No Comebacks (27 page)

I sought my road map from the car, studied it and pointed to a spot on the northern fringes of the Dordogne valley.

'We are about here — I think,' I said.

Bernadette was peering down the road ahead of us. 'There's a village down there,' she said.

I followed her gaze. 'You're right.'

The spire of a church could be seen between the trees, then the glimpse of a barn roof. I glanced dubiously at the car and the hill.

'We might make it without the engine,' I said, 'but no farther.'

'It's better than being stranded here all night,' said my better half.

We got back into the car. I put the gear in neutral, depressed the clutch to fullest extent and let off the handbrake. The Mayflower began to roll gently forward, then gathered speed. In an eerie silence we coasted down the hill towards the distant spire.

The pull of gravity brought us to the outskirts of what turned out to be a tiny hamlet of two dozen buildings, and the car's momentum rolled us to the centre of the village street. Then the car stopped. We climbed out again. The dusk was falling.

The street appeared to be wholly empty. By the wall of a great brick barn a lone chicken scratched in the dirt. Two abandoned haywains, shafts in the dust, stood by the roadside but their owners were evidently elsewhere. I had made up my mind to knock at one of the shuttered houses and try with my complete ignorance of the French language to explain my predicament, when a lone figure emerged from behind the church a hundred yards away and came towards us.

As he approached I saw he was the village priest. In those days they still wore the full-length black soutane, cummerbund and wide-brimmed hat. I tried to think of the word in French with which to address him. No use. As he came abreast of us I called out, 'Father.'

It was enough, anyway. He stopped, approached and smiled inquiringly. I pointed to my car. He beamed and nodded, as if to say 'Nice car'. How to explain that I was not a proud owner seeking admiration for his vehicle, but a tourist who had broken down?

Latin, I thought. He was elderly, but surely he would remember some Latin from his schooldays. More importantly, could I? I racked my brains. The Christian Brothers had spent years trying to beat some Latin into me, but apart from saying Mass I had never had to use it since, and there is little enough reference in the missal to the problems of broken-down Triumphs.

I pointed to the bonnet of the car.

'Currus meus fractus est,'
I told him. It actually means 'My chariot is broken' but it seemed to do the trick. Enlightenment flooded over his round face.

'Ah, est fractus currus teus, filius meus?’
he repeated.

'In veritate, pater meus,'
I told him. He thought for a while, then made signs that we were to wait for him. At quickened pace he hurried back up the street and entered a building which I saw, when I passed it later, was the village cafe and evidently the centre of life. I should have thought of that.

He emerged in few minutes accompanied by a big man who wore the blue canvas trousers and shirt of a typical French peasant. His rope-soled espadrilles scraped the dust as he plodded towards us beside the trotting priest.

When they came abreast of us the abbé broke into rapid French, gesticulating at the car and pointing up and down the road. I got the impression he was telling his parishioner that the car could not stand blocking the road all night. Without a word the peasant nodded and went off up the road again. That left the priest, Bernadette and me standing alone by the car. Bernadette went and sat in silence by the roadside.

Those who have ever had to spend time waiting for something unknown to happen, in the presence of someone with whom not a word can be exchanged, will know what it is like. I nodded and smiled. He nodded and smiled. We both nodded and smiled. Eventually he broke the silence.

'Anglais?’
he asked, indicating Bernadette and myself. I shook my head patiently. It is one of the burdens of the Irish to pass through history being mistaken for the English.

'Irlandais,'
I said, hoping I had got it right. His face cleared.

'Ah, Hollandais,'
he said. I shook my head again, took him by the arm to the rear of the car and pointed. The sticker on the wing bore the capital letters, black on white, IRL. He smiled as if to a trying child.

'Irlandais?'
I nodded and smiled.
'Irlande?’
More smiling and nodding from me.
'Partie d'Angleterre,'
he said. I sighed. There are some struggles one cannot win and this was neither the time nor the place to explain to the good father that Ireland, thanks in some part to the sacrifices of Bernadette's father and uncle, was not a part of England.

At this point the peasant emerged from a narrow alley between two slab-sided brick barns, atop an aged and grunting tractor. In a world of horse-drawn carts and oxen, it may well have been the village's sole tractor and its engine sounded little better than the Mayflower's just before it packed up. But it chugged down the street and stopped just in front of my car.

With a stout rope the blue-clad farmer attached my car to the towing hook of his tractor and the priest indicated we should climb into the car. In this fashion, with the priest walking beside us, we were towed down the road, round a corner and into a courtyard.

In the gathering dusk I made out a peeling board above what looked like yet another brick barn. It said
'Garage',
and was evidently closed and locked. The peasant unhooked my car and began to stow his rope. The priest pointed to his watch and the shuttered garage. He indicated it would open at seven the next morning, at which time the absent mechanic would see what was wrong.

'What are we supposed to do till then?' Bernadette whispered to me. I attracted the priest's attention, placed my two palms together beside one side of my face and tilted my head in the international gesture of one who wishes to sleep. The priest understood.

Another rapid conversation began between the priest and the peasant. I could follow none of it, but the peasant raised one arm and pointed. I caught the word 'Preece' which meant nothing to me, but saw the priest nod in agreement. Then he turned to me and indicated we should take a suitcase from the car and mount the rear step of the tractor, holding fast with our hands.

This we did, and the tractor turned out of the courtyard onto the highway. The kindly priest waved us goodbye and that was the last we saw of him. Feeling utterly foolish, we stood side by side on the rear step of the tractor, I with a grip containing our overnight things in one hand, and held on.

Our silent driver went up the road on the farther side of the village, across a small stream and up another hill. Near the brow he turned into the yard of a farm whose surface was a mixture of summer dust and cow-pats. He came to rest near the farm door and indicated we should dismount. The engine was still running and making a fair racket.

The peasant approached the farm door and knocked. A minute later a short, middle-aged woman in an apron appeared, framed by the light of a paraffin lamp behind her. The tractor driver conversed with her, pointing at us. She nodded. The driver, satisfied, returned to his tractor and pointed us towards the open door. Then he drove off.

While the two had been talking, I had looked around the farmyard in what remained of the day's light. It was typical of many I had seen so far, a small mixed farm with a bit of this and a bit of that. There was a cow byre, a stable for the horse and the oxen, a wooden trough beside a hand-pump and a large compost heap on which a cluster of brown hens pecked a living. All looked weathered and sun-bleached, nothing modern, nothing efficient, but the sort of traditional French smallholding of which hundreds of thousands made up the backbone of the agricultural economy.

From somewhere out of sight I heard the rhythmic rise and fall of an axe, the thwack as it bit into timber, and the rending of the split logs as the cutter then tore them apart. Someone was splitting billets for the fires of winter yet to come. The lady in the doorway was beckoning us to enter.

There may have been a living room, sitting room, lounge — call it what you will — but we were led into the kitchen which was evidently the centre of household life, a stone-flagged room containing sink, dining table and two battered easy chairs by an open fire. Another hand-pump near the stone sink indicated water came from the well, and illumination was by paraffin lamp. I set down the case.

Our hostess turned out to be lovely; round, apple-cheeked face with grey hair drawn back in a bun, care-worn hands, long grey dress, white pinafore and a chirpy birdlike smile of welcome. She introduced herself as Madame Preece, and we gave her our names which were for her quite unpronounceable. Conversation would evidently be confined to more nodding and smiling, but I was grateful to have a place to stay at all, considering our predicament on the hill an hour ago.

Madame Preece indicated Bernadette might like to see the room and wash; such niceties were evidently not necessary for me. The two women disappeared upstairs with the handgrip. I walked to the window, which was open to the warm evening air. It gave out onto another yard at the back of the house, where a cart stood among the weeds near a wooden shed. Extending from the shed a paling fence ran a short way, about six feet high. From above the fence the blade of a great axe rose and fell, and the sound of the chopping of timber went on.

Bernadette came down ten minutes later looking fresher, having washed in a china bowl with cold water from a stone crock. The water coming out of the upper window into the yard would have accounted for the odd splash I had heard. I raised my eyebrows.

'It's a nice little room,' she said. Madame Preece, who was watching, beamed and bobbed, understanding nothing but the approving tone. 'I hope,' said Bernadette with the same bright smile, 'that there aren't any hoppers.'

I feared there might be. My wife has always suffered terribly from fleas and midges, which raise great lumps on her white Celtic skin. Madame Preece gestured for us to sit in the battered armchairs, which we did; and made small talk while she busied herself at the black cast-iron kitchen range at the other end of the room. Something that smelled appetizing was a-cook and the odour made me hungry.

Ten minutes later she bade us come to table, and placed before us china bowls, soup spoons and a long loaf each of delicious fluffy white bread. Finally in the centre she placed a large tureen from which protruded a steel ladle, and indicated we should help ourselves.

I served Bernadette a portion of what turned out to be a thick, nourishing and tasty vegetable broth, mainly of potatoes and very filling, which was just as well. It constituted the meal of the evening, but was so good we both ended up by having three portions. I offered to serve Madame Preece her portion, but she would have none of it. It was obviously not the custom.

'Servez-vous, monsieur, servez-vous,'
she repeated, so I filled my own bowl to the brim and we tucked in.

Hardly five minutes had passed before the sound of the log-chopping ended, and seconds later the back door was pushed open as the farmer himself entered for his evening meal. I rose to greet him, as Madame chattered an explanation of our presence, but he evinced not the slightest interest in two strangers at his dinner table. So I sat back down again.

He was a huge man, whose head scraped the ceiling of the room. He lumbered rather than walked and one had the immediate impression — accurate as it turned out — of enormous strength allied to a very slow intelligence.

He was about sixty, give or take a few years, and his grey hair was cut short to his head. I noticed he had tiny, button ears and his eyes, as he looked at us without sign of greeting, were a guileless, vacant baby-blue.

The giant sat down at his accustomed chair without a word and his wife at once served him a brimming portion of the soup. His hands were dark with earth and, for all I knew, other substances, but he made no move to wash them. Madame Preece resumed her seat, flashed us another bright smile and a bob of her birdlike head, and we continued our meal. From the corner of my eye I saw the farmer was shovelling down spoonfuls of his broth, accompanied by great chunks of bread which he tore without ceremony from his loaf.

No conversation took place between the man and his wife, but I noticed she darted him affectionate and indulgent looks from time to time, though he took not the slightest bit of notice.

Bernadette and I tried to talk, at least between ourselves. It was more for the relief of breaking the silence than to convey information.

' I hope the car can be repaired in the morning,' I said. 'If it's something serious I might have to go to the nearest big town for a spare part or a breakdown van.'

I shuddered to think what that expense might do to our tiny postwar tourist budget.

'What is the nearest big town?' asked Bernadette between mouthfuls of soup..

I tried to remember the map in the car. 'Bergerac, I think.'

'How far is that?' she asked.

'Oh, about sixty kilometres,' I replied.

There was nothing much else to say, so silence fell again. It had continued for a full minute when out of nowhere a voice suddenly said in English, 'Forty-four.'