A House in the Sunflowers (13 page)

Towards the end of the holiday Hugh Fowles, a colleague of Mike’s, visited us en route to play in a tennis tournament in Bordeaux. A young and energetic craftsman, he helped us solve the problem of our corridor which, now the window was incorporated into our bedroom, was always dark unless the outer doors were left open. Unfortunately these were on the west side of the house which caught the prevailing wind. Each time the door between the corridor and the living room was opened, anyone standing in the kitchen corner, usually me, was almost blown away. Clearly what we needed were glazed inner doors but anything remotely modern would have been wrong.

Hugh and Mike went to see M. René who thought he might have a few old doors stacked in the derelict Boulangerie in the village. They finally unearthed a pair of glazed doors nine feet tall which were ideal. They built a frame with one door to be fixed and the other to be hinged open. The frame was huge and heavy and Hugh, who always reminds me of an El Greco figure, looked positively Christ-like as he edged it in on his shoulder. The frame was inched into place and the doors attached and now we can have the western light flooding in without the draught.

We did not get a great deal of work done on the house that summer. It was extremely hot – we had almost seven weeks of continuous sunshine – and also we were inundated, not with toads this year but
with visitors. Visitors I have decided, give pleasure in every way; in the looking forward to their arrival, in the enjoyment of their company, and even in their eventual departure. Each group arrived hot, exhausted and often highly strung from the long journey and we watched the peace and the space begin to soothe them as it soothes us. Matthew brought a gorgeous blonde who slowly turned a pale burnished gold. Adam, by now working for his degree, came with Tom Harvey, a fellow student, and in one of their more energetic moments they built us a stone barbecue which, to everyone’s surprise, still stands and works well.
Les Fostaires
returned, this time without mishap, and Tony too found yet another route to Bel-Air. Early one morning I counted eleven people quietly reading in various corners of the garden.

Although we were not in the mood for work it did not stop us planning. The new glass doors had improved the whole aspect of the west side of the house and we began to consider building a partly-covered terrace. It seemed the obvious use as it was an evening suntrap. Too hot in July, as August passed the halfway mark and the occasional breeze filtered down from the north, this protected spot became favourite for an evening drink. Of course it was still covered in weeds and the outer beam sloped wildly and was too low but the germ of the idea was sown. Even the old outhouse with the narrow wooden doors, which we used as a
wood store and was home to a family of hedgehogs who snuffled nightly in and out, might be large enough to be converted to further accommodation. We were always considering the next task.

We were very happy with our new, enlarged bedroom except for the floor which, with a mixture of old and new cement, was an eyesore. Dark, quarry tiles would, we thought, be a mistake and we looked for something pale and neutral, and finally found them in a strange emporium in a field outside Fumel. It sold job lots of anything, including Spanish floortiles, which were so cheap that we bought enough to tile all the bedroom floors.

We saw our last visitors onto the train for Paris and as we stayed a few weeks longer that summer we were initiated into the most important harvest of the region, the plums.

‘
On va ramasser les prunes la semaine prochaine
,’ said Raymond, with a knowing smile. He knew that we were not involved in a major project at that moment. We had watched the trees grow heavier, the branches bending beneath the weight of the large, lavender-coloured plums. In each village and at every market the conversation was all concerned with
les
prunes
.

‘In Lot-et-Garonne over the next six weeks we shall harvest over ninety thousand
tonnes
,’ said Raymond proudly. This special, local plum, called
la prune d’Ente
has a lavender bloom which rubs off to show
the dark red skin beneath, accounting for its old name of
Robe Sergent
. Originally brought back to France by the Crusaders, most of its cultivation now takes place in this rolling countryside between the two rivers. The flesh is golden and very sweet, making it perfect for preserving by drying.

‘Then they are called
les
pruneaux
,’ said Raymond.

‘What we call prunes,’ we told him.

He laughed. ‘
Que c’est compliqué
.’

Harvesting plums filled each September. Before the
Coopérative
was built to buy the plums and dry them by gas in great quantities, each farm had its own wood-fired oven or
étuve
. The one on Raymond’s farm was built in 1928 to replace a much earlier one. ‘But you have one up at Bel-Air,’ he said. Of course, we had forgotten. The small outhouse where the hedgehogs lived in the wood-pile, Raymond had always called that
l’étuve
. We now saw that the sloping roof had an inner flat roof of smoke-blackened terracotta tiles; a crude tin chimney protruded from the end wall. Now the curiously narrow doors were explained. It was through these that the plum-laden trolley would have been pushed.

Down on the farm Grandpa had been pottering about for days tidying up the year’s accumulation in front of the doors of their
étuve
. ‘This year is the last time I’ll do it,’ he declared, ‘It’s too much work.’ He
lights the oven every year to cook a few hundred kilos of plums, especially the half cooked or
mi-cuit
which will be preserved in
eau-de-vie
, but once it is alight he must get up twice a night to replenish the wood.

Next day his old comrade from his time as a prisoner of war arrived to help him. They reminisced as they mended broken trays and oiled the wheels of
le wagonet
, a long, iron trolley which has eight shelves for the trays and holds over 300 kilos of plums. He showed us how he would push it on the rails through the high wooden doors into
l’étuve
where thick iron pipes line the walls and carry the heat from the fire pit next door.

We greeted each other in the early morning sunlight. Fernande was there, stolid and smiling in flowered hat and apron, also Grandma and Claudette, barefoot M. Demoli unusually prompt, M. René’s sister and a friend, Philippe and Véronique and two cousins from Agen. The women chatted as we collected our green plastic baskets, familiar from the potato harvest, and strolled down to the orchard where Raymond waited, a small iron ladder propped against the first tree. The first day of the harvest was clearly an occasion, and he was doubly pleased to begin by initiating us.

‘
Eh alors
,’ he said with a grin. He shinned up the ladder and shook each branch with his strong brown arms. A cascade of lavender plums covered the carefully raked earth and we bent to pick them up. Before we
had finished he moved on and shook the next tree, and so it continued. We tipped our full baskets into crates which were placed in rows to make them easier for collection later with the trailer. It was not hard work to begin with and unlike potatoes you could eat as many as you liked, but as the morning wore on the aching began. I watched Fernande, easily the strongest and quickest worker. Thick legs astride, she never bent her knees but would occasionally rest one forearm against her thigh to relieve her back.

Raymond delighted in tricking her. It was clearly a ritual appreciated by all, even Fernande herself. High in the tree hidden by the thick branches he would call her, ‘
Eh
Fernande!
’ Innocent and glad of a chance to straighten she would gaze upward shading her eyes. A quick shake and down rained the plums. She never minded the laughter but she never remembered either. He caught her every time.

The dogs chased imaginary rabbits and each other. The women gossiped and, as usual, exchanged recipes;
poule au pot, alouettes sans têtes
, which turned out to be beef-olives, and compared the various sauces in which to cook them. The recipes went on and on as we slowly moved up the rows of trees. Cardigans and pullovers hung abandoned on the branches as the sun rose higher and wasps buzzed round the baskets. Our hands were stained and sticky and the smell of ripe fruit was almost overpowering. At last all fifty crates
were full and Mike drove slowly between the trees while Raymond and M. Demoli swung them up onto the trailer.

It was midday and everyone straightened gratefully, groaning and stretching. ‘
Maintenant
,’ said Grandma, ‘
on peut redresser les reins
.’ I really did feel as though my kidneys had floated up somewhere between my shoulder blades. We left the plums to the wasps and trailed back to the farm and into the cool kitchen. There was a pleasurable jostling at the sink to clean our sugary fingers before a welcome
aperitif
.

In the forty minutes or so since Claudette had left us she had managed to prepare a meal for fourteen. We sat down to sorrel soup, melon, home-cured ham, macaroni cheese and grilled steak followed by tomato and onion salad and finally for desert, pears from the orchard. We were ravenous. There had been as usual no mid-morning anything. Each of us was concerned with replenishing energy for the afternoon.

By two-thirty we were en route to the next orchard about a mile away. Matthew and I bumped slowly along sitting on the high mudguard of the old tractor with Grandpa behind us in his battered old 2CV van. Fernande whirred past us on her mobylette and M. René’s sister and her friend, still exchanging recipes no doubt, had managed to cram themselves into M. Demoli’s disreputable car between all the scrap metal.

M. Demoli took on the job of shaking the trees
in the afternoon. Half hidden in the leaves he braced himself and sent down the plums. With his wild, gleaming eyes and wheezy shouts one looked again to make sure that those bare black feet were not in fact cloven hooves. In the days that followed the smell of wood smoke and cooking plums filled the air for miles. The bulk of the harvest was taken to the
Coopérative
and there were races each evening to be the first tractor and trailer on the road to Monflanquin.

Grandpa was constantly busy, filling the large flat trays or
claies
, loading them into the
wagonet
after washing them and pushing the filled
wagonet
in and out of
l’étuve
. Were they cooked enough? Perhaps a little longer. They normally cooked very slowly for twenty-four hours. I began to learn the language of the prunes. The smallest, hardly worth the drying, were
les fretins
. Grandpa called the largest
les
impériales
.
Le triage
, the grading of the dried fruit, was done by Grandma and her friend, Antoinette. Antoinette was part of
le système
. She had once lived in the village but was now looked after by her daughter and
son-in-law
in Paris. Each September she returned
pour les prunes
and the two old friends sat hour after hour sorting the still warm glistening fruit as they talked inevitably about
autrefois
.

Claudette was busy preparing the jars for preserving
les impériales
in
eau-de-vie
which had been distilled
the previous year. First she packed the still warm prunes into the jars and stood them on the hot step in front of the oven. She then prepared the syrup, 300 grammes of sugar dissolved in one litre of
eau-de-vie
for each two litre jar of plums. She stirred it very carefully as obviously it could easily catch fire. The syrup was poured gently over the warm fruit and the jars sealed immediately. ‘They are best left for two years,’ she said. ‘After five years they begin to disintegrate but we never manage to keep them that long.’ I could understand why.

The smallest and any damaged plums were collected in large barrels. These were covered and left to ferment for at least a month before being distilled into the
eau-de-vie
for the following year. Everywhere one looked
les
prunes
and
les pruneaux
were the centre of attention.

The night before we left, after eating with the family which had by now become a welcome ritual after a day spent packing up the house, we sat nibbling more prunes. ‘Why don’t the English buy more of our prunes?’ we were asked. It was difficult to try to explain their school dinner image and their lack of chic, in this region which dedicates a month every year to this purple harvest and even writes poems to la prune. ‘How do they prefer them, the English?’ they enquired, thinking of their own
noix de veau aux pruneaux
or
terrine de lapin Gascon
, the rabbit flesh laced with prunes.

‘Mostly stewed with custard,’ we admitted. They shook their heads.

Who knows? Perhaps we might be tempted by the advice of the Due de Guise who in 1588, it is said, after arduous nights spent with Madame de Noirmoutiers ate prunes in the morning as a restorative from
les
fatigues de l’amour.
Next morning as we left Claudette presented us with a jar to keep us all going through the coming winter.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Before we left that summer we had talked about planting some more trees. So far we had a greengage and an apricot, which Raymond had planted for us when we first came, on the far edge of the field. On the south side of the house were two small pines and what had originally been two sumachs, planted by Grandma, which had now become five. I had put in two blue
cupressus
and a
thuya orientalis
to protect us from the westerlies but I now hankered for something more exotic. One of those dark, slender Mediterranean cypresses to grow into a
tall exclamation mark by the house, or an Acacia Albizia with its wonderful fluffy pink blossom, perhaps a Judas tree to give us colour in the spring; we discussed it with Grandpa.

‘It’s the wrong time to plant trees,’ he cried. ‘Trees should be planted at the feast of Saint Catherine.
À la Sainte Catherine toute branche prend racine!
’ And when would that be? At the end of November.

That was all the excuse we needed to fly down for ten days. After all those six hundred mile drives that we had done, the flight from Gatwick to Toulouse seemed miraculous. It was the connections from Toulouse to Monsempron-Libos, our nearest station, which took longer but Raymond was there to meet us. At Bel-Air the fire was laid and on the table were wine, eggs, fruit, a vase of Chinese lanterns and a bowl of walnuts. We were home.

Our two great ash trees were strangely bare, the dead leaves in the drive blown into musty heaps. A few dried-up scarlet shreds still clung to the Virginia creeper and the cows had gone down to their winter quarters but the days were mild, the air so clean after London that it seemed perfumed and wonderfully shaped clouds bowled across the wide blue sky. We burned heavy logs in our
cheminée
and bought an iron fire-back with a design of two
vendangeurs
in medieval costumes carrying an outsize bunch of grapes on two poles. It threw more heat into the room and
we cooked sausages and chops on a trivet over the hot ashes.

Everyone seemed surprised and pleased to see us. I think they almost associate us with the swallows and we were out of season. They looked different in their felt caps, thick stockings and fleecy lined slippers – very necessary with cold, tiled floors. The markets were full of woollen socks and underclothes, hunting coats with rows of pockets, cartridge belts, fancy saddles and riding crops, hazelnuts, walnuts and pumpkins. In the covered market where the farmers’ wives sell their produce there were already rows of plump golden corpses – the specially fattened ducks and geese for making
confit
and
foie gras
. Smart town ladies prodded them with manicured fingers while the red-cheeked, aproned sellers extolled their birds and the quality of the maize on which they had been fed. It was interesting to be there at such a different time of year.

One morning a notice went up in the village shop:

GRAND LOTTO SAMEDI SOIR A NEUF HEURES.

‘You will come, won’t you?’ asked Mme Laval who runs the shop, the café and the petrol pump. Before we could reply Mme Barrou arrived on her Solex to collect her bread – the largest loaf in the shop.

‘
Vous allez venir, vous deux?
’ she demanded. When
I learned that Lotto was in fact Bingo I was not over eager but when they told us that all the proceeds were to support the village school it seemed churlish to refuse and, I thought, I could still do with improving my numbers in French. ‘
Il faut y aller de bonne heure pour avoir des places
,’ yelled Mme Barrou as she revved up her Solex and wobbled off, the loaf tied to the back. Everyone in the shop agreed, eyes bright at the coming excitement. Mike groaned but we obviously had to go.

We arrived early. However by half-past nine, as the outdoor faces that usually smiled at us from a tractor were still crowding into the room, we realised that the start would depend on how long each took to greet the other.

‘Bonsoir.’

‘Bonsoir.’

‘Ça va?’

‘Ça va.’
Many of them must have seen each other twice already that day. Kiss, kiss and yet another for luck.

‘How warm it is for the time of the year.’

‘And the ground so wet,
Pardi!’

With smiles and shrugs they passed on to the next neighbour and it all began again.

We bought our cards for the evening at 25 francs for four. They were very dog-eared and, judging by the rubber stamp in the corner, had been borrowed from
the next commune. Along the length of the tables, like harvest festival, were small heaps of maize grains with which to cover the numbers as they were called. Mme Laval’s husband, who besides helping his wife is also a busy farmer, blew into the microphone. His mischievous grandson Julien eyed the large drum of numbered plastic balls and was swiftly removed by Madame.

‘
Alors
,’ he began. His voice boomed out and he stopped, cleared his throat and smiled nervously at the eager faces before him. ‘
Mesdames, messieurs. Il faut commencer
.’ As we all settled down he announced the first prizes for the evening.

‘
Pour la première ligne…Un poulet, deux bouteilles de vin. La carte complète…Un jambon.
’

The hall was hushed as the first game began. After the first few games were finished we watched the delighted winners stowing away
rôtis
of veal and pork, jars of
confit de canard
and the famous prunes in
eau-de-vie
and we began to understand just why local bingo was an event not to be missed. When each prize was edible it was a serious affair.

Raymond and Claudette kept an eye on our cards as well as their own and we were slightly ashamed to find ourselves checking each other’s numbers in English, especially those over seventy. We consoled ourselves with the fact that the caller would insist on shouting the occasional number in patois to cries of
protest from the youngsters but to the obvious delight of the older generation.

At ten-thirty it was time for the
entracte
. In this the region of the
Vieux Cahors
, where the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau creates hardly a ripple, they all confined themselves to Orangina or Le Schweppes, but how they ate! Huge platefuls of
beignets
, a local doughnut, and rolled up
crèpes
arrived and vanished. The children played beneath the tunnels of the long tables and the room reverberated with loud, happy voices.

‘
Alors
.’ Eyes down again. The prizes varied. Two pheasants, a turkey and, for the whole card, a
tourtière
. We now understood that most of the presents had been donated. There were only fourteen pupils in the school but it clearly had the support of the entire village.

There was an extra excitement when a surprise lot was announced. Claudette won and it was revealed to be a pair of wild ducks. She stood up proudly to display them, their wings flapping, the male with his glistening green head and his drab consort. Delighted, she returned them gently to their box, soothing their ruffled feathers with a practised hand. What fun it was!

At long last the final game and the prize for which they had all been waiting.

‘
Une cuisse de boeuf,
’ yelled M. Laval, his voice
husky and the sweat running down into his eyebrows. His assistant heaved up the prize and the whole room, as one, gazed at the eighteen kilos of prime beef. They drooled, eighteen kilos of the best
bifteck
, grilled with garlic, naturally, perhaps with shallots, braised over vine twigs,
en daube
with
pruneaux
or
cèpes
, those highly prized white fleshed edible toadstools which are so popular in this region. While passionate discussions of favourite recipes exploded about the room the weary caller pleaded for attention. It was past midnight and many of the children were asleep, tousled heads among the doughnut crumbs. At last the noise subsided as they realised that the coveted prize had yet to be won.

In the rolling accent of the south-west M. Laval made a final effort. ‘
Cinquante et un. Trente-quatre. Trois
.’ The tension mounted as we glanced sideways at each other’s cards. Only one more needed over there and there too. ‘
Trente-sept
.
Quatorze
,’ he intoned. Sturdy, roughened hands were poised over the cards, the grain of maize squeezed tightly between finger and thumb. ‘
Soixante-cinque
.’ A great shout went up, followed immediately by the sighs and groans of the losers, and a young father of five was on his feet, supported by his delirious family, his round face flushed with triumph.

I suppose they might have come if the prizes had been mere cash but it wouldn’t have been half the fun.
The winners packed their spoils carefully into cartons and the children were throwing handfuls of maize at each other as we reeled out into the dark and starry night.

We planted our trees; an Acacia Albizia, a weeping willow and a dark green Mediterranean cypress but alas, by the following year only the cypress remained. So much for Saint Catherine!

Next Easter was early and cold. True, the fields were full of daffodils and narcissus, but they shivered and shook in the bitter north wind. It whistled down through the break in the distant woods, straight under our porch and in through every gap round the front door. Now we knew why Anaïs had planted a high hazel hedge which we had thoughtlessly uprooted.

Friends came from Scotland and found it as cold as Aboyne and without the comforts of carpets and central heating. We bought thick socks in the market and found that the best way to get warm was to saw up logs for the fire. Our friends, generous as ever, had brought many small delicacies and we had fun planning a Scottish menu to entertain the Bertrands. We built a huge fire, hung a blanket across the door to keep out the draughts and warmed ourselves with Cock-a-leekie soup, Arbroath smokies, haggis, and roast venison. Claudette, as always, found every
dish intriguing and Grandpa, who loves fish, was delighted with the smokies. Of course no sooner had our friends flown home than the wind died away and the spring really arrived. In spite of the distractions of long walks through cowslip-lined lanes we disciplined ourselves sufficiently to tile our bedroom floor and were extremely pleased with the result.

On Thursday mornings we almost always go to market. The only decision we must make is which one to go to. Our local town of Monflanquin has had a Thursday morning market since 1256. The one at Libos, some ten kilometres distant, is not quite so old but is much larger, the whole town centre being closed to traffic and some hundred stalls being ready for business before eight o’clock. It is a cornucopia of seasonal fruit and flowers, vegetables, gleaming fish straight from Bordeaux, piles of exotic mushrooms, hundreds of cheeses, every variety of honey, spices, nuts, and olives; paella cooking on the spot in a massive pan, sizzling doughnuts, cures for rheumatism and lethal knives labelled
saigne lapin.

One morning I noticed an unusual sight. Past the homemade goats’ cheese and the lady who sells quails’ eggs, at the very end of the market, stood a large, swarthy woman, the table before her heaped with a jumble of old clothes. Local ladies
eyed her sideways and hurried by. Farmers’ wives carrying boxes of chicks stared uncomprehendingly at the crumpled pile. I looked at her crudely drawn notice.

TOUT A 5 FRANCS

I have always had a passion for secondhand clothes. To me they are like theatrical costumes. Someone else chose them, wore them and then discarded them. Who? What were they like? At 50p a garment how could I resist? The stall holder smiled revealing several gold teeth and with a large brown hand she turned the clothes and I heard for the first time the expression ‘
Fouillez Madame, fouillez
.’ That was it. I was hooked.

To begin with they were not, of course, English clothes. There were unfamiliar styles and fabrics with French, Dutch, German and occasionally Italian labels. In minutes I had found an Indian red velour skirt the exact shade of a favourite jacket brought in a sale at ‘Bus Stop’ years before. It was fully lined with the zip going right up the waistband as with most French skirts. I could hardly wait to get it home. Would it fit? It did, perfectly.

I washed it and wore it a few days later. Claudette admired it. ‘
Pas mauvais
,’ I agreed, ‘
pour cinq francs
.’ She shook her head and laughingly corrected me. Would Ruth never get her numbers right?

‘Non. non. non!
’ she cried ‘
Cent francs.’

I persisted, ‘
Cinq francs
.’ I held up five fingers and her jaw dropped.

‘
C’est vrai? Mais…òu?
’ And that was how I learned what secondhand clothes are called in France;
la friperie
. What a wonderfully frivolous name!

Since that day the trade in secondhand clothing has grown rapidly. There are ever more stalls and
la friperie
has become a harmless addiction. Claudette sometimes comes with me to the largest which is held every other Tuesday in the exquisite town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot. As early as we can, like a couple of conspirators, we hurtle down the leafy lanes to market. The normal buying of provisions over, and the car loaded, we are then free to indulge our
fantaisie
. Free to hurry down past the war memorial where St George is permanently slaying the dragon, to the far end of the wide, flower-decked boulevard. There the coloured umbrellas ripple in the morning breeze and the twenty or so stalls are in full swing, many of them run by Algerians. Some
entrepreneurs
have vans going twice a week to Holland where the clothes, collected from all over Europe, are cleaned, baled and sold by weight. The turnover is rapid. The days when ladies looked askance at secondhand clothes are long since gone, and many French women are keen to clothe themselves and their families for a tenth of the normally high prices.