Antoine turned the same shade of crimson as a young Pommard wine. “Eh oui, Lapeyre windows are just fine if what you like is la merde! They are the McDonalds of windows! The joints are made in China and the wood will warp in twenty years!” He shook his fist at the infamy of Gégé’s suggestion. Ah…here was the Breton caractère Franck had warned me about.
Frankly, Gégé’s suggestion sounded wonderful. Franck sent me a look that told me he felt the same.
“I could live with the windows warping twenty years from now,” he said, finally.
“So could I.” Maybe in twenty years’ time we would actually afford to get new windows from Antoine’s company, but these renovations had a way of transforming me into a carpe diem kind of person.
Gégé tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a grin of triumph.
“Fine!” Antoine ripped out his measuring tape and began to measure the window as if it was his mortal enemy. He scribbled something else on a fresh sheet of paper and shoved it over to Franck. “These are the measurements you’ll need to order. Call me when they’ve arrived and I’ll come and install them. I warn you now though; I can’t make any promises with such inferior materials.” He began to storm out of the living room, but caught sight of our mammoth stone fireplace.
“What are you going to do with that fireplace?” he demanded.
Franck folded up the paper carefully and slipped it in his back pocket. “We can’t afford to refurbish the chimney and even if we did it would still be a fire hazard that would affect our insurance. We had the idea of making some sort of bookshelf in there but we have to find a carpenter.”
“And more money,” I added.
Franck nodded. “And more money.”
Antoine raised his eyes to the heavens. “Find a carpenter! Why would you do that when you’ve got me?” He took out his measuring tape again and, thus armed, accosted the fireplace. “I see that I’ll have to stay. You’ll never be able to pull this off without me.”
I was ready to take salvation in whichever form it arrived, even a volatile Breton.
It was official. We had only three weeks left before our first guests arrived. I had discovered, strangely, that all this time I had been harboring a hidden gift for Internet marketing. Incredibly, I had booked twenty groups of guests for our next year. We were now completely booked up from April 30, when our first guests arrived, until the end of November.
My fingers were poised over the keyboard of my makeshift computer station in the corner of the living room. The white plaster walls around me looked smooth and pristine thanks to Paulo coming up the past two days to help Franck. They were almost finished the front bedroom too.
I opened my email and clicked on a message from our first group of guests: Bonjour Laura! We are gearing up for our trip to France. How are the renovations going? We’ve bought our tickets now and should be arriving at your house at around 8:00pm on April 30. Can you please send directions and how to find the key? We’re getting very excited!
Today was April 7. Yesterday Franck had bought our train tickets to travel to Oxford, leaving Dijon at 6:12 a.m. on April 30 to get there in time for my graduation ceremony on the morning of May 1 and the festivities of May Day in England. In front of the keyboard I invariably experienced a manic surge of optimism. For those few moments I truly did believe it would be possible to get the house ready for them in time. It was when I stood up and looked beyond my computer screen that my optimism fell down around my feet. I still had to paint the entire house as well as the shutters and some pieces of furniture. Antoine had to install our windows (which had just arrived) and we needed to install our newly purchased electric radiators. The bathroom wall needed to be tiled… May Day. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. The voice in my head plummeted into a nosedive.
I was dying to begin painting the living room but Franck insisted that the radiators had to be installed first. Besides, he wasn’t exactly sure how long the plaster took to dry completely. When he wasn’t looking I would run my hand over the silky smooth surface of the new walls, trying to decide on what color paint to choose. Beige didn’t tempt me in the slightest. Would I paint the walls the lavender shade of the dusty part of a pinot noir grape? The yellow of the canola fields in full bloom? Or the crisp apple green of the vineyard’s leaves when they first unfurled?
Before paint came the radiators and before the radiators could be installed, the windows had to be changed. Antoine, who had gone to Dijon with Franck to pick up the windows from that den of iniquity known as Lapeyre, was now busy installing them. Antoine truly knew his way around a window. He cut, sealed, and wielded the silicone gun with the same nonchalance as a solicitor in London marking up a multi-million dollar contract.
Now that the weather had turned warm I had begun to sand the shutters down in the courtyard. I went back down, plugged in the electric sander and ran it over the peeling white paint of one side of the shutters. When I was done I went back inside to get a glass of water from the kitchen.
I watched as Antoine slipped the new window in the hole made by the old one and anchored it with several little wedges of paper.
I whistled. “You measured that perfectly. I’d never be able to do that.”
“You would if you did it all day long, every day.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Paying attention to detail actually hurt my brain. This was probably why pouring over obscure contract clauses during my law degree had felt akin to being stretched on the rack.
“Do you like doing it?” I asked.
“Doing what?”
“Installing windows.”
He shrugged. “I have to earn money somehow. How else can I buy nice wine and antiques and go out to restaurants? There are a lot of more unpleasant ways to earn money. ”
I took a sip of my water. I had always been brought up believing that people were their career. They were a doctor, or a lawyer, or a real estate agent. In North America, one of the first questions you asked upon meeting someone was, “what do you do?” Of course, what you were really asking was, “what are you?”
Yet here was Antoine, clearly an expert on installing windows but also an expert of so many other things, given our myriad of conversations about French literature and antique furniture and his favourite wines. Installing windows was something he merely did, not who he was.
Maybe I too should just look for a way to earn money that I didn’t hate, and which would finance my other pursuits, like sanding shutters and rescuing ancient door hinges.
The little whistle on the pressure cooker began to turn in lazy circles and a delicious honeyed smell filled the kitchen.
“Who…” I started to ask.
“I’m cooking us a rôti de porc au pruneaux,” Antoine said. A filet of pork with prunes. Yum. “It will be ready at noon. While you’re down there sanding, could you grab us a bottle of wine to go with it? One of Claire’s Côte de Nuits should do nicely. Your window should be installed by the time we uncork the bottle.”
It was while we were still mopping up the succulent sauce of Antoine’s roti that Momo brought by his employee who would be installing our new radiators. Gégé had been invited to join us for lunch, despite the fact that Antoine still resented him for suggesting he work with inferior materials. This did not seem to hinder Gégé’s enjoyment of Antoine’s cooking in the slightest. He made grunts of pleasure as he chewed his last sauce-soaked piece of baguette.
Momo let himself into the kitchen, trailed by a mammoth man with an untamed forest of hair on his head and a thicket of a beard. Momo, who stood about five-foot four and was as sinewy as they come, looked as though he could easily be squeezed up into a ball and lobbed out the window by his employee.
“I’ve brought you your electrician.” Momo helped himself to a glass of coffee. He waved in the giant’s direction. “Meet Tintin.”
“Don’t you sit down and eat a proper lunch?” Antoine demanded of the two arrivals without even saying bonjour. “We haven’t even begun our cheese c
ourse yet.”
“No,” Momo said. Tintin didn’t answer, but glanced at our food and then back at Momo resentfully.
Tintin couldn’t possibly be his real name unless his parents were completely deranged. Tintin was a comic book hero that French children were weaned on. Our Tintin had virtually no physical similarities with the eternally boyish hero with the blond duckbill of hair of Hergé’s comic books. Franck, Antoine and Gégé were all casting sideways glances at our new electrician, surely wondering, like me, how he had earned his sobriquet but asking him directly didn’t seem like the smartest idea.
“Would you like a coffee, Tintin?” Franck ventured.
“Non,” Tintin grunted. “Where are the radiators?”
“A charmer, isn’t he?” Momo laughed and slapped Tintin on his hulking back. “He is probably the stupidest of my guys but he was the only one available. Salut!” On this parting note, Momo set down his espresso cup and left.
Antoine widened his eyes at me. Had Momo been joking about Tintin being a bad electrician? I didn’t know Momo that well. Surely he wouldn’t foist his worst electrician on us.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down with us and have something to eat or drink?” Franck asked again. Tintin cast us a baleful look with flat black eyes that reminded me of a shark.
“No. Momo wants me to start. Where are the radiators?” Franck had no choice but to push back from the table and lead him down to the cellar where the radiators were stored in their boxes.
“What do you think?” Gégé said when they were well out of earshot. “Do you think he’s really here to install the radiators or to murder one of us?”
Antoine considered this. “Maybe he’s here to murder all of us.”
“I’m not sure about Tintin.” I got up and started putting together the cheese plate. “But if Momo really sent us his worst electrician, I will definitely murder him.”
Tintin began working in the front bedroom. There was a tension in the air while he was under the same roof as the rest of us. The few times he spared a glance for one of us on his way outside to smoke a cigarette he looked as though he was contemplating how to dispose of our bodies.
Finally, around six-thirty, he walked out a final time with all his tools.
“Au revoir Tintin,” Franck called after him. “See you tomorrow!” Tintin grunted.
I ran to the kitchen window and watched as he got in his rusty red car and sped off. “He’s gone!”
Franck, Antoine, and Gégé joined me in the front bedroom to inspect Tintin’s handiwork.
“Merde alors,” muttered Franck. Not only had Tintin made a mess of Franck’s beautifully plastered and sanded stretch of wall under the window, but instead of centering our expensive rectangular flat radiator in the space below the window he had placed it a mere centimetre or so from the floor itself.
Antoine flushed scarlet. “What is this pig’s work!?” He bent down and stuck his finger in the huge cut Tintin had made in the plaster and blew out an angry puff of air. “He has installed it this way because he is a lazy bastard who does not want to re-plaster any more than necessary.”
“Are you going to tell him that?” Gégé asked Antoine.
Antoine sniffed and stood up. “That is not my place. I am not the homeowner.” He cast Franck a loaded glance.
The next morning Tintin arrived at seven thirty and stalked back to the front bedroom without so much as a bonjour to the rest of us.
Gégé gave Franck a pat on the back and we all huddled in the kitchen and listened for sounds of carnage as Franck went to talk to Tintin about repositioning the radiator. After what seemed like a very long time Franck came back to us.
“You’re still alive!” Gégé said.
Franck shushed him.
“What happened?” Antoine asked. “Did you tell him he worked like a pig?”
Franck rolled his eyes. “Ah. . . .non. I put it a little more diplomatically that that. I asked if it would be possible to put the radiator higher up, as I was worried about it being kicked so close to the floor.”
I got up and gave Franck a hug for his bravery. “And?” I said. “How did he take it?”
“He wasn’t very happy, but I think he’ll do it. We’ll see.”
We had no choice but to go on with our respective work. We all stayed away from Tintin and the bedrooms. I began to prime the first pair of sanded shutters outside. Swallows chirped and the tractors trundled past on their way out to the vineyards. Winter had vacated the premises and the sunshine warming my hair made me feel as though anything was possible.
Tintin’s presence was menacing but it united the rest of us. Franck and I stopped arguing about whether the walls were ready to paint or not, and even Gégé and Antoine stopped pushing each other’s buttons. Most of the time anyway.
Tintin clearly didn’t want to be installing the radiators at our house. I didn’t take this personally, as my instinct told me that he didn’t want to be installing radiators in anybody’s house. He felt no compunction to even pretend that he was happy with the circumstances. His disgust for his job and us was unnerving but I had to admire its honesty.
I dipped my brush in the paint pot again, and brushed the shutter on the sawhorse in front of me.
The last two years during law school I had pretended to be happy out of a sense of obligation to others. It never even occurred to me that I had a choice in the matter. It would have been immensely satisfying to stalk into one of my tutorials and respond to my tutors with grunts, á la Tintin.
Happy might be a big word for how I felt now – of course, I was exhausted and stressed about not getting everything finished – but there was a sense of satisfaction in transforming this dump of a house into something charming and, dare I say it, beautiful. Moreover, working alongside Gégé and Antoine and Franck meant that I was never alone with the daily triumphs and worries. I had always considered myself to be someone who preferred flying solo in my work but now I wasn’t so sure.
I fell even deeper into the meditative act of painting and lost track of time until Tintin stalked out of the house with his jacket on, presumably to go to lunch.
“Bon appétit!” I said as he passed. He didn’t even turn around.
Gégé sprung out the veranda door a few moments later as I was inspecting my shutters for errant bugs stuck in the paint. “You have to see this!”
I followed him into the house, then to the green bedroom where both Antoine and Franck were standing in front of the newly moved radiator, their faces a study of consternation.
“Is it possible that Tintin doesn’t understand what the word “centered” means?” Antoine asked the room. The radiator was now installed so high up that it was no longer possible to open Antoine’s newly installed window above.
“Momo wasn’t lying.” I ground my teeth. “Tintin really is his worst electrician. Salaud.”
This was a huge waste of time. We needed to get the radiators installed so I could begin painting. Six rooms - each with at least one coat of primer and two coats of paint - that was a lot of painting to do in only three weeks.
“At least there is no risk now that somebody will kick it by accident,” Gégé pointed out. “You have to give him some credit for that.”
Franck maintained a stony silence that we all respected. After all, Franck would have to be the one to ask Tintin to reposition the radiator for a third time.
“There’s nothing further we can do right now,” Antoine declared at last. “Let’s have lunch.”
Between my shutter painting steps I had prepared us steaks in delectable red wine sauce that was bubbling away on the stove. We devoured them while debating the best way to approach Tintin.
“Pay him compliments,” I suggested.
“Tell him he works like a pig,” Antoine said.
“Punch him.” Gégé mopped up the last bit of sauce with his baguette.
Three sets of eyes swung to Gégé. He shrugged. “It is no more preposterous
than the other ideas.”
We were just cutting into a soft round cheese that Franck had bought from the monks at the nearby Cîteaux monastery when Tintin banged through the door with a second radiator – this one for the living room - in his arms. He must have grabbed it from the cellar on his way back from lunch.
“Coffee?” I asked Tintin, out of politeness, never thinking he would even acknowledge the offer.
He dumped the radiator down against the entry wall. “Ouais,” he muttered and came in the kitchen. All of a sudden there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room for all of us.
I hopped up. “Take my chair. Please. I have to wash the dishes anyway.”
Franck usually helped me but I didn’t nag him today. My husband had bigger fish to fry and I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the dirty dishes in the world. Tintin lowered his hulking form down on my chair and sipped coffee out of the delicate red espresso cup I sat down in front of him. Franck cleared his throat.
“About the radiator in the bedroom,” Franck began. Gégé and Antoine exchanged an alarmed glance. Franck was going to do this now? In front of us?
“I put it up higher, like you said.”
“I think maybe now it might be too high…you know…just un petit peu.”
Tintin narrowed his eyes.
“The problem is we can no longer open the window.”
Tintin drew his black brows together. “Are you sure?”
“Definitely won’t open,” Antoine piped up. “We checked.”
Tintin heaved his massive shoulders up, as if to say that we were downright fussy to care about trivial matters such as opening windows. He put down his espresso cup and stalked into the bedroom. Franck followed.
When he returned, Franck told us all that he actually measured and marked off for Tintin where he wanted the radiator to be placed. At the end of the day, once Tintin had departed without a word, we checked and high fived each other over the fact that Tintin actually managed to place it pretty close to Franck’s markings.
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