My day gets underway despite the possibility of creatures who have taken up permanent residence in our absence. While we get our bank statements and other French accounts delivered to us at home, it occurs to me that after a year, I should probably check the post box.
It wasn’t until we got our regulation-sized, Le Bureau de Poste approved post box late the year before and attached it to the stone wall – under Jean-Claude’s guidance about what position would be deemed acceptable by Le Bureau de Poste – that we were considered to officially exist in France. I discover a puzzling collection of very official-looking letters. They have been posted every two months from a government office in Cahors. We have absolutely no idea what they mean. They are put aside to ask Jean-Claude about when we visit for a late afternoon apéritif. What does bring me enormous joy is a welcoming letter from Kaitlyn and Ryan, my students at home. I am deeply touched by their thoughtfulness that a letter is here to greet me at the start of our long summer away. This too I tuck away to share with Jean-Claude and Françoise.
It is yet another extraordinary fragment of my new life, the fact that two of the people I am the closest to, are a seventeen-year-old Australian school girl and a seventy-year-old French man.
Today I have to tackle the dust-covered linen and towels, yet even washing in France is not an ordinary experience. I venture down to the cellar and pull back the creaking, cobweb-covered wooden door. I always have to remember to stoop as I go in or I’ll hit my head on the low stone doorway. I reach for my washing products that are placed in a handy little stone niche in the wall. The cellar has been here for one hundred and thirty years; like many other elements of our petite farmhouse, I wonder about all those before me whose footsteps I am following in the cavernous, cool space. Next I need to unpack. I have not even had to go near my suitcase yet for I’ve just pulled on clothes that I left in our armoire. What is already dawning on me, is that in my usual fashion, I have seriously over-packed. What on earth was I thinking when I filled my suitcase? In the depths of the country, I simply pull on a T-shirt and a pair of pantaloons every day. I seem to have packed for the Riviera or a summer of Paris soirees. It has never been my forte. And let’s not forget, I have been lured by the promise of solde in Limoges in our first week . Indeed, as I was packing at home, even I was struck by my sheer madness at bringing clothes back to France that I’d bought just the previous year. Like our well-travelled Sim card (which I hasten to add still doesn’t work), it would seem that I also aspire to have clothes that travel the world more than most people I know. Seriously, I don’t know what I’m thinking at times. Later, when Gérard and Dominique drop in to see us and I’m invariably in my less than attractive rénovation clothes, they actually ask if when we go home I can send a photo of what I look like when I go to school every day. That seems to sum up my lack of stylishness in France, despite my best attempts at times.
Over our apéritif with Jean-Claude and Françoise in the soft glow of the late summer afternoon, I make plans with Françoise for my first cooking lesson to make a tarte aux pomme, an apple pie that will also be a French lesson, as all my instructions will be in French . This is why I am in France after all. Sadly though, the summer will pass and our plans will be thwarted. Next year; that seems to be our catchcry for many things. As I obsessively work later in le jardin in the intense summer heat, I dream of how in the following year, under Françoise’s expert culinary guidance, my tarte aux pomme will glisten in its honey glaze.
Before we leave their maison, Jean-Claude translates our official letters. They are related to the new la grange roof and enquire whether la grange will now be inhabited.
Absolutely not, Jean-Claude emphatically declares, and writes accordingly on the letter for us in French. He and Stuart conspiringly agree that we should not pay any more taxes than necessary. All that our barn houses is our voiture and a car hardly counts. Views on taxes are clearly the same the world over. As we wish them bonne nuit, Françoise climbs the small wooden stepladder in the enchanting kingdom of her petite la cuisine. She reaches and stretches for jars of her gleaming homemade confiture. The most prized jar of jam is her fig one, labelled September 2009. We are then given a choice between fraise and rhubarb, all from her immaculate potage garden. While strawberry is a luscious choice on fresh pain, we choose the rhubarb as we have not tasted it before. It is touches like these, of the homemade gifts of confiture from the French kitchen of our dear friend, that make all the difference between simply having a maison in France and having a home. In such a short time, Cuzance is definitely home.
8
Restoring la Petite Maison
Stuart’s promise of the past – which I had never quite believed – has proved to be true.
He reminds me that he had absolutely assured me, that each year the renovating and hard work would get easier. To my enormous surprise, it is indeed the case. Well, at least so far. It’s early days yet. At the start of our vacances, time seems to stretch to infinity.
However, our frantic, feverish renovating seems to have decidedly been replaced by domesticity. On day three, Stuart tackles the enormous pile of paperwork – voiture insurance, the Piscine Ambiance contract we need to renew each year for opening and closing the pool, and of course, the official Cahors letters. I start to unpack our suitcases.
It is telling in itself that after three whole nights, we’ve had no need of anything we packed.
Our tiny wardrobe is fitted into the wall of our chambre. It has handmade, dark wooden doors and is very small and narrow. I carefully apportion half the petite space to each of us. I then meticulously layer our clothes on the hangers. There is a trick to hanging everything properly; the coat hangers have to be ever so carefully placed at an angle. Who knew there was such an art form involved in hanging clothes so precisely?
Yet what do we wear each day in Cuzance? The very clothes that have stayed in Cuzance for a year. For two people who claim to rarely shop, it seems absurd to simply have so many. Just like the delight I take in unearthing our vide grenier finds to display and decorate, once again, I pull on my much loved, well-worn, faded green pantaloons, my soft-with-age blue and white striped top and my faded denim skirt. These clothes cost me only a few euro and must have been washed hundreds of times by their previous owners. They are my absolute favourites, for they are like meeting up with old friends.
And the rest of the time? We pull on our old, stained, ripped work clothes to labour day after day in le jardin.
My life is suddenly so domestic this year, that my notes for daily life consist of asking Françoise why the water stays in the washing machine compartment each time I wash, and what is the word for stain remover. A far cry indeed from just a year ago.
This however, although I don’t yet know it, is all about to rapidly change... It would seem I have a false sense of idyll.
In the short space of a year, it is hard to believe that our early days on arrival, have changed so dramatically. It is also a source of irony to me, that now our petite maison is no longer an empty, bare shell, waiting to be renovated and furnished, and the more Pied de la Croix becomes a home, the more there is to do before we can even start this year’s huge project outside. So it is not until day four, that the house is fully restored from its packed-away, boxed-up, dust-covered state. The books are out, the objets artfully displayed, and it is already such a home in every sense that every single item I go to reach for, whether it is in la cuisine or la salle de bain, that there is nothing I can’t find that I need. I even have a hairdryer in the bathroom. How times have changed indeed!
I feel