Our House is Certainly Not in Paris Page 18

  Well time went by; she had another live-in (an ex circus, odd-job man)... and they built three council houses just below her house. In one of them lives my friend Michel Bournat, so that I saw quite a lot of her place, in fact. Her place deteriorated and I heard rumours about her being a danger on the road since she drove carelessly and at excessive speeds. Then, one day, there were two dustbins overturned on the road between her house and my friend’s, and plenty of litter on the road. I enquired about it from my friend and he told me it was the woman who had become quite mad at him for no reason at all. (You know the dapper little man he is and how clean his wife is.) Sometime later, I was surprised to see that Michel’s gate was locked and he told me that the woman had taken a fancy to pouring garbage into his garden! Later, I was apprised that she attacked the children of another house further up the hill.

  Then one day I saw that her roof was quite ruined... and this was the start of a story that made me quite proud of the Cuzance citizens, because when we arrived in the next spring, I remarked to Michel that the woman’s roof had been repaired. He explained that her roof had been ruined by a storm, as a consequence of the lady being swindled by Irish gypsies, who told her they would clean and renovate her roof but replaced her tiles with worthless used-up ones. So, that when a storm struck, the roof blew down. And, this is where I fall in love with the villagers: they worked on her roof for free so that she should have something over her head.

  Time elapsed until one day, Michel stopped by our place, quite agitated and full of nervous tics. Apparently, the woman had attempted to kill him and his wife with a knife.

  Another neighbour saw the scene, photographed it, called the Maire who in turn called the gendarmes, who had the woman sent to a psychiatric hospital in the vicinity. The next day she was back, mouthing horrors and threats against the whole world... and especially against Michel and his wife!

  And so the problem goes on since the woman refuses to take her medicine, she suffers from violent bouts of aggression... and the gendarme are called... and the rigmarole goes on.

  I even heard she hurt a gendarme once, but nothing can be done to (or against?) her. If you go by her house, you will notice it because of the weeds and abandoned look (all her shutters are closed and she goes out only at night); sometimes (rarely) her children come and tidy up the garden... and the situation deteriorates slowly until... drama strikes?

  Sad is it not? A portrait of our civilization!

  And that indeed sums it perfectly. There is simply nothing else I can possibly add to Jean-Claude’s history lessons and stories.

  54

  Crazy Paving, Never-ending

  Is it the paving that is crazy or the people laying it? This is a question that is full of imponderables . Stuart comments that it could certainly drive people crazy – and very quickly too... As a prelude to laying it the following day, after an apéritif, we start playing around with the pieces, laying them out in various configurations round la piscine. The permutations are endless. Not only are the sizes any number of variables, so too the thickness of the stone varies. It’s definitely going to be an alarm clock morning to get the paving underway. Once again, the task ahead is a daunting one.

  My job is to unpack the paving, then sort the pieces and start laying them out. It is soon rapidly apparent that the appellation ‘crazy paving’ is not a misnomer. Meanwhile Stuart has to come to terms with his industrial cement mixer and the different proportions of sand and cement to mix. Unlike artisans we have heard of, he will not abandon a batch of fresh cement if the church bells strikes twelve, signalling déjeuner.

  No, we will work on regardless, especially as Sunday is absolutely a day of rest – our very own village vide grenier day. We are hoping Cuzance defies the odds of the weather forecast and the predicted storm does not strike at lunchtime. If the storm does hit, the annual lunch will have to be abandoned for the third year in a row. The only satisfied customers were the pigs as they were the happy recipients of all the food.

  After just a short time, it is quite evident that I am simply never going to grasp the intricacies of how to lay crazy paving. The novice assumes that the very random nature of it, means that it will just literally all fall into place in a pleasing pattern. This is not the case at all. Far from it. Its placement requires logistics and mathematical precision.

  These are not skills I have. They are not skills I am going to acquire. So, now this task is down to Stuart as well.

  What I am left with? It would seem that labouring is my forte. This is an odd division of labour, for I am not the physically strong one in our team of two. It means that one of my main jobs now is to unpack the crates of crazy paving – all six of them. Not only does Stuart have to now mix the concrete and then apply it, he also has to first put all the paving into place. I labour. I lay out all the paving in ever-widening rows so we can see at a glance which piece may possibly fit into which place. I fetch and carry and move and appraise. I move them again.

  Laying the concrete between the pavers does not proceed smoothly either. The concrete goes ‘off’ far too quickly. Apparently this is the correct term when the mix is far too dry. Similarly, there is an unexpected art form to filling the spaces between the pavers and using the tool to smooth it off. This task too was meant to be one of my designated jobs. I just can’t get the hang of it at all. There are many times in our other life in Cuzance when it is not all one of beer and skittles. Or should that be, pastis and boules? There remains a yawning chasm to pave round la piscine that seems far beyond our reach in the time frame we have. Yet again, the phrase rings prominently in my mind, ‘When will the vacances become a true holiday?’ It’s time for a drastic reassessment.

  While it’s all well and good to bond so firmly with Pied de la Croix through our sheer hard work, it rapidly gets to the point with the paving that it simply consumes our lives. I have cause again to question the reasoning behind buying our petite maison, rather than having a French vacances each year in a quintessential French farmhouse.

  What has happened to the anticipated outings, the exploratory drives, the leisurely lunches? Time seems to have rapidly evaporated.

  When we renovate, we are not used to not reaching our targets. Once we set a renovation goal, we work resolutely towards it. Not this time it would seem. We moderate our plans; they were just too ambitious. The paving project may now have to be completed next year. As for the bathroom plans? They too will have to be postponed for the year after. Surely then the annual French vacances will begin in earnest?

  Another barrow full.

  55

  Our Cuzance Vide Grenier

  Fete en Cuzance is in full swing. As we work away on Saturday afternoon, there is a boules tournament outside the Maires’ office. Do we have time to go and watch? Non.

  Preparations for the vide grenier have been going on for days. From our little porch, we can see the red tape in Marinette’s walnut orchard marking out places for the stalls to be set up on Sunday. The first village dance went until 4 am on Friday night. A set of keys was found as they were tidying up. It was thought they are ours. I am profoundly grateful there was not a knock at the door at that time to find out if they were indeed ours, keys clutched in the Maire’s hand. I am not sure though why it is that they think the keys may have belonged to us...

  The outside disco, held in a marquee on Saturday night, does not start until darkness falls at 10 pm. Another huge day spent with the compacter, ends with dîner al fresco, accompanied by the discordant, surreal sound of the annual Cuzance disco beating loudly across the fields with an overtone of wafting pig aroma. Our gaze settles on the huge holes that lapin have started digging in the grass in front of our petite maison. Rabbits look altogether different bounding happily through the fields. Ah, life in the country.

  We watch groups of young people drift in excited clusters past our petite maison.

  We wonder where on earth they are the rest of the time and what they all do. Until tonight and th
e evening a group of lycée students came to sell us raffle tickets, we had always thought the population of Cuzance consisted of mainly much older inhabitants.

  It’s quite a mystery. Wherever the young members of our village may be the rest of the year, it is wonderful to see all ages and generations come together to celebrate life in their village.

  There is nothing quite as exciting as opening your shutters to see your own village vide grenier unfolding right outside your petite maison. Cars are parked tightly, end to end, either side of our stone pillars and clear-out-the-attic stalls stretch out from the nearby curve in the road, leading down to the Hotel Arnal and beyond. As I eat my petite déjeuner, I watch Stuart from the window as he sets off on his second reconnoitre. He was up so early in anticipation that it was still dark and on his first foray, the stallholders were still setting up in the dim breaking light.

  It is quite an experience to set off from our très jollie steps, basket as always slung over my arm – ever hopeful of filling it to the brim with treasure – and voila, we are immersed in our own Cuzance vide grenier. This year we were so determined not to miss it, that we have booked our return flights after the grand event. Our hopes are not disappointed at what we hope will be the first of many times at our own village annual market. My first – and what proves to be my best – purchase is a sweet, black chapeau. The woman tells me it was her grandmother’s gardening hat. Who she was and where she gardened, I will never know. My elation knows no bounds when I wear it immediately and am told I look like Audrey Hepburn – my style icon. It makes an enormous change to feel stylish rather than in my usual dishevelled daily state.

  For the first time in three years, the weather stays fine for lunch on trestle tables laid out under the walnut trees in Marinette’s orchard. There are hundreds of people gathered from the outlying hamlets, and as the matriarch of the village, Marinette stands on the terrace outside her maison and gazes down with a sense of proprietary pride. The Cuzance band plays vigorous tunes and La Marseillaise is particularly fervent and stirring.

  We settle with Françoise to enjoy our déjeuner in the walnut tree shade and as always, I turn to Françoise with our latest request; not a tablecloth or a hose or wire cutters this time. No, Stuart has actually agreed that we need help with the paving. This for me is the surprise of the century. Stuart absolutely never outsources anything. It is a huge concession on his part. I ask Françoise if she knows of anyone at all in the village who may be able to help. Voila; their neighbour, a sculptor, is looking for extra work. As always, they swing into action on our behalf. By early Monday morning, Jean-Claude has spoken to Jean-Louis’ maman and found out that he is due to return home from vacances that very evening . By seven Monday evening, Jean-Louis comes to visit us to talk about the concreting. He even gives Stuart extra tips – we need to get a waterproof additive for the concrete as well as a water repellent finish for the pavers. He will start on Friday morning. I am elated. Help is at hand at long last in the unexpected form of a shy, silent sculptor.

  By now our work clothes are beyond grimy. They are layered with sweat stains and encrusted with dirt. My socks are so dirty they could walk by themselves. After a cooler period for a week, the heat once again surges. By Friday, the very day we finally have someone to help us find our way in our world of crazy paving, it is thirty five degrees. I push and push myself each day beyond the borders of weariness. My obsessiveness with the ebbing of the weeks leaps the boundaries of exhaustion.

  In the most surreal of coincidences, in my stolen moments under my precious walnut tree, each new book I choose to read is about gardens. Not just any old jardins, but splendid, magnificent ones. The first, Capability’s Eden by Diana Saville, centres on a reproduction on a sweeping scale of the garden of Eden. The next, The Savage Garden by Mark Mills is a monumental tribute to Italianate style. And my favourite book of my French summer, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, also has an exquisite garden as a central motif. What all the books have in common is that the gardens are grand and elegant. I keep wondering if there is a subliminal message.

  By the middle of August, the morning light is already perceptibly softer. The evenings draw to a close more rapidly. The sun sinks earlier and subsides more swiftly on the horizon beyond the fields. The jardin remains thoroughly rustique.

  Lunch at our vide grenier.

  56

  Crazy Days of Crazy Paving

  Our driving force, both against the heat and time, is to now lay all the paving before we leave. Surely our soon-to-be team of trois, will make all the difference in the world?

  As with restoring the jardin in previous years, by now I have a far greater degree of familiarity with the size and shape of the pavers in the six crates than Stuart does. This is because not only have I unloaded them all, but by now I have arrayed them all in rows, virtually single-handed. Since I have failed miserably at applying concrete, as with everything, we have to continue to divide our skill sets. Once again, mine remains unskilled labour.

  Stuart too proves to have a better eye for their intricate layout. You could lay crazy paving a thousand times and each time the configuration would be different. In yet another piece of irony, it falls to me to pass the huge slabs to Stuart so he can mix and match them and fit them all together in our enormous, outside jigsaw puzzle. As some of them weigh about a third of my body weight, this is no mean feat.

  There are literally thousands of pavers on the six pallets. After a week of laying castine, we have now sifted and sorted through them all, trying to find perfect sizes and shapes. Each has a completely different identity, as if each one has its own DNA. Just in time, we find the perfect ones for the sweeping entrance at the back of la forge’s enormous wooden doors. They are the thickest and heaviest. Even more special is their imprints of petite fossils – leaves, ferns and perhaps even tiny creatures from the Palaeolithic era.

  As well as unpacking the six huge crates, I have also used four pallets to sort and divide shapes and pieces of about the same size. I am now able to readily identify the categories that I have devised: very large, large, medium and medium-to-small. I am not entirely sure that my crazy paving sorting skills will ever come in to play in any other part of my life.

  I start to feel like a trader at a horse auction. As I bring the pavers out one by one from their pallets in the barn, I call out the size, shape and pedigree of each paver, to present to Stuart for his larger-than-life jigsaw. It is not lost on me how me how my actions would appear to Martians, peering down, examining our earth-based activities.

  We start laying the pavers at the back of la grange on a blistering August afternoon.

  Our hopes though are as high as the temperature. Indeed, our expectations are well-founded. While the sides of la piscine are yet to be fin, we have reserved the best and biggest pavers for the back of the barn. As they are enormous, we are hoping it will give us a great sense of progress to see them go into place quickly. And indeed, they do look magnifique. The golden colour of many is a perfect match to la grange while the reddish hue of others complement the natural ochre pointing between the limestone blocks of stone in the barn walls. finally, the castine pile starts to diminish as we move more and more into place as a solid base under the pavers.

  After a mere hour, we have to take a break, not simply because the sun sears us.

  It becomes altogether too confusing trying to merge and marry the intricacies of each individual piece of paving. Once again, the term ‘crazy’ is not lost on us. It is clear that we need to return to its intricacies later, with fresh eyes.

  The job is never-ending. And this time, we don’t reach our target... The job is not fin when we leave by any means. I greedily count the remaining weeks like beads on an abacus.

  57

  Return to the Mairie

  Towards the end of our stay, one day when Jean-Claude drops in, he informs us that we have been summoned to see the Maire. We are full of trepidation. ‘We are the slaves of administration,
’ Jean-Claude declares emphatically.

  Our maison and jardin remain in full view of the Mairie’s office. I urge the new plantings to hurry up and vigorously flourish. Every single thing we do can be clearly observed from the upper windows of their office and all our rénovation is subject to scrutiny. Our fear is that we will be subsumed by piles of perplexing paperwork and will need to get approval for our paving before it can continue. Like the mountain of castine, it is unlikely to simply disappear. Shades of our roof the previous year and the imperative paperwork resurface. Although work had already started on la grange roof, it too had seemed as if it would grind to a halt. However, through some guiding intervention, the source of which was completely unknown to us, it all smoothly unfolded and fell in to place and work was able to seamlessly proceed.

  We are faced with two choices. Simply ignore the summons or, face the music.

  It is not without some degree of apprehension, that Stuart nervously sets off the few short paces to the Mairie’s office. We have hastily constructed several possible scenarios and sequence of plausible responses, depending on the outcome of his visit. All feasible responses are to be of course conducted and conveyed with the utmost compliance and courtesy. One – to plead ignorance of the bureaucratic process required; coupled with secondly, ignorance of the French required to engage in the conversation – feigned if necessary.

  I await in a state of anxious anticipation of the outcome of the visit. Will work have to grind to a shuddering stop? How long will the possible paperwork take? Will it be completed before we have to leave? Will there be a très cher fine for contravening some unknown rénovation requirement? The possible outcomes – none of them good – seem to be endless.