Reflections of Sunflowers (17 page)

Would these do? She shrugged. We were asked to leave. He would be moved – downstairs. They were
sympathetic but for them it was routine. We should go and see the administrator.

We seemed to spend the next few hours wandering from one office to another, cancelling arrangements for the air ambulance, filling in endless forms and paying bills. The hospital phoned the funeral director. We had an appointment for the following morning. They would need Mike’s parents’ Christian names and his mother’s maiden name. Still in a daze, we called in at the farm on our way home. I couldn’t cry at all but they were both in tears.

‘Oh, pauvre Michel,
’ sobbed Claudette. ‘And no more of those wonderful trips we all made together on a Sunday.’ Until then I hadn’t realised just how much they had meant to her.

That evening Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark Cathedral, phoned for news and was very sad. He told me that Edith and Rachel, his wife and daughter, were somewhere in France. The next day, M. Guyou, my neighbour, who in 25 years had never come to my door, came to shake my hand. He made the excuse that one of his cows was out. He told me that a woman aged 61 had dropped dead two days before at the fête in the next village. They had given her
bouche-à-bouche,
he said, but to no avail. I wasn’t sure if this news was supposed to cheer me in some way, but he shook my hand again, wiped away a tear and left. Half an hour later I had a call from Edith Slee. She and Rachel were
some three hours drive away. They would be with us by four o’clock. When I protested she said, ‘Stop arguing, I just want to give you a hug.’

I needed a hug after a session with the undertaker.

The whole process seemed macabre. Getting Mike’s body back to England was not a simple affair. Elaborate coffins are the norm as cremations are uncommon and, as we strove for something simple and less tasteless, the young woman, surrounded by wreaths and urns and pieces of marble, looked disappointed. Did we want a coffin with a window in it? They had many Italian customers who apparently insisted on it. Mafia and substitute bodies came inevitably to mind. The documents would have to be signed by the
Préfecture
. It would take time. She would have to liaise with a funeral director in London.

We came out into the sunlight in a sort of trance and walked back again to the hospital to settle yet another bill. Did we want to go down the staircase this time and into the
Funerarium
where Mike’s body lay? I could see that this was going to be very difficult for both my sons and so we decided not to. Raymond and Claudette went that afternoon and now I wish I had gone with them. But we went back to Bel-Air and sat in the garden until Edith and Rachel arrived with a candle. We lit it for Mike.

The next candles which were lit for him were those
in the cathedral where his body lay the night before his wonderful funeral two weeks later. Mike joined the army at the age of eighteen and vowed that he would never join anything ever again. He never did. The one exception he made was to become a proud member of the Guild of Stewards at Southwark, the most forward-looking, loving and inclusive cathedral in London.

‘Will you go back to Bel-Air?’ people asked me.

‘Of course,’ I replied.

‘Won’t you find it difficult?’

‘I imagine so.’

How would I feel? I knew that many in my situation who had tried, had found it impossible. A second home is such an intensely shared adventure. A madcap decision in the first place but, for Mike and me, it had given us more than 25 years of special summers together and these memories remain to be cherished. Bel-Air is very important to me and I am blessed.

On Easter Monday all the family, except Matthew, who had to work, flew Ryanair to Bergerac. The flight was fine; I cannot recommend the sandwiches. From the modern mammoth which is now Stansted, it is the first time I have ever travelled to Bergerac; back, it
seemed, almost to the time of Biggles, with cars parked casually on the grass and a small tent for the swift and efficient baggage-handling. Within fifteen minutes of landing we were on the road in a substantial hired car. Already the right side of Bergerac for us, we soon took a left turn to Issegeac, coasted round the outskirts of Villereal, another thirteen-century
bastide
with a wonderful covered market square and, in less than an hour, Monflanquin was clearly visible at the end of about the only straight stretch of road in
Lot-et
-Garonne.

Bel-Air was waiting for us, clean and sparkling, thanks to Susan. On the table outside stood a large pot planted with daffodils bearing a note of welcome from Ursula. Claudette had opened the shutters and laid the fire, and a jug of tulips and forsythia from her garden lit up the living room. I stood in the doorway looking up towards the wood. A breeze blew down across the vineyard. The cows were grazing quietly. I was home.

The boys piled out of the car and rushed into the chilly house. They quickly got warm as they struggled to carry out all the odd pieces of garden furniture, which had been stored in their room during the winter. We filled the hot water bottles, lit a blazing fire, and soon all the sheets and pillows were aired. Fortunately Bel-Air is not a damp house. Unaccustomed to an almost full house this early in the year, I was short
of bedding and I had arranged with Jean to borrow duvets for the boys. She would arrive in her snug little village house in two days’ time and her neighbour Rosaleen would have already switched on her central heating. Bel-Air has no such luxury and I had forewarned Elliot and Thomas that they would find it a very different experience from high summer. April can be unpredictable with frosty nights and, once we were no longer subject to school holidays, Mike and I usually left our spring visit until May. Jean’s house is very attractive, with much of her work on the walls. I would be glad to see her. We gathered up the duvets and posted Jean’s key through Rosaleen’s letter box. The beds all made, we put a guard around the fire at Bel-Air, the living room already beginning to warm up, and went down to the farm where Claudette had already invited us for supper. Once again we passed what looked like two newly constructed houses at the bottom of our track. No doubt we would soon find out to whom they belonged.

Raymond and Claudette were waiting to greet us. All too conscious that one of us was missing, we sadly rearranged our traditional seating round the table. But, unused to eating indoors here, the boys were unaware, and this helped. Also, Clement, Raymond’s grandson, was staying that week and came to give the customary kisses all round. The boys eyed each other. It would probably be another year before they would feel
confident enough to try out their tentative English and French – at least in front of the adults. As we ladled out the soup, Raymond talked about the new houses. ‘Are they local people?’ I asked. He hesitated. ‘
Ils ne sont pas exactement du coin,’
he said.

I imagined folk from Agen perhaps, or even Bergerac. But it transpired that one of the new occupants was a butcher from Monflanquin, the other house owned by a relation of the farmer about two kilometres away. Clearly our
coin
was, as far as Raymond was concerned, very small indeed. I was pleased to have permanent residents at the bottom of our track as it makes an opportunist burglar less likely. The houses had been built on a piece of land at the end of which stood a complete ruin. There was just one back wall, a heap of stones, and curiously, still standing near the road, a solitary stone gatepost. It had always amused me, for on the top was a neatly cemented pot of flourishing house leeks. This long-abandoned ruin was the reason that building permission for the new houses had been granted, a house having once been there.

‘But why didn’t they demolish the ruin and use the stones?’ I asked, as I had noticed that it was still there, quite close and at a very odd angle to the furthest house.

‘That would have been too expensive,’ explained Raymond as Claudette carried in the first asparagus
of the season. ‘Perhaps they’ll use them later to build a wall.’

Thomas enjoyed the whole meal, which continued with cabbage stuffed with minced pork, galantine of chicken, and a copious salad of endive. Claudette grows the endive, which I love, in enamel buckets in the darkest part of the
cave.
Elliot, who is a difficult eater, enjoyed his customary bread dipped in a bowl of olive oil, but rejoined the menu for a very large sponge cake filled with
crème anglaise
, with which we drank the first of the season’s white wine which they still make themselves.

I thanked Raymond for having organised someone to cut back my pampas grass. I hadn’t had much of a chance to inspect it but I could see that the normally tall and shaggy, sprawling clumps at the far end of the pool had been reduced to strange, rounded, humped figures. From a distance they looked like great, crouching, bald bears. The work had been done by the mysterious Bernard, of whom I had heard but never met. It was Ken Farrington, our English neighbour, who had discovered Bernard. He was apparently a good all-round handy man who would tackle anything and charged, very reasonably, by the hour. In the summer he lived with a group of friends in a nearby village but during the winter he stayed at Ken’s house and kept an eye on things while carrying out minor repairs. I looked forward to meeting him. We also learnt that
M. Carpentier had had a serious accident with a hose of liquid cement which had become blocked and then suddenly spurted out damaging one of his eyes.
‘Il est vraiment demoralisé,’
said Raymond.

Elliot, who had just started piano lessons, was persuaded to play one of his first pieces and then Clement surprised us all with a short recital. On several occasions he had come shyly to listen when I played. When I showed him how to find the melody of
Au Clair de la Lune
, he had learnt it in seconds. He had been having lessons for six months now, he told us, and clearly he has inherited the musical gene in Claudette’s side of the family. Elliot was impressed.

As we left, with a dozen eggs and a small electric radiator, we admired the new heavy sliding glass doors enclosing the hangar. Jean-Michel’s plastic screens had finally fallen to pieces, they explained. The room now looked so smart, I thought, there would be no chance of our ever returning the space to
‘non habitable’
. The great lemon tree in its tub on wheels was hung with fruit, and together with all the other sun-loving plants huddled along one wall, still awaited warmer weather. The air was chilly, the sky bright with stars. We were all tired. As I lay in bed that first night, wondering if I would sleep, the house put its arms around me and the next thing I knew was the call of Jean-Michel’s hens as daylight filtered through the window. I got up quietly
and found the small bellows. The still hot ashes soon glowed and then a small flame licked the kindling and rose through the dry sticks to light the fire for a new day.

Later, while Adam shopped, I went to the bank. The Credit Agricole was completely transformed. Where once we would wait in conversational lines amid the potted plants, wondering if we had picked the slowest queue yet again, where talk was of prunes and maize and cows and Brussels, of celebratory meals and new babies; all was now space and silence. The counter was gone where fresh-faced young men, it was usually men, in smart jackets in deep emerald green or bright blue would smile and chat as they tapped with beautifully manicured fingers into their small computers. Now, around the newly curved, bare wall, four machines apparently coped with everything. At a tiny desk in the centre perched Miss Chewing-Gum. We called her that when, some two years ago, she first joined the young men. With her pale skin, heavy eyelids and full greased lips in perpetual motion we were surprised that no one checked this mesmerising habit which gave her such a, probably false, air of insolence. In her new role as receptionist and the only human being in sight, it seemed that she had been told. She chewed no longer. A slight waft of sympathy came my way as I explained why I wished to change my house
insurance into my name. For the first time, Mike’s original death certificate in French did not need translation. I waited while she telephoned, some distance it seemed, for instructions.

‘Oui. C’est Monflanquin,’
she repeated. Eventually there were endless forms to be signed in triplicate. Having still not completed all the paperwork in London, my probate forms having been lost during the postal strike, these I found doubly distressing. I’m not sure why. At last it seemed all was finished. When I then asked her which machine I should use to put some English money into my account she looked worried. More phonecalls followed. At last she unwound her long legs, slid off her stool and ushered me across the quiet, carpeted space to a solid door in the corner and knocked. I was admitted to a tiny booth where a solitary woman, completely enclosed behind plate glass, told me to post my notes through a small slit high up in the window. Not for her the usual friendly contact with customers. At no time was I shaken by the hand or invited to sit down. It was all very un-French and dispiriting.

We went up into Monflanquin hoping to drink coffee in the sunshine. Two of the restaurants had not yet opened for the season. The other, never very accommodating, declined to serve us anything except a meal. There were changes, too, going on in the square and down the two steeply sloping streets.
New pavements were being laid, a large cement mixer ground incessantly and there was a great deal of noise and dust. We thought that coffee at home would be cheaper and certainly quieter.

It was a beautiful day and after lunch outside we decide to tackle the garden. The quiet was shattered as the strimmer whined away, Adam following me with the lawnmower. I was sad as, inevitably, swathes of buttercups, grape hyacinths, coltsfoot and marguerites fell beneath the blades. The boys did a minimum of raking before they discovered the
boules
and were soon arguing and laughing and looking for the tape measure. Bernard had put all the cuttings from the pampas grass on the edge of the field and when Raymond came by on the tractor he said we could burn it the following morning if there was not too much wind. We cooked pork chops on a griddle over the fire that night and Hugh and Sally called unexpectedly to invite us all to eat with them on Friday. Later we made up the fire again. It fascinated the boys, especially when we piled on dry fir cones, which soon glowed like a miniature forest of scarlet. Without television we played charades, Scrabble, cards and wink murder, something new to me. This can be played as an adjunct to any another game. Lots are drawn and the aim of the murderer is not to be discovered as the players keel over after receiving a discreet wink. Elliot’s winking was so unsubtle we
were all hysterical. By eleven p.m. it was the adults who were tired.

We spent the next morning making a huge bonfire with the heap of cut pampas grass on the field. The boys were really captivated as the fire licked and blazed and, as the wind gusted, they were chased by heat and smoke. In their world of electronic delights this primitive force was exciting. They wielded barrows, forks and rakes and we burnt every bit of rubbish we could find while Caz and Adam worked in tandem with mower and strimmer. After lunch I unearthed the pump for the weedkiller and, having worked out how to use it, set to all down the drive, which now looked as though it had never seen a load of stones two years ago. Apart from grass it was green with clover and edged with buttercups, dandelions, speedwell, and honesty. I tried to avoid the honesty.

On market day the sun shone. We bowled along, dazzled by the fields of rape on either side of the road.

The market was crowded. People stopped every few yards to greet each other between the stalls, more numerous than usual because of the Easter holiday. There were small lemon trees and heaps of fat, glistening
pruneaux
. There were boxes of early, but really ripe, strawberries, small and irregular, marked
‘Fraises déformées. 2’éme choix’.
At 2.50 Euros for 500
grammes they were a bargain and we bought some for tea. Another stall sold two kinds of endive and
pissenlit,
dandelion, almost white having also been grown in the dark. Further along, ring doughnuts sizzled in a huge steel pan and on the next stall girls giggled over the rows of thongs, called here
le string,
these sequinned and bejewelled. We did not go especially early for there were few things we needed. We went for the joy of it and I suddenly found myself disarmed. Oddly it wasn’t for myself I wept but for Mike, who would never enjoy this experience again. Stupid really, as who knows of what joys he might be partaking.

That afternoon, chased indoors by a sudden shower, I heard a soft knock at the door and a very clean, somewhat tentative, youngish man introduced himself as Bernard. He presented me with a small handwritten account for 42.68 Euros for the trimming of the pampas. It had taken him four hours, he explained, and he hoped that I was pleased with his work. We drank coffee and then walked around the garden. The pampas had so badly needed attention and were now beginning to sprout new green shoots. Bernard clearly enjoyed plants. He admired a shrub which Claudette had bought me and, like me, he did not know its name. The flowers are scarlet, somewhat like honeysuckle but the stems are thorny. Perhaps I had found the sort of gardener I clearly needed. He also pointed out a few loose tiles on the ridge of the roof, which a strong
wind had displaced. He would fix them. He talked about working as a stone mason on the Château of Biron some years ago. He was gentle and honest and before we left I gave him a key to the
chai
and instructions to fix the roof and just cut the grass now and then. Another problem solved.