by Sarah Long
‘I’m never leaving this room,’ she said. ‘You can carry me out in a coffin.’
‘Let’s not be maudlin. Anyway, it will all change when we divide the house up the way we planned, but I agree we did well to secure the best room for the time being.’
‘I know I wanted the tower room to start with but Leo was insistent and this is much bigger. Plus it’s another flight of stairs to the Rapunzel turret.’
Dominic came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her as they gazed out together over the lake and the cows grazing peacefully beyond against a backdrop of rolling pasture punctuated by stately trees.
‘We should christen it, really,’ he said, slipping an exploratory hand into the waistband of her jeans.
‘Much as I love these old floorboards, I’d rather wait for our bed,’ said Nicola, opening the window. ‘Isn’t it great how the windows open inwards? The French are so sensible.’
‘It’s because of the shutters, they’re on the outside.’
‘I’m sure they’re designed to lure British buyers – you must admit they were a factor. Let’s have some coffee and some of that bread with proper butter,’ said Nicola. ‘Yet another reason to love the French. They don’t hold truck with fads about low fat and counting calories, yet still live much longer than we do.’
She took his hand and led him back along the landing, then skipped down the stairs with a lightness she hadn’t felt in years. It reminded her of when she was a child – the first day of the summer holidays, counting the stairs on her way down and wondering what excitement was in store as days of freedom and sunshine stretched ahead.
She stood in the middle of the hall so she could see the rooms leading off in both directions.
‘I love these interconnecting rooms,’ she said. ‘They call them salles en enfilade, like a stately procession – they just go on and on. Let’s see if we can remember where the kitchen is. You grab the coolbox and I’ll take the rest.’
She picked up the basket of provisions that she’d left at the foot of the stairs and moved through to the grand salon, where three sets of French windows opened onto the terrace. A set of double doors on the far side led into the crystal ballroom – a sparkling chandelier gave the room its name – and from there it was through to the petit salon and then the dining room, with the baronial-sized table and huge matching sideboard.
These grand rooms formed the heart of the reception space and it was unanimously agreed that they should be reserved for shared use. There was plenty of scope in the east and west wings, as well as the south wing that ran behind, for them to create their own kitchens and living quarters, but the central core of the château should remain unchanged.
‘It’s massive,’ said Dominic, trying not to think about the heating bill. ‘Just as well there are plenty of us.’
‘It’s the beauty of our scheme,’ said Nicola. ‘Ideal proportions for a sharing community.’
She opened the door to the kitchen. It was, they all agreed, the weak spot. Whoever designed the house had not accorded too much space to the servants’ working quarters, any more than he had to their attic bedrooms. He couldn’t have known that this subsequent generation of chatelains would be so keen on performing their own domestic duties, with competitive zeal and designer cookware.
Nicola took out the kettle and cafetière she had thought to bring with her and placed them on the worn worktop. The empty shelves lining the walls were covered with grease and the old-fashioned cooker looked as if it had never been cleaned.
‘Basic, but functional,’ she said. ‘And much more authentic than our fitted kitchen at home. It will be fine to tide us over until we get round to installing our separate flats. In fact, it will do us all good to live more simply; we’re all so spoilt with our luxury appliances.’
Though as she filled the kettle from the stiff tap over the butler sink, she did suffer a pang of nostalgia for the smooth lines of the island unit of her London home, which would soon be subjected to the robust attentions of her children’s flatmates. They hadn’t found a buyer in the rushed few weeks since their offer on the château had been accepted, so agreed that Gus and Maddie would stay there for now and recruit some friends to pay rent. Dominic wanted to charge their own children as well but Nicola had put her foot down. She felt guilty enough about abandoning them as it was, without forcing them to pay for their parents’ desertion. Gus’s face had been a picture when they’d told him. ‘You mean like a commune!’ he’d said. ‘A bunch of sad old hippies!’ Maddie had been less outraged, seeing the potential for holidays and suggested they might like to install a swimming pool.
Dominic was relieved when he found out that they could buy into the French project without selling their house. He’d looked into a pension he’d largely ignored, the lucrative sort you were no longer offered, relating to a job he’d left twenty years ago. If they added that to Nicola’s NHS pension and the rent on their old house, they figured they could get by. On the strength of that, he decided he could afford to cash in his main pension pot. ‘Might as well blow it all on a share of a château,’ he said. ‘Become one of those feckless old people who become destitute thanks to the new pension freedoms.’
*
They carried their coffee out to the terrace and sat on the steps to enjoy the bread spread with butter miraculously studded with salt crystals.
‘It’s called a tartine, did you know that?’ said Nicola. ‘I always thought that meant a little tart, but in fact it’s just bread and butter. I love how everything sounds better in French.’
‘Mon amour,’ said Dominic, working his lips into an exaggerated pout.
‘Look at all the blossom,’ said Nicola. ‘Just wait until the apples come, we can gather them while wearing rustic smocks. You can take a large stick and knock them off the branches, like they do in films.’
‘It beats brunch in London, wouldn’t you say? Not an avocado-eating hipster in sight. Listen to the silence.’
‘I don’t know, the birds are pretty noisy. And there’s a lot of rustling. Who knows what creatures are out there.’
‘I’ll protect you.’
He put his arm around her and watched the dragonflies skimming over the lake as he bit through the warm crust of the baguette.
‘We could plant some water lilies,’ he said, ‘go the full Monet. Convert one of the huts into a studio and learn to paint. There are so many opportunities. Thank you for bringing me here, it’s perfect. When you think I could still be in that office, worrying about things that don’t matter.’
‘Worrying is such a waste of time.’
She kissed him fondly, then noticed someone approaching them from the end of the terrace.
‘Hang on, someone’s here – who is that?’
‘It’s Madame de Courcy.’
They watched her slowly making her way over, pausing every few steps to rest on her cane. She was every inch the grand country lady, with her discreet tweed suit and white hair fastened in a chignon. The last time they’d seen her was at the notaire’s office, where the clerk had to bring in extra chairs for the large numbers of signatories to the sales agreement. It was most irregular, the notaire had sternly informed them. Never before had he sold a property to such a large group of people. He made them sound like a shifty, possibly criminal bunch. In contrast, he treated Madame de Courcy with the utmost reverence, letting them know that she was a person of great significance, with ancestral attachment to the region. Unlike you lot, was the unspoken implication.
‘Please, don’t get up,’ she said as she drew nearer. ‘What a charming scene you make: a couple in love on the terrace of their new home. I saw your car outside and wanted to present you with this.’
She handed over a pot planted with a single lily of the valley, the tiny white flowers almost plastic in their bell-shaped neatness, shrouded by dark green leaves.
‘Thank you, how very thoughtful,’ said Nicola, trying to switch to French and wondering if she’d got her accent right. She’d s
wapped her addiction to games on her phone for a serious Duolingo habit to try and get her French up to scratch. She wondered if the old lady had been watching out for their arrival; they certainly hadn’t informed her of their moving-in date.
‘It’s muguet,’ Madame de Courcy continued in her near-perfect English. ‘We always offer it at the beginning of May to wish good luck. It was Charles IX who introduced the tradition, and we give it now to signify the happiness of a new beginning that comes with the spring.’
She sat down beside them with some difficulty.
‘At my age it is hard to be quite so enthusiastic about each new year, but I am happy in my new pavillon down the road and so pleased that my real home has found good owners. There are some who think it is a betrayal to sell to les rosbifs, but I prefer you who will live here all the time to some Parisian who will only visit rarely. Smell it, you will love the scent, it is softer and less assertive than roses, which I find a little vulgar.’
Nicola obediently leaned forward to breathe in the scent, thinking how all flowers smelled the same to her. Maybe that would change now she was a country person.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, ‘and we are so thrilled with the house. Thank you for selling it to us.’
Madame de Courcy waved her hand dismissively at the mention of money.
‘Nobody ever owns a château,’ she said. ‘It will go on through the centuries, and we are all mere custodians, safeguarding it for the next generation.’
‘Like a fancy watch,’ said Dominic.
Madame de Courcy looked confused.
‘The advertisements for Patek Philippe watches,’ Dominic explained. ‘They show a handsome father handing over a watch to his son and the line is: You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation. Terribly smug.’
‘What is smug?’
Her English was very good but she occasionally needed clarification.
‘Pleased with himself. Content de lui.’
‘I see. However, I think you will find the château is more complicated than a watch! If a watch breaks, you take it to the menders, but you’ll soon discover the maintenance of Château Lafarge is an endless round of hard work – and expense – oh là là! ’
Dominic noted the triumph in her voice. No doubt she was delighted to have fobbed them off with this damaged old ruin. He and Nicola had spent many sleepless nights talking about how much they would need to spend to put it right. Dougie was the only sensible one; he’d suggested from the start that they should get a builder in before they made the offer, so they’d have a ballpark figure for how much the repairs might cost. Simon had shouted him down, said you might as well ask how long a piece of string is; the budget would be what they decided it would be, and they had all concurred. At this price, it was an absolute steal. They egged each other on because they didn’t want any reason not to buy this house.
‘I do hope everything is in good working order,’ Madame de Courcy said, reading the alarm on Dominic’s face. ‘I think perhaps it is a little more dilapidated than you had hoped?’
You hope, he thought.
‘We haven’t had time yet to fully check everything,’ said Nicola. ‘After all, we only arrived an hour ago.’
‘Of course, you are in the honeymoon period! Noces de miel. And the weather is kind; it is good you did not arrive in the winter. Alors, ça! ’
She embarked on a detailed description of the hardships of the winter months, the draughty windows, the exact spots where they would be advised to place buckets on the attic floor in the event of heavy rains, the tendency of the septic tank to overflow, the likelihood of the electricity going down during storms, because our tempêtes are legendary here, they are magnifiques! Only last year they had a summer hailstorm, with stones of ice as big as tennis balls, which even smashed the windscreen of her car! What a relief to be in her newly built little house where she no longer lived in fear of the weather.
Eventually she stood up to take her leave.
‘I thought she’d never go,’ said Dominic as they waved her off. ‘I feel completely depressed now. And notice she didn’t mention any of those structural defects until we’d closed the deal, the wily old witch.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Nicola, trying to put a brave face on it. ‘She’s only being friendly.’
‘Friendly! Merchant of doom, more like.’
‘You can’t say we didn’t anticipate all those problems; nothing really surprising there. And at least there are no termites or asbestos; we have certificates to prove it.’
‘French law is weird. You can sell someone a crumbling pile of stones, just as long as it hasn’t got termites! Never mind everything else that’s wrong with it.’
Nicola sighed, unable to keep up her fake optimism.
‘OK, I admit it. We should have had a survey. But we are where we are and it’s good to have Madame de Courcy on side: she’ll be useful if we need to know anything.’
‘Sitting in her pavillon, counting her money. We shouldn’t have offered the asking price. She must have taken us for naïve English dreamers, which we are, of course.’
‘Yes, we are hopeless dreamers. But that’s because we are living the dream, which can only be a good thing. It’s funny that word pavillon, isn’t it? It sounds really grand but it’s not a decorative summer house at all, just a small Barratt home.’
‘The kind of retirement home we should have looked at if we’d had any sense.’
‘Stop it, we are castle-dwellers now and don’t you forget it. And look, here comes our van! They’ve made good time, haven’t they?’
They watched the lorry manoeuvring in the narrow lane in order to get through the gates, the access being better suited to a horse-drawn carriage than a heavy goods vehicle. Finally, the angle was achieved and the van crunched its way across the gravel drive towards them.
The driver stepped down and walked up to the front steps, throwing his arms in the air to show his appreciation. His name was Terry, he’d told them when he was packing them up in London, and he loved his job. Nothing better than helping people move on to their next place. Nicola had admired how delicately he had wrapped each glass, the finesse of the task at odds with the heavy lifting of furniture, which he undertook with equal efficiency.
‘Well, this is a bit better than your standard terraced house, isn’t it!’ he said, shaking Dominic vigorously by the hand and giving Nicola a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘I’ve done a few moves to France in my time, but I’ve never seen anything as grand as this. Fit for a king. You must be over the moon!’
He was joined by his colleagues, equally effusive in their appreciation as they stretched their legs after the long journey by wandering around the vast reception rooms. Nicola felt a rush of warmth towards them, grateful for the reminder that this was indeed a wonderful place rather than a flawed money pit.
‘Cup of tea would go down well,’ said Terry.
‘Two with sugar, two without, I seem to remember,’ said Nicola.
‘That’s it, love.’
Nicola left them to start unloading and went to put the kettle on, setting out a packet of Hobnobs (after all, they still needed a little taste of home!) alongside the chunky mugs of tea. When she returned with the tray, Dominic was directing operations, allocating their furniture to the relevant rooms. They had left most of it behind for the children and their tenants, but Dominic especially wanted to bring their bed – for sentimental reasons, he’d said. The few other pieces they had brought along for the sitting rooms appeared small and lost in their new, grand surroundings.
‘That bookcase used to fill an entire wall in our study,’ said Nicola, ‘but here it looks tiny. I’ve told Leo he’ll have carte blanche as interior designer. I’m sure he’ll want to do away with all our stuff.’
‘He’ll have a fit when Beth and Simon’s furniture arrives,’ said Dominic, smiling at the thought of it. ‘The entire contents of their house – all of it in qu
estionable taste, as we’ve often discussed.’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s only temporary and at least we’ll have somewhere to sit, even if it looks all wrong.’
‘Leo may be in charge of the shared rooms, but I know exactly what I want in our bedroom. I’m going to get round the local auctions to find a heavy French armoire like that one we saw at Lots Road, do you remember? Big and carved and beautiful, but there was no way of getting it up our stairs. This place is made for it.’
‘We should take one that’s already here – didn’t you notice there are at least three of them in the bedrooms? Make the most of what we have. There are plenty of other ways to spend our money.’
*
When the last boxes had been stacked in the hall, the removal men said their goodbyes.
‘That will keep you fit,’ said Terry, nodding at Dominic’s racing bike, which was leaning against the wall, still wrapped in its protective polythene. ‘Plenty of hills to negotiate round here.’
‘I’m going for the yellow jersey,’ said Dominic. ‘They’re big on cycling in France.’
‘Just need a string of onions round your neck and you’re sorted.’
‘Thank you again,’ said Nicola. ‘Are you heading straight back?’
‘No such luck,’ said Terry. ‘We’re going down to the Dordogne now. Reverse procedure. The clients have decided they’ve had enough sunshine and foie gras and are moving back to England. Maybe that’ll be you in a few years; we might just meet again!’
‘Don’t say that, we’re here to stay!’
They watched the lorry renegotiate the gates and disappear down the lane, then closed the door to continue their familiarisation. Like dogs, Nicola thought, sniffing our way around every corner. They paraded through the crystal ballroom, the salons, the panelled library, all the bedrooms, imagining their friends settling in right away and thinking forward to when everyone would be permanently installed in their separate apartments. Leo would love the fairy-tale turret, and the warren of attic rooms would be ideal for visiting family.
‘I already hate the idea of leaving this place,’ said Nicola as they went down again to the sitting room. ‘It would feel like failure to me, creeping back in defeat. Imagine how everyone would gloat.’