by Jamie Ivey
Over the last few months she'd grown quickly and her trousers rode high above her ankles. Her hair, which until recently had remained stubbornly short, flowed in golden locks down to her shoulders, curling at the end into little ringlets. As we reached the entrance her little hand tightened around mine.
Now was the moment to leave her alone for the first time. The headmistress, a gentle dark-haired lady, took Elodie's hand and nodded to us to go. We turned and left, both of us sneaking a glance over our shoulders as our child, apparently inconsolable, shouted our names. Then, like a number of other parents we ordered a coffee in the nearby cafe, listening as the screams subsided. By the time we'd finished all that could be heard was the sound of children playing happily.
Within a week a routine had been established and by the end of September Elodie skipped happily into crèche. I'd taken to buying a croissant from the nearby bakery and enjoying a coffee in the cafe. The boulanger laced his creations with an indecent amount of butter, and the coffee was one of the strongest in the area. Sitting in the shade of the trees, with the blue sky visible through the mesh of arching branches, quickly became a treasured moment in my days. And it was here, with any income from the next truffle season still a couple of months away, that I came up with our next marketing idea for the wine business.
Ever since the two English boules players had invaded our garden playing their extreme version of the game I'd been thinking about adapting the concept into a tournament. A little research showed that boules had not always been heavily codified. Pétanque – which literally means stuck feet – originated in the port of La Ciotat, near Marseille, at the turn of the century. Unsurprisingly, the idea of playing a game where little or no movement was involved quickly caught on in Provence. However, throughout the rest of France different versions of the game survived. To my delight I discovered that in Normandy a rambling version of the game was still played in farmyards. From the description the concept was not dissimilar to my proposed extreme version.
Rolling back the years and holding a tournament without rules or boundaries should, I reasoned, appeal to the locals. Historical pageants were common and so why not an old-fashioned boules tournament? We'd get a team from our village to compete against a team from the neighbouring village and put up some wine as a prize. Spectators could be introduced to our wine business while they watched. Within a week of the Côtes du Rhône tasting I was sticking posters on lamp posts advertising Provence's first Tournoi de Boules Extrême, to take place in two weeks' time. All I needed was some players.
The village boules club consists of a sizeable dusty square bordered by wooden sleepers. Plane trees have been planted at regular intervals, but as yet they are relatively young and do not provide quite enough shade. In one corner there's a small hut with a sign declaring that the bar is open to members only. Except during play, an iron shutter is always pulled tightly down. Pinned to the wall are notices of upcoming concours (competitions) and a blunt pencil dangles from a piece of string to enable people to sign up. In the summer play takes place most afternoons and there's usually an audience – a nearby car park is heavily used by camper vans and rows of tourists sit on foldaway chairs picnicking as they watch.
When I arrived, late on a Saturday afternoon, the shadows were long and there were about twenty men waiting to play. Some members broke away and made practice throws, others chatted.
'Eh bien, Eric a gagné le loto.'
'Combien?'
'Deux cent mille.'
'Bah oui. Il a de la chance.'
The members were apparently men of few words. Over a third of them conformed to the stereotype of a boules player I'd created in my head – army-style combat trousers, a red hunter's cap, and a bushy moustache surrounded by stubble. A bit of a paunch seemed desirable but was by no means a prerequisite. The rest were a curious cross section: thin, diffident men who hung back on the fringes of the conversation, smartly dressed gentlemen sitting on foldaway chairs, others shuffling by in what appeared to be pyjamas and slippers. At least the club was open to all comers, and therefore hopefully new ideas, I reasoned.
The language spoken was French but with a strong and intimidating Provençal twang, the most obvious manifestation of which was a habit of punctuating every other sentence with the word 'Bah'. Pronounced like the baa of a sheep, it meant very little, but was a reliable conversational crux to fall back on, indicating that one was still alert and hadn't succumbed to the soporific sunshine.
Urgency is not usually a word that figures in the Provençal lexicon, except perhaps behind the wheel of a car. However, in the final minutes before the game started there was a growing air of impatience, as more and more people arrived and started clacking their boules between their fingers. The sound was grating. At some point, when between fifty and a hundred boules were being banged together, the volume became too great to withstand – for the sake of all our eardrums, the game needed to begin.
On cue the shutter of the bar creaked upwards, revealing the man I'd come to talk to – Antoine Sublet, one of the most revered players at the club.
'Allez, on va commencer le concours.' He lifted a large silver bowl onto the counter and began drawing out numbers. The digits were written on small pieces of paper and Antoine's large fingers, swollen with the heat and curled inwards like a boxer's after a fight, struggled to unravel the crumpled balls. Each phase of the draw took a couple of minutes to complete, and the process was occasionally delayed by female passers-by who called out greetings to Antoine. Instinctively he stopped what he was doing and ran his fingers through his dark greying hair before shouting flirtatiously back:
'Isabelle, should anything happen to your husband, promise you'll call!'
'Sandrine, you were always the most beautiful girl in the class.'
The players who were lucky enough to have been drawn early retreated to discuss the merits of their pairings.
'C'est vous encore.'
'Allez, on va gagner.'
'Sylvan, j'ai de la chance.'
Each new pairing was met with laughter and jokes until the hat was finally empty. I approached the counter. Antoine was at the back of the bar holding a hurried conversation through the side door. I coughed loudly, but was ignored, and so I waited. Behind me there was the gentle clack of metal upon metal and the occasional exclamation of surprise at a particularly successful shot. The shadows were lengthening, autumn arriving, but it was still ferociously hot. The glare of the sun off the gravel created windows of fiery light in the canopy of the plane trees. Underneath my thick denim jeans I was sweating heavily and I could feel water droplets gathering in the creases at the back of my knees. The smell of garlic from a nearby home drifted on a rare gust of wind. Antoine's nostrils twitched and he turned to face me.
'Have you seen the posters for our boules tournament?' I asked.
'Quoi?' Antoine grunted, pretending not to understand.
'Le Tournoi de Boules Extrême?'
'Non.'
'Can I explain the concept to you?'
Antoine folded his arms defensively. He listened as I talked him through the idea.
'Play starts at point A, finishes at point B. In-between these two points players can go wherever they want – behind trees, in rivers, down ditches – and the winners are the team in the lead when the cochonnet crosses the finishing line.' I concluded.
Antoine unfolded both arms and rested them on the bar. 'Je comprends pas.' He began to do the washing-up. Undaunted I began again, explaining that there really were no rules to understand and that in any event everything would become clear on the day.
'Plus the winning team goes home with a magnum of wine.'
'Which vineyard?'
'Domaine les Goubert, Gigondas.'
Antoine nodded, recognising the name. For the first time since the conversation began he smiled.
'Will you enter some teams?'
'Normalement, oui.'
In Provence a normalement is the most definitive
answer you can receive. It means that barring earthquake, mistral, rain or an urgent need for a siesta, something is going to get done.
I drove to the neighbouring village, confident that I had at least one set of teams for the tournament. The headquarters of the second club de boules of the day was located in one of the most traditional bars in the area. The no-smoking ban was routinely flouted and a swirl of ash fluttered from the floor as I pushed open the door. At a table in the corner four men were playing cards. Their cigarettes burned in a central ashtray as they fingered gambling chips. The men unilaterally placed their cards face down and turned to look at me.
I'd heard that the cafe was the centre of 'black' labour in the area. If you wanted a job done for cash, then this was the place to come. At the bar chariot horse racing was showing on the television. A pile of screwed-up betting slips
rested next to the nicotine-stained, shaking hand of another regular.
'I'm looking for Benoit.' My voice was unnaturally high. Explaining the concept of our boules tournament in my home village had been difficult enough; explaining it in this environment was daunting.
'You've found him.' The man who spoke swung around on his stool. His eyes were yellow, his hair greasy and he was so thin he looked ill.
'I'm holding a boules tournament at the end of the week,' I began, conscious of the hesitancy in my voice and the speed with which I was speaking.
Benoit managed to listen while keeping one eye on the racing. My mention of the magnum of red wine coincided with him ripping up another betting slip.
'Do you think you'll be able to send some teams?'
Benoit drained his pastis, and rocked from his seat, heading for the open door of the urinoir.
'On verra,' he said as he unbuttoned his trousers and began to pee.
Loosely and politely translated this meant, 'It isn't going to happen, mate, be so good as to get out of our bar.'
The morning of the tournament was bright and sunny. A gentle cooling breeze blew from the north and for the first time in months the air felt light and fresh. It was precisely the type of weather needed to entice people from the heavy shade of their houses. The grape harvest was still not quite finished, but the more forgiving temperature heralded the new season.
We marked out the start and finish points in the countryside behind our house. Manu had declined to take part, but had grudgingly agreed to boules being played through his fields. The course began on the dirt track driveway, meandered through the field of lavender, looped around an olive grove and finished in the vines underneath our kitchen window. After my experience in the boules bar we'd decided to make the tournament less formal and just organise games as and when people turned up. I'd be the roving rules referee, striding through the field, with Elodie safely secured in a rucksack on my back.
Outside the house we erected a blackboard on which to write the names of the competitors. On a nearby table we laid out open bottles of the wines for tasting. A pile of fliers and business cards were held down by several of the heavy local stones. Although we expected most of the competitors to turn up with their own boules, we'd begged and borrowed additional sets in case of need. Simon, a friend from England, was staying with us. He'd been looking forward to the tournament all week, reckoning that the uneven bounce would give him a chance against the more skilled locals.
Fabian, the geothermal millionaire, had arrived at precisely 10 a.m. and I'd endured a difficult half an hour as I tried to make the final preparations while discussing the benefits of using the latent heat in the soil to warm our new house. Glancing at my watch, I noted that competitors and spectators were now appropriately late. I gazed down the road looking for the trails of dust that arriving cars always sent spiralling into the air.
'The thing about geothermal,' Fabian continued, 'is that your electricity bill will be halved. Add a wind turbine and a couple of solar panels and you'll soon be selling power back to the grid.'
'But you can't even walk over the land after the pipes have been laid.' I was beginning to get worried and talking to Fabian was a pleasant distraction.
'It can be a problem, but with the amount of land you've got, there's no point worrying.' Fabian had never seen our plot, but in a small village people talked.
Deciding we might as well get started I paired Fabian off with Simon and sent them off into the field. Simon wrapped an arm around Fabian's shoulder. 'Now remember – it's just like golf,' he said as they headed off.
'Do you think anyone else is coming?' Tanya said as she came out of the house.
'Should get some more.'
'At least Simon's having a good time.'
'Hope he doesn't mind changing his heating system.'
An hour after the appointed start time there were seven cars on our drive. Two of them belonged to couples who'd seen the posters and turned up on spec, the other five to friends. We played some boules and then drank some wine. We even managed some sales. It was hard, however, to avoid the conclusion that the morning had been a disappointment. Holding an event in Provence is not difficult at all; offer a free glass of wine and a few nibbles and usually the whole village and their extended family will turn up. There are typically not too many events to go to and so the opportunity to have a chat while drinking at someone else's expense is all that's needed.
Normalement the fields outside our house should have resounded with the clack of boules. Normalement life in Provence is very social. But nothing quite seemed normal anymore. Perhaps it was La Crise. People were getting used to a simpler life and just not going out, begrudging even the cost of petrol. The lack of an invitation to Delphine's annual fête des vendanges implied that she too had succumbed to the new reality and seen fit to cancel.
Chapter 19
Madame Roland, the directrice of our building company, must have been back from the beaches of St Tropez for well over a month, but her skin still glowed with a rich golden summer sheen. Her nails, always long, were painted a deep ferocious red, and the dark roots of her hair had been bleached white, either by the sun or by one of the Riviera's skilful celebrity hairdressers. As usual, a bubble of overpowering perfume surrounded her. Today there was a strong citrus note, and a hint of musk.
We stood together on the chantier, regarding the progress of the building work. The foundations were in, and a raft of concrete had been laid on top of them. The idea was simple – the soil beneath the house could expand and contract, but because the house was built directly onto the foundations, and elevated a half metre or so from the ground, the bricks would never move. Already the first walls were climbing towards the sky, rising in uneven, ugly grey towers.
However, the concrete mixers were ominously silent and there was no sign of any workmen.
'The water went off yesterday – barely a trickle is coming up. Could be the pump's too small, could be the well's not deep enough,' explained Madame Roland.
'What do we do?'
'Here's the problem: if we pull up the pump and it's OK, then you pay, plus you pay again for a new borehole.'
'How much?'
'Ten thousand, maybe more. Best thing to do is find out how deep the well is, then we'll know whether there's water. If there is, then it's definitely the pump at fault.'
'I'll get on the phone.'
Madame Roland climbed back into the soft leather interior of her car.
'Oh, and Jamie, don't take too long – the cost of materials is going up and up.'
The deeds for the house showed that the well had been dug some fifty years ago, and that the land had changed hands twice since then. A quick search of the phone book revealed no entry for Rousseau, the name of the family that had originally owned the plot, and so that afternoon I sat down and tried to discover which company had dug the well. Family businesses tended to last a long time in Provence and there were only twenty forage (well drilling) specialists.
Hopefully the relevant company would still exist and hopefully their records would stretch back far enough to
confirm the depth of my well.
With each company I explained the location of our house and the problem.
The response was always the same. 'Tout à fait, one has to know the depth.' Then there was a shuffling of papers, perhaps a smoker's cough, followed by confirmation that they couldn't provide the missing details. After ten companies I was dispirited. We'd just have to pull up the pump and risk paying double. Whatever happened, the concrete mixers had to get going again.
I dialled one of the remaining entries for forage in the book. It was an advert rather than a listing and I didn't take the time to look at the address. Mechanically, I explained the problem.
'Oui, oui, alors, on arrive vers seize heures.'
I put the phone down astonished. Somebody was actually going to come out and try to help. No call-out charge, just an attempt to find a solution. I looked at the address: Marseille. I almost phoned back immediately and told them not to bother. The unofficial capital of the south of France had, in my experience, a well-earned bad reputation.