2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees

by Tony Hawks

  The trouble was, as I soon discovered, your ability to keep up a ‘decent pace’ is directly proportionate to how many people you know in the village. Yes, it may have been a weekday afternoon, but for a lot of the villagers work takes place in the fields that surround their houses, so there was a constant danger of ‘decent-pace disruption’ for the keen aerobic walker like me.

  The first interruption came from Alain, the man who in some ways I could hold responsible for the large hole that now filled my garden.

  “But you are English! You must have a pool!” he’d said all those months ago, slapping me firmly on the back as he’d done so.

  I hadn’t seen Alain as much as I would have liked, the problem being that he lived the other side of the village and this meant that our paths didn’t cross enough. Although we lived half a mile from each other, I tended only to see him at village events, because when he returned home from work or trips to the shops he took the right fork down the hill away from my house, and consequently we never got the opportunity to flag each other down and stop and chat.

  Alain was loading stuff into the boot of his car as I reached his house, slightly out of breath from the long climb that had preceded it.

  “Ah, Tony! How are you?” he said, before marching up to me, shaking my hand and providing me with the now trademark slap on the back.

  I explained that all was well with me and that I was over here alone on a trip to get some writing done.

  “You know that you are always welcome to spend time with us—always,” he said with a big grin. “Now, about your swimming pool. Last week I saw that it is not yet finished. Why is this?”

  “Problems with workers.”

  “That is because you were using English.”

  “There was no one available here.”

  “Tssk.”

  Alain threw his head back as if to suggest that this was no excuse. Even though it was. As excuses go, it was about as good as they get. His boot now fully packed, Alain jumped into his car and bade me goodbye with a twirly hand gesture out of the window.

  I walked on past la mairie until I found myself approaching Andre’s house. Since the rhythm of my aerobic workout had already been broken, I was rather hoping that I’d bump into the man who had rapidly become my favourite elderly French farmer. (He wasn’t up against a whole heap of opposition.) As I passed his exhibition piece of a yard, busding as ever with babbling geese, clucking hens and barking dogs, I looked in to see if I could locate the man himself. There was no sign of him until a face appeared at one of the windows in the L-shaped building that bordered the yard. I could see his familiar face chewing on a piece of bread. He lifted a finger and beckoned me towards him. I felt a little buzz of excitement because it was looking like I was going to be invited into his home. I’d heard that Andre still lived much as his forefathers had done, making only a cursory nod to the innovations of the current generation. It seemed that any moment I was going to have a glimpse of what French rural life might have been like three-quarters of a century ago.

  “Bonjour, Tony” he said, as he appeared at his door. “Entre!”

  I walked into another world. Despite his house being substantial in size, Andre only lived in two rooms—his bedroom, and the one I was now in. I guess a modern-day estate agent would call it a kitchen⁄diner, but it was more of a kitchen⁄living room. It was dark and extremely bare. There were no tiles on the floor, just cold concrete. The crumbly walls were dimly lit by the inadequate shafts of light that fought their way through the insubstantial and grubby window. A table and chairs filled the centre of the room, surrounded by an old wood-burning stove, an antique wooden sideboard and an ancient fridge on which was perched an old black and white TV. The aerial that was balanced on top of it was a prototype that resembled a deer’s antlers. It was tied to hooks on the low ceiling by two pieces of string. (Andre told me later that he’d done this because he’d grown tired of it falling off as he walked past.)

  Andre offered me a Ricard and apologised for the fact that he was finishing off his chicken stew. I watched him chatter away as he dipped his bread into his bachelor fare. His strong accent and occasional lapse into Occitan meant that I was grasping only about 75 per cent of what he said, but this was a distinct improvement on what I’d been able to grasp when I’d spoken with him earlier in the year. My ear was clearly beginning to adapt and attune itself to the alien sounds of the region. I asked Andre if the chicken he was now eating was one of his own.

  “Bien sur. Naturellement ,” he replied.

  That must be tough, I thought. Eating something you’ve been living with. Most meat-eaters console themselves with the fact that they’re consuming a creature that they wouldn’t recognise. I wonder what percentage of us would be vegetarians if we had to kill and eat the very animal that we’d been feeding and nurturing for months.

  Andre chatted with the fervour of a man who clearly lived alone, wandering as he did from one subject to another with eager abandon. He told me how he’d been born in the village in 1927 and how he’d spent his formative years coping with a country under German occupation. He revealed a deeper side to his personality as he reflected on the futility of war and the senseless loss of young lives. We discussed how he had his bread delivered three times a week and how he’d left the area on only a few occasions—once for an operation (Toulouse), and once just over the border into Spain for a village outing (organised by Malcolm and Anne). He’d never been to Paris and he had no desire so to do. I decided to enquire as to whether he’d ever been married.

  “Non ,” he replied, “je n’ai jamais trouvé mon âme soeur.”

  I liked this expression—âme soeur —which translates literally as soul sister. Andre was telling me that in his life he’d never met his ‘soulmate’.

  “Moi non plus” I replied. “Me neither.”

  Andre told me not to worry. I still had plenty of time. He pointed to the heavens and said that, for him, his soulmate was probably up there, waiting.

  As I bade him goodbye and continued on my ‘not so aerobic’ walk, I wondered if that’s how it really worked. Maybe when you miss out on meeting your soulmate down here on earth, then you get to meet them up in heaven. Maybe it’s the first thing that happens when you arrive.

  “Welcome to heaven,” Peter probably says at the Pearly Gates. “I expect you’re dying for a cup of tea. The canteen’s just on the left over there—and your soulmate is waiting for you at table five.”

  §

  In my experience French trains are much more punctual than their British counterparts. Certainly the 15.50 for Toulouse rolled into the deserted station exactly on time, almost to the second.

  I was making a day trip to visit the city’s range of furniture retailers. I’d been told that Toulouse had some great stores, and I knew that the time was fast approaching when the furniture I’d brought from England would need supplementing. As for the stuff I’d purchased from Conforama and assembled with Brad, well, this could surely be bettered for style and potential longevity. I’d chosen the train over the car so that I could use the hours of travel to read through the work I’d done on the new draft of the screenplay. I didn’t know it as I boarded the impressively pristine train, but on the outward journey at least I wasn’t going to get a stroke of work done. Mind you, it couldn’t have been for a nicer reason.

  Just as I sat down in the fairly empty carriage and began to arrange my belongings, I saw a familiar young woman making her way up the aisle of the train. She looked flustered, perhaps because she’d only made the train by a matter of seconds. However, as she drew closer I noted that she was looking prettier than I’d ever seen her before.

  “Bonjour, Christine ,” I said, flagging her down, rather hoping that she might take advantage of the empty seat next to me.

  “Ah, bonjour, Tony ,” she said, with a big smile.

  To my delight, the deputy mayor’s daughter, waitress, card player and photographer set her small bag in the overhead r
ack and sat down to join me.

  I had to switch my brain into ‘French mode’. I wanted to speak the language well right now. I knew that this was a fine opportunity to spend some time with an attractive, intelligent and versatile young woman, and I didn’t want to let myself down by constantly asking Christine to repeat things. It wasn’t easy given that mentally I wasn’t prepared. I’d been geared up for a nice comfortable time reading through my own work and I wasn’t at all ready for the speed of Christine’s speech, or indeed her strong regional accent.

  Things began well enough with a brief chat about what I was going to do in Toulouse and a discussion about what kind of furniture we both liked. Soon, though, we had meandered onto the subject of how she loved horses and how her family kept two on their land. As she continued to speak, I ceased to concentrate so much on her words and instead I was lazily offering up nods of the head along with the odd routine oui. And the reason? Well, I was focusing on just how lovely she looked today. But what was it? What was so different? I looked at her as she talked, concentrating not on her words, but on the detail of her appearance. Was it her hair? No, that was the same. More make-up? No, if anything she was wearing less than usual. Different clothes? No, I’d seen her in jeans and T-shirt plenty of times. Then it occurred to me that the big difference was the context. This was the first occasion that I’d seen Christine outside the village environment.

  For the first time I wasn’t thinking in terms of her being the daughter of Leon, the deputy mayor. I was seeing her as a young woman, on her way to Toulouse, probably to continue her studies. How old was Christine, I wondered. Somewhere in her early twenties, that was for sure. Yes, she was a bit young for me, but there’d been countless examples of this kind of relationship working out. Christine was a catch, too. Bright, witty and not short on womanly charms. It wasn’t ridiculous to consider this as a possibility either. There are plenty of young women who like the older man, enjoying the stability and wisdom they can often offer. Could Christine, I speculated, be one of these?

  She continued to chatter away about how both of her horses were rather wild, and how neither of them was really suitable for riding. I mostly nodded and made little in the way of response. My mind was too full of calculations to offer meaningful replies, mainly because a very big question had just popped into my head. Was I old enough to be Christine’s father? I did some mental arithmetic, trying hard not to let my face reveal what was on my mind. Oh dear. The sums weren’t providing the desired outcome. In fact, there was even a moment when I began to wonder whether, had I made an extremely early start to my sex life, I might even be old enough to be her grandfather. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  I looked up to see Christine waiting for a response from me. But what had she just asked me? Something about horses, I reckoned.

  “OKI’,” I said, hoping that this would do the trick.

  Christine smiled, and inwardly I sighed with relief. However, I now thought it best to take the conversational initiative and switch from a subject which had not received anything like my best attention.

  “So, Christine, are you going to Toulouse to continue your studies?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to Toulouse,” she replied. “I will get off at St Gaudens, the next stop.”

  “Oh. What are you doing in St Gaudens?”

  “I’m going to visit my boyfriend.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  I tried hard not to go a bit quiet, but failed. I did manage a few further exchanges but frankly I was quite relieved when, five minutes later, Christine kissed me goodbye and headed for the train door. Perhaps it was for the best. Maybe things wouldn’t have worked out between us. Besides, she would never have been accepted by Roger, what with her not being une petite Anglaise. No, I was pleased that Christine had a boyfriend.

  Just so long as he wasn’t over fifty.

  17

  I’m So Glad You Called

  I was quite excited by the prospect of a bingo night. I’d never been to an ‘eyes down’ session in England, but thanks to the village social committee I would now have the opportunity to do so in France.

  “It’s quite a big thing out here,” said Malcolm as he shared a beer with me on the balcony, having dropped by to say hello. “Autumn here is bingo season. Most villages will put on a night of their own, and lots of people will drive around and go to all of them.”

  “So they’re virtually professionals?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can they expect big prizes?”

  “Too right they can. If they get on a winning streak they can end up with a huge joint of meat and quite a lot of paint. Not to mention our big prize.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Twenty baby chickens.”

  “Bloody hell, that’s amazing! I’m going to win those chickens tonight,” I said confidently. “Just you wait and see.”

  I was late for the event, having once again misjudged the time it took to walk to la mairie. The problem was that I could see it from my house. This meant that it looked close, and I would forget that the road to it wound all over the place and that there was a long, steep climb the other side of the valley.

  The hall was packed. Roger greeted me at the door—well, not so much greeted me as admonished me. He tutted, shook his head, tapped his watch, frowned and then quickly sold me four bingo cards before hurrying me to the only vacant seat in the house. The second game was just about to begin, and I hardly had time to absorb the atmosphere around me. Trestle tables filled the hall, around which eager players sat with heads down and eyes fixed on their cards. There was an air of seriousness that I hadn’t been expecting. No one was chatting or smiling. Most people had similar expressions to athletes just before a race is about to begin. Absorbed, focused, intense.

  On the stage sat the bingo caller, who was none other than Christine. Was there no end to her talents? She looked assured as she addressed the room, clutching the microphone almost with the casual swagger of a club singer. Her assistant was Letitia, daughter of Rene the Mayor. She was in charge of taking out the numbered balls, handing them to Christine to be called out, and then placing them in the neat little ‘ball holder’ that lay on the table before her. Rene himself patrolled the tables like a vigilant traffic cop, ready to assist whenever a query arose and to respond with lightning speed when someone shouted ‘House!’, or ‘Maison!’, or whatever it was that they shouted over here.

  I didn’t recognise any of the other players on my table. These were out-of-towners, the pros who travelled from village to village hoping to be the ones who proudly walked away with the meat, cheese or paint. I noted that they had brought their own little counters to mark off the numbers on their cards. The rest of us used the small pieces of dried sweetcorn that had been piled up in the middle of each table for use by the non-professionals.

  It was only as the game began that the size of the task ahead of me became apparent. The first number was called.

  “Cinquante-sept.”

  There was a beat whilst I made the translation in my head. OK, that’s 57. Then I scanned one of my cards for the number. No, 57 wasn’t there. Then I realised I had four cards in total. That meant that the three other cards needed scanning for 57, too. I picked up my second card to check it over, only to be interrupted by Christine’s voice.

  “Vingt-trois.”

  Vingt-trois? That’s 23, isn’t it? Right, I’ll check for that just as soon as I’m sure that there’s N°57 on any of the other cards. Right: 57—no, nothing on the second card; 57—yes—one on the third card.

  I quickly marked it off with a sweetcorn kernel…

  “Quarante-neuf ,” called Christine.

  Wait! I’m not ready yet! I’ve got one more card to check for 57. Then there’s the 23 to do. I can’t cope with a 49 just yet!

  “Douze ,” announced Christine.

  That was it. I lost my cool and pushed the cards away from me, knocking the only piece of corn that was covering a num
ber onto the floor. The lady opposite took a brief moment to give me a short, sharp glare. A brief moment was all she could spare. She was running no fewer than ten cards. And with some ease by the look of things. I sighed.

  “Where is the fun in this?” I mumbled to myself. I’d had more fun at meetings with my accountant. At least there were moments of rest in between the endless number crunching.

  I gave up before the end of the game and wandered over to the back of the hall to join up with Roger, Malcolm and Anne, who seemed to be observers of the proceedings.

  “You didn’t last long,” commented Anne.

  “No,” I replied. “I need a beer. It’s making me feel ill. When are the twenty baby chickens up for grabs? That’s all I’m interested in.”

  “I think that’s the prize for the fifth game,” said Malcolm. “Do you mind me asking what you’ll do with them if you win?”

  “When I win. Oh, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll take them back to London with me and give them a new start-There aren’t many prospects for the young in these parts.”

  Roger smiled and shook his head at the same time. “Tonneee! Tu n’es pas Monsieur Bingo!”

  He was dead right, I was not Mr Bingo. I bloody hated it, in fact. There was no joy for me in a room full of people not saying a word to each other, just sitting with their heads down and ticking off numbers. What made it even more annoying was that I couldn’t complain about it being a mindless activity. I’d tried to apply my mind to the task but it had begun to hurt after only a few minutes.

  I began to talk with Roger in hushed tones, but soon there came a noisy cry of victory and he had to rush off to join Rene in checking the validity of the claim. I turned to speak with Malcolm and Anne but as I did so they disappeared off to prepare some snacks for the interval. I was left alone. Alone and watching. Alone and watching people listening to numbers and then marking them off. It really was no fun at all. There was nothing for it but to engage in a mild sulk which, though I say so myself, I did rather well. Rather better than I played bingo, certainly.