by Jamie Ivey
'Look at the ceiling,' Miriam directed.
Waves of deep cracks fanned out above our heads. Individual pieces of plaster, some the size of chocolate bars, were dangling by fine threads and metal braces had been inserted at the top of the walls to try to stop the infection spreading. Judging from the fine fingers of blistered wall weaving their way through the paintings, these joists were failing. I began to wonder whether we should be wearing hard hats.
'This house was built twenty years ago on clay soil, just like yours, and now look at it. Whatever you paid for your piece of land, it wasn't worth it. Your house is going to fall down, just like this place.'
'Ah, but we've invested thousands in foundations and an engineering report,' I said, relieved.
Miriam wouldn't be halted, though. 'Foundations? I've seen your foundations. They're exactly the same as the foundations of this house and they'll be crushed just like my foundations. Clay expands with the heat and contracts with the cold. It moves and absorbs water like no other soil type. Concrete foundations are mere matchsticks when compared with the power of the earth.'
She pulled an A4 file from a long row that occupied a shelf in the kitchen where the cookbooks should have been. Crumpled well-used plans were spread across the table and Tanya and I looked at drawings of foundations remarkably similar to ours.
'See the rest of those files,' Miriam waved a hand along the line, ' – correspondence between my lawyer and the insurance company. They're refusing to pay to stabilise the house. I haven't got the money and so if I lose it will probably fall down.'
If the demonstration was part of a well-rehearsed plan to stop us building, it was extremely effective. I felt immediately sorry for Miriam, who was facing the prospect of being kicked out of a home she'd built. The inside might be falling apart but the garden showed how much she loved the place. And her argument about our house was persuasive. Did we really want to go through the heartache of building in the knowledge that the house would probably fall down? If the worst happened, the insurance company that notionally guaranteed the build would, rather than pay up, doubtless bombard us with disclaimer letters. Then again, what choice did we have but to go ahead? We'd paid the money for the land, we'd signed the contract with the builders, there really was no way out, other than accepting financial ruin.
'Thank you for showing us all this,' I said. 'We really must get Elodie to bed, it's been a long morning.' I got to my feet, reeling with shock, like a boxer who has taken one too many punches.
Miriam nodded and pulled on a painter's smock.
'Are these all yours?' I steadied myself and motioned to the coloured canvasses which were twirling like a kaleidoscope before my eyes.
'I have an atelier in Avignon.'
Sitting on a shelf by the door I noticed a collapsed golden telescope. It was of the type used by the captains of great sailboats in distant centuries.
'Does that work?' I blurted out.
'Have a go.'
I pointed the telescope across the valley, scanning the trees until my eyes settled on the construction site. The head of a builder was poking out from one of the foundation holes; another builder was resting on a pile of bricks smoking a cigarette. The magnification was such that if and when we built the house, Miriam would be able to see us get undressed.
'Belonged to my father, and his father before that; quite collectable, I believe. Good luck,' said Miriam as we opened the door to leave. Despite the phone call to the mayor, it seemed she genuinely meant it. Somehow we were now comrades in arms fighting the onslaught of clay soil. A summer of extreme heat and a winter of extreme cold would, according to Miriam, concertina our house before we even had the chance to move in. With her naval telescope, she'd be the first to know.
Chapter 17
At the beginning of September I organised a Côtes du Rhône wine tasting. The purpose of the event was to thank customers of our wine business but there was also a personal motivation.
Just over a year before I'd struck the village of Gigondas and all its satellite appellations from my wine list, vowing never to drink another bottle from the area. Clients still wanted the wines but guilt as fresh as New Zealand Sauvignon prevented me from selling them.
The reason? Just a sniff of a heavy Côtes du Rhône brought the following unpleasant memory tumbling back:
I am bouncing along in the back of the car belting out the last few verses of 'In the Navy' by the Village People – think 'YMCA' but more camp – believing I am quite possibly the funniest man alive. Tanya is heavily pregnant and driving. A vague sense of foreboding penetrates the misty veil of inebriation.
Next to me is my father-in-law, Stuart, who yes, just happens to have served in the navy. He's singing along half-heartedly but really he is wondering just why his son-in-law has the presumption to be ridiculing his military service.
Of course, it wasn't my fault. The evening had started convivially with a couple of Kirs in a small cafe. As the alcohol flowed so did the bonhomie, the conversation gradually became more raucous and my father-in-law and I ordered a bottle of Gigondas to accompany our main course.
Neither of us looked at the alcohol percentage until it was too late; at a whopping great 15.5 per cent, it was nearly a fortified wine. The effect was not so much to loosen my tongue as to unravel it and wrap it around a nearby tree, handily forming a noose for me to hang myself with after my bawdy rendition.
I sing the lyrics with gusto as the car bumps along the Provençal roads, giving my father-in a-law a mock salute.
And so there you have it; the explanation for why I received a pair of socks last Christmas rather than the usual jumper and for why Gigondas was removed from my wine list. However, at Tanya's bequest, I'd decided it was time to mend bridges with my father-in-law, hence the Côtes du Rhône wine tasting, for which he had travelled over from England.
Before the tasting, though, I had a very important meeting to attend – a dog training class. Following directions I headed through the industrial hinterland outside the town of Orange, passed the municipal dump and a low-slung office block, over a rattling iron bridge, into the middle of a barren field. Three other cars and a battered van were already parked in a line. There was a row of orange bucket seats which appeared to have been wrenched from a sports stadium, and a gate leading to a fenced-off area filled with bollards, hoops, rings and ropes. I opened the car door. The acrid smell of boiling chemicals, emitted from a nearby factory, drifted in the air.
Snuffle leapt from his seat and excitedly greeted his fellow pupils: an enormous bull mastiff with shoulders as high as my waist, restrained not by a lead but by a chunky rope; a prim, trim Airedale that danced skittishly away; and a golden retriever, groomed to perfection but with a nasty set of fangs. As we waited more dogs arrived – fierce Alsatians and two enormous cross-breeds.
'How's Rocky?'
'He was at the bins again.'
'And Hercules?'
'Went missing for a day.'
The owners so far were universally women and so I could only assume they were talking about their dogs. Their dress was certainly diverse. Rocky the bull mastiff's owner looked like a rock band roadie. She sported greasy dark hair, leather trousers and a leather jacket with cut-off arms. Unsurprisingly, she dripped with sweat in the autumn sun. Her jewellery, if it could be called that, consisted of leather bands studded with silver spikes. Hercules, an Alsatian, belonged to a petite middle-aged lady. She wore jeans, a T-shirt and a jerkin with the silhouette of a large guard dog on the back.
The dogs detected Gaspar's arrival first. All the barking and bottom sniffing stopped and they marshalled themselves into an obedient line, sitting, waiting, tails wagging, watching the ten-time champion trainer approach across the field.
'Et bonjour tout le monde.' Gaspar wore army trousers, boots, a sweat-stained T-shirt and a red baseball cap. He made his way along the line of dogs, holding out his hand to each of them.
'Have you been a good boy?'
&nb
sp; 'I see you've had a haircut.'
He reserved a compliment for each of his canine clients. Finally reaching us, he parted the hair that covered Snuffle's eyes and fixed him with a penetrating stare. 'Ah, my new student. Allez, on va commencer.'
The dogs trailed in a line through the gate. Rocky was a little slow to react and his owner took the end of the rope and whacked it vigorously across his nose, shouting a loud, aggressive 'Allez!' Her whole face went puce as she yanked on the lead, trying to command her lethargic dog to heel. After a couple more vigorous swipes with the rope, Rocky ambled into the arena and joined the other dogs. The golden retriever bared its fangs and leapt at Rocky's throat, nearly dragging its diminutive owner from her feet. Snuffle looked on in horror.
'Au pied!' cried Gaspar and we began a procession around the field. Most of the dogs pranced obediently at their owners' heels. Copying the women, I held the lead in my right hand, letting it fall across my body and grasping it lightly with my left to control Snuffle.
'Good, Jamie,' praised Gaspar, 'training a dog without a lead is like driving a car without the key.'
'Tout le monde, demi-tour à droite.' The women pirouetted on the spot. As one they turned, exchanging the leads behind their backs and walking briskly off in the opposite direction. I clumsily turned a half circle with Snuffle and rejoined the rear of the procession. This was more like a dancing class than dog training.
A latecomer made his way across the field. It was another man, thank God; perhaps his demi-tour à droite would be as inept as mine. His dress suggested otherwise – suede loafers, white trousers and a polo shirt. He wore a chain around his neck, had thinning white hair, and but for the pug dog trailing in his wake, I'd have been convinced he'd taken a wrong turn on the way to the yacht club.
'Chiens, couchez!' shouted Gaspar and all the dogs obediently lay down, with their long tongues panting in the heat. 'Bougez-pas,' called Gaspar, and as one the women stepped away from their dogs, instructing them not to move. Rocky immediately disobeyed, taking a sudden interest in a dragonfly and gaining a sore nose for his trouble.
'That's what I used to say to my wife,' joked the newcomer.
I must have looked confused.
'Coucher pas bouger.' He gave a little lecherous laugh. 'I'd like to put her on a lead,' he added as one of the women paraded past with her dog.
The rest of the lesson drifted by in a flurry of misplaced double entendres. By the end of the hour I was pretending not to speak any French and the man had all but given up on me. Snuffle lay at my feet, exhausted. He'd managed to sit on command, but apart from that he'd expended all his energy on the nervous excitement generated by the presence of so many other dogs.
Gaspar came over to chat to Snuffle. 'Well done, little one. Next week, we'll work on walking to heel.'
The training session had lasted longer than expected, meaning I was late for the wine tasting. I'd booked a room in a vineyard with space for fifteen people. Each tasting station had a small silver sink cut into the desk and a pad and pencil to take tasting notes, as well as some dry crackers to clear the throat between wines.
The plan was for me to do a basic introduction to tasting and then encourage people to record their own reactions. I'd lined up ten different wines, sumptuous whites and mellow reds with the luscious depth I'd been missing so much over the preceding Rhône-less year. The alcohol in these well-made, well-balanced wines was, I believed, almost impossible to detect. The strongest wine on offer was 14.5 per cent and the weakest 12.5 per cent.
Entering the tasting room I expected to hear a pleasing hubbub of noise, excited chatter about the wines on offer, and anecdotes brought back from far-flung summer holidays. Instead, there was a still and dusty silence. Clean glasses winked under the spotlights. Trays of assorted antipasti testified to the absence of people. I glanced at the clock. It was already ten minutes after the appointed start time. Even in Provence this was a little worrying. The door opened and my father-in-law entered. He had wispy grey hair, a brow furrowed from years hunched over legal papers, and the rosy complexion of someone who was enjoying France just a little too much. His eyes registered the empty room.
'Might as well get going,' said Stuart kindly, 'the latecomers will just have to catch up.'
'I guess so.' I was in a daze. I'd run five such events in the preceding year and they'd proved increasingly popular. The clientele was usually an eclectic mix – educated locals keen to develop their palates, Parisian second homeowners looking for an easy way to keep their cellars stocked and groups of tourists, including, on one occasion, four octogenarian American women who drank so much they barely made it back to the tour bus.
The first few wines tasted bitter and confused. My palate was cold and my mind elsewhere. Gradually as the quality of the bottles improved I managed to blot out the strangeness of the situation. Five minutes into the tasting there was a knock on the door.
A bearded man and his diminutive wife entered. They both wore shorts and stripy T-shirts and although the clothes didn't quite match, the overall impression was of twins who'd been dressed in the same gear by their mother. The sun had burnt a tan line into the man's upper arms. The skin on one side of the line was pale and freckly, on the other side a raw red. The woman was plastered in zinc block and wore a baseball cap with a curtain of material draped from the rear to keep the sun from her neck.
'Do we have to pay?' At least they were English so I wouldn't have to repeat my spiel in a second language.
'No, no – it's free, come on in. How did you find out about us?'
'The tourist office.'
'Well, take a place. To recap, tasting is a personal experience. Don't be put off by the experts who claim to detect scents of mown summer grass or fresh wood chippings. Keep it simple. Say what you see and taste.'
'What's the bowl for?'
'Unwanted wine.' The man raised his eyebrow to his wife, as if to say 'hark at him and his posh ways'. The concept of tipping alcohol away was clearly alien to him.
In a show of support, Stuart upended his glass. The faintest of drops fell into the bowl.
'The next wine is a 2005 Châteaurenard, Boisrenard red; spicy, intensely purple, and explosive on the nose, the tannins just need some time in the cellar to soften a little. It's consistently been voted one of the top hundred wines in France.'
'Tastes like a packet of Worcester sauce flavour crisps,' said the bearded one.
'I agree,' said his wife, biting into a cracker, unconcerned by the crumbs collecting in her bra.
'Good,' I encouraged. 'That's the spicy notes. Can you taste the tannins in the back of the throat?'
'Kicks like a Paint-stripper.'
'I'm sorry?' I visualised the two of them lounging in front of the TV, sharing a tin of industrial cleansing fluid.
'A Paint-stripper – it's the happy hour special at the Prince of Wales,' clarified the man. 'The chilli-vodka peels the moisture from your mouth. Leaves your tongue like sandpaper.'
Stuart had tilted his glass and was busy studying the meniscus, examining the subtle variations in shade which were indicative of age. It was time to move onto the next wine.
'The 2003 Cuvée Florence from Domaine Les Goubert in Gigondas, a profound, complex and well-balanced wine matured for twenty-four months in oak – a dream with a Sunday roast, with the final glass being reserved for the fireside in the evening.'
'Reminds me a bit of Tizer.'
'You mean Dr Pepper.'
'That's what I said.'
'No, you said Tizer.'
In the circumstances, Stuart and I couldn't help but bond. After an hour of listening to more marital bickering and some of France's finest wines being likened to the pint glass cocktails at the Prince of Wales, we were relieved to clamber into the taxi home.
As we did so I heard some familiar notes.
'In the navy…' sang Stuart, who'd obviously been sipping more than he had been spitting.
I joined in, wrapping my arm around hi
s shoulder, pleased that there would be no more socks for Christmas and welcoming the chance to concentrate on something other than the memory of the embarrassingly empty room.
Chapter 18
Shortly after Snuffle started school, Elodie also began her education. Her crèche was located in a neighbouring village, sheltering beneath centuries-old plane trees. The narrow cobbled road was impassable for cars. There was a cafe on the corner where the locals sat sipping strong black coffee and smoking cigarettes on the terrace. The boulangerie was only paces away and the smell of baking bread drifted down the street. Feng shui experts couldn't have created a more calming location. And yet on the first morning, there were tears in Elodie's eyes as we shepherded her towards the door.