I had no idea. I inched our farm van back, avoiding the chairs and the disgruntled dogs, and once the pulley system had landed the lavatory on to the tarmac and negotiated it behind the fig with little collateral damage we settled on the direction for entering and exiting this undesired latrine. I could not think who would be using it.
‘Sign here, if you will. I’ll be back for it on Monday, as agreed. Any chance of a beer, love? It’s bleedin’ hot. Nice place you got here.’
I scribbled where his podgy finger was pointing. ‘I’ll just get the beer, wait a sec.’
Within the cool darkness of the garage, still reeking of wine as well as diesel and oil seeping from the various gardening machines housed there, I found another half a dozen fragments of ceiling plaster splattered on the ground. Stepping over them, I reached for the beer, took it to the driver who was now over in the shade talking to Cleopatra, the most approachable of the dogs.
‘I love dogs,’ he grinned. ‘Cheers, good health!’
When I returned inside the house, the telephone was ringing. I was tempted to let it go to answering machine but was still holding out hope of news from Jacques.
‘Allo?’
A woman at the other end: the expert recommended by our notary. The call I was supposed to make had slipped my mind. She was suggesting a visit in two days’ time, warning me that the inspection would take the best part of a day and that she would require photocopies of all land plans and contracts as well as several other documents, all of which had been filed somewhere, but I was not entirely sure where.
‘I wonder, might we, please, leave this till next week. We’re having a par—’
‘I’m fully booked next week. I have spoken to Maître —— who informed me that the matter is urgent. You should have telephoned me. Never mind. I have set Thursday aside for you and I will be there by ten. Please have the paperwork ready. Bonne journée, Madame.’
That evening, the first of the pre-party guests arrived, an actor friend of mine from London whom I had not seen for almost two decades. He could not be with us for the big event on Saturday so he had arranged with Michel to spend a few days with us in advance. He was willing to lend a hand, but we would also have to understand that he was giving a poetry recital on the following Sunday and would need to learn his lines and rehearse them.
I had also just learned from Michel that neither of his daughters, twin girls, Vanessa and Clarisse, would be with us. Both were mothers now and their commitments lay with their offspring. Travelling with a troop of toddlers was expensive, logistically complicated and, in any case, our modest farmhouse offered limited facilities for these burgeoning families. I was rather disappointed. It had been some time since I had seen them. The delightful news was that Clarisse was pregnant with her second child. A first-week-of-December accouchement was expected. ‘So, by Christmas,’ I winked at Michel, ‘you’ll be five times a grandfather. Where does the time go?’
‘Perhaps we can organise a gathering at Christmas. All of us together,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Shall we plan for it here, a big family Christmas?’
‘We’d be bursting at the seams. At least this weekend all those who are not in hotels can sleep in tents. Hardly possible in wintertime,’ he laughed.
Michel saw his girls so rarely, due to overloaded schedules on everyone’s part, and I knew he had also been looking forward to sharing this party with them. It was not for the first time that I regretted our farmhouse counted only three functioning bedrooms – years earlier Michel had removed most of the interior walls on the upper level – plus a fourth that had long since been requisitioned by me for use as a den, a working space. When needs must, a mattress was laid out on its floor and it metamorphosed back into temporary sleeping quarters, but this was not an arrangement conducive to the presence of small children. The fact was that our house was inadequate for the size of the fold we now represented. It was impractical, I was fully aware of that, and it had been far too long since the girls – we still referred to them as les filles in spite of the fact that both were mothers now – had come to stay with us.
We sat in the sweetly scented shade beneath the flowering Magnolia grandiflora, Bridget (who had ordered the Portaloo), along with Michel and our friends from Berlin, Hans and Sabine. They had spent the better part of the day traipsing about in the brittle heat of Cannes choosing and ordering the ‘birthday’ cake. It was to be a surprise and they displayed much jollity and secrecy about it. I was uncorking rosé. Roger who had been showering and had slipped into linen shorts and shirt and panama, the Englishman abroad, joined us.
Those tranquil moments of aperitif were the last we enjoyed for days. While the men prepared the barbecue – we had three installed now as Michel had insisted that he was going to organise all the catering – ‘we are not going to call in a firm and pay those exorbitant prices’ – we girls picked herbs, uncorked bottles and laid the table. I could not imagine how Michel thought he would handle such a culinary undertaking. We had estimated that between late Friday afternoon through to the following Monday morning, as the party numbers waxed and waned, we would be requiring, for the three evening meals alone (to say nothing of the lunches, brunches, breakfasts, snacks, aperitifs), two hundred and thirty-eight covers. It was so far-fetched that I had stopped worrying about it all (except for the moments when I hadn’t). Beneath the soup-plate sized, white waxy magnolia flowers now in full blossom, each of us was allocated our tasks for the following three days.
I was collecting my mother, a hearty eighty-four years old now, from the airport. Many were flying in and hiring cars. We had guests coming from as far afield as Los Angeles though Michel warned that there were bound to be last-minute cancellations. Bridget was lending us a mattress or two while her partner, Luigi, who was a local boules champion, was going to be organising Saturday and Sunday afternoon tournaments on one of the terraces.
I was despatched to some ghastly hypermarket to buy five new dustbins, two dozen rolls of biodegradable dustbin bags, one hundred knives, forks, plates, what felt like a hundredweight of candles, half a ton of pistachio nuts … the list was endless.
‘What have we forgotten?’
Replacements for the smashed wine bottles and replenishment of the booze already being consumed daily.
‘Have we forgotten anything else? Anybody, any ideas?’
The men were slinging sails higher up the land between a quartet of Italian cypresses. ‘We need more rope. Rigging rope and metal hooks.’
I had come up with the idea of creating in the garden (in the loosest sense of the word) a pleasance, which, in recognition of my travels, would be known as the Bedouin Bar. The corner we had chosen was discreet, suitably distanced from the main house, and looked out over both the Mediterranean and, to the right, the mountains, while the festooned sails sheltered it from the harsh sunlight. It was ideal, a perfect spot for nattering, congregating, reading and, of an early evening, sipping glasses of chilled wine. Once dressed, it would require a fridge, low table, sofas, garden glasses, cups, cushions, coffee machine … phew! Quashia was shoring up the drystone wall to its rear, to provide its seating area with a certain rough-hewn definition.
Poor Quashia, he was completely bemused by the level of activity.
And the phones never stopped ringing. ‘Darling, we’ve arrived!’
‘We’re lying by the pool at the hotel. Gorgeous weather. So dreary back home.’
‘Longing to see you. Anything we can do? No, well, we’ll see you Friday evening then for the kick-off. What’s the dress code?’
‘Darling, I am so sorry. I can’t be there, after all. I’m night-shooting Friday and …’
And … and …
‘Hello, we’re lost! We hired a car and took the motorway towards …’
Roger was prancing about the land with a script in his hand, declaiming, concerned that his hat might fail as sufficient protection against the sun’s damaging UV rays. ‘I don’t want to burn my face, darli
ng,’ he repeated to me on several occasions. ‘I’ve got a show on Sunday, don’t you know. Such a pity I can’t stay for the bash. What creams have you got?’
Whenever I entered the upstairs area of the house, there I’d find him, rooting about in the bathroom cupboards in search of moisturiser. Or at my computer on the internet emailing his agent.
New friends, old friends, long-lost colleagues: the grounds began to buzz with them. Ipod programmed to shuffle and portable Sound-Dock gave us non-stop music: reggae, romantic, dance, jazz, cool, eclectic. My mother, who remained hale and hearty but was getting deafer and suffered a tremor as a result of the many trials she had endured since the death of my father, was ever at the thick of it all, opening bottles for our invited, slathering herself in sun cream (instantly pinched from her by Roger), dressed elegantly, shouting to be heard, assuming the whole world was as deaf as she was. By breakfast on Thursday morning our in-house numbers had reached ten, so house bursting as well as three tents rigged, and many more to come. Not bad going for what was a mere three-bedroom property. Roger was leaving the following morning and his room would be taken by my ebullient agent and his wife. I was constantly hauling out sheets, washing towels, counting out bowls, mugs, glasses, checking lists, while Michel and Hans returned every three hours from the shops and farmers’ markets weighed down with produce. I was delighted to hear that Michel had finally decided against roasting a lamb on a spit up near the Bedouin Bar, which was now dressed and was sinking-into-deep-cushions appealing.
‘No spit, please. Too hot, too risky. We’ll have the fire brigade after us.’
The forecast was threatening a storm, but the sky loured stubbornly and the rains never came. So busy was I with such inconsequentials, any one of which might have put a spanner in the works, that I had completely forgotten it was Thursday morning. A rude awakening when I spied a royal blue Noddy car zooming up the drive.
Had I overlooked the arrival of someone? Miscalculated? Were not the next assembly of guests due the following morning? The vehicle drew to a sharp halt and out stepped Madame l’Expert.
La Madame, probably in her late fifties with severely shorn iron-grey hair and narrow glasses, had arrived promptly, unusual in this area, at 10 a.m. two days after she had telephoned, acting upon instructions from our notaire, she confirmed. She was wielding a briefcase, handbag and magnifying glass and was wearing a tight skirt and heeled shoes. ‘Right, let’s get to work. What have you constructed since you moved in here and what is original?’
I pointed out our humble additions, including Quashia’s hangar and our rather splendid greenhouse – ‘all glass and steel, no asbestos there,’ I assured her with a smile.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You have no idea, Madame, where it can be lurking. Asbestos can be found in three thousand products in the home and industry. Pipe insulation, heating ducts, for example. In a property of this age, I doubt I will go away empty-handed.’
The slanted roof of our hangar was tiled, a Provençal style known as tuile, from the Old French word teuille, or tile, and originating from the Latin tegula. These tiles are fired from earth, terracotta, and are long, curved and sit one on top of the tip of the other. Frequently, they are laid on a corrugated bed of fibre-cement sheets, which was the case here. From the parking area she scanned the hillside, and settled her attention on the hangar. Amiante, she hissed under her breath. ‘I will begin with the hangar and the greenhouse.’ She commenced her ascent, up the steps, striding resolutely, an arrow to target as she soared by Roger whose arms were outstretched, papers flapping in one hand, reciting sonnets of the Bard, all without a glance in his direction. Shoes and skirt no hindrance to her attack on the potential asbestos. The dogs were darting about at her feet but they did not trouble her either. She marched to and fro beneath the roof and then shook her head. ‘When did you say this was constructed?’
‘About four years ago, I think.’
‘That explains why it is not asbestos. The product was taken off the market long before.’
I glanced across at the others hard at work, knowing that they were waiting for me to get to the shops for the requested bits and bobs of hardware.
‘I really think you are wasting your time,’ I implored.
She spun on her heels and bored a look into me that might have nailed me to the wall. ‘Do you realise that asbestos is a toxic material? Not only is it dangerous but it can be carcinogenic, which is why my work is vital. Vital. I will find it, identify it, list it, and file it with the cadastral papers of this site, and there it stays in your house records until it has been dealt with. You realise, too, Madame, that, should I detect asbestos here, you will not be legally entitled to sell this property until you have replaced it.’
This, I learned later, was inaccurate, an exaggeration. One was obliged by law to register and declare asbestos in order that a potential purchaser was fully aware of what he was taking on and not going into the act unwittingly, but the house could change hands.
‘I accept what you say, Madame. However, I am fairly certain that no asbestos exists here. And, if I may say so, I am also rather amazed that the same rigorous attention is not being given to the insecticides sold in shopping centres and supermarkets, products that any part-time gardener can spray willy-nilly, where he likes, without redress. Pesticides that are also dangerous to one’s health.’
Those black eyes studied me uncertainly. Was I mocking her and her vocation? ‘I know nothing about gardening. It is not my expertise and I hate it.’
‘But you are in the business of tracking down toxic materials …’
‘Not at all! I deal exclusively with amiante, asbestos, but let us get on with it or I will be obliged to return tomorrow and the fee will be double.’
We traipsed the land, up and down the hillside, Bruce Springsteen reverberating round the treetops. Every water basin, tap and pipe surround was examined and found to be in accordance with the laws. Nothing was amiss. I was beginning to feel rather proud, personally responsible for our residence’s exceptionally clean bill of health. By now, we had been at it for several hours. The rest of the troop had stopped for refreshments, followed by lunch. I needed a swim and suggested we pause for a cold drink, which this lady accepted. I discovered that she was recently widowed, that her husband had been an esteemed local architect and that, since his death, because she had done all the inspections on the sites where he had been building or reconstructing, business had been less than brisk.
Was this the reason the notary, a personal friend of her deceased husband, I also gathered, had telephoned me? Had he been drumming up trade for the woman who was down on her luck? But I had softened and felt rather sympathetic towards her. She roamed the interior of the house, craning her head, squinting into corners, picking up and examining objects from my travels and seemed genuinely interested and taken with our motley collection of furnishings and objets d’art. I talked a little about my journey circumnavigating the Med and my passion for all things olive, while she sipped her lemonade and listened, watching me, scrutinising me as though I too might be a harbinger of toxicity.
‘Olives hold no fascination for me,’ was her bald response. But afterwards she smiled and said, ‘You are fine. There is no asbestos here. I don’t think I need to look further. Well, I’ll just do a swift recce in the garage and then I’ll be on my way.’ She was marking sheets of paper with a tight, frenzied energy, sheet after sheet. Each page contained lists of questions, descriptions. In every instance, she ticked the boxes.
‘Positively in keeping with the law,’ cracking a rictus.
We strolled out into the sunshine, making our way down to the parking, alongside the garage. In the distance, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks could be heard.
‘Are you in the habit of hosting such a full house?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘Do you mind it?’
‘I enjoy it once in a while. We’re preparing for a party.’ I threw a glance towards the other
s who seemed to be having a very jolly day, singing along to a seventies tune I recognised but could not identify. I smelt fresh paint and wondered what was being decorated. Elsewhere, someone had a barbecue on the go, herby sausages were being grilled. A cork was popped.
‘Since my husband died, I find time rather a disconsolate, demanding companion. Is the garage open or do you have the key?’
‘No, it’s unlocked but it’s in an appalling mess, jam-packed with junk and machinery.’ I was embarrassed by its condition. ‘And it reeks of damp and er – of wine, due to the leaks in its roof. There are tiles, clods of plaster falling regularly, so please watch your step. You’ll have to climb over the debris, I’m afraid, or wait while my gardener and I clear it out.’
‘Not at all, I can step.’ She raised one leg as far as her skirt would allow and pointed her foot like a ballerina. Suddenly, she was a girl again.
‘Let me come in with you and put on the light. At the rear to the left is the heating room. It’s a boiler from the dark ages but, until we can afford to change over to solar heating, the dinosaur works and we prefer to leave it as it is. The boiler room was tunnelled out of the rock upon which the rear of the house sits so I doubt you’ll find anything toxic in there.’
She sniffed about in the crepuscular light. ‘What a shocking condition this garage is in,’ she was bending forward, arching like a switchblade, flicking on and off a delicate, pencil-thin hand torch. ‘You should get it seen to it before it collapses entirely.’
‘Yes, well, we intend to.’
Then rising to her full height, she declared that she was satisfied.
We had passed muster.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I grinned.
‘Here’s my card. I can recommend you to the architectural firm my late husband founded. They’ll fix that ceiling for you in no time.’
Out we went again and strolled to her little royal blue car. It reminded me of a jelly bean. Still talking, she was unlocking the door, before tossing her case and papers on to the passenger seat and then she swung back round to shake my hand. As she did so, something behind me caught her attention. Glancing about, eyes darting this way and that, her face began to convulse. It was as though she had set eyes on a monster.
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