“Yes, well…you see there has been an error somewhere along the line,” the surveyor explained. “Legally it could be argued that part of this house is yours.”
I wanted to grab a dishtowel and muzzle the man.
Monsieur De Luca glanced up at me and gave me a rueful smile that quite transformed his face. “That does not change the fact that this house is not mine and never has been. What must be done to set it right?”
The cadastre straightened his spine proudly, taking credit for this swift and amicable resolution. He drew some red lines on the plan he had in front of him, and then scribbled something indecipherable at the bottom.
“Can you just sign here then?” He pushed the paper towards our florid neighbour who shrugged his belligerence at such a stupid mistake, scribbling his name in a signature that was as small and cramped as he was large and imposing.
“French civil servants, eh?” He winked at me. The room seemed full of oxygen once again.
Franck took out the bottle of cassis from beside the fridge.
“Apéro anyone?”
The surveyor left our abode almost as flushed as Monsieur De Luca, who had departed only five minutes before because, in his words, some of us had real jobs and did not have time to sit around all day fixing the mistakes of notaries and cadastres, dios mio!
“You’ll need to go back to your notary and sign a rectified Act of Sale,” the cadastre reminded us in parting.
“You have Monsieur De Luca’s signature on the rectified plans, isn’t that enough?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Hélas, no. That would be far too simple for French administration. I’ll send him the documents and he’ll call and set up an appointment.”
“Actually, he won’t,” Franck said. “But I’ll call and harass him until he does.’
“Who’s your notary?” Le Cadastre asked.
“Maître Lefebvre.”
The cadastre sent us a pitying look as he slid into his seat. “My condolences.”
It had taken us two weeks to manage to: a) harass the cadastre into sending the rectified plans to the notary and b) harass the notary’s secretary into making an appointment with him so we could finalize this thing once and for all. During that time, Franck and Gégé finished eviscerating our walls. More exciting yet, a week after the cadastre deigned to grace us with his presence, Gégé informed us one morning that he needed to go down to Beaune to fetch Paulo the plasterer.
“He’s Portuguese,” Gégé reminded us again as he searched his coat pockets for his car keys.
“So?” I shrugged.
“He doesn’t keep his tongue in his pocket.”
I frowned at Gégé. “I should hope not.”
“It means he talks a lot,” Franck helped me out.
“Go get him,” I said to Gégé. “I’m sure we have a few pairs of earplugs kicking around here.”
Gégé hadn’t exaggerated. Paulo’s voice made its entrance to our house well before his body. The lyrical sing-song rang through the single paned glass in the far bedroom where I was working. It did not pause for breath and seemed to be telling a series of jokes.
The veranda door clattered and Paulo’s voice got louder. I came out of the bedroom and found myself face to face with its owner. He was small and sinewy with deeply tanned skin. He kept prattling to Gégé even as Franck introduced us and continued as we gave each other les bises.
Franck ushered us all into the kitchen. The tour of the holes in the walls couldn’t start, of course, until we had been served an apéritif. The fact that it was ten thirty in the morning was no deterrent in Burgundy.
After knocking back two kirs and regaling us with many stories about people we had never met and probably never would, Paulo seemed to have forgotten all about the holes and showed no intention of pausing in his monologue.
Franck managed to slip in the word les murs with a questioning finger and beckoned Paulo into the living room. On the way, Paulo regaled us with the tale of how he had just gotten the best deal in the world on his new car – a flashy type of Peugeot – by scaring the car dealer into thinking he was part of the Portuguese mob.
“As if there even is such a thing!” Paulo slapped his muscular thigh. “You should have seen his face though! I swear to you – pale as an endive!” Reminiscing about the car dealer turning the same shade as a bulb of chicory, Paulo set off into gales of laughter.
Franck opened the door to the living room and brought Paulo’s laughter to an abrupt halt.
He wordlessly surveyed the cavities in the walls. A minute ago I would have given anything for him to shut up but now I wanted nothing more than for him to say something…anything. Franck reached over and grabbed my hand. We waited.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Franck asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Paulo murmured, then fell silent again.
Franck cracked every one of his knuckles, one by one. “What should we do?”
Paulo pursed his lips, still unable to tear his eyes away from the walls. “Sell the house.”
“Too late for that,” I said.
Paulo grimaced. “When do you need this done by?”
Franck didn’t need as much as a millisecond to calculate exactly how much time we needed. We woke up every morning with a huge neon sign in our minds counting down to Mayday – a word that took on a new and sinister double meaning with each day that passed. “Two and a half months until our first clients arrive.”
Paulo lifted his heavy brows and stared at us for a long while.
“Allez Paulo,” Gégé nudged him. “Tell us what we need to do.”
Paulo turned back to the wall and ran his fingers over the closest pockmarked section. He sighed. “Seeing as you will be hanging new wallpaper up I suppose it doesn’t need to be perfect underneath.”
“We’re not putting up wallpaper,” Franck said. “We’re painting.”
Paulo turned to Franck. “Impossible!”
I gave Franck a small nod – permission to go ahead and rat me out.
“Laura doesn’t like wallpaper.”
Paulo ran his fingers along the crumbling edge of one of the biggest holes that I had decided a few days ago looked rather like Greenland. “It’s going to be ten times the work if you want to paint. It has to go from this” - he shook his head, despairing - “to parfait. You know Laura, they make some very pretty wallpaper.”
The three men watched me, waiting for me to concede. I knew there was some very nice wallpaper out there, but I knew even more that I didn’t want wallpaper.
“It has to be paint,” I said. I didn’t relish telling them this but I was certain that my vision of this house just didn’t include wallpaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so sure about something.
Paulo let out a guttural noise. “Vous les femmes! I should know better than to try and change the mind of a woman when it comes to decorating. You do realize though, that your husband will probably want to divorce you after plastering this room?”
Franck nudged me. “You should listen to Paulo. I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.”
“I don’t want a divorce,” I said. “But it still has to be paint.”
Franck turned to Paulo. “What can I do? I made the mistake of marrying a woman with caractère.” A woman with spirit. It had been a long time since I had thought of myself in that way but this house had a way of bringing out the pluck in me.
Paulo studied me with a mix of annoyance and begrudging respect. “I can see that. I will help you Franck. Us men must stick together.”
Paulo, unfortunately for us, had a full-time job in a metal factory in Nuits-Saint-Georges. Plastering was just something he did on the side. Technically, Gégé had a full-time job too, but this never seemed to prevent him from coming to us almost every day, all day. But then again Gégé was a civil servant and Paulo was not. It was agreed over a few more kirs – we all needed to sooth our nerves after the paint versus wallpaper stand-
off in the living room – that Paulo could come for a few weekends and show Franck the ropes. Paulo made it clear, however, that once he had imparted the art of plastering, Franck would be mainly on his own.
By the time our scheduled appointment with our Notary finally rolled around, Paulo still hadn’t come back. Something had cropped up that first weekend, but we were keeping our fingers crossed that he could make it in two days’ time.
We got ready to head down to Nuits-Saint-Georges to meet with Maître Lefebvre right after lunch.
“Two o’clock appointment?” Gégé checked his watch. “Not ideal.”
Franck pulled on his coat. “Je sais. I’m sure most days even he is not sure if he is capable of returning to his office after lunch.”
We made the amateur mistake of arriving punctually. When we had waited for forty-five minutes, squirming on the hard plastic chairs, I had to admit Franck was right when he had insisted there was no rush to eat quickly and get to Maître Lefebvre on time. I glanced up at him from the notary newsletter I was skimming. A murderous gleam had begun to take shape in his eyes. To distract him, I slid out my notebook that contained the various lists I had scribbled down the day before.
First there was “Work Completed”. It felt like we had been working on the house for countless weeks already yet written down in stark black and white we hadn’t actually made that much progress. We had divested the walls of their wallpaper, dug out all the rotten bits of plaster, and made the executive decision that the turquoise bathroom fixtures would have to go.
My second list was “Work To Be Completed”. It took up a whole page and I still hadn’t finished when I gave up halfway down a second page. It included: re-plastering, installing new bathroom fixtures and wall tile, ripping out old kitchen cabinets, installing new kitchen cabinets, figuring out (and installing) a better heating system, painting the walls, painting most of furniture…and it didn’t end there.
It was troubling to be sure, but at least it had the power of momentarily distracting Franck. He twisted a Paris Match in his powerful hands, perhaps imagining it was Le Maître’s neck, but still, his eyes made their way down my list. Maybe this was not the best time to mention that I had received two more bookings in the past week. It was very exciting for me; every booking felt like a triumph. However, based on my lists, every booking also reinforced the reality that we were setting ourselves up for an impossible task.
“You forgot about the fenêtres,” Franck said.
“Right.” I scribbled down fenêtres on the “Work To Be Completed” list. A few months ago I would have scribbled down the English word “windows” but now my mind was filled day and night with French words relating to renovations: plâtre, carrelage, toilettes, plomberie, peinture. When I was forced into remedial tutoring for my hideous French mark in grade eleven I never would have imagined that ten years later I would be sitting in a French notary’s office with my French husband mulling over a French list of the renovations for our French House.
“The windows are in terrible shape,” Franck ruminated. “They’re drafty and the wood is rotting. They’ll all have to be replaced. A friend of my parents is in the window business.”
“Really?” This sounded hopeful. “What’s his name?”
“Antoine.”
“Can you call him?”
Franck eyed the door to the office, which had still not been graced with the Maître’s presence. It was going on three o’clock. “I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to make calls from jail,” he muttered. “That’s where they put you when you kill a notary, n’est-ce pas?”
Just then Le Maître blew in the door, hair unkempt and his face a vivid shade of scarlet. Without even sparing a glance at the waiting area – a skill he had no doubt honed over years of practice – he shouted something belligerent to his secretary and then slammed his office door behind him.
Franck stood up. The air around him crackled with anger. The secretary took one knowing glance at him, saw a client that was on the verge of exploding, and pressed the intercom button to talk to the Maître.
“Madame et Monsieur Germain have been waiting since two o’clock,” she said. “They have another appointment afterwards,” she lied. “Can you see them immediately?”
Muffled raillery followed from Le Maître. Clearly he didn’t know or, when I considered the matter more closely, didn’t care that he was on speakerphone.
“Bon, d’accord,” he finally acquiesced. “Let them in.” He let out a sigh of such epic proportions that I heard it not only through the speakerphone but also through the closed door of his study. Franck didn’t need any further invitation. He marched into Le Maître’s étude.
“Vous êtes très en retard. You are very late,” Franck said to Le Maître, who froze on his way from his desk to the door to let us in. For a few seconds, Le Maître woozily tried to meet Franck’s baleful look with one equally as challenging, then his shoulders dropped and he began to chuckle.
Franck and I weren’t sure how to react. We had been primed for a fight, not dissipation.
“Sit down. Please, do sit down.” He waved us into the two chairs and picked up a letter from his desk and waved it in the air. “You absolutely must listen to this letter I received this morning.”
“Is it from the cadastre?” I asked, hopeful.
Le Maître frowned at me as though I was speaking gibberish and began to read: “You are not only a competent man, but a very alluring one. You know my husband doesn’t care for anything now save his tractor and his vines. I find myself a very lonely woman, especially in my intimate life. Could we not find time to get to know each other better?”
“Ça alors!” Le Maître Lefebvre slapped the missive on his desk and surrendered to mirth. “Can you believe it?” Franck and I exchanged a look of bewilderment. Could our notary actually be sharing a love letter with us? “She’s practically begging me to sleep with her.” He wiped his eyes.
“Will you take her up on it?” Franck asked him, finally. How had we gotten so completely off topic?
Le Maître picked up his Mont Blanc and caressed it, contemplating Franck’s question. “I would have to be very desperate. She has no breasts to speak of.” With this he looked pointedly at my ample frontage and raised an approving eyebrow at Franck. “No, she is a vieille peau,” he concluded with regret. “Still her letter is just too funny not to be enjoyed. I read it to my secretary before lunch but as you have seen for yourself she has no sense of humor.”
Given the daily aggravation of working with Maître Lefebvre, I felt nobody could really blame her on this point.
“Now then.” He smiled magnanimously at us. “What are you here for today?”
It took a good hour plus several exasperated visits from Le Maître’s secretary before we were able to rectify the plan so that it actually reflected the house Le Maître had sold us. Le Maître was excessively bored by the proceedings and at several junctures had to go back and quote his favourite passages from his love letter out loud to keep from nodding off.
“And your neighbor agreed to this without any bribery or threats?” Le Maître asked as we were signing the last few documents. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You didn’t offer yourself up to him, did you?”
“I didn’t want the house that badly.”
He hooted and then, with a beatific smile, began tapping his adding machine to calculate the myriad of different fees that we were going to be charged for his services. After he presented us with a shocking bill, Franck wrote him a cheque. At last we were in possession of documents proving we owned the entirety of our French house.
“I didn’t think such a level of unprofessionalism existed,” I mused as we climbed back into the car.
“He was drunk, you know,” Franck said as though this went some way in excusing Le Maître’s erratic behaviour.
One of the central ideas I had learned about the law in the past two years was that it had to be taken seriously: you had to take your clients seriously,
you had to take yourself seriously, and you had to take your vocation seriously. Le Maître seemed to have missed that lesson entirely. He was, however, living by the Père Bard’s credo that God put us all here to have fun….and drink copious amounts of wine.
“I know he’s useless as a Notary,” Franck admitted. “But you have to admit, he is entertaining.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I rolled down the window and took a deep breath of air that felt as icy as the frost on the vines we whipped past. The house and the furniture in it were finally completely, unequivocally, ours. Now all we needed to do was get it in picture perfect shape for our first guests who were arriving in two months and five days.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed how the soft winter light filtered orange under my eyelids. All we could do was plunge ahead and hope that whoever had been guiding us this far wouldn’t abandon us now.
Chapter 21
It was the beginning of March. Paulo had come and given his inaugural plastering lesson to Franck and then left him to figure it out on his own. This involved lots of swearing and endless trips down to Beaune to buy bags of dried plaster.
I hopped into the car to accompany Franck down on one such trip. The day before Gégé had also given us an indecipherable list of pipes, taps, and joints to purchase, but my secret plan was to begin perusing for bathroom tile while Franck lost himself in the plumbing section.
Le Gégé had become a member of our little family, or notre tribu as Gégé liked to call us. We were living like a strange isolated tribe; all three of us spangled in plaster dust, dreaming of electrical radiators, and unable to relate very well to the rest of humanity. It niggled at me that we had never officially discussed with Gégé how much we were going to pay for his help.
“We need to ask Gégé for an estimate for all the work he’s doing,” I said to Franck as we sped along La Nationale past the shiny yellow and black tiled roof of the castle in Aloxe-Corton. I knew the money was leaking out of our bank account every day and our budget was getting smaller and smaller. I had regular nightmares about getting to the end of work without a single franc left to pay our ever-increasing debt.
My Grape Escape Page 18