Encore Provence Read online

  Her departure, on small, glistening feet, signals the start of a quiet period. It's still too early for alcohol, except for the driver of the truck bringing beer supplies. He'll have a businesslike glass – but only to satisfy himself that the beer has the correct, chilled bite – after he's unloaded the kegs. He rumbles off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving the café to prepare for the second shift of the morning. Tables are cleared, glasses are polished, the wave bands of the radio are explored in an effort to escape a numbing attack of French rap music.

  Eventually, business picks up again. Two figures, nodding politely, make a tentative entrance and sit with their guidebooks by the window. They wear the uniform of prudent tourists: anoraks, in case of a sudden change in the weather, and those abdominal growths designed to confuse pickpockets – pouches of black nylon strapped around their waists, pregnant with valuables. After a moment of hesitation, they order glasses of wine, looking a little guilty as they toast each other.

  Mid-morning may be early for them, but it certainly isn't for the quartet of village elders, with a collective age of more than 300 years, who arrive next. Tumblers of pink wine are brought to them, and the cards for belote. But before they start to play, four heads in flat caps swivel on tortoise necks to inspect the strangers. They are from the pre-tourist generation, the old men, often puzzled by the popularity of Provence, sometimes pleasantly surprised at the prices their disused barns and scrubby, unproductive patches of land can fetch: a quarter of a million francs for a ruin, half a million or more for a modest house. And then another small fortune spent on indoor sanitation and central heating. Putaing, how the world has changed.

  While the four musketeers get on with their cards, it's time to meet one of the café's main attractions, madame la patronne, a woman of a certain age with a taste for hoop earrings the size of a parrot's perch and precipitous décolletage. I've stolen her from a bar in Marseille, where I watched her presiding over her territory in a pair of conspicuously tight tigerskin trousers, dispensing drinks, sympathy and insults to a group of regulars. Now there, I thought to myself, is a woman born to run a café. And, by a happy coincidence, her name was Fanny.

  The relevance of her name is linked to the boules court under the trees by the side of the terrace, another stolen attraction. (You can see the original court next to the Lou Pastre café in Apt.) Every day, weather permitting, the spectators – experts to a man – settle on a low stone wall to offer their opinions on the performance of the players, and the version of the game being played is pétanque. This was invented, perhaps incidentally, in La Ciotat nearly 100 years ago. Until then, the style of play had been a running throw, but on this eventful day, one of the players stood still when he threw, his feet together, or pieds tanques. Was it fatigue, idleness, an ingrowing toenail, or arthritis? Whatever the reason, it caught on, and the new technique was then used regularly on the court outside the local bar.

  And who was behind the bar? None other than the original Fanny, a lady of considerable charms and a sweet, accommodating nature. If, in the course of a game, one of the players should be in despair after a terrible run of luck, he would leave the court, go into the bar, and collect his consolation prize: a kiss from Fanny. In time, this became part of the vocabulary of boules. Today, if you should hear one of the men on the wall sigh and say, ‘Té, il a encore baisé Fanny,’ he's not making a romantic observation, but commenting on the player's failure to score. Not long ago, I saw a set of boules displayed in a shop window that were so technologically advanced, so perfectly weighted, that they were guaranteed to be ‘Anti-Fanny’.

  The influence of the modern Fanny, chatelaine of my imaginary café, extends far beyond the bar and the boules court. More, much more, than an occasional consolation prize, she is the nearest thing the village has to a resident psychiatrist, a patient listener to the dreams and woes of her customers, a provider of spiritual and alcoholic encouragement. She also acts as unofficial banker, offering credit and even making modest loans to deserving and trustworthy cases. And, in return for these comforts and services, she receives generous transfusions of the lifeblood of the village: gossip. Feuds, domestic battles, illicit liaisons, lottery windfalls – she hears about them all. She is careful to edit the news before passing it on, and to protect her informants. Like a journalist who will only make a discreet reference to a source close to the President, she never reveals the author of the latest leak; on dit is as close as she gets. But that's usually enough to send rumour – the invisible inhabitant of every village – scuttling through the streets like a dog after a ball.

  With a few exceptions, all the adults of the village make a daily stop at the café. One of them is almost a fixture, always on the same stool at the end of the bar just inside the entrance, perfectly placed to ambush the unwary as they enter. It is Farigoule, the retired schoolteacher, who has been working on a book (although, given his constant presence at the bar, one wonders when) ever since he gave up academic life eight years ago. The café is his classroom and you, unless you're very fast on your feet coming through the door, will be his pupil.

  He is a one-man Académie Française, dedicated to the preservation of the French language and loudly indignant about what he calls the Anglo-Saxon contamination of his mother tongue, among many other modern tragedies. His current favourite horror – I should probably call it his bête noire – is the malign and seemingly irresistible influence of Hollywood. Farigoule's considered opinion is that the film industry is. merely a front for cultural espionage directed against France. He will, however, admit to having gone to see Titanic (more out of a secret admiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's cheekbones, if you believe Fanny, than any interest in the story). When asked what he thought of the film, his review was short but favourable: ‘The ship sank and nearly everyone perished. Most enjoyable.’

  A close runner-up to Farigoule in regular attendance at the café is Tommi, the village expatriate. Originally from a distant Scandinavian country, he has worked hard over the years to transform himself into a French peasant. He is probably the last man in the village to smoke unfiltered Gauloises, and has mastered the peasant's knack of leaving the final quarter of an inch screwed into the corner of his mouth so that it bobs up and down on his lower lip when he speaks. Pastis is his drink, which he always refers to as pastaga, and he carries an Opinel pocket knife which he uses to cut up the steack frites he orders every day at noon, tapping its wooden handle on the table to release its ancient, blackened blade. Who would think he came from a nice middle-class family in Oslo?

  Tommi has appointed himself an intermediary – a kind of shuttle diplomat – in the long-running vendetta between the brothers Vial, who own adjoining properties in the valley below the village. Dark, stringy men with the narrow faces of whippets, they haven't spoken to each other for twenty years. Nobody knows for sure what started the feud. It might have been disappointment over an inheritance, a dispute over water or a woman, or simply a mutual dislike that has turned into an enjoyable loathing. The two Vials sit at opposite ends of the café, getting up from time to time to leave accusations and insults with Tommi, who passes them on with conciliatory shrugs, nodding gravely at the response. Back he goes to the other brother. It's known locally as the waltz of the three wise men.

  For light relief, the café regulars rely on the turbulent love life of Josette the baker's daughter, a girl whose emotional state can be gauged by her wardrobe the moment she comes through the door. If the current romance is flourishing, she saunters in on platform heels wearing a microscopic skirt, with a crash helmet swinging like a trophy from one hand. Perched on a bar stool, she waits for Lothario to arrive on his moto, whispering to Fanny in between giggles and lipsticked sips of a Perrier menthe. But if the course of true love has taken a temporary dive, skirt and heels are replaced by dungarees and espadrilles, giggling by shuddering sighs, and Fanny has to dig around behind the bar to find a paper napkin for the tears.

  Unmoved by aff
airs of the heart – unless, of course, the heart should stop beating and provide the excuse for another burial – is Marius. For him, I would like to create an official post in the village hierarchy – entrepreneur de pompes funèbres, or resident funeral director. This might help to give a semblance of authority to his hobby, but he would have to learn to be more subtle in his exchanges with his future clients, particularly Jacky, the oldest of the old men playing cards at the next table.

  ‘Eh, mon vieux, how are you feeling today?’

  ‘Ça va, ça va. I'm well.’

  ‘Pity.’

  This is enough to make a sensitive man take umbrage and go somewhere else to die, but with a little coaching I feel certain that Marius could disguise his natural enthusiasm for what he calls the final celebration. And he would have to give up his plans to start the ultimate sweepstakes. Runners, if you could call them that, would be everyone in the village over sixty-five. Bets would be placed on their longevity, and winners paid after the funeral, cash on the gravestone. Marius takes the view that this is no more macabre than life insurance, with the added bonus of instant reimbursement.

  You may have noticed by now that there is an imbalance between the sexes here, with the male customers greatly outnumbering the females. Where are the ladies of St Bonnet?

  The different generations keep away from the café for different reasons. The younger women work, and when they're not working they're at home cleaning the house, paying the bills, chasing the children to bed and cooking dinner for the senior child, the husband, who has stopped off in the café until it's safe to go home.

  The older village ladies have two problems with the café. The first is Fanny, whom they consider dragueuse, a little too flirtatious and frisky for their taste, with a little too much bosom on public view. The second is that they can perform their function as an unofficial watch committee far more efficiently if they are on duty in the small square at the entrance to the village. Installed on chairs outside the house of their commander-in-chief, the widow Pipon, everything is within range of their radar: the post office, the boulangerie, the café, the car park, the mairie and the church. They have long ago abandoned any pretence that they are simply taking the air, although a few of them may have some token scraps of knitting in their laps. They are there to observe and comment on everybody's business.

  The most insignificant change in daily routine is cause for speculation. A young housewife buying more bread than usual must mean guests. Who are they? A confirmed heretic paying a visit to the church must have something juicy to confess. What is it? A local real estate agent pulls up in his mafia-black Land Cruiser and ducks into the mairie, clutching documents. Whose house is he trying to get his hands on? And – mon Dieu! – the tourists. These young girls are wearing lingerie on the street! They might as well be naked! Here in the middle of St Bonnet-le-Froid, a respectable village! In the absence of anything else to titillate their curiosity, the old ladies can always fall back on the drinking habits of the men in the café, Josette's amours – ‘She'll come to a bad end, that one’ – or old, unconfirmed and therefore delightfully possible rumours.

  The watch committee is part of the family that you have to be prepared to adopt if you choose to live in a tiny, curious community, and that is one of the drawbacks of village life. We once tried it, many years ago, and the memories of our first few days are still fresh in my mind. We had barely moved in when the spinster sisters who were our neighbours appeared on the doorstep demanding a tour of inspection. They looked everywhere and wanted to know the price of everything. How fortunate we were, they said, to have a telephone, one of the few in the village. The next morning their brother arrived, made the calls he'd been saving up for the past three months, and left fifty centimes on the table by the phone.

  We put up with it, and all that followed, because we were foreigners desperately anxious not to cause offence. We had chosen to live with these people, after all. They hadn't chosen us.

  Village life taught us early on that what you gain in companionship and convenience you lose in privacy. The face at the window and the knock on the door can come at any time, and there's no escape. You can hide, but you can't run. They know you're in there. They know because your shutters are open, and nobody leaves a house without closing the shutters. (You can, of course, always fool them by closing the shutters and staying at home, but then you'd be spending your life in the dark.) Your movements are monitored, your mail examined, your habits discussed and analysed.

  I'm sure this isn't confined to France. Go to live in the Hebrides or Vermont or a hamlet outside Munich; you will find the same fascination with newcomers, and you'll be considered newcomers for a good five or ten years. It's obvious that many people enjoy this, but I've discovered that I don't. I like to come and go without having to explain, every fifty yards, what I'm doing. I like a little privacy in my private life. That is why for me, a village – even St Bonnet-le-Froid, my ideal village – is best enjoyed at a distance. It will always be a great place to visit. But I wouldn't want to live there.

  5

  Curious Reasons for Liking Provence

  Driving along the back roads of the Vaucluse, you cannot help noticing the high proportion of cars that are well past the first flush of youth. With their mottled, rusty complexions, engines in the final stages of bronchitis, and exhaust pipes a-dangle, they seem to last almost as long as their owners, kind and good souls who are obviously prepared to put up with their cars' mechanical idiosyncrasies. When we first came to live here, I assumed that this loyalty to old iron sprang from the frugal nature of the inhabitants and their reluctance to part with any piece of machinery, no matter how ramshackle, while it could still be kicked or coaxed into life. Then we bought a car, and I understood.

  Frugality has nothing to do with the Provençal motorist's attachment to his limping '71 Citroën or the exhausted Peugeot with 400,000 kilometres on the clock. Shortage of funds is not the problem here. The reason for all those disreputable old bangers on the roads, I'm convinced, is that the process of buying a new car is often so infuriating, so frustrating and so time-consuming that if you have any sense you never wish to repeat it. As we discovered, it is not enough – not nearly enough – to have a valid driver's licence and a cheque. The buyer is also required to prove that he or she officially exists, and don't think you can do this simply by waving your passport under the nose of authority. Other documents are demanded (usually one at a time, so that you have to keep coming back) to prove that your driver's licence, your cheque-book and your passport are not just artful counterfeits. For some reason, phone and electricity bills are considered to be exempt from the forger's attentions, and these, together with a handful of old envelopes addressed to you, will eventually do the trick. But it can be a long and weary journey, demanding much stamina and patience. Or so it was when we were obliged to undertake it seven or eight years ago.

  Things will have changed, I told myself, when the time came to replace our car. This is the New Europe, blazing along in a white-hot streak of multinational cooperation and efficiency, with factories spewing out hundreds of thousands of cars each year. These cars had to be sold. Big business was on my side. And even if it wasn't, even if things hadn't changed, I was no longer an innocent in these matters. I knew what to expect, and when I arrived at the showroom I was fully prepared, confident that the comprehensive dossier I had put together – which included all the normal documentation as well as a form stating my blood type, some old airline tickets and a greetings card from my accountant wishing me a prosperous New Year – would be more than enough to establish my credentials. I was ready for anything, except what actually happened.

  I had decided to support local industry and go to a dealer in Apt. The premises were not much bigger than an office, but they showed all the signs of crisp efficiency. A computer hummed and hiccuped on the desk, the brochures were neatly arranged on racks, the aroma of freshly waxed coachwork was in the air, the place was spotless
. Somehow, two cars had been squeezed into the small space, and they too were so highly polished that one hesitated to touch them. Here, I said to myself, was a dealer who meant business. The New Europe, even down in Provence.

  But where was the dealer? After a few minutes I was beginning to feel lonely when a woman appeared from behind the rack of brochures and asked me what I wanted.

  ‘I'd like to buy a car,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. Attends.’ She disappeared. Another few minutes went by. I started to read my third brochure, mesmerized by upholstery options and remote-control glove compartments, and barely glanced at a burly man in a checked shirt and flat cap who came in from the forecourt to join me by the rack.

  ‘It is you who looks for a car,’ he said.

  Indeed it was, I told him. I'd decided on the model, picked a colour, chosen the upholstery. All that remained was to establish a price and a delivery date.

  ‘Ah bon.’ He tugged at his cap. ‘You need a salesman.’

  ‘I'm sorry. I thought that was you.’

  ‘Beh non. I take care of the forecourt. My son is the salesman.’

  ‘Then perhaps I could talk to your son.’

  ‘Beh non.’ He shook his head. ‘He is en vacances.’

  The gentleman in the cap could do nothing. But his son the salesman, so I was assured, would be back in a week or so, fit and rested. Meanwhile – as a special dispensation, brochures being the price they were these days, so they didn't have many of them – I was allowed to keep the brochure so that I could study it at home.