2
If my ‘emotional reunion’ with Alistair were a scene in a movie, it would definitely require a second take. When I arrive at the train station, 50 minutes from my new French home, I am almost incoherent. Two plane marathons, endless interludes of queuing, and a three-hour train ride from Paris have left me worn out, wilted and wondering what’s so wrong with dating men, if not in my own postcode, then at least on the same side of the world.
But I am glad to see Alistair, after two months apart. I don’t so much embrace him as topple forwards into him like a felled pine tree. He smells nice. His hug is warm and his shirt is cool. I’d forgotten how tall he is.
He leads me to the station car park where his pretty blue Citroën 2CV is waiting and busies himself in the boot, producing first some water and a facecloth. I freshen up in full view of a café table of friends enjoying Wednesday-night beers in the setting sun. ‘I thought you hadn’t come,’ Alistair says as he rummages once more, this time emerging with a basket. ‘You were one of the last to get off the train and I thought, “She’s changed her mind”.’ I should have paid more attention to this remark. If I had, I might have avoided a looming mini-drama. More of that later.
In the basket are juicy flat peaches, camembert, a fresh baguette, fat green tomatoes and slivers of smoked salmon. We set off with the Citroën roof rolled back, gathering speed as we leave the town behind. The ‘deux chevaux’ bounces and occasionally rattles, and it’s like travelling through the countryside in a giant bread bin. I lift my face to the sky, let the peach juice dribble down my chin and the breeze whip through my hair. We race past fields of sunflowers that are radiant in the golden evening light, then we slow down as we snake through one tiny village after another. The landscape is ridiculously charming: rugged cream stone walls, ivy-clad barns, languid willows and pointy slate-turreted châteaux peeping over the horizon like overgrown pencils.
Alistair rests his tanned forearms casually on the wheel, and I try to take it all in. I can’t. It’s too beautiful, too idyllic. I will have to ingest it one morsel at a time, over the coming days and weeks.
It’s dark when we arrive at the moulin, but the full moon throws its spotlight on each charming detail. I’m smitten by it all … the craggy stone walls, the moulin’s shutters, even the old baked-bean can on a stick that warns visitors to steer clear of the ditch by the driveway. Most especially, I am hypnotised by the river, wobbling darkly beyond the trees: a blackcurrant jelly that’s not quite set.
But as I later climb the stairs to our bedroom, woozy on tiredness and chilled sparkling rosé, I become sharply aware of how far I am from everything I know. There is no sound but the rush of the river. No traffic, no people, not a bark or a siren or a bird call.
If this doesn’t work out, I will be adrift like a space traveller cut loose from her shuttle. I try not to think of my daughters back in New Zealand, of the dog wondering why I haven’t come home yet, of the 18,000 kilometres between me and everything I have loved for so long. I have to pull the shutters closed on these thoughts … otherwise I will drown.
Over the next week, I start to become accustomed to my new surroundings. Although ‘accustomed’ sounds a bit pedestrian. What I am actually doing is slowly waking, rubbing my eyes, and finding the illusion is still there.
I wake daily to what sounds like torrential rain, only to realise I’m in summer now and it’s just the rush of the river. As the heavy walnut furniture swims into view when I first open my eyes, I’m reminded with a jolt that this isn’t my own home. And as the duvet falls and rises gently next to me, I remember that I’m no longer single but living on the other side of the world with a man I met only months ago.
The sense of unreality is compounded by the shimmering heat and the long, hazy days. To arrive here in the heady midsummer is to step into a beautiful dream halfway through: one that is oscillating, unclear, mysteriously enchanting.
By midday we swelter, our skin glistens and one by one our intentions droop like week-old lettuce. No ‘Hmm, shouldn’t I be sorting my tax, taking up watercolour painting, signing up for online Pilates?’ No, no. It’s all out of the question. The heat comes along like a polite but firm butler to remove your shoes, relieve you of your ambitions and plans, plump up your pillows and leave you to get on with it. ‘It’ being seeking refuge in the river, flopping on the bed like a drowsy cat, or collapsing onto a sunlounger in the shade of the old walnut tree.
The moulin sits alongside the beautiful River Vienne, in the French department of the same name. And this tumbling mass of water is a godsend.
When the mercury hits the thirties, I pop on my water shoes and carefully descend the rough stone steps into the cool water. The current tugs at me as it roars past the mill, but it’s only kidding. It means no harm. As I make my way further in, it becomes calm again. Even the stones are hospitable, flat and wide like moss-covered ottomans. There’s one we call the Jesus Rock because it lies just below the surface so that when someone stands on it, they appear to be walking on water. Another rock is slanted, smooth and large enough for two — that’s the sunbathing rock.
The moulin itself is enchanting — a three-storey turret of cream and brown stone with bright blue wooden shutters and walls that are solid as eternity. A working flour mill for almost two centuries, it was turned into a rudimentary dwelling some fifty years ago. The first floor is our living and kitchen space, the upstairs the bedrooms. The millstones have retired — one to a life as a picnic table right outside the front door. The other has given itself up to being a layabout, languishing on the ground floor of the mill — a cool, musty space Alistair now uses as his workshop. This is where we enter our fortress — and when you bolt the great wooden door behind you at night, a great sense of safety and wellbeing descends.
Yet I’m not entirely at ease. There are challenges within and without these metre-thick walls. First, the obvious one: will Alistair and I work out? Was this really the best idea? Out of all the things I forgot to bring to France (unbelievably, these include swimming togs), my relationship baggage wasn’t one of them. And in all the books I’ve read on how to win at romance (and I’ve chewed through a few) I don’t ever recall ‘move to France’ being a tried-and-tested formula for success. Plus Alistair and I didn’t even date. We totally skipped the ‘movies, dinners, walks, getting to know you’ stage and went straight to moving in together. In a foreign country. Even the most sadistic reality show creators couldn’t have dreamed this up.
There’s also the challenge of acclimatising to an entirely new culture. And I don’t mean the French one. Oh no, that part is relatively simple. I mean how to live in the countryside, when I’ve always been a cinema, shopping and brunch-with-friends kind of girl. I had pictured the ‘French me’ frolicking from boulevard to bistro to boutique, with accordionists gaily playing in the background. But the mill is in the heart of ‘La France Profonde’ — about as depopulated and rustic as you can get. No accordions or happy chatter spilling from cafés. Only the occasional distant bray, the sound of a shotgun from la chasse (the hunt), or a church bell perforating the stillness of a sleepy afternoon.
Yes, I should have looked more closely at a map.
The population of our tiny village is just over 400. Standing by the roadside on an average day tells you the inhabitants total roughly two — one of which is an elderly golden retriever called Salsa, regularly to be found waddling nonchalantly down the deserted main thoroughfare.
Salsa and I are already acquainted; she makes it her business to greet everyone. But I’m going to need more than an ailing dog in my social circle. I resolve to make friends. Human ones.
I don’t know that much about Alistair, to be honest. He is a whole country to be explored in himself. One thing I soon learn, however, is that he can make anything out of anything and often does. He’s practically Leonardo Da Vinci. I can’t say for sure if he could cobble together a flying machine or design a self-supporting bridge — but I wouldn’t put it past him.
He constantly has projects on the go. Creating a timer device for the old dishwasher so it whirrs into action at midnight on the dot. Converting the 2CV to run on ethanol instead of petrol. And another mysterious endeavour — currently in the conceptual phase — involving the river current and a generator.
Sadly, when it comes to engineering schemes, there is often an environmental cost. In this case, the casualty in our immediate environment is the dining-room table. Yes, all relationships have their conflict zones, and this splendid piece of walnut carpentry has become one of our first.
It’s a magnificent specimen that Alistair is rightly proud of. He’s extremely protective of it and winces whenever I slide, rather than lift, anything across it. Which is puzzling. Because while he values the table, he doesn’t seem to mind that its luxurious grained surface is rarely glimpsed — thanks to the paraphernalia that resides there. We’re talking head torches, spanners, tape measures, screws, screwdrivers, documents, plastic folders, books, nuts, bolts and other perplexing bits of plastic and metal. Every now and then I will find a biscuit, a sock or an empty water bottle.
A recent addition is an upturned lampshade that is full to the brim with leads, plugs, a temperature gauge, and a whole range of unidentifiable objects that could be mere junk or critical parts of an ongoing project.
Every night I clear a space at one end of the table so we can eat. It began as me delicately nudging some papers to one side. Now that the items have multiplied, I do it more riot police-style — forcefully pushing back the heaving mass and hardly caring if things get injured in the process.
No wonder da Vinci lived alone.
But hey. It’s only a table. And some of Alistair’s projects go beyond the merely functional to being sources of great joy — as is the case with the two large, wheeled contraptions that are delivered soon after my arrival. From the living room I hear the metallic sounds of Alistair pottering and tinkering in the workshop below … and I’m wholly delighted when they emerge as e-mountain bikes some 24 hours later.
To explore the French countryside on these electric marvels is to be in it, not just gazing at it. It’s thrilling — and guaranteed to make you live in the moment. Which is especially de rigueur on the gnarliest tracks, if you want to avoid a trip to A&E. The electric factor means we can roam far and wide; but then the thick tyres allow us to go off-piste and a bit crazy.
Our favourite route is along the kilometres of disused railway track near our home, now overgrown with grass and covered with a crisp layer of leaves. It’s crunchy and golden, like pedalling over a giant bowl of cornflakes. When we pass the grand cream building that was formerly a railway station, I always find it poignant to think it once connected this little village to the wider world. It’s now a private dwelling, and instead of men with whistles and porters lugging trolleys, it’s home to a gas barbecue and bits of plastic outdoor furniture.
We also bump along less hospitable terrain where nettles graze your ankles, chunky rocks threaten to de-saddle you, thorny hedges wait gleefully for your next false move — and it’s exhilarating. We fly past fields where tractors with seed drills crawl across the land like prehistoric beasts; wobble along behind panicking flocks of sheep; and ‘Oooh!’ at the glowing embers of red ivy clinging to barn walls. We pass a field of kale and Alistair stops to stuff some in his backpack (we steam it later with lashings of butter and garlic).
Our bikes have throttles (shh, it’s not strictly legal). My throttle is a little frisky and when I gingerly attempt to use it, the whole bike bucks like a demented horse. On one occasion we are on a steep, narrow street and I hit the throttle instead of the brake. The bike lurches towards the wall and I go flying, with the heavy metal frame clanging down on top of me. I get up and inspect the damage. My leg is throbbing, my bottom is bruised, but phew — the acrylic nails are intact. Alistair shakes his head.
I clamber back on, determined to show no fear. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ says Alistair, concerned. ‘Absolutely!’ I assure him. ‘Allons-y, Alonso!’
However, I make the same mistake as we’re speeding down a gravel path by a busy road — and only just manage to fling myself to safety on the grass verge. Without a word, Alistair walks over and disconnects the throttle, then gets back on his bike. That is what I call a very sound executive decision.