Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog

by Jamie Ivey

  Delphine's vineyard was biodynamic, with all important work taking place according to the cycle of the moon; hence the frantic activity this evening. Nearby, a destalking machine churned grapes out ready for the press. Men heaved hoses running with grape juice between the vats, marking the varieties on little blackboards. And through all this noise and activity Delphine materialised, sweeping towards us in a flowing white gown, magically untouched by grape juice. Trailing behind her, as always, was Fifi.

  'Darlings, you found me! Such a shame to miss the party, but as you can see I have my hands full.'

  'How many more days?'

  'Two, maybe three – just the sweet wine to go.'

  I bent down to caress Fifi. 'Did you know we're getting a dog?'

  Momentarily, Delphine appeared horrified. It was as if we were a couple of celebrities poaching an African child from his or her loving parents. Then the look was replaced by a benign smile.

  'Why don't you come and see me tomorrow?' Delphine swept imperiously away, followed by a trail of workers. 'Let's put the rest of the Cabernet in there.' She gestured at a large vat and was gone.

  Back outside there was thankfully no sign of geothermal Fabian. Instead, we chatted to a lovely Parisian couple who had a second home in the region and a penchant for our Pouilly Fumé, a young vigneron who invited us, presumably for corporate reasons, onto his yacht, and an expat Englishman, former gynaecologist to the royals, who'd given Tanya occasional advice during her pregnancy and now wanted to hear all the details of the birth. At the end of the evening we danced to jazz under the stars and returned home over an hour late for the babysitter.

  The following day, as requested, we dropped over to Delphine's vineyard. It was just before lunch but the terrace was already immaculate. The long tables had vanished and every last cork had been collected from the floor. We knocked on the heavy door but there was no answer; instead, on the doorstep, we discovered a DVD entitled Wolf in the House.

  Watching it before bed that evening stopped me from sleeping. The advice of the presenter, a former Foreign Legion dog-training specialist, was as follows: if you have children do not even consider getting a dog; buying a dog is like inviting a wolf into your house; at some stage the dog-come-wolf will get hungry and eat your children; if you are lucky it will just be a minor appendage, but some of the bigger breeds can sever a toddler's head.

  I am exaggerating, but the basic scaremongering tone was the same and for a while Tanya and I were put off the idea, oscillating back to the pig. Common sense eventually prevailed. Plenty of people with children had dogs. Granted, having a baby and a puppy was not going to be ideal but given time, surely the two could learn to live happily with each other? We'd raised Elodie for nine months, learnt how to change her nappies, read her moods and adapted our lives to hers. How hard could it be to manage a dog?

  Delphine's unexplained absence did, though, leave us with an immediate problem. We had no expert with whom to discuss breeds.

  In the end Eric Serep, our estate agent, recommended a former client, Pascal, who might be able to help.

  We arranged to meet Pascal in a walkers' and climbers' hideout near Buoux. The lodge was hidden at the bottom of vertiginous cliffs and accessed via a chassis-wrecking dirt track. The swimming pool fed from a mountain stream doubled as a watering point for wild animals and the surrounding hills were so full of boar, hare and game birds that the owner never needed to visit the boucherie. Instead, first thing every Sunday morning he simply trained his gun on the basin and collected enough food for his restaurant for a week. The surrounding hills that had once sheltered Protestants fleeing Catholics and Jews running from the Nazis now embraced recluses who wanted to spend their lives communing with nature.

  Pascal, the man Eric had described as the best truffle hunter in the valley, was already nearly an hour late, but we had little choice but to sit and wait. Still, it was a pleasant place to idle away time. An early September storm had revived a lush field of grass and we sat letting the sun warm our faces as Elodie crawled in a circle around us. The Aigue Brun river bubbled away nearby and a couple of birds rode thermals until they were enveloped by the endless blue sky. Occasionally the smell of a slow-cooked stew emanating from the kitchen of the auberge reached us, and I swallowed involuntarily with misguided anticipation. We were here for a meeting, not to eat. A couple of ramblers waved from the top of the Fort de Buoux, which guards the entrance to the valley. Another day we would have to return and make the ascent. I lifted Elodie onto her feet and supported her as she made hesitant stumbling steps.

  'She'll be walking soon.'

  I turned to find a bearded man sitting on the grass beside us. His relaxed posture was that of a person who'd been lounging around for hours but neither Tanya or I had heard him approach. His feet were crossed and the soles of his weather-beaten trainers faced towards us. Their uneven bottoms had been repaired with what looked like the remains of old car tyres. The rest of his clothes were in a slightly better state: combat trousers with green patches across the knees and a sun bleached T-shirt inexplicably bearing the logo 'Aqua Land'.

  'Pascal?' I asked.

  The stranger nodded in agreement. We smiled and shook hands a little awkwardly. Pascal's eyes drifted off to the horizon, and momentarily we sat in silence.

  'We've come to find out about truffle dogs,' volunteered Tanya.

  'So Eric explained,' Pascal shrugged. 'Understand that it is not the dog that finds the truffles, it's the man.'

  What could we say? We'd travelled an hour into the hills to find out about dogs only to be told we didn't need one.

  Pascal stared at the horizon again. A climber halfway up a distant cliff face shouted a command that echoed down the valley. There was a clatter of pans from the kitchen and the auberge's cat meowed with hunger. I signalled to Tanya that we should go. Elodie would be getting hungry and the sky was still fascinating Pascal.

  'Anyone can smell a developing truffle,' Pascal finally offered. 'Once you have the scent, you must watch the ground, observe the small daily differences, chart the path of the cracks, note where the vegetation dies, leave a stone as a marker, smell the underside to see if you are right. How can you begin to teach a dog to find truffles if you can't find them yourselves? Patience is the key, Jamie. Are you a patient man?'

  I nodded in agreement, only too aware that the older I got, the more impatient I became. Sudoku puzzles frustrated me after just moments and the first clue of a cryptic crossword was enough to have me reaching for the TV remote. Adding to my problems, a childhood accident had left me with only one functioning nostril. If anyone needed a dog to find truffles it was me, and yet Pascal insisted canine help was unnecessary.

  His spiritual view was that 'the man doesn't find the truffle, the truffle finds the man', that there was some sort of hidden force that would guide us to the black diamonds. However, rather like characters on a quest, he believed we had to be pure of heart to stand any chance of success. 'Finding truffles is about the spirit of la chasse. People who just want money never succeed.' Our teacher nodded sagely, pressing his palms together and rocking backwards and forwards as if entering a trance.

  'Bravo Elodie!' Pascal clapped his hands as our daughter's attempt to walk once more failed spectacularly and she tumbled towards him.

  'How did you know her name?'

  'I overheard you speaking as I approached.' I was beginning to think the man had superhero powers: enhanced hearing, heightened sense of smell, the ability to appear out of nowhere – had he, like Obelix, fallen in a pot of magic potion when he was younger?

  'Now, let's talk about dogs,' Pascal continued. 'First you have to decide who's going to be head of the pack. If it's you, Jamie, you must get a bitch; if it's you, Tanya, get a boy. That way the dog will obey better.'

  'And the breed of chiot?' Tanya asked.

  Pascal laughed, which immediately relaxed him and robbed him of his distant intensity. He gathered himself but then started laughing a
gain. At the time I couldn't understand what was funny, but later we learnt that by not dropping the 't' at the end of the French word for puppy, Tanya had in fact enquired what breed of toilet she should be getting.

  Once Pascal had regained his composure, he continued, 'Breed? You don't want a breed. What you need is a one hundred per cent mutt. The more different dogs in him or her, the better. Don't ask me why, but homeless bastards make the best truffle dogs. Perhaps it's the need to please.'

  Confessing a weakness is never easy; confessing a weakness to a man who has only just recovered from a convulsive giggling fit is doubly hard. I could hear the question in my head before I asked it, and looking at myself through Pascal's eyes I saw a town dweller who didn't deserve to be the owner of a truffle plantation. Still, I'd gone to the trouble of looking up the correct vocabulary in the dictionary and so I pushed ahead.

  'We need to get a hypoallergenic dog; you know, one that doesn't drop its hairs. I get asthma you see,' I prattled on, realising just how pathetic I sounded.

  Over the years I'd observed that the Provençaux were not the world's greatest dog lovers. Owners tended to set their pets loose in the garden, but, of course, instead of sitting serenely under a tree munching a bone and looking at the view, the dogs headed off to explore the countryside, chase cars, scavenge in bins and bonk on street corners. Roadkill carcasses piled up, but nobody really believed that neutering was worth the expense and so the puppies kept on coming. The answer I expected was therefore an obvious one: keep the dog outside, and if it runs off, get another one.

  Pascal, though, surprised me. 'And of course you have Elodie to consider. A pure breed is more predictable, a poodle is probably best.'

  I winced. Visions of overdressed, over-made-up French women, the latest designer bag on one arm and a poodle trotting daintily from the other, came to mind. Having a poodle would be just so emasculating. Part of me thought that Pascal was enjoying a personal joke.

  'They're very intelligent, excellent noses, obedient, good with kids – you could do a lot worse. You could even get a big black one, much better for men,' he said, showing an uncanny ability to anticipate my objection.

  'Training is simple. The younger you start, the better. Get him used to the smell of a truffle. Put a slice in an old sock and let him sleep with it. Hide some more around the house, under the legs of furniture, under beds – wherever he has to work a little to find the truffle. Then make it a little harder – slightly higher up, but at a level he can reach. Make it fun. Once he's really enjoying it, go outside, hide the truffle under a stone, then some earth, then some more earth. He'll be ready for the real thing in a month or so; take him for a walk in the woods, and he'll be off following his nose. Be careful, though – after dark only. Having a dog with you in these parts makes you a target. Someone once shot at me with an Uzi, bullets rattling the trees, all because they thought I was after their truffles.'

  Now Pascal was on to his subject he really seemed to be enjoying himself. 'That's when I started going hunting with the chief of police. The landowners thought he was out on patrol, protecting their land, and letters of praise for his diligence even arrived at the mairie, when in fact he was out with me, acting as a bodyguard while I dug up the truffles. Night after night, village after village, we performed the same scam. Ah, that was a great year. Not that you'll have any problems; you've got your own trees. Just watch out for police cars in the middle of the night.'

  'The police are poachers?' exclaimed Tanya.

  Pascal looked away into the distance, aware, perhaps, that he'd said too much. He shook his head, rose, brushed himself down, said the briefest of farewells and headed off towards the trees. I took my eyes off him for a second, glancing at Tanya, and when I looked back he was gone. Trotting along the line of trees, though, was a white wolf-like dog.

  'You don't think?' I joked with Tanya.

  'What?'

  'The sense of smell, heightened hearing, arriving silently…'

  'Only if dogs have a sense of humour – you with a poodle!' Tanya smiled.

  I think she was secretly content with our choice of breed. On the other hand, my only consolation would be the phone call to my parents to tell them that we had a dog.

  Chapter 10

  The more I thought about it, the more I disliked the idea of getting a poodle. A poodle was more of a fashion statement than a dog and I just wasn't sure how well one would complement my Primark T-shirts. Tanya didn't help the matter by showing me pictures of coiffed pooches with pink ribbons in their hair, wearing pearl-encrusted tiaras and coats studded with diamonds. Only oligarchs' wives, Parisian princesses and Hollywood honeys had poodles.

  I had a recurring nightmare about the village bar. As I entered the Bar du Centre all heads swivelled towards me and jaws dropped cartoon style to the floor at the sight of my prancing poodle. Pulling up my seat I nodded to the barman and opened my copy of La Provence. Then when I reached for my drink I discovered that instead of my regular beer, I'd been served a Babycham in a Martini glass with an iced cocktail cherry. 'Anything for the dog?' the barman asked and all the other customers burst out laughing. Above all the noise I could hear one particularly unpleasant cackle – it was Serge, the man with the fixed eyes, whose bad mood always seemed to form a shadow in the corner. In my dreams Serge's area of the bar was so dark that all I could see were his mirthless eyes boring into my skull. At this point I always woke up in a cold sweat.

  Internet searches revealed any number of poodles waiting for a new home. There were two breeders within a thirty-minute drive with recent litters and yet I prevaricated. We weren't just choosing a dog, we were choosing a new member of our family. Pascal had stressed how successful truffle hunters were at one with their dogs, thinking together, moving together, existing, if only on the hunt, in a state of synchronicity. How could I ever achieve this with a poodle?

  An alternative briefly presented itself in the form of the labradoodle, a cross-breed from Australia first bred in the 1980s, which promised the temperament and size of a Labrador with the hypoallergenic non-fur-dropping characteristics of the poodle. I was sold and immediately checked the Internet for local breeders. There were none. I changed the search to the south of France, only to get the same answer. Finally, I checked the whole of France and discovered the website of one breeder near Paris. The next litter wasn't due for six months and there was already a waiting list for the puppies. Even in England there were no labradoodle puppies immediately available. Short of flying one in from Australia, the breed simply wasn't an option.

  Meanwhile, time passed and it became increasingly likely that my poodle obstinacy was going to cost us the first season of truffle hunting. Fields of vines turned a ripe robust gold, the streets emptied of tourists, pumpkins replaced melons in the fields, and falling leaves lay on the surface of the local étang (pond) like pieces of an unfinished jigsaw. Progress on the build was non-existent but finding our first truffles was within our control – if, that is, I was prepared to sacrifice my manhood and get a poodle.

  I was one click away from ordering a whole new poodle-matching wardrobe when I came across a breed called petit chien lion. The dogs grew to just below knee height and appeared to be bundles of fur, not the tight curl of a poodle, but rather long and shaggy, like a fireside rug in a bad porn movie. Descriptions of the breed were positive: the dogs were loyal, excellent with children, fierce defenders of their owners and – most importantly – hypoallergenic. When displayed at shows they had their hind legs shaved, which made them look ridiculous, but otherwise for a small dog they carried an air of rough toughness which appealed to me.

  A further click pulled up a photo of a twelve-week-old pup being offered for sale by a breeder in Cassis. His kennel name was Flairer. We'd never heard the word before and looked it up in the dictionary – 'to hunt with one's nose; to snuffle', read the definition. 'Snuffle the truffles,' I said under my breath. It had to be fate.

  In the photo, Snuffle's eyes were in
visible, even his legs were invisible; in fact, all that could be discerned was a black blob with a flash of white across the chest. It reminded me of the type of painting a three year old would bring back from nursery. I called Tanya over.

  'What do you think?'

  She laughed. 'What are we buying, a rug?'

  'Shall I give the breeder a call?'

  'Why not.'

  Moments later I was on the phone to Veronique, hearing all about Snuffle. Her description made him sound more virtuous than Mother Theresa; never had she had a dog like him; he was calm, wise, caring, attentive, clever and gentle. The adjectives just went on and on and the praise was limitless. Finding truffles was child's play for Snuffle; he could sniff out a black diamond at over one hundred metres. Encase it in kryptonite and he would still find it.

  When I had the temerity to enquire whether Snuffle was house-trained, Veronique's indignant tone implied that here was a puppy so domesticated that he would cook us a three-course meal every night, uncork the wine, make the beds, do the hoovering, sweep the terrace, keep Elodie amused, make a fortune shorting the stock markets and enable us all to retire in a year. A price a little shy of 600 euros was not much to ask for such a dog.