A Chateau of One's Own

by Sam Juneau

  ‘Good point. Call Véronique. You talked to her before about this, hopefully she’s ready.’

  Véronique was a friend and sometime house-cleaner from the village. I had mentioned to her the impending birth and our half-baked plan which included phoning her at the last minute, possibly bringing her own three children to the chateau, and asking her to sleep on the sofa while Blue played in the television room. When I first spoke to her about tending Blue in our absence, she simply responded, ‘Mais elle est sauvage, non?’ But, she is wild, no? I wasn’t surprised by her observation. We had found in our short time in France that the French were rather more strict with their children than we tended to be. Other people had noted the animal nature of our only daughter. We liked to think she was simply carefree and expressive.

  ‘Véronique?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘It’s Sam. Bud is going into labour. Are you available to come over now? We need someone to watch Blue this evening.’

  ‘It is no problem, but my husband goes to work at five tomorrow morning. Can you be back by then?’

  ‘Yes, we should be done by then.’

  It is clear we are not the best planners. Luckily, Véronique was free. She came by at 8.30 and wrangled with Blue as Bud felt the surge approaching. By 10.30 that evening, Bud’s contractions were coming fast and furious. We loaded up the van, said our goodbyes and started down the road as Blue yelled at the top of her lungs.

  The trip was not easy. Riding in the van was like sitting in a tractor on a very bumpy road. The road was perfect all the 30 minutes to the hospital, there were just no shock absorbers. We arrived at the hospital, where everything was closed up tight. I approached the side entrance and found a sign which told me to ‘appuyez ici’ or ‘press here’ for emergencies. So I did as ordered and heard a voice greet me over the intercom.

  ‘My wife is in labour. We are here to have the baby,’ I said.

  ‘Please come in.’

  We entered the dark hallway and made our way dutifully to the third floor. We stepped out of the lift into the main waiting area. A midwife appeared from the shadows and led us to a room. Bud stopped suddenly with another contraction, unable to move, paralysed with the weight of the impending explosion.

  We hurried with our things to a clean, private room where I made ready our few belongings. The next contraction was nearing as Bud doubled over and let out a tremendous groan, a bellow really. Another midwife rushed in to give aid. Bud moaned loudly again and the midwife frantically started shushing her. I couldn’t believe how frenetically she was trying to quieten Bud. Appalled and angered, I said, ‘You need to leave this room immediately.’

  Bud reprimanded me, ‘Sam, please don’t fight with the midwife. It’s OK.’

  ‘I can’t believe she’s “shushing” you. They’re so damn discreet here, they don’t want you to act like a normal woman and let out the pain.’ The French are a very discret people. It is always imprudent to make a scene, whether at a restaurant, grocery store, or anywhere in public. Generally, this is a wonderful, valuable quality. Not here, though, not now. I think it was odd for the midwife at this clinic to hear a scream. Our doctor had told us most, if not all, French women have péridurales, or epidurals. But that wasn’t Bud’s chosen path.

  ‘It’s OK. Relax,’ she managed through pants and grunts. Personally, I would have an epidural for teeth cleaning. Bud was different. She wanted it au naturel, real and full of all the good and bad feelings associated with childbirth. God bless her.

  Sometime after midnight, the doctor arrived. If she was happy, she didn’t show it. She was all business. She led Bud into the birthing room. I should say ‘operating room’, for it was all bright lights and clinical alienation. The doctor instructed Bud to lie on her back, the worst possible position in which to give birth as there’s no gravity. Bud tried in vain as the ‘transition’ began. Apparently, this is the most painful time as the baby actually ‘engages’ and moves down the birth canal. Ouch. The doctor peered down there. The baby was head down but his face was turned the wrong way. Not good.

  Bud’s labour stalled at this point, while the doctor and her dutiful midwives were busy fiddling with the stirrups. Again, the worst possible thing for a labouring woman but convenient certainly for the doctor.

  ‘Stop messing with those things!’ Bud bellowed. She was at the point of no return. She heaved herself over on all fours and began the final, primal push.

  The doctor leaned back and petulantly threw up her hands, then folded her arms.

  ‘If you are like this, I can do nothing to help you,’ she complained. Astonishing, a hissy fit in the middle of a birth. I was speechless. Who says the French are difficult?

  Bud continued her hard work and just as the head appeared, she turned over and assumed the ‘proper’ position for our sulky doctor. With a tremendous effort and a concentrated energy found possibly only in nuclear reactors, Bud forced the little fellow out. And so Grim was born. He immediately breastfed and began the journey into the rest of his life.

  Bud passed out on the birth–bed-slash-operating-table and I fell asleep uncomfortably on a nearby chair. The doctor was long gone by the time we drifted off. I set my alarm for 4.30 a.m. so that I could begin the trip back to the chateau and Véronique could see her husband off to work.

  I returned with Blue shortly after 6 a.m.

  ‘Sam, I have to get out of here. They were waking me up all morning to make sure I was sleeping.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to go? They say you have five days in the hospital minimum.’

  ‘Yes, let’s go. Let’s talk to the doctor when she comes in and get out of here.’

  By mid morning, the doctor’s rounds landed her in our room. She was a bit stiff and cold with us as, I’m sure, images of Bud’s rebellion flashed in her mind.

  ‘We would like to leave today if that’s OK.’

  ‘You cannot leave. You just had the baby. I cannot give you permission to leave.’

  I am never good when told what to do. Neither is Bud.

  ‘Well, we’re leaving. It’s more restful and better for the baby to be at home.’

  ‘You must sign yourself out and sign a statement saying it is against medical advice.’

  ‘No problem, just show me the paper.’ We signed yet another piece of paper.

  ‘And I will not continue to have Mrs Juneau as a patient.’

  That was a new one. We had never been fired as patients before. Fair enough. I suppose there comes a time in a doctor’s life where the burden is greater than the reward. We signed all the documents and headed downstairs to pay. I entered the payment office warily, as I couldn’t imagine what the cost would be. As the accounts woman began printing up our bill, Bud and I looked at one another, our eyes searching for a sign of hope, a sign that it wouldn’t crush us. The same thing for Blue had run into the $6,000 (£3,200) range all paid for by insurance, but this time we had no safety net. The bill took an awfully long time to print and contained many pages. When she was done, I extended a shaking hand. 1,021 euros (£700). Brilliant. This was a break we really needed, and briefly reaffirmed our love of France.

  We returned home without incident and Bud took to bed with the lovely, strapping Grim. I can’t really give you a good reason for his name. Upon hearing the new name, some of our family and friends predicted bullying and a childhood of misery for the poor thing. My mum simply said ‘Oh,’ when I told her. And again, ‘Oh, Sam.’ As in, ‘Oh, Sam, how could you do that to your offspring?’ I had met a lad once years back in a pub in New York. He was Swedish and quite tall with long, black hair, a sharp nose and a prominent jaw and broad forehead. My friend knew him and introduced us casually. He said, ‘Sam, this is Grim.’ The name sort of shocked me. I thought it was unforgettable and unique. After I told Bud about my meeting later that evening, we both agreed it was one of the most striking names we had ever heard. Now, here was Grim. Under stiff resistance from the in-laws, we comforted ourselves with
our choice by noting the name means ‘daring or bold’ in Old Norse.

  I served her breakfast in bed for the next few weeks as we settled in to the new room we had prepared. Didier, the painter, had warned us that he was making good progress and that we needed to move the family bed. We chose a lovely large room down the hall. The room had eighteenth-century wood panelling on the walls which neatly hid vast oak cabinets. There was a later period marble fireplace with a sweet, grand trumeau with intricate neoclassical carvings of nymphs playing among swirls and gold trim. The floor was composed of tomettes, or terracotta tiles. Perhaps cold in the winter but pleasing to the eye. This would be our new nest for the long winter ahead.

  We had bought a Louis XVI silk-covered bed at a local antiques show. This would be our bed which we’d share with hungry Grim. Blue would sleep in a perfect wrought iron single bed that we found in the attic. There weren’t many treasures like this in the house when we bought it, and we found this particularly pleasing. We had decided to name all of our rooms after trees on the property – the Chestnut Room, the Oak Room, Sycamore and Sequoia Rooms. This we called the Cedar Room in honour of the massive 250-year-old Lebanese cedar planted behind the chateau and in clear view from the windows of this room, with a nine-metre trunk and sprawling branches extending skyward.

  Like many deciduous trees, the cedar had the peculiar habit of shedding branches every so often. The top of the giant was littered with broken bits and pieces and tended to create a shabby yet grand appearance. Like most things at Bonchamps, the imperfect decay of the tree accented nicely the house’s faded elegance and irregular beauty. This specific tree had the added virtue of serving as a lookout for the two rather noisy owls that lived in the rear tower of the house. I had met one, in the library on that eventful night a couple of springs prior.

  Every evening, just at sundown, the owls perched on the large stone oculus that led into the tower above the attic. With a screech and a dramatic flurry of feathers and impressive wingspan, the owls would fly out to the cedar, a sort of scouting spot for the night’s hunting. They were just white and brown barn owls, nothing fancy or overly colourful, but they were our owls. The fact that they left tons of waste and undigested small animal parts in the tower bothered us not one bit. We felt privileged to have them as guests. Or perhaps we were their guests. In any case, they offered a glimpse of wildness, a little spectacle to punctuate the cool evenings that now descended upon us as we stumbled into October.

  Every day I would make my rounds of the house and the property in general to monitor the work and make sure our merry band of artisans were happy and plugging away. One morning I stopped in on Didier as he pried loose bits of worn plaster from the ceiling.

  ‘This is very fragile. Old. I will try to repair but you really need a plasterer here.’

  ‘Do what you can and if we need someone else, I will get them.’

  ‘I am not really comfortable doing this work and it’s not budgeted. But I can do some things for now.’

  ‘Please do. And let me know what your additional costs are.’

  I realised the only way we could survive on our small pot of money was to guard costs and milk the artisans. Sounds ruthless, but it was the only way we could make it to the next summer, our first full planned season. I had offered to pay Didier for his extra labour but I was sure his costs would be far less than a skilled, registered plasterer.

  I chatted briefly with Didier about the upcoming sardine festival in nearby Cheffes. It seemed odd to me that a town so far inland would have a sardine festival. Didier assured me it was a grand event with thousands of people, cheap wine and good food. Perfect. He noted too, casually and with gusto, that the end of every sardine festival climaxed with dancing girls from Paris. Nude dancing girls. A must-see if ever there was one.

  I left the room with Blue and started down the hall. Just behind me, I heard a crackling sound, then a rumble, and finally a tremendous, house-shaking crash. I picked up Blue and rushed back to Didier. There on the floor, in a heap of dust, wood laths, plaster and assorted rubble, lay small Didier with a bewildered look on his face. And there, sure enough, his little feet poked out of the debris, pointing up to the hole in the ceiling.

  ‘What happened?’ I cried.

  Didier wiped the dust from his eyes and peered out from his plaster tomb as a cloud of dust billowed down the hall and out the windows in the corridor.

  ‘I was pulling loose some plaster here in the ceiling. I think the weight of old plaster and some rotten wood laths made the ceiling fall in. Quel bordel!’

  I looked up and saw a gaping hole in the ceiling that took up the better part of the room.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said. I felt guilty that I had pushed poor little Didier beyond his skill level into near disaster.

  I leaned down and started to clear the debris away from our shocked painter as he picked himself up and dusted himself off. Blue began to cry. Needless to say, after this, Didier was less willing to take on other jobs not in his métier. We decided to leave the hairline cracks in most ceilings and perform minor cosmetic surgery on the long-failing plaster. Luckily, the actual structure of the walls and their large stones were in decent shape. I asked Didier if he thought there were other unstable ceilings in his path. Didier shrugged, not seemingly concerned, and said, ‘On verra.’ We will see.

  I told Bud about the most recent catastrophe. For the time being, she was preoccupied, caught up in the bliss of new motherhood, caring for our new baby and breastfeeding 17 hours a day. Bud was good in this state and nothing unnerved her. Progress was being made, the men were showing up and working diligently and meticulously. All was good in the chateau, although the money was dwindling faster than we had hoped. This problem was something I dealt with, for the moment, courtesy of that old, trusty friend denial. We would have to address the problem at some point, but not now. Even if we did open for business in the coming summer, it would take a good deal of time to actually make some money. I wasn’t sure what to do about this nettlesome problem.

  As the autumn began to show the first hints of a colder, darker time, Ludovic, the exterior window painter, showed up every day with rarely a peep. I became used to bringing him coffee on the colder days as he continued his thankless task.

  ‘How do you continue day in, day out when you have so many windows to do?’

  ‘I don’t think about the other windows, just the one I’m working on,’ he said, resigned and surprisingly content.

  Ludovic was in his late twenties, it seemed, with dark hair and dark eyes and a slightly sad aspect. He was hearty and seemed to take the work in his stride. Every window received the same care: sanding, filling in broken and rotted parts, replacing broken panes, resealing panes (all 24 of each window), painting and repainting as he passed from one monumental window to the next. He had the capacity to endure with this, what seemed to me, most tedious and arduous task… the same thing, over and over again, without apparent end. We would see him from time to time at the local pub/pizzeria when we would venture there for takeaway. He was usually nursing a beer with a buddy, chatting amiably.

  He had his calling, a decent though modest salary, he took long lunches, the state took care of all his basic needs. And when he worked, he worked at his pace, answering to himself and satisfying his need to do a job well. This was the first time I realised the profound and fundamental difference between who he was – a man happy with being – and the never-ending aching and ambition of American life. I’m not saying all the French are content with little and I’m not saying all Americans are hungrily scoffing at the trough of greed. It’s just that Ludovic came to symbolise for me the ‘less is more’ attitude. A way of sustaining oneself without the constant, niggling longing for more, more, more. I don’t want to romanticise the lack of ambition of a young man in the French countryside. But there is almost certainly something there, something real that says the best you can have is what you currently have. It leaves one less unsatisfied. Didier
seemed to share the same contentment with his lot.

  The following day, we had a brief spell of warm weather, odd in late October. I asked Ludovic to join me and Gilles, the carpenter, for a drink during lunch. Gilles had been showing up sporadically, willy-nilly, like the cliché about Mediterranean workers told us he would. We didn’t mind because he was a very kind and sweet man. He wore thick glasses and had a gangly body and a distracted, almost mournful, solitary way about him. We would talk often, when he did show up, about the work, about the French countryside, politics and whatever else helped us wind our way through the day. All the time, he would cut and plane cabinets, kitchen storage units and surrounds for the bathtubs.

  The sun was shining, so we sat out the back around an old wrought iron table and took a little rosé with a lunch of baguettes and dried ham alongside a few hunks of tomme Pyrénées cheese.

  ‘I will not be here next week,’ Gilles bashfully stated.

  ‘OK, what’s going on? We need to finish the surrounds and get the cabinets in order.’ I felt panic creeping in.

  ‘Well, I have a problem. It is not your problem, but mine. You see, you know now the rivers are rising and they are full?’

  ‘Yes?’ I did not know quite where he was going with this. But my affection for him made me curious of his path here.

  ‘Near my house, the river is particularly high. It is flooding our back garden. It is inondable. It is all I could afford because I do not work all the time.’ Inondable. Liable to flooding.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. What do you normally do when this happens? Do you have to move for the flood season?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes I go to stay with my mother, whose house does not flood. It is hard on the kids too.’

  I did not know that he had children. Five, as it turned out.

  He continued, ‘And this year, my wife walked into the river.’

  ‘It’s a bit cold to swim this time of year,’ I replied innocently.

  ‘No, she wanted to end her life. I had to save her from the current in the river.’