There were no modern buildings. Islands were dotted between the inlet and the open sea. Sparsely planted vineyards scattered the lowland. The nearest supermarket was outside Narbonne. As we climbed into the village we entered narrow, cobbled lanes with room for just about two people to walk abreast.
Women were gathered at the lavoir, the communal washing area, scrubbing linen on flat stones and spreading it on the wide sides to dry in the sun. Hawkers were bringing in local market produce and their latest catch of fish. On Sundays many of the housewives stamped on live eels in the streets to get them to shed their scales – a task nowadays performed by cement mixers in the gardens. There was a bistro and bakery that sold bread and cakes still hot from the oven. We had found Bages!
The house we were looking for clung to the side of the rock, its windows facing the water, and beyond the gardens there was arid scrubland between it and the lagoon, with space to moor boats and a small, rickety jetty.
It was a three storey building. The grenier had a towering raftered ceiling and we realised that we could open up the whole wall facing the water, extending it with sturdy sliding glass doors onto a balcony. There was no sanitation and no reliable mains water supply, but that came after a few years, when top quality water flowed from the Rhone and the thirsty land could drink its fill. Then the whole area flourished and vineyards spread everywhere.
In high sun lizards slithered across the floor of the vast upper room, and as dusk approached bats flew in and out, and swallows and swifts swept through. Fortunately the dense clouds of mosquitoes, which had kept the whole region from tourism for so long, were fast disappearing as the land was being drained.
It wasn’t easy to negotiate buying a house because often each room was the property of another member of the extended family, and getting agreement between them was a long and arduous task. The house we bought in April 1968 was right on the waterfront and built in about 1900. The stable was at street level, and it would also have been stuffed with wine barrels, fishing gear, and a boat squeezed in, too. People lived on the first floor. At the top the spacious and lofty grenier incorporated a tiny room where the stable boy slept.
We learned this from Mademoiselle Denise, an unmarried lady in long skirts and a floppy Victorian flowery bonnet, who was eager to let us know the history of the house, and said the stable boy had been her lover but never came back from the First World War. She had special memories of that little room. A shaft ran from one side of the grenier down to the stable at the bottom, and he forked hay down for the animals’ feed. A stone circular staircase with black iron balustrades and glass knobs on it twisted its way up from street level to the loft.
The superb dimensions of the grenier, splendid exposed beams and red floor tiles presented an opportunity to create a huge living room, on one side a stairway leading to a pine balcony overlooking the main room, and an extra bathroom between the stairs and the back wall, the window of which opened onto sheer rock. Uwe designed it with great flair and did detailed architectural drawings that were followed minutely by the local builder and carpenter, Monsieur Dellong.
The light from the Mediterranean sky reflected in dazzling water thrilled me, and I knew I would want to paint – something I hadn’t done since my teens. With the wide expanse of tiled floor I could handle large canvases of wood, silk stretched out and weighted at the corners, or hessian fixed to a big frame, and crawl round them with ample space surrounding. I could spill water or paint and clear it up easily, and leave work in progress overnight without having to tidy it away. Lavishly decorated wall tiles and china cups and jugs would dry off in the warm air and then be baked in the oven on the first floor. Uwe was off sailing, and often the children too, and it was easy to see when they were on their journey back across the water, so I could estimate their arrival time and get a meal on to greet them. And when I was tired or inspiration faded I flopped on a king-sized bed under a massive mosquito-netting tent, a good base, too, for reading and writing and correcting proofs of articles and books.
Painting in Bages
I painted birth goddesses, several huge portraits of Uwe in the bath and eating shellfish with gusto, the village cemetery with its family tombs, vineyards stretching below, hoofed pan spirits eating grapes, and angels abundant overhead, and vivid symbolic representations of dramatic world news, triumph and disasters: earth and moon at the time of the first moon mission, Dubrovnik under attack, lit by flames, with families sheltering in the cellars, and long lines of starving people seeking food at distribution centres in Africa. The very first painting was a pattern of the girls’ heads and shoulders, focusing on the special shape and angle of each, and their inter-relationships. I painted forms that evolved from the shape of the spiral staircase, and the life that teemed around and in the house, the rough grey stone walls with lizards and insects, moss and leaves in their interstices, and a snake that slipped in if we left the back window open. Then there were the birds – the wetlands of Narbonne are a bird paradise – including pink flamingos, great flocks of them feeding in the Étang. Uwe’s mother stayed with us and I painted her arthritic hands as the knotted branches of old olive trees. And there were sky and lakescapes with dramatic changes in the weather, dawn and sunset, and storms that came up with thunder and lightning crackling across the water, when it seemed the earth shook.
Though the first long drive down through France was stressful with five children in the car – for them as well as us (Celia nibbled at the car upholstery and Uwe was convinced she had eaten a sizable portion of the window frame on her side) – it was wonderful when we arrived. We towed a caravan for the first time so the children loved to sleep in it. When we stopped overnight at a luxury hotel the children slept in the caravan in the car park, and came one by one and on their best behaviour to have a bath in the hotel. I think the staff were rather bewildered by five blonde little girls all dressed alike – or was it one having five baths?
We stopped to buy provisions at little towns and stocked up with picnic foods for the children. This didn’t prevent them standing outside the restaurant where we were dining, their noses pressed against the window. Waiters took pity on them and emerged from the kitchen with trays of fruit and other delicacies. I don’t think French parents treated their children this way. They would have been sitting at the table until 10 at night.
Life in Bages allowed the girls great freedom, and they could roam and explore all round the village as they wished. They invented a hide-and-seek game they called ‘Smith’, because it linked to a book they enjoyed reading. All but one girl would hide in the nooks and doorways of the alleys, while another set out to find them. As each was discovered she joined the seeker. The hunt entailed jumping over sleeping cats and dogs and any other hazards. They always came in fresh-faced and shining from their game.
A small 12-foot, gaff-rigged dinghy came with the house, and seemed perfect for the children so that they could have adventures along the coast and into the canal.
We met the other foreigners in the village: Dr Dubost, a radiologist from Toulouse, who bought his house the same day as us, and he and his family became close friends.
The children’s boat quickly acquired a name – Trouble (as trouble arrived every time they got in it). Our friend Margaret joined us with her daughter Miranda and the girls went on adventures together and there was one occasion when they didn’t come home at nightfall.
A Letter To My Father, Summer 1972
My Dear Father,
We are having a gorgeous holiday. The weather is hot and sunny, with plenty of wind for sailing, and the children are all getting on very well together.
I have already done four paintings, one on the balcony wall and two on wood. At the moment Uwe has gone with Polly in Trouble, the little boat with the engine, to try to find Tess and her crew of Miranda, Nell and Jenny, who went out for a day’s exploring of deserted islands at 10.30 a.m. this morning and are still not back at 8.30 p.m. No sign of a sail on the horizon, and soon it w
ill be dark! But there is a breeze, unusual in the evenings here, so they should be able to get back. I don’t know what we do if they don’t turn up. Uwe’s engine only takes fuel for an hour or so, so he couldn’t get to all the islands to find them. Margaret has gone to Arles for the day. Still, they are good swimmers. I think that perhaps they wanted to go to different islands and so Tess dropped them off in different places and now can’t find them to pick them up, or something of that kind. They will get cold, but beyond that I don’t suppose any harm will come to them.
2 Days Later:
Well, that letter never got finished, because the girls did not turn up. Margaret got back to find her daughter still not returned and the sun setting. It was clear that a storm was brewing. The sky darkened, the wind roared.
No other boats were around. They had all scuttled to harbour. Hour after hour passed and night fell. There was no chance of them sailing back now. Polly and Uwe tried to reach the nearest islands in a very choppy sea, and came back not having sighted their sail, and with no indication of where they might be. We thought they might have made the mainland at Port la Nautique, the other side of the Étang, so Margaret and Uwe drove there (it is only half an hour or so away by road) and hoped to see the boat by a railway crossing which runs close to the water. It was pitch dark with only a little shrimp of a moon. The wind was blowing hard by now, and there was no sign of them.
We had got together food and drink and sleeping bags and blankets and hot water bottles, but when they returned without the girls we put them away and wondered what to do next. There are no coastguards here, so there is no rescue service on which to call, and one simply depends on friendly fishermen. We had no petrol for the engine of the little boat and Margaret fetched some from Narbonne. We had found a torch, although a very faint one, under Nell’s pillow. It was now about one in the morning. Doors were banging with the wind and shutters flapping. Uwe went up to Dr Dubost who has six children of his own and a fast motor boat, but all the lights were out and he didn’t want to disturb them. It was decided to go to bed and start the search again as soon as light dawned.
Of course, once we lay down we really started worrying. Had the boat floated away while they swam? Had one of them tried to swim after it and drowned way out in the lagoon? Had one of them stuck in deep mud near one of the islands and sunk? Had someone been hit on the head with the boom as it jibed and been knocked unconscious into the water? Uwe had said they need not wear life jackets all the time if they got in the way and hampered their movements, provided they had them on board. I thought of nasty men encountering a little girl on a lonely island. Were they all together, or had they split up? We had heard them say they wanted to visit different islands. What about Jenny? Had she become exhausted with swimming and exposure? Uwe felt terribly guilty for letting them go.
As soon as the sky got a bit lighter I made coffee and found extra jerseys for them in case they were weak with exposure and dehydration and Margaret and Uwe went off in the motor boat at 5.20 a.m. It takes about 2 hours to reach the island, a speck in the distance, on which it was most likely they had stayed if all was well, except that the wind was too awkward for them to make it back again. As a result I was left in suspense for some six hours (watching the horizon, and seeing if I could glimpse the wreckage of a boat) before they returned to say that they hadn’t found the girls, but they had discovered the boat, intact and in good order, with a note tied to the mast saying that Tess, as captain, had decided the journey home was too difficult against the north wind and that they were sleeping on the island, on beds of seaweed in one of the deserted houses. The note said they intended to walk back around the Étang keeping as close to the shore as possible, but omitted to say which way round they were coming. Margaret said it was signed by everyone except Jenny, so we weren’t sure that Jenny was all right. Inside the boat was a well kept log of the journey.
Uwe and Margaret chugged back, towing the boat behind them. They were soaked to the skin, and since we didn’t know where to find the girls and they had neither of them had any breakfast, we had some bread and cheese, and then the idea was that Uwe and I should drive one way and Margaret in her car in the opposite direction to see if we could find them, with ample supplies of food and water. I could imagine them fainting by the roadside and baked by the sun, which was now very hot. Margaret left, and just as we were walking out of the door Tess came loping in, bright pink, hair wet and matted, and looking worried at what we would say. She made for the shower saying, “The others are on the road between here and Peyriac. Could you pick them up? Their feet are cut about by stones and it hurts them to walk.” We rushed off and first encountered Nell and Jenny, grinning broadly and looking as if they had walked 50 yards or so, gaily hitching a lift from us. They had quarrelled with Miranda who was still back near the next village. In fact she was pretty near too, but her flipflops had split and she could hardly walk in them.
They had had a marvellous time. “It was fun”, said Jenny, “Only we were worrying about you worrying.” They had found a ruined cottage and sheltered behind its stones. The mosquitoes buzzed all night and attacked them. Tess made a plan of campaign, and as soon as they could see a short distance in front of them she started them paddling across the isthmus to a spit of the mainland that projected into the water, and they walked round the bay in the direction of Bages for about 5 kilometres. They had walked a good twelve miles back by following a railway track that runs between a finger of land extended into the lake, wading through shallow water and climbing over rocks, and then gone through fields and along lanes and roads in the direction of Bages.
They treated it as a great adventure and their first thoughts were to write it up in full in their diaries. They had suggested to some boys who were going back from the island that they ring the police in case we rang them, but the police never contacted us. They had not thought of taking our phone number with them and as it is not yet in the book did not get anyone they met to ring us, which would have simplified matters.
We scooped them up, listened to stories of their exploit with relief and admiration, and returned them to civilisation, showers and food.
We have just about caught up with our sleep, but not Uwe, who went down with a migraine, because of being so exhausted and also, I think, so anxious, and he has been sleeping all day solidly. The children have been flopped on their beds for long periods too, but Jenny and Polly have been learning water skiing with Dr Dubost, and I gather Jenny is getting quite good at it. She has boundless energy, that child. She has been out with him twice already today, although the second time there was a lot of wind and she didn’t like having her mouth full of water much of the time.
We have heard from Celia who had Josie staying with her, and was just off on a pacifist demonstration in Stratford and a Quaker youth walk in George Fox’s footsteps round the north of England, and then to a meditation session with Hindus or Buddhists or someone, and I think she plans to spend a week or so in London.
Polly and Jenny have been cooking supper and I hear Tess’s motor coming in across the lake. She has Miranda as crew and they went to fetch back Trouble, the little rowing boat, which Margaret and Uwe left at the island when they brought back the Bosun which the children had been sailing.
Uwe and I are going up in the Pyrenees and to have a look at Andorra while Margaret looks after the kids the week after next before she leaves. Later this week Margaret, Uwe, Nell, Polly and Miranda are cruising in the big boat, She, down to Spain. Tess likes to be captain of Fertility, so she is staying here.
Both fridges are working well, which is a blessing. The washing machine started as soon as it was plugged in, too. We have bought a liquidiser to make lemon drinks, grate cheese, etc. The house is much easier to run than it was three years ago! Tess jumped on the end of Miranda’s bed yelling ‘The lady likes Milk Tray’ or something the significance of which I don’t see, and it crashed to the ground. So we shall have to get the carpenter round.
Lo
ve Sheila
Another time Polly and Jenny were arrested by the police in Trouble on the canal between the sea and Narbonne. They had no identification and no evidence that they owned the boat. They were locked in cells and given some police magazines to look at. They used their incarceration to put tails on all the pictures of policemen and write ‘cochons!’ beneath each. They were allowed to phone me. I got hold of Dr Dubost as quickly as I could and he drove to the police station and explained, as he rescued them, that the English had different educational methods from the French and wanted their children to be adventurous, not ‘sage’.
CHAPTER SIX
LECTURES AND BOOK TOURS
USA
From 1968 onwards, I travelled back and forth to the United States lecturing and publicising my first book The Experience of Childbirth and according to the dynamic feminist Norma Swenson, founder of Our Bodies Ourselves, and on the Faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health, had a ‘groundbreaking role in changing the discourse in childbirth’.
Norma invited me to lecture to the Boston Association of Childbirth Education. She flung open the doors of my career in challenging aggressive interventions in childbirth, ‘just in case’ obstetrics and ceremonial birth procedures (those carried out by rote whether they are needed or not). It was my first visit to the United States since my time in Chicago in 1950 and I came face to face with a system in which male gynaecologists monopolised women’s health care, having completely eliminated competition from midwives, and claimed exclusive access to and control over the organs of female reproduction.
A Passion for Birth Page 16