A Year in Provence (10 page)

Even if the property should be owned outright by a single acquisitive peasant, such as Massot, there is no guarantee of a straightforward transaction. The peasant may set a price which he thinks is absurdly high, and which will keep him in drink and lottery tickets for the rest of his days. A buyer comes along and agrees to the inflated price. The peasant immediately suspects trickery. It’s too easy. The price must be too low. He withdraws the house from the market for six months before trying again at a higher figure.

And then there are the trifling inconveniences that are mentioned casually at the last minute: an outbuilding that has been lost to a neighbor in a card game; an ancient right of way that technically permits the passage of herds of goats through the kitchen twice a year; a dispute over well water that has been bitter and unresolved since 1958; the venerable sitting tenant who is bound to die before next spring—there is always something
unexpected, and a buyer needs patience and a sense of humor to see the business through.

I tried to prepare Tony for these local oddities as we drove to the office of a property agent whom we knew, but I should have saved my breath. He was, by his own modest admission, a shrewd and resourceful negotiator. He had played hardball with the big boys on Madison Avenue, and it would take more than bureaucracy or a French peasant to get the better of him. I began to doubt the wisdom of introducing him to anyone who didn’t have a car phone and a personal business manager.

The agent met us at the door of her office, and sat us down with two thick files of property details and photographs. She spoke no English and Tony spoke vestigial French, and since direct communication was impossible he behaved as if she wasn’t there. It was a particularly arrogant form of bad manners, made worse by the assumption that even the most derogatory language can be used without the risk of it being understood. And so I passed an embarrassing half hour as Tony flicked through the files, muttering “Fuck me!” and “They must be joking” at intervals while I made feeble attempts to translate his comments into some nonsense about his being impressed by the prices.

He had started with the firm intention of finding a village house with no land. He was far too busy to bother with a garden. But as he went through the properties I could see him mentally becoming the Provençal squire with acres of vines and olives. By the time he had finished he was worrying about where he should put his tennis court. To my disappointment, there were three properties that he thought worthy of his attention.

“We’ll do those this afternoon,” he announced, making notes in his Filofax and looking at his watch. I thought he was going to commandeer the agent’s phone for an international call, but he was just reacting to a signal from his stomach. “Let’s hit a restaurant,” he said, “and we can be back here by two.” The agent smiled and nodded as Tony waved two fingers at her and we left the poor woman to recover.

At lunch, I told Tony that I wouldn’t be going with him and the agent that afternoon. He was surprised that I had anything better to do, but ordered a second bottle of wine and told me that money was an international language and he didn’t anticipate having any difficulties. Unfortunately, when the bill arrived he discovered that neither his gold American Express card nor the wad of traveler’s checks that he hadn’t had time to change were of any interest to the restaurant’s proprietor. I paid, and made some remark about the international language. Tony was not amused.

I left him with mixed feelings of relief and guilt. Boors are always unpleasant, but when you’re in a foreign country and they are of your own nationality you feel some kind of vague responsibility. The next day, I called the agent to apologize. “Don’t worry,” she said, “Parisians are often just as bad. At least I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”

A
FINAL CONFIRMATION
that warmer weather was here to stay was provided by Monsieur Menicueci’s wardrobe. He had come to carry out the preliminary
études
for his summer project, which was our central heating. His woolen bonnet had been replaced by a lightweight cotton model decorated with a slogan advertising sanitary fittings, and instead of his thermal snowshoes he was wearing brown canvas boots. His assistant,
jeune
, was in a guerrilla outfit of army fatigues and jungle cap, and the two of them marched through the house taking measurements as Menicucci delivered himself of assorted
pensées.

Music was his first subject today. He and his wife had just attended an official artisans’ and plumbers’ lunch, followed by ballroom dancing, which was one of his many accomplishments. “Yes, Monsieur Peter,” he said, “we danced until six. I had the feet of a young man of eighteen.” I could picture him, nimble and exact, whirling Madame around the floor, and I wondered if he had a special ballroom bonnet for these occasions,
because it was impossible to think of him bareheaded. I must have smiled at the thought. “I know,” he said, “you’re thinking that the waltz is not serious music. For that one must listen to the great composers.”

He then expounded a remarkable theory, which had occurred to him while he was playing the clarinet during one of the power cuts that the French electricity board arranges at regular intervals. Electricity, he said, is a matter of science and logic. Classical music is a matter of art and logic.
Vous voyez
? Already one sees a common factor. And when you listen to the disciplined and logical progression of some of Mozart’s work, the conclusion is inescapable: Mozart would have made a formidable electrician.

I was saved from replying by
jeune
, who had finished counting up the number of radiators we would need, and had arrived at a figure of twenty. Menicucci received the news with a wince, shaking his hand as if he’d burned his fingers. “
Oh là là.
This will cost more than
centimes.
” He mentioned several million francs, saw my shocked expression and then divided by a hundred; he had been quoting in old money. Even so, it was a considerable amount. There was the high cost of cast iron, plus the government sales tax, or TVA, of 18.6 percent. This led him to mention an outrageous fiscal irregularity which typified the villainy of politicians.

“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.