The Long Hot Summer (12 page)

It's a small crew. Just the producer Janine, the cameraman and a sound recordist. They stay in nearby holiday cabins and arrive every morning immediately after breakfast. We film all day and they rush back to look at what they have captured before going to bed early to recharge their batteries for the following day's filming. It's exhausting. We retreat to our bedroom every night feeling shattered. The interviews alone take four or five hours, and they are done individually so neither of us really knows what the other person has said. Although we certainly have a pretty good idea.

Janine wants various members of the family to be interviewed.
I ask the children, but only Miriam agrees. The boys are not camera-shy but the notion of being questioned about personal family problems worries them. My stepson Tony, who is married and lives in Sydney, has been very level-headed about our marital problems, not taking sides or passing judgement and offering love and support to us both throughout. But my biological sons Aaron and Ethan have been more deeply affected by the events of the last few years. In a sense my behaviour and its aftermath have rocked the foundations of their lives, having always felt secure in the belief that their parents were an unshakable unit. Perhaps they fear showing pain or anger during the interview and we don't blame them at all for declining to be involved. Miriam, on the other hand, has plenty of views and attitudes that she would like to express, and in a sense almost relishes the opportunity to speak out.

Janine would also like my sister Margaret to record an interview for the program in Canada, but I feel certain she will refuse. Having her long-lost little sister reappear in her life after fifty years has been confronting enough for Margaret to cope with without the emotional strain of being interviewed for a television program as well. I give her the opportunity and she declines. As I expected.

Janine is keen to capture the beauty of the farm and the surrounding countryside, and she is fortunate to have the talents of a particularly gifted cameraman, David Marshall. It's autumn and they shoot scenes at dawn in the rolling mist and at sunset with the house nestled among the old exotic trees. It's cold so I light the open fires, which fill the rooms with a glimmering warmth that is also captured on film. I try to keep my input as lighthearted as possible. I make jokes and brush aside questions
that I consider too intense or deep and meaningful. The only time I am moved to tears is when I talk about finding my sister Margaret. I had been determined not to cry, not to give way to such a public display of emotion. But I can't help myself.

Janine wants to film me leaving for France. She wants to capture the moment of our farewell as I pass through the wide doors to the customs hall. David and I debate the issue all the way to the airport.

‘She doesn't want us to act,' I keep saying to him. ‘She wants the real thing.'

He is adamant that after we embrace and say our goodbyes for the camera I must go through the departure doors and wait a few moments before returning to say goodbye properly. Privately, without a camera under our noses.

David feels that the film is robbing us of a private farewell and is therefore too much of an invasion.

I check my bags through and fill out the customs forms. Our body language is nervous and hesitant, which is surprising because we have been filmed for weeks non-stop and surely by now we should be appearing relaxed in front of the cameras. But we are like wound-up springs, because in truth this moment will be the most significant in the film. David holding me before I leave once more for my other life. My fantasy life. For France.

When we embrace it is slapstick in its exaggeration. David insists on a full passionate kiss and I feel self-conscious and awkward. I disengage myself from his arms to go, aware always of the camera behind me. I turn for an instant and wave, then disappear behind the screen. I wait fifteen seconds and walk back to David and hug him again, properly. We have our private moment but I quickly retreat. The whole business has been too
much for both of us and I can't wait to escape the prying eye of the camera.

But for David the ordeal is still not over. As he walks away from the departure doors, the camera picks him up and closes in on his face.

‘How do you feel about Mary going?' Janine asks.

‘Anxious,' he says. ‘I'm always anxious when Mary is flying. I won't relax until I know she's safely arrived.'

‘No, no,' she continues. ‘That's not what I mean. I mean, how do you feel about her going back to France?'

‘In what sense?' he says.

‘Well, surely you can't trust her?' A probing question that catches him by surprise.

‘I'm not going there, Janine,' he replies. ‘That's not something I'm going to respond to.'

But she has hit a raw nerve. He already has a feeling that things are not quite right between us. That there is more to the story than I am telling him. Obviously the instincts of Janine, the documentary maker, are also alert to the fact that the story is by no means over yet.

Why do I love this place so much? Why do I feel so good when I am here, so far from my family and all the people and places that have made up my life for the past fifty-four years? The pleasure I get in opening up the house, unlatching the shutters and letting the spring sunshine pour into the main room. Making up the bed with clean sheets and then cleaning the house from top to toe because it has been closed up now for seven months. I throw open the bedroom windows and shutters on the first floor and lean out over the road. I see familiar faces coming and going from Hortense's corner store, the alimentation that provides the village with the convenience of all sorts of produce from fresh Roquefort cheese to Bordeaux red wine, available from breakfast time until sunset every day. I love the familiar stone tower of the old church, cracked as it is but with a new shingle roof, and the bells that chime on the hour and half-hour, twenty-four hours a day.

I see Madame Thomas shuffling down the road towards the boulangerie. She is now walking with the aid of a stick, so
perhaps she has had a fall since I was here last year. Then again she must be quite an age now and the winters here are pretty gruelling, so it's not surprising she suffers from aches and pains. She looks up and sees me at the window, smiles and waves enthusiastically. I feel so happy. So welcome. So much at home.

This year I plan to paint the inside of the house white, to brighten up all the corners that are dark and dingy. The new kitchen looks perfect, but I also need curtains to give me privacy from the main road and to seal off the house in winter, because I have a tenant coming after I leave at the end of summer and I don't want her to have to endure the cold from the draughty gaps in the front windows and shutters. Curtains will certainly help.

There is no May walking tour this year because the dreadful Bali bombings and the SARS scare have made Australian tourists temporarily nervous. But we have lots of bookings for September and in the meantime I intend working on a novel. My first attempt at fiction writing and therefore rather daunting.

David is staying back at the farm until May, when he leaves for his annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival. This year in June our daughter Miriam will celebrate her thirtieth birthday, and as a special treat we have bought her a ticket to visit us in France. Her husband Rick has agreed to take three weeks off work to care for their four boisterous boys, two of whom are at school. Rick's father, John Parsons, will come down from Queensland to Bathurst to help him. After a decade of being a full-time mother, this will be Miriam's first real break from domesticity and she is filled with excitement but also has some qualms because she is anxious about missing the children.

Miriam has been to France twice before – once when we took all four of our children on an extended overseas trip that
included two months in Provence, and once when David had a film in competition at Cannes and I was unable to be there to support him because, just days before the festival, my mother Muriel had a stroke. The ticket had been paid for so we sent Miriam instead, and as a fifteen-year-old swanning around the Côte d'Azur she had the time of her life. Now, fifteen years later, she is returning and I can't wait to introduce her to the delights of this region and the joys of living in the village.

David, however, is ambivalent about coming to Frayssinet. It will be his first time back here since the affair and he is sensitive about it. He sees the house and the village as a representation of his pain and unhappiness. He believes that the house is my place, not his, and that I used it not only to escape from him and from our marriage but to launch myself into an affair. In some ways he's correct, but I am constantly trying to encourage him to see things from a different perspective. To look ahead rather than always dwell in the past.

In my heart, however, I know that whatever I might be saying to David is totally compromised by the secrets I am keeping from him. On the one hand I am encouraging him to ‘get over it' and ‘move on', but I am also keenly aware that I have betrayed him yet again and that my words are filled with hypocrisy. All I can say is that when I talk to David about working to repair our marriage and about staying together I sincerely mean it. When I tell him I love him, I mean that too.

On the plane from Australia to Paris, I spend a lot of time wondering what will happen when I return to the village. I have maintained sporadic email contact with my new lover since last year but we have communicated only about inconsequential things, with no mention from either of us about our relationship.
Is it over or will we pick up the threads again this year? How do I feel about it? Confused as ever. All I keep saying to myself, over and over, is that David must never find out.

Within hours of arriving in Frayssinet, I find myself down at Le Relais catching up with my gang of friends. Christian and Christiane greet me like a member of their family. The local barflies smile in recognition and kiss me on both cheeks, after first removing stubby cigarettes that seem permanently stuck in the corners of their mouths. Jock arrives, then Claude. It is a wonderful reunion. Locals wave a welcome greeting as they drive around the intersection. It's a strange feeling, almost as though I haven't been away at all. I am quickly filled in on all the latest news. The boucherie/charcuterie has closed down over the winter, which is a tragedy for the villagers. Didier, the butcher, also has a thriving shop in Cazals, but the man who has managed it for him over many years left suddenly and Didier could not find a replacement. Unable to keep two businesses going by himself, he reluctantly closed down the Frayssinet shop.

Didier was also facing the prospect of having to spend a lot of money to upgrade the Frayssinet shop to bring it up to European Union health standards, which have been imposed across France. Traditional boucheries engage in all sorts of practices that no longer conform to European norms. In the old days fresh meats and prepared foods, such as terrines and foie gras, were all displayed together in one glass cabinet. Now, separate display units with regulation cooling must be provided. The floors must all be standardised for cleanliness and even internal architectural details, such as the old oak beams that are an attractive feature in many old shops, must be covered over completely. One of the charms of the village butcher shop has always been
the weekend rotisserie with rolls of chicken and turkey and pork that are placed outside mid-morning, filling the air with the rich aroma of spit-roasted meats. This is also being phased out, along with the giant paella pans that steam with the smell of rice and saffron and fresh prawns cooking.

Given that most of Didier's customers were the elderly people of the village, there simply wasn't enough cash flow from the business to spend on all the obligatory renovations. So the building was sold, to be converted into a gîte (holiday apartment), and now the locals must make do with a butcher's van that sets up twice a week in the car park. Many of the older locals don't have transport to get to the larger towns for markets or to the supermarket. So instead of buying fresh meat every morning for the tasty lunches she makes for herself and her husband, Madame Thomas must plan ahead and shop on Wednesday and Friday afternoons instead.

Hortense at the alimentation has been similarly affected, and the rumour is that she will close down completely within the next year or so. This will be a disaster for the village. Apparently the health inspectors have been and the list of requirements for her to satisfy their demands is as long as your arm. For decades she has been selling everything from cleaning products to cat food, from tobacco and wine to fresh fruit and vegetables and of course local cheeses and processed meats such as ham and salami. Hortense has a round table in the corner of her shop, and when her friends pop in to visit they all sit down and have coffee and cake and a good old chinwag. She's now not allowed to drink coffee in the shop or entertain her friends, which makes life tough for her because she is open almost ten hours a day. So far she is ignoring the directive.

Hortense and her husband Jacques have three small dogs who also hang around the shop all day. They often sleep on the plastic chairs outside in the sun and they make a daily pilgrimage into my courtyard and stand at the back door, longingly hoping for the scraps left over from my last evening's meal. I usually reward them. When the weather is cold, they huddle under the table inside the shop where Hortense and her friends sit chatting and laughing. This is now an absolute no-no. No animals are allowed anywhere near a shop that serves fresh produce. I recall when I first moved into the house and Hortense had an old cat that slept all day on the shop counter on the pile of newspapers she used for wrapping various purchases, pulling sheet after sheet from under the dozing moggie. The cat on the counter never worried me, but imagine the look of horror on the faces of the inspectors. Just as well the cat has since died!