Jean-Pierre and Vivette become our new best friends. We see them a couple of times a week, sometimes dropping in to buy wine but more often just for a chat, usually toward the end of the afternoon when they are finishing their chores. Sitting around the table, the fire softly crackling behind us, we discuss grapes and children and sausages and local politics. Municipal elections are coming up, and there’s talk of change, left-wing parties favoured to poll highly. The Midi, if Jean-Pierre is any guide, is strongly socialist, if not communist.
As the days lengthen so do their working hours, and the lateness conflicts with the children’s routines. Our Babies, the booklet I was given when I first took the children to the baby health clinic, the standard reference issued to all new mothers in New South Wales, advises that toddlers should be in bed by seven each evening. It’s my only guide, and I follow its routine: a small snack after the afternoon nap, evening meal before six, then bed.
You should give them a goûter, says Vivette.
In France the goûter is seen as the fourth meal of the day for children. Unlike a small afternoon snack, it is substantial enough to keep them going until eight o’clock, the usual time for the evening meal. Traditionally, it’s a length of baguette stuffed with a slender bar of chocolate, sometimes simplified to bread spread with Nutella. I have my doubts but start offering the children an Australianised goûter—a cheese sandwich, or bread and pâté, or yogurt and a handful of the conversation biscuits. The effect is miraculous. The next time we visit Mas Laval, Dylan and Stephanie happily play with Vivette’s two children, or with their toys, while we enjoy a glass of wine and talk until dark.
Until now, our explorations of this micro-region have been superficial—towns and villages, markets and mairies. With Jean-Pierre and Vivette as guides, we get to see behind the scenes, to begin to understand the places and stories and rituals that coalesce in local culture. One Sunday they take us to the Cirque de Mourèze, an ancient limestone formation of bare, weathered rocks that resembles a moonscape, bleak and windswept. The soil is fine and powdery, easily blown away, and the only vegetation is low shrubs and stunted herbs. Thanks to centuries of wind and rain, the site has been eroded into sheer pillars and grotesque forms that start to resemble weird and imaginary animals. There’s a viewing platform on one of the peaks, and although the wind is fierce I want to climb to the top. Beneath me stretches a magnificent panorama from Montpellier to Sète. The landscape is a mosaic of browns and greens, and here and there a brighter patch of pinkish red indicates the new roofs of the lotissements. I recognise Nizas by the line of the stream and pattern of roads leading in and out, by the patches of scrub on les causses. From this height I start to appreciate the individuality of each of the tiny villages, islands in a sea of vineyards. At ground level, they are almost identical, but each has a particular profile, a particular complexion.
Without Jean-Pierre and Vivette’s precious local knowledge we would never have been aware of the Chartreuse de Mougères monastery just outside Caux. Vivette and Mamie take us one sunny afternoon. Dating from the 14th century, it was abandoned in the 15th, rebuilt in the 17th and shut down during the revolution of 1789. It could have suffered the fate of other religious establishments, pillaged and ransacked by a peasant rabble intent on destruction, had not a devout and a wealthy woman from Pézenas decided to buy it. She instructed in her will that on her death the monastery was to be returned to the first white-robed monks to return to France after the turmoil, and thus it passed to the Carthusian order who promptly re-established its vineyards.
It’s not so much the monastery that interests us; more the wine that it produces. The winemaker is Brother Paul, the only monk who has not taken a vow of silence and is permitted to interact with visitors. A newcomer to the order, he was an electrical engineer in his former life and spent two years working in America; his English is very good. He takes us first to the simple chapel, which I dutifully admire, though it’s the monastery’s vegetable garden beyond that takes my attention. Row after row of cabbages, some deep green and crinkly, some narrow and pointed, some like a tight ball in a neat nest, give a clue to the monks’ austere diet. They are allowed wine with meals, but the main purpose of the monastery’s winemaking activities is to yield income. As in most of the vineyards here, the main grape variety is cinsaut, and from this they make both red and rosé wines. At around 13 degrees, these are superior wines; most local wines struggle to reach 11.5 degrees. Even more unusually, the monastery’s wine is bottled rather than sold in bulk. I want to buy a bottle of the rosé—at eight francs, it must be a top drop—but Brother Paul makes a present of it. I tell him I will return to lend him my copy of Waverley Root’s The Food of France.
As promised, Vivette introduces us to her brother Henri, inviting us all to Sunday lunch. I’m nervous; it’s the first time we’ve been asked to join another French family for a meal, and I feel obliged to make an effort. Despite the limitations of my wardrobe I try to choose something a little more stylish than the practical, comfortable clothes I usually wear, and dress the children in their best pants.
Lunch is a rather more formal affair than our impromptu end-of-day visits. The table is set with the best plates on a tablecloth that reaches the floor. We are offered apéritifs—pastis for the men, sweet wine for the women, then a platter of hors d’œuvres, all prepared by Mamie—salade russe, œufs mayonnaise, olives, slices of saucisson; the homely classics of countless hotel dining rooms. Vivette has pot-roasted one of Mamie’s rabbits, and accompanies it with an intensely green salad from her garden. Then cheese, and apple cake, and coffee.
Sitting next to Henri, John has a good chance to ask questions about the University of Montpellier and its activities. Henri’s speciality of geochemistry is vaguely associated with mining but far removed from John’s engineering research. Nonetheless he offers to arrange a meeting with the professor of rock mechanics who works in the same building. It’s beginning to sound promising, especially when he adds that Professor Jouanna has worked in an American university and speaks very good English. John is making excellent progress but his French is still at a fairly elementary level.
As it happens, Jean-Pierre has a dentist appointment in Montpellier the next week and offers to take John with him and drop him at the university while Stephanie, Dylan and I spend the afternoon at Mas Laval. The professor is away so the visit is brief, but long enough for John to get some understanding of the kind of research the faculty does and how and where he might find a niche.
A week later Henri lets Vivette know that he’s arranged a meeting with Professor Jouanna and all four of us go to Montpellier. We don’t have a map of the city but we find the university, on the northern outskirts, with only a little difficulty. It’s a new university, or at least a new campus—the medical school of the University of Montpellier was one of the earliest in Europe, renowned from the 12th century—and its isolated multi-storey cubes seem rather soulless, with little sign of student life. John meets some of the researchers in the morning before we return to Henri’s for lunch, then John accompanies Henri back to university. Meanwhile I take the children to the open-range zoo, just beyond the university. Like the campus, it’s new and not yet fully populated. Best of all, it’s free, and the animals are at semi-liberty in natural surroundings, separated from visitors by deep moats. It’s the children’s first visit to a zoo and they revel in the freedom and space of the park and its sights, even though the distant and partly camouflaged animals have to be pointed out to them—zebras, llamas, kangaroos and a lakeful of pale pink flamingos.
I arrive back at the campus just in time. The meeting is finished and, bringing Professor Jouanna over to the car, John introduces me. His English is indeed excellent, and he enthusiastically praises John’s qualifications and expertise before abruptly disappearing back into the building. I assume this is goodbye but a few minutes later he’s back with something wrapped in tissue paper. In a totally unexpected gesture, he presents me with a bottle of Mumm champagne. I’ve never before been offered a bottle of Mumm. Champagne is so far beyond my humble horizons I consider it the summit of extravagance. As I mumble effusive thanks, he turns to John and casually remarks, ‘Of course, if you wanted a place I could probably help you’.
At first I think he’s suggesting a house to live in, which might be useful, but gradually it dawns on me that he’s talking about a job. It might only be temporary, he adds, a research assistant, six months or so, and it might depend on the success of a grant application, but it would be a start. I can hardly believe this serendipitous stroke of fortune—especially since it would mean that we could stay in the part of France we like. Driving back to Nizas we start to dream elaborate scenarios that see us living here for the next five years.