At the end of the day, we inspected our property together, for while Stuart’s days were spent inside assembling the kitchen he really had no idea what I’d been trying to accomplish outside. So I showed him all my pruning and sawing and clearing. It was a constant source of surprise to think that we had our very own orchard. Stuart picked a small red apple from one of the several apple trees and declared that it was the first time he’d ever picked fruit from his own tree. And that declaration seemed to me to sum up the very wonder of it all — and the wonder of what we had made possible.
We decreed that, even here, our working week would be Monday to Friday and we would have a ‘normal’ weekend. We knew only too well from last year how easy it was to be obsessive and just keep working manically. Not that shades of obsession hadn’t already set in. We were determined too not to work until midnight, especially on Saturdays, when the alarm went off early on Sunday for us to visit the vide-greniers on our perpetual quest for treasure. Those mornings had a sense of excitement like no other.
I knew I had a sense of the weekend and all its pleasure as I actually slept in. I knew that it was later as the fingers of light reaching past the sides of the heavy wooden outside shutters were dancing off the wall in a further corner than usual in our whitewashed room. I knew, too, that it was the weekend, as my mind had registered that it didn’t have to leap up, make coffee and exchange our daily ‘Bonjour’s and handshakes all round with the roofers.
It was actually strange how often we talked about the presence of the roofers and how they had added an extra dimension to the pattern of our days. There were four most days, the two older ones in their fifties and the two younger ones in their twenties. Most days they worked in a team — an older, experienced roofer with a younger one; one team on the roof of the barn, the other on the pigsty roof. We wondered about their lives and families beyond the world of our roof. We wondered about the life they returned to at the end of each day when, without fail, they courteously wished us, ‘Bonsoir.’ We loved the rituals of our brief, everyday life with them, like when they left at precisely one minute to twelve to walk to the village restaurant to have lunch together. As they pulled on clean T-shirts to eat their midday meal, we always all chorused, ‘Bon appétit.’ We wondered if Monsieur Arnal, the owner of the restaurant, appreciated how much extra business we’d sent his way.
It seemed like the first time since we’d arrived that we’d started the day in a leisurely way. Our front porch, shaded by an enormous white-flowering lime tree, was still very cool — it was only thirteen degrees and yet it was supposed to be summer. The back of the barn, though, had lovely early morning sun, so we set off out there with our white plastic IKEA chairs to have our coffee. Like all French people, as we’d discovered, we just loved IKEA. No matter their status or class, every house we’d visited seemed to have an eclectic mixture of affordable IKEA and vide-grenier — just like ours. Strangely, though, not all our French friends shared our passion for the Trocs. Everyone who saw our IKEA cuisine in progress exclaimed over it. At home, people like IKEA; here, people love it!
Our weekend started with a trip to the Trocs in Brive. This time, we were searching for an armoire for the sitting room. Its dimensions had to be exact as it was going to sit under a small wall cupboard with a wall on either side of the space. I was not expecting to find one straight away by any means. I absolutely loved the little cupboard, high on the wall that the armoire was going to be placed beneath. It had a dark brown background and was hand-painted with a rural scene on it, showing rabbits, trees and flowers. I thought it was original, so quirky and beautifully done that I just wished I could see back in time and know who so lovingly painted it.
We also went to a nursery — actually, we could scarcely believe that, after only two weeks back in France, not only were we finding time to go to one but that we were starting to plan what planting we were going to do around the pool area. We were very excited by the range, quality and the prices at the nursery. While we resisted starting to buy pots of lavender, we did buy a gorgeous fuchsia for Françoise as she had invited us to a ‘grand’ dinner the following week. To continue celebrating our weekend of relaxation, we went into Martel for lunch at the locals’ café, Mespoulet, and had a delicious, cheap menu du jour of our favourite steak and frites. After that we again set up our IKEA ‘Jeff ’ chairs next to the pool, among the rubble and prolific weeds. To complete the picture, as it was extremely hot, we had to shelter right next to the barn for some shade so we were right under the roofers’ ladders. I was glad that we’d renovated before — though never on this scale — and that I had enough imagination to dream about what it would look like one day, even thought that day might be far, far away. To complete our poolside relaxation, Stuart set up a strip of green weed matting to make a type of runway to the edge of the pool so that we didn’t have dirt and stones on our feet when we went in for a dip. It was alarming enough when pieces of slate fell from the roof onto the new pool lining. To complete the ironic touch, Stuart was reading a glossy piscine magazine. The pictures of pristine pools and immaculate landscaping could not be further from the reality of how we were trying to enjoy our new piscine.
So we whiled away a few hours amid the rubble and planned the paving to surround the pool, the decking and the border of lavender we would plant. Our attention to detail meant that we even discussed where a barbecue would be placed outside the kitchen door once the barn was renovated in the distant future. This too required great vision as, of course, at the moment, the barn was just an empty shell; it was where we imagined the kitchen would be placed. Flicking though the pile of out-of-date magazines that we bought at a vide-grenier, some as old as 1992, Stuart came across a hand-drawn sketch of a kitchen design, tucked between the pages. It was someone’s personal notepaper and their address was in Morocco. Yet again, I thought about the past and wondered about the story behind that piece of paper.
A somnolent summer drowsiness settled over the village on the weekend. It had an altogether different feel. No lumbering tractors, no school bus, no villagers rushing home for lunch, no white artisan vans racing past our kitchen window to stop for their two-hour break. By Sunday, there was an even more soporific feel. Sunday was sacrosanct in France: a family day, a day for a Sunday lunch outing. We had learnt not to have lunch out on this day of the week, especially when the tourist season picked up pace, as it was far too busy. Plus, our much-loved menu du jour was usually not available on the weekends. One thing we had learnt very early was that the set menu was by far the best value for money. Often, for only about twelve euros for three courses, a glass of wine was also included. It was our idea of perfection. The icing on the cake — so to speak, in the land of boulangeries and pâtisseries — was when crème brûlée was on the menu. Crème brûlée made my heart sing.
This Sunday I was awake at the astonishing time of five-thirty, and up shortly after. While it made a long day even longer, given that it gets dark so late in a European summer, I loved the quiet and solitude of being up first. I loved the early morning cool crispness, the sight of doves cooing on our two stone entrance pillars, the rabbits bounding up past the bend in the road. I was often up even before the solemn clanging of the church bells announced the formal start of the day at seven.
Our vide-grenier guide led us astray for the first market of the day. We weren’t quite sure why this sometimes happened. We always checked and double-checked the date and name of the village. Then occasionally, like today, we set off bright and early, fuelled by anticipation, only to discover the market square completely quiet and empty. It didn’t matter too much — except perhaps we wouldn’t have fallen out of bed quite so early, as this village, Strenquels, was yet another picture-perfect one. Visiting the brocantes and vide-greniers every Sunday had formed our own personal tourist guide to the Lot and the Dordogne. It meant that we got to see an extraordinary number of utterly tucked away, beautiful villages that we would never have possibly discovered otherwise. The
y were often so remote that we wondered if we were ever going to actually find a village as we plunged further and further into heavily wooded areas or crawled round precarious hairpin corners on narrow, winding roads up steep hillsides.
After discovering the first vide-grenier was not on, we quickly consulted the guide and programmed the Sat Nav to tear off through the countryside again. This time, our cross-country excursion rewarded us. On the way, there was a gasp-out-loud chateau crowning the top of a hill. It was moments like these that filled me again with a sense of wonder to be here, in France, and it often hit me with a jolt that we had our own petite maison to return to year after year.
And then we arrived at the market. Another glorious village, Turenne, framed by an old castle and magnificent church. It was no surprise, really, that France is the most visited country in the world. We lingered for several hours, the find of the day being a pair of wooden shoe lasts in perfect condition and a pair of ice tongs that we’d been searching for, both for a song. I paused for a long time to examine a basket of beautiful old linen, all still pristine white. The stallholder told me about a pair of exquisite old pillowcases that I coveted. They were at least 150 years old, all hand-embroidered with the initials perfectly executed in the corner of each one. I was told they would have been embroidered by a young girl for her trousseau. I was captivated by the utter romance of it all and the story they held hidden in their delicate seams. Practical needs, such as a much-needed flyscreen for our bedroom window, were balanced against my strong desire to own such a treasured piece of history and fragment of the past. However, they lingered long in my mind and fell into the category of regrets. Why didn’t I just buy them? I would never see anything like them again. And, at the end of the day, they weren’t very expensive at all. We were delighted to find a boulangerie open in the village — not always the case on a Sunday — and so we treated ourselves to our favourite pain au chocolat and perched on a stone wall in the sun to enjoy the market ebbing around us. Life doesn’t get much better. Well, except for the pillowcases, which should have been nestling at the bottom of my market basket.
Next to us was a carousel of old, brightly painted cars, and I watched the joy of a little boy as his maman let him have ride after ride. I asked if I could take his photo and remembered to say ‘Coucou’, which I’ve heard the French use with their children, to get his attention.
Being in France, surrounded by beauty, culture and history, I was learning to look at the world with different eyes. I tried to capture quintessential moments through my camera. The lace curtains peeping through the windows that were encased with ivy; the succulent chocolat glistening in the window of the chocalatier; the water rippling in a swimming pool that, when printed, looked like Monet’s garden. The tributes to the soldiers on the war memorials in the tiniest of villages; the back view of a young girl gracefully swinging through the antique market in Paris. The Mercedes convertible pulled up outside a restaurant with its wicker chairs and checked tablecloths, not a person at a single table yet — like a film set, waiting for the actors to arrive. The old men, faces weathered with age and a thousand stories, chatting across the table laden with plump tomatoes in the markets. These were the photos I printed and filled the wall with when we were at home again and far away from our other life.
There were other fascinating experiences that occured at the markets. One particularly cool Sunday morning, we found ourselves at a vide-grenier in Autoire that was positively brimming with its possibilities of treasure. Stuart always set off on an initial reconnoitre to quickly locate any significant pieces of treasure, such as furniture. I tended to wander more slowly, soaking up the atmosphere and examining the stalls in more minute detail. If there was anything that Stuart thought we might buy for our petite maison, he found me and we went off to examine and discuss it before it was snapped up by someone else. Strangely, as the tourist season picked up we actually felt quite put out when we heard the echo of English accents around us sometimes. We liked the sense of being the only foreigners walking around the vide-greniers in the midst of the deeply-buried French countryside, far from anywhere.
On this occasion, I was happy to find, for a couple of euros, a bright yellow jug that was the exact match for one I already had, so now I had a pair to place together on the mantelpiece. As I pored through more bargains, I glanced up at very beautiful young couple whose stall it was. As I enquired about the price of a wooden bread board, the good-looking boy asked where I was from. He was surprised to find out that I’m Australian and he then told me he was from New Zealand. His parents had a holiday house in the village and he chatted about how they alternated between the two countries, trying to have a life of one endless summer. That too was our ultimate aim. His girlfriend was from Berlin and they met in Paris, where they were both studying at the Sorbonne. They were both glowing with youth and beauty, and I marvelled at the extraordinary life they seemed to be living at such a young age.
Another day, another vide-grenier, and we chatted to a market holder about her array of artworks and household bric-a-brac. We found out that she had just returned to her home village after living in Melbourne for thirty years. Her children had all grown up now and left home so she’d returned to her childhood village and her house that had been locked up for all these years. She too had embarked on renovating it so we shared our experiences. And so, once again, the world didn’t seem such a very big place at all. After just two brief summers in Cuzance, it delighted us too when we went on our ritual Sunday forays to the vide-greniers to run into people we knew — even, one day, our friends Dominique and Gerard. We all examined what treasure we’d unearthed for the day and marvelled at each other’s finds.
Like us, they were passionate about vide-greniers and, during the week, when we saw each other, we all talked about which ones we were planning to go to the next Sunday. When we were invited for an apéritif or dinner at their home, we admired the objets d’art in their home. Gerard always fervently declared either ‘Troc’ or ‘Vide-grenier’! Once, when we went for an apéritif, they were very suitably impressed that my green linen trousers were a mere one euro. Every time that I then saw Gerard, he enquired whether what I was wearing was one euro from a vide-grenier. He also declared that our house name should be: Troc. I knew that I’d made an impact with my penchant for bargains when, one day, Dominique arrived at our petite maison in a new outfit. When I admired it, she told me that it was second-hand. I’d never known her, unlike myself, to wear second-hand clothes before and she told me it was the first time.
Another memorable moment was when we encountered our Maire and his wife, Jocelyn, sharing a bottle of wine at a stall with a friend one sticky, hot summer Sunday. They beckoned us over and, with the hospitality we love in France, invited us to have a glass of wine with them. The temperature was pushing forty; it was red wine and I knew it would be potent, but to decline the offer was inconceivable. They left shortly after and, much to our amusement in the land of world-renowned cuisine, bought a takeaway pizza from a pizza van to take home for their Sunday lunch. To us, it was an utterly incongruous touch in rural France.
We returned home to have lunch on our little porch, with the cacophony of squealing pigs from a nearby farm as the background accompaniment. We then once again took advantage of the searing heat and retreated to the pool. The irony of the glossy magazines that Jean-Claude had kindly bought us on pool design and landscaping was once again not lost on me. By now, the burning sun had dried the grass out so much in just a few days that it was like looking at a sparse, arid Australian landscape. Though it drops to as low as minus eighteen in winter in our département, in summer it can soar to the mid-forties. There are many similarities with the landscape, in fact, for we were very familiar with a number of shrubs and flowers. Roses, hydrangeas, oleanders, hibiscus, geraniums and marigolds all flourish here. Even the roundabouts in France are usually very decorative and have beautiful flowerbeds. The trees, though, are distinctively European, and it was
strange for me not to be able to identify them as readily. I gazed around the jardin and tried to visualise its transformation in the future. It was quite hard indeed to picture it.
Jean-Claude’s Stories
On occasions that were only too rare, I took the opportunity to finish early and wander down to Jean-Claude and Françoise’s to enjoy a gin and tonic with them in the early evening, relaxing on their terraced garden overlooking their enticing piscine. Stuart had taken a break to play bridge in Souillac with Françoise — quite a challenging undertaking to play bridge in France in a foreign language. So I had some time alone with Jean-Claude and we went through his photo album that was both an impressive record of his hard work and a tribute to all he had achieved. They bought their extraordinary house in 1989 for 40,000 francs. As an English teacher, Jean-Claude had spent all his holidays and many weekends working on the house. In those days, it was an eight-hour drive from Lyon and no small undertaking with three young children. The years and years of sheer hard work had created a breathtaking transformation. If I thought we worked hard, it was nothing compared to the fact that Jean-Claude would get up at 4am and work under lights he had rigged up outside. He tackled so much single-handed that there were even photos showing him working high, high up on their attic roof to replace the tiles.
He always brought everything to life with all the stories he had to share. I was fascinated by his accounts of the tax collector visits in the 1700s. The tax was paid in salt. The further that people lived from the sea or salt mines, or other countries where the tax was less, the higher the tax was. The precious store of salt was hidden by the cavernous fireplace, where it was kept reasonably dry. Tradition says that the salt was also hidden in the chair that was reserved for the elders so that the tax inspectors would not dare disturb them and discover the treasure. Jean-Claude also showed me photos of sugar cutters that were used in the days when sugar came in huge blocks and had to be cut. Sugar was sold in the shape of huge cones, similar to the red and white safety cones that the gendarme put on motorways today to signal an accident.
Our House is Not in Paris Page 14