Au Revoir (15 page)

I am also drawn to the collections of tin-lined copper cooking pots that were commonly used in kitchens all over France. They are incredibly heavy and would be impossible to carry home—I imagine myself with cooking pots slung over my shoulder trying to board the plane at Paris. There are piles of beautiful antique linen: bedspreads, sheets, pillowcases, curtains and delicately embroidered white nightgowns that look as though they were never worn apart perhaps from a few brief moments before being removed on the wedding night. Seeing all the bric-à-brac of everyday living from the past gives me a fascinating insight into the local way of life.

In my real life I seldom have time to browse in antique shops and I rarely, if ever, stop to rifle through boxes of unwanted household items at a garage sale. I have many friends who regularly attend auctions and open days and regard trawling for bargains as a splendid way to while away their weekends. My lifestyle dictates that the weekends are for early morning
shopping and cooking up large family feasts, and spending whatever few hours I can spare to weed my garden or tend the vegetable patch. I usually allow some time for grandmotherly play with the little ones, although I also often work at my computer over the weekend, trying to meet outstanding deadlines or to get ahead on projects. In the end my weeks and weekends often blur into a flurry of work and commitments. Therefore leaping around these charmingly different flea markets and seeing what's on offer is a rare treat, even if I am not in the position to spend any money.

Although the village antique and jumble sales are a great way of picking up interesting local furniture and household goods, a lot of the items on sale are also ridiculously overpriced when you consider how junky they are. It's almost as if the owners don't really want to part with them. On the other hand, some items are extremely cheap—they would be considered an absolute bargain in an Australian antique stall, and I spend several hours, like everyone else, peering and fossicking among the collections of fascinating articles. The troc is also an opportunity for socialising, seeing friends and being seen, and at Duravel we link up with various members of the gang including retired English photographer Claude, who lives in a beautifully restored millhouse at Frayssinet-le-Gélat; Danny, who is also English and rents his beautiful farmhouse to holidaymakers in the summer; and Anthony, an escapee from the world of high finance who is also in the throes of restoring a stone house and therefore definitely in the market for bargains. Surprisingly, he buys an expensive and totally impractical addition to his new household, a beautiful antique slide projector, possibly more than one hundred years old, but in full working order. He
doesn't quite know what he will do with it, but like a lot of market shoppers he just can't resist certain treasures. Jock buys a chipped bowl for 15 ff and is delighted. We decide to meet back at the Pomarède restaurant run by Madame Murat for a simple but weighty five-course lunch. So there goes the afternoon.

Over the next eight to ten weeks there is a market at a different village or township virtually every weekend, and I learn to be quite discriminating about those which are worth visiting and those which are a waste of time. Like most visitors I regard them as the highlight of the week. Nearby Loubejac, with its wonderfully ancient church and village green, hosts a memorable brocante with goods of a quality and price that would easily allow a newcomer to furnish a house and equip it with all manner of household goods very cheaply. I weaken and buy a stylish pastis water bottle for 35 ff and a pair of weird earrings in the shape of cat's heads. Very sixties and rather naff. While we watch various acquaintances exploring the stalls, Jock and I have a beer followed by a mouth-watering baguette stuffed with spicy sausages. The weather is perfect, the setting is bliss and I feel completely happy and at home in this foreign village watching the fun of the fair. It's intriguing comparing purchases and looking at other people's discoveries. Jan and Philippe find a magnificent gilded picture frame and I see Danny on the way home with a classic wrought iron light fitting that he is planning to mount in his downstairs hallway. Jock buys a couple of aluminium gravy boats for 10 ff and is happy as a sandboy.

The grandest of the brocantes is in the popular bastide township of Monpazier, displayed in the elegant square surrounded by cafés and upmarket tourist shops. By this time Jock's
gorgeous blonde stepdaughter Claudia has arrived on her honeymoon from America, with her new and slightly bedazzled young husband Michael. She and I fall upon the treasures on offer, staggered at the quality and comparatively low price of the china and glassware, the antique furniture, the books, paintings, prints, carpets and kitchenware. I discover a linen stall with perfect white handmade nightdresses, and buy several as presents for my daughter and daughters-in-law back home. Claudia is also into ‘linens' as the Americans call them, and while Michael and Jock sit patiently in a café sipping beer, we dash back and forth with our purchases. After an hour or so even I am worn to a frazzle, but Claudia is just getting into her stride. It's a shoppers' paradise, and very seductive.

The largest secondhand sale of the season is at Cazals, a village about twenty minutes from Villefranche that dates back to the twelfth century. Cazals has a handsome square and a network of old back streets and narrow lanes and its fair has so many stalls that it is impossible to take it all in. Whereas once I tried looking at virtually every item on offer, by now I find I am incapable of absorbing it all. I wander through the square and around a massive arched street that is crammed with displays, and realise I have lost the desire to buy anything much at all. It's the same sort of feeling that often overwhelms me at home in supermarkets and department stores. I am suffering from object overload. I am always attracted to kitsch, however, and Cazals has more than its fair share of hideous items including clocks in the shapes of horses, ashtrays that are women's breasts and tasteless statues of black people that are either moneyboxes or cocktail stands. Some sculptures made by a local ‘artist' are beyond belief both in their concept and clumsy execution. I cannot resist a
pair of chubby baby legs, obviously moulded from a child's plastic doll, that have been painted blue and sit, torso-less, on a coffee table—perfect for the outdoor bar of my new friends Miles and Anne, who are also into collecting ugly and somewhat offensive objets d'art.

Miles and Anne are relative newcomers to the scene, arriving every August from their smart townhouse in London for six weeks or more. Their rambling house and garden in Frayssinet-le-Gélat is not their first holiday home here, but they have only been in Jock's friendly circle for a couple of years. Unlike some of the other part-time residents they have made the effort to speak French, and employ several people to help them with gardening and renovating, so they are well liked in the village. Miles is a most unlikely character for me to get along with, being English and male, for a start, which has often been a bit of a problem for someone as irreverent as me. A Cambridge graduate, with all the baggage it carries, he works as an executive in the mining industry and has links to Australia that involve the exportation of uranium from our shores. Shock horror. At our first meeting I exclaim with delight that I have probably been involved in more than one greenie protest against his various export operations, but he shrugs this off with good grace. He turns out to be a charming man with a sense of humour akin to my own and it's a good lesson for me in learning to put aside staunchly held political positions and get along with people whose company I would normally shun.

Anne is a talented artist and potter who somehow manages her handful of a husband with good humour—for Miles is a bit of a party animal, who loves long lunches and dinners and any occasion where drinks can be served liberally. Anne has great
plans for their beautiful, wild garden. She is quite knowledgeable about plants and appreciates my help with ideas on ways to get her untamed woodland garden established. Yet another convert to mulching under my belt. Miles and Anne usually bring a team of their oldest and dearest friends along for part of the summer holiday. Mostly ex-Cambridge mates and their wives, many of Indian origin, they are a highly entertaining and witty bunch when they all get together. We enjoy some memorable outdoors summer lunches and curry feasts while they are in residence, making it little more than one long summer party. Suddenly I spy them and their assorted friends and houseguests having a beer in the café over the road and before long we are joined by most of the others who have turned out for the Cazals fair.

Frayssinet-le-Gélat also has a vide grenier and it's a real mixed bag of delights. Here I again encounter Anne, who finds a handsome old tin hip bath that she tells me she'll convert into a giant ice bucket to set up beside the bar at their numerous drinks parties on the terrace. This time I resist making a purchase and we all repair to Miles and Anne's for drinks, which is the beginning of my downfall. Miles insists that everyone around him should be having a good time, preferably with a glass in their hand. He is making martinis, not my normal tipple, as beer on a hot summer day is my drink of preference. But I suddenly find myself clutching an ice cold martini, one hundred per cent gin, with the vermouth sprayed lightly over the chilled surface from a perfume bottle. It's delicious and I have a second one, followed by a glass of champagne and some white wine. We enjoy a late lunch of salads, bread and cheese and continue talking and laughing and drinking wine well into the mid afternoon.

Without giving it a second thought, I jump into my car and head back to Villefranche to sleep off the excesses of the day. As I am driving towards the Dordogne border an oncoming car flashes its lights at me, but I ignore the warning. Suddenly I see the reason—the gendarmes are out in force and they are waving me over to the side of the road. The rest is history. I have never been breathalised before and certainly at home in Australia I would never, ever consider driving home after a long, boozy lunch. But here everyone drinks at lunchtime and drives home and I have been stupidly lulled into an unrealistic false sense of security.

Back at the station I am found to be ‘just over' the limit and am given an on-the-spot fine of 600 ff and told I can pick my car up after four hours. I am driving on my Australian licence and luckily therefore have no points deducted. I can't help but think I have escaped very lightly indeed. At home I would have automatically lost my licence, would have had to make a court appearance and would have been gleefully written up in the local papers. Here I am given a relatively small fine and offered a lift home by the boys in blue (which I decline). I feel chastened and terribly ashamed at my irresponsible behaviour. I slink back to my room to assess my situation. Late in the evening I walk the five kilometres to the car and drive nervously back to Villefranche as the sun is setting.

The gang reacts to my ‘misdemeanour' (the actual word written on the gendarmes' receipt for my fine) with surprise and nervous amusement. I almost become the local hero because I am the first one to ever be caught and fined for drink driving. However I notice a sudden restraint emerging at lunch and dinner times, and sense that generally fewer glasses of wine are
being consumed. Main roads are being avoided in favour of trips home through the woods, and suddenly people are teaming up to travel to parties in groups with a ‘designated' driver. While the incident certainly does not result in general sobriety, it has given some friends among my circle food for thought. Cynics claim that it would never have happened after one of the St Caprais lunches in the restaurant across the road from Jock's, because the gendarmes are careful not to dampen local businesses by arresting customers for drink driving. All I know is that I will be drinking a lot less if I have to drive, and maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

There's an irony in the fact that I have been spending so much of my French retreat drinking beer and wine when my young life was so painfully damaged by the excessive use of alcohol by both my parents. The terrible fights in my family, the infidelities and even the attempted and successful suicides can be clearly linked to alcohol abuse. Yet drinking is a part of life that I really enjoy. I love the taste of it, and I love the effect of a couple of glasses of reasonable wine, and I certainly love drinking wine with good food. The French have a very relaxed attitude to drinking, and wine is considered a basic necessity of life—like bread and milk—and is therefore not heavily taxed. The French drink wine every day with meals—both at lunch and at dinner—but they certainly don't drink to get drunk. They just have a couple of glasses of wine and think nothing more about it. You rarely, if ever, see a drunk person around the villages and towns of rural France; there are always a few alcoholics hanging around
the squares in the larger cities, but drunks are still relatively inconspicuous compared to other major cities of the world.