Our House is Not in Paris (10 page)

At no point did we stop and consider the impracticality of having a holiday house on the other side of the world. Somehow it didn't seem absurd or ridiculous. It didn't even seem the sort of thing that ‘ordinary' people simply don't do. Somehow it all felt just absolutely right. And, while now it's a reality, it still always has an element of surrealism. Overlaying that feeling and the sense of utter privilege, it is also just perfect in every possible way. Well, almost perfect, for there is no escaping the sheer hard work of it all.

Last year, the steps at the front of the house were the place of all our activities, not only for all our meals and socialising over an
apéritif
, but it was also the place where I sat with a bucket, handwashing all our clothes. Strangely, even after we got our lovely old table, our habit of having our meals and
apéritifs
on the steps persisted. It was a comforting place to sit, watching the village pass by, waving and making friends. And the curved little steps were what brought our friends to us.

Without our friends in Cuzance and Villefranche, and their invitations to their magnificent homes and memorable meals, we would always remain on the outside looking in. We would not have enjoyed the essence of French life: good food, good wine, good company — a little French house yet never quite belonging.

There is something about France that seeps into your skin. When we are not there, it is still like a palpable presence in our lives. When we are not there, we talk about it constantly — our
petite maison
, our plans for the work we will do the following year, what we miss and our friends.

Before we even arrived in Cuzance for our second year, another chapter had unfolded. There was a forty-two-hour journey to endure before we finally saw our
petite maison
again. When at last we did, it did not seem at all as if a whole year had already slipped away. However, the adventure started as soon as we arrived at the airport to book in. Our luggage was a whole kilo and a half overweight. So we became the people who hold up everyone else in the queue — there were shades of IKEA in Toulouse the previous year. Impatient passengers rolled their eyes in frustration at our ineptitude as we were told to unpack our suitcases and take out the offending excess weight. There we were on our hands and knees, scrabbling through our bags and taking out piles of books. After this embarrassing episode, we went outside for a final coffee before boarding. As we were sitting there an elderly Japanese woman attempted to get a trolley and didn't have the required change for one. We gave her the money, and Stuart helped her with her luggage and the trolley. She bowed courteously several times to thank us. Before we had finished our coffee, she returned, with her laden trolley, to graciously present us with a package of Japanese tea, complete with several more polite bows. Next, as we went through passport control, I was selected at random for an explosives test. I was told to read the declaration and say whether I agreed to be checked. I declared indignantly that, as a teacher, I was hardly likely to be carrying explosives. I was tempted to see what might happen if I had said that I didn't agree to the test but had visions of the federal police being called to intervene, so I decided that the easiest choice was to, of course, comply.

So the journey of ten stages commenced. This is the part that we dread each year: the interminable cramped flight, complete with ghastly airline food. Some of our friends have told us they love airline food; we think they are mad. Long-haul flights are a never-ending succession of plastic, processed meals. The strangest on this trip was the dinner served at 4.30am after leaving Bangkok and then the five meals in a row that consisted of bread. A sign of things to come in Cuzance and, yet again, memories of mere
pain
for
dîner
last year.

We finally landed in Paris, after the never-ending customs checks at Heathrow, a flight forced upon us to merely make the connection to Paris. We now had two challenging Metro trips before Austerlitz for the final four-hour train journey to Brive-la-Gaillarde, just twenty minutes from Cuzance. At Charles de Gaulle, we bought our first espresso at the airport and, as we were desperate for a brief respite, some fresh air and a fleeting glimpse of Paris, we went outside for a few moments. This was our big mistake and cost us not merely the price of an airport coffee, but our final connection. We lugged our suitcases onto the first Metro, for ten stops, then changed again: an arduous undertaking that involved dragging our leaden bags up and down the many steep stairs. We made the second Metro connection, but by then time was rapidly ebbing and precious minutes were ticking away and I was becoming more and more anxious with every stumbling step. We got off with mere minutes to find the right platform for the train to Brive. Our tickets had already been booked and printed at home; we were as organised as possible with our meticulous planning. However, there were even more steps to face and I simply couldn't go fast enough, despite fully realising the consequences.

As seems to be a recurring experience in France, I told Stuart to run, to go as fast as he could and that I would catch up. I asked him to tell them I was right behind him and try to hold the train. I should have realised this was a futile suggestion, as one thing I remembered clearly about SNCF trains is that they depart not one second later than the schedule. In France, of all places where women are immaculate even when they travel, many complete with high heels, I was a dreadful spectacle, panting and struggling up the stairs, scarcely able to carry my suitcase. I made the fatal mistake of losing sight of Stuart, and the next fatal mistake of making a wrong turn. I collapsed in a heap on the platform to see the train imperiously departing into the distance. It all came down to a mere two minutes in a forty-two-hour journey. A few words were exchanged and then we went to see what we could do to remedy the situation. Very fortunately there was another train in two hours and, for a small fee, we were able to change the tickets. We then had to contact Jean-Claude, as we had arranged with him months ago to pick us up in Brive. Our organisation had again been so precise that we had even organised with him to stop at a
supermarché
to buy food for our first evening at Pied de la Croix. While on the plane, I had even written the list of what we needed to buy. My attention to detail meant that I had also written the extended shopping list for our first full day, when we would go to Martel to stock up properly.

As with many major occasions in our lives — like buying our house at auction two years ago — our mobile always let us down. Once again, we were thwarted by technology. Stuart had bought a French mobile when he bought our house. This is the sort of thing that he takes care of very calmly and competently, and always impresses me enormously. It is in the category of setting up our French bank account and organising for our rates, water and electricity bills to be automatically deducted — basically, all the things that I simply don't have a clue how to do. However, it seemed that, because the phone hasn't been used for twelve months, the number had been disconnected. Of course, none of the phones take euros so Stuart bought a phone card. For some reason, he couldn't get through to either Jean-Claude's home number or Françoise's
portable
. We later discovered that Françoise had lost her mobile just two days before. We knew Jean-Claude would be waiting on the dot of six in Brive and it was imperative that we contact him.

Our next attempt to contact Jean-Claude was to try and find an internet café, but of course, in these days of laptops and wireless connections, such places are no longer as common. I then discovered a room at the station with a wireless internet connection and it was full of connected people. I frantically approached a friendly-looking young woman who was using her laptop and blurted out my dilemma. She was immediately simpatico and offered to let me use her laptop. I, however, cannot use one without a mouse. She then logged in to my email for me — I told her she now had my whole life in her hands, as she had my email password. I hastily dictated a short message to Jean-Claude to let him know our new arrival time. Next, she offered to also call Jean-Claude so that we had covered all possible bases. I raced back to get Stuart and our luggage, as he had the contact number on his redundant mobile. The lovely French woman whipped out her iPhone and dialled his number. No response. Then she checked his number on the internet and dialled again. This time she left him a message. We now felt fairly hopeful that he would be waiting on the platform at Brive. Surely we had covered all bases? Soon, the two extra hours of waiting slipped away and it was time to depart. We left without even learning the young woman's name, and yet again we were astonished and warmed by the kindness of those we have encountered on our travels.

The four hours on the train passed comfortably and we had some much-needed sleep. Alas, there was no Jean-Claude to warmly greet us at the station. We had yet another dilemma. There were some taxis at the station, so we enquired about the cost to Cuzance. It was essential that we have some food for our arrival at our
petite maison
, so, still hopeful that Jean-Claude would actually arrive, Stuart set off in search of food in the deserted streets of Brive. As I was standing with the luggage, passengers waiting for a connection to Toulouse asked why on earth we had come all the way from Australia to the quiet, empty town of Brive rather than the Riveria. Forty minutes later, Stuart returned with two sad-looking, end-of-the-day
baguettes
. We were actually quite grateful for them, as they became our very late supper and, the next day, our stale breakfast; not quite what we imagined for our first meals in France. There was now no choice at all except to pay the exorbitant price for a taxi and so, finally, we were on the last leg of our ten-part trip.

After a very fast, very expensive, taxi ride, we arrived at Pied de la Croix several hours later than anticipated. There were shades of our arrival last year as our hearts didn't quite beat with joy. No, there was a huge, green, flapping tarpaulin covering half the barn roof; there was a pile of rubble in front of the house where the roofer's truck hit a water pipe; and, oh, the grass was very, very overgrown. Despite the meticulous checklist, somehow ringing Christian to cut the grass had been overlooked. To complete the picture-perfect romantic French idyll, there was a dead bird on the porch right outside the front door. Once inside, it was like a haunted house. The lingering smell of old fire smoke was extraordinarily strong and the house was festooned with cobwebs. Fortunately, there was some wine left from last year, so we rapidly downed a glass with our stale
baguette
and fell into bed, complete with a year of dust on the eiderdown. Welcome home to Cuzance.

The long-awaited day was here — well, very late evening. We were back, after almost another year, at our beloved
petite maison
. Its arms embraced us warmly and there was a real sense of coming home. I remember vividly a Monday morning the previous year when my first task was to start ever so carefully peeling the wallpaper from an ancient wooden beam in the room that was to become
la cuisine
. I recall thinking I would much rather be doing this first thing on a Monday morning than the normal routine of work at home. Stuart was off on one of his many errands, sourcing
bricolage
needs and food, so I was alone, as I often was. While we have lived in many, many houses over the years, including two old terrace houses in Sydney, I had never felt such a palpable sense of warmth emanating from a house. I actually felt that our
petite maison
was thanking me for breathing life into it, indeed, bringing it back to life. Once I found out more about its history from Jean-Claude and the previous owners, it made even more sense. I truly felt their presence in a very warm way. They were glad we were pouring love into the house. Despite renovating our hundred-year-old terraces in Sydney, I had never experienced such a strong connection with the past. In fact, what was really interesting was that our second terrace in Newtown was in our ‘dream' category. It was a magnificent, grand two-storey terrace in a line of about twelve similar ones on a wide, tree-lined street. When we lived around the corner in our smaller terrace, we would often walk past and admire them. We never dreamt that one day we would actually live in one. Yet we made that dream come true and, while the house was very grand, it always felt strangely distant and never embraced me in the way our little French farmhouse did almost straight away.

Our life was so extraordinary, in fact, that parts of it had become ‘secret'. Off we went to work, to our two ordinary jobs, and yet we had such astonishing things going on that somehow we felt we could no longer share it all, simply because it was in the realm of being too amazing. It was not what ordinary people do at all. It was a very strange way to feel, especially as, at the start of our marriage, life was such a struggle. I think that's what makes what we have achieved even more astonishing. The fact that Stuart was unemployed for the first year of our marriage. The fact that we had to scrape the money together at the end of each fortnight before pay day to find enough money for bread and milk. And now look at us. We were living a life we didn't even know enough about to even dare to dream of. So, in that sense, it was more than a dream come true because we never imagined that, in the realm of our ordinary lives, we would ever have a house in France. What it did mean was that life felt perpetually surreal. That, for us, there was always another hidden dimension beyond the everyday routine.

I think that was why, in the end, we were so mindful of not talking about it too much. That somehow, we had found ourselves in this undreamt of position of being able to invite our family and friends to France to be a part of it and share the dream with us.