Ferrou, badly painted but recognisable by the black split down it. The sun above it and underneath the words: ‘Thank you. 1942.’ Thank you for what? She would ask Auxille.
But after mass there was no time for questions. Jeanette introduced Mireille to the rest of the villagers, who stayed outside the church shaking hands with the priest and complaining about each other. She described Mireille variously as ‘an expert on orchids’, ‘a journalist’ and ‘the daughter of the famous British architect’. Having a guest had given Jeanette an exalted sense of status, and, despite her orange and pink dress, bare legs and those red shoes, she still managed to look like an important guest at a garden party.
Then it was lunch! And that was going to take all afternoon. A gigot of lamb, hard-boiled eggs and a salade sauvage. Local red wine, coarse but not unpalatable, and Macon even turned the television off. They ate in the closed café, the tables pushed together and covered with the best linen.
‘… and did you see Madame Cabasson’s niece …’ said Jeanette, serving up. ‘Pink cheeked, and how plump she looks. I’m sure she’s pregnant.’
‘And he’s a policeman,’ said Auxille.
‘And wasn’t that the Villeneuve’s youngest daughter near the back in green with a smart hat? She must be getting married soon but she will get married in Paris for sure. Did I hear she became a lawyer? Mireille, more salad, it’s good for the digestion.’
‘Was that picture of the Ferrou given by Old Man Henri?’ asked Mireille, but neither Jeanette nor Auxille could remember such a picture. The church fittings were not the reason why they went there.
‘During the war there were many miracles,’ said Jeanette. ‘Our Lady spared many lives,’ and she blessed herself to revere this fact.
‘But not your father’s,’ said Macon into his wine glass. ‘Your parents were married five years before they had you. Now that is a miracle.’
‘Hold your tongue on this holy day!’ snapped Jeanette, but Auxille hadn’t heard. She was telling Mireille about her grandfather. ‘Old Man Henri was a shepherd from the Maures and every year he used to take the sheep up to the Alpine pastures.’ She looked fondly at the new painting now balanced above the fireplace. ‘But one year he was resting with the flock near the river at Lieux and a village girl came down to wash the clothes (they did that then), and what a picture she was, dark hair, rosy cheeks, a true Provençal, and just fifteen …’
Mireille had heard this story before and so had Jeanette and Macon, hundreds of times.
‘That’s the carpet I bought with your mother’s money,’ said Jeanette, pointing to a patterned rug on the floor. ‘Your mother, I remember her so well. What a lady. Très gentille. Très sympa. Très élégante …’
‘Of course he had to give up being a shepherd, because my grandmother’s father said he would never let his daughter be married to one … he became a carpenter but he liked the open air too much, he walked for hours in the hills … but when she died during the war, an appendix complication and they couldn’t get a doctor, he wouldn’t live in the village again. He bought the land at the Ferrou and lived like a hermit.’
‘Of course, if they had built that house, that mansion, you might have married a French boy, a cousin of the Villeneuves’, but that wasn’t to be and now the Ferrou is a wilderness. Who can find it? It is forgotten.’ She was becoming poetic.
‘… and he lived like a hermit until he died and he didn’t want company, and he didn’t want anybody to visit him, but I did sometimes with some goat’s cheese and anchovies in season …’
Mireille listened to both of them. Perhaps the painting made sense now. Thank you for peace and quiet. Thank you for a life away from the rattle of the village. Thank you.
Wednesday. Afternoon
I didn’t get back home until Easter Monday and even then Jeanette was pressurising me to stay another night. But I couldn’t. I wanted to get back here. I love the smell of this place, wet earth and plaster and always the pine trees. Opening the door is like smelling a lover when you first embrace him. At Jeanette’s I could hardly sleep. The room was so stuffy and the bed wobbled when I turned over. God! Am I so hardy again I need to sleep on wooden planks with a hefty draught under the door? I like Jeanette and Auxille and even Macon. They drive me nuts, but I know they are honest and kind and I appreciate it. I’m writing this in bed because when I got back I was sick. I’ve had a bad stomach since. I wasn’t used to all that food. It seems a shame that Auxille’s cooking should land up so rapidly in the pit in the woods. I didn’t want it that way. I wanted to feel that their generosity could at least linger in my body and do me good. I’m now on a diet of bread and a herbal brew I made out of lime-flower tea with lemon and celery leaves. It’s pretty revolting. I’ve been too ill to saw up wood and the hut has become cold again. I must remember not to leave here for too long because once the stove goes out the temperature drops rapidly. I want it to get warmer outside because then I can bathe in the Ferrou. I’m longing to do this. Even in the hottest summer the water makes me gasp. I’m thinking about Old Man Henri. He lived here until he died. Is that what’s going to happen to me? I have made no plans to do anything else. I’m thinking about history now. Every place has a history. Every person has a history and this place is part of my history and I am a part of this place, with Henri and before him with whoever was the first person who stood by the Ferrou and touched the water. It’s a history impossible to trace, but I feel part of the line when I stand there. And I felt it when I was nine.
My parents were bored with the coast. The phenomena of St Tropez did not interest them. My mother would never have been seen dead in bare feet, hipster jeans and a shirt tied in a knot to show off her midriff. She called them ‘dirty bohemians’ and Brigitte Bardot was a ‘silly, dirty bohemian’. I think it was more that they realised they were not young any more. Hugo Devereux, the brilliant young architect, and his beautiful wife. They believed this even though they were in their thirties. They believed it at their parties in Bath. They believed it when The Heathers was being built. But that summer they couldn’t believe it because the young had all gone to a little fishing village and were hanging out on the beach.
We went inland in a hired car. It started out as day trips with a picnic packed by the hotel. I had only seen fashionable resorts and I thought all of France was like that. Hotels with shutters. Large houses with tiered gardens and swimming pools. All French people were like my father’s clients, who were mostly British anyway, with skin the colour of polished pine and manners as well tailored as their clothes. But we went inland to tumbledown villages perched on the tops of hills, where old women wore black and shuffled by in worn-down espadrilles. A man in navy workclothes and a peaked hat was followed by a small dog. Where the bars were smoky and the only food they served was croque monsieur. My mother hated it. She fanned herself with the map. She sat in the car for the picnic because of the ants. She remained conspicuous, with her pastel clothes, golden blonde hair and tiny frame, where all the other women were sturdy, busty in cheap floral dresses. My father loved it. He was an architect and he loved buildings. Squashed-up stone houses. Dark cavernous churches. Forgotten eighteenth-century mansions with crumbling façades and that shabby, shabby grandeur that’s impossible to imitate. It was his idea to go further north.
I remember this journey in fragments. It was August and although the heat wasn’t as stifling as it was by the coast there were no swimming pools to dip into. The car was an oven and I was a currant bun cooking on the back seat. Wherever we stopped was dry. Even the leaves on the trees were dry and the grass snapped when I stood on it. The ants marched over my shoes and up my legs. The ground smelled strong and aromatic. There were pine trees with huge cones and I collected them. I kept them on the back seat and poked my fingers in between their smooth wooden spires. We drove through canyons and gorges. Past cliffs of gnarled grey rock. Past huge boulders. Past ravines that fell to fast rivers hundreds of feet