Our House is Not in Paris (5 page)

Before our first night in our house we stayed in the nearby town of Souillac. It was the last ‘normal' night for quite a while. On the way to stay in a local hotel, we unloaded all the bags and boxes from our car, ready to start camping in our
petite maison
the next day. Well, we were moving in, but in every other way in my mind it was just like camping except with four stone walls.

To even start staying in our house, we had to buy everything that is conceivably needed to set up a house: from tea towels to coffee machine (essential for us), to bed and broom. So, the next day, we embarked on yet another of many shopping expeditions and the first day of many, many lists. It became the holiday of lists. What to buy virtually every day at the
supermarché
and
bricolage
, to the allocated list of tasks for the day and what each of us would be doing. Just like at home, the hardware store became Stuart's second home. The luxury part of the holiday was well and truly over. The working part of the holiday had started in earnest.

Day one at our house. We left the hotel and headed back to the whitegoods shop. As I said, throughout June it is
Solde
season everywhere and, as the prices were so reasonable, we thought we may as well get everything we would ever need. Our rationale was that we were going to need it all eventually so why not just buy it all at once? So, this trip: vacuum cleaner, TV, dishwasher, range hood and even a hair dryer. It seemed like we thought euros were Monopoly money.

Now, despite setting up a French account before leaving, there was a daily limit on the card, which we hadn't been aware of. At just before 11.50, Stuart went to pay for all our purchases on the card and it was declined. The owner suggested going to the bank to get the difference. Now, keep in mind that in France absolutely everything (except restaurants) shuts for the two-hour lunch break, so we ran madly down the road to the bank. The first bank we came across wasn't ours, so we kept frantically running. I yelled at Stuart to run and told him I'd catch up, as he could run faster. If we didn't get there just before twelve, we'd have to wait around for two hours — and we had a huge list of things to do, not least of all buying an air mattress so we had something to sleep on that night.

We finally flung ourselves, panting, into the bank at five minutes to midday, gasped our request to the ever-immaculate single teller and showed her our whitegoods receipt. Stuart couldn't withdraw cash from the machine, either, as we were over our daily limit. The bank manager, who only had a few words of English — and, keep in mind, her sacrosanct lunch break was about to start — rapidly set up a special one-day-only account and in just a few minutes we had a huge stack of cash. We resumed madly running back down the street to pay for all our whitegoods. It was now 12.10: well and truly the French lunch hour. The shop owner had all his shutters down and was waiting impatiently. Stuart rapidly counted all the money out and we too sought somewhere for lunch (and to recover).

The speed at which we were accomplishing things never fully registered for me, because it was always time to move on to the next item on the daily list. Oh, the lists. Our lives seemed to be consumed by them.

Thank goodness for the civilised French lunch hour (or two) that gave us time to catch our breath in the heat of the searing summer's day. It was always such a luxury to have a glass of rosé and linger for a while over a delicious steak and
pommes frites
while also recovering from once again spending so much money! Next on the agenda were two
bricolage
trips — not my favourite places, even in France — and the buying started again. Stepladder, paintbrushes, tools, paint, all chosen quite at random (bearing in mind that we had just painted in Australia and bought five samples of white to choose the right tone). Very fortunately, the white turned out to be perfect. Everything was harder because, of course, all the labels were in French. As always, I used a lot of miming to indicate what we needed, including that the walls had to be cleaned before painting. Equipped with the French equivalent of sugar soap, once again my sense of the dramatic seemed to do the trick.

Two
bricolages
later and it was the
supermarché
for essential supplies and an air mattress for the next few nights. The first purchases of bread, ham and cheese — prosaic words that set the tastebuds fluttering when recited in French:
pain
,
jambon
and
fromage
. We finally staggered into our house for our first night at five o'clock. By then it was about thirty-six degrees. Instead of simply relaxing with a beer after the long, exhausting and eventful day, we had to start cleaning — the house has been empty for a long time. Stuart tackled the bathroom and toilet, which I was extremely grateful for. It would be a long, long time before I got used to the French style of
toilette
. Meanwhile, in the searing heat at the end of a shattering day, I madly vacuumed, sucking up strands of cobwebs.

It was the time of day when the French had wound down and were wending their way down the lanes to their
maisons
and
apéritifs
. Yet the first sign of the morning's horror was already evident as there seemed to be rather a lot of traffic for the early evening and impending sacred dinner hour.

After a hasty breakfast in our new home that seemed more like a camping expedition, I launched into all the work. First, I ripped down the ugly wooden fence on the front porch that served no purpose at all, and swept up all the piles of dead winter leaves. The abundance of dead leaves and weeds growing in the cracks in the stone steps leading to the front door all added to the air of neglect. An immediate improvement. Now, we weren't novices at renovating. We had ten years of renovating and a few other houses under our belt, and were actually very pleased with our organisation and preparation. We had all the tools and
bricolage
purchases on hand to get underway on the very first day. That seemed quite impressive in itself to achieve at home, let alone in a foreign country.

We decide to start with the bedroom, so we could have a restful space to collapse in every night and shut the door literally on the dust and mess and reality of renovating. Keeping in mind that we simply didn't have the luxury of much time at all, in fact a mere three weeks, we decide to take a short cut. After all, we had painted over wallpaper in our terrace house in Newtown and it was a huge success. No-one could even tell there was wallpaper under the paint. This was not the case with French wallpaper, however. As soon as we painted it, the paper started to bubble under the paint in huge, unsightly blobs. We were, however, fully committed at this stage and somehow hoped that as it dried it would improve. This did not happen. Neither did we have any wallpaper stripper, so we had to continue and more than doubled our work as, after the paint was on, we had to strip it all off by hand. Meanwhile, the trucks thundered past incessantly …

We kept working furiously in the heat, mindful that our friends Brigitte and Erick were soon to arrive. Yet again, thanks to the internet, we had made arrangements with them to buy us a bed and deliver it to us once we arrived. We just couldn't stop; we were so determined to get the bedroom painted and move on as rapidly as possible to the rest of the house.
Time is short
was the mantra of the day — and every day. Of course, we weren't ready and Brigitte was horrified to find us in our renovating clothes; they arrived during the sacred French lunch hour! That was the first time, and there were many more in the next few weeks, when we could get ready, pull on decent clothes and transform ourselves in literally two minutes. In fact, we got it down to an art form, usually with a shower as well, but always in record time. I even managed to throw on some make-up to try and look more presentable to the world, bearing in mind it was a ‘French' world.

We had carefully planned where we should have lunch with Brigitte and Erick as we were very conscious that Brigitte used to be a chef and had her own restaurant. The village restaurant was only a minute's walk away — one of the reasons we chose our house, in fact — but the food was not quite the Michelin fare we were hoping to treat our friends to. We had planned to go to Martel, a mere seven minutes' drive away, but Brigitte was alarmed at the thought. After all, it was now almost one and nearly an hour into the precious lunch period. So, the village restaurant it was.

It turned out to be a brilliant decision for a number of reasons. There were a few workers inside eating, but the four of us were the only ones sitting outside. The food was fine, but what we realised afterwards was that, by going there with French friends, our standing in the village probably increased enormously. George Arnal, the owner, enquired through Brigitte and Erick whether we needed a gardener. Well, we were desperate to have the grass cut and,
voilà
, he was able to give us Christian's details. However, the
coup de grâce
was — and this was only revealed by chance as we are leaving — that the unusually high volume of traffic was because of roadworks on the main road to Paris; all the traffic was being diverted! I could have wept for joy. How momentous life decisions can hinge on the slightest chance. If it had not come up as we were about to say
au revoir
, our ultimate decision, and the following years and chapters in our lives, might have all been vastly different. There was no other way we could have known or found out about the roadworks.

There was another vital piece of information, too. Every day except for Mondays, a bread van arrives at the restaurant at 7.30 am. This was the other main thing we needed, as each trip to the shops meant time away from work on the house. However, even though we consumed vast quantities of
pain
, including just plain bread for dinner some nights — no
fromage
, no
pâté
, just plain bread (well, there was some wine at least), as we are simply working so hard — I never did get to the bread van. I was up early every day to work, and yet the only time I ever thought of racing down the road in my renovating clothes was, of course, on Mondays. Next year.

The fact that our
petite maison
was right on the road turned out to be one of its best features, as the road carried new friends to us. For the three weeks we were there, as we didn't have a table or chairs, we ate all our meals on the front steps. In fact, even when we did get furniture, we had become so accustomed to eating our meals and having a glass of wine on our
petite
steps that we continued to sit there anyway. It meant that we saw everyone driving past and I waved to absolutely everyone, conscious that it was a small village and I wanted very much to be a part of it. George, the restaurant owner, started to slow down on our corner and looked out for me, as I would usually be having breakfast at that point. He would wave and call out, ‘
Ça va?
' It was one of the few expressions I knew I could reply to. I later found out that he had recently lost his wife and went every morning to visit her grave as well as check on his land. What is special was that I also found out he is not usually so friendly, so that made me even more inclined to look out for him. Goodness knows what he really thought of me as I would have just fallen out of bed, pulled on my work clothes and grabbed my breakfast. There was no time for the vanity of looking in a mirror or even brushing my hair. I knew that I was utterly lacking in style, but I felt compelled to start working as soon as possible.

More new friends. We were working from sun-up to sundown, and our daily rhythm was constructed around endless lists. Lists of what to buy and what tasks each of us were going to tackle every day. I only wish that I'd kept all those endless lists as they were a record of our daily life. Yet, in the midst of often sixteen-hour days — and often I didn't go anywhere at all — we started to make friends. When I look back, it's strange as I was so focused on seeing our little farmhouse for the first time that I hadn't even thought about the village or the people we may possibly meet. Strange for me, too, as usually that is something I would give a lot of thought to. It was a truly unexpected bonus not only to have met the people in the village, but also to have made friends. And not merely friends, but true friends who we had an instant connection with. After a mere three weeks, they quickly became a part of what would be the joy of returning each year to our house in the village.

I have to add here that having a house in France, on the other side of the world, is the stuff of dreams. It is all very surreal. I've been there and worked on the house, yet when I'm back in Australia it seems very much a dream. It is not the sort of thing that ordinary people do, and yet here we were, now no longer ordinary.

I don't remember how early on it was that we met Jean-Claude; however, as soon as we did, he was a part of the tapestry of our life every single day. He was our new ‘best friend' and was like a fairy godfather and knight in shining armour all rolled into one. And yet I was so very close to not meeting him. What I do remember is dashing out the front — maybe to shake a paintbrush — and seeing a distinctive figure striding up the road. I was so utterly focused on renovating every possible moment that I didn't even pause to smile or say, ‘
Bonjour
.' No, I dashed back in to keep working. Yet something propelled me to almost immediately go back out the side door to greet him. I am so grateful that I did and I think my first words were, ‘Oh, you speak English!' I invited him to see our house and all our work, and that turned out to be the start of his daily visits, sometimes up to three or four times a day. He took an avid interest in all that we were doing, and what was magnificent was that he would go away and reflect on many of the things we were doing and come back to share his advice and knowledge. He even went to the extent of looking up on the internet what things needed further checking.