My Twenty-Five Years in Provence Page 7

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  One other result of interviews that were published in the British press was that I began to receive letters from readers, and I’ve kept them all, hundreds of them. Most of them were to tell me how much they had enjoyed the book, which was kind. But a few readers, hot under the collar with indignation, wrote to tell me, without being specific, that I was ruining Provence. I wrote back, asking them how I was ruining it, but the only answer worth keeping was this one: “Your wretched book is in every lavatory in Wiltshire.”

  That particular comment was easy to laugh off, but there were a few other, less picturesque accusations that I tried to take seriously, only to find that they had often been made from positions of considerable ignorance. For instance, one critic whom I replied to admitted that he had only been to Provence twice in five years, for a total of ten days. Even so, he knew that it was being ruined because the price of a cup of coffee in his favorite café had just gone up by ten centimes.

  Among all the correspondence from readers, there was only one truly unpleasant letter, from a man who told me that I wrote drivel. This was the least offensive of a string of insults which he ended by telling me that he had enclosed a twenty-franc banknote, because he was certain I would never make any money as a writer. The tone of the letter was enough to make me want to reply, and the writer had made the mistake of using stationery with his address on it. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist. I sent his twenty-franc note back to him wrapped around a suppository. I never heard from him again.

  My favorite letter came from a gentleman whose life, like mine, had undergone a drastic change. He was writing from his cell in Broadmoor, a well-known English prison, to tell me that reading a book of mine had given him, as he said, a day’s reprieve from his sentence. He signed off with the reassuring words “Nothing serious. Out soon.”

  Letters were quite often replaced by personal visits. Readers who were on vacation would arrive at the house in cars, on bicycles, even on foot, looking for half an hour’s distraction. In fact, it was sometimes a welcome distraction for me, too, a chance to leave the typewriter and my struggle with the alphabet, and sign a well-thumbed copy of a book or two. I’d go back to work greatly encouraged. There’s nothing like an appreciative word from a satisfied reader.

  One journalistic moment that I still treasure was the interview conducted by a serious young man who came armed with questions I’d never been asked before. What was my father’s occupation? Where had I gone to school? Did I have any children? I was puzzled by these questions because they had nothing to do with Provence, so I eventually asked the journalist where his interview was going to appear.

  “Oh, didn’t they tell you?” he said. “We’re preparing your obituary.”

  Thirteen

  A Good Place to Be Ill

  There used to be a widespread belief among those Englishmen unfortunate enough to endure a privileged public school education that any health problem short of a broken leg could be cured by a couple of aspirin and a cold shower. Complaints and self-pity were for wimps, and a stoical disregard for aches, pains, and symptoms was admired.

  This started to change several years ago, when girl students and their softening influence were admitted to these temples of learning, but for those of us who had been educated in the bad old days, old memories and insults remain. One insult in particular has stayed with me: it was always said that France is a nation of hypochondriacs. This was never explained or justified, probably because none of us had been to France or knew any French people, but it stuck, and it made us feel more manly and superior.

  Early visits to France seemed to confirm that the French were considerably more health conscious than English schoolboys. There were more pharmacies, all equipped with chairs for those waiting their turn. And waiting time was often long, because each customer required a short conference rather than a quick purchase. Prescriptions were studied and discussed. One by one, packages of painkillers, digestive aids, trusses, eye drops, nose drops, and laxatives were arranged on the counter for consideration. Finally, when all the crucial decisions had been made, the customer would stagger out of the pharmacy with a bulging plastic sack containing enough to keep him healthy for at least another week.

  This ritual was faithfully observed by the French, who were used to it. But for the poor ignorant foreigner, it was a little daunting. I still remember my first taste of pharmacy shopping. I had gone in to buy a tube of toothpaste. I found it, I took my place in one of the few chairs that was free, and I waited. And waited. And waited.

  Eventually, my turn came, and I went up to the counter clutching my toothpaste. The pharmacist put it to one side, and asked to see my prescription.

  “For toothpaste?”

  “No, no. For your other purchases.”

  “I have no other purchases.”

  “Ah, bon?” His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Bizarre.” And he made a great ceremony of putting my toothpaste into a paper bag, folding the top carefully, sealing it with Scotch tape, and presenting it to me with a flourish.

  My visit to the pharmacy made me curious about the French and their attitude to self-preservation, and I started to pay closer attention to what proved to be a rich and often surprising subject. For a start, I quickly learned the consequences of making polite inquiries about a Frenchman’s general state of health: if you ask him how he is, he’ll tell you, in detail, from his lower-back problems to his turbulent liver, his arthritic toe, and, if you’re not careful, the irregularity of his bowel movements. This fascinating update will be delivered as if none of these conditions had ever been suffered before. Attempts to interrupt will be brushed aside, and all you can do is assume a sympathetic expression and hope that your companion will run out of ailments.

  There is a story, widely told, about two elderly men having coffee one morning in the village.

  “What are you doing today?” asked the first gentleman.

  “Oh, I shall be at the doctor’s most of this morning.”

  “Can I come?”

  This exchange may well be true, such is the interest in medical matters. In doctors’ waiting rooms, equipped with the usual varied selection of magazines, I’ve noticed that the most popular of these are journals devoted not to celebrities and soccer but to health problems. Waiting patients have their noses buried in news of the latest surgical advances, often tearing out a page that describes a breakthrough in the treatment of piles or heart fibrillation.

  This fascination with our internal workings is not just personal. Other people’s problems are every bit as interesting. When a friend of ours fell off his bicycle and broke a bone in his ankle, his plaster cast and his crutches made him a minor village celebrity, and the questions he was asked almost persuaded him to hand out a press release. It’s only fair to say that the attention he received was entirely sympathetic. There was not even a trace of criticism that he often had a few beers before getting into the saddle, or his weakness for attacking the summit of Mont Ventoux after a good lunch. Instead, his questioners hoped that the problem wasn’t too serious, and did he have any picturesque scars?

  Scars are, of course, the most dramatic souvenirs of a brush with death, but they are by no means the only subjects of keen interest. Symptoms run them a close second, with the added advantage that we’ve all had symptoms at one time or another, and this allows us to join in the conversation.

  Many years ago, I found myself sitting at a café table next to a group of old men whose behavior caught my eye. Instead of playing cards, they were having an animated discussion punctuated by frequent pauses: one man rolled up his shirtsleeves to allow a better view of his arms. The man next to him rolled up a leg of his pants. One by one, heads were massaged, necks were rubbed, and tongues extended. Then it was the turn of ribs and shoulders. In each case, the group paid close attention, asking questions, sometimes probing and poking the organ on
display and generally acting as though they were having the most enthralling experience of their lives.

  A week later, there they were again, the same old men, wearing their ailments like war wounds. After watching a second performance much like the first, I realized that this was a group dedicated to the appearance and progress of symptoms, the tracking of newly arrived aches, and the monitoring of degrees of suffering—all this helped down by health-giving carafes of rosé.

  Sadly, when I went back to the café a few years later there was no sign of the symptomaniacs, and when I asked the café owner where they were, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and drew his index finger across his throat. RIP.

  Since then, I’ve seen smaller versions of this fascination with health, from two people arguing noisily over prescriptions to demonstrations of newly achieved mobility—the most public-spirited example being a friend of mine, who donated his recently discarded crutch to the café as emergency aid to customers who had enjoyed themselves slightly too much at the bar. In every case, what struck me was the willingness to share intimate personal health developments with the rest of the world.

  My own experience with the French public health system has, on the whole, been pretty good. Our doctor, Madame Medicine, is charming and helpful, and writes embarrassingly generous prescriptions. Specialists are highly qualified and well organized. Pharmacists are extremely well trained and well informed. France must be one of the best places in the world to find professional medical help. And this occasionally comes with some surprising refinements, one of which I experienced not long ago.

  Madame Medicine had suggested, then recommended, then insisted that I should undergo a minor operation. “Your heart is murmuring,” she said, “and it’s telling you to go to the hospital. Fortunately, I know an excellent man for hearts.” And within forty-eight hours she called to give me my marching orders.

  After the obligatory mechanical checks at the hospital, I was taken to see the surgeon, a reassuringly soothing young man who asked me if I had any sinful habits, like nicotine or cocaine. I was able to put his mind at rest about those, but I had to admit a long-standing fondness for red, white, and pink wines. He brushed those aside. “C’est normal,” he said. Obviously, a doctor after my own heart.

  The great day arrived, and I was taken to my room at the hospital, where I found the doctor waiting to greet me. He told me that I needed to have a small preparatory procedure before the main event, and that he’d see me in the operating theater. I was then left to change into my outfit for the morning.

  I don’t know who invented hospital gowns, but it would be difficult to imagine a more embarrassing garment. Its flimsy cotton had a slit from neck to hem of what I assumed was the back of the gown. I put it on, and immediately discovered that, with any kind of movement, the slit fell open to reveal a detailed view of naked back and naked buttocks. I was still trying to work out some way of getting to the operating theater while preserving a shred of dignity when there was a knock on the door.

  It was a girl, a pretty girl, carrying a small metal tray. “Il faut raser la barbe,” she said with a grin. This puzzled me, as I’ve never had a beard. The girl then put her tray on the bedside table and I could see an electric razor, a cloth, and a small pot of what I imagined was after-shave balm.

  “Lie down on your back, please,” she said. I lay down. With great delicacy and precision she pulled the gown up to my waist, and I belatedly realized that I was about to have my very first pubic shave.

  “Uncross your legs, please, and relax.”

  She gently went to work, and I have to say I didn’t feel a thing. She finished, sat back, and surveyed her work.

  “Voilà,” she said with another grin as she dusted me off. “You look ten years younger.”

  Fourteen

  The Pulse of the Village

  The hours are brutal. You start as early as six a.m. and very rarely finish before ten p.m. During that long day, you will be expected to provide a variety of refreshments, operate as an occasional left-luggage facility, serve as an informal message center, and, most important of all, demonstrate endless patience and a receptive ear. In other words, you will be running a village café.

  The café is much more than just a place to get a quick cup of coffee or a drink. In fact, it’s a most useful and civilized compromise. More comfortable than perching on a barstool, less formal than sitting at a restaurant table, it is also a most welcoming destination for customers who, for one reason or another, are on their own. Sitting by yourself in a restaurant goes against human nature; man does not live by eating alone. But sitting by yourself in a busy café, you will usually find yourself in the company of several others who, for various reasons, prefer the companionable solitude offered by a table for one.

  Not far from your seat on the terrace will be a man who is a human fixture at almost every French village café. This is the regular with his newspaper, sitting at his regular table at the back of the terrace, where he can see everyone. He doesn’t need to order, because he has the same thing every morning. He will acknowledge people he knows with a nod before returning to his newspaper. He could be there for half an hour, or most of the morning. At no time will he be pestered into ordering something from the café bar; this too is preordained. If he is still at his table at eleven o’clock, a pastis and a small saucer of olives will be brought to him.

  That is by no means all that will be brought to him in the course of the morning. Despite his relaxed, almost drowsy appearance, the regular is keen to know what’s going on, to hear the day’s nuggets of gossip. In one case I have in mind, these are supplied by Laure, a local café owner, who will have picked up the early-morning news from her privileged position behind the bar. She will come out for a quick session with the regulars to pass on items of particular interest: the latest developments in a village feud; rumors of the postman’s sizzling new romance; a power struggle in the mairie; the chef’s dog giving birth to half a dozen puppies in the kitchen of his restaurant—every day there is something new, and there is no better way to hear about it than from Laure, the village’s very own CNN. Meanwhile, unaware of all this excitement, the group of tourists at the next table will be congratulating themselves on having found this marvelously peaceful village where nothing happens.

  The peace is disturbed by a variety of new arrivals, none more colorful than a group of refugees from their very own tour de France, cyclists in desperate need of cold beer before they attack the next hill. They are, to a man, dressed like professionals, with lightweight crash helmets, bright yellow jerseys, and skintight black shorts. There is much clattering while they park their streamlined bicycles before mopping their heated brows and sinking their first beer so fast that the waitress is barely back inside the café before they call her out again for another.

  By now, the terrace is becoming busier with what a local wag likes to call the summer League of Nations: British, Germans, and Dutch escaping from the gray chill of the northern summer; Parisians seeing how the southern half lives; and, in recent years, orderly groups of Japanese and Chinese. These latter visitors can be seen drifting down the main street of the village in docile pairs, talking quietly—so quietly, in fact, that it prompts some café regulars to wonder whether noisy people actually exist on the other side of the world.

  And so the ebb and flow of village life continues throughout the morning until the street suddenly becomes less crowded and the café tables overflow with lunchtime diners. The level of chatter rises, and the waitresses perform miracles of balance as they wriggle among the tables, their trays loaded with bottles, glasses, platefuls of the plat du jour, and whatever can be cooked on the indoor barbecue. A favorite dish is figatelli, the rich and wonderfully tasty Corsican pork sausage, served with a large baked potato and guaranteed to get you through the afternoon.

  By about three, the café terrace is once again sleepy and sparsely populat
ed. Some customers have gone to answer the call of the siesta; others are up to their necks in the cool water of their pool. The café waitresses breathe a sigh of relief, and Laure, finally, can have a late lunch.

  But quiet though the afternoon may be, it is often the preferred time for some highly personal activity as Laure becomes a one-woman advice center for those with problems. These will vary enormously: a dispute with the neighbors; an ill-advised affair; a grasping bank manager; a doctor who doesn’t seem to care; a son with adolescent traumas; a daughter struggling with early womanhood; and, inevitably, those minor ailments that the French take such pleasure in discussing. All of these are listened to intently, and Laure’s opinion is given when asked for. But advice is by no means the only part of the service offered. By far the most appreciated benefit of these consultations is that they provide a sympathetic audience and a measure of comfort for those who are going through difficulties. It’s not all that different from a visit to a psychiatrist, except that you’re more likely to get a glass of wine than a bill.

  In Provence, there is a dramatic difference between the sweltering, hectic days of summer and the quiet, icy, almost deserted weeks of winter. This is the annual problem faced by the café’s personnel director, who is, once again, Laure. In the winter, she can count on her husband to lend a hand when he’s not pruning in the vineyard, and she has Annie, her permanent treasure, a local girl who has worked at the café since she was a teenager some years ago. But in the summer, this is not enough. Four or five more are needed to cope with the crowds.

  Luckily, there are always plenty of students on vacation looking for some pocket money, and in the high season it is not unknown for your coffee to be served to you by a young woman on the brink of a degree in applied physics. But as willing as these summer recruits are, they have a lot to learn about essential café procedures. This is where Annie is invaluable, and this is when part of the terrace turns into her classroom, where she can pass on what she has learned over the years of active café duty. She runs a tight class, helped by a sharp eye for detail and the disposition of a sergeant-major.