Escaping

by Henrietta Taylor

  His birthday was coming up, so the next decision was to book him on a cheap flight from Nîmes to London as a present — and it was debatable whether it was going to be a single or a return ticket. It was a great incentive for me to get better. I wanted him out of the house double-quick. We had both experienced enough of playing Happy Families to last us a lifetime. It was now week eight and the shine had well and truly worn off; even I found it tedious to hear my constant barbs.

  The following week, I managed to lower myself gently into the car and we all headed off to the airport at Nîmes. Raymond would be staying with his cousin Jane and her husband and three boys in London, catching up with friends and going to museums. I, on the other hand, would be spending my time at the local laundrette, washing and drying sheets. Good riddance and goodbye!

  The children and I returned late at night from Nîmes after a particularly taxing drive home; even after dark in the depths of winter, everyone in France tends to behave like a rally driver. When we opened the front door a gush of freezing cold air rushed out to meet us; the fire had gone out and the pathetic amount of heat from the electric heater was wildly insufficient. There was a high degree of probability that we would freeze to death during the night. But at least it wasn’t snowing. The next day I would be able to forage for some kindling, get a blazing fire started, and keep it like that forever. The children trudged off miserably to bed, gripping a hot water bottle between them and mugs of steaming hot chocolate as comfort food. I pretended I couldn’t see the tears in their eyes. Late February for them back home meant long hot summer afternoons at the seaside after school, ice creams and sunburn.

  Being the middle of the night, it was safe to call Australia, so I wrapped a warm blanket tightly around my shaking body and put on the pair of lambskin gloves Raymond had forgotten, then telephoned my father.

  ‘Jack, it’s me. We’ve just got back from Nîmes airport. How on earth did you survive growing up in Glasgow as a kid? I have never experienced cold like this. It’s freezing enough for snow.’

  He rambled on about the latest mischief Lucy the puppy had been up to and I listened dutifully — until I saw something falling from the heavens outside.

  ‘Dad, it’s snowing! It’s magical!’

  It snowed all through the night, and by morning the drifts up against the house were well over a metre thick in places. We were completely snowed in: the car had disappeared and the garden was a winter wonderland. And the magic didn’t end there: the amount of snow that had fallen forced the school to close. The children could barely believe their luck! Plus there was enough of it for endless snowballs! Breakfast could wait; toast and hot chocolate couldn’t compete with snow fights!

  But while they were outside rolling in the snow, an unpleasant reality started to dawn on me. After I’d realised the lights weren’t working it took me most of the morning to remember where the fuse box was, then work out that we hadn’t blown a fuse. The snow had caused a blackout! This meant no hot water, no heating and no telephone. We had the gas to cook on, and the fireplace, but our food supplies were running low; we’d been due to go to the supermarket tomorrow morning. It wouldn’t matter, I told the children; it was great fun and we would have electricity within forty-eight hours. Sure. Absolutely sure. Almost positive.

  One week later, we had exhausted our supplies of soup, pasta and rice, the candles had all gone and the romance had disappeared along with them. The school was still closed, much to the children’s delight. Our neighbour lent us a dial phone that would work during the blackout, which meant I finally had contact with the outside world. I rang Kamila to find out if they had electricity in Saignon and if the roads were clear.

  Yes to both questions. We would go to Place de la Fontaine, which was now closed to guests, and where there would at least be heating and plentiful hot water. I had to shovel the car out and drive carefully up to the village, and from there the road was clear for the sixteen kilometres to Saignon.

  Within a few days the temperature had gone up dramatically, the snow had completely melted and the whole thing was like a distant bad memory. When Raymond returned he didn’t even believe we had been snowed in. He had devotedly rung me every day, and thought I had taken the children on holiday to Italy just to spite him!

  And just as I’d hoped, his absence had been the perfect circuit breaker. I had missed his hard Latin books nudging my back in bed, the sheets of paper everywhere and the constant crunch of biros and glasses caught up in the pillows. During my period of immobility due to my back, Raymond had come to excel in the role of short-order cook, and I was happy to relinquish some of my duties in the kitchen. He treated us to bacon and eggs, sausages and baked beans that he had brought back from London.

  We were back together and closer than ever. I had accepted that we didn’t cope particularly well living together, but it was infinitely worse without him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The New Business

  RAYMOND HAD KINDLY TOLD me that one in four small businesses fail within the first twelve months and one in five in the second year. I sincerely hoped I was up to the challenge.

  As I organised the financial side, I was more grateful than ever for his business brain. He showed me how to set up my accountancy books so that the day I started taking in money on a regular basis from clients I would be in control. He went assiduously through my accounts from the previous year, trying to get everything in order for the accountant, showing me the correlation between cheque butts and bank statements. The concept of Australian taxation was too high a hurdle for me even to contemplate without him. And the French tax system scared me even more. Raymond came with me to more meetings with Monsieur Perrard, who sweetly explained for the hundredth time how to invest my capital, pay for the houses and minimise my French tax legitimately.

  Raymond spent hours explaining how projected estimates of income could help me keep to a workable budget. I decided we didn’t think along the same lines. I wasn’t overspending; clients were entitled to a fully equipped house. Budget or not, the money had to be found somehow.

  I started drawing up a list of problems and possible solutions, which soon grew to alarming lengths. High on the list was the task of turning the two cottages into beautiful oases that people would be happy to live in for a week or two. But equally pressing was the need to begin advertising both properties. I had no idea where to start. People would want as much information on the houses as possible, including colour photos and details of rates and availability; they would ask exactly the same questions as I did when I went on holiday. I knew my clients were out there; I just wasn’t sure yet how to reach them.

  Before leaving Sydney I had pinned flyers on notice boards at local libraries, evening colleges, universities and Alliance Française, but this was small fry. I needed to reach a much wider market. A small ad in the local paper was inexpensive but proved to be fruitless. But I just managed to meet the deadline for a very expensive ad to go into a thick brochure that would be published in the UK. At least someone might hear about my properties that way.

  The Internet was the obvious answer. But my Net-surfing abilities were still fairly limited, despite months of playing the stock exchange. It seemed to me that you had to be extremely precise when typing in keywords to get to the correct websites, and I couldn’t work out which keywords to use. My typing skills had improved, but my knowledge of computers was still pathetically poor, and the little backwater of Provence I had chosen to live in appeared to have few technical people who could help. Shouldn’t I have a special business email address?

  Our boxes of computer self-help books, along with the children’s toys and all the other bits and pieces, were making their way across the seas to Marseille. When they eventually arrived Raymond and I drove 100 kilometres to Marseille then spent the day wandering around trying to find the office where I could deal with the customs officials and sign for the consignment. When we got there I couldn’t find the proof that the consignment be
longed to me. Yet another important piece of paper sucked into the black hole in my handbag!

  When we opened up the boxes of books, ninety-five per cent of the contents proved to be obsolete, impossible to understand and a sheer waste of money. The photographs were a joy to have back in our lives but the computer books were shoved at the bottom of the bookshelves, never to be opened again. After wasting a whole day on this task, Raymond and I were livid.

  I managed to set up an email address and then began the task of writing a printed information sheet for prospective clients, to which I could attach a sheet of photographs.

  At this stage Place de la Fontaine was in running order, but Rose Cottage wasn’t habitable for paying clients, nor would it be until halfway through 2001. How did you take enticing photographs for clients when renovation work hadn’t even begun?

  It seemed that one problem led into another. Interior photography was not my domain. My camera was fine for snapshots of children and holidays, but the definition was not sharp enough for good-quality photos. I would have to either engage a professional photographer or invest in a better camera. Now that digital cameras were becoming more affordable I felt that even I should be able to point and shoot, but installing the software into the computer was another thing altogether.

  This was the moment for Lizzie and me to take a trip to Auchan, the enormous hypermarket in south Avignon, about forty minutes’ drive away. It was the perfect shopping experience: all my technology needs under one roof. The sales assistant went pink with excitement went I handed him my shopping list:

  1. Fax machine with telephone and ink-jet photocopier

  2. Spare cartridges for the fax machine

  3. Two cordless telephones

  4. Flatbed scanner

  5. Computer extension cables

  6. Digital camera with extra memory sticks

  7. Technician to install and explain how to use all of the above, starting with the memory numbers in the telephone.

  On our way out the door Lizzie piped up: ‘Wait, did you get your receipt?’

  When I waved a slip of paper in her face she said, ‘No — not the docket from the checkout. You need an itemised sheet on Auchan stationery with the date and a reference number.’

  I looked at her blankly.

  ‘Quick. I’ll show you what you have to do.’

  Thank God for Lizzie. She whipped me back into Auchan and down the stationery aisle, and found folders, staplers, colourful cardboard dividers and a large package of plastic A4 sleeves with perforated edges. All dockets pertaining to goods bought for the rental properties had to be inserted into separate plastic sleeves and placed inside the folders. The folders had to be divided up into deductible and non-deductible items. Monthly tallies had to be written up in another section.

  ‘Start off correctly and you won’t have any problems.’

  Poor Lizzie. After living in France for more than fifteen years, a fair amount of the French obsession with paperwork had obviously rubbed off on her. I pitied her for her anal retentiveness. I had always prided myself on my ability to do things in my own distinctive way, and this would be no different. I carefully put the receipt into my bag, where it was filed immediately into the black hole, never to be seen again. (Years later, I’m pleased to say I’ve reformed my ways and now file everything meticulously into coloured folders.)

  Success from some advertisements in Saturday papers and rental agencies in America provided a glimmer of hope that I might be able to survive for more than twelve months and prove my father wrong. A small dribble of prospective clients had now begun contacting me for the summer season, occasionally via email but usually by letter or phone. I was glad to see that the majority of the world still had not embraced advanced technology. Little did I realise it then, but within two years virtually all my business would be through the Internet and all bookings would be by electronic mail.

  But before any client could walk through the door, I had to overcome the huge hurdle of the renovations, which soon consumed my every thought. My focus was firmly set on May, when Rose Cottage was due to open. Enter the Ahmed building team, consisting of Ahmed and Ahmed with the occasional appearance of their cousin, Ahmed. I managed to secure their promise that they would start work in early February and have everything finished by late April.

  Before they could attack the horror that awaited us in Rose Cottage, they had been commissioned to insert a new window into the second bedroom of Place de la Fontaine, to allow both light and air into the room. I had decided on this new window at the last minute, and it meant that Place de la Fontaine wouldn’t be ready for clients until a month before Rose Cottage.

  At the moment the room only had a tiny cell-like window high up on the wall. Everywhere in Provence you see the same style of window, quite effective for keeping out the heat in summer and the cold in winter. The windows on the northern side of Provençal houses are always smaller than on the southern side because of the howling Mistral wind from the north. To replace this tiny window, Lizzie’s husband Andrew had been commissioned to design a ceiling-to-floor double French door, opening onto a Juliet balcony.

  The approval from the mayor’s office arrived and the work started immediately. Scaffolding was erected and a hole was punched into the side of the wall; Place de la Fontaine looked like she had a seeping wound on her face. The stone for the arch around the window was ordered. There would be a slight delay, but it would be ready by the time the rest of the work was completed. Deadly words. The orange warning light was on, but ignorance was bliss. I had full confidence in Andrew’s work and his ability to bring everything together on time. He had been working in the French system for over fifteen years, so there was very little he didn’t know about how it operated.

  Construction work was obviously out of my league, but I wanted to see if I could cut any costs by doing some of the other jobs myself. After the side of the house had been smashed in, sending a cloud of dust and debris billowing into every crevice, my earlier calculation of six hours’ cleaning, washing and polishing seemed wildly insufficient. The job would take days. We would cope; costs had to be kept to a minimum. I was becoming less pleased with the Ahmeds, though. I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t thought of putting up some heavy plastic sheeting inside the house. The orange warning light began to flash.

  I simply didn’t have the time to paint the shutters that would adorn the new French windows. Raymond joked that my car was being sucked into the Bermuda Triangle on a regular basis, as I was driving constantly from Apt to Avignon to Aix-en-Provence, disappearing for hours at a time in search of items for Rose Cottage: finding paint and fabric samples, choosing doors and tapware and comparing white goods. The list was endless. There was just so much to be done.

  Meanwhile, the predicament of the shutters remained. They had to be painted on trestles or a flat horizontal surface to keep the paint from dripping. They still stood in the back corner of the garage in Chemin St Roch, waiting patiently. This chore had been shoved in the ‘Not Really Urgent’ file, and regrettably, on the day they had to be installed around the French doors, they were still standing in their naked glory, unpainted. Andrew was adamant that if I wanted to have the project completed on time so that the Ahmeds could move on to Rose Cottage, the shutters had to go up when the men were available. So up they went. They would just have to be painted while hanging, and we’d have to risk having the paint drip everywhere. But where could I get a painter at such short notice?

  I had a better solution. Raymond was proficient in painting — well, not really, but he could learn. This was the perfect job for him. He could stand on the scaffolding and paint the shutters in a day. It would be good for him to have some outdoor activity. He was still spending all of his days locked up in the attic studying Latin by correspondence, and in his spare time he walked the children to school, did the washing, cleaned up, cooked occasionally and checked my accounts, usually while listening to classical music broadcast from England over the
Internet. He had loads of time. It never occurred to me that he was already running our house and I was perhaps being just the teensy-weensiest bit unfair. I was just too busy with the cottages, where the pressure was escalating daily. Raymond calmly finished the washing up, took off his gloves and apron and told me that he was ready to help in any way that he could.

  But by this time the villagers were irate. The scaffolding was blocking the already narrow access to houses further down the hill. Their patience had come to an end. One more day was one too many, they cried. So the metal rig was removed and Raymond was forced to paint the shutters while hanging from a rickety old ladder with a Provençal Blue paint pot strapped to the top rung. He was pushed and buffeted by a glacial wind, and before he knew it a storm had sprung up from nowhere and attacked with a ferocity that left him speechless. The lashing, driving rain quickly turned into a hailstorm. On our way home that night I felt it was prudent not to say a word about the blue paint stains he’d left on the car upholstery.

  The next day, the villagers wandered around surveying the storm damage. There were broken branches strewn over the ground, leaves had been left in patterns on the cobbled stones where the swirling water had subsided, and the fountain struggled to contain all the excess water. Provence had unleashed a violent spring storm to bid winter on its way.

  But this mini-tornado was nothing compared with the ire of some of the villagers when they spied the new window in Place de la Fontaine. Their faces purple with rage, they shouted, ‘Ah, non! Ça va pas! C’est une honte! C’est une calamité!’ It was outrageous. A calamity. People turned to me and cried out that the window was not in keeping with the architectural heritage of the village, that obviously a grave mistake had been made. The mayor must be called immediately.

  ‘Bugger off. Go on, just bugger off!’ was my response. I couldn’t be bothered speaking to them in French. Sometimes violent hand gesticulations and a loud voice transcend the need for translation.