The Long Hot Summer (18 page)

Normally these markets are crammed with foreign holiday-makers also looking for bargains, but this year the numbers seem to be down a little and this makes it easier for haggling. The heat has probably driven people indoors and discouraged them from making the effort to go out shopping. The markets are generally held out in the open in village squares, with the goods arranged on tables or spread out on the ground. I love the old garden tools that have been rescued from the back of derelict stone barns, and I'm always on the look-out for pastis bottles, which I am starting to collect. Pastis is the anise-flavoured aperitif so loved in the rural regions of France. Poured from the bottle it is a pale yellow liquid, then water is added to the glass and it turns a milky white. The water bottles, always labelled with the brand name, come in different shapes and sizes, and there are also porcelain water jugs that a lot of people like to collect and display on their bars.

The costume and heirloom jewellery at the markets is also
worth looking at. I have a friend in Australia who makes interesting individual pieces of jewellery, many in art deco style, and she has given me a budget and asked me to search for unusual beads and chains and buckles and clasps that she may be able to adapt for her work. I really have no idea what I am looking for, but it makes the searching more fun as I target every stall with old baskets and boxes of discarded junky jewellery. I also find various bits I like for myself – chunky silver earrings in the shape of a pussycat's face and brightly coloured necklaces that demonstrate that for very little money you can be adorned with gaudy cast-offs that are unique. Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but I love them.

I have also observed that for every interesting or worthwhile treasure for sale there are at least a hundred ugly artefacts – the tables are groaning with French bad taste, which may seem like a contradiction in terms but is in fact the truth. The French seem to have the best and worst of taste, and I never cease to be amazed at the hideous items that are seriously on display with a price tag attached. Some of my favourites revolve around the local rural passion for hunting. There are caps with a wild boar's head (sanglier) embroidered into the brim and dainty deer antlers that have been transformed into hat racks or hooks for keys. Deer feet are also used as handles for salad servers, and there are stuffed heads of various dead animals that have been mounted for display. Usually old and mouldy and always grotesque.

Clocks and lamps are another case in point. There is virtually no object that cannot be converted into a useful wall clock or tasteless lamp, including wooden clogs, plates, bottles, shells and jugs. I make the mistake of expressing my delight at the bizarre
nature of some of the items on sale and my friends take the opportunity to buy me hideous gifts they stumble across at vide greniers or trocs. My friends Tony and Terry ceremoniously present me with a large blue porcelain clock that is a representation of a naked man clubbing a cougar to death. All he is wearing is a wispy loin cloth, and the clock face is somehow incorporated into this unappealing sculpture. I position it on top of the fridge.

Next Jan buys me a telephone cover made from dusty mustard velvet and glittering gold braid. Every part of the telephone is covered, including the handset, and there's a cute circular flap to lift when one needs to dial the number. It takes pride of place on the sideboard. Philippe discovers a 1960s vibrator, thinly disguised as a ‘personal massager', with all sorts of telling line drawings and instructions in the booklet, which appears to have remained untouched all these years. An unappreciated gift, I expect. I plug it in to try out some of the vibrating attachments but am nearly electrocuted for my trouble as the French system has changed since this handy appliance was manufactured and now runs on a much higher voltage. I thank Philippe for his thoughtfulness.

So it goes on, until we decide to turn the game into a competition of sorts. Over one dinner, after several bottles of wine, we decide to launch an ‘Exposition de Merde' or ‘Exposition des Exquisites' – both names are bandied about, but a final decision is never made. At any rate, an exhibition of items collected at various vide greniers and trocs during the summer months. There is only one rule: the item must cost five euros or less. The idea is that we each collect an item and at the end of the summer we hold an exhibition and pronounce a winner.

We have not thought ahead to the fine detail – where to have the exhibition and what will happen to all the goodies afterwards. It just means that whenever one of us goes to a second-hand market there is a specific goal: looking for something truly hideous to outdo the competition. And trying not to let any of the others in the competition see what you have found – we all live in the same area and go to the same markets. It gives the summer a focus. It becomes a game: getting to the market first to blitz the stalls before anyone else. Sneaking off with the item of ghastly kitsch and hiding it away for the end-of-season competition.

If Miriam had survived the three-week holiday in France without pining for her children, they are certainly making her pay for it now. Back into the stride of her daily routine with four small boys, she barely has time to bounce back from her jetlag when things start to go awry. Rick returns to work, leaving early, and the two older boys continue the school term. One morning the youngest, two-year-old Augustus (known as Gus) is found crying helplessly in his cot, not greeting the day with his customary loud laughter and boisterous good humour. Miriam clucks over him and lifts him out. He won't go onto the floor and can't seem to walk. He has a slight fever and complains of a sore abdomen. She bundles him into the car and takes the two big boys to school, continuing on to hospital outpatients with Gus and his older brother Theo.

After an interminable wait, during which Gus whimpers in pain, they see a doctor and Gus is quickly admitted to the children's ward with suspected septic arthritis. All Miriam's children are recovering from colds. Septic arthritis is a rare
opportunistic infection, like bronchitis, which can follow a childhood cold or flu. It manifests as a pool of infection in the hip joint and the child experiences intense pain, fever and inability to walk. The treatment is a massive dose of antibiotics and constant monitoring to ensure that the infection subsides.

Having just returned to work after Miriam's three-week absence, Rick has to request compassionate leave to look after the three older boys while Miriam keeps a vigil at Gus's hospital bedside. They swap shifts in the evening after dinner. Rick comes into the hospital while Miriam goes home and spends the night with the big children, swapping back in the morning. Theo goes to pre-school the following day so Rick is able to work, at least from 9 a.m. until school finishes at 3 p.m.

They are told that if Gus's infection doesn't resolve he will have to be transferred to a larger hospital in nearby Orange for monitoring and possibly surgery. They will make an opening into the hip socket and drain away any infected material.

On the second day, with the older children in school and preschool, Miriam waits for the verdict of the visiting paediatrician. He examines Gus closely and says he feels it would be wise for him to transfer to Orange. His temperature hasn't dropped enough to indicate that the infection is clearing. Miram is about to phone Rick and tell him that he will have to look after the other children while she travels by ambulance the 45 minutes to Orange with Gus when the phone rings in the children's ward. It's for Miriam. Eamonn, the eldest, is in the sick bay at school and needs to be collected. For the first time ever, Miriam leaves Gus alone in the hospital and makes the dash to Eamonn's school, feeling somewhat irritated at his appalling timing. It's probably just a tummy upset.

She brings Eamonn back to the hospital and sticks him on a chair in the corner while she continues to make arrangements with the paediatrician for Gus's imminent transfer. The doctor glances over in Eamonn's direction.

‘What's his problem?' he enquires in a distracted way.

‘Goodness knows,' says Miriam. ‘Probably sick of school, or not getting enough attention.'

‘I'll take a quick look at him.'

Within ten minutes, Eamonn has been admitted into the hospital with acute appendicitis.

‘He's really quite a sick little boy,' the doctor tells Miriam. ‘We'll have to operate this afternoon.'

So Rick catches the ambulance to Orange with Gus while Miriam stays by Eamonn's bedside, holding his hand as he is prepared for surgery. Both boys have their operations within hours of each other, and friends look after Sam and Theo, who seem quite jolly in the face of all the excitement.

That day I've been trying to call Miriam at home in Bathurst, unaware of the unfolding events. I can't understand why nobody is at home – not in the morning nor again in the evening. I keep calling, then eventually phone Ethan to see if he knows where they all are.

‘Don't you know what's happened, Mum?' he says. Then regales me with the unbelievable saga.

It's moments like this that I regret being such an absent grandmother. Of course they cope without me, but I feel terrible that I haven't been there to help and lend support.

Both boys make a rapid recovery but Miriam feels totally drained by the experience. As though her therapeutic three weeks in France have been entirely expunged. At least she knows she's back home.

Two weeks later Eamonn goes back to see the paediatrician for a post-operative examination and he gives Miriam the results of the tests done on the contents of Eamonn's abdominal cavity at the time of surgery. His appendix had actually ruptured, and if he had been left much longer he could have been a very sick little boy indeed. In fact, he could easily have died. Miriam is shocked to realise how easy it is to overlook symptoms of childhood illness. Eamonn had left for school that morning seeming quite cheerful. By eight in the evening he was on the operating table. It's a frightening thought.

In Paris the workforce is getting ready to exit for annual August holidays. The schools, the government, the bureaucracy and most of the private sector take their holidays at the same time, and because it is the hottest month of the year most people head for the country or the coast. This year it's much hotter than usual and very few French homes, even in Paris, have air-conditioning. The heat rises off the road and inside buildings those living on the second, third and fourth floor apartments are experiencing heat like never before. A lot of elderly French people live alone rather than with their families. When the annual holiday exodus occurs, they are left to fend for themselves without children or grandchildren nearby to help out if there is a problem. Most of them live in old apartment blocks and very few have gardens or places where they can find shade to escape from the heat. The younger couples drive out of the city with their children, leaving the old people behind. Doctors leave, emergency services people leave, and hospitals are run with a skeleton staff. It's a recipe for disaster.

The farmers in and around the village talk about little else than the heatwave. It's been a catastrophe for their maize and sunflower crops, which are literally baking in the fields. In a normal summer the heads of corn would be plumping up by now, but instead they are stunted and withered. The heads of sunflowers, usually brilliant yellow and packed with shiny black seeds, have collapsed because the stems have been weakened by extreme heat and lack of water. They hang dismally, waiting for the farmers to rip them from the ground unharvested so that at very least what remains can be turned into silage. Nobody can remember such widespread loss of crops, and there are grave fears for the grape vines which, unlike in Australia, are rarely irrigated. The annual rainfall and temperatures are so reliable that irrigation is not considered necessary.

In spite of the heatwave, the tourist season appears as busy as ever and people are crowding to the Plan d'Eau every day, sitting in the shade of the oaks and dangling their legs into the cooling water. The Plan d'Eau is a large and very pretty manmade lake, edged with spreading trees, just around the corner from our house, and it's a haven for summer visitors. Christian from Le Relais opens a bar and outdoor restaurant here in the summer, serving cooling drinks and ice creams for the children and simple meals – moules frites (mussels and chips), grillade (mixed grill) and salads – for the adults. A local company hires out paddle boats and the lake is also used for fishing and swimming, although I don't fancy the idea of venturing into its murky shallows. It doesn't seem to faze the children, however, and there's lots of splashing and swimming out into the middle of the lake, which is much colder and therefore appealing on these long hot summer afternoons.

The lake feeds into a stream which snakes through the back of the village, running past neatly tended potager gardens bursting with summer vegetables and eventually under Claude's house – the old moulin (millhouse) – where it also feeds his ornamental pond. Sitting in the dappled light of the Plan d'Eau in the late afternoon is like stepping into a painting by Claude Monet, but this year I don't seem to get down there very often.

There's quite a different atmosphere to the three summers I have spent here before, and for us it is as though something more ominous, quite apart from the heat haze, is hanging in the air. I'm trying to write a novel and it seems to be going nowhere. I have written at least four separate opening chapters and lots of descriptive passages, yet when I read back over them I feel dissatisfied and frustrated with the result. It doesn't feel as though it's my voice that's telling the story. The writing seems stilted and forced. My heart sinks.

Since dropping Miriam off at the airport in Toulouse, David has become even more subdued and sullen. I admit I don't much have the heart for socialising either. I'm starting to feel rather frayed at the edges, and I suspect it's not just the heatwave.