by Jamie Ivey
'Soil survey has arrived – five metres of clay,' Ange clucked in disapproval as I turned down an extra helping of tart. 'You'll have to send it to the engineers, but it's not going to be cheap.'
The sound of Elodie crying carried from the bedroom. The canicule had destroyed any hope of a routine. Our daughter wore only a nappy and still woke drenched in sweat. Sleep took place when she was too tired to cry.
'Her teeth are arriving, poor thing,' announced Tanya as she clasped Elodie to her chest. As was his habit, Ange rose and kissed Elodie on the forehead. 'Isn't she beautiful?'
We nodded, proud as ever, oblivious to the less than aesthetic blotchy red heat rash which covered her body. The rest of the men also rose from their seats and clustered around.
'Have you tried ginger?' asked Ange as he bit into the slice of tart I'd rejected. 'Smear a little on her gums, it's a natural anaesthetic.'
'Lavender rub on the chest before she sleeps,' added the plumber.
'Homeopathic suppositories worked for us,' said the electrician, who was several years younger than us.
Tanya was already searching in the fridge for some ginger, but I was determined to continue the progress update.
'Any firm prices yet?'
I looked around. Eyes fell to the floor.
'It's August.' Ange's raised eyebrows implied I should have known better than to ask.
'Clack.'
The noise came from the driveway. Whoever it was, they weren't worth sacrificing the bubble of cool air trapped in our house.
'Clack, clack.'
The sound was vaguely familiar, like metal on metal, reminding me of the camaraderie of the regulars who sipped pastis in the shade of plane trees and rattled their boules together as they waited for their turn. However, at this time of day the square in the village with its wooden sleepers and members' bar was a barren dust bowl. In any event, the sound had never carried before.
'Clack, clack, clack.'
After five years of living in Provence I'd learnt that from the beginning of June to early September you never ever opened the shutters between midday and midnight. In fact, a Provençal would prefer you to proposition his wife or poison his prize truffle dog rather than fling open his windows. The reward for this obstinate determination not to let the light of day into houses was that the cold air remained trapped and in the eyes of the locals there was no real contest between having a view and being able to sleep at night.
However, curiosity overcame me and I opened a window to take a look.
Strange sights are not that rare in Provence. Only the previous week a local butcher had chopped the heads off two pigs, placed sunglasses on their eyes, cigarettes in their mouths and hung signs around their necks saying 'Sarko and Carla'. The display proved an instant hit with Japanese tourists, who tended to huddle in excited groups before one of their number was propelled screaming hysterically towards the pigs for the obligatory photo call. Ever enterprising (but of course avowedly socialist) the butcher made space beside the pigs and started charging 2 euros a snap.
I am still not sure which was more alarming – the sight of one Japanese woman kissing a dead pig's head or the view that confronted me as I poked my head into the sunshine, so bright it momentarily seemed white. Briefly I considered phoning the pompiers. These jacks of all trade were responsible for dealing with everything from fires to hornets' nests. If I made the call, then ferrying deep-fried boules-playing tourists to hospital could be added to the list.
'Clack, clack.' The two young men continued their game, oblivious to my stunned gaze. Both of them dripped enough sweat to drown a swarm of flies. They wore Bermuda-style swimming trunk shorts with colourful polo tops tucked in behind their bottoms like horses' tails, leaving their bare chests exposed to the brutal sun. One of them had the dark skin of someone who tans easily, the other was cursed with freckles, and welts of sizzled skin covered his body, giving the appearance of an extreme case of measles.
'Come here,' I urged our lunch gathering.
Despite their obvious exhaustion the players remained blithely cheery, sharing a bottle of rosé between shots as they rested their hands on their knees and panted like athletes at the end of a marathon. Stranger still, they were lobbing their boules over the old pig shed at the bottom of our garden. Tiles could easily be snapped or windows broken but the potential for damage didn't seem to worry the two intruders; instead, they whooped with delight as their boules disappeared from view.
The two men finished their shots and walked around the back of the pig shed. There was a shout of delight and when they reappeared moments later the light-skinned one was kissing the cochonnet – the little wooden target ball at which the larger boules are aimed.
'You little beauty,' he exclaimed as he planted another smacker on the wood, before tossing it into the shadows adjacent to Manu's carefully cultivated lavender bushes. In a shower of purple confetti the first shot of the next game sliced the heads from one of the plants.
'Oh là là, le gibier d'été,' exclaimed Ange as if nothing else was to be expected. Gibier is French for game, anything that can be riddled with lead in the winter – boar, hare, partridge; in fact, anything that moves and isn't wearing a hunter's fluorescent jacket. In the summer months, the word is used to describe tourists. Fortunately for my visiting gibier d'été, Ange didn't have a gun.
'Are they still alive?' ventured the electrician.
'They're twitching,' added the painter helpfully.
'Boars convulse for minutes when shot,' said the plumber, who had strange emotionless eyes.
'They're covered in rosemary,' Tanya observed.
'What do you expect?' quipped Ange. 'It's like a rotisserie out there.'
I coughed loudly to get the players' attention.
'Bonjour,' the lighter skinned of the two men called back, dragging his sweaty mop of hair away from his steamed-up glasses, and holding his hand up in a signal of friendship. Looking like they did, doing what they were doing and with their appalling accents, the two could only be my fellow countrymen.
'Good afternoon.'
They grinned broadly and one replied: 'We're a little lost. We started a game and just kept going. We're renting a house over there somewhere.'
He pointed to the far side of a distant hill and smiled again, disarmingly, as if he appreciated the madness of what they were doing and was welcoming me into the comedy of their endeavour.
'You do know boules is usually played on a pitch?' I couldn't help but like them.
'And in the shade,' grunted Ange under his breath.
'By Frenchmen,' whispered the plumber.
'Yes, yes, but it's much more fun this way.' They were still grinning inanely.
'Can I offer you a lift back to your villa?' I said, dreaming of the air-conditioned interior of my car.
'Wouldn't want to put you out,' said one, with a crisp accent. Impeccable breeding had clearly taught him to refuse all offers of help. A surgeon trying to save his life would doubtless only be given the go-ahead 'if it wasn't too much trouble'.
'We'll manage,' lied the paler of the two as he collapsed in a heap, throwing a crop circle of sweat into the gravel.
I beckoned them into the house and poured a couple of chilled beers while they excitedly explained how they'd become hooked on a roaming version of boules.
The gathered ensemble of artisans regarded them with suspicion, as if to speak to them would be to humanise a species they were all too happy to regard as alien.
'It's a bit like golf – you never know what terrain you are going to come across. Olive groves, vines, hills, valleys; sometimes you need lob shots, sometimes you have to throw it flat, and there are even water hazards.'
'Water hazards?' I raised an eyebrow, determined to be supportive.
'Yeah, yeah – it turns out the boules don't break the tiles. We always dive in anyway, just to make sure they make a soft landing.'
'You play in the swimming pool?'
They nodd
ed vigorously. 'Yeah, it's really extreme.'
The four Brits laughed. Even Elodie reacted by banging her hands happily on the table and rocking backwards with a toothy cackle. Ange, who was a well-respected local boules player, pushed back his chair, took off his cap and excused himself. Taking his cue, the artisans did the same.
'Call me when you've heard from the engineers,' said Ange and shook his head. Perhaps he'd be motivated to write a letter to the French Boules Federation seeking to ban such bastardisations of his favourite game.
'What about your quote?' I asked, remembering the purpose of our meeting.
'Let's wait and see what the engineers say. I'm not going to take your last bonbon.' Ange pulled his cap over his head and braved the sun. The rest of the group filed away, and each and every one of them leapt on the excuse of the missing engineers' report. Quite what the concrete content of the foundations had to do with how many electrical sockets we wanted in the bathroom, or the finish on the doors, I'll never know, but since I wasn't in the trade, and was momentarily distracted by my compatriots, I just accepted the answer.
Our new English friends followed the artisans out the door. I watched as they restarted their game, zigzagging down the drive, stumbling painfully over stones wearing just their flip-flops, shredding lavender, trampling over wild thyme and finally disappearing into a drainage ditch. Their antics made me feel strangely patriotic. A verse of 'God Save the Queen' wouldn't have been out of place – only it was too hot to even consider singing.
Chapter 9
Over the summer we'd somewhat grudgingly accepted that we were going to have to get a truffle dog. The problem was that neither Tanya nor I were great dog lovers. My family had always had cats and during my childhood my parents were more likely to invite a Satanic emissary into their house than the neighbour's retriever, Jerry. Swearing in the house was only allowed when the target of my parents' wrath was this dog. The fact that Jerry stank and defecated on our lawn at every opportunity – seemingly storing up his daily efforts for maximum impact – provided them with an inexhaustible supply of ire and me with a vocabulary far too spicy for my age.
I remember an entire summer when Jerry's preferred hobby was chasing our cat up a tree, so high that only my father on a ladder could get her down. Dad worked late, and could think of better things to do at 2 a.m. than sway, 20 foot up in the air, trying to grasp a panicky stranded moggy. To his credit he always managed the rescue before retiring to bed, plotting a slow death for Jerry. Shipping him to China and turning him into a burger was the preferred solution.
Then there was my grandfather's Jack Russell. It's hard to imagine a more vicious, unfriendly little beast than Sally. My brothers and I nicknamed her The Rat for the way she scampered across the furniture gnawing at everything in her path. The main problem with Sally, though, was her hair. Every surface was thickly coated from her annual moult. As a result, the moment I entered the house it felt like I was wearing a boa constrictor for a scarf. Within minutes my airways had seized up. No matter how hard I inhaled only a whisper of oxygen made it to my lungs. By the time Granddad had made tea and demonstrated his latest ballroom dancing step, I was usually ready for a trip to casualty.
Dogs and my family just didn't mix. In fact, when my parents retired they'd specifically sought out a housing development that banned pooches. Some of their antagonism towards dogs must have rubbed off on me, because as an adult, while I tolerated other people's canine addiction, I could never for one moment imagine having a dog in my house.
Fortunately, I married someone with a similar mindset. The story of Tanya and dogs is much briefer. When she was nine her pet guinea pig, Pacer, was eaten by a stray. The sight of his torso slowly disappearing down the throat of a terrier has, as you can imagine, stayed with her for life.
However, the income from the truffle plantation was not something we could afford to turn down. To begin with we'd discussed our other options.
Fly truffling appealed for its simplicity. The idea was to approach the trees with the sun in our faces. This way we wouldn't cast a shadow. Using a stick we would then gently disturb the ground in front of us, watching for any of the flies that habitually gravitated to ground where truffles were buried. The practice, though, had all but died out. It was time-consuming and inaccurate and relied on the presence of the required species of flies. Both Tanya and I agreed that it was too much of a chance to take.
We spent a long time discussing getting a pig. Pigs were cute in a, well, piggy sort of way, plus they lived outside, required little attention, and were incredibly cheap to feed. Sows in particular are naturally attracted to truffles because the tuber emits a steroid similar to the one produced by boars in pre-mating rituals. Selecting a pig would be simple – find a farmer with a litter, hide a truffle in our hands and see which pig approached first.
Once a pig had tasted truffle it apparently developed a voracious appetite for the tuber and would hunt all day. Best of all, unlike a dog, if a pig didn't work out as a sniffer, we could always eat it. On the flip side, several truffle hunters had lost fingers, even entire hands, trying to swipe truffles away from the mouths of hungry sows. More often than not the lost digit ended up as an accompaniment to a truffle feast.
Following the anything-but-a-dog approach, we briefly considered a goat and even a bear – cubs were used in Russia to hunt truffles. However, the more we turned the problem over in our minds, the more we realised that we would have to get a dog. Surprisingly, once the decision was taken, we started to really like the idea. We talked about appealing thoughts such as our pet curled up by the fire, or running gaily across the fields with Elodie. When I was away from home it would be the perfect companion to Tanya and a fierce protector of the family.
All we needed was some advice on breeds and naturally we decided to consult Delphine. Her annual fête des vendanges, the celebration of the grape harvest, was one of the biggest events in the village calendar, and took place, as always, in the final week of September. The guests consisted of the twenty or so labourers who spent their days hand-picking and sorting the grapes and most of the residents of the village. Long tables stretched the length of the imposing terrace of the château and plates of canapés slalomed amidst bottles of wine and ordered legions of glasses. Fairy lights looped between the trees and they flickered into light as dusk fell, attracting the last of the season's mosquitoes.
A jazz band played on a small stage, and a ripe moon shone overhead. People wandered arm in arm exploring the extensive formal grounds – the rose garden, the herb garden, and the old water basin which had been converted unobtrusively into a swimming pool. Stirred by the lingering smells of the surrounding garrigue, memories of the summer hung in the air: the terrace of the village cafe filled with a multilingual, multicoloured pastiche of tourists, market stalls stacked high with ripe melons, peaches splitting from their skins, and the rippling thunder of an August hailstorm which had shredded entire fields of vines.
Under an iron treille (arbour) draped with vines, Vivienne, the owner of the village bar, appeared to be conducting a line-dancing lesson. Dressed in a white sparkling cowboy hat, matching boots and a frilly sequinned skirt, she was whooping and whirling away with a succession of unwilling partners. Sitting on a nearby wall, watching and laughing, were Ange and a coterie of local tradesmen. Tanya and I nodded hello, but this evening wasn't the time to discuss business.
Well, at least not for us. On the far side of the party, Fabian, the geothermal millionaire, responsible for introducing environmentally friendly heating systems to the area, saw us, waved and immediately began making his way over. He'd heard we'd bought a plot of land and had been pestering us ever since. It wasn't about the money, he insisted – although he had recently installed a helipad at his otherwise traditional Provençal mas – it was just that he was evangelical about saving the planet. Even a wake wouldn't stop him in his mission to convert all the houses in Provence to his system. To Fabian, a dead relative was to be cel
ebrated rather than mourned, because his old boiler could be sent, with him, to heaven.
To escape the familiar spiel, Tanya and I ducked through the open door of the cave, absent-mindedly shutting it behind us. A line of bare light bulbs hanging from cords illuminated large vats of wine and the metal gangways that zigzagged between them. The air was pleasantly cool but dominated by the acrid smell of the harvest.
'Open the door or you'll kill us all,' shouted a worker, busily pulling rotten grapes from a conveyor belt.
Fermenting wine emits carbon monoxide and for the health of the workers all cave doors in vineyards are kept open immediately after the harvest. Centuries ago, deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning were not uncommon – wine was aerated by men plunging in and out of the wine vats, and if they lost hold of the rope they were trapped in a gas cloud. I always thought it would have been an appropriate way for Bond to kill off a villain.
'Sorry,' we apologised, opening the door, and heading deeper into the safety of the cave.