Reflections of Sunflowers (6 page)

At a cello recital in the tiny church of Lugagnac we had met Ursula. Her house is just nearby. We were glad to see her for we had heard that she was ill. She soon corrected us.

‘I
was
ill,’ she admitted. ‘Pneumonia. Couldn’t breathe – and now,’ she sighed. ‘They’ve discovered my blood pressure is too high. So I’m on medication to thin my blood. I mustn’t cut myself. I said to my doctor, ‘Well, can I ride?’ He said, in his wonderful English – she imitated wickedly – ‘You may ride, Madame, you may not fall off!’

She told us about her new puppy, which she clearly adores, and about her new mayor, whom she equally clearly does not. She had to see him because the dog had eaten some documents. ‘
Monsieur le Maire, je suis désolée mais mon chien a mangé ma carte de séjour
,’ she had begun and then giggled. ‘
Madame, c’est très sérieux
,’ he had thundered without a smile which, of course, she said, had made her laugh even more. I can’t imagine Ursula ever having been pompous; now, well over eighty, she can be as frivolous as she likes.

Each year at the end of the first week of the music festival the students would give a free concert in the square. It was both a thank you to the little town for so warmly accommodating the annual musical invasion and a gentle encouragement to everyone to buy tickets for the rest of the concerts. For this concert we ate
supper early and drove into Monflanquin to be sure of a seat close to the front. The young orchestra from Westphalia, after what seemed an age of tuning up – although nothing is ever done in a hurry here – started off the evening with the Overture from
Oberon
. The orchestra then took a short break while the concert continued with a young Russian who bowed with immense dignity before seating himself at the piano and dashing off an impressively difficult piano solo by Liszt. As the audience applauded and cheered his performance, more and more people arrived, slipping quietly into their seats. The light began to fade and arc lamps were switched on. A chair was set in the middle of the stage and a small Japanese girl carried in her cello and sat very still for a moment before she began to play Bach, her long thick hair swinging gently as she tilted her head. There was a pause as the orchestra returned and retuned. People changed seats for a better view or to sit nearer friends. We then enjoyed two young violinists who shared the Beethoven violin concerto. The first player was French and she tackled the very difficult first movement; the second and the third movements, which run together, were played by another Japanese student. It was fascinating to compare their different strengths and weaknesses. The audience, now grown so large that it was necessary for some to find seats on the walls around the square, responded with enthusiasm.

As the evening continued and stars began to appear, children gradually fell asleep and were carted home; their places taken by diners at nearby restaurants who, having finished their meals, came closer to listen. The small tree-lined square has a wonderful atmosphere, perhaps because for almost seven hundred and fifty years it has been a place for meeting and celebration. Just after midnight the orchestra, after many an encore, persuaded us to go home with the sound of their final spirited performance of Brahms’
Hungarian Dances
still ringing in our ears as we all drove away down the dark and winding roads.

A few days later we had to go to Bordeaux to meet Thomas. Our ten-year-old grandson was flying out to have a week with us on his own before the rest of the family arrived. Neurotic grandparents, we left at 8.30 a.m. to get to Bordeaux to meet the plane at 11.32. Bordeaux is only a hundred miles from us and as we sped along we discussed ways of passing the time after our inevitably very early arrival at the airport. All these ideas were forgotten as on the ring road into Bordeaux we encountered a five-kilometre tailback. We crawled past the road works, and frequent deviations, becoming increasingly worried. When we finally arrived at 11.30 we parked the car and raced into the reception hall to find a slightly tense Thomas, fortunately looked after by a friendly and conscientious air-hostess. Thomas
was on his best behaviour. No doubt he had been primed by his parents and, without his brother, whom he really adores but…he was an easy and surprisingly grown-up and delightful young guest.

He had arrived in time to watch one of our trees being cut down. When we first bought Bel-Air there was one great ash tree, which gave us shade on the north side of the house. Nearer to the house, almost touching the wall of the
chai
was another ash, originally a seedling I suspect, of the older tree. It was small and graceful then and we didn’t listen when Raymond tut-tutted and told us that it was too close to the house.

‘
Il faut le couper, maintenant
,’ he had said ‘
Autrement
…you’re going to have problems one of these days.’

He was right, of course, he always is where growing things are concerned, and now the day of reckoning had finally arrived. The once small, graceful tree had become a towering hazard, its branches over-hanging our long sloping roof. Apart from any damage it would do if it ever fell, the constant cleaning out of twigs and fallen leaves from the channels between the tiles was an essential but irksome task. Mike had constructed a long pole with a hook at one end to tackle this, but in fact, he often had to also climb up on the roof to dislodge a particularly stubborn clump of moss, growing on its own perfect little compost heap of leaves. If these were left they would act as a
dam and the rain would back up and eventually find a way through the tiles. One year we even had to uproot a couple of self-sown teazles actually flourishing on the roof.

We spoke to our friend Simone, who has a large garden with many trees, and she recommended the services of a Monsieur Bentoglio. We were sad to contemplate the felling of the tree but knew that it was essential. M. Bentoglio whistled when he first saw the height of it and the position but reassured us that it would present no problem, apart from costing us £320. Now, on the day of the felling, a team of four had arrived; Monsieur and Madame Bentoglio, their son and the man who seemed to be in charge of the lorry. He, it seemed, would do most of the cutting and work from the cabin at the top of the elevator arm. The main difficulty, apart from not letting heavy branches drop onto the roof, was the small space between the two trees in which to manoeuvre the elevator lorry. We did not want to damage our other tree.

It was fascinating to watch them work as a team. The lorry was constantly moved and jacked into different positions. The cutter dealt with the higher, smaller branches first, lopping and stacking them beside him in the elevator platform. When there was no more room on the platform he would lower himself, to where he could safely throw the branches down. He never threw anything without looking first and the
others never moved without checking. M. Bentoglio picked the branches up. The son quickly chain-sawed them into manageable lengths, constructing a neat log pile as he did so, and Madame, in her neat spotted pinafore, raked and cleared the bits.

Minute by minute the shape of our very high tree changed as the top branches disappeared. As well as a power saw, the cutter also used a long, sharp lance for smaller branches and with this he would loop and tie a rope to secure and control heavier branches. At last there remained only the largest, most dangerous overhanging branch to remove. While M. Bentoglio hung onto the rope, his face red with the effort, the last great limb was severed and turned safely away from the roof, and finally M. Bentoglio himself ceremonially sawed through the trunk. Our tree was no more. Instead we had a neatly stacked pile of logs, the cut ends making a very pleasing design of varying circles. An equally tidy pile of small branches was left to dry alongside the barn. The ivy-covered trunk waited to be taken one day to the sawmill, and all that remained to remind us of the operation was a bright, sweet-scented ring of new sawdust. It took this organised and very professional team almost three hours and we reckoned they had earned their money.

While Kevin and Pat were hard at work transforming the chateau, their wives, Claudia and Diane, brought
the children up to Bel-Air to swim. Thomas and Kieran immediately made friends and Thomas would return with him to go exploring the chateau and the grounds. One evening when I went to collect him, Kitty, Kieran’s young sister, offered, with a delightfully proprietorial air, to take me on a tour. Although living very comfortably in their large mobile-homes, the children had made a playroom in the chateau. In the large reception room next to the kitchen, modern plastic toys and children’s tricycles stood incongruously on the elegantly tiled but dusty floor. Dolls sprawled in a heap on a coloured blanket.

‘Would you like to start at the top?’ Kitty enquired. She led me not to the grand staircase, but up the winding back stairs. Up and up we went where I discovered eight more bedrooms on the top floor, which I had never seen. We peered out of the high windows, one giving a view down onto the lake, another onto the top branches of the great dark cedar trees below. In another of the rooms was a light well, like a small counter built over a glass panel in the floor through which one could see into the room beneath. I wondered why it was there, how many people had looked down through it over the years and what they had seen. On we went, up another small wooden staircase into the great wooden belfry.

‘We’d better not ring the bell,’ she giggled. ‘The boys kept on doing it yesterday.’

We had heard nothing up at Bel-Air. Clearly the call of the peacocks, now long disappeared, had carried further than the sound of the bell.

‘And now,’ she said dramatically, ‘I’ll take you to see the bats.’

Back we went down the dark narrow staircase, ducked under a low doorway into the sculleries at the back of the kitchen, and she carefully pushed open a small metal door. ‘You can just look,’ she whispered, very seriously.

The bats, like a row of upside down very dirty, grey handkerchiefs, hung from the low ceiling.

Kitty put her finger to her lips. ‘We mustn’t disturb them,’ she said closing the door again.

I wondered how much of all this Kitty would remember when she grew up, but before the summer was out her father had decided that he wasn’t cut out to spend months, if not a couple of years, in rural France and she and her family left for home.

Preparations were in hand for the village fête to be held that Saturday. The new committee, which included Véronique, was still finding its feet. After the joining of the two opposing factions in the commune under the new mayor, it would take a few years it seemed, for the summer fête to regain its former glory. It was to be a smaller affair, held in the playground of the school, but Raymond made a special journey to the chateau to make sure that ‘
les Anglais
’ were invited to
book their places. And reminded that they must bring their own plates, glasses and cutlery. The day before the fête, I was surprised when Thomas offered to come shopping, until I saw him solemnly deciding in the supermarket which gel he should buy to make the front of his hair stand up. The next evening, although the sun had almost gone down before we left for the village, he put on his sunglasses and tried hard to look cool in his brand-new shirt. He and Kieran eyed the local girls but were soon racing around with the boys in the field behind the school. Tables were arranged in the playground, which is not particularly large as there are usually only about a dozen pupils in the school.

The evening began as always with unlimited aperitif, a very potent Sangria. Mme Renée, and Mme Barrou, who, for as long as I can remember, have been stalwarts of all preparations for village affairs, from fêtes to weddings and funerals, had at last taken honourable retirement. They sat at their ease with their husbands, while the younger generation served the first course which was, inevitably, generous portions of rice salad with tuna, hardboiled egg and sweetcorn. Raymond always leaves the sweetcorn. ‘
C’est pour les bêtes!
’ he declares.

He knows perfectly well that maize grown for human consumption is a different variety but still refuses to try it. Many local farmers grow edible maize. The flowering plumes are more silvery and the foliage
more delicate, but Raymond still cannot bring himself to eat it. He also won’t eat broad beans, yet he adores ‘
soupe de fèves
’. Broad beans are for making soup and that is that. Mike adores broad beans and tells him how delicious they are eaten fresh. Raymond shrugs; ‘
Oui, c’est possible
,’ he says with a shrug, ‘
mais une bonne soupe de fèves, comme celle de Claudette, ah!
’ he kisses his fingers

Music for the disco started after the first course and people got up to dance. The smell of meat cooking was tantalising but it was ten o’clock before the trays and trays of barbecued lamb chops were passed, and repassed, interspersed with plates of sausages. There was no limit. The young men seemed to be vying to see who could consume the most of everything. After the meat, eaten with chunks of good bread, a green salad appeared and everyone took the obligatory leaf, except Claudia, Kevin’s wife who, being a vegetarian, made the most of the salad, before a generous portion of cheese was served. As soon as one of the many bottles of red wine, from the local
Cave des Sept Monts
at Monflanquin, was finished another took its place. There were, by now, many flushed faces, but it could have been the dancing, of course. There was delicious apple tart specially made for the fête by the
boulanger
at the mill, and ice cream for the children, none of whom seemed the least bit tired.

In the course of the evening we caught up with local
gossip. Mme Vidal was going to retire, who would take over the village shop was as yet unclear. M. René, our now retired builder who had helped us so much in the early days had had a back operation but it had not been an unqualified success. He still had pain. Poor René. I remember years ago when he would whizz me round the dance floor at some fête or other. We chatted about the old days. ‘
Les beaux jours d’autrefois
’, the nostalgic phrase that used to amuse us when we first came but which begins to have a meaning for us, too, now. Spurring each other on, the old folk shouted for me to sing
Le Temps des Cerises
, the song about cherries that grandma taught me. Unable to refuse, I sang and, responding to shouts, I also included something a bit more up-to-date for the young ones. I realised as I performed that Thomas had actually never seen his grandma on the end of a microphone before, with an audience. He gazed at me with a wonderful mixture of pride and embarrassment.