Reflections of Sunflowers (12 page)

I gasped at the height of the great stadium with its tiers of seats. There was a wide escalator to take us gently to the top where we walked along and then down to our numbered section. The show was supposed to start at ten p.m., but it was a question of waiting until it was completely dark. We could still just discern the outline of a Château and the gleam of a lake. Gangs
of local young people appeared to entertain us, scruffy and yet stylish in a way that only French teenagers seem to manage. They clowned and did handstands and cartwheels along the front of the stands. They encouraged the crowd in rhythmic clapping and Mexican waves. It was all good-humoured and as the last light faded away, so did they.

I don’t know quite what I expected. A spectacle! 800 actors from fifteen neighbouring communities, 50 horsemen, lasers and fountains – it was all in the brochure. What was stunning was the sudden plunge into complete darkness, the silence, and then the small trembling light from a single lantern, carried by a figure moving across the landscape. This was Jacques Maupillier, the archetypal peasant from the region, la Vendée, through whose eyes the whole story was told, using the recorded voices of Philippe Noiret and other actors. As the trudging figure moved on, a small dwelling was revealed, a family sitting round the table. The traveller knocked and entered and told them the news of the coming troubles, which would eventually lead up to the great Revolution. We saw the news brought to a whole village, complete with animals and children. Each scene was set in the dark and then brilliantly lit. We sat enthralled as later the great Château was illuminated with music and revelry. People arrived by boat on the lake. Elegantly costumed dancers whirled and swayed in the windows.

I knew that this part of France was fiercely Catholic and many of the peasants still maintained an almost feudal loyalty to their local noble families. As the Revolution progressed they saw that it was the bourgeoisie in the towns who were benefiting; not the peasants. 300,000 rose against the new Republic, hoping that England would help them. But they were defeated and cruelly massacred by Republican soldiers. We watched as troops of horsemen arrived at full gallop towards the Château. Shots were fired. Battles were lost and won. Prisoners were led away. The great Château burned, the flames leaping into the sky. I can’t pretend I followed the significance of every scene. Considering how long it had taken me to organise this visit, I cursed myself for not having better done my homework on the history of La Vendée.

But Raymond was right. It was something to be seen. The cast were impeccable. Whoever produced and directed this level of discipline with hundreds of amateur performers had to be a genius. There were celebrations, funerals, battles and scenes of lyrical beauty. A great crowd of peasants made hay in the evening sunlight, loading the heavy carts to be pulled away by quiet horses. The show lasted almost two hours and ended with a splendid finale of fountains and fireworks. I shall always remember the final great parade of peasants complete with children, leading all their animals across the wide arena to cheers and
prolonged applause. Horses, cows, sheep, pigs, goats and even geese; all bathed in a golden light, all of whom seemed to know exactly what to do. And when it was all over, we left, row by row. Once again there were no queues. The same helpful marshals, surely tired by now, were on hand to direct us, to speed us out into the dark and starry night. I’m afraid that the
navigateur
, drunk with the spectacle, took us, temporarily, on the wrong road. But that’s another story – best not told.

When, some years later, I went to see the Dome, I thought what an opportunity had been lost. I imagined the history of London, in
son et lumière
, using the river, and hundreds of local people in just such a way, and felt that it could have been a real
spectacle
with which to celebrate the millennium.

‘La pluie ce soir!’
yelled M. Gouyou over the noise of his tractor as he passed the house that afternoon. He was right. By eight o’clock the lake between the green room door and the shower room was filling relentlessly. Thankful that our friends were not due for another few days, we prayed that it would soon stop and that before we left at the end of this summer M. Carpentier would arrive to finally solve the problem. Round the house and down the pathway the rain ran off the baked, stony ground, but the following morning we noticed that it had made deep furrows in Jean-Michel’s new track across the field.

The pathway which runs past our house is a
chemin communal
and we are entitled, every two years, to a load of stones paid for by the commune, to help maintain it. When we first bought Bel-Air, the handsome
géomètre
who arrived with his giant tape measure, to mark out our exact piece of land surrounding the house, found an anomaly. After consulting the
cadastre
, his detailed survey map, he discovered that, years before and without permission, Raymond had simply altered the position of the track so that it ran behind, rather than in front of Bel-Air. I imagine that it made easier access with ever-larger machines; but no one, neither Raymond, nor Grandpa, had thought to inform the authorities. Raymond probably simply forgot. Grandpa had little use for authority, other than his own. Once discovered however, French bureaucracy demanded an immediate redrawing of the map. This, in its turn, necessitated an
‘acte’
to be passed by the Mayor. It was one of the reasons that our deeds took longer than expected to be finalised, while Raymond, still anxious about the possibility of a capital gains tax, fretted.

Jean-Michel took no chances this time – his wife is, after all, the Deputy Mayor! But half of the track he wished to change lay in the next commune and another Mayor had to be consulted. Our former charmer of a Mayor of this commune having recently retired after long years of service, we now have an equally charming
Madame la Maire
. I imagine the two women just put their heads together and sorted things out amicably.

The reason for wanting to change things this time
was that the
chemin
, which ran from our house right down to the road, passed through the middle of Jean-Michel and Véronique’s farm, between the great barn and the house. Although the traffic is minimal – the odd van, a slow-moving tractor; at weekends the occasional, intrepid pair of helmeted teenagers on incredibly noisy, small
mobylettes
would suddenly loom into view. One Sunday a couple of quad bikes thundered by, the drivers waving gaily. That was enough for Jean-Michel. With Océane playing outside, not to mention a dog, a cat and the odd wandering fowl, he set about devising another route, which would bypass their farm.

He had told us about it the previous year and we were intrigued when we first arrived this summer to see
PROPRIETÉ PRIVÉE
as we crossed the little bridge at the bottom of his drive. A smaller, more discreet sign pointed the different route now to be followed up to Bel-Air. The new
chemin
snaked across the bottom of the field where the cows graze and then mounted between Raymond’s land and that of his neighbour, M. Guyou.

‘Oh, c’est pas pour vous,’
said Jean-Michel, the next morning.
‘C’est pour les autres.’
But we use it just the same. They are entitled to their privacy. It’s a little longer and this morning would be very muddy, but the view is lovely.

Jean-Michel and Véronique have worked hard on the house since they first moved in after their marriage.
As well as being a competent farmer, Jean-Michel is no mean builder, carpenter, painter or decorator. Véronique loves to buy pieces of old furniture at
brocante
fairs and do them up. She has also created a lovely garden. I envy her a magnificent
apricot-coloured,
repeat-flowering rose, which scrambles up the wooden support to the barn. But, of course, she does have an unlimited, on site, supply of manure. With her duties as Deputy Mayor and working eight hour shifts at Auchan, the hypermarket in Villeneuve sur Lot, I also envy her energy.

In August of 2001 we received an unexpected and intriguing invitation.

‘10 ANS DE MARIAGE, VOILÀ LE RÉSULTAT
…’ was the caption on a photograph of the three of them in a field of poppies. Jean-Michel, shirt-sleeved, resolute, one arm bent to his waist, gazing into the future; Véronique, bare arms, squatting among the flowers, in a then-trendy, lime green jump suit, smiling up into the camera and Océane, ebullient as ever, arms flung wide, laughing as she throws petals into the air. Superimposed on the photograph were pictures of a large mother cow and two calves.
FAMILLE NOMBREUSE!!!
written below.

The invitation was to
‘faire la fête a partir de 20 heures’
at the
Salle
des Fêtes
at St Aubin, a nearby village.

The
salle
is new and spacious and can easily hold
several hundred guests. It has a fully equipped kitchen with several fridges and a large freezer. There is a long, elegant bar, a wide stage, unlimited tables and chairs and a vast, tiled floor for dancing. To
faire la
fête
in this area, no matter how small the commune, is a serious business.

Once the invitations were sent out, we were all roped in to help prepare what was clearly going to be a copious buffet. The afternoon before the celebration the smell of roasting pork filled Claudette’s kitchen. Raymond staggered about with crates of salad. As always, there was a certain air of competition. Tenth wedding anniversary celebrations were apparently the fashion. Someone had been to one in the same
salle
three weeks previously. Menus were discussed. Mike and I were on parade early the next morning. Claudette’s kitchen tables, both inside and outside, were all in use. Véronique, her hair screwed up with an elastic band, was busy with an electric carver, slicing the long, rolled joints of pork and arranging them on silver trays. Claudette, with a giant wooden spoon, was stirring mayonnaise into vast quantities of potato salad. I must have made enough carrot salad to feed the whole of south-west France using a borrowed machine that jammed about every third carrot. It was a swine to dismantle and re-assemble but it saved one’s fingernails.

Jean-Michel’s stalwart mother arrived with a huge
tray of pizza and a plate of still-defrosting
pain
poisson
. This, she explained, as she cut it carefully into slices, was made with a mixture of salmon, tuna, crab and eggs and then baked. It smelt delicious. We prepared tray after tray of tomato salad, cucumber salad, using clingfilm by the mile, and wondered what we did before it was invented. We broke briefly for a lunch of bread, wine, and the well-cooked ends of the joints. Delicious! A nibble of cheese, fruit, and we were off again. After two or three trips to the
salle
, the back of our estate car filled with long trays of food to unload into the fridge, we finally left another team laying the tables and went back to Bel-Air for a rest and a bath.

There were about 150 guests and so many snacks with the aperitifs that I wondered whether the buffet would get eaten. I needn’t have worried. It was a really good evening with a great mixture of friends and family. The walls were decorated with photographs of Véronique in her wedding dress and Jean-Michel looking incredibly smart. I remembered the sudden storm late that afternoon ten years ago that had us all scurrying for cover, Véronique with her dress looped over her arm and Claudette running to save the decorations she had so patiently made. As we looked at pictures of Océane as a baby, we caught up with members of both families that we hadn’t seen for several years. Claudette’s cousins Roland and
Nicole, both gymnasts, were there. With their three beautiful children, they had come to teach Raymond and Claudette to swim when we first had our pool. Ken and Sandra, our nearest English neighbours, were there with friends. They all shouted for me to sing and I was glad I’d warmed up with a few scales in the bath. Old habits die hard. I sang and enjoyed myself. We stayed till past 4 a.m. and I realised how much we are a part of this community.

I watched Corinne, Raymond’s beautiful
daughter-in
-law, dancing with her handsome brother Louis. Like their mother, they both love to dance and are very good at it. Later I watched Corinne persuade Philippe onto the floor. She smiled as she danced, taunted and coaxed him, flaunting her slim body with its perfect curves. Philippe is like Claudette. He finds it hard to let go, but this wife of his was irresistible and at last he responded and we saw a different Philippe, dancing with the same wild fervour. It made me very happy to watch them. Jean-Michel doesn’t dance but he is content to sit and watch Véronique. Both Raymond’s children seem to have very good marriages – for which we are all thankful.

The next morning we were invited back to the
salle
to eat
les restes
and, of course, to help clear up. We knew the form from previous occasions. One table, amid all the chaos abandoned from the festivities, had been cleared and about twenty of us sat down
to eat. There seemed no lack of enthusiasm for the still-delicious remains. Jean-Michel had even brought a special jeroboam of good red wine. I was intrigued to see that it was Corinne, who having slept, so she told me, till past midday, came in late but soon took charge.

Once we had finished eating, our small army simply folded the gay paper tablecloths in halves, shovelling everything into black plastic sacks. Paper plates, picnic glasses, designer napkins, candles and cutlery entwined with streamers, vanished. Only the table decorations of fresh flowers were carefully put into a box to be distributed among us. While we, the women, made sure that the kitchen was as we had originally found it, the men and the boys took over in the hall; snapping down table legs and stacking them and building tall columns of chairs at great speed. We came back to see Jean-Michel’s brother-in-law and two friends armed with brooms a metre across sweeping in tight formation the vast expanse of floor. Next they threw down buckets of hot water and, in bare feet and wielding equally large squeegees, they worked as a team until the whole place was spotless. It was very impressive.

The rain had stopped. The lake outside the green room door was subsiding slowly and the sun reappeared. As I sat under the porch watching the steam rising off the vineyard, I wondered what they would do for their
twentieth anniversary and whether I would be here to see it.

Later the following evening we telephoned Raymond. We’d been keeping watch.
‘Ils sont arrivés,’
we said.

‘Les étourneaux?’

‘Oui.’

‘Merde!’
was his response.
‘Je vais chercher le canon.’

There were already blue plastic ribbons at intervals tied among the rows in this the newest vineyard, which we see from our front door. Raymond had placed great faith in these strips blowing in the breeze. For some reason, he was of the opinion that
les étourneaux
– the starlings – did not like blue and would avoid it. With the vines already heavy with succulent grapes, which were growing larger and riper every day, I thought the birds might think them worth any affront to their appreciation of colour. Every year
les étourneaux
seem to arrive around the beginning of September. They sweep in great wheeling clouds across the fields and if they are exceptionally numerous can decimate a crop. Fortunately they don’t seem to stay very long so it is more a question of persuading them to fly off somewhere else. For this the cannon was now to be brought into use. It would shatter the silence once every ten or fifteen minutes, causing the birds to fly up in alarm. Eventually it was hoped that they would get fed up and leave.

We once stayed the night with friends in the Dordogne. Their difficult neighbour across the valley had, so he claimed, a problem with
sanglier
, wild boar, eating his maize. In spite of the fact that no one else in the whole area had seen a boar, a cannon was employed. The noise was so loud and, being in a valley, reverberated against the hillside startling not only any
sanglier
but everyone else within miles. It also continued about every eight minutes throughout the night and we were very glad to get home. It is actually illegal to use a cannon after dark and eventually we were told that, in this case, the police were called in and dismantled it.

Raymond, having installed his machine somewhere in the middle of the vineyard, was concerned that it worked as it should. All was well for the first evening and we hadn’t had any sightings of starlings that day. Raymond and Mike sat on the porch drinking an aperitif while I prepared supper listening to Beethoven’s Second on
France Musique
, divinely played by an orchestra under Simon Rattle. Through the open door I could see the line of cows standing near the fence, watching Raymond and listening to his voice. The last few distant bangs of the cannon stopped as the light faded. Raymond drained his glass, bid us
‘Bonne
soirée’
, and we heard the tractor start up and then die away.

The next day, while we were preparing for our
guests, the cannon suddenly stopped in the afternoon and, having been mended, did not stop as dusk fell. There was nothing for it but to switch it off later by hand. Raymond was going to a reunion that night. Would we do it? Of course. But we forgot. By the time we remembered, it was very dark. We decided to drive up the edge of the vineyard in our old 2CV. We didn’t want to risk our other car. The cannon is a small device, attached to a similarly sized gas cylinder. It sat on the ground somewhere about half way up one of the fifteen extremely long, leafy rows. I hopped out of the car while Mike turned it, trying to avoid the ditch. He parked and climbed out.