A Chateau of One's Own

by Sam Juneau

  At this point, Chevalier translated for his comrades in arms. One older man stepped forward. He wore a thick beard, an enormous belly, chock-full of boar sausage, I presumed. Suddenly he started yelling and pointing in Bud’s face. I couldn’t believe my eyes; here was a man that we didn’t know trying to intimidate my pregnant wife by screaming. Just months after my rumble in the streets of Angers, I felt confident of my own potential to intimidate.

  I stepped in front of this audacious assailant, pointed in his face, yelling. In English.

  ‘You get the fuck off my property,’ I yelled repeatedly, emphasising each syllable with a clarity that transcended language. I grabbed the man’s gun and held it firmly to the side, thinking, that gun better be made of chocolate because I’m going to make you eat it. I thought maybe this wouldn’t translate so well, so I kept it to myself.

  Chevalier quickly stepped in. ‘That’s enough, that’s enough. We will back away. Jean-Paul, call your dogs.’

  The old man fired a parting volley, ‘You should go back to your country. We don’t want you here. We have the right to hunt.’ This last phrase he repeated many times as he wandered off.

  ‘This is my country and I will stay here as long as I like,’ I ventured.

  The troops eased away and set up shop in a neighbouring field. Hard feelings all around.

  ‘Sam, you didn’t have to be so aggressive. I was handling it fine.’

  ‘No one, and I mean no one, is going to yell at my wife and try to intimidate her.’

  ‘You’re right, but you could have been calmer. We need to live with these people.’ Bud was more amused than scared or annoyed. It did bother her deeply that people were killing living things but she wasn’t entirely comfortable with confrontation – at least not the way I went about it. She did have a point. Better to negotiate than bully.

  In a sense, it was true. What right did I have to come to the French countryside and tell these farmers what to do? They had gained the right to hunt through a hard-fought and vicious battle over the centuries. There was a time when tenant farmers needed the chateau owner’s permission to kill their own chickens; nothing would be killed without the say-so of the seigneur, or lord. The kings of France had long hoarded the sacred right of the hunt. Hunting on private property was punishable by death up until the turn of the last century.

  In the last presidential election, the Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions party (party for hunting, fishing, nature and traditions) had garnered close to four per cent of the vote while sending a good few representatives to the European Parliament in the past few years. This was a profound issue and I could feel and understand their anger. Here we were, ‘rich’ Americans buying up their patrimony and then demanding they obey our rules. This after a thousand years of battle to win the right to live off the land and do as they please.

  All this was further complicated by my own brief career as a hunter. I used to go out with my father into the swamps of Louisiana. We only managed to knock down a few ducks here and there. My brief hunting life ended one day when I was 15 and shot a squirrel in the woods with a small Beretta .410 shotgun. He squirmed violently on the forest floor. I moved closer and saw a long black mark along the spot where his genitals used to be. It made me sick and from then on, I only went to the woods and the swamps to eat and drink beer with the men.

  ***

  The next morning came again much too quickly. Groggy and feeling hungover without the benefit of having drunk anything the night before, I was aroused from a deep sleep by a persistent clanging. I rubbed my eyes, looked at the clock on my nightstand and thought this had to stop. I couldn’t take another premature wake-up call. I quickly realised the clanging was coming from a bell at the back of the house. The bell, mounted about five metres up the stone wall outside the kitchen, was loud. Bud and I had surmised it was the bell used to call the workers and servants for dinner or to do chores from the far corners of the estate. It was our only ‘doorbell’ and someone was rigorously tugging the rusted metal chain.

  I stumbled downstairs and flung open the door. Two men were leaning casually against a small utility truck. One looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Bonjour, je suis Monsieur Cocteau. Et voici mon fils.’ I am Mr Cocteau, he said, and, pointing to the younger one, ‘he is my son.’

  The younger man was the tree thief. The older man was identical to his son; stocky, with bandy legs, glasses from the sixties, a white T-shirt and long, green rubber boots. He continued in French, fast and heavily accented. I should know an accent since mine could cut wood.

  ‘We need to talk. Do you remember yesterday?’ He peered up at me with raised eyebrows and a slight smirk. He seemed to be enjoying this. But I could tell he was not happy. I had some remote recollection of yesterday… I ate, pulled weeds… of course, the wild boar incident.

  ‘That was my brother you met,’ he said. Oops. ‘Do you see that chainsaw in the back of my car? I could cut your sign down this morning.’ Cocteau was referring to the panels we had posted at the end of the lane: ‘Château du Bonchamps, Chambre d’hôtes et Gîites, Mariages et Seminaires’. The signs sat on the lonely country road and no one but the locals would ever see them. But we were happy to install these small symbols of our new business.

  ‘Why do you want to do that?’ I asked, not quite sure what was happening.

  ‘You cannot yell at my brother when he is trying to hunt boar. We are trying to protect our crops. These beasts create great destruction on the land. It costs us money.’ The son glanced at the ground with reddened cheeks, seemingly not really wanting to take part in this exercise of male dominance.

  I tried to force my brain to work. This wasn’t good. Opting for the path of least resistance, I asked them to sit at the teak table just outside the kitchen so we could talk.

  ‘First, let me make you some coffee.’

  ‘Oui, s’il vous plaît.’

  I padded inside, ground the coffee, poured it into a large, glass French press and waited for the water to boil. I didn’t know what to do, but hospitality seemed the best approach. I poured the coffee, stepped out of the kitchen and sat with the Cocteau men.

  ‘So, please tell me what is going on?’

  ‘You see, we must kill the boar to save the corn and the wheat. They reproduce and destroy many things. It costs money.’

  ‘Yes, you said that. I understand. But my wife does not want animals to be killed here.’

  ‘Pourquoi?’

  ‘She is an animal lover and a vegetarian.’ The Cocteaus laughed. What an absurd concept!

  ‘That’s OK, my daughter-in-law is a vegetarian too and we laugh and tease her about it. But we respect this.’ This was unexpected, to say the least.

  ‘Then you can see the problem she has with hunting.’

  ‘Yes, but it is our right. And we are trying to live with the land and protect our things. And the mayor has allowed us to hunt. But, of course, we need permission to hunt on your property.’

  ‘I understand. I could say it is not possible to hunt here. But if you tell me in advance, maybe we can work something out. But honestly, we are afraid for the children when there is shooting. And we will have guests here who will be unsafe.’

  ‘What sort of business are you running?’ This was a welcome change of tone.

  ‘Let me show you.’ I then took these hardy farmers into the chateau and gave them the finest, most extensive tour to date. They walked around the house, eyes wide and very curious. They told me they knew the house but had never been inside, despite living less than a kilometre away for 40 years.

  We ended up in the library, shelves lined with old books, a massive oak-carved mantelpiece. They were impressed. My goal was to impress but also to show them all the rooms we had to rent out while we lived in just a small part, modestly, not unlike them; workers, just trying to make a living, like them.

  I think they got the point. They smiled and talked briefly about their families. They told me they moved to the regio
n four decades ago but still felt like outsiders. They said they knew how hard it was for ‘blow-ins’ like us. Considered an outsider after so long? My, we had a long road ahead of us.

  We wrapped up with the normal courtesies and well-wishings. We hadn’t really resolved the outstanding issue, but good feelings presided. I think they simply wanted a little respect. Don’t we all?

  As I escorted them to their truck, Monsieur Cocteau stopped abruptly. He turned quickly and a big, self-satisfied smile spread across his face. He pointed into the distance. There, as sure as we were standing there, were a family of wild boar trotting around the apple orchard which we could just see through the trees. There was one immensely large bristle-backed, long-tusked male accompanied by his slightly smaller mate rooting around with three little ones nipping at their heels. I couldn’t believe my bad luck. Bud and I had often wondered why the orchard looked as if a bulldozer had dug up large patches of grass and mud. Here was the answer. Hungry, destructive boar.

  ‘See. You should know they do the same thing to our crops. And think of ten or twenty doing the same thing. This is why we kill them,’ Cocteau said, delivering his final argument. For him, the matter was settled. As they drove off down the road, I could see the father patting his son on the shoulder and tilting his head back in uproarious laughter. ‘We showed him,’ he might have been saying.

  I could certainly see their point. Here some American and his Irish wife sought to overthrow their hard-won rights. Of course, we owned our property and had the right to deny hunting and incursions. We wanted to protect Blue, and ourselves, from stray bullets and overeager hunters. I couldn’t come to an answer, a peace, with this question. Like many things, life is complicated and unclear. But I left our meeting resolved to tread more lightly, to respect the farmers and their rigorous lives. It was all foreign to us. And so were we to them. This, I promised myself, I would try hard not to forget.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Autumn Sonata

  We were lurching into autumn, and the long, pretty summer days were starting to shorten. One by one, the sundry workmen we had cobbled together from seemingly infinite phone calls placed with the help of the Pages Jaunes, or Yellow Pages, started to appear like mushrooms after a vigorous rain. Didier was fully engaged, winding his way from bedroom to bedroom. The oak exterior windows were in poor shape, so Ludovic began his journey – sanding, stripping, resealing and painting (three times over) 156 windows. And our carpenter, Gilles, was set to begin. Gilles had come recommended to us by Didier, with the warning that Gilles was in fact marginal. What this meant, I wasn’t sure. I assumed it meant something like the English ‘outside the mainstream’. As a rule, we liked marginal people, feeling sometimes that we too didn’t quite fit into the conventional run of things.

  The autumn days were crisp, brilliantly clear and bracing. A very pleasant time to be in the Loire Valley. The leaves started their little sojourn into dormancy and near death, the pond swelled with a few days of rain and a certain quiet melancholy descended on the property as everyone readied themselves for winter. All the worker bees from the summer, the boys and Hercule, were gone now. It was just us and the French gang. We waiting for the new baby and the artisans toiling gently, quietly, imperceptibly away in the bowels and heights of the castle.

  The time was nearing. We would, in a matter of days, embark on a journey – the birth of our second child. Our first birth experience was a near idyll at a stand-alone birth centre in the middle of Manhattan. The birth centre was staffed exclusively by midwives and all medical intervention was viewed with suspicion. There were no pain medicines, no monitors, no doctor meddling. Just a midwife, a woman, her husband and a baby. And a nice large tub filled with warm water for the comfort of the mother. Blue was born in water and rested with her mum in complete peace, free from the wandering hands and fussy intrusions of more traditional hospitals. This, our second baby, would be born in France. The French had different ideas about birth and motherhood.

  Well-meaning neighbours and friends had directed us to a private clinic in Angers. We were told the care was more meticulous, more specialised, more personal. And the baby would be delivered by a doctor, not a midwife. Bud and I have a natural distaste for and distrust of doctors and much prefer the experienced, not-so-medical hands of a woman artisan whose métier it is to deliver babies. If we had thought clearly about the implication of doctor ‘care’, we probably would have opted for the public hospital where midwives do all the heavy lifting unless, of course, there is a serious problem. But we were a little anxious about having a baby in a foreign land with a language not our own. So we opted for caution and went the private route.

  Roughly a week before the big due date, we met with the doctor to lay a firm birth-plan, as they say in the business of having babies. We drove our beaten-up red truck into the big city and arrived at our appointment a little early.

  All the normal things unfolded with the midwife: blood pressure, heart rate, pee in a cup.

  Then the doctor came in and Bud laid out her plan.

  ‘I do not want an epidural and I want free movement during labour. And if the baby tears me when he comes out, do not cut, let it tear. I want the least possible intervention.’

  ‘This is not the way here. We will intervene as we see fit. Are you sure you do not want a painkiller?’

  ‘Absolutely not. It passes from me into the baby and can have effects. Inability to breastfeed, lethargy, and so on.’

  ‘It is nothing for baby. Everyone here takes the pain medicine.’

  ‘I am not everyone. Please respect my wishes.’

  ‘It is your body. But if the baby goes over the date, we will have to induce.’

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ Bud reassured her.

  Despite the odd expressions and occasional grimaces of the doctor as Bud laid down the law, we had found the medical system in France exceptional. We no longer had insurance from the States and we weren’t quite in the system in France. At this point, we had not properly registered the business and had not been paying into the social system. We would have to pay for the birth out of our own pockets. So far, this had not posed a problem. Bud had undergone some of her obligatory doctor’s visits with a couple of sonograms, each one amounting to 39 euros, whereas in the States, the same procedure would run into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars. And the care was prompt; no long waits, agreeable and attentive staff. As Americans, we had long heard of the ills and horrors of socialised medicine (man goes in for appendectomy, comes out without one leg… that sort of thing). Not in France, it seemed. We hoped for the best.

  By the end of September, Bud was overdue. We had learned from Blue’s birth that being late was no cause for concern. A few days, a week, the kind midwives at our New York haven showed no signs of concern or haste. Let the baby come as she will. France was different.

  When Bud was a day late, we received an urgent call from the clinic. We chose not to answer the phone and to ride out the panic. The message left urged us to sprint to the hospital for immediate and much needed care. We were able to ignore the urgent pleadings of our doctor because we had faith in the simple fact that more than 80 per cent of all births are normal with no complications. We had no reason to believe things were complicated. So why intervene?

  In fact, we weren’t quite sure whether she was a day or a week late. Depends on who you asked or what calendar you consulted. The French usually counted 38 weeks while Yanks liked to think more in terms of 40 weeks. It’s all very inexact in any case. The next day, we decided to go in. Just to say hello. And assure the doctor that we had everything under control.

  ‘You are late and I am very concerned,’ the doctor began. ‘It is actually not clear when my exact due date is. I think we have time,’ Bud responded.

  ‘I do not like this. I want to induce you,’ the doctor said.

  Bud stood her ground. ‘We do not think it is a good idea. Once you begin on this path of intervention, it leads to more
intervention and problems. We truly believe this.’

  The doctor was displeased. ‘This is not the way things are done in France. I say what is appropriate. We must induce you.’

  ‘We will not do this and there is no argument. It is bad for the baby.’

  ‘Then you will sign a document saying you forego my recommendation.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘May I examine you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The doctor made the examination, then said, ‘You are partially dilated so it appears things are moving along. But if this continues for another day we will have to take immediate and invasive action.’

  ‘We will see. And then make a decision.’ No budging Bud on this point. I simply watched as Bud took things into her own intuitive hands.

  Strangely, later in the evening as we were having a nibble in the kitchen, Bud felt those familiar pangs that let us know, without a doubt, she was going into labour.

  ‘Sam, I think it’s beginning. I swear she induced this somehow. During the exam, I think she might have rubbed some gel down there to speed things along.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be all right. You can handle it.’

  Easy for me to say. We set our little plan in order, taking a long walk in the woods and making sure our overnight bags were ready. I began videotaping here and there, for posterity. Things were proceeding nicely. I was checking my watch, timing the contractions, both their length and the interval between each, like a good husband. I thought quietly to myself, what happened to the days when the father could pop off to the pub, sip nobly from a pint and wait for the whole thing to wrap up?

  Everything was going smoothly. Then it struck me like a bolt of lightning.

  ‘Bud, what are we going to do about Blue? Is she coming with us?’ We had debated whether or not Blue would attend the birthing. In the end, we thought it might be a little too traumatic for two-year-old Blue to see her mother in such pain.