Our new landlady is simply Madame. Only when we’re talking to others do we refer to her as Madame Nicolaud. Thin and scrawny, with short white scarecrow hair that seems to be combed only on Fridays when she goes to town, Madame does not encourage conversation. Living in her big old house with her son Raymond, who looks to be about 50, she rarely leaves the property and rarely has friends to visit; she’s too busy working, morning and afternoon, six-and-a-half days a week. If it’s not the rabbits to feed twice daily it’s the orchard and garden to tend, snails to collect in the right season, jams and tomato paste to make in summer. When we arrive she is checking the grape vines she grafted last year.
Madame is the complete antithesis to Madame Molla, though she must be at least the same age. And she has not reached her venerable age without sharp wits. Shrewd and practical, she is well aware of the value of things. Unlike Madame Molla, who waves away our offer to pay the second month’s rent in advance, saying ‘we’ll sort it all out at the end’, Madame insists on payment up front. When we ask her about olive oil—Caromb being in olive territory, with an old press in the town—she advises us not to bother. At 20 francs, it’s too expensive. Like most of the locals, she prefers grapeseed oil. Eventually she gets us a bottle of olive oil from the neighbours opposite, their own production. Il faut la couper, she insists, in admonition of our extravagance; you have to dilute it with grapeseed oil.
I suspect there’s a story here—if only I could find a way to get her to talk. She’s clearly no peasant; the cutlery in our apartment is Christofle, only silver plate, but Christofle all the same. When we tell her one day that we’re going to Aubignan for a drive, her face brightens. Aubignan, c’est mon pays, she tells us with patriotic pride, as if an impassable mountain range separated her village from its neighbour, Caromb, instead of a mere five kilometre expanse of vines. Her father was the butcher there, she adds. It must have been a good business, as he left her a vineyard property at Suzette, in the hills behind Beaumes-de-Venise. I’d love to learn about her girlhood, her marriage, about life before and during the war, but she’s not one for intimacies.
Even with her son, Madame is a woman of few words. Their exchanges, or at least what we hear, are peremptory and often hostile, as though Raymond thinks her requests or orders unreasonable. In this household, her word rules. One evening I overhear an argument—not the actual words, just the raised voices, followed by a door slamming and Madame’s Tant pis! Too bad! Then Raymond’s car leaving the drive. But nothing is said the next day, and I have no clue as to the source of their disagreement.
Raymond, too, is difficult to engage in conversation. Habitually clad in workmen’s blue overalls, he departs on his tractor almost every morning, too early for our greetings, and rarely returns before sunset. Dylan is entranced by this new set of wheels, and tac-ta is his first word. He rushes to the window as soon as he hears the motor starting up, and I have to lift him up to follow its jolting progress out to the road. I never know quite where Raymond goes, but surely not to the vineyard at Suzette, which is about seven kilometres away up narrow winding roads.
Too many mysteries in this household. Even when we start to know some of the locals and raise oblique questions, we don’t get far. Madame Flour tells me that Raymond married a local girl, and they were divorced over six years ago. From someone else we learn that Raymond has a daughter aged about 25 but now never sees her. Nor does Madame. The estrangement is total. No one can tell us why. Was Raymond too taciturn to live with? Did his wife run off with someone else? I wonder if Raymond and his family once lived in the apartment we are now in, and if living with mother-in-law finally proved too much.
To my surprise, Raymond does very little work about the house. The orchard and garden, and the rabbits, are clearly Madame’s responsibility. When she needs someone to help she calls on le bonhomme de Carpentras, an odd-job man, to help pick and pack the cherries or scythe the tall grass in the orchard. He’s a good worker, the bonhomme, but like the shepherd at Nizas, he’s a simple soul. We never learn his name. For us he is only ever the bonhomme, and his place is definitely downstairs; Madame is not concerned with formal introductions.
The orchard is mainly cherry trees, but opposite the front door is a gnarled old fig tree, and in its broad umbrella of shade is Madame’s summer table and chairs. It’s a black fig particular to Caromb, la figue longue noire de Caromb, and over the next couple of months I watch the fruits forming and swelling and regret that I will miss the harvest in July. Beyond the orchard is a vast vegetable garden, far bigger than necessary for two people. In April it yields artichokes and lettuce, broad beans arrive in May, followed by peas, then green beans in June. Tomatoes and courgettes are still young but promise a bountiful summer harvest. But the most flourishing plants in spring are the nettles that grow alongside the irrigation channel near the garden, up to my waist. Attention aux orties!, Madame warns if we go down that path—and it is such a narrow path, and the nettles so vigorous, that it is almost impossible not to be stung.
Guarding the entrance to the house are two venerable pots, their original deep green glaze now evident only in isolated patches. Each proudly bears a simple inscription: Fait par Boisset, potier à Anduze, 1864. They’re beautiful pots, perfectly proportioned, simply ornamented with an elegant garland. Some years later, I visit Anduze, north of Nîmes, and see exactly the same pots still being made in this village totally dedicated to pottery. Madame’s pots, however, have a dignity about them that is absent from the modern ones that sell for a small fortune in London’s trendy suburbs.
The double doors open on to a black-and-white tiled hall and the staircase. To the left is Madame’s formal sitting room, always kept locked. Only twice are we invited to enter: first when we initially agree to rent the place and pay a deposit, and later when we renew for an additional month. Madame’s kitchen is on the right, and it’s here that she lives when she’s not sleeping or working. It’s a large, sparsely furnished room with a table in the centre and a comfortable chair for Madame to watch the television in the corner. Upstairs is our quarter of the house, together with Madame’s and Raymond’s bedrooms on the left. We never get so much as a glimpse inside, Madame always up and about before us.
Until we move in, Madame has relied on Raymond to take her into Carpentras on Fridays to go shopping. She seems not to patronise the local shops, though Raymond must go up the hill and buy bread. In our first week, since we are going to Carpentras for the bank and the big Friday market, I tentatively invite Madame to come with us. She replies with one word: Merci, and turns back to her work. I am puzzled. Does this mean ‘Thanks, but no’, or ‘Yes, thanks, I will’? Her answer is clarified when we come downstairs on Friday and find her waiting. I have wondered if a trip to town means a change from the old working clothes she wears every day, and this morning sees her smartly dressed and wearing an expensive silk scarf, face washed and hair combed. Like a small girl, her eyes are shining in anticipation, and she is almost a different person.
The Friday trip to Carpentras becomes a weekly routine. Once parked, we go our separate ways, having agreed on a time to meet back at the car. It’s such a vast and intricate market, the big square near the cathedral and every little street leading to it packed with stalls, that we lose all sight of Madame. I have no idea what she buys, what she does there; perhaps she treats herself to an elegant morning tea. But I know what she buys at the supermarket, which is the main reason for her outing. Unlike Pézenas, Carpentras is big enough for several large supermarkets—Intermarché, Leclerc, Carrefour. Madame’s usual favourite is Leclerc, although she prefers Intermarché for meat.
On our first joint visit I delicately suggest that Madame might like to take Stephanie in her trolley. I’m delighted that she accepts so willingly. It becomes part of the ritual, that we hand over a child and Madame goes happily up and down the aisles with a wide smile on her face as she shows her new accessory a box of sugar cubes or a packet of soap powder.
From this day Madame adopts Stephanie as a stand-in granddaughter. She invites her to help feed the rabbits, taking her inside their little shed and holding a rabbit for her to pat. Stephanie est très sage, she says, very good and obedient. Stephanie can now say lapin. When the rabbits are in the outside enclosure she gives them grass, imitating Madame’s actions. Dylan tries to do the same, but pokes his finger through the wire as well as the grass and is not pleased when a bold rabbit jumps up on hind legs and nips him.
A couple of weeks into our stay, returning home from a walk, we find Madame talking to neighbours in front of the house. We mumble the usual Messieurs, ’dames as we pass but as soon as the children are out of their strollers she calls to Stephanie and, as if showing off a prized new possession, presents her to her friends. Stephanie revels in the attention and the special relationship with Madame, and we benefit as well, with Madame’s growing fondness expressed in the form of gifts from the garden—lettuces and broad beans at first, fresh peas and plenty of cherries later.
In my idle, musing moments, I imagine opening a letter one day in the future and discovering that Madame has willed Stephanie the Anduze pots. Or the property at Suzette. If only!