promise to drop by and visit some friends tomorrow evening,’ I lie, for I really do not want to bump into Dave with Jon around. ‘What about the following evening?’
And so the deal is done. I give him my phone number and he promises to pick me up on Saturday evening. And then I rush off in case he changes his mind.
Having lived in a top-floor flat in London for many years, gardening does not figure highly on my list of personal accomplishments. In fact, until I moved to France, I was blissfully unaware of the seasonal nature of flowers. While I had noticed that daffodils and hyacinths, for example, normally appeared around Easter time, that was about the extent of my horticultural knowledge. And so, on Saturday morning I go to Jardiland, the garden centre in Poitiers, and buy myself an instant garden: two deep blue hydrangeas, two jasmine plants, a purple hibiscus and half a dozen velvety red rose bushes – all of them in full bloom. I also splash out on a wrought-iron table – an essential part of la vie française – which will be delivered the week after next. I have never been remotely interested in garden centres before, but now I have outdoor space, I am smitten. I could happily have spent a day in there meandering among gnarled olive trees in tubs, rose bushes, geraniums and rows and rows of unfamiliar flowers – all as colourful as a make-up artist’s palette. When I get home I don’t bother to plant my purchases. I just drop them into terracotta pots or, in the case of the hydrangeas, place them, in their plastic tubs, on top of the earth in the stone flowerbed. It’s the lazy girl’s approach to gardening, but it works. The sight of those big, blousy hydrangeas through the kitchen window and the bolt of intense blue and purple in the courtyard becomes a small but significant daily pleasure.
Having planted my instant garden, I spend the rest of the afternoon tidying up the house ready for Jon Wakeman’s visit and deciding what to wear. The phone rings when I am painting my toenails pink.
‘Hi, it’s Jon.’
‘Oh hi there,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine thanks. Did you get the message I left earlier?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I was in Poitiers at a garden centre.’
‘Well the thing is, I can’t make tonight, I’m really sorry. I did leave a message earlier but I wanted to make sure that you got it.’
‘Oh?’ I wait for some excuse, like ‘A major pipe has burst, flooding my property’, ‘I am extremely ill’ or ‘I am really sorry but I forgot I was already doing something’, but none is forthcoming. Instead he says, ‘I guess I’ll see you around.’
‘Yeah, see you around,’ I say, surprised at how disappointed and angry I feel. I spend the rest of the afternoon wondering what made him change his mind. And I can’t help thinking that Dave just might have had something to do with it.
The first day of spring arrives – a day, in my view, not to be celebrated if you are single. At least in the autumn you can hide away with a good book and a bottle of Bordeaux. Not so in the spring, when you are confronted with loved-up couples at every turn. And so, having woken up to pigeons cooing and hordes of birds singing brightly somewhere outside my window, I drag myself around to the Café du Commerce to jolt myself awake with une petite noisette.
The sun is shining and the sky is a pretty hyacinth blue, but it’s still a little chilly to sit at a table outside. Instead, I slip into the cafe, nodding the customary ‘Bonjour, Messieurs’ to the oldish men in flat caps already drinking pastis – even though it’s breakfast time. As I take a seat on the red faux leather banquette, I spot Jon Wakeman sitting on his own, reading a French Sunday newspaper and drinking an espresso. It’s an awkward situation since it’s just over a week since he abruptly cancelled our ‘date’. He nods hello and looks worried that I might join him. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stop,’ he says, getting up. ‘My girlfriend is arriving today and I have to go and pick her up from the airport.’
‘You have a girlfriend?’ I say, incredulous.
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘See you around,’ I say.
I drink my espresso alone, trying to make sense of this revelation. He certainly kept his girlfriend under wraps, never mentioning her once. Perhaps it is someone he has only just met. Either way, it is not good news. I walk back across the square in the sunshine and, to cheer myself up, stop at the bakery for a baguette and a fix of René Matout in his baker’s whites. As usual on a Sunday morning, the bakery is the epicentre of all activity in Villiers. People dash in and out clutching multiple baguettes; some drawing up at speed in their cars and leaving the engine running while they run in to buy bread. I can see René in the back room, his large bear-like frame standing next to one of the giant steel bread-making machines, talking and laughing with someone out of sight.
I am trying to decide between the glistening chocolate bombe quivering behind the glass and a rather prim looking religieuse filled with violet-flavoured confectioners’ custard when I catch a glimpse of the man the bake
r is talking to. An extraordinarily handsome guy of Latin American extraction, with a schlock of dark hair and astonishing cheekbones, appears framed in the doorway. Tanned and wearing jeans and a black T-shirt (tight enough to reveal a very buff body underneath), he is carrying a large silver tray of choux buns on his shoulder. Wow! The new baker has hired some hot new help in the kitchen, thereby lowering the average age in Villiers by several decades! Things are really looking up.
Yet, despite the excitement of the baker’s new assistant, my spirits are low as I walk back down Rue St Benoit towards Maison Coquelicot. It seems that almost everyone in the world is part of a couple – apart from me (and possibly Dave). And I’m convinced that René Matout and his assistant probably have gorgeous lovers stashed away somewhere. Back home I make myself another coffee, drag a wicker chair from IKEA outside and eat the chocolate bombe in my courtyard, surrounded by my potted hydrangeas and hibiscus. And the reality of my situation slowly sinks in. There is a blue sky above me and invisible birds are singing somewhere beyond the high stone walls. I am living a life that many people dream of: sipping coffee in a beautiful courtyard in France on a Sunday morning, surrounded by sunshine and flowers. It is time to start enjoying my new life. It is time to start looking outwards at the life going on around me, to get moving. The need to burn some excess calories is another motivation: unloved is one thing; fat and unloved is not a good look.
Since moving to France, most of my energies have gone into beautifying the house and I have not paid much attention to my own exterior. Whereas in London I had mirrored closets at every turn, here I don’t have a single mirror. I think I must be suffering from the opposite of an eating disorder, because in my mind I feel as thin as a willow but the truth is that I’ve been eating an awful lot of René Matout’s brioches and tarts and my clothes are starting to feel noticeably tighter.
When you first move to France, as most ex-pats will tell you, you lose weight. The stress of moving, the physical labour and the lack of cooking facilities meant that, in my case, the kilos dropped off like the buttons on a cheap cardigan – even when my diet consisted mostly of sporadic snacks of bread and Brie. But as soon as you are comfortably installed with functioning oven and fridge and have found your way to the local market, the weight starts to pile back on faster than you can say foie gras.
It doesn’t help that much of the social life in rural France revolves around eating enormous meals in other people’s houses (when I lived in London, dinner was often liquid and by Laurent Perrier). In London, where my work required attendance at fashion and beauty launches, mostly populated by women in their twenties and as lean as crispbread, a few extra kilos would have spelled both career and personal disaster. Here the winter was so long and cold, I could even argue that the extra insulation helped to cut down on the fuel bills. To begin with, a few extra kilos do not bother me. But they do seem to bother my French friend Mathilde. Although she is in her late forties, Mathilde is as thin as a slice of cucumber and, like many Frenchwomen, blessed with good ankles, not to mention steely self-abstinence. She seems to have taken it upon herself to railroad me onto a régime – or at the very least count calories on my behalf.
During the Wednesday afternoon ‘Entente Cordiale’ Anglo-French conversation group at the Liberty Bookshop recently, a stout Yorkshirewoman called Shirley, who had also been eating too many of the new baker’s macaroons, announced that she was about to go on a diet. ‘Good idea,’ cried Mathilde, suddenly animated. ‘Maybe you and Ka-renne could do it together. You could have a weight loss competition.’ The hints continued to flow like cold rosé on a warm summer evening. Wandering around the local supermarket with Mathilde, she stopped and pointed to a brand of mineral water called Comtrex. ‘This is what French women drink when they have gained some pounds,’ she said archly. ‘It is full of magnesium and minerals that help weight loss. Maybe you should try it?’ Another time, while having lunch with her and Sebastian, she looked at me knowingly when I declined some cucumber and yogurt salad. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know you are on a régime but this is not at all fatty.’
I can’t be too cross with Mathilde, as I know that she has my best interests at heart. But even Madame Figaro appears to be in on the conspiracy. Every Saturday I open the magazine to find it full of bottoms as smooth as a beach pebble and the latest potions and pills to keep it that way. So I capitulate: if I am to subscribe fully to the French lifestyle, I am going to have to join what Madame Figaro calls ‘la lutte contre les capitons et les kilos’ – the struggle against cellulite and kilos.
But, and I know this sounds like a lame excuse, exercise is not easy in rural France. In London my day began with a brisk twenty-minute walk to buy a cappuccino. Here I am just twenty paces from the village square and (very dangerously) the boulangerie. The nearest gym is 25 kilometres away in Poitiers. Even if I was inclined to go (which I am not), going to the gym just seems so… un-French. I certainly never envisaged myself in gym kit when planning My New Life in France. Nor is running or le jogging an option. As (almost) the only Anglaise in the village, I’m aware that my behaviour is being monitored closely. Were I to start running circuits around the village square it would no doubt give my neighbours greater cause for mirth than when I asked an artisan to send me a postman (un facteur) instead of a bill (une facture).
The truth is that you never see a French woman jogging, wearing trainers or looking pink from exertion. Yet they must be doing something other than apply cellulite gel. I press Mathilde on the subject of her exercise regime – I am convinced that she is doing thousands of stomach crunches and rear leg-lifts in private but considers it un-chic to admit it – and she tells me that French women like to walk a lot.
And so, on Sunday afternoon on the first day of spring, I put on my trainers and start to walk. I tell myself that I will just walk to the next village of St Maurice, which is about half a mile away. I walk downhill from Villiers towards the old village with its hotchpotch of old houses with mismatched terracotta-tiled roofs, the peeling paint of the blue-grey shutters visible in the spring sunshine and an explosion of orange-pink geraniums on doorsteps and windowsills. The smell of woodsmoke and damp earth has been replaced by a fresh greenness – notes of green shoots and sap combined with a hint of white florals, most noticeably jasmine. Crossing the little stone bridge, I arrive at the twelfth-century church which has lain on my doorstep, unexplored, for a full seven months.
Inside, it is far more beautiful than I imagined. Rather than cool and dark, it is cool and light – all creamy stone and marble, the pale decor serving to intensify the colours of the high, arched stained-glass windows. This would be a beautiful place to get married, I think to myself as I leave the cool interior of the church and walk uphill through the narrow, cobbled main street of St Maurice. I walk past houses with distressed wooden doors, past the mairie with French flags fluttering above the entrance, and past the iron gates of the enormous chateau that dominates the village. It’s just after lunchtime and there is not a soul around. The stillness of a Sunday afternoon in France is very soothing.
Rounding the chateau, I turn into a narrow country lane and keep walking. I have no idea where I am going but it doesn’t matter. Within minutes, I am in beautiful, open countryside, surrounded by lush green and golden fields as far as the eye can see. I pass the occasional field of sheep but there is absolutely no one else around but me. I walk and walk, enjoying the lemony-pale spring sunshine and grass verges dotted with poppies and bluebells. The longer I walk, the happier I feel. How could I not have known that such beauty lay on my doorstep?
I have been walking for several hours and I have no idea where I am or how far I am away from home. I come to a wooden bridge at the end of a narrow footpath. To my left is an old, ramshackle cottage with pale green shutters and wisteria climbing up the walls. In the garden, over a low stone wall, I catch sight of a familiar face: René Matout lying on a blanket on the grass, next to a
nother man. To my surprise, I also recognise the face (and body) of the man sharing the blanket with him. It is the good-looking Latin guy that I saw in the back room this morning. And as the truth gradually dawns, I wonder how I didn’t notice this before: René Matout is gay and the Latin guy his lover. It takes me a moment to take on board this fact. My ‘gaydar’ (usually spot on after decades in the fashion industry) has failed badly in rural France.
René and his lover look shy, almost embarrassed to see me. I smile, as if to let them know that I am in on their secret and that I’m not at all surprised to two men lying snugly together in a garden in the countryside. Despite the discovery that René is never going to be my husband, as hoped for by Claudette, I am genuinely happy for them. They have found happiness together in a quiet rural village rather than gay Paree, or the bright lights of another metropolis.
‘What a surprise!’ I say to René, when he notices me over the wall. ‘I thought you lived above the boulangerie.’
‘No, we live here,’ he says, sitting up and pointing at the cottage behind them, their secluded love nest.
‘C’est très jolie,’ I say (my stock phrase for many situations in France).
‘Yes, Pascale and I, we’re very happy here,’ says René, smiling.
I’m not sure what to say next, so I tell René that I think I’m lost.
‘No, you are not lost,’ says Pascale with a lazy smile. ‘Just keep going on this road. It will take you to the village.’
By the time I reach Villiers, I have been walking for over two hours and the effect on my mood is astonishing. The discovery of all this beauty on my doorstep – the potential of all the roads and narrow country lanes that I passed and have yet to explore – leaves me feeling almost euphoric. Suddenly, new possibilities have opened up. I don’t even care that Jon Wakeman has a girlfriend.
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