We walked into the master bedroom. This is where Madame Gréco had her boudoir, bathroom and dressing room. The floors here were wooden, giving it a warmer feel than downstairs. There was a large Victorian bath on a raised platform at one end of the bedroom and a double sink.
“I can’t believe it, I’ve always longed for a Victorian bath,” I whispered to Nick, unable to contain my excitement any longer. I had to stop myself from jumping up and down on the spot.
We opened the large shutters in the middle of the room and walked out onto the balcony. Mr Vorst was fiddling around with something inside so Nick came and stood next to me.
“This view reminds me of a postcard,” he said. “Just look at the vineyards. I think I can see more shades of green than there are in Ireland.”
He was right. There was everything from the bright grass to the olive trees to the oak and the plane trees lining the road that leads to the village and the cypress trees leading up to Château de Boujan. There were vineyards in every direction, perfectly planted rows of vines with leaves on the cusp of turning from green to autumnal bronze and red. They seemed to be a couple of weeks behind those closer to the sea. The lines of the vines led to the mountains in the distance, inviting me to walk between them towards the deep green hills.
I noticed a perfect rose bush growing from a chipped blue ceramic pot. It had worked its way up the soft light stone and looked like it was part of the masonry. It had wax-like petals that at the tips were almost black, the red was so intense.
The plant was about three feet higher than me. I asked Nick to take a picture of me in front of it. An Alsatian dog wandered past the house beneath us and Nick took a picture of him too.
“He’s beautiful,” said Nick. “Where is he from?”
I sensed that Nick was keen to adopt an animal before we even bought the house. He grew up with lots of dogs in the countryside and misses not having them. I had vetoed a dog in London. Partly because I think it would be cruel to have a dog cooped up all day but also because I don’t know anyone who has one who doesn’t find walking them a chore. Apart from my friend Carla, the one who is having an affair with her tennis coach. She uses the walks as an excuse to call him.
When we had coffee mornings together, she told the rest of the amazed mothers all about her trysts; in the car, at the tennis club, even in her own broom cupboard.
“Has your tennis got any better?” I asked her once.
“No darling, I gave up tennis when I discovered sex. I found I was much more talented at it and I never lost. Surely you realise that tennis coaches are not really there to teach you to play tennis?”
She didn’t seem remotely ashamed or even worried that her husband would find out.
“You can’t eat the same pasta sauce every night,” she says in her thick Italian accent, flicking her long black hair, when we question the wisdom of serial infidelity. I guess you can’t if you’re Italian. Personally I had rather gone off pasta sauce in any flavour. I thought it must be hormonal. But maybe Sainte Claire with its wild capers and France with its oysters would prove inspirational.
“I think the dog lived here. The foreman next door at the château has been looking after him,” said Mr Vorst. “I will show you the other bedroom on this floor.”
“How many bedrooms are there in total?” asked Nick.
“There are four,” answered Mr Vorst. “It is not an overly large property but there is a barn that could be converted if you needed more living space. It is already semi-habitable, it is where the grape-pickers used to stay during the harvest.”
I was about to say to Nick that a barn would be perfect for the girls when they are older. They could be self-sufficient there and play loud pop music and dye their hair green without bothering us. As long as it wasn’t French pop music, obviously. There have to be some limits. But I decided to keep it for when we were alone. More arguments to convince him Sainte Claire was the only place for us.
We went up to the top of the house, where there were two large bedrooms, each with a small attic-style window at the front and a larger one at the side. There was a bathroom in the middle of them both, with doors joining it from each one. I was already seeing bunk beds in the slightly larger room for the girls and getting butterflies.
Apparently the key to buying the right house is being able to see yourself living there. I could see myself there very clearly, as well as my entire family and all my friends. Lucy would fit right in; she would waft from room to room wearing some floaty diaphanous creation and carrying an intellectual book. Sarah would be curled up on the sofa, her blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, reading the latest copy of Vogue. Carla would be in the cave with the wine-maker, assuming we had one. Or out looking for one if we didn’t.
As we walked downstairs, Nick whispered to me to stop grinning and squeezed my hand. I took the hand squeeze as a sign that he loved it as much as I did. My butterflies intensified. I was sure Mr Vorst could hear my heart beating.
We walked outside into the bright sun, providing a stark contrast to the cool interior. The agent walked us around the house to a terrace on the other side of the kitchen.
“Look at the marble table,” I said to Nick. “Great for breakfast.”
The agent seemed to have miraculously regained his hearing.
“The marble table and chairs are included in the sale,” he said smiling. “And look at the fountain. The basin is probably big enough to swim in on a warm day.”
“Yes,” said Nick. “But it’s empty. How can we be sure it works?”
We walked towards it. An over-sized, vertical fish made of stone was the spout. I could see where the water would burst out of its mouth and imagine cooling off underneath it on a hot day.
“All the electrics are in order,” said the agent, as if he were quoting straight from the ‘How to Sell a House on the Spot’ manual.
I was sure he couldn’t possibly know whether they were or not, but I didn’t care. We could always fix the fountain. I was in love. I was like a young girl who had just met her dream boy. Small details about his electrical circuits or lack of them were unlikely to put me off.
The terrace looked out over rows of vines leading to the mountains in the distance. It was now almost five o’clock, approaching my favourite time of day, when the shadows lengthen and the sun caresses you with its dying rays. And you know a drink is not far off.
“Take a walk to the vineyard,” said Mr Vorst. Nick and I wandered off alone.
“I love it, love it, love it,” I repeated as quietly as I could.
“I know,” said Nick. “But try not to show it quite so blatantly. We still need to negotiate a good deal here, the asking price is high for the amount of land involved.”
The vines were about one metre tall. The grapes were still on them – Mr Vorst had explained that they weren’t harvested this year.
“There are weeds all around but the vines look healthy,” said Nick, bending over to inspect a bunch of grapes. I did the same.
“Amazing to think they turn into wine,” I said to Nick, holding a bunch of grapes in my hand.
He laughed. “Soph, they don’t just turn into wine, we have to make them into wine. There’s a whole process…” He was about to tell me about it when his BlackBerry started wailing and he wandered off with it stuck to his ear, a more and more regular occurrence over the past couple of months. Funny that.
I was left alone in the vineyard. There were rose bushes at the end of some of the lines of vines, both yellow and red. I thought about where we might be a year from now if we bought Sainte Claire. We would have harvested the grapes, either by hand or machine if we could afford to rent a machine, we would have bottled the wine and we would be trying to sell it. We would have pruned the vines, sprayed them to protect them from disease, weeded around the base and trellised them. It seemed a lot to achieve in one year but I was longing to give it a go. I was longing to make a life here for all of us, to live off the land, to go back to nature a
nd get away from tarmac, crime and traffic wardens who seem to multiply every week like hordes of locusts, as well as the rude men with bad taste in breasts and handbags (why would you otherwise mug a woman carrying an old Marks & Spencer special?).
I saw Nick walking back towards me. I might once have thought this was a pipedream, but by now I was all for it now and even grateful to him for coming up with it.
“The estate is at the boundary where the appellations of Faugères and Saint-Chinian meet. Monsieur Gréco was with Saint-Chinian,” Mr Vorst joined us, “a respected and popular appellation. When Monsieur Gréco was alive he used to work the vineyard and did well out of it. When he died Madame Gréco just sold the grapes to a local négociant who sold them on to other wine makers or the local wine cooperative.”
In the vineyards we were standing was a little stone hut, which I guessed was where the workers would stop for lunch. It had a tiled roof and a jasmine plant growing up the walls. It was like something from a scene in a dreamy, hazy French film with no discernible plot.
“Any minute now Gérard Depardieu is going to lumber past swigging a bottle of red wine and chewing on a baguette,” I said nudging Nick.
“I hope Emmanuelle Béart is with him,” he laughed.
We walked down a dusty track that Mr Vorst told us was often used as a boules pitch. The cave or winery was between the house and the vineyards, opposite a barn used to house the grape-pickers during harvest time. It was a whitewashed building and the most chaotic thing about the property. Inside bits of broken machinery lay around and there were bottles all over the place. I couldn’t imagine how it would ever be cleaned up. But Nick looked ecstatic.
“What a mess,” I said.
“It’s marvellous,” said Nick under his breath. “Look at these foudres; they must be over one hundred years old. This is like walking into wine-making history.”
There was a row of around twenty huge oak casks along both walls. They were on their sides.
“Once the wine juice is squeezed it is pumped up into the casks through the top and then left for a year or so to take on the taste of the oak as it ages,” Nick explained.
“Well, it’s great they’re all here,” I said.
“Not on a practical level,” said Nick, suddenly coming into his own. “Nowadays everyone uses stainless steel or concrete so they can control the amount of oxygen that gets to the wine and also it’s easier to reduce the temperature; which is essential if you want to avoid the wine turning to vinegar. We’ll have to invest in some of those. And some peacocks of course.”
I was so happy to hear him say it. Not that I could see how anyone could fail to be charmed by Sainte Claire but I needed to be sure that Nick could see himself there as strongly as I could.
We walked back out into the early-evening sunshine. I had the sensation that nothing had changed for generations. The view to the mountains was the same, the vines, the roses and the beautiful stone house and barn. It felt secure and peaceful.
“I wish I had a TARDIS and could just transport the family, the furniture and Daisy right this minute,” I said to Nick.
I was reluctant to leave as we walked back towards the house and to the agent’s Berlingo van. Before I got in the car I took one last look up at the rose on my balcony and said a silent prayer that we would be back soon, crossing my toes and fingers as I did so. The agent went around closing all the shutters again. I said a silent prayer that next time they were opened it would be by us and that we would be here to stay.
We drove back with the agent to his office in silence, partly for fear of endangering our lives but also overwhelmed with a sense of how important it was for us to buy the house, how it encapsulated our whole French dream, how it was the one real chance we had to turn our dream into reality.
We sat down in his office. “The asking price is €850,000. They had an offer,” he told us looking through some papers, “of €790,000, which they have rejected. But I know they are keen to sell before the end of year for tax reasons.”
“If we were to offer €10,000 more than that, do you think they would accept?” asked Nick.
The agent leaned back in his chair, which reclined under his weight. At one stage I thought we’d lost him, but he bounced back. “I can ask.”
He called the lawyers representing the feuding French family. I had terrible butterflies. I tried to breathe deeply, to squeeze all my nerves into my toes and not look too desperate. Mr Vorst jabbered away in very fast French. Neither Nick nor I were any the wiser as to the outcome of the conversation when he finally put the phone down.
“They will call me,” said the agent. “As soon as I have some news I will call you.”
“But did they sound optimistic?” I asked.
Mr Vorst smiled and leaned back in his chair again. “Lawyers rarely sound optimistic,” he said to the ceiling. “There is nothing more you can do, I will call you the minute I hear anything.”
Nick and I left his office and walked towards our hotel.
“It is amazing that all this has happened in a day,” said Nick. “This morning seems like a lifetime ago. We left London at nine o’clock not knowing that we would end up seeing the house of our dreams today and that our lives could change forever.”
By the time we had eaten dinner we had both checked and re-checked our mobile phone signals about forty times.
That night I veered between euphoria and desperation; one minute I thought ‘Why wouldn’t we get the house? We’re offering a good price and they’re keen to sell’. Then I would think, ‘One of the siblings will decide they don’t want to sell and so the whole thing will just collapse’.
“I mean why would you want to sell such an incredible place?” I said out loud to no one in particular at three in the morning. “It must be one of the most beautiful houses in France.”
I listened to Nick breathing peacefully, which made me feel safe. This was the biggest thing we had done together since saying ‘I do’ and having three children, two of them at once. It was a huge adventure and we needed to make it work.
Miraculously, I fell asleep again almost straight away despite my panic attack. When I woke up in the morning, I took this as a sign that the international conspiracy to keep me awake had not reached France – yet another good reason to move there.
But I left the promised land with a heavy heart the following morning since there had been no call from the agent. As we boarded the plane, I wondered if I would ever walk through the vineyards at Sainte Claire again. Not only could I see myself being happy there – I couldn’t see myself being happy anywhere else.
Rule 5
It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be – Brigitte Bardot
The French Art of Having Affairs
“Mummy, where’s Daddy?” There is a voice coming from somewhere asking a question I cannot answer. I know I need to react but I can’t seem to open my eyes.
“Mummy, Eddie took my fairy dress and says he is going to wear it to his first day at school,” another voice joins it. “Tell him he can’t; he’s a boy, and anyway it’s my dress.”
“You wear my flip-flop tops.” The first voice is back. I’m longing to see what’s going on and to know what a flip-flop top is.
“Your flip-flops stupid, they’re called flip-flops,” says the disgruntled owner of the fairy dress.
Why can’t I open my eyes? It feels like something dark is forcing them closed. Have I gone blind overnight? Is it possible to lose both one’s husband and one’s eyesight in a few short hours? Has God blinded me for visualising my husband’s mistress being publicly exposed as a home-breaker and having her head shaved by booing crowds in the Place du 14 Juillet as I am awarded the Légion d’Honneur for services to the French wine industry?
“Mummy, wake up and listen,” bellows a third voice. “You have to get up, it’s morning time. It’s light outside. We’re supposed to be starting school today.”
I sit up, feeling dazed
and disorientated.
“Mummy, why are you wearing a scarf around your eyes?” asks one of my children.
Of course, the reason I can’t open my eyes is that I have a lavender-scented bean-bag tied over them with a leopard-print scarf. I couldn’t sleep because of the bright moonlight forcing its way into the bedroom through the rickety old shutters. Or was it more to do with the fact that my husband of ten years and the father of the three little people currently clambering on top of me admitted to an affair last night with a French woman called Cécile?
I unwind the leopard-print scarf and bean-bag from around my head.
“Mummy, you don’t look very good,” says Emily, head to one side, before putting her thumb in her mouth. I almost burst into tears at the sight of the three of them, all in their pyjamas, beautiful with blond tousled early-morning hair, looking up at me expectantly. Emily already has her cat’s ears on. She was given them for Christmas a year ago and never goes anywhere without them. I have got so used to seeing them they almost seem to be a part of her, but I wonder what the French will make of her eccentricity.
“That’s not very nice,” says Charlotte, adding with the brutal honesty of a child, “but it is true.”
“Mummy looks like a fairy,” says Edward, climbing closer to give me a hug. I clasp him to me greedily. Obviously this morning I am more vulnerable than most mornings, but poor Edward’s first words were ‘det away’ because I have always smothered him with hugs and kisses.
“I look like a fairy too,” he continues, wriggling free from my arms. “Where’s Daddy?” he adds, looking around the room while doing an unsteady twirl on the bed to show me the fairy dress at its best. I wonder for a brief moment if I can pretend their father is hiding to avoid telling them the truth. But they would soon run out of places to look in our bedroom-cum-open-plan bathroom.
“Edward,” I say looking at him and stroking his blond hair. I am about to utter my first sentence as a single mother. It has to be just right. This is one of those moments they might never forget, like the first time they ride a bike or wear a school uniform. I have to make it as painless as possible for them.
Love in a Warm Climate Page 5