Son of Serge Bastarde

by John Dummer

  What a perfect morning for a stroll into the village to buy fresh croissants for breakfast! I told Helen where I was going and set off along the track across the fields. I had showed her the 'ACHAT D'OR' leaflet but she didn't believe it; she said someone must have used an old photo of Serge. I tried not to think about it. Instead, I did what I always do when I walk across my land – worry about the weeds and brambles that take hold over the summer. And then guilt sets in as I recall the ecological disaster I caused through my ignorance when we first moved into our 300-year-old farmhouse a few years ago. There was a jungle of weeds round the house and one of our well-meaning French neighbours had advised me to control them with a chlorate weedkiller. I bought a plastic pump machine, diluted the concentrated killer and went around spraying the paths and driveway, wearing a face mask and goggles (you can't be too careful with poisonous weedkiller, it said on the bottle with its skull-and-crossbones logo).

  It worked like magic. After a few days the weeds wilted and died and the effect lasted throughout the year. I was so encouraged by this that the following season I went right round the house spraying the bottom of the walls where the weeds were springing up. And I noticed I wasn't the only one caught up in this weed-killing mania. Our neighbours sprayed the verges outside their houses, leaving just a dead area of earth where nothing could grow, not even grass. This had seemed a bit extreme, but as the French like to point out, 'C'est propre' (It's neat).

  On hot, humid summer evenings we were delighted to hear the sweet musical peeping sounds made by tiny green tree frogs around our house. Sometimes we would see one attached to one of the windows by the sucker pads on its feet. They were such wonderful little frogs, and the sound they made was magical. But the following summer they had disappeared, and with horror we realised too late that our beautiful tree frogs must have absorbed the deadly weedkiller. I had thoughtlessly wiped out a population that had doubtlessly been breeding round our property for generations. We hoped and prayed that some had survived and they would return. But they never did.

  The EU has recently banned chlorate weedkiller, and not before time. Now I never use weedkiller – I cut back the brambles and weeds by hand. This is not as effective and is much harder work, but I will never be able to rid myself of the guilt over the demise of our beautiful tree-frog colony.

  As I walked through the orchard behind our house the church bell in the village chimed quarter past the hour and I remembered Spike, our big brindle Staffordshire bull terrier who was buried in the far corner of the field. A walk without a dog isn't the same, and with Spike by my side the world had always seemed a brighter and more exciting place. He had a unique, stylish way of trotting that you couldn't help but admire, and his whole mien was the epitome of relaxed and casual 'cool'. This was the first time Helen and I had been without a Staff since we were first married. We had brought two cats with us and inherited two more from Gaston, the previous owner of the house, but to my mind there's something about having a dog around that makes life more worthwhile. I can think back to every dog I've ever had and how each one enriched my life. My earliest memories are of cuddling up in a basket with Bruce, a gentle red setter that befriended me on a beach in Worthing when I was a kid on holiday with my mum and dad. Bruce's owners were unable to cope with him for some reason and to my great joy agreed to let us keep him. As I grew up we had a succession of black Labradors and I still miss my little whippet-cross, Percy, my constant companion in my early twenties.

  We had spent too long without having a dog around. I decided when I got back with the croissants I would talk to Helen over breakfast about buying a Staff puppy. There must be a breeder here in France. American Staffs had become popular in recent years, although they were on the dangerous dogs list in France. But the Staffordshire bull terrier had been removed from 'list 2' after protests by owners in France, so now you didn't have to register the dogs with the local mairie (town hall), or muzzle them, or get special insurance.

  As I followed the road into our village the hirondelles (swallows) were swooping low, gliding effortlessly over the fields. It wouldn't be long before they would begin to gather on the telephone lines in preparation for their migration before the cooler weather arrived. When we had first moved into this house years ago it was the beginning of summer and a pair of swallows flew in through the back door and all around the living room, twittering, landing on the beam above the cheminée (fireplace) and back out of the door. It was thrilling having them whirl about indoors above our heads. When we examined the beam we discovered an old nest hidden underneath it. The previous owner, Gaston, must have left the back door open all summer long and the pair were returning to lay eggs and raise chicks in the same nest. There were several cats prowling around and the swallows sensibly decided it was too risky and, to our disappointment, went off to nest elsewhere.

  Seeing the swallows flying reminded me of the old French song I learnt when I was a child, 'Alouette, Gentille Alouette'. The alouette is not a swallow but a skylark, and it was only recently that I discovered the song was about plucking the feathers from the corpse of the bird before eating it. Somehow this took away the magic for me, although it is still a pretty tune.

  On the way back from the boulangerie with my croissants I bumped into Roland, a woodcutter and farmer who lives nearby. In his spare time he plays accordion and sings in a local dance band that plays at fetes and bals à papa (old-fashioned traditional dances). He knows I'm a musician too and we had hit it off as soon as we met.

  'Heh, John, it's going to liven things up when they build the houses on the fields next to your place,' he grinned. 'We could do with some new blood round here.'

  'How do you mean?' I said. I didn't know what he was talking about.

  'Mais oui, they've changed the law. We farmers can sell off our fields for building land. They've extended the limits of the village. There's been a notice up in the mairie for months.'

  My heart sank. We'd heard nothing about this and never went to the mairie to read the notices.

  'Old man Fagot has applied for permission to build on his fields next to your place. I saw him in the bar last night and he was rubbing his hands together. He's going to make a fortune.'

  'What? He's going to build houses on the fields next to us?' I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

  'All us farmers want to sell if we can. There's no money in farming now. We have our old age to consider.'

  I was stunned. Surely this wasn't happening. We had been told that if we were surrounded by farmland we were protected here in France. The law was that agricultural land was safe from development. I had been enjoying the peace and serenity of fields of corn around our house. If they built on them, it would all vanish. I felt my knees go weak.

  'Isn't there anything we can do to stop it?' I asked.

  'Stop it?' Roland seemed surprised. 'Why would you want to stop it? You'll have lots more new friends and neighbours. It will do wonders for the village. We need the money that it will bring for developing better amenities – it will mean bigger fetes and more work for our dance band, not to mention all the pretty young girls.' He gave me a nudge and a wink. Roland was something of a local Lothario. He lived with his eighty-year-old mother but still kept in touch with a brace of ex-wives he continued to visit and spoon with. He also wasn't averse to taking up with any new girlfriends who might pass his way – the younger and prettier the better. He clearly viewed any enlargement of the neighbourhood as a chance for new fodder to enliven his sex life.

  I looked at him in a state of shock, bid him a hurried 'au revoir' and half walked, half ran back up the road. My heart was thumping. Could it be true? All these beautiful fields to be concreted over to build new houses? What would that mean for us? We loved the away-from-it-all rural atmosphere of our place.

  As I passed Mr Leglise's he was scything the long grass in front of his old stone farmhouse dressed in traditional French blue jacket and trousers, his beret set at a jaunty angle. He would be affecte
d by the new houses, too. I went up to him but he was so engrossed he didn't notice me and I had to jump back to avoid being cut down by his scythe. He grinned at me in apology, put down the tool and shook my hand.

  'Have you heard the news?' I asked him. 'Fagot is selling off his fields to build houses.'

  'Yes, I know,' he said, 'but there's not much we can do about it now, he's made up his mind.'

  'You knew about this?' I was shocked. Everyone seemed to know but us.

  'I could have sold some of my land but I don't think new neighbours would put up with my singing, do you?' he said. On sunny days he was in the habit of getting out his old gramophone, playing records and singing along to them in his rich baritone voice. 'What about your drumming, John? I love it when you practise but not everyone likes the sound of drums like I do. You might have problems, too.'

  I didn't know what to say. Everything was about to change round here. I bid him a hurried goodbye and headed home.

  When I arrived, breathless and stressed out, Helen was waiting to have breakfast with me. I blurted it out: 'They're going to plough up the fields and build a load of houses! What are we going to do?'

  'What are you talking about?' She was pouring herself a cup of tea.

  'I just saw Roland. He says they've changed the law in France and farmers can sell off their land for building plots.'

  Helen looked at me like I had gone mad. 'That's impossible! They're not allowed to.'

  'They are, and they have. He says Fagot's selling his and they're going to build houses on his fields. Roland says there's a meeting at the town hall next week when they're going to give the details to everyone.'

  Helen looked at me, wide-eyed. 'No, that can't be true?'

  'Roland seemed very definite about it,' I said. 'Mr Leglise knows all about it as well.'

  'I can't believe it,' she exploded. 'I'm going up to the mairie to ask what's going on.' She leapt up, grabbed the car keys and ran out.

  I sat and waited, gazing across at the heady countryside surrounding our peaceful old mas, listlessly munching on a croissant. But now it had somehow lost its taste. I mused over the path that had brought us to live in this old house together. I had met Helen whilst I was playing in the band Darts, formed some years after the John Dummer Blues Band disbanded. She was a photographer on a band shoot and I fell madly in love with her and we got married. Some years later, after touring and managing other music ventures, I realised I was disenchanted with the music business and burnt out. Helen and I were both fond of France, and it was at this point that we decided, on a whim, to buy an ancient monastery in the Dordogne. We lived there for a couple of years before selling up and touring around Europe, finally settling in Portugal, where we found an old windmill on a hill in the Alentejo region. We lived 'wild and free' before returning to France with finances much depleted and had bought the 300-year-old farmhouse, which was then in need of much restoration.

  When Helen got back twenty minutes later she looked desperate.

  'They're building a housing estate next to us!'

  'What?'

  'Not just a few houses on the road but a whole lotissement.'

  She was clutching photocopies of the plans and we pored over them in disbelief. The new zone constructible (building zone) covered the area around our house and included our garden and fields.

  'They said we could build two houses on our land if we wanted to,' she said. 'Apparently the law changed in the whole of France recently and all villages are allowed to apply to enlarge the building zones around them. Fagot has permission to build a twenty-house lotissement right next to us.'

  'Twenty houses? The whole of France?' I'd gone gaga. 'Why didn't we know about it? How come the neighbours weren't all talking about it?'

  'I don't know, do I?' said Helen, sounding irritated. 'I stopped at the neighbours' on the road opposite us and they had no idea what I was talking about. They're beside themselves now that I've told them they're going to have twenty houses across the way. They were going straight up the mairie when I left them. I suppose people who wanted to sell and build kept it quiet. How often does anyone read notices up the mairie?'

  'Can't we fight them?' I asked.

  'I don't think so, not according to the mayor – he's ecstatic! I think we're going to have to move,' said Helen.

  'What? I don't want to move. I love it here,' I said, feeling like I was about to burst into tears.

  'Well, you can stay if you want,' said Helen, 'but I'm going.'

  Now the truth was out! She had been trying to persuade me to move for ages but I had dug my heels in. She wasn't as enamoured of the bathtub in the kitchen as I was. She kept saying we should face up to the fact that restoring a house wasn't our forte and it had beaten us. I had reroofed it with the help of an English builder friend and rewired most of the house, but never got round to installing a proper kitchen or bathroom. Maybe she was right. We might as well move and start afresh.

  The following Wednesday evening we were sitting in the halle des sports (sports hall) with everyone else in the village, listening to the mayor telling us about plans for the future. Any protest should have been lodged with the mairie months ago. We got the feeling there had been some sleight of hand somewhere along the line and that there were very few objectors. Everyone seemed just to accept it – except us. No one else said anything. Our house appeared to be the only one encompassed by a lotissement; all the others were on the edge of the road. Looking at a map it appeared that the zone constructible had been specifically extended out in a big loop to the edge of our property to take in all the fields around us. And the twenty houses had been an underestimation; Fagot envisioned over forty plots being sold off, with new houses encircling our home completely.

  We came away feeling depressed and defeated. But I still wasn't willing to give up.

  'We could plant some tall leylandii trees to grow up along the boundary of our land to hide us from the estate,' I suggested, clutching at straws. 'How bad could it be?'

  'I really don't know, but I'm not staying to find out,' said Helen with feeling.

  4

  BUYING FRENZY

  It was still dark as I drove into Dax, but the town was slowly beginning to come to life. It was a warm, balmy morning and the colourful neon signs outside the numerous boulangeries gave the town a jolly party atmosphere. I like the way French bakers begin work at an astonishingly early hour and that you can purchase freshly baked bread or croissants before sunup. This is a blessing, especially on Saturday or Sunday mornings when revellers and wedding guests are wending their weary way home to sleep off their exertions. There is nothing like fresh croissants and a large café crème to combat the effects of an early-morning hangover – as I well remember!

  I turned off at the covered market in the town centre and drove round the square, parking my van in its usual place within easy reach of my regular pitch. It was the week after the Soumoulou market and the first Thursday of the month, when the Dax antiques market is held. Dax is no stranger to the English; the city experienced three centuries of English rule (1152–1453) and Richard the Lionheart is believed to have built the original castle and fortified wall, only parts of which survive. Dax is a well-known spa town and attracts large numbers of curistes, who come for the mud baths and natural hot water springs that run underneath it. The healing properties of the springs are reputed to have been discovered by a Roman soldier who was about to go off to war and, unable to take his rheumatic old dog with him, went to drown him in the river. The dog emerged with his rheumatism gone and acting like a puppy again. It's too good a story to ignore, whether true or not, and a larger-than-life-sized bronze statue of the legionnaire and his dog has been erected in the town.

  It was six-thirty in the morning and already a few brocanteurs were unloading stock from their vans and setting up their stands. My friend Louis was up and busy, staggering under the weight of a heavy box of LP records, which he was hefting onto one of his tables. He gave me a welco
ming grin and came over puffing to shake my hand. I was still upset from discovering we were going to have to up sticks and move but the sight of Louis cheered me up.

  'Hey, John, look at this will you.' He pulled several LPs out of the box. 'I've picked up a load of Lester Young stuff when he was with Count Basie and some great Billie Holiday albums.'

  He knew this would get my attention, and that I loved Billie Holiday. I couldn't resist stopping to study the sleeves and we enthused about how great she was.

  'We can listen to this lot later and dig Prez and Lady Day all afternoon,' he said, slapping me enthusiastically on the back.

  The pitch next to mine was already crammed with expensive-looking antiques. Glittering objets d'art were positioned on polished fruitwood desks and walnut tables. Bronze figurines of scantily clad females glowed seductively, backlit by artfully placed spotlights. A closer look at the stock would reveal that most of these were reproductions with a handful of genuine antiques mixed in to add authenticity. This stand belonged to a seriously overweight individual with a turned-up nose and small piggy eyes whom Helen and I referred to jokingly as 'Monsieur Repro', but his real name was Laurent. He always carried a big stock of reproductions which he tried to pass off as genuine antiques. The trouble was that after a while it was difficult to tell which were reproductions and which were the real antiques; everything looked fake. He gave me a wave and carried on setting up his stand.