A Year In Provence Read online

  "You buy a bidet," he said, jabbing me with his finger, "and you pay full TVA. The same for a washer or a screw. But I will tell you something scandaleux and altogether wrong. You buy a pot of caviar, and you will pay only 6 percent TVA, because it is classified as nourriture. Now tell me this: Who eats caviar?" I pleaded not guilty. "I will tell you. It is the politicians, the millionaires, the grosses légumes in Paris -they are the ones who eat caviar. It's an outrage." He stumped off, fulminating about caviar orgies in the Elysée Palace, to check jeune's radiator arithmetic.

  The thought of Menicucci occupying the premises for five or six weeks, burrowing his way through the thick old walls with a drill that was almost as big as he was and filling the air with dust and running commentaries, was not a treat to look forward to. It would be a dirty and tedious process involving almost every room in the house. But one of the joys of Provence, we told ourselves, was that we could live outdoors while this was going on. Even this early in the year, the days were very nearly hot, and we decided to start the outdoor season in earnest one Sunday morning when the sun coming through the bedroom window woke us up at seven o'clock.

  All good Sundays include a trip to the market, and we were in Coustellet by eight. The space behind the disused station was lined with elderly trucks and vans, each with a trestle table set up in front. A blackboard showed the day's prices for vegetables. The stall holders, already tanned from the fields, were eating croissants and brioches that were still warm from the bakery across the street. We watched as one old man sliced a baguette lengthways with a wooden-handled pocket knife and spread on fresh goat's cheese in a creamy layer before pouring himself a glass of red wine from the liter bottle that would keep him going until lunchtime.

  The Coustellet market is small compared to the weekly markets in Cavaillon and Apt and Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, and not yet fashionable. Customers carry baskets instead of cameras, and only in July and August are you likely to see the occasional haughty woman down from Paris with her Dior track suit and small, nervous dog. For the rest of the season, from spring until autumn, it is just the local inhabitants, and the peasants who bring in what they have taken from the earth or the greenhouse a few hours earlier.

  We walked slowly along the rows of trestle tables, admiring the merciless French housewife at work. Unlike us, she is not content merely to look at the produce before buying. She gets to grips with it-squeezing aubergines, sniffing tomatoes, snapping the matchstick-thin haricots verts between her fingers, poking suspiciously into the damp green hearts of lettuces, tasting cheeses and olives-and, if they don't come up to her private standards, she will glare at the stall holder as if she has been betrayed before taking her custom elsewhere.

  At one end of the market, a van from the wine cooperative was surrounded by men rinsing their teeth thoughtfully in the new rosé. Next to them, a woman was selling free-range eggs and live rabbits, and beyond her the tables were piled high with vegetables, small and fragrant bushes of basil, tubs of lavender honey, great green bottles of first pressing olive oil, trays of hothouse peaches, pots of black tapenade, flowers and herbs, jams and cheeses-everything looked delicious in the early morning sun.

  We bought red peppers to roast and big brown eggs and basil and peaches and goat's cheese and lettuce and pink-streaked onions. And, when the basket could hold no more, we went across the road to buy half a yard of bread-the gros pain that makes such a tasty mop for any olive oil or vinaigrette sauce that is left on the plate. The bakery was crowded and noisy, and smelled of warm dough and the almonds that had gone into the morning's cakes. While we waited, we remembered being told that the French spend as much of their income on their stomachs as the English do on their cars and stereo systems, and we could easily believe it.

  Everyone seemed to be shopping for a regiment. One round, jolly woman bought six large loaves-three yards of bread-a chocolate brioche the size of a hat, and an entire wheel of apple tart, the thin slices of apple packed in concentric rings, shining under a glaze of apricot sauce. We were aware that we had missed breakfast.

  Lunch made up for it: cold roasted peppers, slippery with olive oil and speckled with fresh basil, tiny mussels wrapped in bacon and barbecued on skewers, salad, and cheese. The sun was hot and the wine had made us sleepy. And then we heard the phone.

  It is a rule of life that, when the phone rings between noon and three on a Sunday, the caller is English; a Frenchman wouldn't dream of interrupting the most relaxed meal of the week. I should have let it ring. Tony from advertising was back, and judging by the absence of static on the line he was hideously close.

  "Just thought I'd touch base with you." I could hear him taking a drag on his cigarette, and I made a mental note to buy an answering machine to deal with anyone else who might want to touch base on a Sunday.

  "I think I've found a place." He didn't pause to hear the effect of his announcement, and so missed the sound of my heart sinking. "Quite a way from you, actually, nearer the coast." I told him that I was delighted; the nearer the coast he was, the better. "Needs a lot doing to it, so I'm not going to pay what he's asking. Thought I'd bring my builders over to do the work. They did the office in six weeks, top to bottom. Irish, but bloody good. They could sort this place out in a month."

  I was tempted to encourage him, because the idea of a gang of Irish workmen exposed to the pleasures of a building site in Provence-the sun, cheap wine, endless possibilities for delay, and a proprietor too far away to be a daily nuisance-had the makings of a fine comic interlude, and I could see Mr. Murphy and his team stretching the job out until October, maybe getting the family over from Donegal for a holiday during August and generally having a grand time. I told Tony he might be better advised to hire local labor, and to get an architect to hire it for him.

  "Don't need an architect," he said, "I know exactly what I want." He would. "Why should I pay him an arm and a leg for a couple of drawings?" There was no helping him. He knew best. I asked him when he was going back to England. "This evening," he said, and then guided me through the next hectic pages of his Filofax: a client meeting on Monday, three days in New York, a sales conference in Milton Keynes. He reeled it off with the mock weariness of the indispensable executive, and he was welcome to every second of it. "Anyway," he said, "I'll keep in touch. I won't finalize on the house for a week or two, but I'll let you know as soon as I've inked it."

  My wife and I sat by the pool and wondered, not for the first time, why we both found it so difficult to get rid of thick-skinned and ungracious people. More of them would be coming down during the summer, baying for food and drink and a bedroom, for days of swimming and lifts to the airport. We didn't think of ourselves as antisocial or reclusive, but our brief experience with the thrustful and dynamic Tony had been enough to remind us that the next few months would require firmness and ingenuity. And an answering machine.

  The approach of summer had obviously been on Massot's mind as well, because when I saw him a few days later in the forest he was busy adding a further refinement to his anticamper defenses. Under the signs he had nailed up saying PRIVÉ! he was fixing a second series of unwelcoming messages, short but sinister: Attention! Vipères! It was the perfect deterrent-full of menace, but without the need for visible proof that is the great drawback of other discouragements such as guard dogs, electrified fences, and patrols armed with submachine guns. Even the most resolute camper would think twice before tucking himself up in a sleeping bag which might have one of the local residents coiled at the bottom. I asked Massot if there really were vipers in the Lubéron, and he shook his head at yet another example of the ignorance of foreigners.

  "Eh oui," he said, "not big"-he held his hands up, about twelve inches apart-"but if you're bitten you need to get to a doctor within forty-five minutes, or else…" He pulled a dreadful face, head to one side, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth, "They say that when a viper bites a man, the man dies. But when a viper bites a woman"-he leaned forward and waggled his eyebr
ows-"the viper dies." He snorted with amusement and offered me one of his fat yellow cigarettes. "Don't ever go walking without a good pair of boots."

  The Lubéron viper, according to Professor Massot, will normally avoid humans, and will attack only if provoked. When this happens, Massot's advice was to run in zigzags, and preferably uphill, because an enraged viper can sprint-in short, straight bursts on level ground-as fast as a running man. I looked nervously around me, and Massot laughed. "Of course, you can always try the peasant's trick: Catch it behind the head and squeeze until its mouth is wide open. Spit hard into the mouth and plok!-he's dead." He spat in demonstration, hitting one of the dogs on the head. "But best of all," said Massot, "is to take a woman with you. They can't run as fast as men, and the viper will catch them first." He went home to his breakfast leaving me to pick my way cautiously through the forest and practice my spitting.

  EASTER WEEKEND arrived, and our cherry trees-about thirty of them-blossomed in unison. From the road, the house looked as if it were floating on a pink-and-white sea, and motorists were stopping to take photographs or walking tentatively up the drive until barking from the dogs turned them back. One group, more adventurous than the rest, drove up to the house in a car with Swiss plates and parked on the roadside. I went to see what they wanted.

  "We will picnic here," the driver told me.

  "I'm sorry, it's a private house."

  "No, no," he said, waving a map at me, "this is the Lubéron."

  "No, no," I said, "that's the Lubéron," and pointed to the mountains.

  "But I can't take my car up there."

  Eventually he drove off, puffing with Swiss indignation and leaving deep wheel marks in the grass we were trying to turn into a lawn. The tourist season had begun.

  Up in the village on Easter Sunday, the small parking area was full, and not one of the cars had local plates. The visitors explored the narrow streets, looking curiously into people's houses and posing for photographs in front of the church. The young man who spends all day sitting on a doorstep next to the épicerie was asking everyone who passed for ten francs to make a phone call and taking the proceeds into the café.

  The Café du Progrès has made a consistent and successful effort to avoid being picturesque. It is an interior decorator's nightmare, with tables and chairs that wobble and don't match, gloomy paintwork, and a lavatory that splutters and gurgles often and noisily next to a shabby ice-cream cabinet. The proprietor is gruff, and his dogs are indescribably matted. There is, however, a long and spectacular view from the glassed-in terrace next to the lavatory, and it's a good place to have a beer and watch the play of light on the hills and villages that stretch away toward the Basses-Alpes. A hand-lettered notice warns you not to throw cigarette ends out of the window, following complaints from the clientele of the open-air restaurant below, but if you observe this rule you will be left undisturbed. The regulars stay at the bar; the terrasse is for tourists, and on Easter Sunday it was crowded.

  There were the Dutch, wholesome in their hiking boots and backpacks; the Germans, armed with Leicas and heavy costume jewelery; the Parisians, disdainful and smart, inspecting their glasses carefully for germs; an Englishman in sandals and an open-necked striped business shirt, working out his holiday finances on a pocket calculator while his wife wrote postcards to neighbors in Surrey. The dogs nosed among the tables looking for sugar lumps, causing the hygiene-conscious Parisians to shrink away. An Yves Montand song on the radio fought a losing battle with the sanitary sound effects, and empty pastis glasses were banged on the bar as the locals started to drift off toward home and lunch.

  Outside the café, three cars had converged and were growling at one another. If one of them had reversed ten yards, they could all have passed, but a French driver considers it a moral defeat to give way, just as he feels a moral obligation to park wherever he can cause maximum inconvenience and to overtake on a blind bend. They say that Italians are dangerous drivers, but for truly lethal insanity I would back a Frenchman hurtling down the N100, late and hungry, against all comers.

  I drove back from the village and just missed the first accident of the season. An old white Peugeot had gone backwards into a wooden telegraph pole at the bottom of the drive with sufficient force to snap the pole in two. There was no other car to be seen, and the road was dry and dead straight. It was difficult to work out how the back of the car and the pole had contrived to meet with such force. A young man was standing in the middle of the road, scratching his head. He grinned as I pulled up.

  I asked him if he was hurt. "I'm fine," he said, "but I think the car is foutu." I looked at the telegraph pole, which was bent over the car, kept from falling by the sagging phone line. That also was foutu.

  "We must hurry," said the young man. "Nobody must know." He put a finger to his lips. "Can you give me a lift home? It's just up the road. I need the tractor." He got into the car, and the cause of the accident became clear; he smelled as though he had been marinated in Ricard. He explained that the car had to be removed with speed and secrecy. If the post office found that he had attacked one of their poles they would make him pay for it. "Nobody must know," he repeated, and hiccupped once or twice for emphasis.

  I dropped him off and went home. Half an hour later, I went out to see if the stealthy removal of the car had been accomplished, but it was still there. So was a group of peasants, arguing noisily. Also two other cars and a tractor, which was blocking the road. As I watched, another car arrived and the driver sounded his horn to get the tractor to move. The man on the tractor pointed at the wreck and shrugged. The horn sounded again, this time in a continuous blare that bounced off the mountains and must have been audible in Ménerbes, two kilometers away.

  The commotion lasted for another half hour before the Peugeot was finally extracted from the ditch and the secret motorcade disappeared in the direction of the local garage, leaving the telegraph pole creaking ominously in the breeze. The post office men came to replace it the following week, and attracted a small crowd. They asked one of the peasants what had happened. He shrugged innocently. "Who knows?" he said. "Woodworm?"

  OUR FRIEND from Paris examined his empty glass with surprise, as if evaporation had taken place while he wasn't looking. I poured some more wine and he settled back in his chair, face tilted up to the sun.

  "We still have the heating on in Paris," he said, and took a sip of the cool, sweet wine from Beaumes de Venise. "And it's been raining for weeks. I can see why you like it here. Mind you, it wouldn't suit me."

  It seemed to be suiting him well enough, basking in the warmth after a good lunch, but I didn't argue with him.

  "You'd hate it," I said. "You'd probably get skin cancer from the sun and cirrhosis of the liver from too much plonk, and if you were ever feeling well enough you'd miss the theater. And anyway, what would you do all day?"

  He squinted at me drowsily, and put his sunglasses on. "Exactly."

  It was part of what had become a familiar litany:

  Don't you miss your friends?

  No. They come and see us here.

  Don't you miss English television?

  No.

  There must be something about England you miss?

  Marmalade.

  And then would come the real question, delivered half-humorously, half-seriously: what do you do all day? Our friend from Paris put it another way.

  "Don't you get bored?"

  We didn't. We never had time. We found the everyday curiosities of French rural life amusing and interesting. We were enjoying the gradual process of changing the house around so that it suited the way we lived. There was the garden to be designed and planted, a boules court to be built, a new language to be learned, villages and vineyards and markets to be discovered-the days went quickly enough without any other distractions, and there were always plenty of those. The previous week, as it happened, had been particularly rich in interruptions.

  They started on Monday with a visit from Marcel
the Parcel, our postman. He was irritated, barely pausing to shake hands before demanding to know where I had hidden the mailbox. He had his rounds to do, it was almost noon, how could I expect him to deliver letters if he had to play cache-cache with the mailbox? But we hadn't hidden it. So far as I knew, it was down at the end of the drive, firmly planted on a steel post."Non," said the postman, "it has been moved." There was nothing for it but to walk down the drive together and spend a fruitless five minutes searching the bushes to see if it had been knocked over. There was no sign that a mailbox had ever been there except a small post hole in the ground. "Voilà," said the postman, "it is as I told you." I found it hard to believe that anyone would steal a mailbox, but he knew better. "It is quite normal," he said, "people around here are malfini." I asked him what that meant. "Mad."

  Back to the house we went, to restore his good humor with a drink and to discuss the installation of a new mailbox that he would be happy to sell me. We agreed that it should be built into the side of an old well, positioned at the regulation height of seventy centimeters above the ground so that he could drop letters in without having to leave his van. Obviously, the well had to be studied and measurements taken, and by then it was time for lunch. Post office business would be resumed at two o'clock.

  A couple of days later, I was summoned from the house by a car horn, and found the dogs circling a new white Mercedes. The driver wasn't prepared to leave the safety of his car, but risked a half-open window. I looked in and saw a small brown couple beaming at me nervously. They complimented me on the ferocity of the dogs and requested permission to get out. They were both dressed for the city, the man in a sharply cut suit, his wife in hat and cloak and patent-leather boots.