C'est La Folie

by Michael Wright

  ‘Shall I give you a credit-card number, or would you prefer a cheque?’ I ask, a week before D-Day.

  ‘Nah,’ huffs Surly Rod. ‘Cash on delivery only.’

  ‘But I’m in France,’ I explain. ‘I don’t keep a big stash of sterling under the bed.’

  ‘Then we’ll take euros, at the NatWest tourist rate.’

  ‘Isn’t there some other way I can pay?’ I wonder.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could make a bank transfer,’ mutters Rod. So I do.

  Four days later, conscious that the piano should already be rumbling through France, I phone Rod again. ‘Any idea when the piano will arrive?’ I enquire cheerily.

  ‘Soon as we get the money,’ he rasps.

  ‘But I made the transfer on Thursday.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he snarls. ‘We haven’t received it. And I’m not delivering a piano to France until it’s paid for.’

  ‘What happens if the transfer doesn’t complete in time?’

  ‘We’ll take the piano back to England.’

  This is a classic hostage/ransom scenario, and I spend the next couple of days expecting to receive a severed middle-C in the post. To keep my spirits up, I ask Monsieur Duruflé, the chirpy tiler who is putting the finishing touches to the floor of the maison des amis, if he’d be willing to haul the piano – should it ever arrive – up the drive on his truck. Attempting the ascent with a removal lorry would, I suspect, be like trying to ride a walrus up a spiral staircase. And I am still emotionally scarred from that nasty business with the man who came to empty the fosse septique.

  ‘Pas de problème,’ replies Duruflé, beaming at the prospect of being able to be even more helpful than usual. The fact that he has a slight squint only adds to the innocent delight of his smile.

  The cold has been squeezing La Folie in its vice for as long as I can remember. Some mornings, I have been struggling to break the ice on the water trough for the sheep, even with an iron bar. At least Gaston’s ardour has finally cooled. But Silent Mary is looking weaker than ever, and the rest of the Egg Squad have been in a puffed-up sulk since December. Last week, after I returned from the skiing, I was snowed in for four days, the Espace beached like a whale on the steep right-hander at the bottom of the drive.

  Thanks to the cold, I’ve even abandoned my decision to resist lighting the stove until the temperature indoors became unbearable. It was when the cat came downstairs with a quarterstaff over her shoulder and all her belongings tied up in a knotted handkerchief that I realized it was time to stop kidding myself that I was becoming tough.

  To be fair, however, being snowed in was almost fun. There was no repeat of the freezing-rain fiasco. And we’re not talking about Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, what with Céline’s boulangerie being only half an hour’s trudge away. No, having the Espace marooned in a snowdrift gave me a chance to feel thoroughly medieval as I staggered into town with my oil lamp to play the organ for Mass, secretly hoping to bump into somebody en route because I was feeling so picturesque.

  Today is Tuesday, and the ice and snow have finally melted, so Marie-Claude has come to sort me out. Marie-Claude is a card. When I ask her to clean the new tiles in the unheated maison des amis, she insists on taking a thermometer with her, to test the brutal conditions under which I am making her work.

  Just after she has vanished with her mop, there is a frantic commotion outside. It sounds as if all the girls are shrieking at once. Mon Dieu, I hope that’s not another fox. I dash for the back door and out into the slush. And stop, spellbound, my eyes widening with awe.

  The sky is full of birds, and they’re not chickens. Arranged in a giant V-formation that stretches far out across the valley, they are mournfully kroo-kroo-ing their calls like an airborne massed band. Zumbach told me I could expect a lot of swallows at La Folie. He didn’t tell me about the cranes.

  There must be a thousand birds up there, lined up in interconnecting chevrons, fluting to each other as they beat time with their seven-foot wings. The formation is almost half a mile wide, its two great arms divided and sub-divided like the boughs and branches and twigs and shoots of some vast flying tree. Squinting into the sunlight, I follow the last of the rippling branches, only to see that this, too, is connected to yet another huge formation beyond.

  I don’t know why, but seeing these creatures flying in such numbers, single-mindedly supporting each other on their epic voyage, and hearing their heart-rending calls, makes me … well, I’m embarrassed to say that it makes me want to cry. I can’t explain this. What is so moving about a sky full of birds that I should feel myself melting within?

  I am no twitcher. My parents have reached the age where they gasp and grab the binoculars every time anything feathered flutters into their garden. I have not. Bird-watching is really not my thing. The only birds I can confidently identify are as follows: robin; magpie; pigeon; sparrow; chicken; parrot.

  But cranes … cranes or their ilk were alive when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. You rarely see them in Britain, because they tend to migrate from Spain to Scandinavia via a narrow corridor that cuts through the heart of France. And what I am just now discovering, as I stand and watch in awe, is that La Folie is located slap-bang in the middle of their international flight path. I immediately decide that cranes are one of my favourite things, along with tennis, Spitfires, chickens, Chopin and the crème brûlée they serve at the Toquenelle in St Juste.

  Behind me, Marie-Claude appears with her mop.

  ‘You know what this means?’ she says. ‘When les grues arrive, it marks the beginning of spring.’

  And then she waves the thermometer at me, to show what an ordeal she’s had.

  ‘I should lodge a complaint,’ she declares with a brave smile.

  ‘But you hardly look blue at all,’ I reassure her. And we both stand and gaze, open-mouthed, at the sky.

  Marie-Claude is just warning me that I shouldn’t keep tomatoes in the fridge, and that cabbages should be wrapped in foil, when the phone rings.

  ‘Mr Wright?’ English voice, Estuary accent. ‘Just to let you know that we’re in Poitiers with your piano. We should be there in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Incredible. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the drive.’ I have known that piano since I was twelve years old. I have waited months to bring it to Ice Station La Folie, conscious that in Jolibois I have not once heard the sound of music floating out of an open window, if you discount the days when Ralph the artist is torturing his saxophone. And now there are only hours to go. It crosses my mind to hug Marie-Claude, but she is drying the carving knife, so I think better of it.

  Again, the phone rings. They’re there, at the bottom of the drive. I run to find Duruflé, and he drives me down in his beaten-up white truck.

  The two Frowns who descend from the Bolton’s lorry do not say hello. Duruflé, twinkling with the pleasure of tiling a damp room in sub-zero conditions, shuffles forward to shake hands, and then shuffles back again, embarrassed.

  ‘A handshake with my friend wouldn’t go amiss,’ I murmur to one of them.

  ‘You what, mate?’ he sneers. ‘Oh, yeah, right. Just as long as he doesn’t start any of that kissing malarky.’

  And then we are rumbling up the drive on the back of good Monsieur Duruflé’s truck: three Englishmen and a grand piano. That sounds like it might be the start of a joke, and – as I shall discover – in some ways it is.

  But for now, all’s right with the world. The sun glitters through the trees, and the piano doesn’t topple over as we ride the Cresta Run in reverse. With my old friend looming between us like the dorsal fin of a mighty whale, I am Ishmael. I am Fitzcarraldo. I am twelve years old.

  Even the two Frowns can’t help grinning at the Laurel-and-Hardiness of it all. I give a thumbs-up to Duruflé each time his smile illuminates the rear-view mirror. On our right, Titus and the Girls stand stock still beneath the lone pine, heads cocked sideways, keeping an eye on the huge black beast coming up the drive. I
can’t wait to introduce Martha to Chopin.

  And then we’re at the top, and it’s time for the Englishmen to take over.

  ‘Merci mille fois,’ I say to Duruflé, shaking his hand.

  ‘Seen that, Del?’ says one of the Frowns.

  ‘Wossat?’ asks the other.

  ‘We’re never gonna get it up them stairs.’ He jerks a sulky shoulder at the three stairs I told Bolton’s about weeks ago.

  ‘But I said there would be stairs,’ I murmur. ‘And look: there are only three of them.’

  ‘Nah,’ he continues, sitting down. ‘Nobody never told us, mate.’

  ‘Would it help if I went and fetched a plank?’ asks Duruflé in French, beaming with helpfulness.

  His teenage son, who has been working on the tiling next door, comes out to help. And so we lower the piano from the back of the truck, and slowly haul it up the stairs. As far as I can see, Duruflé – at least twenty years older than the rest of us – takes most of the weight.

  ‘We’ll drag it,’ says one of the Frowns, when the piano is resting in the doorway.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I respond hastily. ‘That floor is rather special to me. What about using the piano trolley?’

  ‘Chuck us one of those blankets, then, Andy,’ he says, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he clenches his teeth. The piano trolley remains untouched on the back of the van.

  And so they drag the piano across the floor, while the unseen shard of broken glass that is embedded in the blanket etches a long, curving scratch mark in my carefully sanded oak, like a bright vapour trail cutting the sky.

  Duruflé looks long and hard at this scratch and, after giving me a smile of rueful sympathy, goes back to finishing his perfect tiling. The Frowns hastily re-attach the piano’s legs and the pedals, and one of them suggests, without enthusiasm: ‘Play us a tune then, mate.’

  I don’t feel like playing anything, not just now. I pictured myself alone when I struck the first notes. I even start to try to explain, and then stop myself. Go on. Play something.

  So with trembling fingers, I gently sound a chord:

  C major, both hands, the intervals widely spaced. And the sound is gorgeous in the towering room’s churchlike acoustic; like warm butterscotch sauce drizzled over a perfect scoop of my dad’s homemade ice cream. And then another sustained chord: E-minor seventh, first inversion. And a third: A-minor seventh, first inversion. I can’t help falling in love with you. But Houston, we have a problem. We have a big problem.

  ‘It’s not right,’ I say.

  ‘What’s not right?’ asks First Frown.

  ‘The dampers. They’re not touching the strings. Can’t you hear how it all blurs into one?’

  ‘It sounds all right to me,’ he grunts.

  So follows an hour in which the three of us lie underneath the piano, attaching and detaching the pedals, examining the brass connecting rods, puzzling over what could be wrong. The rods just seem too long. And these two of my fellow countrymen just seem too … too English, with their so-called expertise and their boorish ways. I catch myself wishing I’d asked a French removal firm to pick up the piano from East Dulwich.

  ‘It must have been like that all along, mate,’ says Second Frown eventually, ‘and you just didn’t notice.’

  ‘There’s got to be a simple explanation,’ I reply, ignoring this.

  ‘Well, you’ll be having it tuned, right?’ says First Frown. ‘So when the tuner comes, he can just saw a bit off one of the rods, and then they’ll fit.’

  ‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, all right. So maybe you don’t want to wait,’ he continues. ‘But I bet that cross-eyed bloke next door’s got an angle-grinder. We could do it now.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Leave it now. Have another cup of tea. I’ll sort it out later.’

  In the end, I manage a temporary bodge, inserting a piece of cardboard between the pedal-frame and the piano to make room for the over-long rods. I make yet another cup of tea for the Frowns and leave them grumbling at each other in the winter sitting-room. Finally, alone with my piano for a few moments, I play the opening of the Schubert A-major sonata, A664, that was on my parents’ scratchy Ashkenazy LP that I heard so often as a child, dreaming of rippling out its lyrical themes for myself one day.

  Clack, clack, clack goes the sustain pedal each time I press it. Clack, clack, clack. I feel as if I have waited months to meet a long-lost friend, only to discover that they are not the person I thought they were.

  The Frowns do not say goodbye. Good Monsieur Duruflé gives them a lift down the drive in the cab of his truck, while his son shivers on the exposed flat-bed behind them.

  Heavily depleted on the euphoria front, I head off for tennis coaching at the Jolibois gymnase. Running around and being yelled at by Grégory, the brilliant young coach, does me a power of good, and – with endorphins buzzing around my brain – I drive back to La Folie with renewed purpose.

  What do I have to feel down about? I’m no worse off than I was yesterday.

  I sit under the piano with my torch and have another look at the problem that stumped three of us for an hour. After approximately seven seconds, I spot a small dowel that is out of place. I wobble it with my finger, and it clatters out of the bottom of the piano.

  Bingo.

  Then I play Christmas puzzles with the dowel for a while, trying to work out how to get it back into position. I unscrew something here. Tighten something there. Ah. There.

  Holding my breath, I sit at the keyboard and start to play.

  Chopin, the 3rd Ballade.

  And I know, as my fingers stroke the keys, that I shall not feel alone again.

  54

  SILENT MARY

  Every day now begins and ends in the summer sitting-room, rattling out Chopin and Schubert and ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ at my beloved keyboard. The cat joins me, sitting under the piano to pick up the vibrations, especially from Chopin, who is her favourite composer. But outside in the field behind La Folie, other and more resonant melodies are making themselves heard.

  Black, fragile and hop-skippety cute, the first of this year’s lambs has just been born. Fortunately, Ouessants are hardy creatures, and tend to handle the messy bit of lambing themselves. So from last year to this, I have never yet had to don the rubber gloves and a faraway look to help.

  Gilles and Josette come up to check on my new arrival, and find me so triumphant about the lamb that they must think it was me, rather than Daphne, who has given birth. Cooing at the tiny creature, Josette tells me about the simultaneous arrival of their first grandchild. I want to explain that I’m hoping to become a grandfather, too, if my dear little Claudette becomes a mother this spring.

  ‘They would have to have it slap-bang in the middle of lambing, wouldn’t they?’ growls Gilles. He doesn’t think they’ll be able to go to the christening in Châteaudun.

  ‘But I can look after the lambing for you, Gilles,’ I tell him, with all the confidence of one who has read Sheep for Beginners from cover to cover.

  Gilles throws me a glance of raw pity, although I can’t for the life of me think why. ‘And I can do les vaches, too,’ I add, even though I haven’t read Cows for Beginners yet.

  ‘On va voir,’ he says, looking pale.

  In the end, despite my lobbying, Jean-Jacques, a picturesque neighbour with a face like a kindly potato, is given the cow job. Old Boulesteix is placed on lambing watch. And I am left to look after the rest of Gilles’s sheep.

  Now I know sheep are rather good at looking after themselves, but I still feel touched by the trust this implies. There is a world of difference between playing Marie-Antoinette with my seven – sorry, eight – little Ouessants behind La Folie, and taking responsibility for someone else’s livelihood, if only for a weekend. I am to feed, water and generally oversee six hundred-odd ewes, rams and lambs in fifteen different fields and barns, some of them several miles away. Pas de problème. />
  As I accompany Gilles on his rounds, I’m reminded of that thrilling moment in learning to fly, when my instructor, Sinking Anand, finally decided I was ready to go solo, climbed out of the plane and left me to screw up all by myself.

  Unfortunately, counting sheep turns out to be harder than landing an aeroplane.

  ‘There should be forty-five ewes,’ declares Gilles, in the first field.

  ‘J’ai quarante-quatre,’ I reply, after some time. ‘Someone must have kidnapped one.’

  ‘Count again. Do it in twos.’

  ‘Ah, that’s better. Now there are forty-eight.’ I make a third stab – ‘vingt-six … vingt-huit … trente …’ – but Gilles has already moved on.

  ‘If you don’t get it right first time, tu es foutu,’ he explains, waving his sawn-off finger at me. No wonder this game is a hit with insomniacs.

  Clambering over the barbed-wire fence towards the jeering mob of sheep in the next field, I manage to spill my feed-bucket in the wet grass. Gilles looks away, as –brown-kneed – I do my best to scoop up the mess.

  ‘I’ll distract them while you fill up the first three troughs,’ he says. ‘Then, when they run to you, I’ll fill the other three troughs. Do it fast, or they may knock you over.’

  Over the next couple of hours, we clamber over innumerable barbed-wire fences and deliver umpteen buckets of feed to countless uncountable sheep in various fields and dilapidated barns. Then we come upon a ram, collapsed in the grass, who looks to me to be very dead.

  ‘Non, il n’est pas mort,’ says Gilles, slapping the creature around the chops. ‘But I’ll have to bring the tractor, to take him to the vet.’ I bless the poor ram for choosing to have his seizure today, and not in two days’ time.

  In the evening I return for another training session. ‘I hope you’re not going to worry too much,’ I tell Gilles, as we sip our apéros after work.

  ‘Ah, non,’ he laughs, swigging his Salers with the air of a cowboy about to have a bullet removed from his chest. ‘I have total confidence in you, Michael.’ Well, that makes one of us, at least. ‘Incidentally,’ he adds, ‘have you heard about the train à vapeur?’