Apart from Bernard’s friends, like Sagan or Claude Perdriel, owner of Le Nouvel Observateur, the only people we saw were the Pols, who belonged to what we jokingly referred to as ‘the villa set’, a snobbish élite dotted about the coast, or we would lunch with Pippa and Peter Forster, a journalist on the Evening Standard. They lived at La Garde-Freinet, where Pippa had created a typical English garden, with flowerbeds and grassy inclines. Peter did the cooking and whenever we went to lunch we would arrive to find him purple in the face, grooved to a chaotic kitchen, tippling. His menus were rustic. Once he had prepared a brandade on to which were stacked a pile of mashed potatoes and fried eggs. We ate under a trellis in the garden and it was always agreeable. When alone, I might lunch in Grimaud with a Danish beauty who had been married to John Churchill. She had a little Welsh terrier called Jackson that liked to leap into the swimming pool on a hot day to cool off.
June Churchill was the first person to invite herself to stay. She had been a close friend during the Weidenfeld crisis and had advised me to give him that same treatment she had given Randolph: refuse to sleep with him for three months and then have him followed, she said. And when I was married to Derek, she took me with her to Majorca, where Sonia Melchett had lent her a villa by the sea. June remained in bed with the same sentimental record on the repeat and only got up for meals. She came to stay in the Midi in the first week of October just after she had had a breast operation, and she was infatuated with a possessive Greek shipowner. The taxidriver having lost the way, she arrived late at night and immediately asked to have a fire lit in her room. She rejected any Provençal-type cooking and had a horror of food cooked in butter. What she preferred was a simple meal of cold ham with potatoes baked in their jackets. During meals, we would gossip about our quixotic pasts, which seemed to annoy Bernard. One evening, during dinner, he was telling us about a dachshund he once owned called Joke that had had dirty habits. He’d punish Joke, he said, by thrusting the dog’s head down a water closet. When I appeared to be shocked, June calmly said, ‘He’s boasting, to give the impression he’s macho.’ The idea struck me as so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Are you drunk?’ she kept repeating irritably. ‘It’s not that funny.’
One evening she was taking a shower when I heard her scream and, draped in a towel, she went hurtling down the stairs screaming for Bernard. Apparently, while taking a douche, a toad had leapt out of the bidet. Bernard coped very well. He came uptairs with a broom and swept it off her terrace, and as the two remained drinking in the sitting room while I prepared the dinner, my jealous disposition was exacerbated; the rice got burnt and, without consulting me, Bernard opened the last bottle of Derek’s vintage Bordeaux. The atmosphere grew so tense that June disappeared up to her room. Around midnight, just below her window on the moonlit terrace, there was a scene; in spite of my cries for help, June preferred not to hear, so that I was dragged by the hair down some stone steps and flung into a tomato patch.
In the morning no one commented on my black eye. In her hurry to depart, June left a gold evening bag and some dancing pumps in the cupboard. Was it a reproach as we hadn’t left the house? It is doubtful if, Freudian fashion, it meant that she was anxious to return. When I drove her into St Raphael, June said, while waiting for the Blue Train, ‘I think you ought to put a door between my room and the bidet. It isn’t everyone who likes to have a view of a bidet when in bed.’ In that way she was conventional.* Later, reports of the visit drifted back. I had become so antisocial that whenever I heard a car coming up the hill I hid behind trees. But then I had good reason to, for I was being pursued by French douanes.
In the Sixties, shops in Paris liked to be paid in dollars, and they deducted the tax. Derek bought practically everything at a reduced price, including the Mercedes. But after six months one was supposed to pay customs, the car then being rated second-hand. Unknown to me, he had neglected to pay this duty, and while June was staying two customs’ officers came up and confiscated the car.
In those days, gendarmes were far more insulting, even with foreigners. They were capable of giving you an alcohol test at seven in the morning, knowing full well you were stone-cold sober. Everyone dreaded being stopped for speeding. One hot summer’s day, I was driving full speed back to Paris (I was still living at the Ritz) when I was stopped near Dijon by a bareheaded gendarme who demanded I pay a fine right away, so I pretended I had no money.
Show me your handbag, he said aggressively, whereupon I accelerated.
The car was traced by its number plate. I received a summons to appear in court and it looked as though I really were in for it. I went to the Faubourg St Honoré to see the head of the gendarmerie, a Monsieur Douce, who lived up to his name. Assuming me to be one of the idle rich, he asked how I spent my day, and offered me coffee and liqueur. The situation was saved by the fact that the gendarme was not only without his kepi but unaccompanied, as they always hunt in pairs, and he could well have been an impostor. A month later, two gendarmes came up to the mas and took a further statement. And that was the end of the affair.
I was always having trouble with the Mercedes. When Bernard and I were staying with François Michel, a brilliant pianist who lived at Montaigre, in the L’Ain, our host sent us off one day to the charming provincial town of Belley – the wartime retreat of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and their tailor Pierre Balmain – to fetch an ombre Chevalier he had ordered for a luncheon party. We parked in the main street in front of the Hôtel Chabert and went into the bar. Suddenly, there was a rumpus in the hotel lounge and two gendarmes entered, supporting an elderly gentleman with a cane. Apparently, I had omitted to put on the hand brake; the car had drifted down the sloping street; knocking over this elderly inhabitant of Belley. Bernard led the three of them into the bar and plied them with whisky, so that the gendarmes failed to ask for any papers, which was just as well, as I had let the insurance run out. We then collected this delicate regional fish which was so large that the bain-marie containing the marinade stretched right across the rear seat and we had to drive back to Montaigre at forty kilometres an hour.
François was a very generous host and liked filling his house with people. In the evenings, he either entertained them conversationally, sitting cross-legged on his chair like a large, jovial baby squatting on its pot, or by thumping on the piano. I employ this term, for I always enjoy listening to Chopin, Schubert or Bach, but whenever François sat down at the piano, I had an immense urge to go to bed. The catering was done by a wily, dishonest Moroccan with a lively imagination, who not only might try and slip into your bed in the middle of the night, but, while the guests dined, would siphon the petrol out of their cars, leaving just enough for them to get home, so that the loss would not be noticed until the following day.
* A few years later, when I was spending the summer in London, we arranged to meet for lunch. June cancelled at the last moment, saying, ‘I don’t think we have anything in common.’ A belated discovery, but in a sense, true. June was very likeable, but inclined to be humourless and quick-tempered about something quite trifling. She was very level-headed and appreciated the importance of money. What we had in common was old lovers.
Chapter XVIII
Guests
After June Churchill, the next person to turn up out of the blue was Old Bill. By then the mas had been fully furnished with marble tables and swivelling armchairs, the kind one sees in luxury offices, only instead of turning to face a pavement, one had a glimpse of mountains.
One day a Simca came tearing up the hill and after backing into the mimosa that Joseph had just planted, Old Bill got out and came running across the terrace, carrying a Biot wine flask. He greeted me joyfully with, ‘If you’d had this house when I first knew you, we’d have been married all these years!’ Goodness, what I’d missed! Then he ran back to the car, and reappeared with a Rolleiflex and, careering down towards the vines, leaving crushed shoots in his wake, with parted legs, muscles bulging, the camera balanc
ed on his paunch, he snapped and snapped away. But the results turned out to be overexposed. While we sat drinking on the terrace, he remarked on the olive tree in front of Bernard’s quarters.
‘Yes, don’t knock it over. It’s only just been planted,’ I said.
‘That size?’
‘Yes, it cost me a packet.’
‘It’s good to hear you boasting’, he complimented me, ‘you never used to,’ adding, ‘You’ve stopped bleaching your hair, I see.’ When Bernard went into the kitchen to replenish the bidon of wine, Bill said, ‘He reminds me of that Hamilton boy. Only this one looks even younger. Nice work if you can get it.’ And he went on humming down the scale … ‘Doh ray me far so lat te doh … What is it you like so much about Jews?’
‘Noses,’ I said.
The odd fact was that of all my friends, Bill was the one that Bernard got on with best. Did they have some affinity? Hommes de ménage! Appreciators of good food and wine. After scouring the hillside for herbs, Bill came running back with some dandelion shoots, wild thyme, fennel and lemon verbena and, while Bernard went on filling the bidon, he prepared a delicious aioli. They could have set up house together! Numerous marriages, countless girls and jobs, and just turning sixty, with no wife, girl or job, and on the look-out for all three, Bill went on humming down the scale until we all settled down to eat beneath the eucalyptus tree. He was staying with his ex, he said.
‘Mind you, I was never in love with her. I might have been if she’d had better breasts. But she just didn’t turn me on. Don’t you miss people here?’
‘I prefer birds to people these days,’ I said emptying the bread basket for the white turtle doves at our feet. Then the sirens went and we saw the thin spiral of smoke rising from across the valley. The next day, we learnt that the vieille in the librairie had let a bonfire get out of control.
At six o’clock I said, ‘Isn’t it time we went?’ The Mercedes was being repaired in a garage in Cannes and Bill was driving us in. When we reached the main road, we got caught up in a traffic jam … doh ray me far so la te doh … and wham, the Simca struck the rear of a Citroën and an irate Frenchman leapt out screaming abuse. By then the traffic was on the move and, with a flash of white teeth, Bill sped ahead just as the Simca door swung off its hinges. Dear old blunderbuss. He certainly was affectionate. As we drove into the garage, he gave me an enormous hug and kiss on the lips. A mechanic produced some rope with which to reattach the door and Bill went off merrily shouting, ‘There’s no doubt, you’re much nicer to animals than you ever were to people.’ What had I ever done to him?
He turned up again three years later, bringing a new wife, a baby, a babysitter and a backlog of dirty washing that they proceeded to ram into the washing machine and then spread across the terrace to dry. They departed after a week, leaving their bedroom walls covered in red graffiti, as the baby had been playing with his wife’s lipstick.
Edwina wrote inviting herself and then arrived with a scowling lover, an enormous dog and a two-year-old baby with a permanent grin. They also stayed a week and then made a get-away, barely saying goodbye, before Thérèse had discovered that the urine-drenched mattress had also been hacked with a penknife. I never had much luck with guests.
It was during the pea and bean season that Jane arrived from the States with flowing, bleached hair looking like a beautiful transvestite. In the mornings, she stood naked at her bedroom window playing a flute. In the afternoons, she got into the car, lowered the hood and went sightseeing. At dusk the car appeared, tearing up the hill, a swarm of bees in its wake. A cat lover, Jane was amused by the way Mell strayed across the terrace, as though the gravel scorched her paws, but what Jane enjoyed even more was the emergence at drinks time of an enormous toad that did a methodic tour of the rosemary hedge, gulping down moths and mosquitoes. There was no particular mishap during this visit, but, being in the throes of writing Un Siècle Débordé, it was Bernard who felt guilt for not having given her enough attention and, as she stepped into the car to be taken to the station, he bowed so low while kissing her hand that he grazed his head.
One sunny day, we drove to Antibes to see Graham Greene, who lived in a large modern block where you announced yourself by shouting into a grill. His flat had a lovely view of the sea and I remember him saying that he would never recover the amount he had paid for it, whereas these days it would be worth far more. After Graham had mixed several excellent Martinis, we walked across to his favourite restaurant and Bernard related how, as an adolescent, he had always dreamt of entering Chez Feliks. During lunch, Graham had a long conversation with the patron that, at the time, I thought rather impolite, complaining of the incessant barking of dogs at night and asking what could be done about it. But having lived many more years in France, I now understand Graham’s obsession. No matter where you are, there is always a barking dog in the vicinity; ‘Chien Méchant’ boards deface practically every village gate. The French must feel protected by this brute that is usually lamenting the absence of some master or mistress, and no matter how often one visits the local gendarmerie (in principle no animal should disturb the peace after ten pm) no amount of discussion will resolve the problem. We drank a lot of Marc. Then, in spite of Graham reiterating, ‘But this is my party,’ Bernard insisted on paying the bill. As we were leaving, I suggested to Graham that he come and stay.
‘There’s plenty of room,’ I said. We have four bedrooms.’ He must have thought I was boasting and in a subdued tone went on repeating, ‘Four bedrooms!’ as though someone had related a miracle.
Bernard and I bickered all the way back to Grimaud, and we never saw Graham again.
I was often lonely but never bored. When Joseph no longer had the time to tend the garden, a succession of good-for-nothings came and went. Joseph’s mentally retarded brother, the shepherd’s stepson, a sturdy youth, carried a transistor and came up wearing a straw hat with a dangling pink ribbon; he took afternoon siestas in the meadow and surreptitiously gathered boulders off the property to carry away and build himself a cabanon. Then an old Italian peasant came. Surveying the surrounding chaos, he muttered, ‘Beaucoup de boulot ici.’ In winter, should I go on to the terrace dressed in an old marmot fur coat and gold evening shoes that I was trying to wear out, he’d mutter, ‘Quelle putain!’ In the evenings, he went home with his pockets stuffed with maize that was stacked in the garage for the poules and once, when I called on him in Grimaud, his wife guiltlessly handed me a plate of polenta she had made from it.
In June, rotted trees had to be sawn down and the wood piled ready to burn the following winter. In July, the apricots ripened and Thérèse made apricot jam. August was the time for gathering peaches, nectarines and almonds which got shelled while sitting beneath the mulberry tree – a way of ekeing out the evening drink.
Every few years the cork trees had to be stripped, leaving the boles a smooth, burnt ochre. A Moroccan came up to do that. Before carting away the cork to sell, he hosed it well with water to increase its weight. In winter, he went home and turned up again in the spring to fill in the potholes. He moved with incredible grace on horny black feet and once during my absence, seeing Thérèse sweeping upstairs, he climbed up on to the bedroom terrace and offered her thirty francs for a quickie. She rejected him politely, saying, ‘I have Joseph for that sort of thing.’ Or so she told me.
The last Sunday in August was the opening of the chasse. As soon as one opened the shutters, there would be a blast of rifle fire and lone huntsmen with their dogs would toil up the hill; after chalking ‘Et ta soeur?’ (‘Up yours!’) on the hoardings inscribed ‘Propriété Privé’ and ‘Défense de Chasser’, they fired on anything that moved. Even the turtle doves had to be caged, as if one flew across the valley, it would suddenly plummet. Anything white, chasseurs’ delight, one could say. In fact, there was nothing much left in the forest to kill apart from stone martens, ferrets, an occasional rabbit or foxes that haunted the terrace at night, making an eerie sound like a baby’s
wail. In the initial years, there were a few wild boars. Joseph would show me where they had been rubbing their backs against the bark of a tree. Then one day, he came up very excited to show me one he had shot, crammed into the boot of his car.
‘Regarde! Regarde!’ he kept saying. ‘Comme il est beau!’ Just like the weather. The following day, there it was dangling by its feet outside the butcher’s shop.
When his sons reached an age to handle a rifle, they would sneak up at dawn, park their car in the lane and, after gathering any cèpes they could find, creep, à pied de loup, on to the terrace to take pot-shots at the blackbirds in the olive tree. A blackbird’s song is a lovely sound. I would tear out in a dressing gown, screaming abuse.
Joseph also liked laying traps for birds. He put them so close to the house that the cats would bring them in and lay them on the kitchen tiles, as much as to say, ‘Look what I’ve found.’ Joseph and his two sons were savages when it came to killing. Still, so was the writer, Isaak Dinesen, according to her book, Out of Africa:
'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More' Page 42