The House in France

by Gully Wells

  AS MARKETS GO, the one in Bandol was impressive, but it was nothing stacked up against the mother of all markets in Toulon. It occupied the entire length of the Cours Lafayette, which—like its fancier cousin in Aix—is a broad boulevard shaded by enormous plane trees with peeling camouflage-bark that stretches on a gentle slope from a hill at the center of the city all the way down to the harbor. Lined on each side with wooden stands overflowing with fruit—raspberries in baskets lined with fuzzy vine leaves; figs about to burst their purple skins; heavy, fat little watermelons—and vegetables—skinny haricots verts, shiny aubergines, fragrant bouquets of basil—we would barrel down filling up our bags, sometimes stopping for a quick proffered taste of peppery saucisson or a sliver of Gruyère that had arrived that morning in a truck from the Haute-Savoie. Wild field greens, arugula, and dandelion leaves, and huge briny barrels of olives—some stuffed with anchovies, others mixed with pimentos, celery, and cracked coriander seeds—occupied the trestle tables farther down toward the harbor. If we were feeling really hungry, and our baskets had gotten too heavy, we would pause for a slice of Toulonnais pizza, its thick tomato crust studded with shrimp, calamari rings, and octopus tentacles, in homage to Toulon’s fishy heritage.

  During the war the Allies and the retreating Germans had between them bombed and blown up everything along the water, completely demolishing Toulon’s famous harbor. But even worse than this destruction were the buildings that had replaced the ruins in the 1950s. Reminiscent of the most lumpen architecture of the Soviet era, these mountains of gray concrete, now cracked and streaked with dirt, sit there sullenly staring out at the pure blue beauty of the Mediterranean. If you walk down to the end of the Cours Lafayette, to the part where the fishwives preside over their trestle stands, piled high with heaps of shellfish, thick slabs of tuna, and small, fierce rascasses, some with half-devoured smaller fish still hanging from their jaws, you can catch a glimpse of the sea in the distance. It is easy to be seduced by the breeze, the boats, the glint of sunshine on the water, but that’s where the gulag of concrete begins. Instead we would turn off into one of the side streets off the Cours, and get lost in the rat’s nest of dank, crooked alleyways in the old city.

  The bombs were interested only in the harbor, so the neighborhood behind, which for centuries had offered hungry sailors all the consolations they craved, had been spared. I loved the way you could leave the wholesome, bright bustle of the market and be transported in just a few minutes into the secret, twilit world of some French film about a handsome criminal—Jean-Paul Belmondo, perhaps—eluding les flics, in the sleazy back alleys of a Mediterranean port. Or, at least that was how it felt to me. Not a glimmer of sunlight filtered down onto the fetid streets, and outside one bar I swear I saw a deep brown stain on the sidewalk that could only have been dried blood. The fishwives’ younger sisters—with the same peroxide hair and stocky legs but much shorter skirts, and every bit as determined to cajole, seduce, or if necessary, bully their customers—loitered about in the doorways. Just like in the movies.

  Once, as we were walking past an especially raucous bar—drunken shouts and the noise of crazed pinball machines spilled out through the pink plastic-beaded curtain—my mother offered me twenty francs if I’d go in and ask for a glass of Orangina. “Go on, take a chance,” she urged me, eager to promote any form of anarchy, however mild. Like a fool I refused. But I can still hear her words echoing in my ears, and still wish I had done it. “Take a chance”—this was the precept she had always lived by, the impulse that had propelled her forward, the belief she clung to as fervently as any of the pilgrims who worshipped at the shrine of Notre-Dame du Beausset-Vieux, in that tiny chapel on top of the hill, behind our house.

  The army surplus store occupied a strategic corner with entrances on two streets and a window full of faded, oddly hermaphrodite mannequins with painted-on hair and hats emblazoned with the names of long-forgotten ships perched on their lifeless heads. Sylvia had instructed us not to bother with anything other than the American navy stuff. And it’s true that we weren’t much interested in passing ourselves off as British commandos in khaki camouflage, or dressing up in baggy brown wool trousers that tucked into lace-up boots, like Tintin, or wearing silly berets trimmed in leather: What we were after was the genuine sailor look. It was Coco Chanel who had started it all when she was photographed in the early thirties in high-waisted white bell-bottoms, a skimpy little blue-and-white striped sweater, and a revolutionary suntan. The mode marine was born, and I was determined to follow in her chic, espadrilled footsteps.

  Once inside the store, we went straight for the stack of not entirely clean navy blue pants (could you catch crabs just by trying them on?) with jaunty square flaps, tailored for the snake-hipped, malnourished navy recruits who had once worn them. My mother whooped with delight when she discovered an olive green double-breasted coat with gold buttons, which looked like something Marshal Zhukov might have worn on the eastern front but she claimed was just the same as the one she’d had in the Canadian army. She slipped it on over her jeans and stood there in front of the mirror, narrowed her eyes, raised her right hand in a crisp salute, and started barking out nonsensical parade-ground commands in a heavy Russian accent. So, that, along with several white canvas belts, the pants, and the striped sweaters, had to be added to our pile. The sad-looking man behind the counter, already alarmed by my mother’s Zhukov impersonation, hurriedly stuffed everything into a couple of crumpled paper bags, scribbled l’addition on a corner of the newspaper he was reading, and went back to the sports page, relieved to be rid of these noisy foreign women who had disturbed the calm of his dusty shop.

  Fired up with the success of our shopping expedition, and in no mood to stop spending money anytime soon, my mother announced that since we were already in Toulon, it would be criminal not to visit a few junk stores. Contemptuous of luxury and extravagance and congenitally incapable of paying full price for anything, she nonetheless had an extraordinary eye for quality. A full-length black, backless cashmere dress (missing one pearl button), shocking pink kid gloves from Italy (slightly soiled), one half of a pair of Georgian silver candlesticks (a bit dented), a majolica teapot (spout chipped), an eighteenth-century Baroque gilded mirror (glass cracked): All these had been bought for a fraction of what they were worth and restored to something approaching perfection. Whereas “junk,” in her vocabulary, back home in England, could be stretched to cover anything from a market stall selling old plates and mugs to a real antique store, in France it was altogether different. In their mania for Cartesian order and hierarchy, the French made a clear distinction between brocante (junk that an antiquaire was too snobby to touch) and antiquaire (a better class of junk that could be passed off as Louis XV, Empire, or whatever, and sold for a ludicrous amount of money). Some objects could slide from one category to another, like the rusty wrought-iron bedstead I once saw leaning against the wall of our favorite brocante on the outskirts of Toulon that reappeared a couple of weeks later, painted white and tricked up with embroidered linen pillows, in the window of the antiquaire on the boulevard Strasbourg. But then again something like the early nineteenth-century pine grandfather clock in our kitchen, with the curvy, pregnant bulge in the middle, where the brass pendulum swung lazily from side to side, could only have come from an antiquaire. In the end, of course, none of this mattered; my mother just kept her eyes open (and taught me to do the same), skipping promiscuously from one shop to another, to truffle around for treasures in among the rubbish.

  “Okay. I say we go see the one-armed bandit first, and then we can swing by that fag who sold Pussy her armoire.” It was an itinerary that neatly covered both ends of the spectrum. Roaming around Toulon, trying to find some garage that Monsieur Tricon swore would be able to fix the ailing “station wagon,” my mother discovered a junkyard, hidden away behind an abandoned factory. The spécialités de la maison seemed to be broken metal objects. Leaky cauldrons, rusting radiators, strange pipes, and mys
terious bits of machinery were strewn about, all watched over by a cheerful, emaciated Algerian with one arm. On her first visit my mother had gone mad, ending up with a cast-iron casserole without a lid, a set of mismatched knives, a coffee grinder, and a large enameled green stove. Impressed by her wild extravagance, the Algerian had insisted on throwing in a free saucepan that was missing one of its handles—rather like himself. We were customers for life, or at least for his life. When we dropped by one day about twenty years later and were told he had died, out of loyalty to his memory we never went back.

  BOSSY PUSSY WAS NOT interested in trash. Her taste was altogether more conventional, and her standards were high, so when she said Monsieur Renaudin—the Loulou Richelmi of antiques—was the only antiquaire in the whole of Toulon who wasn’t a thief, my mother listened. Renaudin et Fils occupied the ground floor of a Belle Époque building just off the place des Trois Dauphins. Pierre Renaudin must have been the fils part of the business because, with his sky blue cashmere sweaters, white loafers, and the rose-scented pomade that kept his thinning blond hair plastered to his bony skull, it seemed unlikely that he had any sons of his own. But what he did have was very good taste, and since he wasn’t a thief, his prices didn’t make you scream with laughter. A tinkly, flirtatious bell would announce your arrival in his shop, and he would hurry out of his tiny bureau—really more of a wallpapered womb tucked away under the staircase—to welcome you as if you had just come for a cozy dinner. And it is true that his shop looked and felt like an apartment rather than a place where stuff was actually bought and sold. The air smelled of beeswax and lavender, or at least it did at first, but once your nose got used to being there, it snuffled about and quickly detected the unmistakable acrid aroma of cat’s piss, lurking underneath the flowery top notes.

  It was Monsieur Renaudin who had sold my mother the curvy clock, and as soon as we walked through the door, after our adventures in the one-armed bandit’s scrapyard and the army surplus store, he was there to greet us.

  “Ah, bonjour, Madame, Mademoiselle,” and like the maître d’ in a fancy restaurant, he led us quickly through the back of his shop and out into a small bamboo-shaded garden, where one of his incontinent cats lay asleep under a gardenia bush. We must have looked exhausted, because as soon as we sat down, he said we were clearly in need of une tisane de tilleul. A few moments later he reappeared with a teapot, three cups, and a plate of—what else?—madeleines. The garden was deliciously cool—the bamboo rustled, water dribbled out of a dolphin’s mouth into a stone shell—and our sagging bodies and spirits quickly revived. Now it was time to talk about a particularly fine pair of carved fruitwood armoire doors that he had recently acquired. An old lady had died, her unsentimental children had sold not just the house but everything in it, “même ses vêtements, qui n’étaient pas tellement propres” (Monsieur Renaudin was particularly shocked by this callous offloading of her not-very-clean clothes). And even her cupboard doors, it seemed. As soon as she saw them I could tell that my mother wasn’t going to be able to resist. She gave a little involuntary intake of breath and turned to me, “These are really something else. Look at that carving and the sheen on the wood,” she said, reaching over and gently stroking one of the doors as if it had been one of our sleek, overindulged cats. It was merely a question of whether they could fit on the roof of the “station wagon.” Taking on Freddie’s role, Monsieur Renaudin wrestled with the elastic snakes, and eventually got the doors trussed up and tied to the rusty luggage rack.

  “LES RIVAUX DE PAINFUL GULCH. Une histoire de Lucky Luke au Wild Ouest.”

  “No, Dad, you have to read it in English. I told you that before.”

  “Oh, so you did, darling, I keep forgetting. I am silly, am’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “We had better start again. ‘The Rivals of Painful Gulch. A Story About Lucky Luke in the Wild West.… Lucky Luke rode into town on Jolly Jumper, the cleverest horse in the West.… We have some unfinished business to settle.… Is that so? … I reckon it is.… There’s only one place to settle this, and that’s outside.…

  “ ‘So Lucky Luke, quicker than his own shadow’ ”—

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Darling, what can I get for you?”

  “Meringues and mustard.”

  “I’m not at all sure where one might find such a thing.”

  Nick was naked and lay sprawled, like a tiny, bored pasha, on an armchair. Freddie was on his hands and knees, scrabbling around in the back of the cupboard, in search of the elusive meringues. And mustard.

  “What the hell is going on here? We have fifteen people coming to dinner. There are two doors on the roof of the car. And I need to start cooking. Now.”

  We had arrived back from our adventure in Toulon, and my mother was not pleased. I was always amazed at how she could whip herself up into a rage about something—mainly Freddie—that was not only utterly predictable but was never going to change. Imagine: We had been away all day and Freddie had, incredibly, failed to tidy the house/do the dishes/put any clothes on Nick. Imagine: After they married, Freddie had, unbelievably, gone on sleeping with other women. “Étonne-moi!” But she never stopped being astonished. And very angry.

  The best way to calm her down was with furious activity. As soon as the Canadian sergeant major swept through the clackety wooden beads, we all knew she wasn’t kidding. She dumped her Marshal Zhukov coat on the table and stomped back out to the car to get the shopping baskets. Everybody snapped to attention and ran after her, eager to help, or at least eager to forestall another serious eruption. The guests were arriving at eight, the kitchen was a mess, and, as she had pointed out, we had to start cooking. Now. Freddie quite sensibly retreated to his cave, mumbling about how much work he had to do, Robin swooped down and picked up the naked Nick, announcing it was bath time, and ran up the stairs. So that left me alone with my mother.

  At fifteen I’d had many years of practice and had over time taught myself to ignore her temper. It wasn’t easy, especially when I was younger and more easily frightened, but I had pretty well perfected my technique by this point. Keep calm, distance yourself, don’t argue back, and allow the impassive, slightly bored expression on your face to convey your cool—no, frigid—disdain for the whole crazy uproar. Naturally it didn’t always work. The other trick was to distract her or, even better, to make her laugh. Sometimes I’d dredge up some innocuous but faintly idiotic thing my father had said or done (I know, I shouldn’t have) and she would giggle and always come up with something even better, like the time he had given her a trout-fishing rod for her birthday. “Jesus, can you believe it? He knew I didn’t give a shit about fishing, but that way he got to keep the rod and didn’t have to spend any money on a present I might actually want.” Which allowed us to marvel, yet again, at the incomprehensible—and all-too-often reprehensible—ways of men. But that afternoon she wasn’t in any mood for jokes about their silly foibles, so I decided to adopt the frantic-worker-bee approach. She stood at the kitchen table, her hair unwashed, sweating not just from the heat and lugging the baskets but also from the exhausting, backbreaking work of shouting. For a moment she looked utterly overwhelmed, and instead of being upset, I felt sorry for her.

  My mother carried most—no, all—of the household burdens on her shoulders: She was the full-time chauffeur and cook as well as the part-time, not especially skilled, handyman and cleaning lady; in fact there was nothing she didn’t insist on doing all by herself. No wonder she sometimes went mad. After we had put all the food away, I told her I would start on dinner, while she went upstairs and had a bath. “Oh, would you? Could you?” A look of genuine relief came over her face at the thought that she might be able to abdicate her sergeant-major role, if only for half an hour, and she smiled, “Thanks, Gull.” With the taste, interests, and obsessions of a fussy homosexual, I was the household’s self-appointed sous-chef, party planner, and interior decorator. But, as all artistic people know, when you happen
to be blessed with a passion, however hard you drive yourself, it just never feels like work at all. Which was lucky for my mother. When I wasn’t fretting, like an old queen, over lampshades and linen napkins, I was a demented fifties housewife in a flouncy little apron, forever scrubbing floors, sewing cushion covers, polishing furniture, and arranging fragrant bouquets of wildflowers. This was my idea of heaven.

  All of Elizabeth David’s books were lined up on a shelf in the kitchen, along with throwbacks to my mother’s New England childhood, like a facsimile of the 1918 edition of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer. Not much interested in recipes for baked scrod, and put off by the dumpy appearance of its unsmiling author, I became instead a rabid disciple of the woman who had taught the English how to make the kind of food she had discovered on her wanderings around France, Italy, Morocco, and the Middle East. Her recipes were wonderfully simple, hardly bothering to specify precise quantities or explain each fiddly step: She assumed you knew what you were doing. Of course I didn’t. But in my role as sous-chef, I was constantly in the kitchen, and between watching my mother, hanging around with Sylvia and Pussy, and devouring every word Elizabeth David wrote, I eventually learned how to cook.