My Twenty-Five Years in Provence Read online

  One-stop supermarket shopping was then confined to towns and cities. In the depths of Provence, if you wanted bread, you went to the baker; meat, to a butcher; fruits and vegetables, cheese, wine, detergent and clothespins, each had specialist suppliers, usually experts in their chosen specialty, and always happy to tell you all about it. Then there were the local customers, mostly suspicious ladies who were determined not to be fobbed off with a bruised peach or a wrinkled tomato. Naturally, the shopkeeper would spring to the defense of his wares. There would be much squeezing and sniffing and, if that didn’t work, tasting. This would be accompanied by a spirited sales pitch, and eventually the suspicious lady would dig deep into her purse and complete the sale. It was amusing to watch, but it took time—ten minutes for two melons was typical—and by midday we were still a few items short. Alas, everything closed at noon. We had learned our first Provençal shopping lesson: Start early, be patient, and don’t be late for lunch.

  Finding a real estate agent had its own complications; not scarcity, but the reverse. In almost every village, we found at least one picturesque nook occupied by an agent immobilier. Hanging on the wooden shutters outside the office were photographs of the properties on offer. These triumphs of rural architecture would invariably be described as deals à saisir, to grab before the next eager buyer came along. The problem was that to our inexperienced and wildly susceptible eyes, everything looked possible: the ruined barn with its roof almost hanging off; the snug little village house that, probably for good reason, had been uninhabited for twenty-five years; a pigeonnier that was so decrepit even the pigeons had abandoned it—all the properties seemed ripe for imaginative renovation.

  The real estate agents were naturally as enthusiastic as we were, and their language would have made a used car salesman blush. Every photograph we saw had its commentary—a jewel with unlimited possibilities, a dream, a rare and precious opportunity. And not only that. Several times we were exposed to the agents’ secret weapons. These, by some fortunate chance, were all people who, for a price, would be delighted to help us. Many were related to the agent. A brother-in-law who was an architect, a cousin who was an electrician, an aunt who was a landscape gardener extraordinaire.

  Luckily, common sense came to the rescue, and every blandishment was resisted. We reminded ourselves that we wanted a house we could live in, not a five-year project, and so the search continued.

  Meanwhile, we were experiencing some of the pleasures and curiosities of village life, and we soon learned that we were a minor local news item. Strangers would stop us in the street to ask if we had found a house yet. One evening we found a friendly old man at the front door. After establishing that we were les Anglais, he explained the reason for his visit.

  “It is said that you have a telephone. Very unusual in this village.”

  We did indeed have a phone. “Ah, bon,” he said. “I have a son. His wife is expecting a baby, but I have heard no news. I would like to call him.”

  We showed him the phone and left him to it, anticipating a call of a couple of minutes. Quarter of an hour later, he reappeared, smiling broadly.

  “I have a grandson. Three kilos.”

  We congratulated him. He thanked us, and said he had left something for us by the phone. Sure enough, there was a twenty-centime coin on the table. It was not until we got the phone bill that we found that his son lived in Martinique.

  The days were amusing, fascinating, sometimes frustrating. This was mainly due to our struggles with the language, made worse by the Provençal habit of speaking at breakneck speed, accompanied by a distracting selection of tics and gestures, a kind of visual punctuation. Noses would be tapped in a significant manner, indicating the need for discretion; hands jiggled, to hint that what was being said was perhaps not strictly accurate; thumbs were bitten, biceps slapped, earlobes pulled, acrobatic eyebrows waggled. And this was in the course of polite conversation; heaven knows what physical excesses would be involved in a full-blooded argument.

  Our house-hunting luck changed at the beginning of the second week, when we met Sabine in her little office in Bonnieux. Unlike the other real estate agents we had met, Sabine listened when we tried to explain what we wanted instead of trying to sell us what she had. Petite and charming, she immediately won our confidence when she warned us of some of the pitfalls of village life, from the nosiness of neighbors to mysterious and long-lived feuds. As outsiders, she said, and especially foreign outsiders, we would be the focus of intense curiosity and gossip. It would be good to find somewhere secluded, away from prying eyes and wagging tongues. How did we feel about that?

  She was pleased to hear that we agreed with her. And then, as if struck by a sudden blinding flash of inspiration, she smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead, and said, “But of course!” She explained that she had, that very morning, received the photographs of a property that had just gone on the market. It might be perfect.

  The photographs were produced. They showed a rambling barn-cum-farm, its mellow stone façade bathed in sunshine, a dog asleep in the shade of a plane tree. You could almost hear the chirp of crickets. It was lyrical, and there was more to come.

  Sabine explained that the house was built on the slope of a hill, overlooking an uninhabited valley—a private view, she called it. By now, we were ready to move in. Even the price wasn’t enough to put us off; we’d scrape up the money from somewhere. A date was made for us and Sabine to see the property the following afternoon.

  The house was everything the photographs had promised, and the private view was the stuff of postcards. The proprietor, an amiable artist, told us to wander wherever we wanted, while he sat in the shade chatting to Sabine. We explored, taking photographs, making notes, finding places for our furniture, and deciding what could be done with the rather primitive kitchen. There would be plenty of time later to talk about money, but for the moment we were giddy with excitement.

  This must have been obvious to the proprietor, Monsieur Leconte. Sensing a quick sale, he produced a bottle of rosé and told us about some of the property’s less obvious charms. In the valley below the house, he said, there was a clump of truffle oaks which, each winter, produced a fine harvest of these magic mushrooms. The slope of the hill behind the house protected it from the mistral, the fierce wind that blows in from Siberia, and which is blamed for everything from dislodged roof tiles to attempted suicide. There was an ample private supply of water, it was perfect country for our dogs, and there were no tiresome neighbors to bother us. By the time he had finished his list, we were well and truly sold.

  To celebrate, we went that evening to a restaurant that Sabine had recommended in the tiny village of Buoux. She knew Maurice, the owner and chef, and she said we wouldn’t be disappointed. We weren’t. It was the beginning of a long and delightful series of lunches and dinners eaten outside, in the summer, and in front of the big fireplace in the winter, and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve enjoyed every mouthful over many years.

  On this, our first visit, euphoria was the dish of the day. We couldn’t believe our luck. It seemed too good to be true.

  Which, of course, it was.

  Three

  Getting Closer

  We had sat up until the small hours of the morning, counting our chickens. The following afternoon, we were to have a meeting with Sabine in her office to go through all the details that would-be house buyers need to know before becoming proud owners. Even this, dreary though it might be, was a step forward, and we arrived at the office ten minutes early.

  The first hint of trouble was the expression on Sabine’s normally cheerful face when she came out to greet us. Mouth set, brow furrowed, she had the look of a woman on her way to a funeral, and she wasted very little time before giving us the bad news.

  She had spent a good part of the morning on the phone talking to Monsieur Leconte. There was a problem, she said, with the ownersh
ip of the house—or, rather, with part of the house. Did we remember the outbuilding next to the kitchen? Of course we did; we already had plans to knock some walls down and join the two buildings to enlarge the kitchen.

  Sabine sighed, and shook her head. Impossible, she said. The outbuilding didn’t belong to Monsieur Leconte. It seemed he had lost it during a card game a couple of years earlier. He had tried several times since then to buy it back, but without any luck. To make matters worse, the current owner of the outbuilding said that he intended to leave it to his children. This had destroyed his friendship with Monsieur Leconte and the two men no longer spoke to each other. Unfortunately, said Sabine, stories like this one were not uncommon in Provence, particularly when large families were involved. The problem was that under French law, the children must share equally in most of the proceeds when the parents die, an obligation that is fraught with trouble.

  Say, for example, that the three children of Monsieur and Madame Dupont have inherited a fine old house worth two million euros. The oldest of the children, Henri, wants to sell the house and use his share of the money to travel and have fun. His sister Elodie is horrified; she wants to rent out the house and put the money away for her children. His other sister, Nathalie, younger and a little flighty, wants to set up a hairdressing salon and massage business on the ground floor of the house. The result is an ill-tempered stalemate that can last for years, and sometimes for generations.

  Sabine, to her great credit, advised us not to have anything to do with the Leconte property. She said we had to be brave and not to worry. She would find a little piece of heaven for us.

  Even so, it was a profoundly disappointed couple that prepared to set off back to England, and we needed something to cheer us up. Filling the car with olive oil, rosé, and some of the local red wines helped. And, as Jennie said, we could always come over to Provence anyway, and rent while we searched for somewhere to buy. Before that, however, there was the small but vital matter of selling our house in England.

  It was an old farmhouse with a thatched roof and sweeping views over the Devon countryside, and the local real estate agent, a languid young man in head-to-toe tweed, pronounced it “super saleable.” But when? There was no shortage of prospective buyers. One by one, they loved the house—but several found it too isolated, or were suspicious of what strange creatures might be living in the thatched roof, or admitted that they would feel uncomfortable without neighbors; there was always something. The weeks went by—slow, frustrating weeks.

  Salvation finally appeared in the form of an artistic young man who lived with his parrot, Roger. He came, he saw, he agreed to buy. It would take four or five weeks to complete the sale formalities, but we didn’t care. We were, or shortly would be, flush with cash. Major progress had been made. We were on our way. We called Sabine with the good news and she said she was sure that something quite splendide would come along shortly. We celebrated the evening with a bottle of Côtes de Provence, and wine had never tasted so good.

  * * *

  —

  With a short and brutal session of house clearing behind us, we loaded the car to leave. We had decided to furnish more or less from scratch in Provence, taking advantage of the antiques markets and the local artisans, so most of the extra space in the car was taken up with the two dogs and their baskets. Just about everything else had been sent off to be sold.

  This time, driving down from Calais, France felt different. Now it was to be our home, and each of us admitted to feeling a touch of apprehension as well as excitement. It’s not too hard to do this kind of thing when you’re in your twenties, but we were, to put it kindly, mature.

  As we left the north and the middle of France behind us there was once again the change in the color of the sky, from pale gray to a thick, cloudless blue. It came like a dose of 100-proof optimism, chasing away the apprehension and turning our thoughts to something practical and sensible, like dinner.

  When we reached Gordes, it was glowing in the sunset. Even though summer was just beginning, it was already warm enough to eat outside, and we decided to try the restaurant next door to the apartment we had rented before.

  Chez Monique was a little classic, with Madame Monique taking care of the front of the house while her husband, Jules, and his young assistant stayed in the kitchen, where they produced simple, traditional favorites. Unlike many chefs, who constantly tinker with ambitious, complicated dishes in the hope of a Michelin star, Jules was content to stay with what he was good at. The menu was short, and changed daily. The white plates were blessedly free from the artistic smears of sauce that were then becoming fashionable. The wine list was a model of brevity: red, white, or rosé, served in generous carafes. We felt very much at home.

  We chose a table outside, so that we could bring the dogs with us. When we asked if this was allowed, Monique laughed. “Mais oui, bien sûr,” she said. She turned to face the inside of the restaurant, whistled, and out came Alphonse, a majestic Basset hound, who ambled over, sniffed our dogs, and lifted his leg on a nearby lamppost before going back inside to bed.

  Monique took our order, coming back at once with a carafe of red for us and a large bowl of water for the dogs, something you’re unlikely to get in most Michelin-starred restaurants. All traces of apprehension now gone, we sat back and enjoyed the moment. The last of the sun caught the buildings, giving the stone a honey-colored softness. The café across the square was lively, and we heard snatches of German and English coming from customers on the terrace. Like us, they were early visitors, preferring the warmth of June to the thudding heat of July and August. Unlike us, they would all be going home in a week or two, while we would be staying. It was difficult not to feel smug.

  Monique offered to choose what we ate: iced melon soup to start with, she said, would cleanse the palate and alert the taste buds. To follow, she recommended her personal favorite, roast lamb from Sisteron, “the best lamb in France,” with flageolets, “haricot beans from heaven.” How could we resist?

  The melon soup, wonderfully cool and smooth, had been subtly flavored with fresh basil, and by the time we’d finished it, our taste buds were, as Monique had promised, on high alert. They weren’t disappointed. The lamb was pink and tender, the flageolets might have just been picked, and the tiny roasted potatoes were a golden bonus.

  There was local cheese and, Jennie’s weakness, a tart with thinly sliced apples. Coffee, and a shot glass full of dangerously smooth marc de Provence, and we were ready to take the dogs for a stroll. They immediately noticed, as we had, that the air in Provence smelled different and exotic. The lampposts, too, had a certain je ne sais quoi that they found fascinating. It had been an evening of discovery for us all. Our life in Provence had started well.

  Four

  Second Impressions

  Back once again in our rented apartment, it didn’t take long before the differences between being les Anglais en vacances and resident foreigners made themselves felt, and it was a surprisingly good-humored experience. Our attempts at the French language were tolerated, often causing laughter, sometimes provoking replies in pidgin English. These were delivered with much gravity, solemn nods, and finger wagging, with an expectant pause at the end to listen to my reply. This wasn’t always easy.

  “It is well known to us in France that all English men have a passion for le cricket. It is like our boules, non? Please explain me the rules of this sport” was my least favorite topic. I would try to oblige, but I could see eyes glaze over once I began to describe the functions on the cricket field of short leg, long on, silly mid off, third man, gully, and second slip. And by the time I explained that a top-class cricket match could last for five days without achieving a result, I knew I had thoroughly confused my audience. It was time for a glass of wine and a change of subject to something simple, like politics.

  Our decision to change countries, however, met with universal understanding and
approval. Not only was France the finest country in Europe, we were frequently told, but Provence was the finest region in France. Where else does the sun shine for three hundred days a year? Where else do you find the truly authentic rosé, sometimes fruity, sometimes dry, a taste of summer in the glass? Where else is goat cheese an art form? And so the list went on, one unique aspect of life in Provence after another.

  What was striking about this catalog of blessings was that these enthusiasts weren’t trying to sell us anything. They genuinely believed that they were living in one of the most privileged spots on earth, and had no intention of living anywhere else. As we came to know Gordes, we learned of more and more families who had spent their lives there, sometimes in the same house, for generations. Their collective memories went back a hundred years or more. They were like living history books.

  This seemed to produce amiable people with a relaxed temperament who took life slowly, avoiding the modern habits of pressure and speed. Naturally, they distrusted the government—les imbéciles de Paris—and became a little morose if it rained for more than two days, but on the whole they were cheerful and content. As we found, this was catching. Did it really matter if the occasional pressing chore was postponed in favor of lunch? Time was elastic; there was always tomorrow.

  Together with this leisurely approach to life, or perhaps because of it, we found that people were noticeably more polite than we were used to. Handshakes and the kissing of cheeks—sometimes twice, sometimes three times—were obligatory, even if you saw those same people every day. And there was always a moment or two put aside for gossip.

  Other first impressions were not always so agreeable, and the French obsession with official bits and pieces of paper was a recurring irritation: we were told to keep such vital national security treasures as our electricity bills, doctors’ prescriptions, tax declarations, phone bills, and bank statements for at least two years, sometimes five, and occasionally ten. After only a few years of residence, we thought seriously about renting filing space in a neighbor’s garage. (It comes as an anticlimax to admit that, during more than twenty years, we have never been asked to reveal anything—not even our highly sensitive electricity bills.)