‘Maintenant c’est le triage,’ said Claudette, as we followed her across the courtyard. I could not imagine what we were to do next. As we came into the oldest barn where all the poultry have their ramshackle nesting boxes the remaining hens and ducks shrieked and clucked as they flapped out into the sunlight. Ahead of her Claudette shooed, like a miniature corps de ballet, the twelve smallest ducklings, shutting them safely in an inner sanctum behind the pigsties. The turkeys scolded plaintively as they skirted past us, picking up their feet with a disdainful precision and the three pigs snorted and squealed and trod on each other’s feet. The whole barn was darkened by the bulk of the loaded cart drawn up at the entrance.
Suddenly Raymond appeared, staggering under the weight of a sack which he emptied onto a space which had been cleared at the far end. Onto the beaten earth floor tumbled sack after sack of potatoes until we had a great mound. Folded sacks were placed for us to kneel on and we began sorting them into baskets. Le triage was a simple but effective grading system. Everyone yelled instructions. ‘Pour commencer – les plus grosses,’ shouted Raymond. He and M. Demoli swung up the filled baskets and carried them into an inner store where they were layered with a preserving powder to prevent rotting. Any bad potatoes were hurled to one side. After we had selected all the largest we progressed to les moyennes. From these we had to choose les plus belles for resowing the following season, the more ordinary went to be stored with the rest. It was surprising how quickly we demolished the heap until only the smallest potatoes remained. These, I learned were to be put into a box pour les cochons. I asked if I might take some for us. Raymond laughed. ‘Have some bigger ones,’ he said. He seemed surprised when I told him that I really did prefer them. Grandma smiled, ‘She’s right,’ she said, ‘they have the best flavour. They just take so long to peel.’
‘We eat the skins as well,’ I told her.
‘It’s possible,’ she said politely. No sooner was the pile finished than Raymond fetched more sacks and we began again, kneeling in this cobwebbed and chicken-cooped, semi-darkness as generations before us must have done, on this same floor of beaten earth.
At last it was finished, the baskets banged against the wall and stacked inside each other, the sacks shaken and folded. Grandma swept the dust into the corner with a besom. Sensing the end of the invasion, one by one the chickens, calling softly, reclaimed their territory. Claudette took two still warm eggs from a nesting box and put them in her pocket. She emptied a basket of small potatoes for the pigs who squealed and scrunched with joy as we emerged into the blazing courtyard.
‘Alors,’ she smiled, ‘Merci. Les pommes de terres sont ramassées.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
That summer we began to realise that we had a problem with rising damp at the front of the house and that it was getting rapidly worse. Wet patches appeared on the floor of the north-facing bedroom. They started at the outside edge and spread alarmingly across the entire room. Clearly something would have to be done, but what? We peered down the well. The water level was very high, might there be a seepage? We siphoned off gallons but still the damp persisted.
The following Easter things were much the same and we consulted M. René who, after prowling around for a few minutes, gave us the answer. The house had no damp course and therefore, he explained, the level of the soil outside was critical. Bel-Air, being on a gently sloping hillside, had acted, over the years, as a dam against all the soil which had been washed down. When we measured we found that the ground outside was a foot higher than the inside floor level.
‘I think you really need a proper drive right round to the porch,’ said M. René. ‘I know the very person to dig it out for you. M. Mastero. He’s Italian, but he’s lived here for years,’ he added reassuringly. Remembering his two other young workmen who had so quickly excavated the hole for the septic tank, I vaguely imagined a huge Italian who would do the work of two lesser men. Before the appointed Thursday I moved the kerria bush which, since the chopping down of the box trees, had struggled into bloom outside the north-facing bedroom window, and I dug up a few straggly marigolds and transplanted them into pots. About nine o’clock M. Mastero appeared in a small van. Five feet square, red-faced and very jovial, he did not look particularly energetic.
‘It’s not arrived yet then?’ he cried.
‘What?’ we asked.
‘La pelle,’ he answered. We were perplexed. His shovel? Didn’t he normally bring his shovel with him? Suddenly he looked down to the distant road. ‘Ah elle arrive!’ he roared. Whatever he had seen had turned from the road onto the track far below us and was obscured by the trees, but we could hear a heavy engine and over the brow of the hill and into our disbelieving view came a lorry bearing a sign CONVOI EXCEPTIONEL and towering behind it a bright yellow mechanical digger. We had expected nothing like this. At that moment M. René’s van appeared from the other direction and he tried to reassure us. ‘C’est facile,’ he said. ‘It’s easy, one hour and it’ll be finished.’
Now we began to understand the extent of the operation. The digger was almost as tall as the house and once it began to carve out a deep trench in a straight line from the track along the side of the house I realised I had a problem. I have an antipathy to straight lines, especially in gardens, and clearly la pelle mécanique and her handsome driver – M. Mastero was merely the owner – could neither comprehend or cut, it seemed, a curve. And so battle began.
A depth of at least two feet had to be dug to allow for a foot of stones to be laid as a soak-away for the water. Out came the old, romantic tunnel of vines which had so graced the side of the house. The japonica bushes staggered, collapsed, and were no more. Everything, without ceremony, was dumped into the back of the waiting lorry. Compared to my hours of effort with a small spade it was impressive, there was no doubt about that. But I now realised that a small syringa tree which stood at the corner of the house would be the next to go. I clasped my arms round it and defied la Pelle. ‘Non! Non! Non!’ I yelled.
The driver could not hear me but he could hardly miss my demented mime. He climbed down from his God-like height. M. René too came to see what was amiss. They all tried to persuade me. This tree and the next one, une boule-de-neige, were both in the way and would have to come down. Even Mike joined this male contingent of ravishers of my garden and, I felt, of Anaïs’s too. I could plant other trees, they reasoned. I didn’t want to. I was adamant. Why could la Pelle not go round them? Round was a silly word; she couldn’t do anything round. Only square. Then could she not cut squares at the base of each tree? They looked doubtful. Perhaps, it might, just might, be possible. Not at all reasonable of course, but, perhaps, possible. Clearly they were not exactly eager to try. They shrugged, drew in their breath and looked at each other. They paced to and fro, wishing I had gone shopping.
‘It would be difficult,’ said the handsome young driver.
‘But you could try?’ I pleaded.
Maybe my tears of rage at the whole insensitive lot of them finally moved him but he climbed back up onto his machine and, of course, it was possible. It meant a lot of gear changing and backing and turning, but the ground was cleared right up to the house and my two small trees stood bravely up on their squares of earth, startled but safe.
When the lorry was full with earth the driver asked where he might dump it. The maize in le grand champ had not yet been sown and Raymond, who had by now arrived to watch the operation, said airily, ‘You can dump it there on the edge of the field. I’ll flatten it later.’ I do not think he bargained for the twelve loads that were eventually excavated.
Once the edge of the house had been cleared the digger went back to the track to widen the trench that he had cut. Everyone who drove to our front door swung naturally round in a curve but la Pelle of course, could only work in a straight line. Our proposed new drive and parking space grew ever wider and our meadow consequently smaller. Not needing to accommodate a fleet of lorries, we stopped him.
‘R
ight,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll just straighten this bit up,’ gouging out yet another right angle. I have never been so glad to see the back of such a beautiful man.
The next day the stones were laid; eight inches of large stones beneath four inches of smaller ones. We raked them into place. The sun shone and the newness and whiteness of such a large area was horribly dazzling. Now it has mellowed with mosses and the wild flowers have returned. Honesty, love-in-a-mist and marguerites soften those hard edges. The days after the departure of the ravening digger I spent moving barrows full of earth back from the field to our garden in an attempt to change the straight lines into curves. Raymond teased me. ‘You’ve just paid to have it all removed. Now you’re putting it back again!’ But when I rested he climbed down from the tractor and filled three or four loads for me, piling the barrow high and pushing it as though it weighed nothing.
That summer, in the rough ground at the top of le grand champ which, after the lorry had dumped our garden soil, Raymond had left uncultivated, we had a wonderful nursery of small plants. Encircled and protected by the maize in the remainder of the field, small japonica bushes appeared, daisies and hollyhocks, Chinese lanterns, marigolds, tansy and honesty, sweet william, balsam and golden rod; seeds that must have lain dormant in the earth close to the house, perhaps that Anaïs herself had once planted, were now jolted into life. We spent hours transplanting them.
The syringa and the boule-de-neige, or viburnum opulus, that I had only just managed to save from destruction, were thriving and have grown more beautiful each succeeding year. This October I watched its leaves turning ever more glorious shades of crimson and I was doubly glad that I had saved it. And we have had no more problems with the damp.
Raymond, our mentor in every local tradition, decided that it was high time that we started our own cave. ‘Why don’t you make use of the other pigsty next to the outside lavatory?’ he said. ‘It faces north and should be ideal.’ We already had the old wine racks which we had found in the attic so we gave them a coat of wood preservative before installing them in the dark and cool little store. Now to choose the wine, a serious business.
After numerous telephone calls to a variety of cousins, Raymond arrived one afternoon in his oldest 2CV with a medium sized barrel or fût hidden under some sacks. He and Mike went off for an hour or two’s dégustation in the idyllic Lot valley, not far from Cahors. The first wine they tasted was, at that time, selling for between four and five francs a litre. Not entirely satisfied, and in any case, out for the afternoon and intent on as wide a choice as possible, they climbed further up into the hills for yet another tasting and, for nine francs a litre, they knew they had found just what they were looking for.
After cleaning it with a sulphur candle, the producteur weighed their barrel, filled it with his finest wine and weighed it again. The bill, which we shared, came to just under a hundred pounds. Before they left, the producteur, a meticulous man, recommended that they bottle it straight away. ‘Moi, je connais mon vin,’ he declared. ‘Mais je ne connais pas votre fût!’
At last we had a use for all those dozens of empty bottles that we had found everywhere, in the house, the attic and the chat. We cleaned them thoroughly and took them in cartons down to Raymond’s cave where the precious fût waited. Although the day was hot, once we had passed beneath the low lintel we entered a world of dark, damp and unchanging coolness. Our barrel was at the beginning of a long row of barrels of various sizes, beyond which were haphazard piles of crates and mysterious curtained cupboards, containing Claudette’s famous preserves.
Raymond pulled aside the dusty lengths of a variety of fabrics to show me the dozens of jars of foie gras and confit de canard – joints of fattened duck preserved in their own juices and covered with a thick layer of duck fat – the pots of pâté and rillettes, the bottles of asparagus, beans – green and white, dark red cherries, golden peaches and fat white pears. How many more there must have been before the advent of the deep freeze! On the floor in the darkest corner sat old enamel buckets packed with chicory plants, some sprouting fat cream shoots, others newly cut. Such self-sufficiency and expertise was fascinating.
As we began to unload the bottles, Grandma, flowered apron over her thick cardigan, came to help us stack them neatly in front of our barrel to the left-hand side. To the right she arranged several wine-stained planks until she was satisfied that they would not tip on the uneven earth floor. At last she nodded, placed a small rush-seated stool in front of the barrel and calling, ‘Venez, venez,’ she hurried outside.
The smoke gusted from her chimney as we followed her across the courtyard and through the narrow door into her primitive kitchen where a large iron cooking pot bubbled on a wood fire. She lifted the lid to show me the dozens of corks bobbing in the steamy water. ‘Il faut l’emporter à la cave, Michel,’ she indicated. She took a very long-handled shovel from behind the door and once Mike had lifted off the pot she scooped a heap of the hottest ashes and trotted ahead of us across the courtyard back into the cave where she dropped them in the far corner and helped to lower the pot on top. She explained that as we used the corks we must add others and that the water must remain warm. ‘C’est le système,’ she smiled. Grandma has a système for almost everything.
She squatted on the stool, turned the tap on the barrel and the bottling began. Each filled bottle she handed to me, and I became part of le système, standing each one carefully on the planks within easy reach of Mike and Raymond who banged in the corks which would later be sealed with wax. Naturally we had to make sure that the wine was still good and inevitably we spilled a little from time to time. The whole cave smelled of Cahors and wood smoke and, crouching to avoid cracking one’s head on the low, beamed ceiling, it was a strange, troglodite experience. After we had filled some one hundred and fifty bottles we were quite glad to emerge and straighten up in the warm brightness outside but we were also very pleased to think that our cave had really begun.
We labelled our odd assortment of reclaimed bottles Cahors ‘79, and proudly arranged them in our crudely-made wine racks. Later that year Raymond telephoned us in London to say that he had the opportunity to buy a fût of Corbières and would we like to share it. So another sixty litres of good red wine went into our cobwebbed pigsty. The only problem we have is keeping it long enough to reach its full maturity.
That summer, Adam, our elder son, sounding more than usually depressed on the telephone, said that he thought a visit to Bel-Air, which he had never seen, might be just what he needed. Delighted, we went to Bordeaux to meet him and were shocked to see how thin and unhappy he looked. Clearly all was not well. In the days that followed we watched the space and calm of our house in the sun begin to put him together again. The unreal world of rock and roll receded as he collected wood and mended fences with Raymond who treated him with a kindness and sensitivity I shall always remember. Claudette did her best to fatten him up, his French improved daily and he and his brother got to know each other better.
More friends arrived. Graham Bishop, a wonderful craftsman, alas by then too ill to carry stones himself, patiently taught me how to build a low, dry-stone wall to edge my now happily curved flower-bed which faced the porch. I learned to weigh the stones in my hand to balance them and to turn them until they sat naturally. It was fascinating work.
While Graham and Adam played chess under the great ash tree we decided that it was time that we at least attempted to clear the chai or outhouse. We needed room to store our growing collection of tools, ladders, tins of paint and wood preservative, garden furniture and the bicycles which we intended to bring next time. Most of the barrels in the chai were rotten and they disintegrated as we moved them. The two which remained we sawed in half and planted with marigolds, honeysuckle and marguerites, hoping they would look after themselves. And so they have.
Again we found the strange wooden, sledge-like object that had originally been in the attic. What on earth could it be? Grandma laughed when we asked her
. She dusted it off with a cloth and carried it into the bedroom. Lifting the covers she slid the pointed end into the bed. Now we understood. The curved shape held the covers high and the hook in the centre was to suspend a metal lined box full of hot ashes. It was called la moine. Why she did not know. She also found a larger metal-lined box called un chauffe-pied. These she told us were used by the old ladies d’autrefois – in the olden days – to keep their feet warm. They put them under their long skirts when they sat shelling walnuts. It was clear that we had a great many fascinating things just lying around the house.
Mike and Matthew carried out an ancient winnowing machine. Raymond came to explain how that worked. It was first used around 1880 and was the earliest mechanical aid for stripping the chaff from the wheat. As the grain was slowly tipped into the top of the machine it was separated by contact with the wooden blades of a paddle wheel which was turned by hand. It made a whirring sound and the name in patois was le tarare. When pronounced with the Italian r it was a very descriptive name. Raymond insisted that we put it safely in his barn. It was something d’autrefois and rightly to be preserved. In fact they never threw anything away.
The more we cleared the chai the larger it seemed. It could clearly be made into a beautiful room, perhaps a studio. The walls were especially beautiful: apart from the highest wall which adjoined the house itself, they had never been plastered and were a wonderful example of pierres apparentes. The high wall had once been roughly rendered with earth and also contained several large, worrying cracks and we thought that it might be prudent to ask M. René to cement it when he cemented the floor that winter. He agreed and chalked on a board which was nailed to the wall: CREPIS CE MUR.
One morning Matthew came in very excited. ‘You’ll never guess what Philippe and I’ve been doing,’ he cried. ‘Grandpa’s got this old car – ’
A House in the Sunflowers Page 9