So, are you dreaming too during your wild, wet days in Wales?
In reply, Liz says:
My dear Susan,
How lovely. I now have all those images in my head and time won’t go quickly enough!
I don’t know if we will manage the pears because I’m coming earlier in the season and they may not be ripe on your orchard trees. However, I’m sure I’ll manage some other delights.
I love cooking in your kitchen in France, it’s such a social place to be. Shopping, cooking, relaxing, swimming, the possibility of the odd brocante... and I’ll only have a few days to squash these heady pursuits into. I’m so looking forward to it.
After just a few years, life in Cuzance is taking on a steady and comforting rhythm.
3
La Piscine in Peril
How would we manage without the internet? It is not possible to imagine all that we have achieved without instant access to information, sometimes information that throws us into a spin. Not only did we buy a car by email, install a pool by email, and organise a new gardener by email, we also had to shoot emails back and forth rapidly in a frantic effort to save our piscine in the big freeze. While at home, most of the state was experiencing severe floods, the European winter was one of the worst in memory.
Life at home was constantly awash in a never-ending torrent of rain that consumed our lives and conversation. Deep, deep snow and treacherous ice however, was not on our personal weather radar.
Meanwhile, throughout the year, every few days Stuart logged on to check the weather in France. This was mainly out of simple curiosity to see how the seasons were unfolding on the other side of the world, especially in our own special little place, Cuzance. It was primarily so he could announce to me the extremes of temperature and we would marvel from afar at the depths to which the temperature frequently plummeted. That is, until the winter of the big freeze; suddenly, sheer curiosity turned to extreme consternation. The temperature became an entirely different matter; it became personal – it was an inconceivable minus eighteen in Cuzance. The piscine was in peril.
Stuart sent an email to Piscine Ambiance. We needed to know urgently if our pool was at risk, not simply of freezing but if the pump was adequate, if it was likely to break down and if the new pool was likely to crack... As the previous summer had been mostly cool and damp, we had literally only used la piscine on a couple of occasions. It was not worth thinking about the possibility of our pool, sitting all alone in an empty orchard, possibly near the end of its days – frozen, broken, cracked and spilling a river of water across our rustique jardin. So now we had to call Piscine Ambiance as well, organising the time by email to ensure we were able to speak to someone in the office.
This time it was not the president or Yannick or Nicholas, as in all our previous email communication the year before. It was a new young English girl, Hannah. She calmly confirmed that yes, indeed it was imperative to send a technician immediately.
Naturally the night that the call is arranged for, Stuart is out playing bridge. He assures me it will be a straightforward matter. Naturally it’s not. Hannah asks me a series of questions about the pump, the switch and the mechanism’s operation. I vaguely recall that Stuart has told me the switch is set to go on for two hours a day. I frantically scribble notes and questions to leave for Stuart when he gets in late at night after bridge. At midnight, he too has to call Hannah to sort out the complexities of the long distance piscine. Now why doesn’t that surprise me that he has to step in after all to sort it out?
The next morning before work, I hastily check with him what’s happening to save la piscine.
He fills me in and lets me know that a technician will go to Cuzance as soon as possible – snow and ice permitting – to check on the pool and the switch. I hesitate to ask how much this will cost. The euro conversion takes a while for me to calculate. Once I manage to do so, it’s not an attractive calculation, especially first thing in the morning. It is now that I raise the question – somewhat hesitantly – of why the technician who came on site to brief Stuart on the complexities of operating and maintaining a pool – especially long distance – hadn’t raised this critical point. As it transpires, he most certainly did.
However, and yes, I can understand this, it was on one of the few significantly hot days the previous summer that the technician came to discuss la piscine’s maintenance and operation. Yes, the issue of extremes in temperature had been discussed, including the possibility of snow and ice. On a blazing hot summer’s day, such a thought however, was inconceivable. Stuart chose not to have the switch installed that would prevent la piscine being in peril. And so, the technician ventured out on the icy perilous roads to save la piscine. As for the water pipes in the petite maison, on our return, we knew that would be another matter entirely.
4
The Moon, Whales and Stale Bread
When the whales return each June, swimming north to warmer waters, it signals our return to France. The first winter moon is always spectacular. It shines in a bright river of light across the ocean. As the darkness of winter creeps in ever earlier, the silver path of the moon is in a straight line to our kitchen bench. I gaze out at it as I stand preparing dinner. The next full moon I see, peeps instead in a bright yellow orb, inside our Cuzance bedroom window, late at night.
Winter seems far away once we arrive in Cuzance. Yet I know winters were a harsh time in days gone by in Pied de la Croix. I know this from the newspaper tightly packed into every single crevice of the old farmhouse. It lined each step of the stairs up to the attic and the gap between each outside door and the floorboards. One day, as I am tearing out this tangible sign of the bitter cold seeping in, Jean-Claude tells me about Madame de la Croix’s attempts to stave off the icy fingers of winter. He kneels down and shows me how the old oak wood is exceptionally smooth and shiny in some places.
Those gleaming spots are near cracks that are wider than others in the floorboards. Why do you think that is Jean-Claude asks me? He likes to test my knowledge. I tell him I have absolutely no idea and couldn’t possibly hazard a guess.
When he reveals the reason, to say I am astonished is a huge understatement.
Apparently, Madame de la Croix, used to roll up small pieces of stale pain and then stuff the bread in the cracks to fill them up. The romanticism of days long gone dims with such tales that betray the ferocity of winter and a life lived on the land. I now have two summers, two rhythms and two lives. Yet the spirit of Madame de la Croix lives on in the dusty corners of our rooms.
Actually, while it seems far from Paris, in reality our petite maison is just a swift four-hour train trip on the TGV from Brive-la-Gaillarde to Gare d’Austerlitz. However, while in Cuzance, being in our petite village in the Lot, it is like being buried deep in the country. Rabbits bounce along the road right outside Pied de la Croix and squirrels scamper over the moss-covered stone wall opposite the French doors in our kitchen.
While the alluring streets of Paris beckon brightly, it’s just the way we like it. There is an encompassing sense of being far away from the world. Our friends find it even more so when they arrive to stay and to their dismay, they discover there is not even a boulangerie. They try to hide their disappointment, for after all, is not a boulangerie the quintessential essence of life in a petite village in France? On the eve of our annual departure to our petite maison, the enquiry from friends and colleagues is always, ‘When are you going to Paris?’ It seems that Paris is synonymous with going to France. We gloss over the fact that most times we simply land at Charles de Gaulle and the most we see of Paris is the metro.
While we no longer have a desire to be tourists in the other famous cities of the world, the romance and beauty of Paris will never lose