by Sarah Long
‘I must admit I opened the window to save going downstairs. Reminded me of a French exchange I did when I was thirteen. My copain Pierre used to piss out of the window every morning; his mum had a big argument with him about it, said he was turning the tree outside yellow.’
‘Gross.’
‘So this morning I thought, when in France . . .’
‘When in France . . . you might as well turn into a horrible old man who pisses out of his bedroom window. Supposing someone happened to be taking a stroll?’
‘Authentic medieval behaviour, true to the origins of our historic dream home.’
‘Our dream home with no functioning toilets.’
She climbed in next to him, placing her cup of coffee on the bedside table. ‘I thought it was very romantic, going to bed by candlelight. My phone has died now, too, so it’s just like the olden days. I’m going to stay here for a bit and read my book before thinking about the septic tank and power failure.’ She picked up her book and opened it with a sense of quiet satisfaction. ‘Hopefully someone else will have dealt with it all by the time we get up.’ The upside of shared ownership was that there was always the option to leave it to the others.
Dominic, too, had enjoyed the romance of guiding Nicola up the stairs by the light of the candle he had taken from the kitchen cupboard. He hadn’t shared with her the memory of the last time that had happened. He had been on the point of doing so – ‘Do you remember?’ he had said, then stopped himself. It wasn’t with Nicola, it was in a different house with a different person, and he was glad he had managed to hold himself in check. Just in the nick of time, again.
‘Cheeky lie-in, good idea,’ said Dominic, extending a hopeful hand in her direction beneath the sheets. ‘Every morning is Sunday morning when you’re a silver fox in early retirement. And no chance of the morality squad bursting in.’
One of his irritations about living with their adult children was the lack of privacy. You never knew when one of them would come charging in, with no thought about what they might be interrupting. Whereas they wouldn’t dream of opening Maddie’s or Gus’s door for fear of what they would find.
‘Maddie’s forgiven John, by the way,’ said Nicola. ‘She texted last night to say she’s thinking of moving in with him.’
‘That was quick! Never crossed her mind to move out when we were there putting food on the table.’
‘I’m pleased for her. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it, for them to grow up a bit?’
‘It’s rather sudden.’
‘Not really, they’ve been going out for two years. If you remember, we moved in together after three months and that turned out all right.’
‘More than all right.’
He snuggled up to her.
‘Nothing would take me back to the UK now. Even with all the hassles, I feel we’ve found our place. And it finally does feel like our place, now that Madame de Courcy seems to have given up on letting herself in at random moments – maybe we don’t need to change the locks after all.’
Nicola got out of bed and walked towards the window.
‘I’ll never get tired of this view.’
‘Talk me through it,’ said Dominic. ‘Imagine I’ve lost my sight, fast forward a couple of decades to when I’m old and losing my faculties.’
‘OK, so I can see the sun dancing on the surface of our extensive lake, the apple tree blossom falling onto the grass like confetti, the cream-coloured Charolais cows grazing with their calves, the dovecot rising up to remind us of our aristocratic heritage, the chapel calling us to prayer . . . Did I tell you Simon wanted to take it over as his writing retreat?’
‘The master of displacement activity.’
‘And there’s Dougie walking across the field, carrying a spade. We can guess what he’s been up to . . . And there is our neighbourly farmer who’s just pitched up below our bedroom window – good job he wasn’t there in your line of fire ten minutes ago. I’d better go down and see what he wants.’
She pulled on her jeans under Dominic’s regretful gaze and went out onto the landing, which still carried the lingering smell of disinfectant, at odds with the grandeur of the staircase with its chandelier. She had the sudden impression of living in an institution. Madame de Courcy had told them the château once served as a rehabilitation centre for wounded soldiers; she could imagine herself as a sainted nurse administering to the lines of men on camp beds who gratefully kissed her shadow as she passed.
There was no sign of life. It was clear that everyone was taking the same approach to the plumbing and electric problems and remaining resolutely in their bedrooms. She slipped into her clogs and went out into the fresh morning air, skirting the wing of the château to the terrace where Jean-Louis was waiting in his trademark blue overalls, cigarette clamped between his lips. In a previous age, when smoking was desirable, he would have made a good subject for a tobacco advertisement, a farmer version of Marlboro man.
‘Bonjour Nicolette,’ he said. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I was just speaking to your friend who told me about your little problem with the fosse septique.’
‘It must have been Dougie you spoke to, I think he’s the only one up. The rest of us are all trying to avoid it!’
‘It can be easily fixed. I want to give you the number of my plumber, he is an honourable man and he will give you a friendly price when you say you know me.’
He took his phone from his overall pocket, a strangely modern accessory to his timeless image of a noble peasant.
‘Here it is, do you want to note it down?’
‘That’s kind,’ said Nicola, ‘but I haven’t got my phone on me, and anyway, it’s out of battery. Did Dougie tell you we also had no electricity? Would you mind coming inside so I can write the number down – old school pen and paper!’
He followed her round to the front door and carefully removed his boots.
‘I see your scaffolding is going up. It will be a great relief for you to have a new roof.’
‘It certainly will,’ said Nicola. ‘Would you like a coffee? If you’ve got time, that is.’
‘Thank you, that would be most agreeable.’
‘It’s my first time in this room,’ said Jean-Louis, looking up at the ornate mouldings on the ceiling as they walked together through the grand salon. ‘It is very magnificent.’
‘Really? I thought you’d been grazing the land here forever?’
‘That is true, but I have never stepped beyond the front door or the kitchen. Madame de Courcy is very correcte.’
‘And we are very incorrect. I’ll show you around if you like. We have thirty-two rooms, all of them fabulous.’
‘Yes, I would like that very much. Now, you say you have a problem with your electrics? I can help you with that.’
When they reached the kitchen, he went through to the arrière-cuisine and turned his attention to the fuse box.
‘You seem to know your way around,’ said Nicola, watching him inspect the unit with an expert eye.
‘Madame de Courcy would often call me in when she had a power failure, usually after a storm.’
He fiddled with something and the lights miraculously came back on.
‘My hero!’ said Nicola, and noticed Jean-Louis blushing with the pleased look that men have when they manage to fix something.
‘I am sure Madame de Courcy has told you the installation is non conforme. You will have to completely rewire the château.’
‘Let’s not think about that now,’ said Nicola. ‘We’ll get the roof done first, then rob a bank to pay an electrician.’
He looked alarmed, then relaxed into a smile.
‘Of course, your famous English humour! Monty Python, j’adore!’
‘Let’s have a coffee to celebrate.’
She was aware of him watching her as she screwed together the elements of the coffee maker and placed it on the stove.
‘Bialetti,’ he said. ‘I had an Italian girlfri
end who used one. She had them in all sizes, lined up like Russian dolls, just like yours.’
‘I love them,’ said Nicola. ‘We also have cafetières but I prefer these. They remind me of being on holiday; you always find them in Italian villas. What happened to your Italian girlfriend?’
‘She went back to Palermo, said she could not tolerate the fog.’
‘The fog!’
‘You may not have seen it yet but it is a feature of our climate here in Normandy, especially in autumn; a beautiful grey mist that falls over the land like a cloak.’
Nicola liked the sound of the words as he said them: brume, brouillard, all delivered with that French ‘r’ that the English could never quite manage to pronounce.
‘A bit of fog wouldn’t put me off. What brought her to Normandy? Sorry, I’m being nosy, it’s none of my business.’
‘She came over for her studies and chose this region for the architecture, because she loved the Norman Byzantine buildings of Sicily and wanted to see what the Normans built in their homeland. But she was disappointed by our castles, she said she missed the Arab influence.’
‘Ah. It sounds like you maybe weren’t very compatible.’
She tried to imagine the connection between this man of the soil and a fog-hating Sicilian lover of Byzantine buildings.
‘So now I live alone,’ he said sadly. ‘It is not evident to find somebody in my work; I am solitary much of my time.’
‘I’m sure you’ll meet somebody,’ said Nicola. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’
‘I don’t just want somebody. I am very choosy.’
He looked at her appreciatively, as though she might very well be someone he would choose.
Nicola suddenly felt self-conscious and moved away to check the coffee on the stove.
‘As you should be,’ she said, with her back to him.
‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Now that I have told you my story. What brings you to our beautiful land of fog and cider and camembert?’
She picked up the coffee pot and unscrewed the bottom portion, using a tea towel to protect her hand from the heat, then brought it to the table.
‘A fresh start for us all,’ she said, pouring the coffee into two bowls from the set that Madame de Courcy had left behind. ‘We wanted to live together – somewhere big enough so we could all have our own space and at the same time enjoy each other’s company, like a non-stop house party, if you like. And when we found this château, we knew it was the place for us.’
‘You are brave. For me, I could not live in a house with so many people.’
‘I love it, it’s like an extended family, without the feelings of family obligation. We have some disagreements, of course, like in any family! But it was a good decision for us and we have no regrets – in spite of the complications. Like having no toilet!’
‘My plumber will deal with that. And do you not have any children?’
‘Yes, a girl and a boy. They’re still in the UK. It gives them proper independence, being free of their parents.’
‘Are they in boarding school? En pension?’
That always made her laugh, the French for boarding school, making children sound like little old retirees.
‘Oh God, no, they’re in their twenties now! We are the ones en pension – in the other sense of the word.’
‘I cannot believe you have children in their twenties! You don’t look old enough! And certainly not old enough to be en retraite.’
She couldn’t believe it herself sometimes; in her head she still felt about thirty-five.
‘Thank you for the compliment, but I should point out I took early retirement. I was a doctor.’
‘Un médecin!’
She felt his admiration move up a notch. It didn’t matter where you were, who you were with, everybody was impressed when you told them you were a doctor. Quite different in Flaubert’s day – Fizz had inspired her to read it again – when Madame Bovary’s poor chump of a doctor husband was perceived as a plodding nobody.
‘Yes, so you know where to come in a medical emergency. Although I’m really looking forward to doing something different. I want to get my vegetable garden going – there’s less to go wrong with a carrot than a person, and it’s ultimately more rewarding.’
‘True, it is the same with my cattle. It is always a small pain for me when I take them to the market, to know I have raised them just to send them to . . .’
He demonstrated a knife across his throat.
‘But with my fruit and vegetables, there is no killing. It is peaceful.’
‘Yes, it’s very hippie. Soixante-huitard.’
‘You know you sound exactly like Jane Birkin. Especially when you say that word. You know her song, “Soixante-neuf, année erotique”?’
‘Hello, hello, what’s going on here? All this dirty talk of Jane Birkin and her erotic year!’
Simon strode into the kitchen and nodded at Jean-Louis. Nicola scowled at him, annoyed that he had interrupted their conversation with his obnoxious remark.
‘Any of that coffee going? Getting my courage up to go out there and dig my own cesspit.’
He illustrated his remark for Jean-Louis’s benefit by putting his foot on an imaginary shovel.
‘Yes, I heard about your petit problème, which is why I proposed to Nicolette that she call my plumber. Here.’
He passed his phone to Nicola, who jotted down the number.
‘Monsieur Robinet!’ she said delightedly. ‘Mr Tap, the plumber – talk about nominative determinism.’
Jean-Louis said his goodbyes, shaking them both by the hand and leaving them together in the kitchen.
‘Beth was right, he’s certainly got the hots for you!’ said Simon, with a probing smile.
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Nicola, cross with herself for blushing. ‘He came in to pass on his plumber’s number, that’s all. I’ll ring him right away. At least one of us is doing something about our massive stinky problem.’
*
Monsieur Robinet was as good as his name suggested, turning up in his van right away and taking care of the blockage.
‘It is a problem of feminine hygiene products,’ he explained to Nicola as he climbed back into his van. ‘You must never place in your cuvette anything that is not lavatory paper, which assures you on the packaging that it is fit for the fosse septique.’
He waggled his forefinger at her in that condescending way that certain men seem to have been born with, particularly in France, she’d noticed. She forgave him, though – he wasn’t to know that she was well past the age of feminine hygiene products, as were all the ladies of the house apart from Fizz. It was one of the few perks of their advancing years.
‘Good news, everyone,’ she announced to the reading party who were assembled in the library, buried in their books to insulate themselves from the unwelcome upset in the sanitation.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Beth, after hearing Nicola’s explanation. ‘Ah, bonjour, Madame de Courcy!’
Nicola turned round to find the old lady standing behind her.
‘I just saw Jean-Louis on his way out,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘He told me about your difficulties, and I wanted to make sure everything is now functioning for you?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Nicola replied, trying not to sound too impatient. ‘It all seems OK for the time being.’
‘But soon you must replace the septic tank – you know it is non conforme, and so are the electrics! You will be mise en demeure, blacklisted by the authorities, if you do not address these issues without delay!’
For God’s sake, thought Nicola.
‘Yes, Madame de Courcy,’ she said, ‘we are well aware that we are non-conformist. It’s just a shame that we didn’t find out before we signed the sales agreement!’
Madame de Courcy gave a charming little smile.
‘But your notaire will have been informed! I think it is the case that none are so blind as those who will n
ot see, and you wanted only to see the beauty of the château, and none of his faults!’
‘I’ll show you out,’ said Nicola, extending her arm to invite the uninvited guest to go before her.
‘Ah, while I am here, I hope you do not mind if I take that clock from the wall?’
She walked behind the chair where Mary was sitting and unhooked the timepiece.
‘I thought I would have no place for it in my new home but now I find I do. Also, I am sending over somebody to collect the beehives from the barn. He has the key, you need not concern yourselves.’
The cheek of the woman. Nicola had had enough!
‘Actually, we do need to concern ourselves,’ she said. ‘Those beehives were included in the sale, they belong to us now, and so does that clock. And while we’re about it, could I ask you to give us back your key to the château? You are very welcome to visit us at any time. All we ask is that you knock at the door, rather than just let yourself in.’
Madame de Courcy looked at her with a new respect, then replaced the clock on the wall and obediently handed over the key. The little English blonde was not quite the pushover she first thought.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I can’t remember the last time I had such an early start,’ said Simon, closing his eyes and pushing back the driver’s seat into a reclined position. ‘The last time I left home before sunrise was back in my wage-slave days, en route to some meaningless meeting. Thank God those days are over; it feels completely unnatural.’
He and Beth were sharing a thermos of coffee at the ferry terminal at Le Havre, waiting for Eva to arrive off the night ferry. The weather had turned and the sky was a glowering grey with dull, relentless rain, which suited the austere architecture of the port, with its industrial refineries and severe 1950s apartment blocks.
‘I rather like the concrete chic,’ said Beth. ‘I’d love to see inside one of the apartments. You know this was declared a World Heritage Site in 2005?’
‘It’s a bit hipster for me,’ said Simon. ‘Give me old stones any day.’
‘We could leave the car and wait in the café,’ Beth suggested.
‘Doesn’t look very appealing. I’d rather stay here and listen to the Today programme.’