Love in the Loire

by David Leddick

  “Shall we see as many châteaux as we can today?” I asked them as the old Peugeot snorted along through the fields of sunflowers. “We can take a shortcut and go through Fougères. There’s a great old château there that was built by the Danes when they rampaged through here.”

  This interested them. I told them that when the Vikings and other early marauders came south they came up the Loire River and ravaged the countryside. The house Nina and Graham were living in was on the remains of the old Château of Cornichons, which had been destroyed by the Danes. They raided the Abbey several times. That was the reason for the high walls that surrounded the Abbey. The Vikings had come roaring through also.

  I told them that the plumber had told me that there was an escape tunnel from the Abbey all the way to the banks of the Cher, which was a good five miles away. He claimed that he had been in it, but that parts of it had fallen in. I didn’t know whether to believe him. This part of the country is a soft kind of limestone under the earth and many of the people along the banks of the Loire and the Cher live in caves carved out of the cliffs. They’re called Troglodytes. Sounds like they’re dwarves, but they’re normal people. Normal damp people. It’s possible such a tunnel exists. The monks had plenty of time to do it in the winter when crops were in.

  Fougères is one of the few château around that wasn’t redone in the Renaissance. No large windows were put in. It still stands there in the heart of its little surrounding town with great stone walls going straight up and a few windows up high where it would be difficult to climb to or for arrows to reach. There are narrow slots down low for the archers to shoot through at the enemy. A pretty impregnable place. And no tourists. It was easy to imagine all the farmers and villagers rushing in to be protected. That was feudalism. You protect me behind stone walls, and I’ll give you some of my crops. There wasn’t much choice in those days.

  Darla and Sharon Ann liked it. Darla said, “Not only have I never seen anything like this, I didn’t know it even existed.” And on we went to Cheverny.

  For me, Cheverny is always a sad place, despite its gigantic white stone façade and rolling gray slate roofs, seen first at a long distance down the country road. The approach of several miles ends in iron gates with the château even further away across enormous green lawns. Cheverny looks much younger than it is because of the white stone, brought from the quarries not far from Cornichons. It gets whiter as it ages.

  Cheverny was built at much the same time as the house where Nina and Graham live, but shows little signs of wear. Its history began badly. The lord who built it frequented the court of Louis the Fourteenth. His young wife was left to sit alone in the country, where she fell in love with her page. You have to do something. Her husband was near the king at a soirée at Versailles and the king made the sign of the cuckold, the first and last fingers of a raised hand over his head. Evidently there had been talk that the wife was fooling around. The nobleman saw the gesture above his head reflected in the mirror, immediately left, rode nonstop to his château, ordered the page killed and his wife to take poison, and rode back to court. And from this sad story the present family is descended. I wouldn’t want my inheritance to come from such a cruel past. It was the king, in fact, who killed the original lady of Cheverny, with his careless joke.

  I told Darla and Sharon Ann this story as we walked through the rooms of Cheverny. Most of the furniture dated to the same period of forced suicide by poison. I imagined that poor girl, probably freezing amidst all the gilt and paintings.

  My new friends weren’t as interested in the dramatic history of Cheverny as they were with the hunting dogs. Cheverny has a famous hunting pack that is used to hunt deer in the autumn. All of the Cheverny lands, many, many, many hectares, are fenced in to contain the deer. And there is a great hunt with all the dogs yapping and everyone in red jackets on horseback. The local gentry long for invitations. There is even a hunt by night with torches.

  Darla and Sharon Ann loved the dogs and were thrilled that we were there at feeding time when the keeper enters the large caged kennels and forces the dogs back against one wall with a whip while the troughs are being filled. And then he barks a command . . . very much as though he were a dog himself . . . and they rush forward and fall upon the food. The smaller dogs push and shove to find a place to eat something. The bigger ones get the most. They are big, black, brown, and white hounds with floppy ears and curling tails and are not at all like pets. They are never petted and no one ever scratches behind their ears. It is curious to see dogs treated as though they were livestock.

  But the girls loved it. They undoubtedly imagined themselves pelting about the forest in red jackets, holding torches, pursuing the hounds. Lesbians often have a manly side that is very attractive. Darla and Sharon Ann saw the dogs as the hunters intended them to be seen. I was the one who wanted to see them as pets.

  We had lunch at the little restaurant just outside the Cheverny gates. We talked. Sharon Ann met Darla at the riding school in Vermont. She is from New York. They are trying to figure out if they should live together more than they already do, which is weekends only. Darla doesn’t want to live in New York. Sharon Ann thinks Darla can find work in or nearby the city but is reluctant to urge her as she knows she loves the job she has now.

  I encouraged the ladies to try the pot-au-feu, which was the special that day. Neither of them seemed to be very adventurous and confided they would be happy with hamburgers. But they liked their chicken and had some red wine with it. I told them I was doing the driving so they could live it up. I asked Darla how she happened to get to Vermont from the Midwest.

  “I was such a hick,” she said. “Both Ralph . . . Graham, I can’t get used to calling him Graham . . . and I came straight off the farm, you know. We’re cousins, but he’s the brain. He was a year ahead of me in school, which was good. He helped me through college. He had already gone to the West Coast and was making money. His poor parents. They knew he was making dirty movies. I don’t think they ever saw one, and they pretended they didn’t know.

  “And then with me being a big lesbian. I mean, look at me. I was a basketball star. I was actually more help on the farm than Ralph. He didn’t like it. I did. But I graduated from Iowa State with a degree in animal husbandry and there was a man from the East Coast out there looking for horses, and he found me. I got the job at his stables shoveling horseshit, and I’m still there. I could always ride, but I learned a lot more there, and I love to teach.”

  “She’s great,” Sharon Ann said. She was putting away a little lemon sorbet. Fighting those bulges.

  “I worry about my cousin,” Darla said. “That’s one of the reasons I came over. I knew he was here. I knew he wasn’t doing much. Nina and the baby are great. But I don’t see where it’s going for him. I didn’t. But last night at dinner he told me he had this movie offer. I guess this director who runs the Festival is doing a movie and has a part in it for Ralph . . . Graham.”

  “So he’ll go back to Hollywood?” I said.

  “They were talking about that. How Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn live up in Colorado. And Daniel Day Lewis lives in England. And how movie actors don’t have to be in Hollywood anymore. Except just for when they’re working. Nina told him that he should go and not worry about it. She will probably have the baby before he goes. He would be making money so she could have an au pair while he was gone. And that she would move back to the United States if she had to and that it would break her heart to be away from him and she would miss him horribly every moment and it would probably make their marriage last forever. You know how she is. Funny. But she gets her point across.”

  We went sailing across the fields to Chambord. My spirits were soaring. Fucking Cranston Muller had not been a waste of time. And now I could forget it. Chambord came jutting up out of the forest ahead of us. It was gigantic. It had been built as a hunting lodge, and you wondered how anything could be left in the forest if this place was full of hunters and horses.
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br />   There are mysterious winding staircases that thread up the center of Chambord. They wind around each other, and as you climb, you can never see another person on the other staircase from any vantage point. On the roof there is something like a miniature city of little towers and window tops and chimneys and God knows what all. You can see for miles and miles across the forests that still surround Chambord. In the château are tiny little bedrooms all done up in pretty eighteenth-century fabrics which seem completely out of place in Chambord. It calls out for great rooms where roughnecks could roister about and wipe their boots on the draperies.

  As we drove back Sharon Ann said, “It’s big. And not very beautiful. But I wanted to see it because we both have the same last name.”

  I looked over at her. “Your last name is Chambord?” She stared straight ahead. “Are you Sharon Ann Chambord?” I might have put it together sooner. There can’t be a whole lot of Sharon Anns around in the world.

  I looked over my shoulder at Darla. “Does your cousin know that you’re sharing a hotel room with Sharon Ann Chambord? The famous Broadway choreographer who just directed Oom-Pah-Pah, the biggest hit in New York right now? The story of John Philip Sousa?”

  “No,” Darla said. She sounded a little sulky.

  Sharon Ann said, “This being a theater festival and all, we thought it would be better if I kept a low profile. Just in case everyone got all excited and thought I was here looking for a show or something.”

  “And you didn’t see The Red Mill?” I said. I was kidding.

  “Nina said you were great,” Darla said. Sharon Ann said nothing.

  “I’m going to give up the theater,” I said. “It’s really not for me. You have to concentrate on yourself so much you can’t really pay any attention to anyone else. And I think I’m in love. And I want to be in love like Nina and Graham.”

  “Are you gay?” Sharon Ann asked.

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” I said. “Did Picasso paint? But it’s nice of you to ask.”

  Sharon Ann said, “I’m actually interested in that children’s performance of Ten Little Indians. I saw the playbill and posters. Who the hell is Henrietta Rothschild?”

  “You have to see it to believe it,” I said. “If she isn’t going to be a star, no one is.”

  “And that Toca Sacar. I think he’s a very interesting director. I think that’s the show that might have legs for Broadway. I have to see it. A new Oliver or Annie. Broadway is longing for it. I could set the dances. But we’d try to keep the original cast. Direct from France. It could be good.”

  So Now, What Next?

  There is a wonderful Robert Burns poem that goes something about the north wind blowing and the rain pelting down and the poet longs to be safe in bed in the arms of the one he loves.

  That is what I want with Steve. That, as the storms of life beat and battle around us, we can be together and hold each other close. There is that incredible sailing off through the stars together when you have sex and have orgasms at the same time. But even better, I think, is when you are locked in each other’s arms and you both feel, “I have someone with me. I am not alone. We may have our differences. We may see each other’s weaknesses. But beyond that we are a team. We are partners. We are together. And we will not let the world tear us apart. Or let our own little self-destructive mechanisms crumble away this locking together of ourselves.”

  This is what Nina and Graham have. This is what my mother and Glenn Elliott have. This is what I admire. This is what I wish to emulate. More than any fame. More than any fortune. When I lay down to die I know having had this will make me feel that I have truly lived. That I have missed nothing. And it will not be difficult to go.

  I hope Steve can feel this way. I will remind him of it every day of our lives together. He wants to move in with me when I go back to New York. I think we are ready for this. Here we go.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Michael Glidden for struggling so manfully to put this text together in the right order. And also my great pal Heriberto Sanchez for throwing himself into the fray in making corrections and additions on the computer for me.

  There is such a town very much like Cornichons, but I assure my readers that this is entirely a work of fiction, no matter how much you may have become enamored of Hugo or Graham or anyone else. Thanks to all those readers too, who have encouraged me to bring back my characters from my novels “My Worst Date” and “Never Eat In.” You should have read them before you read this book. But it’s never too late.