My Grape Escape (9 page)

When the door finally swung open we all surged forward to get into the relative cool of the house. I turned to shut the door behind me to keep out the heat and my hand fell on one of the most arcane and complicated latching mechanisms I had ever seen on a door. My eyes travelled higher. The door itself was intricately carved wood that reminded me of the door of the church across the street. Inserted in it was a black metal design of flowers.

Franck had a thing for stone. I had a thing for keys, locks, and doors.

As I penetrated further into the dark interior of the house my nostrils were assaulted by the stench of mothballs and mildew. It took a good minute or two for my pupils to dilate, but when they did I could make out the wallpaper - a fake rattan pattern of greens and yellows in the hallway that gave way to a leaf and flower explosion of browns, greens, and oranges in the living room beyond.

“It reminds me of my grandmother’s house when I was little,’ Franck commented, wistfully.

“It’s hideous,” I said, loud enough for Le Maître to hear.

Le Maître waltzed into what looked like a tiny kitchen, the walls of which were papered in green ivy.

“It is hideous,” he agreed. “But look at this view.” He swung open the shutters, and I saw from the flaking white paint that we were in the house I had noticed after emerging from the church following my stream-of-consciousness conversation with the Virgin Mary statue. He opened the single pane windows. “
Voilà
!” he exclaimed, and drew back so we could have a look.

Franck gave me a gentle nudge towards the open window. Because the house was up that flight of stone stairs from the street level, the windows were level with the church. It was an intriguing perspective. I paused to admire its entranceway of old oak beams and square stones and its long, thin minion window. My eyes travelled up the small but elegant spire that was topped with a metal rooster.

All we would have to do to get the weather forecast was look out the kitchen window in the morning over our
café au lait
and check if the rooster’s head or tail feathers were facing south. Something familiar fluttered under my breastbone. We’re not going to buy this house, I reminded myself, so there was no point in daydreaming about eating breakfast here. We were going back to Canada in five days.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, despite myself. “I can see Stéphanie and Thierry’s roof from here.”

Franck came over and I felt his hand brush the small of my back. “We didn’t have any family in Marey,” he said.

I turned my back on the view and inspected the kitchen. The view was just about the only thing it had going for it. The room was tiny and half shoehorned under the stairs that led to the attic. A massive white ceramic sink took up at least a third of the wall which left space for only a small fridge and stove to be placed under the crooked line of the stairs.

“
C’est très petit
…small,” I was going to say, but was stopped by a thunk as Le Maître clonked his head on the very low door jam.

“
Merde! Fichu
ancient doorways!” His brows drew in with regret at his not very strategic outburst, but he added in a petulant tone, “That door jamb should have been raised long ago.”

He pointed at the simple latch that looked as though it had been made of beaten metal. “Look at that! That must have been hand beaten by the village ironmonger a few hundred years ago. I don’t believe they have even bothered to change the door since then.”

Franck caught my eye and cocked a brow. He followed Le Maître circumspectly into the next room, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

As soon as they were gone I ran my finger over the cool beaten metal of the massive latch. I pictured the village ironmonger bent over his fire several hundred years before, banging it into shape. Sweat would have dripped from his face into the open fire, filling his low ceilinged workshop with steam. I was scandalized at the thought of anyone changing or modernizing this piece of history. I closed the door reverently and worked the latch. It still slid into place perfectly.

Now that the door was closed, I noticed the hinges. I’d never seen such marvellous things, beaten in a curlicue
design and each about seven inches long. They were like something out of a medieval castle. I didn’t want the rest of the house, I told myself as I opened the door again, I just wanted this kitchen door and its hardware…and the front door too…and maybe those stone stairs for Franck…

I joined Franck and Le Maître in the living room which was lit by a solitary bulb on the ceiling. I could only just make out the walls – a riot of orange and brown which made me feel less in danger of falling for the house. Franck was over by the window on the far wall, trying to get it open. He had managed to open the shutters just as I joined him and we took in the view over the humble Roman church. Its effect was more seductive for me than any view over a Gothic cathedral. Something in that church had given me a taste of peace. It was the same thing that had made me talk – dare I say pray? – to the Virgin Mary. I had never prayed in any other church before in my life. I tore myself away from the view to glance around the living room again. It didn’t matter. We could not buy a house before we left, especially one with wallpaper this nauseating.

Just then my eyes alighted on the massive stone fireplace that took up almost half of the back wall. Franck had noticed it too; he walked over and stood inside it without hitting his head. He ran his index finger over a thick ribbon of ochre rippling through the roughly hewn stone.

“This is incredible,” he said. “Not only is it typically Burgundian, but I do believe we could roast an entire cow in here.”

Le Maître was inspecting a small cupboard door inset into the wall to the right of the fireplace. Its latch and hinges were stunning, obviously the handiwork of the same ironmonger who had fashioned the latches and hinges of the kitchen door several hundred years before.

“That’s a strange place to have a cupboard,” I said, drawing in for a closer inspection.

Le Maître smiled at me. “Put your head inside.”

I hesitated but Le Maître looked so amused that curiosity got the better of me. I slid open the beautiful iron latch. Maybe a hidden treasure? A blast of cool air hit my face; as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could make out that the walls of the long hole inside were made up of huge blocks of stone. I couldn’t resist reaching my hand out and feeling the surface of the stone which was polished smooth with use and time.

Le Maître quizzed. “Can you guess what it is?”

I removed my head. “No idea.”

“I’ll give you a clue. Almost every house used to have one but now they are increasingly rare. They let the cold in,
vous voyez
, so most of them have been filled in and drywalled up. “Still no idea?”

I thought for a moment. “Nope.”

Le Maître clicked his tongue at my answer. “It’s a
réfrigérateur
!”

A fridge? “Really?”

“
Bien sûr
! How do you think people kept their perishable food cold before electricity? See how it is so deep? It can hold a lot of cheese.”

I stuck my head back in again. It was amazingly cool within the slabs of stone, even on a scorching summer day such as this. And with that, Franck and I exchanged glances. Saying
non
to Mr. Partridge and now falling in love with another house. Maybe I was fickle after all.  

About half an hour later, after touring the bedrooms, the attic and the cellars, we took our leave of Le Maître.

“What did you think?” he tried to feel us out as he opened his car door.

Franck pursed his lips disdainfully. “It would need a lot of work.”

Le Maître squinted back toward the peeling white shutters and sighed. “
Oui
, but it could have much charm. The owners have had it listed with me for quite some time, but now they are talking of bringing in the real estate agents.” He spat out these last three words as if they were poison.

A few years ago real estate agents were all but unheard of in France. Notaries, and only notaries, handled all real estate transactions; people sold all their vines and houses and pig sheds through the very same notaries that their family had been using for centuries. During the past few years though real estate agents had arrived on the scene and multiplied like rabbits. They were viewed by many as just another symptom of the “Americanisation” of France. Particularly,
bien sûr
, by the notaries.

His words had their desired effect, nevertheless. The owners were talking about listing the house? That meant that it could be splashed over the real estate ads in a matter of days. That meant that we could have a second house stolen out from under our noses. But wait…no…we didn’t want this house. This was all happening too late. The timing was all wrong. We were leaving in five days.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Franck must have read my expression. He stilled my words with the briefest touch on the nape of my neck and said to Maître Lefebvre, “We’ll get back to you.”

Back at Franck’s house we sat under the wisteria and contemplated our options over a kir. Franck leaned back on his chair against the warm stone of his parents’ barn. We each waited for the other to speak first.

As much as the Marey property was grandiose and majestic, the house across from the church in Magny was humble. It consisted of the veranda, the entranceway, the tiny under-the-stairs kitchen, the living room with the stone fireplace and the cheese fridge, a bathroom, a separate WC, or “water closet” (as in most French houses) and two bedrooms with crooked walls and lovely oak floors. There was also the attic that we visited by taking the crooked set of wooden stairs. I wasn’t brave enough to step out on to the dodgy looking floor boards but from the top of the stairs I could make out the gorgeous oak beams in the attic gloom, complete with huge oak pegs that had been used instead of nails to stick them all together. If we ever redid that space, it could be spectacular.

“I think it could work,” I said, finally taking the plunge.

Franck’s chair clunked forward on the pea gravel. “
Vraiment
?”

I chewed my lip. “It’s a lot smaller than the property in Marey, but maybe that’s a good thing. It means less money, less risk…we’ll be able to keep things more flexible.”

“Do you really think so?”

“
Pourquoi pas
?”

Chapter 10

The next morning, breakfast wasn’t even cleared before we whipped out a pad of paper and a calculator. This time, we wouldn’t be involving any additional notaries besides our own
maître
who, as representative of both the buyer and seller, had every motivation to get the deal done.

“What was the asking price again?’ I asked. I had never been able to wrap my mind around math in the same way I had say, Shakespeare.
Francs
had always flustered me. They had to be divided by a figure with five digits after the decimal point to get the equivalent amount in dollars.

Mémé, who had been kneading bread, leaned over Franck’s shoulder and read the confused and poorly photocopied property information sheet that Le Maître had handed to us as an afterthought after showing us the house in Magny.

“I can’t even make out the number that’s written here,” Franck said.

Mémé brushed the dusting of flour off her forearm. “Twenty-seven million francs.”

Franck smiled up at her. “Ah.
Merci.
” It took a few moments for Franck and Mémé to register my stunned silence.

“In old
francs
!” Mémé said, and she and Franck laughed. “New
francs
never did make any sense to me.”

“So that means it’s listed at 270,000
francs
.” Franck squeezed my knee. “New
francs
.”
Mémé
shrugged her disapproval of this whole new
francs
business and went back to evaluate her dough.

270,000
francs.
To some that wouldn’t seem like much, but we had no income at the moment and now that I was turning my back on the possibility of law as a career, not even a solid prospect of one.

“How much does the price translate into dollars again?”

Franck punched a few numbers into his calculator. “$71,145 Canadian.”

Once we were back in Canada, I had no idea what we would do for work. I was quite certain that the salary for a barista at Starbuck’s wouldn’t pay both a Vancouver rent (astronomical according to my friends who lived there) plus the mortgage on a place in France. Two hundred and seventy thousand. It seemed like a very, very big number – almost as ridiculous as twenty-seven million
francs
.

“Let’s go for a walk.” Franck grabbed my hand and led me out. “We think better when we’re moving.” We found ourselves quickly on the path that wound through the vineyards. My legs felt heavy as they moved through the still, sticky air. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Franck’s eyes searched mine. He wanted this house. I knew that he would feel better moving back to Canada knowing that we had a house here that would always be ours. His family frequently told the story of a cousin of Mémé’s who’d left for America after the war to be with her soldier love and never returned to France again. Franck didn’t want that to be our future.

“We have your grandfather’s forty thousand dollars.” His thumb rubbed the humid skin in the palm of my hand.

That was true and it
would
help. But if we were to buy the house, did it mean Franck and I were finally embarking on our life as a married couple, or were we just extracting ourselves from the untenable situation in Oxford in order to pitch ourselves into another one?

“I think we should offer the asking price,” Franck said, looking down at the pink vineyard dust that swirled around our ankles.

“How are we going to pay the mortgage every month? What if we can’t find jobs in Vancouver?” The house needed a lot of work, and as far as renovations – especially in a house several centuries old – neither Franck nor I knew what we were doing. There were so many unknowns.

“It’ll work out one way or another,” Franck said. “I know that it will.”

“But…”

“It
will
.” How I wanted to go through life like my husband and be certain that any path I encountered in life would lead somewhere interesting and good. “Remember the fireplace?” Franck’s hazel eyes glowed almost gold. “And the cheese cupboard?”

Need seized me by the throat. Nobody could appreciate the cheese cupboard the way I could. I felt just like I did when I was eight and stood contemplating a massive double looping roller coaster in an amusement park in California. Should I get on? The wild part of me itched to jump on the ride and feel the thrill of losing control while the anxious part of me worried a pin was loose and I might plummet to my death.

Franck watched me. He plucked a grape off a vine and popped it in his mouth. “Did you see the date that was carved in the stone at the bottom window of the neighbor’s house?”

“
Non
.”

“It said 1789. That must have been when the farm was built. Maître Lefebvre told me it was all one big house that was split up over the centuries.”

“1789,” I echoed. “The year of the French Revolution.” So when the Bastille was being stormed, our house was being built, stone by stone and huge oak beam by huge oak beam. Uh oh.
Our
house? A clap of thunder boomed close by and the clouds began to squeeze out fat drops of rain.

I took a last, fleeting glance at the ground beneath my feet and braced myself for the ride. “OK,” I said to Franck. “Let’s offer the full amount.”

Franck lifted me up and spun me around until the vineyards around us became a green blur. He planted a long kiss on my lips before setting me down – a kiss that made me feel as though I was home already. We grabbed each other’s hand and tried to outrun the storm.

We were soaked by the time we got back but we were safely inside before the lightning started to crash all around Franck’s house. I hopped in the shower, mainly because I needed a few minutes of solitude to clear my head before we called Le Maître and made it official. I wouldn’t go back on what I said – I had been brought up to follow through on my commitments, hence the two years at law school – but I just needed a few minutes of quiet and hot water.

When I emerged from the bathroom, still combing my wet hair, I was confronted with a full-blown celebration in the kitchen. Apparently, Franck had announced to his entire family that we were about to become property owners. Franck’s family never really subscribed to that whole “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” philosophy that I had been reared on.

“It’s not done yet!” I protested to my husband. “We have no idea if they’re even going to accept our offer!” I was convinced in the deepest depths of my soul that to boast or even share hopes that something good was in the offing was to jinx that very thing.

“It’s never too early to celebrate!” Mémé said and disappeared into the cellar only to reappear a few seconds later brandishing one of the bottles of chilled crémant she always kept on hand for impromptu festivities. “Franck, come here and open this for me!”

A crack of lightning made the windows shake. It was too early. If anything would ruin our chances of pulling this deal off, it would surely be popping the cork on a bottle of crémant.

“Franck,” I hissed. “We can’t celebrate yet.”

Before Franck could answer, Mémé broke into an impromptu rendition of “Le Ban Bourguignon” – a traditional Burgundian drinking song that consisted of turning your hands and signing crescendos of “laa – laa – laaas”. It had surely become the Burgundian drinking song over the years precisely because it was hard to screw up even after prodigious wine consumption. Franck rolled his eyes and pulled me towards the door.

“Why not? They’re happy because it means we will always be coming back here. Let’s just enjoy this moment with them.”

“Remember what happened last time,” I reminded him. “What if we don’t get the house?”

“At least we’ll have gotten a celebration out of it.”

 My heart was skipping beats and I was breathing too fast. “But it could jinx everything!” I had to make him understand.

Franck studied me for a moment. “Instead of having such faith that things will turn out badly, why don’t you try to believe that they will turn out just fine - no matter what we do or don’t do? Do you really think that whoever is up there in heaven cares if we dance and sing and drink
crémant
?”

“I just think - ”

“
Non
.” Franck shook his head. “What you are doing is believing, not thinking. It’s a choice. The problem is that you do not believe in something that makes you happy. What’s the point of that?”

Mémé came over, linked her arm in Franck’s and dragged him to the middle of the kitchen for an impromptu jig. I lingered by the doorway. Could I really just decide to believe something different? A door opened, just like it had when the
Père Bard
had said that in his opinion, God had put us here to have fun. Maybe I should try that.

Still, it was with a vestige of unease – those old habits can feel scary to break – that I smiled at Mémé as she jigged over to me with a full glass in her hand. I tried very hard to let my reservations go.

I had never met anyone who was more gifted for capitalizing on a moment of celebration than Burgundians, and the kitchen was soon full of Ban Bourguignons and one empty bottle of
crémant
quickly became two. Mémé kept leaping up to do impromptu dances of joy around the table. As far as she was concerned it was a done deal. Her cherished Franck was becoming a property owner and even if we were about to embark on that long and evil trip to the hinterlands of Canada, the Magny house – which she already thought of as our house - meant that we would be coming back.

“I just hope I’m not dead before you get the keys!” she laughed. Judging from the way her feet flew over the kitchen floor, I had a pretty strong hunch Mémé would be around for our housewarming.