Our House is Not in Paris (18 page)

To make up for this loss, Jean-Claude turned up with his old wheelbarrow. I thought that he was intending to lend it to me so that I wasn't forever hauling everything by hand, but, as it turned out, he was giving it to me. I declared it was a better present than a diamond ring, as it was exactly what I needed — even if the front wheel was wobbly! Every trip I then undertook across the bumpy land, I was fearful that the wheel would finally break and I'd lose my entire unstable load. What made the wheelbarrow perfect, though, was the little picture pasted on the front of it from the manufacturer: a little man with a hat and a pipe in his mouth. It was Jean-Claude himself! Jean-Claude was never without his pipe and, in hot weather, when he was working outside, he always wore a white singlet top and a battered hat. That was the image I had in my mind when I thought of Jean-Claude. Striding up the road in time for an
apéritif
: white singlet, pipe in mouth, a wave of the hand.

So I immediately put my new present into action. I set to work in the
jardin
with renewed vigour, for having a wheelbarrow made all the difference in the world. I was in my usual dishevelled state when Dominique and Gerard swept up grandly out the front, dressed in their summer best on their way to lunch. It was not without a sense of envy that I downed my tools to go and say hello to them. Stuart emerged from the house to greet them; he was covered in dust, as he was in the process of cutting the kitchen bench for the hotplate. After they left, it was back to work for us and I went inside to inspect his progress to find the house was consumed by a cloud of choking dust. To add to the ambience, he had now hung up flypaper in the fireplace to catch some of the marauding flies that had taken over the
petite maison
. While extremely unattractive, it was nevertheless working.

At the end of the day, we inspected our property together, for while Stuart's days were spent inside assembling the kitchen he really had no idea what I'd been trying to accomplish outside. So I showed him all my pruning and sawing and clearing. It was a constant source of surprise to think that we had our very own orchard. Stuart picked a small red apple from one of the several apple trees and declared that it was the first time he'd ever picked fruit from his own tree. And that declaration seemed to me to sum up the very wonder of it all — and the wonder of what we had made possible.

We decreed that, even here, our working week would be Monday to Friday and we would have a ‘normal' weekend. We knew only too well from last year how easy it was to be obsessive and just keep working manically. Not that shades of obsession hadn't already set in. We were determined too not to work until midnight, especially on Saturdays, when the alarm went off early on Sunday for us to visit the
vide-greniers
on our perpetual quest for treasure. Those mornings had a sense of excitement like no other.

I knew I had a sense of the weekend and all its pleasure as I actually slept in. I knew that it was later as the fingers of light reaching past the sides of the heavy wooden outside shutters were dancing off the wall in a further corner than usual in our whitewashed room. I knew, too, that it was the weekend, as my mind had registered that it didn't have to leap up, make coffee and exchange our daily ‘
Bonjour
's and handshakes all round with the roofers.

It was actually strange how often we talked about the presence of the roofers and how they had added an extra dimension to the pattern of our days. There were four most days, the two older ones in their fifties and the two younger ones in their twenties. Most days they worked in a team — an older, experienced roofer with a younger one; one team on the roof of the barn, the other on the pigsty roof. We wondered about their lives and families beyond the world of our roof. We wondered about the life they returned to at the end of each day when, without fail, they courteously wished us, ‘
Bonsoir
.' We loved the rituals of our brief, everyday life with them, like when they left at precisely one minute to twelve to walk to the village restaurant to have lunch together. As they pulled on clean T-shirts to eat their midday meal, we always all chorused, ‘
Bon appétit
.' We wondered if Monsieur Arnal, the owner of the restaurant, appreciated how much extra business we'd sent his way.

It seemed like the first time since we'd arrived that we'd started the day in a leisurely way. Our front porch, shaded by an enormous white-flowering lime tree, was still very cool — it was only thirteen degrees and yet it was supposed to be summer. The back of the barn, though, had lovely early morning sun, so we set off out there with our white plastic IKEA chairs to have our coffee. Like all French people, as we'd discovered, we just loved IKEA. No matter their status or class, every house we'd visited seemed to have an eclectic mixture of affordable IKEA and
vide-grenier
— just like ours. Strangely, though, not all our French friends shared our passion for the
Trocs
. Everyone who saw our IKEA
cuisine
in progress exclaimed over it. At home, people like IKEA; here, people love it!

Our weekend started with a trip to the Trocs in Brive. This time, we were searching for an
armoire
for the sitting room. Its dimensions had to be exact as it was going to sit under a small wall cupboard with a wall on either side of the space. I was not expecting to find one straight away by any means. I absolutely loved the little cupboard, high on the wall that the
armoire
was going to be placed beneath. It had a dark brown background and was hand-painted with a rural scene on it, showing rabbits, trees and flowers. I thought it was original, so quirky and beautifully done that I just wished I could see back in time and know who so lovingly painted it.

We also went to a nursery — actually, we could scarcely believe that, after only two weeks back in France, not only were we finding time to go to one but that we were starting to plan what planting we were going to do around the pool area. We were very excited by the range, quality and the prices at the nursery. While we resisted starting to buy pots of lavender, we did buy a gorgeous fuchsia for Françoise as she had invited us to a ‘grand' dinner the following week. To continue celebrating our weekend of relaxation, we went into Martel for lunch at the locals' café, Mespoulet, and had a delicious, cheap
menu du jour
of our favourite steak and
frites
. After that we again set up our IKEA ‘Jeff ' chairs next to the pool, among the rubble and prolific weeds. To complete the picture, as it was extremely hot, we had to shelter right next to the barn for some shade so we were right under the roofers' ladders. I was glad that we'd renovated before — though never on this scale — and that I had enough imagination to dream about what it would look like one day, even thought that day might be far, far away. To complete our poolside relaxation, Stuart set up a strip of green weed matting to make a type of runway to the edge of the pool so that we didn't have dirt and stones on our feet when we went in for a dip. It was alarming enough when pieces of slate fell from the roof onto the new pool lining. To complete the ironic touch, Stuart was reading a glossy
piscine
magazine. The pictures of pristine pools and immaculate landscaping could not be further from the reality of how we were trying to enjoy our new
piscine
.

So we whiled away a few hours amid the rubble and planned the paving to surround the pool, the decking and the border of lavender we would plant. Our attention to detail meant that we even discussed where a barbecue would be placed outside the kitchen door once the barn was renovated in the distant future. This too required great vision as, of course, at the moment, the barn was just an empty shell; it was where we imagined the kitchen would be placed. Flicking though the pile of out-of-date magazines that we bought at a
vide-grenier
, some as old as 1992, Stuart came across a hand-drawn sketch of a kitchen design, tucked between the pages. It was someone's personal notepaper and their address was in Morocco. Yet again, I thought about the past and wondered about the story behind that piece of paper.

A somnolent summer drowsiness settled over the village on the weekend. It had an altogether different feel. No lumbering tractors, no school bus, no villagers rushing home for lunch, no white artisan vans racing past our kitchen window to stop for their two-hour break. By Sunday, there was an even more soporific feel. Sunday was sacrosanct in France: a family day, a day for a Sunday lunch outing. We had learnt not to have lunch out on this day of the week, especially when the tourist season picked up pace, as it was far too busy. Plus, our much-loved
menu du jour
was usually not available on the weekends. One thing we had learnt very early was that the set menu was by far the best value for money. Often, for only about twelve euros for three courses, a glass of wine was also included. It was our idea of perfection. The icing on the cake — so to speak, in the land of
boulangeries
and
pâtisseries
— was when
crème brûlée
was on the menu.
Crème brûlée
made my heart sing.

This Sunday I was awake at the astonishing time of five-thirty, and up shortly after. While it made a long day even longer, given that it gets dark so late in a European summer, I loved the quiet and solitude of being up first. I loved the early morning cool crispness, the sight of doves cooing on our two stone entrance pillars, the rabbits bounding up past the bend in the road. I was often up even before the solemn clanging of the church bells announced the formal start of the day at seven.

Our
vide-grenier
guide led us astray for the first market of the day. We weren't quite sure why this sometimes happened. We always checked and double-checked the date and name of the village. Then occasionally, like today, we set off bright and early, fuelled by anticipation, only to discover the market square completely quiet and empty. It didn't matter too much — except perhaps we wouldn't have fallen out of bed quite so early, as this village, Strenquels, was yet another picture-perfect one. Visiting the
brocantes
and v
ide-greniers
every Sunday had formed our own personal tourist guide to the Lot and the Dordogne. It meant that we got to see an extraordinary number of utterly tucked away, beautiful villages that we would never have possibly discovered otherwise. They were often so remote that we wondered if we were ever going to actually find a village as we plunged further and further into heavily wooded areas or crawled round precarious hairpin corners on narrow, winding roads up steep hillsides.

After discovering the first
vide-grenier
was not on, we quickly consulted the guide and programmed the Sat Nav to tear off through the countryside again. This time, our cross-country excursion rewarded us. On the way, there was a gasp-out-loud
chateau
crowning the top of a hill. It was moments like these that filled me again with a sense of wonder to be here, in France, and it often hit me with a jolt that we had our own
petite maison
to return to year after year.

And then we arrived at the market. Another glorious village, Turenne, framed by an old castle and magnificent church. It was no surprise, really, that France is the most visited country in the world. We lingered for several hours, the find of the day being a pair of wooden shoe lasts in perfect condition and a pair of ice tongs that we'd been searching for, both for a song. I paused for a long time to examine a basket of beautiful old linen, all still pristine white. The stallholder told me about a pair of exquisite old pillowcases that I coveted. They were at least 150 years old, all hand-embroidered with the initials perfectly executed in the corner of each one. I was told they would have been embroidered by a young girl for her trousseau. I was captivated by the utter romance of it all and the story they held hidden in their delicate seams. Practical needs, such as a much-needed flyscreen for our bedroom window, were balanced against my strong desire to own such a treasured piece of history and fragment of the past. However, they lingered long in my mind and fell into the category of regrets. Why didn't I just buy them? I would never see anything like them again. And, at the end of the day, they weren't very expensive at all. We were delighted to find a
boulangerie
open in the village — not always the case on a Sunday — and so we treated ourselves to our favourite
pain au chocolat
and perched on a stone wall in the sun to enjoy the market ebbing around us. Life doesn't get much better. Well, except for the pillowcases, which should have been nestling at the bottom of my market basket.

Next to us was a carousel of old, brightly painted cars, and I watched the joy of a little boy as his
maman
let him have ride after ride. I asked if I could take his photo and remembered to say ‘
Coucou
', which I've heard the French use with their children, to get his attention.

Being in France, surrounded by beauty, culture and history, I was learning to look at the world with different eyes. I tried to capture quintessential moments through my camera. The lace curtains peeping through the windows that were encased with ivy; the succulent
chocolat
glistening in the window of the
chocalatier
; the water rippling in a swimming pool that, when printed, looked like Monet's garden. The tributes to the soldiers on the war memorials in the tiniest of villages; the back view of a young girl gracefully swinging through the antique market in Paris. The Mercedes convertible pulled up outside a restaurant with its wicker chairs and checked tablecloths, not a person at a single table yet — like a film set, waiting for the actors to arrive. The old men, faces weathered with age and a thousand stories, chatting across the table laden with plump tomatoes in the markets. These were the photos I printed and filled the wall with when we were at home again and far away from our other life.