Last Tango in Toulouse (17 page)

‘It's all very well for you to be here now, doing the washing and the shopping and feeding the bloody chickens,' I rail. ‘But where were you when I really needed you, when the children were growing up, when they were teenagers and being difficult?'

He shakes his head and looks deeply hurt. Where is the woman with the ready smile? Where is the easygoing, fun-loving wife, always quick with a joke and a happy laugh? She has somehow vanished, replaced by a scowling, bitter woman, quick to reproach and criticise.

I can't help but feel sorry for him, but I also feel sorry for myself and the situation I now find us in. And I really don't know what to do about it.

In the late spring and summer the farm is beautiful and I am determined, no matter how miserable I am feeling, to try to make the most of it. Our first season of living there is well before the drought sets in so the paddocks are smothered with lush green pasture and both the dam and creek are bubbling with cool, clear water. Behind the old hall is an area that has been used for decades as a vegetable garden, and when I slip a spade into the soil it is like butter, rich and dark and teeming with worms. There is a stand of three mature walnut trees, probably more than sixty years old, but in that first season they bear no fruit because of the late frost that hit during the flowering time, cutting the tips and turning the canopy black. The trees have recovered and are fully clothed in fresh healthy foliage, with the promise of a good crop next season. Because walnuts are one of the most important crops in southwest France I am pleased to have three magnificent trees of my own. In poor rural areas of the Lot, ownership of even one good walnut tree is to be prized, and you often see very old women in pinafores with baskets gathering the fallen nut capsules in
the early autumn. Perhaps that will be me in a few years' time.

Along the back fenceline I discover a long, deep drift of brilliant yellow daffodils, so plentiful that I am able to pick them by the bucketful to decorate the house. Their cheerfulness helps to lift my spirits, which are still wildly out of control. At this stage I start to conduct a constant and exhausting inner dialogue with myself, arguing the case for and against continuing my relationship with the man from Toulouse. We have almost daily contact and this keeps the feeling between us alive. I wonder whether, if we stopped communicating altogether, it would assume less significance in my life and gradually fade away. A large part of me wants to go back to feeling the way I did all those years before this happened – happy and cheerful and relatively content with my lot in life. But deep inside I know that I will never be quite the same person again. I have confronted so much and brought it out in the open. I can no longer just bury my feelings and pretend that everything is fine. And, of course, the other part of me relishes the fact that this man is so enamoured of me, wants me, and is prepared to take risks so that we can eventually be together, even if it is just for a few stolen moments.

At the farm I decide that I am not going to fall into the trap of creating a large and time-consuming ornamental garden, even though I know that this is what most people expect of me. Garden clubs phone and asked if they can come and visit – by the busload – and I am open and welcoming to them, explaining that what they will see are lots of green paddocks and well established trees but no deep flower beds of perennials and old roses or herbaceous borders overflowing with rare alpine treasures, as in my previous garden. What they will see here is a real farm with a few old wilting hydrangeas and many, many weeds. I host a few
morning and afternoon teas with groups and they love exploring the old house and hearing its history, then make encouraging comments about how beautiful the garden will be once I ‘get going' with it. But I am determined not to.

I do, however, intend to establish a good-sized vegetable garden to grow all the wonderful produce that I have enjoyed buying in the markets and cooking for friends in our little village house in Frayssinet. Being in a cold climate, the garden is suitable for all sorts of berry fruits – raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries, currants and strawberries. Artichokes grow brilliantly here, as do asparagus, rhubarb and all the perennials that need a winter chill to be at their best. I also intend to grow herbs as well as winter and summer vegetables, although the locals inform me that getting tomatoes to ripen in one season is not always possible.

‘Never plant your tomatoes until the day after the Melbourne Cup,' one old-timer tells me with conviction. ‘The late frost will get them every time.'

I gradually start to meet our neighbours living in the immediate vicinity. Robert and Sue, who have restored the old inn just down the road, arrive one afternoon with a bottle of wine and a copy of an old photograph of our house, taken possibly around 1920. The original owner, Mabel Walshaw, had been Robert's great-aunt and he knows every square inch of the house and the farmland surrounding it, having spent so much time here in his childhood. His family is one of the largest and oldest in the district. They have lived here for four generations and he is the oldest of six sons who have all remained, more or less, as neighbours. Robert works in town but also farms the land around the old inn and is a part-time beekeeper, a
tradition maintained from the previous generation. Sue grows the best peonies in the district, huge white, pink and crimson flowerheads – peonies are considered ‘difficult' plants to cultivate in most regions of Australia. Here the winter chill creates exactly the right growing environment, and seeing Sue's magnificent collection of peonies in full bloom, I am sorely tempted to try growing them myself. But I resist. Robert and Sue quickly become firm friends and we wander back and forth to each other's homes for casual evening meals together. The inn they have restored would have been the halfway staging post for travellers between Lithgow and Bathurst. They have almost completed a function hall on one side, with accommodation that will eventually become a bed and breakfast. The house is perfect for it.

I also meet David's soulmate, Russell, late one afternoon when we are taking a stroll around the paddock that adjoins our two properties. Russell has a beer in his hand when he comes to the fence to greet us, and puts it on the ground so he can shake my hand vigorously. He's a good-looking man in his early fifties with slightly wild eyes and a humorous turn of phrase.

‘Take your sunglasses off so I can see your eyes,' he says without any hint of rudeness.

I oblige and smile at him. He takes both my hands in his and gazes deep into my eyes. ‘You're lovely,' he says, which makes David laugh and me blush.

‘It's a pleasure to meet you,‘ I say, trying to change the subject. ‘David has told me a lot about you.'

‘I'm sure he has,' says Russell. ‘You probably won't think it's a pleasure for long. Most people don't like me much when they get to know me.'

‘Nonsense,' I say. ‘Come over and have a beer or a cup of tea with us any time you like.'

We talk a little about his organic farm, in which he grows rows of brilliant scarlet rhubarb and huge heads of garlic between the piles of rusting rubbish that are scattered over most of his paddocks. He uses geese as natural insect control, and they also help to keep down the grass that grows wildly in and around the old car wrecks and rusty fridges. Russell has numerous and quite high-level horticultural qualifications and is aware of my work as a gardening writer. But his life has been sorely affected by alcoholism which, at the moment, he assures us, he has under control.

‘I've just done two programs in town that help problem drinkers,' he tells me. ‘They've really helped,' he adds, reaching for another beer.

I instantly like Russell, even though I can see that he's more than a little eccentric. There's something lovable and very vulnerable about him and David and I agree that having him as a neighbour far outweighs the disadvantage of his unsightly rubbish collection. When we first saw the ‘Steptoe and Son' state of his property we planned to plant a thick screening hedge to obliterate it, but now, having met Russell, we think his eclectic mess adds to the appeal of our mutual surroundings.

There are two younger couples in the street. Across the road is a couple with three boys approximately the same age as my older grandsons, and in a small cottage next door a younger couple who have a baby girl about the same age as little Gus. They are all friendly and welcoming and I feel almost immediately accepted into the community.

Robert and Sue have an old tractor and they offer to turn over the old vegetable garden so that I can get going with my
ambitious plans to create a French-style potager. When I indicate the size of the area I want ploughed Robert looks bemused.

‘You planning to feed all of Bathurst, are you?' he says.

‘Well, I do have a large family,' I say in my defence. ‘And I am planning to grow perennials like artichokes and asparagus and potatoes which take up a lot of space.'

For me it's an utter luxury to have this much space to play with, even though I know, that cultivating such a large vegetable garden will involve an enormous amount of work.

I am planning to try to make our Australian farm as close to the model of a French farm as possible. This means I want to concentrate only on plants and animals that provide food for the table. The French have an entirely different attitude towards gardening, stemming from centuries of poverty where no resource was wasted for frivolous decorative purposes. When you talk to a French person about their ‘jardin' they will automatically assume you are referring to their potager. It all comes down to the cost of the plants and the fertiliser and water that is used to keep those plants alive. French farmers who don't have their own independent water supply are on a ‘user pays' system and wouldn't dream of splashing costly water onto prissy perennial borders. Potted pelargoniums and begonias are okay, as are roses planted against the old stone walls. At least they are relatively drought-resistant. Because eating is so important to the French, growing good things to eat is also a priority. I intend taking the same approach, and scour the rural newspaper classifieds, looking for breeding stock of muscovy ducks and geese that I intend to use for meat as well as the pure white fat that is so highly prized in French cuisine.

‘It won't be long,' I say to David with great enthusiasm,
‘before we are frying our own potatoes in our own goose fat.'

Russell soon becomes a regular visitor, hopping over the fence for a beer in the late afternoon and offering all sorts of advice and help for various jobs that need to be done around the farm. About 5.30 one afternoon, he calls by when David and I are still working, he on a script and me on a magazine article. Russell brings a large bunch of glorious rhubarb – he never comes empty-handed – but we don't invite him to stay for a drink because we haven't quite come to the end of our working day.

‘Come and have a drink tomorrow,' I say to him, ‘when we are not so busy.'

That evening, after nightfall, we see the flashing lights of a police vehicle, driving along the old highway at the back of the property. We don't think much about it, but on the local radio news the next morning we hear of a local man being killed in a road accident the night before. Again, we don't think much about it except to wonder who it might have been. Later that day, a neighbour phones and tells us it was Russell. We are totally devastated by the news. Apparently, not long after he left our place he took his utility truck and drove towards town. The tailgate fell off and he pulled his vehicle over to the side of the road. It was just before dusk when visibility is poor. As he went to retrieve the tailgate, a large fourwheel drive came down the highway, hauling a horse trailer. It was the trailer that hit Russell, and he was killed instantly.

‘If only we'd asked him to stay for a drink,' I lament, ‘this may never have happened.' I feel dreadful.

But that's a stupid thing to say. It was just his time, Russell's time to go. He was a true eccentric and, even though we have only just got to know him and appreciate his funny ways, we shall
miss him. But his unexpected death upsets me more than I expect, perhaps because I am in a sensitive frame of mind. David, too, is hit hard by the news, and when we go for our regular late-afternoon walk now we invariably stand at the spot where we used to chat to Russell over the fence and look sadly at his collection of rusting rubble. I'm not sure what's going through David's mind, but I know for me it's a salient reminder that life is very fragile and that it can be cut short at any moment – after all, Russell was exactly my age.

One of David's responses to the possibility of my having a relationship with another man is to take a long hard look at himself, at the way he looks, the way he feels and the way he often behaves around the house. Not only is he overweight and lacking in energy, he is often grumpy and negative, and these personality characteristics are hard for me to live with. It's very easy for him to slip into a trough, especially as he is by nature a little on the dour side, so he decides, wisely, to turn things around. He enrols at the gym in Bathurst and starts again on his old exercise regime. As before, the results are amazing. Within weeks his former fitness levels start to return and his whole attitude to life improves. I am not sure whether it is the endorphins released during a workout, but he becomes addicted to his daily ‘fix' of exercise and combines it well with other helpful routines. After the gym he does the household shopping, pays the bills, visits the post office and does all the other irritating administrative tasks associated with running the farm. When he comes home each day he has a smile on his face and is often clutching a bottle of champagne or some other little gift for me. It is like living with a different man, and it certainly helps with the rekindling of our relationship. All the good things are coming back. He
often phones me to say he's about to leave town for the twenty-minute drive back to the farm. I light the little fire in our bedroom and have a bath and when he returns we spend most of the afternoon in bed. It's no wonder I have little time for gardening.