Last Tango in Toulouse (9 page)

Inside Jock's large, mid-seventy-year-old body there beats the heart of a man much younger and more energetic. He still sees himself as being about thirty years old, rakishly attractive (which he still is, of course) and with a constitution that can effortlessly tolerate a wild and often hedonistic lifestyle. He must have been blessed with a fantastic set of genes and a cast-iron constitution, but he also has certain medically based limitations – lungs that wheeze and splutter after more than seven decades of chronic asthma and a heart that has successfully undergone major surgery and should be treated with a little more respect.

Jock's main problem is that he is such a popular and entertaining guest that his summer diary is crammed with invitations for lunches, dinners, drinks and general merriment. All his friends worry about him because from time to time his entire system falls apart, and on at least two occasions he has ended up in hospital with a life-threatening illness, the last one pneumonia. However, it takes more than a little brush with death to stop Jock in his tracks, and after a week of slowing down to recover he's back on deck, ready to party.

The contrasts in Jock's life are profound. During the long,
hot days of summer he is on a non-stop treadmill of social activities, with house guests and parties that stretch for weeks into months. He gains a lot of weight, becomes even more florid in the face and often looks as though he's been to hell and back a few times. In winter the entire social scene calms down and, as temperatures plummet to below zero, Jock hibernates in his small stone house, often remaining in his study, where the only heater is, before wandering into the icy kitchen to cook up some dinner or up to his equally frosty bedroom to sleep. He attempts to brighten this dreary winter hiatus by throwing the odd dinner party – he's an excellent and creative cook – but friends attend with some trepidation. A mutual friend recounts sitting through a delicious four-course dinner wearing her overcoat, scarf and gloves; others claim they furiously stoke the fire but still shiver all night. Last winter his oldest friends, Margaret and Lucience, ganged up and insisted that he install some electric heaters. However, Jock is still inclined to absent-mindedly leave a door or window open, so it's never cosy.

In summer Jock reverts to his wild ways, exhausting by association all those within his orbit. It's not uncommon for him to attend a lunch that lingers on until five o'clock, go home for a snooze then out again to an evening meal or party that starts at 7.30 and goes until well after midnight. Concerned about his health, I once emailed him from Australia saying that I had heard via the grapevine that he had been ‘overdoing it' a little, considering he was not long out of hospital. He replied with an amusing slice of his diary, detailing his various social activities, ending each one with ‘and woke the following morning feeling absolutely fine'. Well, perhaps Jock's idea of ‘fine' is different from most people's. I know how I feel after a few weeks trying to
keep up with his pace in France, and ‘fine' isn't the word. It's ‘ruined'!

Like everyone living in a remote rural region, Jock is totally dependent on his car for mobility. There are no taxis or trains or buses in the countryside so, after a five-hour lunch, driving home, no matter in what condition, is unavoidable. Over time Jock's reliable old Peugeot has taken a bit of a battering. The rubber side-strips have been scraped off, one by one. The side mirrors have been known to take out the odd passing shrub, and the back bumper bar has born the brunt of more than half a dozen badly judged reverses. The driver-side front fender is entirely caved in, though Jock insists he wasn't responsible for that one – someone backed into him in a car park. And there's a running gag among his friends about a ‘Watch Out For Children' sign erected in the driveway of a friend's rental house: Jock has knocked it down at least four times.

His worst accident happened one summer when he attended a morning drinks party that somehow became a lunch party that somehow continued with glasses of wine into the early evening. Jock suddenly realised the lateness of the hour and decided he should go home, weaving his car down the long driveway, pruning some of the hedge with his side mirrors. Next morning his neighbours were horrified to see his badly dented car parked out the front of his house. The passenger side was completely stoved in and the front bumper bar was on the road. Mid-morning, Jock emerged from his house a little rumpled and red-faced but none the worse for wear. He seemed highly amused, revealing that as he pulled in to park in front of his house, his foot ‘slipped' off the brake and the car plunged forward into the thick stone front wall. The car was pronounced
‘totalled' by the local mechanic, M Moliere, and without insurance Jock was faced with having to rustle up the funds for a new one. When asked by friends what had happened, Jock responded in characteristic fashion: ‘The front wall reared up and attacked the car,' he said.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, all is not running smoothly down on the farm. David is feeling a profound sense of loneliness and disconnection, not having me there to soothe his passage into our new environment. He has befriended our rather eccentric neighbour Russell, who pops over the fence for a beer and a chat about local life in the district. Like David, Russell is a hoarder, except that his collections consist mainly of junk which is scattered at random from one end of his property to the other. There are rusting sheets of corrugated iron, old water tanks riddled with holes, kitchen and laundry appliances, sinks, baths, toilets, buckets, and piles of railway sleepers and tangled coils of wire. You could be forgiven for thinking that his side paddock is the local tip, only probably not as tidy. In and around the drifts of rubbish Russell manages to cultivate organic vegetables mainly leeks and rhubarb for the commercial market, and has a large flock of honking geese that he allows to graze and keep the grass down. There are two old houses on the property but Russell actually lives in the shed. The houses are rented out to augment his meagre income. But Russell is strangely lovable and David grows immediately fond of him, looking forward to his spontaneous afternoon visits that help break the silence.

As the weeks pass David discovers various practical problems around the property, a pretty normal occurrence when you move to somewhere new. The water pump frequently malfunctions,
leaving him mid-shower with his customary head-to-toe soapy lather and suddenly no water to rinse it off. Neighbours come to the rescue, helping to prime the pump and get things moving again, at least for a day or so.

The animals are also taking time to adjust to the new place. Floyd, our half-blind Labrador, disappears for hours at a time and David worries that he may wander as far as the highway, where he could be skittled or, worse, cause a terrible accident. Searching for him one day, he encounters a half-naked elderly man in one of Russell's rented cottages who introduces himself as Frank. He has a thick Dutch accent and a broad sense of humour.

‘Have you seen a Labrador?' David asks.

‘Sure I have,' says Frank. ‘He was here two minutes ago and killed one of the geese.'

David reels back in disbelief and becomes instantly defensive.

‘That couldn't have been our Floyd,' he stammers. ‘Floyd has grown up with chickens and ducks. He loves poultry. He would
never ever
kill a bird. He's a Labrador.'

Frank roars with laughter. ‘And I'm a fucking Dutchman. Don't worry about it. I hate those bloody geese. I hope your Labrador comes back and kills the rest of them.'

David slinks off and eventually Floyd returns looking quite innocent, no traces of blood or feathers around his mouth.

The cats have been allocated the laundry to settle in, but eventually David starts to let them have the run of the house and garden. Disoriented, they immediately start messing in the corners and he rings Miriam in alarm.

‘The cats have crapped on the carpet,' he reports in some disgust.

‘Well, clean it up,' she says with little compassion. As the mother of four small boys, her life is a constant round of bum wiping and associated mess, and she has little time for her father and his helplessness.

The cats are banned from the house until I return and some semblance of normal life is restored.

Mid-October the weather suddenly turns bitterly cold and there is a black frost that burns the tips off every tree and shrub in the garden. The wind howls across the paddocks and buffets the house in icy blasts. David isn't very good at keeping the fires going and the atmosphere is bleak and dreary.

Already prone to depression, during this period alone at the farm he falls into a black hole. When I phone him from France, bubbling with excitement about living in the house in Frayssinet and catching up with all my friends, the intrigues of village life and the joys of the local food, he sounds totally down in the dumps and negative.

‘Don't you like it there?' I ask with some degree of guilt.

‘Not really,' he says. ‘It's cold and the house is very large and very empty. I wish I was back in Leura.'

My heart sinks at this news. I am beginning to feel that I have pushed for too much change in too short a time. Not only have I insisted on buying this little village house so that I can escape to it every year, I have also uprooted David from our home at Leura so that when I am away he is living in unfamiliar surroundings. Yet I also feel unreasonably irritated by his inability to adapt and cope. After all, Miriam, Rick and his four grandsons are only twenty-five minutes away by car and he can easily spend more time with them if he's feeling lonely or down. In the back of my mind is always the niggling resentment from years gone by.
He repeatedly left me to cope with a large house and four young children for months at a time, and now it's my turn. It's not that I don't feel some compassion for his predicament, it's just that I am determined to hang on to this precious time when I can be my own person.

Just before Ethan and Lynne catch the plane back to Australia for the birth of their baby a surprise party is held in their honour – a combined farewell and baby shower. Our English friend Carole organises the party, collecting money for a present for the baby – an elaborate and very stylish French baby carriage that includes a car capsule for a newborn. I drive Ethan and Lynne to Bob and Carole's, ostensibly for a farewell drink. A crowd of twenty-five friends have gathered and they leap forward as we enter, much to the kids' astonishment. Lynne is overwhelmed by the generosity of her new friends and sheds a few tears. She and Ethan spend hours working out how the various components of the pram slot together. It's great that they have been accepted into this community but also sad that they can't stay and have their baby here at the local hospital. At a time like this, Lynne needs her family's support, and they would not be covered by the French health system, which would make it a very expensive delivery.

A few days later I drive them to Toulouse airport and as they book in at the Air France counter we realise that the folded pram has now put them seriously overweight in the baggage department. They are slapped with a massive excess baggage bill and the young woman behind the counter doesn't show a flicker of compassion despite the fact that Lynne is obviously distressed. I offer to pay the bill with my credit card, reassuring them that they can repay me with some work at the farm when I get back.
I laugh quietly to myself, thinking it would have been cheaper for me to buy them a pram at home, but of course they are so thrilled with the stylish French one that it's unthinkable not to take it back.

Back at the house, I am alone within those four thick stone walls for the first time. I light a fire, put on some music and pour a glass of wine, soaking up the mood and trying to regain the heady feeling I had the previous year of being a woman living alone in a small French village. It's an overwhelmingly seductive sensation. I feel rather decadent being so free and independent, sparing barely a thought for David at home, trying to settle into the farm and feeling so lonely without me.

After a day or two of just revelling in the delights of the house I start to get organised for the real purpose of this visit – setting up the village walking tours that I aim to run every year to justify my annual visit. My friend Jan, originally from New Zealand and now living full-time in France with her French landscaper husband Philippe, has agreed to help me with the task, which involves booking hotels and bus companies and working out an interesting and varied itinerary. Her French language skills are terrific and we set off to visit all the towns in the region to gather material from each one's Office de Tourisme. I have decided that walking should be an important facet of the tour; it's by far the best way of seeing the local countryside and appreciating its unique beauty.

During this period of setting up the tour I ponder the rights and wrongs of bringing Australian tourists to regional France. After all, I have just experienced the downside of tourism in my home village back in Australia, so I question whether it is absurd of me to be doing exactly the same in reverse here in
our quiet little region of France. I run my doubts past our friends, asking them how they feel about my bringing Australian tourists to the Lot.

‘Don't worry about it,' says Jock. ‘It will be fun. As long as I can still get a seat at Madame Murat's restaurant, I have no objections.'

‘It will be a boost to the local economy,' says Jan. ‘It will provide some work for the bus companies and income for the hotels. It's a great idea.'

‘You just can't have too many Australians,' says my English friend Miles, wryly.

I feel slightly reassured that I am not turning the Lot into Disneyland, but I still wonder whether the local French population, those not directly involved in or benefiting from tourism, will be as enthusiastic. I can only hope that the fact that the tours are very small (fewer than twenty people) and infrequent (twice a year at most) will lessen their impact on the quiet lifestyle of this region. And I hope that because things here are usually very quiet, the locals will regard the arrival of a few Australians as entertaining rather than irritating. My doubts about this issue are not allayed when we start to make contacts.