As we are now more habituated to French ways, so are the inhabitants of Provence more used to outsiders, at least in comparison with the Languedoc. There’s a long history of English writers and expatriates retiring to sunny Provence, or at least wintering there; Lawrence Durrell lives just across the Rhône, at Sommières. New inhabitants tend to keep to themselves and quietly blend in. Locals accept occasional eccentricities. Nobody raises an eyebrow at the presence of the odd Englishman, or other foreigners, with the possible exception of Germans, who are definitely unwanted.
Some of the foreigners are artists, like the Egyptian potter and his Swiss painter wife who live in the middle of a vineyard between Caromb and Le Barroux. We pass their roadside sign, Poterie-Soie, many times before daring to enter; there’s no way we could afford any of their work. That we’re not potential customers seems not to bother them and they welcome us to their workshop and showroom, demonstrating their techniques and tools: the potter’s wheel and oven and dying vats. Taking pride of place in the showroom are wide, shallow bowls and large platters decorated with bold motifs, but my eye is caught by the iridescent scarves and exquisite silk shirts, softly flowing, hand-painted in shades of blue and aqua and purple that manage to be both vibrant and muted at the same time. I might not wear them myself, but I would love to give one to my mother.
They’re generous with their time and share their experiences as expatriates in France. It’s the first time we’ve had such a conversation, and it’s gratifying to know that others have made the same mistakes, have puzzled at the same customs. We don’t know them well enough to be on first-name terms and, since the common language is French, they remain Monsieur and Madame. They ask about Stephanie and Dylan; they have a boy and girl, too, old enough to attend school. From time to time we drop in for a visit, and sometimes run across them shopping in Caromb. One day at the Thursday market, Madame Poterie-Soie calls to me. I have a bag of clothes our children have outgrown, she says, would you like them? I hope we don’t look so destitute as to be dependent on charity, but I’m very thankful all the same.
At the cave coopérative at Mormoiron, I meet one of the English expatriates as we both order refills of our ten-litre cubitainers. Overhearing me talking to John in English, he immediately switches from French and we compare opinions on the Mormoiron wine (one of the best, we agree) and on other caves nearby. Life is good here, he says; the climate, the lifestyle, the wine. There are quite a few of us in the region now, he adds, though to me they are largely invisible. Nevertheless, on yet another wine-buying expedition to a local cave I recognise, from the slight nuance of accent, that the other customer at the counter is English. That I am not French must be equally obvious to him. Yet on this occasion we keep up pretences, offering polite pleasantries on the weather and wine—C’est un très bon vin, n’est-ce pas?—and wishing each other Bon après-midi.
The oddness of this exchange is not immediately apparent. Only when I recount it to John, waiting in the car with the sleeping children, do I realise that in our four or five months in France I have become used to speaking French everywhere outside our little family unit. And even when we’re conversing in English at home, it’s actually a mixture of French and English. Do we need to get mazout for the heater, I ask, since that’s the name of the fuel it takes and I have no idea what might be the equivalent in English. The stinging nettles are always les orties, broad beans always les fèves. This is the language the children pick up and repeat, unaware of its idiosyncrasies.
The expatriate diaspora must be well scattered and self-sufficient, as we get to know only one English speaker around Caromb. We meet Julian one Sunday at Le Barroux, a hilltop hamlet crowded around a massive 12th-century château, an intimidating fortress that looks as though it hewed itself out of the elemental rock. Le Barroux is known as an artists’ village, and its steep cobbled lanes are home to tiny galleries and craft shops. In April customers are few, but it’s easy to visualise the throngs of tourists in summer, leaning over the worn stone walls and snapping the panorama to Carpentras and beyond. Idly wandering, we follow the signs to an art exhibition at the mairie, where conventional watercolour scenes of Provence are juxtaposed with dark, turbulent paintings that seem to depict exploding satellites in violent colours of orange and red and yellow. At 1000 francs or more, they’re not inexpensive. They’re all by my husband, says the lady at the door, and these ones—pointing to the colliding colours—were in an exhibition in New York. He will be back soon, she adds, right now he’s acting as a chauffeur for an Englishman who has already bought two paintings.
Out of politeness, we stay until the return of the artist/chauffeur and his wife eagerly makes introductions. I ask a few questions about the New York exhibition but it’s difficult to find the right words to show the appreciation he feels his art deserves. It’s the Englishman who takes over, inviting us back to his house for tea. Since he lives outside the village proper, on the side of the hill, we have to drive him home. On the way he starts to tell us his story.
Julian has lived at Le Barroux for eight years. His reason for moving to Provence, he says, was to escape exorbitant English taxes. At first his wife and young children lived with him in the house, but after a few years she left him to live with the owner of the château above. It’s all beginning to sound like a B-grade melodrama.
His house is a big old Provençal mas, partly renovated. The swimming pool, today muddy and leaf-sodden, is an ongoing project. One of his first changes was to convert the adjoining barn into a new kitchen, for which he drew up a design that included a row of windows in the solid north-facing wall. The local builder was aghast, Julian was adamant, and the end was inevitable. With the first mistral the windows were blown away. They’ve used stronger glass this time, he tells us, but I suspect the mistral has other tricks up its sleeve.
Inside is a scene of utter mayhem, as though the place had been ransacked by a burglar. The floor is littered with family-crested silver: trays and jugs, meat dishes and carving knives. Pieces of a dinner service balance tenuously on chairs and sideboard. My sense of foreboding is not helped by a glimpse of a huge, hairy boar’s head, grimacing from the end of a dark hallway. It terrifies the children and I have to persuade them it’s only a sanglier-cochon, like the picture in one of their books. The kitchen is a mess but Julian waves away the chaos and manages to produce a pot of tea, and leads us to his living room.
Julian’s conversation is jumbled and incoherent, sometimes lucid and logical, sometimes totally incomprehensible, but I’m starting to fit bits and pieces together. One day, he says, he crashed his car into a steamroller. It was stationary, parked on the side of the road while the workmen were having lunch. A freakish accident, I imagine, but not implausible. It’s the next part that starts to raise my suspicions as to his sanity. So I commandeered the steamroller, he continues, and managed to get a couple of kilometres down the road before the police came. They immediately arrested me for DUI. He tells the story with a mixture of pride and regret. Now he has neither car nor licence, and I realise why he needed a chauffeur; why he asked us to drive him home.
The chances of his regaining a licence are slim. In his next ramble Julian tells us he’s an alcoholic. Perhaps he was crazy even before the drink did him in. At one moment he seems to suggest we drop in to see him from time to time, that he’d be happy to see us at any time, that he enjoys our company; the next, it seems he would rather not know us. Right now, however, he desperately needs a lift to his ‘watering hole’, so we drop him at the Café du Cours in Caromb. Later that evening John checks the café and Julian is still there, in dire need of a ride home; local taxis take a night off on Sundays. His legs won’t carry him down the hill to our apartment.
Over the next couple of months we run into him occasionally in the street or in the café. Le Barroux is too small to have permanent shops so Julian has to come to Caromb or another close town for supplies. He seems to live on beer and wine; rarely do I see solid food pass his lips. His extravagant bonhomie has to be balanced against the kaleidoscope of his moods but in good times he has plenty of stories of his exploits, always entertaining if sometimes straining credulity. I wonder how much longer he can continue.