The first sense of belonging came when we appeared at the local market for the first time. Sunday mornings from seven until noon. It was the market that really showed us how the villagers socialized, how they lived. It was a place we would bring people staying with us so they could see what local life could be life. Not that we knew that much. The market would cover the entire square and would be set up early morning, row upon row of stalls shaded by young plane trees. The market was a feast for the senses especially in high summer when many farmers local to the area came to sell their wares.
I can remember fist sized Quercy melons, the tang of local goat’s cheeses, duck and boar sausages and freshly butchered young chickens. There would be baskets filled with apricots, strawberries, plums, grapes and other produce. Sometimes, if we could afford it, we would purchase, other occasions we would just savour the fragrant smells.
It was here weekly that I got to know Madame Collier who used to sell many different kinds of fruits and vegetables alongside fresh herbs at her long table in prime position in the middle of the first row. Her offerings changed with the seasons, in the summer a riot of colour while come October, a selection of root vegetables and a dozen varieties of potato and squash. Each wooden crate bore a chalked marking not just of a price but locally where it originated from. Everything was local. We all ate the same things.
Madame Collier was une jolie laide, a comely, ugly woman with an added spark of personality. She corrected my mistakes when I would be buying something. Soup carrots were called les grosses and not les grandes as I had mistakenly called them. She was always offering her own advice on what to cook and when. 'The pears won’t wait, don’t boil these potatoes and the avocado is for tomorrow oui?'
The market would be filled with a dozen creaky old farmers, men and women most of who sat in deck chairs under umbrellas surrounded by boxes of eggs and lettuces. There would also be other valuable stalls which we found useful. There was the tin man who sold every junky kitchen utensils you could think of alongside cheap pots and pans. There was a wine seller, off-loading good quality and cheap red vin and rosé along with Rivesaltes, a sweet wine in bottles and in vrac, bulk, when you bring your own plastic jug to be filled from his huge barrel. Depending on the season we would discover the oyster man, the jam lady and a young woman who sold only aged plum and pear wine, which could take the paint off the side of a house.
One of the most likeable vendors, and perhaps the most theatrical was the cheesemonger who used to don a wide straw hat and puffy sleeved black peasant shirt. He would flirt with all the women of the village whatever their age behind his piles of mountain cheeses, hard Cantel and blue cheeses with an occasional Brie or Camembert thrown in for good measure. The locals would be gone by nine and then outsiders would appear. Small clusters of folk would gather between the stalls clean and smart in their Sunday best, young girls in flowery print dresses giving bisous, the traditional kisses of greeting on both cheeks. They would chat with people from another village before making a few considered purchases which would disappear into enormous cloth bags or straw market baskets before meandering to Pierre’s café for a quick drink before vanishing into their diminutive and much abused Citroën’s.
During the hottest summer months, a different crowd would emerge, that of a tourist who maybe had stumbled on the village by accident, passing through on their way to the coast. They would arrive in mini-vans dressed in the barest of clothes and recognizable by their accent, language and sunburn.
But sometimes we would just sit with the locals and people stare outside Pierre’s café nursing a deadly strong café or an apero to get the stomach working before a hearty lunch. We would watch people doing their rounds, flowers first, then fruits, perhaps a few packets of cigarettes from the tabac which would be open for a few hours before getting a baguette from the boulangerie.
I would watch, but no one would be watching me. It was how I liked it.
The hot months swelled the population in the village and became a time when most people vanished behind their shutters. It was often a pain to walk into the village to see the square groaning with visitors and coach tours but the local bar and shops made a profit so to them the summers became worthwhile. Outside the village the camp sites would become filled, everyone’s second home or converted barn would be rented out for a few weeks to gain some extra income, the pool man would be working eighteen hour shifts and all the new faces would buy up all the olives and wine.
The summers provided a strange kind of heat. A dry heat. A heat nonetheless that forced you to become familiar with local traditions.
All of the houses in the village had shutters on the windows, ours were a strange blue for a time le bleu gaulois. Much more than fashion accessories as we were to learn. In the early
morning while the night air still lingered the windows and shutters would be flung open to capture its coolness. By about ten o’clock, however you shut all the windows and shutters effectively turning the house into a darkened shrine but creating a welcome haven from the dry heat outside. We were told it was a tradition of the village, however that did not explain why most villagers kept their windows and shutters closed all year round. The summer months were strange. Long sun-blasted days in an exotic landscape where everything seemed so new, so beautiful.
In the summer like so many of its village visitors we saw only the picturesque in what others might see as cold. We saw the quaint traditions that people had held onto for years maintained for many reasons. It would take us time to comprehend. In the beginning it was all one big puzzle.
One day I recall checking the list of all the laundry with Madame Renoir and sorting out payment for her in her spotless kitchen. I mentioned something about needing a wall being built at our home as a shield against the savage mistral wind which roared straight through our garden and the terrace. This wind would generally cause our terracotta pots to fall and smash causing more exhaustion after tidying up. I personally detested the wind, it made me restless, irritable. Amazingly no one ever mentioned the wind. I mean, I knew the wind blew but what I didn’t know was how savage it would become for days and sometimes weeks on end raging around the valleys causing havoc to my roof where sometimes the tiles would scatter like confetti. Something had to be done quickly about a wall which would give us some relief. Madame Renoir pursed her lips and shook her newly dyed henna hair and said that her husband (the one who used to nod and grunt at me) was a splendid maçon and if I liked could get him to come along to the house to discuss ideas. She further said, hand on heart he was the best maçon in town, if not the area, if not the whole of France and that he would be fair with his price as he knew the house having done work there with the previous owners. He knew every brick, every stone, every tile. It was a suggestion, albeit slightly over-exaggerated that I could not refuse. I was always so grateful to the Renoirs.
Monsieur Renoir, Luc, was a large man. Six foot something, muscular, handsome even when viewed close up. The strong silent type who liked a quiet home, good food with wine just not one for conversation. A well reserved man but when he smiled his whole personality changed. A smile was rare. He wore a cloth cap on the back of his head and was never
without his black and white chequered jacket or a Gitane on his lower lip. His handshake was strong and his accent thick. He was to prove an excellent maçon and, in the end, a grateful friend. Sometimes his ideas were totally the opposite of mine.
He was all for ripping out the old fireplace, replacing everything with black and white chrome and was constantly bewildered when I said I like the old French rustic style. He was even more bewildered when he was asked to strip down all the exposed beams which had been painted so their brilliant silvered oak could be revealed. He spent hours if not days peeling back the years of paint and when complimented would give a shrug.
'People judge my work all the time. I am just a peasant,' he would mutter. I discovered Luc was not one for a compliment but would raise a smile and mutter a thank you whenever the sound of a cold beer or wine was being poured. In the end Luc spent nearly two years doing building work for us and after a long period came round to my way of thinking and planning. All traces of modern decor were stripped way and the old style resurfaced, a welcoming back to the way it was and should be.
Luc once brought his parents up to have a look. They would, he assured me, be surprised and shocked that I had recreated exactly what they had spent their lives getting rid of.
'It’s like a museum,' his mother cried, arms outstretched like an opera singer entering the stage to applause when she walked in. Both people were gentle, aged and dressed all in church black, he with cap in hand and marvelled at this almost forgotten way of life. For me it was just a home that was simple, understood, without fuss.
They could not comprehend why there was no television set, no cocktail cabinet, no curtains just shutters and that the huge fireplace burned only wood.
The floors remained uneven and polished with a rug here and there. Madame Renoir Senior tutted that there was no carpet, that the lamps were old and just run on oil and that the beams had been stripped and not concealed tidily and nicely in the ceiling. But they were both extremely polite.
They left with smiles and many handshakes but the smiles soon turned sad and their heads shook in disbelief as I heard them mutter that one must be mad to live like that. A mad foreigner! Someone living in the past that everyone else was attempting to run from.
Living here with the old.
Decaying.
The memories of the past.
Madame Escargot was ninety at a day when we moved to the village and retained her strong independence to the very end. She was the only person in the village to invite me into her house for something to drink. It was because she had recognized me from old films. Memories from the past. Emilie (she eventually told me her first name) was no more than five feet tall, had few teeth and a face like an old apple. Her usual expression to anyone walking past her home would be a scowling, angry exterior with sparkling alive green eyes. Her usual conversation was a catalogue of moans, groans, growls and odd spitting noises emerging from her pursed lips which she used to exaggerate by a smudge of red lipstick. Her conversations were punctured by a waving of arms, shrugs and gestures with her hands. She was forever disgusted with the world, the youth, the men and women of today, the cold of the night, the heat of the day and the violence of modern society. She hated foreigners also. But she loved the English and used to spend time re-watching old classic movies from a bygone forgotten age. Most of these matinee classics featured me. For an older French woman she spoke remarkable English which she only spoke in my company. Everyone else got shouted at in her native gutter French.
Her home was an old traditional farmhouse situated on the edge of the village within walking distance to mine. It was a simple rectangle building with a clay roof, an old style front door with porch and two diamond shaped windows facing the road. Inside exposed beams penetrated the rooms which were kept warm by one small fire which was also stocked with various pieces of firewood.
I had often stood in front of the house admiring the windows when I first met Madame Escargot. I introduced myself as the new owner of the house back up the hill. She said nothing but curiously just looked at me. The next time she also said nothing. But by the third time I walked by one warm sunny afternoon, she invited me inside for a drink of water. We managed to have a brief conversation and there for the first time I saw her smile, a rare beautiful beam which changed the whole outlook of her face.
'I had to learn English,' she said. 'I knew England from many years ago but I learnt words from these films.' She picked up a magazine which had a few film titles written down. 'Do you know them?'
She handed to me the magazine.
She had written down a few film titles and I knew then she knew who I was. She smiled. It was obvious she was playing a little game with me but without asking me the question. So I just nodded and said yes, I knew the films and what a different world it was back then. On several occasions I would be invited in for a quick café and I would sit in her bare stone kitchen. The room was dim, lit meagrely by a single large window above the sink and another thin slit by the door. In the kitchen stood a huge grandfather clock, a small television set and a mini refrigerator. She would talk at great length about some film she had just watched, what she thought of it, the story, the sub plot, the acting. I smiled. I remembered the story well and I agreed with her, some of the acting was tragic. 'But it was a good film,' I would always say and she would nod her head enthusiastically. 'Oui, a good film.'
It was then I realized this ninety something aged woman had no fire, no heat no bathroom, telephone or cooker. She lived within a fantasy beautiful world of classic b movies. And that was what kept her alive. When I left after one visit I rather forwardly took her hand and kissed her lightly on both cheeks. She cooed with pleasure and I realized that, like my own grandmother, she had most likely outlived her contemporaries and had few people in her life. Of course back at the house, we had other people working alongside us. Anthony would be in charge of all the outside work, maintenance of the terraces, pruning of the vines, the spraying, the pruning, the cutting, the never ending changing face of the landscape. Anthony was helped along by a neighbour, Monsieur Dante. A grey haired man of about fifty with a dropping moustache. He hardly ever spoke, never smiled, refused all offers of conversation except a Oui when offered a wine. He carried an air of sadness about him. From time to time I would watch him and see him stop whatever he was doing to consider his sadness, shake his head slowly sighing, brush his heads with his arm and then continue his work. In the early days he would bring his dog with him who also appeared sad and dejected. Monsieur Renoir said he was a good worker, had a wife who was always ill and could be found at least one evening a week in the local bar nursing a pastis alone. I met his wife a few times. Once she arrived with his lunch in a box. She was a few years younger than him and had an almost childlike appearance. She dragged a small child alongside her like a toy dog on wheels. She never spoke but would look down and twist on her flip-flopped feet with cracked red toenail polish. She would then leave as quickly as she came. In all the years I was there we never spoke. She never looked at me.