by Jean Gill
With the sudden change of mountain weather, there is a mist hugging the road, completely masking the hills, adding drifts of pink ground cloud when the flashes come. Just as suddenly, the mist lifts and once more white sears the sky above the St Maurice, Mielandre and Mont Rachas. The rage turns to rumbling, the house wakes up with all the clicks and beeps of electric gadgets starting up and we realise that two hours has gone by.
We are safe, dry and warm but what about others? The pompiers will have been out in their storm, ensuring that any lightning fires are out, helped in their work by the rain, but it turns out that it is the rain itself that does the worst damage.
We find out later that the River Ardèche rose so much in three hours that over a thousand campers were evacuated and spent the night in village halls and a young life was lost. It is not however images of the Ardèche which flood our television screen but Cornwall, then Perthshire, with warnings for our own south Wales. York sister tells me of floods there again, ominous in summer with winter rains still to come, and the elements remind us of the respect due to them and of our own fragility.
Our house is safe in flood and storm; it is fire that scares me, the forest fires of the Midi, sparked by tinder dry scrub and spread like the wildfire it is. I have a plan of course, for the moment when I smell smoke and see a wall of flames advancing from the woods, taking the truffle oaks en route to our orchard and my newly established lavender hedge.
We will go into the wine cellar and hide until the fire has gone. The basic idea seems quite sensible; the cellar is underground, there are solid stone walls, and the fire will sweep across overhead but there are some details that make me unhappy. How will we know when the fire has gone, and not get burnt to death popping our heads up to have a look, impatient as I am? How will we manage with two dogs and two cats in a confined space for an unspecified time (don’t even think about a litter tray)?
And what if the fire comes down into the cellar and reaches the wooden door of the wine cellar? This is not how I want to go. I would rather go, running around outside screaming, ‘Fire fire don’t panic’ and pretending I’m Jeanne d’Arc. John says we don’t live in a forest and he has no interest in discussing the cellar as a fire refuge. But then he wasn’t the one summoned by two council workers who appeared at our gate and told me there had been a fire on our land.
Disbelieving, I followed them to the corner of, not our but Monsieur Dubois’ field, where the charred earth and acrid smell told their own story. The council workers had been driving past when they saw flames so they stopped, jumped out of the van and put out the fire with the sand still piled there by the roadworkers. ‘What started it?’ I asked.
A shrug. ‘Who knows? A cigarette thrown out of a passing car probably.’
Stupidly, I say, ‘It’s not my land, it’s a neighbour’s.’ We look from the fire across the hundred yards to my house. The men say nothing. ‘I know,’ I say, ashamed, ‘It’s all the same to the fire. What should I do?’
‘I think we’ve put it out but check it in half an hour, an hour...’
‘And if the fire starts again?’ I can feel the panic rising. There is no longer grass in the field, just occasional spikes of almost dead herbs and flowers, waiting like matches for the spark.
The shrug. ‘Call the pompiers. There is nothing you can do.’
I wonder whether to call Monsieur Dubois, in his other home in Haute Savoie, to let him know that there was this near-terrible thing, a fire on his land, but the council workers’ words echo. There is nothing he can do either. He has been a good citizen, he has meticulously cleared all the undergrowth, mowed around the truffle oaks with his sit-on, stacked dead wood away from the trees and saved it for the autumn bonfires – he can do nothing to protect us from a stray fag-end. It is just another of those ‘what-ifs’.
Not that I’m against contacting the pompiers. It is the season for pompier heroics and it seems that every other person is a volunteer, if not a full-time hero. If the age restriction is relaxed much further, I might yet join the uniformed elite. The job is not just fires and floods (as if that were not enough), nor even, British style, cats up trees and small boys stuck in railings; road accidents, fallen climbers, lost cavers, wild animal sightings – whatever the emergency, the pompiers are expected to get there and deal with it.
As in Britain, there is a feeling that the risks are not reflected in pay and pensions, nor insurance for the vast army of volunteers without whom the summer fatalities would be even worse. Perhaps they would take me on for the little things... not too much climbing and carrying people.
Oddly, my height (lack of) affected my career choices more when I was sixteen than it would today; in those days I was barred from all of the uniformed forces and from being an air hostess. I have never really understood why an air hostess had to be tall; I’d have thought it an advantage on a plane to be little. On the other hand, in those days, air hostesses were chosen on the same sort of criteria as Miss World, so perhaps there were other factors excluding me from a job I only fancied because I was barred from it.
No, fire person is a far more interesting prospect, especially since a visit to the Gorges du Verdon, where a pompier speedboat left our little pedalo spinning in its wake. Opening the throttle full, her long blonde hair flying in the wind, Mademoiselle Pompier was making the most of her authority, carving up the tourists as she sped to an emergency – or to a picnic with her Pompier partner, in a far cove. It gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘siren’. I picture her leaning against her motorbike in her jackboots and I wish I were younger. Can you have a pompier speedboat, a motorbike and a cute fire-engine or do you have to choose?
The rain stops me worrying too much about fire. I know that this year is not like last year here; although as dry, it is cooler, we – and the farmers – have been able to sustain our gardens and crops. Already, I can join in some of the ‘remember when?’ and ‘That was the year...’
My neighbour and her dog Mimi stop to talk. Usually I am be-Pyreneaned and Mimi, traumatised by a previous experience with a German Shepherd, has to be kept away well beyond talking distance. Madame takes the opportunity to ask how we have settled in and I say, truthfully, that it feels as if we’ve lived here for years, that everyone makes us feel welcome, helps us when we stumble with the language. ‘Mais c’est normal,’ she tells me, clearly wondering if there really is a place on earth where the locals don’t try their best to welcome strangers. There are indeed such places.
It is the little changes that we notice. The families whose houses back onto the Jabron have put out their summer ladders so the children can paddle in the river, the pebble labyrinths have been built across the flow but this year’s stone monsters are different. Someone had a remote control boat for his fête day and the vessel shoots across the mini pool inside its ring of pebbles while the boy’s mother half-watches, half dozes, sitting on the bank.
We drive around Montélimar, half-noting the usual statues at each roundabout – the massive bull has gone, replaced with a rearing horse. Apparently someone made the Council an offer they couldn’t refuse, so they sold the bull, bought the horse and pocketed the profits – sorry, I mean they used the profits to benefit the people of Montélimar.
I don’t miss the bull but I would be sorry to lose my own favourite. It is in the centre of a particularly difficult roundabout, usually characterised by beeping horns and cars cutting in from wrong lane. Right in the middle of this chaos is a stone kiwi wearing ice-skates. Head down, concentrating on the imaginary ice, with its long nose profiled against the grass, it always makes me smile. Is that why it’s there?
A new roundabout has appeared amongst all the roadworks near our house and I wonder what will be the centrepiece there. Floral? Sculpture? The ancient plane tree, well over a hundred years old, has been preserved and the whole roundabout planned to leave it shading a side road that was once the main route into Dieulefit. Beside the plane tree, a warehouse wall still demands liberty f
or José Bové although I know for sure that he is now as free as any of us; I have seen him on the television news, attacking a field of maize, fighting against genetically modified crops (which do not usually fight back).
There is so much I haven’t done, not just the Picodon project but the stories I haven’t found out, including the 1920s Dieulefit artists; Edmeé Delebeque, known as ‘le corbeau’, the raven, because she always wore a black cape and who always put cypresses into her landscapes whether they were there in reality or not; Willy Eisenchitz, who said that the discovery of Provence was the most important, most liberating in his life.
There are the teachers, not just those responsible for smuggling Jewish children to safety, but also those who ran ‘l’école de plein air’, ‘the school in fresh air’, for youngsters aged 3 to 13 with problems – whether pulmonary or behavioural.
I feel kinship with the sixteenth century curate, Jean Morel, who had ‘no brakes on his mouth’. Who were the key figures in the old silk trade, running the factory in Dieulefit (now the hospital)? No doubt they were Protestants, as in the Cevennes. Why do silk and Protestant go together, or Quakers (the Rowntrees and the Cadburys) and chocolate?
Who was Yet Rhoosenthal, whose grave, in the village cemetery at nearby Poët-Laval, is adorned with an ironwork eagle and a tribute from the British Airforce Escaping Society? What part was played in the Second World War by this man with a Jewish name, who lived until 1972? How wonderful that when he did die, someone official cared. Who is ‘l’Anglais’ who donated the old altarscreen in the cathedral at Die and why did he do it?
It’s not just what I haven’t done that occupies my thoughts. Will the chimney sweep ever come back? I suspect that the electricians will, but when exactly? And will the filtration tank to complete my fosse septique be co-ordinated with the making good of the drive promise by the council roadworkers? Will someone buy Club Med and will it become noisier?
This is a good place to live - and to grow old. We have seen the old people sitting outside their houses, on benches in the village square or outside the churches, and there seem to be a lot of them. This augurs well for longevity – unless of course these ‘old people’ are all in their thirties, prematurely aged by the sun and their house renovation. We have some plans before we stop and just sit. We have Mielandre and Mont Rachas to climb and we are going to Strasbourg in December, to see Cabrel in concert and to rediscover Christmas in France’s most famous seasonal market.
The story never ends; the writer just chooses when to stop telling it. If it is to be Literature then you have to stop at a moment considered sad, horrific or violent – preferably all three with bonus marks for irony, which makes it eligible for the ‘black comedy’ tag. I choose to stop here, now, with a spider absailing down the washing, fine silver threads of dew? sap? dripping onto me occasionally from the acacias, the sound of my husband mowing lawns drowning the cicadas. A lizard scuds across the stone path and disappears behind a potted geranium. I am nobody, adrift in sunshine and mountains. Is this Provence? Who cares ... Dieu le fit... the village where ‘Nul n’est étranger’, ‘no-one is a stranger’.
Aquéu païs Diòu faguèt e l’amarés coumo lou paradis
This is a land created by God and you will love it as if it were Paradise.
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About the Author
I’m a Welsh writer and photographer living in the south of France with a big white dog, a scruffy black dog, a Nikon D700 and a man. I taught English in Wales for many years and my claim to fame is that I was the first woman to be a secondary headteacher in Carmarthenshire. I’m mother or stepmother to five children so life has been pretty hectic.
I’ve published all kinds of books, both with conventional publishers and self-published. You’ll find everything under my name from prize-winning poetry and novels, military history, translated books on dog training, to a cookery book on goat cheese. My work with top dog-trainer Michel Hasbrouck has taken me deep into the world of dogs with problems, and inspired one of my novels.
With Scottish parents, an English birthplace and French residence, I can usually support the winning team on most sporting occasions.
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1150: Provence
On the run from abuse, Estela wakes in a ditch with only her lute, her amazing voice, and a dagger hidden in her underskirt. Her talent finds a patron in Aliénor of Aquitaine and more than a music tutor in the Queen's finest troubadour and Commander of the Guard, Dragonetz los Pros.
Weary of war, Dragonetz uses Jewish money and Moorish expertise to build that most modern of inventions, a papermill, arousing the wrath of the Church. Their enemies gather, ready to light the political and religious powder-keg of medieval Narbonne.
Set in the period following the Second Crusade, Jean Gill’s spellbinding romantic thrillers evoke medieval France with breathtaking accuracy. The characters leap off the page and include amazing women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Ermengarda of Narbonne, who shaped history in battles and in bedchambers.
Chapter 1
She woke with a throbbing headache, cramp in her legs and a curious sensation of warmth along her back. The warmth moved against her as she stretched her stiff limbs along the constraints of the ditch. She took her time before opening her eyes, heavy with too little sleep. The sun was already two hours high in the sky and she was waking to painful proof that her choice of sleeping quarters had been forced.
‘I am still alive. I am here. I am no-one,’ she whispered. She remembered that she had a plan but the girl who made that plan was dead. Had to be dead and stay dead. So who was she now? She needed a name.
A groan beside her attracted her attention. The strange warmth along her back, with accompanying thick white fur and the smell of damp wool, was easily identified. The girl pushed against a solid mass of giant dog, which shifted enough to let her get herself out of the ditch, where they had curved together into the sides. She recognized him well enough even though she had no idea when he had joined her in the dirt. A regular scrounger at table with the other curs, all named ‘Out of my way’ or worse. You couldn’t mistake this one though, one of the mountain dogs bred to guard the sheep, his own coat shaggy white with brindled parts on his back and ears. Only he wouldn’t stay with the flock, whatever anyone tried with him. He’d visit the fields happily enough but at the first opportunity he’d be back at the chateau. Perhaps he thought she was heading out to check on the sheep and that he’d tag along to see what he was missing.
‘Useless dog,’ she gave a feeble kick in his general direction. ‘Can’t even do one simple job. They say you’re too fond of people to stay in the field with the sheep. Well, I’ve got news for you about people, you big stupid bastard of a useless dog. Nobody wants you.’ She felt tears pricking and smeared them across her cheeks with an impatient, muddy hand. ‘And if you’ve broken this, you’ll really feel my boot.’ She knelt on the edge of the ditch to retrieve an object completely hidden in a swathe of brocade.
She had counted on having the night to get away but by now there would be a search on. If Gilles had done a good job, they would find her bloody remnants well before there was any risk of them finding her living, angry self. If he had hidden the clues too well, they might keep searching until they really did find her. And if the false trail was found but too obvious, then there would be no let-up, ever. And she would never see Gilles again. She shiver
ed, although the day was already promising the spring warmth typical of the south. She would never see Gilles again anyway, she told herself. He knew the risks as well as she did. And if it had to be done, then she was her mother’s daughter and would never - ‘Never!’ she said aloud - forget that, whoever tried to make her. She was no longer a child but sixteen summers.
All around her, the sun was casting long shadows on the bare vineyards, buds showing on the pruned vine-stumps but no leaves yet. Like rows of wizened cats tortured on wires, the gnarled stumps bided their time. How morbid she had become these last months! Too long a winter and spent in company who considered torture-methods an amusing topic of conversation. Better to look forward. In a matter of weeks, the vines would start to green, and in another two months, the spectacular summer growth would shoot upwards and outwards but for now, all was still wintry grey.
There was no shelter in the April vineyards and the road stretched forward to Narbonne and back towards Carcassonne, pitted with the holes gouged by the severe winter of 1149. Along this road east-west, and the Via Domitia north-south, flowed the life-blood of the region, the trade and treaties, the marriage-parties and the armies, the hired escorts sent by the Viscomtesse de Narbonne and the murderers they were protection against. The girl knew all this and could list fifty fates worse than death, which were not only possible but a likely outcome of a night in a ditch. What she had forgotten was that as soon as she stood up in this open landscape, in daylight, she could see for miles - and be seen.
She looked back towards Carcassonne and chewed her lip. It was already too late. The most important reason why she should not have slept in a ditch beside the road came back to her along with the growing clatter of a large party of horse and, from the sound of it, wagons. The waking and walking was likely to be even more dangerous than the sleeping and it was upon her already.