by Tommy Barnes
Right, I thought, this baby business is all well and good, but I’d better get back to brewing some beer. No time to waste. I’m going to be one of those modern parents who just carries on as normal, except with a baby strapped on their back. But before I could, Albert began to cry.
Three months passed.
I’ll tell you how we ended up buying the house. When we were planning our escape from London I was searching for places to rent on the internet. We had a place to stay for March in Brittany and a place for June to September in the Auvergne, but we needed somewhere for April and May. The place in March was owned by a friend of Rose’s dad, so it was free, and the place in the Auvergne was pretty cheap. I found the advert for La Ruche, which was owned by a lady called Mishi, and it looked spectacular. It was more than we had planned to spend, but the other places were so cheap we thought we’d give it a go, and besides, we were flushed with redundancy money, and as everyone who’s been made redundant knows, redundancy money never runs out.
I knew we’d like Mishi from the moment she changed my name. All I had enquired about was whether the house was available for rent and if she’d consider a reduction, as we were struggling writers/artists, and she’d sent several sprawling emails back covering topics from art history to recipe suggestions. And then she changed my name from Tom to Tommy, and she was right – I was a Tommy. It suited me. When I was young I was always a Tommy, it was only when I got older and life became difficult and boring that gradually I became a Tom to more and more people until only my closest friends called me Tommy. Mishi had a talent for putting things in the right place. She agreed to let us have the house for the months of April and May for a cut-price rate. ‘Just do me a favour and mow the garden, sweetie,’ she said. She hadn’t mentioned the lawnmower was practically from a pre-combustion-engine era and the garden was actually a paddock.
The moment we walked through the rusted gates of La Ruche it was clear that one day we would buy it. Largely because Rose said, ‘One day we will buy this house.’ Mishi was in the kitchen waiting for us with a plate of ginger biscuits and the BBC World Service on the radio. She looked just like I’d imagined. There was something Narnia-esque about her. If someone had thawed out the White Witch and shown her the error of her ways, that would have been Mishi: regal, kindly, but every now and then with a flash in her eyes that said she wished she was still allowed to point at someone and turn them into ice. And you got the feeling that if she wanted to, she could. Not us, though. She seemed much taken with us.
‘Tommy and Rosie! That could be the title of a children’s programme. Come and have a biscuit.’ She glanced at the bottle of wine that I was about to give her. ‘Not for me, darling, I don’t drink. Save it for yourself, sweetie. Honestly. Save it for yourselves.’
She had decorated the house beautifully. As I say, Mishi’s great talent was that she just knew where things were meant to be. She walked us through the house, talking at a hundred miles an hour about every subject she could think of, pointing at walls and ceilings and doors and grand works of art on the wall that she had painted. She was a fantastic painter. The only rule was, there was to be no red wine in the bedrooms. But we could smoke dope up there if we wanted, she added, eying us carefully to see if we were the sort that smoked dope. The only thing she didn’t comment on was a headless mannequin dressed in a nineteenth-century French gown on the landing. She breezed past it as if there wasn’t a house in the world that didn’t have one.
‘You must come and meet us for coffee in the PMU in Richelieu. Maybe tomorrow morning? OK, bye, sweeties. Enjoy! Bye!’
Initially I wasn’t as taken with La Ruche as Rose. I mean, the house itself was out of this world, but it was more the area. I’d pictured myself living atop a rocky cliff in Brittany or in an orange grove in Provence, but here the landscape was, at first glance, unspectacular. It was gentle. Quiet. Quiet except for one of the neighbour’s dogs, which I think was a cross between a Rottweiler and an American wrestler. Also, to get anywhere you had to drive. I had imagined walking into the village to pick up my fourteen croissants for breakfast every morning. Finally, and most damning of all, as far as I could see, the house didn’t have a wine cellar.
But over those two months the sun shone and the countryside gradually revealed its beauty, little hills and ridges that gathered and released like an unmade bed, and we discovered breathtaking châteaux and magnificent towns like Chinon and Saumur and, indeed, Richelieu. Through Mishi we met David and Ali Kimber Bates and they introduced us to everyone. I mean everyone. We would sit with Ali outside the PMU café and she would shout at people as they walked past and demand they come and meet us. Nobody dared refuse. And by the time we left it was a wrench, because it felt like we fitted the place.
Three months later we were staying in a Spartan cottage in the Auvergne atop the gorge of the River Bouble, to this day my favourite river name (I like to imagine a baby Michael Bublé being washed up on its banks in a bed made of reeds and tuxedo, effortlessly crying the tune of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and thus melting the hearts of the local peasant women doing their washing, who at first wept and then threw giant peasant knickers). Our friend was visiting and we had gone for a day out at Volcania. Volcania is a volcano-themed fun park in the Auvergne. We’d been queuing for nearly an hour for the star attraction, a driverless bus tour round the car park, when Mishi rang.
‘Tommy, darling, listen. The thing is, my estate agent has found a buyer for La Ruche, but at eighty thousand euros less than I wanted. Now, sweetie, I have to sell the place, we’re down to our last pennies’ – (she always says that!) – ‘but if I have to sell at that price, I’d prefer to sell to you. I know how much you love the place and we really love you. Also, if I sell direct to you I won’t have to pay the extraordinary estate agent fees.’
‘Well, that’s kind of you to think of us, but I’m afraid it’s still rather out of our …’
‘Tell her we’ll buy it.’ Rose interjected. She was listening in.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Please, Tommy. Tell her we’ll buy it. We’ll be happy there. We’ll find a way to afford it.’ There was something in her voice, something her eyes, a wondrous look that said if you don’t get on board with this I will shove you into fast-moving traffic.
‘Mishi. We’ll take it!’
‘Marvellous sweeties both! I’ll email you the details and what you need to do. Wonderful to have you back.’
And that was it. It was so easy. We went back to the Loire the next week to sign paperwork. We had a meeting with Mishi about what furniture from the house she was willing to sell. She argued with herself for an hour over tea and biscuits while we sat in silence, before drawing up a list and writing a price next to it, then arguing herself down on the price by about 20 per cent.
‘Can we keep the four-poster bed?’ I said when she was done. I’d always thought that if I had a four-poster bed Bonnie Tyler would like me, should I ever meet her. We’d become friends. Meatloaf too, probably. People like that.
‘Of course you can, sweetie, because we can’t get it out now without knocking down a wall. We built the loft conversion after we put the bed in. It doesn’t fit through the door.’
That was all I needed to hear. Over the next few months Mishi emailed on a daily basis with changes to the list of furniture she was prepared to leave in the house, to the point where we had no idea whether there would be anything left when we moved in, but we knew we had the four-poster bed, and that was good enough for me, because in many ways I am a simpleton.
Rose sold her flat in London and added to that we used a sizeable chunk of our redundancy money. That gave us enough to buy the house outright. Even though it was more than we should have spent, the same house in London would have cost ten times what we paid. The only problem was it didn’t leave us with much money to start our new life. Still, as long as there weren’t any major life changes, we would be OK.
Nine months later, thanks in some part to the f
our-poster bed, Albert was born.
*
Generally speaking, hops do two things: on the one hand they release alpha and beta acids, which give the beer its bitter taste, and on the other hand they release various oils that give the beer its other flavours, which, depending on the hop variety, could be fruity flavours or herbal flavours, woody or mineral-like. There are hundreds of different oils in hops and we don’t yet know what half of them do. But the point is some hops, like the Nugget variety, are very high in alpha acids and are therefore used primarily at the start of the boil to give the bitterness. It doesn’t matter if they boil for a long time and the oils in them evaporate, as you aren’t really looking to extract much flavour from them anyway, just the bitterness – the acids. Other hops, like the Citra variety, are lower in the acids but have much more flavour oils – in the case of Citra, citrus-like flavours. A remarkable coincidence. So you wouldn’t normally put them in at the start of the boil, as at they aren’t as effective at bittering as some hops, and all the oils that give the delicious flavours that Citra is known for will be evaporated by the time you get to the end of the boil. Instead, you put hops like this towards the end of the boil, or even after the boil, when the temperature is dropping, so that you don’t lose too much of the oils.
I managed to do one final brew just before Albert was born. A smoked black IPA. In a moment of jubilance I threw in a kilogram of very bitter Nugget hops towards the end of the boil. I had this whole kilogram bag of Nugget hops and I just thought, I’m going to chuck this lot in. It will probably be all right. That was my thought process. This is the stage where you are supposed to use flavouring hops, not bittering hops. Also, normally I would use a hundred grams of a flavouring hop like Citra for twenty-five litres of beer. I used a kilo of Nugget hops. I managed to bottle it in a contrary state of caffeine-soaked exhaustion a couple of weeks after we had returned from the hospital, and two weeks after that it was ready to taste.
One of the best things about trying my beers out on Damien was that I learnt lots of new French vocabulary. On this occasion for instance, I had learnt that révoltant means revolting and herbicide means, well, you get the idea.
‘It is much too bitter, but there is something else. Something even worse. Something terrible,’ said Damien.
He was right. There was another flavour in there. Something not of this world. To this day I can’t quite describe it in a way that means anything, other to say that it was a sinister, turquoise flavour. Sinister turquoise? What the hell does that mean? I know! But that’s what it was. Sinister Turquoise. I had created something terrible. The sort of thing that, if the North Koreans got their hands on it, they could use to potentially destroy the world. Sinister Turquoise would be a good punk band name.
In total, I had made around eight or nine brews by now, many too uneventful to mention. But I was starting to realise that perhaps my beers weren’t as good as I had initially thought. When you make your first beer, you’re so overwhelmed by the success of making something that can genuinely get you pissed that you are blind to its faults. Gradually, as my beers progressed, I began to realise there were serious issues to be addressed. In the case of this smoked black IPA, it was simply a bad recipe. My fault. I was starting to experiment and I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing, but at least I could fix it next time. But with my normal lighter IPA beers I had eventually been forced to accept that they all had an astringent taste that remained no matter how I altered the recipe. And yet my dark beers, even this disaster, didn’t have it. Further reading was required. I knew that. The problem was, having a young baby meant I was so tired I could barely read the back of a shampoo bottle, let alone a chapter of a book.
I like to read the backs of shampoo bottles when I’m on the loo, you see. That’s why I mentioned it. I find it relaxing. It’s not a crime.
Our biggest error, as humans, is that we think we can control everything. We think that with science as our guide we can understand and master the world. What we fail to realise is that the world is fundamentally absurd, and no amount of knowledge can truly control it. Trying to tame nature is a fruitless exercise. This is what I used to believe until I met Monsieur Richard.
Monsieur Richard is the sort of man you can’t help but respect. He holds himself in a way that commands respect. His first name is Christian, but you call him his formal name, Monsieur Richard, despite his protestations. He is in his late sixties, he has a voice that has dispensed with any unnecessary affectations and is low and sandy. He has great bear paws for hands, an immaculately trimmed beard, which he gets done once a week at the local hairdresser’s, and he is a genuine, lovely man.
He doesn’t have to be. I suspect he could be a complete arsehole and have everything he wants, because when you are in his presence it’s like Godzilla is in the room. He could bully people to get what he wants. He could force his way to the front of every queue, but instead he is generous and kind. When anyone in the Richelais asks you where you live, you tell them you live opposite Monsieur Richard and instantly they know where you are. Everybody knows Monsieur Richard. He should have retired long ago, but he spends his time helping young people starting local businesses get off the ground.
He lives with his wife, Madame Richard, in a reasonably new house. It’s a peculiarity of the French that despite all the fantastic old houses that lie empty, they aspire to live in modern houses on the edge of town. That is the dream. Consequently, you come across ancient villages full of character that are left to crumble, while on the outskirts several streets of brand new, benign, ‘pavilion’ style houses that range from reasonably pretty to ugly as shite are thriving. Apparently, this is partly to do with mortgage regulations. It’s much harder to get a mortgage on old houses in France, especially if you are young.
The Richards’ house is different, though. It is not built in among streets and streets of other new houses. It stands alone against the backdrop of the forest on land his family have lived on for at least six generations. It is homely and well designed. It’s exactly how you should do it. This is typical Monsieur Richard. His favourite words are propre (proper, tidy or correct) and impec (shorthand for impeccable). These are the principles he lives by. He treats everything tangible in this manner – people, animals, wheelbarrows. There are no shortcuts.
By this point we knew the Richards to say hello to. We’d wave to each other over the road. Then, one day a month or two after Albert was born, they invited us over to their house for lunch.
When we arrived, Monsieur Richard gave us a tour of his garden. It was astonishing. Rows upon row of salads, courgettes, cornichons (which his wife, Marie, pickles and which make any cornichons you’ve had before taste like newspaper), peppers, spuds, tomatoes and every other vegetable alive were perfectly spaced, to the millimetre, along expertly turned soil with a professional watering system installed, which runs down each row. It was really something to behold. It was the Sistine Chapel of vegetable gardens.
‘How do you keep the bugs off the vegetables? Do you use sprays?’ said Rose.
‘Non. If the garden is done properly, well laid out and well maintained, tout est propre, it takes care of itself,’ said Monsieur Richard. It was then that I realised he had tamed nature.
The rest of his house was equally impressive. Perfectly cut lawns. Electric gates, doors and garage doors, all controlled by one remote controller. Inside was spotless. All the furniture belonged exactly in its allocated space. There was a coffee table that unfurled into a drinks cabinet as if it was designed by the man who makes James Bond’s equipment. Everything was quality. Nothing had been done on the cheap. Propre. Impec.
Marie had cooked a very traditional lunch. First, apéros. A sweet wine called Coteaux du Layon, which I absolutely love. It’s a Loire wine from the Anjou region further west of us. Then we started with a red cabbage and duck gizzard salad. Gizzards sound horrible, but the way Marie cooked them they were delicious. I think it’s just the name – gizzard. No one
wants to eat something called a gizzard. They should call them something more appealing, like stomach truffles. That needs work, but it’s undeniably a start. You simply can’t deny that. Then we had juicy slices of beef with green beans cooked with garlic. In England now it’s all about cooking vegetables for the minimum time possible, so that they still have their crunch. Big mistake in my book, because the less you cook a vegetable, the more it tastes like a vegetable. Marie cooks her beans properly so that they are soft and have taken on all the flavour of the garlic. I could have eaten mountains of them. Then we had a cheese course – local Sainte-Maure de Touraine AOC goats’ cheese, which is famed throughout France, blue cheese from the Auvergne and a Camembert. And for pudding a frangipane. Everything was exactly as it should be. Impec. It was all delicious.
The best bit about the Richards, though, and this is why I will always love them, is that although they had effectively tamed nature, they had mastered the art of living, they had completed the computer game of life, when they came to our house the next day and saw Burt digging holes in the lawn, bits of fencing and old dog beds strewn across the garden and the general chaos that envelops a house when you have a baby, they didn’t judge us. They may have pitied us a little but they didn’t judge us. Like Damien and Celia, they wanted to help us.
For the first few months after having a baby, coffee is your life drug. It replaces sleep. It replaces food, water. You live in a space between the conscious and the unconscious – a blur of midnight feeds and anxious conversations about vividly coloured poo. Vivid Poo would be a good name for a band. Your living room becomes a minefield of shrill musical toys that explode into double-speed nursery rhymes when you accidentally tread on them as you stagger around in your pants at 3 a.m. endlessly rocking the baby. You devote all your senses to monitoring the baby at all times. Everything else is impossible. When the baby doesn’t sleep, you don’t sleep. When the baby does sleep, you don’t sleep because every thirty seconds you can’t help but check they are breathing. The only way to cope is to make sure your body is made up of at least 50 per cent espresso. You’ve got to be careful not to overdo it, though – it can have side effects.