A House in the Sunflowers

by Ruth Silvestre

  ‘Did you know Clothilde and Fernand?’ I asked him.

  ‘Clothilde?’ he cried. ‘Il faut demander à Mme Barrou,’ you must ask Mme Barrou – Clothilde was her aunt and lived with her until she died.

  It was in the village shop that I next bumped into the champion carrot grower. ‘Et alors,’ she shouted, embracing me fiercely. She had wide black rims of earth under her nails, and her hair, which looked as though she had trimmed it herself with the secateurs, showed a wide, white parting in the carrot coloured strands. ‘Ça va?’

  ‘Ça va. I’ve been hoping to see you to talk about Clothilde. She was your aunt I hear.’

  ‘Bien sûr. She was married to Fernand who was the son of Mathilde, who was the sister of Anaïs,’ she finished triumphantly.

  ‘And they lived at Viallette?’ I asked. Mme Barrou nodded.

  ‘What happened to Fernand?’

  She said nothing but took me by the hand and led me across the road to the war memorial. I had seen it every time I came out of the shop and yet had never noticed his name. How Alaïs must have missed his hero and his confidant.

  The last group of letters are from Delphine and although written later are full of references to the hideous war that changed so many lives. Most of her letters are very sad. The first one, written at the end of 1919, is the longest.

  ‘I use the occasion of the new year to break our silence and offer to you my best wishes and also to Alaïs (by this time Justin was dead). I hope that 1920 will favour us both with health, prosperity and, above all, consolation. I think so often about you. There is no corner of your home that I cannot remember for I shall never forget that in those moments of loneliness and sadness that I went through during the war I came to you so many times to search for consolation.’

  It seems that although she has moved, Delphine is still in service, and extremely unhappy. She tells Anaïs that she tries hard to remember her advice, in particular about keeping the linen in order, but that by the time she has finished her work it is gone nine o’clock and after having been on her feet all day she is too tired to sew. ‘And I will not be a sou better off by the end of the year,’ she writes, ‘as everything gets dearer. I am obliged to believe that the best time of our life is past for we shall never be as contented as we were before the war. I shall stop my writing as I shall finish by boring you…She who never forgets you, Delphine.’ Alphonse, who clearly did survive the war, adds a cheery postscript, wishing that Alaïs might find a charming other half.

  Anaïs must have sent her many parcels over the years for almost every letter thanks her for some kindness. ‘Thank you for the prunes. I eat them with so much more pleasure, knowing that they come from Grèzelongue.’ ‘Thank you for putting a flower in your letter, it brought me the perfume of Grèzelongue, and also for the money for the apron which will make me look more correct as you told me.’ The last letter is written in January 1939, on the eve of yet another war, and ends ‘I’m sorry not to have written for the new year but we had to kill the pig as he was lame. I shall never be young again and it is only bad days to come that await me. If I weren’t so far away I could come and tell you my troubles as I did during the war.’

  What happened to Delphine in the Second World War to end this correspondence of twenty years I shall probably never know.

  Mme Barrou talked about Anaïs and her sister Mathilde going to church together, with Clothilde. ‘They were always so neat and clean,’ she said, ‘and always with a sprig of something pinned to their coat, a little rose or a bit of heather.’ One Sunday afternoon returning from a drive in Grandpa’s old Citroen, Raymond took us to the churchyard where Anaïs, Justin and their son Alaïs are buried together. Now each summer I make a pilgrimage; I tidy the weeds and I plant a few more of Anaïs’s house leeks, sempervivum. I hope eventually that they will cover the grave and make her last resting place ever green.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  This year we could not wait until July to return to Bel-Air. Our Cretan holiday of the previous year had been fun, with sunlight so bright in skies so vividly blue, that even before breaking our fast on thick yoghurt and honey, we had reached for sunglasses. The hillsides were an embroidery of flowers and the Cretans the most beautiful people with thick, lustrous hair which sprang from their foreheads as though they were perpetually emerging from the sea. But inevitably we, the tourists, were on the whole an unlovely lot, and I began to tire of enforced idleness and all those meek, red-kneed husbands with shopping bags, patiently trailing their bargain-seeking wives through endless curtains of cotton dresses, scarves and tablecloths.

  We flew to Toulouse in May and the train to Agen was crammed with excited migrant workers coming to pick the strawberries. After an exceptionally mild and wet winter the grass round the house, full of scabious, poppies and clover, was up to my shoulders. In the south-facing lawn Raymond had kindly cut a rectangle but he had left a wide, untouched border for fear of inadvertently mowing down my invisible lavender bushes, my escallonia and japonica, my irises, and, most precious of all, a loquat which I had grown from a stone and had planted out the previous summer. The straight red stems of the passion flower had reached the roof. It seemed rather late to prune it so I just hoped that some of the flowers would tumble over and hang down. There were clumps of wild marguerites everywhere and in the dusk they gleamed like unattached, milky stars; but the biggest surprise was the roses.

  We had never been at Bel-Air in late May. At Easter they had just begun to bud and by the time we came back in late July they were dry, tattered bushes which gave no hint of the beauty of the flowering. Now we saw what Grandma had always told us. ‘They were Anaïs’s favourite flowers,’ she said. On the north-facing wall, the whole length of the chai, a brilliant cerise rose thrust its long, pointed buds up through the stems of the elderberry and orange blossom. A sweet-scented, double pale pink climber was held neatly in place on the west corner by the tall, sticky stems of common cleaver which, as children, we had called ‘sweethearts’ as we stuck them on each others’ backs. Yet more, small red roses bloomed under the window of the new atelier and on the south-facing wall, what I had always thought was the remains of a dog-rose turned out to be a thick-petalled, creamy white, scented climber. And to think they had all been blooming for the last twelve years and we had never seen them.

  And there were more birds. Hour after hour, hidden high in the ash tree, a warbler repeated his liquid, questioning trill. I kept the binoculars round my neck but I never saw him. In the wooden letter box which hangs next to the front door were seven eggs and the parents, a pair of great tits, fretted whenever we sat on the porch. Once the eggs were hatched we were obliged to move chairs and table from the flight path between the nest and the ash tree. Each time we came out of the door the thin, high piping would be instantly silenced by a fierce click from the parent but, once we were out of the way, juicy caterpillars were posted through the slit intended for the mail. We made a sign for the postman, ‘Chez oiseaux. Posez les lettres sur la table SVP.’

  Outside the Syndicat d’initiative in Monflanquin there were more roses. They framed the election posters from which smiled M. Chirac and M. Mitterand and steely-eyed M. Le Pen. Everyone was pleased about the release of the French hostages whose faces and number of days in captivity had been shown after the TV news every night since their capture. We felt sad that the British hostages were not so remembered. It was assumed that M. Mitterand would win the presidency but there was an air of real excitement.

  Sunday was the day of the election and we were invited down to the farm to watch the results which, we were surprised to learn, would be declared that evening. Raymond, who obviously had complete faith in the system, explained that it was possible to estimate the results. Thinking of our own all night vigils and last minute demands for recounts I could not understand it.

  When we arrived just before eight that evening the table was laid but they had clearly not yet eaten. On the stove was a pot of soup which Claudette, int
ent on the screen, made no attempt to heat or serve. Raymond turned to greet us. ‘Asseyez-vous, asseyez-vous,’ he said hastily, pulling out more chairs. Grandma, hands folded in her lap, her head on one side like a little patient bird, sat leaning towards the screen with its fast-talking commentator. Grandpa, putting down the cat he was stroking, got up to turn up the volume.

  Moments later a thinly smiling M. Chirac elegantly and sonorously conceded defeat, making it seem, in the manner of politicians everywhere, that it was almost a triumph. Grandpa laughed. ‘What did I tell you?’ he crowed.

  Not from a presidential desk but jostled by an ecstatic crowd, some jumping up to be seen on camera, calm paternal M. Mitterand spoke to the nation. After that it was a free-for-all. In the next hour of chauvinism, mere party politics irrelevant, it was la gloire de la France, past, present and future that was extolled. We imagined the eighty-five per cent of the population that had voted listening as les Bertrand listened with shining eyes. Grandpa did something that I had never seen him do before. Without a word he got up from his chair, lit the gas under the soup, stirred the pot and then served himself, watching the television all the while.

  ‘Well I always thought that food was the most important thing in France,’ said Mike. ‘Now I know it’s politics.’

  Raymond laughed, ‘Bien sûr, mais ce n’est pas tous les jours.’

  At last the transmission ended. Claudette came out of her trance and in her usual brisk fashion she prepared a meal. As on most Sunday evenings, except for special occasions, it consisted chiefly of leftovers from lunch. My contribution, a chocolate cake, tempted Véronique, my one-time rosy-cheeked little professeur de dictée, now quite a beauty, who came in briefly for yet another change of clothes. Raymond opened a bottle of his sweet golden wine, fabrication maison from Anaïs’s grapes, to drink with the cake and talked about his plans to sow le grand champ with sunflowers. ‘And what about the newly cleared ground just below the wood?’

  ‘Sunflowers too,’ he said, ‘but they’ll have to be planted later as the soil is heavier and still too wet.’ Clearly sunflowers were profitable as well as spectacular. ‘You’ll be surrounded by sunflowers,’ he said, ‘that will please you.’

  As we said goodnight and came out to the car a nightingale was singing. We freewheeled down the drive and sat leaning out and listening to the miraculous sound, reluctant to start the engine and shatter the night with mechanical noise.

  A few days later, hired by the farmers’ Coopérative, another new machine and its driver arrived. With its gleaming red containers it sowed eight rows at a time, blowing each seed through a revolving perforated disc which ensured its falling to earth at exactly spaced intervals. As the young man drove down the field, Raymond, hands on hips, very much the successful patron, watched contentedly, the first eight rows of sunflowers already in his mind’s eye. But when the machine turned and the long straight lines began to waver his face changed. He threw his hands in the air, ‘Oh, comme il est maladroit!’ he cried, clearly wishing he was doing the job himself. He turned his back on the field and came in for an aperitif. ‘Now we need rain,’ he said, ‘then in eight days they will have germinated.’ The next thing, as though to order, I heard the first heavy drops pattering onto my terrace as I fell asleep. The seeds sown by high technology germinated as predicted, but on the tenth day I was amused to see Raymond, a basket on his arm like some biblical sower, trudging the perimeter of le grand champ scattering slug-killer.

  We bought twenty square metres of small, square brick tiles to cover the floor of the new atelier and the west facing porch, and Le Barbu being otherwise occupied, Mike became M. René’s new assistant. Their only problem was the low beam which formed the outer edge of the porch roof. With the floor level raised it was now almost lethal, and in spite of constant cries of attention everyone cracked their head.

  ‘We’ll have a go at raising it in the summer,’ said M. René as he grouted the tiles with liquid cement, forcing it into the cracks with a large squeegee. Then it was all hands to cleaning them, first with sawdust, then on our knees with rags soaked in fuel oil. Rough fired and marked with the odd cinder, the tiles are simple and attractive and we were pleased with the result of our working holiday.

  Before our return that summer I went to Granada in June to work on a television film and I spent my one free day walking round the magnificent gardens of the Alhambra in a disbelieving trance. Later on our journey down to Bel-Air in July we called at Giverny and once again I was stunned by another ravishing garden, the one which Claude Monet designed. Yet for me neither of these compared with the experience of climbing our winding track overhung with sunflowers. I think that no one could walk the length of such a field without a lifting of the spirits. The vigour of the tough stems draped with large broadly-veined leaves, the bee-studded centres brown at the outside edge where they begin to ripen, shading inwards to palest green, the exuberant luxury of the overlapping petals with the late afternoon sun behind them, the hot ripe scent of marigolds – all must be enjoyed the more intensely for in a few weeks they will be dry dark mockery of their former perfection. There is a primitive joy about a flower whose head is as large as one’s own. Les tournesols? They do not turn. They lift their faces to the morning sun and stay there and are glorious. And we were doubly lucky for as those in le grand champ began to fade, those planted later on the other side of the house opened. It was a golden summer.

  A week after we arrived Grandpa celebrated his eightieth birthday. Twenty-nine adults and seven children sat trying to decipher the menu. Véronique, after specially naming each dish – foie gras entier de canard became délices de Barbarie, intelligible presumably to those familiar with this species of duck, the salmon was seigneur de la rivière – had then written the titles backwards. The guests puzzled over the long list of dishes. One held it up to a mirror. ‘It’s in English,’ shouted another.

  ‘It’s not,’ we cried. The wife of le garagiste shrugged and smiled.

  ‘I shan’t bother,’ she said, ‘I know it will all be delicious. I shall just sit here and eat it.’ So did we all, course after course after course, and wine after wine, a 1960 Burgundy, tawny and wonderful and a Château Margaux ‘78 with le rôti. Eighty years called for such a celebration.

  Le garagiste, now retired, has taken to travelling and regaled us with tales of tropical fish seen from glass-bottomed boats in Guadeloupe. His brother, a retired peripatetic inséminateur, now stays put and studies bees. He will talk about his hives and his honey with mounting enthusiasm for as long as you will listen. A dragonfly lighted briefly on the table and he was off, describing its lifecycle as though it were one of the wonders of the world, which it is.

  Inevitably they talked of wine, and the problems of those growers who were introducing hybrids to improve the quality. But what, in fact was happening to that quality? They threw their hands in the air. ‘Bordeaux? A disgrace!’ said someone. They looked at each other.

  ‘Of course,’ said the bee-keeper, local pride reasserting itself, ‘un bon Bordeaux is always superior to un Bourgogne.’ They nodded. ‘Mais un bon, j’ai dit,’ he roared, finger poised, ‘with nine out of ten Bourgognes on est sûr, la même avec le Cognac, mais le Bordeaux – attention!’ No one moved, shocked by such perfidy, but there was worse. ‘Armagnac aussi,’ he shouted. They shook their heads in despair. ‘Maintenant,’ he finished solemnly, ‘il faut toujours savoir le terroir et le cru.’

  The champagne was poured as they nodded agreement. The bee-keeper, clearly the family orator, took a much altered script from his pocket, put on a pair of glasses which looked far too small on his broad, mobile face and began his peroration to Grandpa with the somewhat inaccurate statement, ‘We have known you now for eighty years – we marvel at your youth.’ Grandpa laughed and looked at his plate.

  All summer visitors came and went as the sunflowers ripened, the seed-heads swelling and darkening, plums began to scent the air and the maize dried and crackled in the heat; fam
ily and friends, actors and architects, poets, painters, psychologists and priests and, en passant, friends of friends, curious about this place that they had heard of called Bel-Air. Claudette delighted in sampling each new dish that we prepared for her. She was fascinated by steak and kidney pie and a Portugese recipe for potted sardines in whole lemons and also my cousin David’s avocados mixed with sharp apple, watercress and toasted nuts. Raymond demanded more mince pies. Their interest in food is insatiable. On their return from a visit to friends their account of the day will inevitably begin with ‘On a très bien mangé,’ and will continue with many a ‘et puis, et puis.’ I am sure that they would never think of eating, as Mike and I do when we are busy, a tin of tuna emptied onto a bowl of green salad, a squeeze of lemon and a sliced onion. We eat, enjoy and go back to work. This is not le système d’ici!

  The sunflowers burned almost black and were harvested leaving a field of stalks which Raymond chopped all day in a swirl of dust. The following day, while he began the plum harvest, we decided to begin working on the west terrace with M. René. The more we looked at the state of the timbers of the porch roof the more sensible it seemed to replace them when we raised the dangerous beam. Clearly when le charpentier had originally done the whole roof twelve years previously he had either run out of enthusiasm or money by the time he had reached that end of the building. Now that the old prune oven was to be used as a studio it was essential to make it watertight and dustproof. We looked up at the smoke-blackened triangle of crumbling rough-cast at the very top of the wall. That too would look so much better if we cleaned it off. Now we realised that we should have done all this work before tiling the floor.

  We bought £80 worth of new roof timbers, chevrons et voliges, rafters and laths. We laid a plastic sheet over our brick-tiled floor and then covered it with the new wood. The demolition began. I soon realised just how heavy Roman terracotta roof tiles are, as I helped to remove and stack them. The old worm-eaten roof timbers made another stack of firewood and then we jacked up the heavy beam until the tallest of us could pass beneath it. As we began to tap away the dirty rough-cast the handsome stones beneath emerged. As we worked down the wall we uncovered the hand-cut stones of an early archway. We repointed the stones with a cream cement and then M. René and Le Barbu rebuilt the roof.