The heat is brutal. The search for water and its source occupies Michel’s first few days here.
Vanessa and I have set about cutting back the ivy in the swimming pool. We have one pair of garden shears between us. This means one of us clips until aching arms defeat her, while the other tugs, untangles and gathers up the dead foliage. Then we swap. We seem to have a good rhythm going. She is a hardworking, bright girl and I thoroughly enjoy her company. Neither of the girls speaks English, which forces me to use my rather rusty French. Our conversations don’t amount to much: the odd polite exchange or earnest requests on my part to know the French word for this or that. From time to time, particularly given the temperature, the arid conditions and strenuous activity, it proves difficult, and we end up working in companionable silence.
Meanwhile, Michel is scouring the hill, up and down, back and forth like a two-legged goat over our ten acres of Provençal jungle for waterpipes or signs of a well. His legs are latticed with grazes from the brambles and from tripping over hidden rocks, but he remains determined. Madame B. mentioned to him that somewhere on the property there is a natural spring, but for the moment, its whereabouts eludes him.
“We may have to cut back the entire acreage before we find it!” he announces on one of his stopovers at the villa, in search of refreshment.
“Where’s Clarisse?”
Vanessa and I shake our heads and wipe our sticky brows. “Don’t know, haven’t seen her for hours. You need Wellingtons and a hip flask, Michel,” I say.
He shrugs and disappears in his shorts and supermarket espadrilles—fraying already—ascending yet another barely visible track. I read his concern. The installation of an entire water system at this stage would mean we would be obliged to close up the property and abandon it for the foreseeable future. Neither of us have voiced this sorry prospect as yet.
Each evening, one or both of us drives to the village to fill several twenty-liter plastic containers with water for the day ahead. I learn that in France every village and town has its public supply of eau potable. It is considered a basic right in this country that, no matter how poor a person may be, he has access to free drinking water wherever in the land. Vive la France! I laugh when Michel explains this national kindness. I am very grateful to the Republic of France for such forethought, because our funds are diminishing rapidly.
Still, funds or no funds, due to the lack of facilities at the villa, we are obliged to install the girls in a hotel. Naturally, we choose the hilltop hotel, where the patron offers Michel a generous deal. Each morning, we drive to Mougins to collect them; they order le petit déjeuner, which is the usual: rolls, croissants, confiture and café au lait (chocolat for Vanessa, who cannot abide tea or coffee yet frets constantly about her pretty, svelte figure). The girls’ breakfasts are included in the price of the room (any rolls not eaten we stuff into my bag and take with us for our lunch), and Michel and I order a pot of coffee for two. This we consume as a family on the patron’s terrace and, while he and his wife are occupied with the bills of departing guests, one at a time, Michel and I tiptoe up the twisting, narrow stairway to the girls’ room and take an illicit hot-water shower. Hot water never felt this delicious or wicked! By day three, Monsieur’s flamboyant bonhomie is beginning to diminish, and he is eyeing us with suspicion. I dread to think how he will greet us toward the end of the month!
Michel pays a visit to la mairie, the local town hall, requesting plans of Appassionata’s water system. But it is August, and there is nobody to search through the files. Everyone is en vacances, and even if they were not, he learns, it is unlikely that the information has been registered. The house is too old, the land has been divided, it is a private residence. Water systems, septic tanks, do not have to be listed. We must continue our search unaided. In desperation, he stops at a local phone booth and puts in a call to Brussels, to Madame B.
“I’ve found a bassin at the top of the hill, but the pipes that lead to it disappear into the undergrowth and I can’t trace or get at them. Where is the water coming from to feed that basin?”
Madame has no idea. The property was bought as a gift for one of her two daughters who loved horses, but the inclines and terraces made it impossible for her to breed there. She never lived on the property.
“Hélas, I cannot remember, Monsieur, it was almost fifteen years ago.”
“And the woman who rented it from you, who bred dogs?”
“I have no idea where she is. She left owing us thousands, including the water bills.”
“Ah, so you do have water bills?”
“Mais, bien sûr! At least I think so. She never paid whatever bills were outstanding. Of that I am very certain.”
“It’s just that… you’d mentioned a well?”
“Ah, la source! Yes, yes, I think there is a well. Perhaps my daughter has kept everything, but she is away until mid-September. We will try to supply all these details when the sale goes through. Pierre and I are off on holiday tomorrow, so bonne chance.”
IT IS EARLY EVENING. The sun is glinting through the olive trees and laying shadows across the weedy terraces. We are sitting alone in an expansive dust patch—once a lawn—alongside the top terrace, in two supermarket deck chairs, sharing a bottle of local vin de Provence rosé. Our conversation is about water, of course, and I am discovering how Michel hates to be defeated.
“If squatters lived here and grew vegetables, there has to be a water main. They wouldn’t have known about the well. I am going to Lyonnaise des eaux, the local water board, in the morning, and pray to God they haven’t also shut down for the month of August.”
“They might have done what we are doing,” I suggest, pouring us both another glass of wine.
“What’s that?”
“Taken advantage of French hospitality. Collected their daily water supply from the village.”
While he considers this possibility, I tell him that I have driven the girls back to the hotel and that I have promised we would take them into Cannes later for a pizza. Money shortage or not, they are ready for an evening out. I sense they are growing bored and impatient with our lack of facilities and the slim choice of meals we and our temporary cooking arrangements can provide—a couple of old saucepans from London, a two-hundred-franc barbecue, a plastic salad dish, servers, knives and forks bought locally along with paper plates and some form of camping thing belonging to Michel which looks like a Bunsen burner but succeeds in boiling water for potatoes and coffee.
“The girls are fine. It’s you who wants to get out,” he teases. It is about now that I am recognizing a fundamental difference between us. If I, in my old life, my real life, am faced with something that does not work, I leave it, move on, buy another. “No kitchen, fine, let’s eat out” is my idea of the perfect solution. Michel, on the other hand, has patience and an ability to knock up something practical out of what looks to me like nothing more than a useless piece of wire or wood. I concede, “Perhaps you are right,” and he hoots with laughter when I confess sheepishly that this is the closest I have ever come to camping.
“Still, you’re right. The girls will be happier once I get that pool filled.”
He continues to reassure them that once we have discovered the water source and how to pump it to our water basin, a circular cement tank at the very summit of the hill, and ensured its freefall passage back downhill to the house unimpeded by clogged pipes, the very first thing we will do is fill the swimming pool. I turn my head and look back across two terraces to its empty, bleached-out blueness and fantasize about cool, crystalline swimming water. Yes, the days will be more languid then.
“What about the neighbors?” I ask him. “Have you talked to them?”
“Everyone is away. Or at the beach.”
The beach! We haven’t visited the beach yet. “Hang the water problem. Let’s go to the beach tomorrow!”
“Too many tourists,” Michel says, as though we had lived on this hill for a hundred years.
WE RISE EARLY. I am delighted to have found a man who loves the early mornings as much as I do. Our days begin when the sun peeps through the towering pines and shines down upon us and our dreadful mattress on the floor to light our bronzed faces.
“I’m off to the sea,” I whisper sleepily, throwing on old clothes. I drive to the coast, falling into combat on the way with great orange dust carts and the first of the day’s horn addicts. Down in the town, the air is rich with traffic fumes and freshly baked bread. A solitary hour spent swimming followed by a fresh cold-water shower on the beach and I am perky and raring to go. Back at the house I grab a coffee before we drive over to collect the girls from the hotel. This is so much better. I can no longer face beginning each day with the patron’s glower. Michel laughs and tells me I am too sensitive. But judging by the look on the patron’s face every time we mount the stairs to the girls’ room, I feel sure his nights are spent plotting our deaths.
Over breakfast, I relate the delights of the beach at seven A.M., eulogizing about the tranquility, the lack of tourists who are all still slumbering, not a footprint written on the golden sand and the sunrise. Ah, the sunrise! It lifts in majestic silence from a secret heaven beyond the hills, bringing warmth and a honey-ripe light which spreads across the water to meet the horizon, coloring the limpid Med a shimmering gold. At the center of this miracle is me, rippling through the salty stillness.
Having shared my moments of bliss, Vanessa expresses a fervent desire to come with me. Tomorrow, she begs, s’il te plaît, Carol, chère Carol?
I don’t answer. She and her sister would sleep till noon if we left them to it.
S’il te plaît, Carol. She is so solicitous, requesting with pouting and passion. How can I possibly refuse? It is agreed.
After breakfast, back at the villa, the view is a heat haze. It gives an opium-smoked softness to the contours of the surrounding hills. Michel sets off on a visit to the water board while Vanessa and I clear the last of the ivy still clinging like death to the pool’s walls and base. When this backbreaking chore has finally been accomplished, we stand back to admire the results of our labors.
“It’s so cracked and old,” she pronounces.
“It needs water,” I encourage, but it does look strangely desolate.
In blistering heat, we hike the mountains of dead vegetation across the terraces and pile it all up as a bonfire, ready for burning at some later stage in the year. We dare not put a match to it for many months to come. In the south of France, it is against the law to light fires during the summer months. There is a high risk of bush incidents here. With our wild acres of growth and acute lack of water, in this temperature, we risk igniting the entire coastline and turning it to charcoal.
I look about for Clarisse. She is nowhere to be seen.
Baguettes for lunch under arm, Michel returns from the town looking fried and frazzled. It was noisy, dusty, packed with tourists and cars, he says, and he encountered a deeply unhelpful female fonctionnaire who informed him that they are unable to disclose the whereabouts of our water source without a legal document showing proof of purchase of the property or a recent bill, neither of which we have. Nor would the water board be willing to trace any location details without the name of the last account holder. The most likely person is the dog lady who ran off without paying any bills. He offered Madame B.’s name, but the assistant merely shook her head and then, with furrowed brow, informed him that the board had received a letter some eighteen months earlier from Madame B., requesting the water be cut off.
“Why would she have done that?” I ask.
“In France, if the electricity and water are officially switched off, the proprietors are not responsible for paying the land and habitation taxes,” Michel says.
“So now what?”
“I am going back tomorrow with our passports and our promesse de vente. It is signed by Monsieur and Madame B. With those to hand I’ll insist that they revert the instruction.”
“Coo-coo, Papa!”
“Ah, you finished the pool. Well done.” And with that Michel hurries inside for his camera to takes photos of Vanessa, waving and calling, alongside Pamela. They are investigating the deserted pool. At its deepest point, it measures three meters and makes even fat Pamela seem minute. I ponder the rushing gallons of water it will require, as well as Michel’s tenacity through all of this.
AS EACH DAY PASSES, the land around the house grows more like a dustbowl. When the wind is up, it settles everywhere—in our clothes, on kitchenware, on our skin, as grit around our teeth. Whatever we attempt, it is hot, dusty work, but the girls remain cheerful most of the time, and in their different ways, they offer their assistance with the task we have taken on. Although they are twins—fraternal—I am enjoying the discovery of their separate natures. Clarisse, possibly the less practical of the pair, spends hours picking wildflowers—her tiny frame is lost among the jungle growth—which she delivers in discarded wine bottles or jam jars to our rigged-up dining table, a wooden plank supported by bricks, broken tiles and other debris dug out of the garden. Vanessa, on the other hand, takes pleasure in the discovery of language and information. She has now owned up to a knowledge of English but adamantly refuses to speak a syllable of it with me. Why, I inquire, but she merely shakes her head and goes away. Is it some deep-rooted resistance to me, I ask myself, or is it that we are in her country and so, in her exacting mind, must speak her language?
Returning from the boulangerie, she and I drive by a house named Mas de Soleil. Back at the villa, she comes searching for me to borrow my dictionary to look up the meaning of mas. I wonder that she is French and hasn’t come across the noun before, but then we learn that it is particular to this region, meaning a farmhouse or traditional Provençal house. She suggests we might like to rechristen our villa Mas des Oliviers.
“Do you like this house?” I probe, but she merely stares at me, shrugs and goes off about her own affairs. I’d like to detain her, engage her in conversation, ask her about her life in Paris, but only when we are at work together do I feel a bond. Still, whatever their opinions on the purchase of our dilapidated property—and perhaps they have none; after all, they are only thirteen—they appear neutral. I love them for not judging their father’s choices. I have no children of my own; I have never married before. This will be my first go at it, and I suppose I am as nervous and inept as anyone in my position. I wrongfoot on a daily basis, but so far, nothing that cannot be redeemed. We are living in combustible conditions in broiling heat, but we make allowances for that, and for one another. In spite of the frustrations, I believe we are a happy band.
WHILE MICHEL BATTLES on with the water crisis, Vanessa, Clarisse and I attack the grounds, cutting them back to take stock of what is there. It is a time of discoveries: empty bottles, slabs of thick ancient floor tiles painted Tuscan earth colors. Were they transported here by the original owner of the house, whose name, I have learned from the reams of history documented in our promesse de vente, was Signor Spinotti? Signor Spinotti, a merchant from Milan, the creator of Appassionata. Yes, I like the sound of it and close my eyes to picture him: portly, exuberant, generous.
And Clarisse has unearthed a pond. “Carol! Papa! Come and look!” Who would have thought it? In this arid paradise, a kidney-shaped pond is revealed, about two meters long. It has survived, buried beneath jungles of streaky iris and wild lilies and heaven knows what other thick-stemmed weeds and, astoundingly, has not dried up, but the water is so dank and muddy that we cannot tell how deep it goes.
“Could it be fed from our elusive well?”
Michel kneels and considers its silty blackness. “It’s very still; I doubt it, but who can know?” He rises, reminded of our lack of water, and turns around in the hot cloudless day, trying to figure out the puzzle.
I stare at the murky bath, longing to trickle my fingers through, to feel its liquidy velvet sensation and watch the drops dribble and drip back into the pond, but I am hesitant. I don’t know what might lurk beneath its surface. Something sinister might rise up and bite me.
“Oh my God, look!” The water shivers and stills again.
Michel bends to survey what I am staring at but can see nothing. Neither can I.
“Something moved. I definitely saw it. I think it was a fish.”
He laughs. “A frog, perhaps, but not a fish, chérie. The house has been empty for years.”
“Well, when we have water, I’ll clean it up, and then we really can have fish.”
“Mmm. When we have water…” He glances at his watch. “I must get going.”
HE TRACKS DOWN Monsieur Charpy, the estate agent, and persuades him to write an accompanying letter of attestation which, along with photocopies of our passports and a copy of the promesse de vente, the water board agrees to accept as proof that we are entitled to receive water. Late in the afternoon, Michel motors up the driveway honking, triumphant with his news. He rushes to the garage, and we switch on the main tap one more time, but there is still no water.
We exchange a silent, rather desperate look. Is this why Madame B. accepted such a drastic reduction in the price? Have we bought a farm without a water supply? The pig in a poke my father had warned me against.
“What now?” I ask.
“The EDF are coming to switch on the electricity tomorrow. The water supply shouldn’t be affected, but maybe it is. Let’s wait till then, chérie. If there’s still no water, then… well, we’ll see.”
THE QUIETUDE OF MY morning swims on the beach alongside the Palm Beach Casino have been supplanted by the hectic itinerary of a family outing à la Monsieur Hulot. Even Pamela accompanies us now. Gone are the languorous laps that acted as my physical meditation, necessary to face the hurdles of house renovation on a shoestring. They have been replaced by a car trunk full of soggy towels, wet bathing suits and leaking shampoo bottles. Not to mention Pamela, who carries another twenty kilos of sand in her damp fur. Now, instead of swimming and quitting the beach in rejuvenated isolation, returning to the house to collect Michel by eight, by the time the troops are out of bed and rallied and we are on our way down the Boulevard Carnot, it is rush hour and I am grumpy.
“I don’t want to do this anymore!” I scream. “These were my morning swims!” The erstwhile lunatic energy in the car recedes into awkward silence. Our outing is funereal in mood, and neither of the girls answers when I speak to them. Both have retreated into a serious sulk.
Later, over a cup of reheated coffee, because we have run out of water and didn’t have time to refill one of the plastic canisters since an electrician and a representative from the EDF are arriving at ten-thirty, Michel chides me. Lovingly, he tells me that I am not behaving like a member of a family. “You are not used to it, chérie. The girls understand.” And he brushes my nose with a kiss. But obviously they don’t. They judge me demented, and I am ready to hurl myself in the bracken or the black viscose pond.
While I am elsewhere, feeling inadequate, the electricity is connected. A painless affair, certainly compared to the escalating water saga. In the presence of Mr. Dolfo, the electrician, Michel gives our water tap another try, but the pipes do not respond. Not one throaty gurgle.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about this?” he asks Dolfo, who shakes his head and shrugs.
Still, to keep our spirits up, we celebrate our first step toward modern living by dashing out to the largest supermarket I have ever visited and purchasing a modest little fridge.
On our way back, Clarisse points out a series of brightly colored posters pasted to the lampposts all around the village. They are advertising a fireworks display to be held on the beach at Cannes. She pleads with Michel to take the girls down to the coast for the evening. He attempts to dissuade her, warning of the thousands who will be there, assuring her that we will see much more from our own terraces, but she, and now Vanessa, are insistent. So, along with Pamela, whom we dare not leave in case she has a heart attack from fright or waddles away in terror never to find her way back, we join the lines of descending traffic and head for the beach, which is teeming with holidaymakers. Every parking lot and garage is bursting; there is nowhere closer to Cannes than our own home to leave my VW.
By this stage, I am more than ready to dump the car and walk away, but Michel suggests we drive on a mile or two out of town and find ourselves a deserted stretch of sand to watch the display. This is what we do. Car parked, I wander over to a small stone jetty and sit. The girls are engaged in a rather earnest converstion with Papa, so I remain at a discreet distance, regarding the sea. In any case, I cannot follow what is being discussed, and since my earlier outburst, I have been feeling rather like an exposed nerve. Before me the waves are glinting silver in the moonlight. The water lapping at my feet is tranquil and soothing, but does not reach the confusions churning about inside me. Way along the coast, the pyrotechnics have begun. Great globes of blue, white and red—the colors of the French flag—explode into sprays that fall away silently. I am a foreigner here, an outsider. I travel frequently and regularly have found myself alone in the most outlandish of situations, but this time there is another nuance. I have given every penny I possess, which, granted, is not a whole heap, and thrown in my lot with a man I barely know; steamed off into the rosy sunset without a clue about where I was heading. Now we have an olive farm which we cannot begin to afford, no water, no prospects for any, two girls who are tolerating me…
Clarisse’s arm presses up against me as she plops down beside me. It takes me by surprise.
“Tu es très pensive, Carol. Are you and Papa going to have a baby?” she inquires without preamble.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Why, would that trouble you?”
She thinks hard for a minute and then shakes her head. “No, it’s just that Vanessa and I have been talking about it.”
“Have you? What have you been saying?”
She thinks again. I await her response with trepidation.
“It would be better if it were a girl.”
“Why?”
“You both have such a lot of curly hair. It might look silly on a boy.”
Innocent as this comment might be, by God, it heartens me.
Later, as we undress for bed, I ask Michel, “Were the girls talking to you about us having a baby?” He looks at me, amused. “No, why ever would you think that? They were wanting to know about the pool. They think we need advice on how to maintain it.”
“Shouldn’t we wait till we have water in it?” I suggest a mite testily.
“I promised them that one treat. I want to keep my promise, if I possibly can, and give them something to look forward to.”
“So that’s what you were so deeply engaged in conversation about, the swimming pool?”
He stares in surprise, a tired smile on his nut-brown face, placing his shirt on the cardboard box acting as dressing table. “What’s the matter?”
I scramble into bed, and a spring needles me in the back, at which I curse profanely and drag the sheet over my head.
Michel approaches and lifts the bedding from my face. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing. I just hate this mattress and I want a bath.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, even without my daily swim, promising amounts of my good humor have returned, and I kiss Michel lovingly as he sets off down the hill for the hot cramped office set alongside the motorway and occupied by the rather grandly named Piscines Azurèenes - Construction et filtration - Produits - Accessoires - Contrats d’entretien - Dépannage - Robots de nettoyage to buy a bucket of chlorine tablets and pick up a useful leaflet or two. The woman recommends that, because our pool has been empty for some time, we have an expert pay us a visit.
Within the hour, a swimming pool–blue van trundles up the drive, honking frequently. I run to take a look.
“Tie up that blasted dog or I’m not staying!” is our introduction to its driver. Poor dear Pamela, who was snoring happily and quietly enjoying her day, is dragged to one of the stables, where I attach her with a piece of string to one of the iron rings. It is only now she begins to bark.
Satisfied, out of the van comes l’expert. He is a burly fellow in very baggy trousers, with bloodshot eyes and a big dark drooping mustache, and he reeks of alcohol. (It is a little after eleven A.M.) He takes one look at the pool, throws his arms in the air and scoffs loudly. “This pool was constructed in the late twenties.”
“Is that a problem?” I snap crossly.
He screws up his face, eyeing me beadily, then sets off on a slow plod around the pool’s perimeter, bending and lifting like an ostrich, appraising it theatrically. “It is a capacious and sturdy piece of workmanship, but it has no filtering system.”
Fortunately, both girls are elsewhere, because I know that bad news is about to be imparted. And it is. Within three days of its being filled, même pas three days, the water—if we ever locate any—will breed galloping algae and turn a brilliant green which, in this heat, would be a serious health hazard. I reluctantly admit to myself that he knows what he’s talking about. The long and the short of it is that we cannot simply fill it as we had envisaged; we must construct a cleaning system. His estimate nearly sends me tumbling backward over the terraces.
The girls’ disappointment when Michel breaks the news over lunch is heartbreaking, to say nothing of my own. We return to our land clearing in a despondent mood.
In an attempt to cheer us all up, Michel calls us, beckoning us down the hill. “J’ai une bonne idée!” he cries.
“No more stupid ideas, please, Papa!” returns Vanessa, refusing to even glance in his direction. “This whole place is a stupid idea,” she mutters to her sister. I feel sinewy knots tighten in my stomach.
“A stroke of genius, mes chéries,” he coaxes. “To put the empty pool to use.”
But they will not even turn their heads. I watch him walk away, saddened for his defeat. Then curiously, he gathers up our old radio/cassette player, takes it to the swimming pool and descends the steps with it. I am intrigued. “Look at your father,” I encourage, but the girls will not relent. When he has satisfied himself that he is standing in the center of the empty space, he places the machine, a rather clapped-out ghetto blaster, on the ground and slips a cassette into it. The voice of Sting bounces off the walls, reverberating bass and acoustic guitar, and reaches up the hill to the terraces where we three girls are at hot, sticky work. Their cross expressions break in delight. We drop our tools and race toward the music. There we are, covered in earth and bits of scythed weeds, alongside Michel, who is clapping to the beat. “Every problem has a good side,” he says, laughing and winking blue eyes in my direction, while Pamela growls uncomprehendingly as we dance and hoot like crazed Indian squaws.
Into this bizarre scene arrives a small white Renault van. It is the electrician, Mr. Dolfo. He looks at us askance, trying not to notice the radio sitting in the center of a huge empty pool and the fat German shepherd going bananas barking at us, not at him.
He takes Michel aside as though there is no sense to be had anywhere near three such hysterical females and begins a conversation that appears to be serious and highly secret.
The evening before, over a glass, Mr. Dolfo tells Michel, he was in conversation with a fellow workman, a plumber and chimney sweep. By chance, he was relating the woes of the new waterless house owners on the hill. Quelle surprise! His colleague, who was born and bred in the village and used to hunt on our land as a lad, knows the exact whereabouts of our water house. Mr. Dolfo offers to drop by at the end of the day with Mr. Di Fazio. There is great excitement. I dash to the village to buy beer, cases and cases of it, to chill in our new little fridge and offer our rescuers, though the prospect of water at long last has become almost too improbable to count on, so I try very hard not to allow excitement to get the better of me. When did I ever think that water running from a tap would send me into paroxysms of joy!
THE VISCOSITY IN THE light caused by the day’s heat is evaporating. Dolfo arrives up the hilly driveway late in the afternoon in his Renault van—which I later discover he cannot reverse!—followed by the chugging of what looks like an old bus. This is Mr. Di Fazio. The fellow emerges from his van in filthy blue overalls, and in this brilliant clear sunshine, we meet a man covered from head to toe in soot. Cleaning chimneys, he explains with a roar of laughter. I immediately take to him and his thick Provençal accent which twangs like country music and offer him a cold beer. This he accepts like a naughty boy, looking this way and that in pantomimic fashion as though he were about to be chased with a rolling pin. He pats his robust stomach, downs the beer in several thirsty gulps and mutters mischievously about disobeying his wife and the strict diet she administers.
Michel and the two men set off on foot. As he tells me later, they cross the lane bordering our land and disappear into the valley that sits between us and a narrow track winding to the village and on to the sea. There in that valley, they come upon a small stone house about the size of a cote.
“Your water shed!” declares Di Fazio.
Unbeknownst to us, this petit cabin was built by our splendid Italian ancestor, Signor Spinotti, in the same year as Appassionata and remains a part of the estate. When Appassionata was first constructed, its domain included this valley and the hills beyond. Nowadays, this particular parcel of land is owned by a syndicate in Marseille. Still, the small stone house, which has electricity, a water meter and an electric pump, remains the property of the villa owners, and they have water rights as well as rights of passage. Because its thick wooden door is jammed closed, Di Fazio wastes no time in breaking in; to reassure Michel, he points out the main pipe, situated aboveground outside and running alongside a small stream back toward the town.
First the three men switch on the water. It gushes forth instantly and splashes into the water house, filling up a cement dugout about a meter deep.
“Now we switch on the electric pump,” continues Di Fazio, who makes a gesture toward Mr. Dolfo to do the honors. The pump begins to shimmy like a plump belly dancer.
“From here the water will be pumped to the bassin at the top of the hill, and from there it will flow back down to the main house.” Michel and the two artisans watch on, satisfied, then they pull fast the door and make their way back up to the villa for a second, much deserved cold beer.
Di Fazio takes a deep slug from his bottle, squinting at the hill’s brow. Behind him, we stand like extras in a film, following his gaze, waiting expectantly. A remarkably large black and white butterfly flutters by me.
“Deux heures,” our new plumber pronounces with the expertise and wisdom of God.
Two hours. The words are repeated like a Chinese whisper as though the miracle is too incredible to articulate out loud. In two hours we will have water!
“Quelle heure est-il?” demands Vanessa, needing as always to be precise. Clarisse shrugs. She has lost her watch somewhere between wildflower picking and selecting branches for flower arrangements from the scythed broome Vanessa and I have decimated.
“Half past six.”
“So, half past eight, then? Yippee!”
HALF PAST EIGHT comes, and half past eight goes. The water does not arrive. Every thirty minutes, one of us is given the thirst-inducing duty of pounding up the hill in the falling evening light to confirm whether or not the water has begun to arrive. Each one of us returns half dead with a shake of the head. Pas encore. Five hours later, when we prepare for bed, there is still no sign of water.
The next morning Di Fazio returns. He and Michel, who by now is acquainted with every overgrown square centimeter of this land, set off with shears and a scythe to walk the hills and terraces in search of burst pipes and leaks. They find none. So, en principe, there is no reason why the water should not be arriving up in the basin. Eventually, a return visit to the stone house shows them that the electric pump which burst into life at the flick of a switch has died. Clearly the effort, after so many years of idleness, was simply too much for it. We will need a new pump. After a lunchtime consultation with Mr. Dolfo, we learn that the new pump will cost, including labor, approximately ten thousand francs, or about fifteen hundred dollars. This news is bad. Ten thousand francs is more than we have left, and we have not yet settled our bill with the hotel owner. We thank both Mr. Dolfo and Mr. Di Fazio for their assistance and tell them we will be in touch when we next return to the coast. Shaking hands with us, they slip away discreetly. Their disappointment on our behalf is evident.
FRIENDS ARRIVE IN A two-car convoy from England, bringing with them bits of furniture and two large terra-cotta pots I purchased in Crete which will look splendid on either side of the pool steps, as well as other offerings of one sort or another, including, most importantly, my mail. We cannot hide our dismay about the water. A lunch salad is made, and Michel recounts our ongoing water saga over an aperitif while I disappear to our bedroom to read through the stack of letters. Most are junk, a few are from long-distant friends who have heard via the grapevine about my new life—sounds divine, darling!—and want to come and visit, and one is from my agent. A letter from my agent usually contains one of two things: the occasional forwarded fan letter or two, in which case the envelope is usually thicker, or a check. This envelope is slender. My hopes are high. I open it with trembling fingers praying that the check will not be for some ridiculous sum, such as 47 pence from the BBC for a foreign program sale to some remote cable channel in the middle of Botswana. The letter is notification of a check which has been paid directly into my London account for a series of sales and repeat fees on All Creatures Great and Small. The check more than covers the price of the water pump. In fact, it will stretch to the first installment on the required cleaning system for the pool. Our day, no, our summer is made.
I run crazily out onto the upper terrace waving the statement like a flag of victory. Friends and family, seated around the table on the level below me, cheer and raise glasses as I deliver the news.
Michel hurtles off in the car to telephone Mr. Dolfo while the rest of us lay the table for lunch and change the cassette in the swimming pool. Funky music echoes around the hillside. Our water problem is at an end.
Ah, how much we take for granted in city life! The simple rituals of brushing our teeth, getting clean, soaping our flesh recklessly, frothing our hair into sudsy turbans of shampoo, make us jubilant. Vanessa discovers a leak on the land in one of the pipes where the water is spraying out as though it were a geiser. She jumps about over it and leaps on the muddied earth, splashing and washing, laughing and whooping. Her exuberant cries cut through the still heat, silencing even the cicadas.
“SEE, THE HOUSE faces southwest. It looks out over the bay of Cannes, the promontory of Fréjus and the sweeping gulf of Napoule and, if we stand on tiptoe or take a ladder and scale the back wall onto our flat, graveled roof, you can clearly see the two islands sleeping off the coast of Cannes, west of Antibes, known as the Îles des Lérins.”
From our top terrace, after sundown, when the streetlamps light up along the coastal road that snakes around the promontory of Fréjus, it looks as though someone has dropped a priceless diamond necklace, leaving it to glitter across the westerly half of the horizon. Sometimes the Esterel Mountains turn a dusky blue and resemble a Japanese painting. Alongside, the pink sunset puts me in mind of flamingoes flitting across a mirage. Our friends are falling for this ramshackle villa as much as we have. So we are not alone, not so dizzy.
THANKS TO THE rooms taken by our guests, the patron now has a full hotel. He puts up the sign—Complet—and the small affair of illicit showers is dismissed with a shrug and a glass of wine. We settle our account with him while the girls pack their bags, and then we drive them home to be with us at the villa. And what is more, they seem excited at the prospect.
“PAPA! PAPA, viens içi!” It is Clarisse calling. Everyone downs tools and runs to the terrace where she is standing and waving. Vanessa is at her side. They are now kneeling and staring into our pond. “Il y a des poissons!”
I knew it! Ever since that hot midge-biting afternoon when we first discovered the pond, I have been returning there to try to penetrate the living mystery of its smoked-glass surface. Clarisse, with her usual fascination for the minutiae of wildlife, has passed the last hour filling jugs of water from the luxury of our water supply—a running tap!—and pouring them into the pond. The fresh water has stirred the silt and life beneath. There, swimming close to the brimming surface of the diluted, bracken-toned water, are three huge fish. Each is a good foot long.
“C’est incroyable!”
The four of us are on all fours like thirsty mogs bent close over the water to examine the fish. They are carp, or monstrous goldfish. Then another appears. And another! In all, we count five or six, possibly even seven, it is difficult to be precise as they dart and dive. But the first three are the largest.
“How have they lived all this time?” I ask.
“On the plankton, the natural vegetation. Still, it is rather miraculous,” says Michel.
Another discovery of Appassionata’s life—its resilience. Each day, we are thrilled by new wonders.
AND THEN OUT OF the blue, a rather disagreeable guest turns up, an elderly gentleman searching for Michel. He is a writer who has come in the hope of selling a screenplay. How did he find us, we ask ourselves, but can find no satisfactory explanation. Fortunately, our living circumstances are so manifestly primitive that we have no need to apologize for the lack of a bed, but politeness and Michel’s endless generosity dictate that we invite him to stay for dinner. Our little gathering has now reached eleven. Dinner is prepared on the barbecue. It is a communal affair and great fun. Running water from the tap in the temporary kitchen facilitates the washing of vegetables and salads.
We dine beneath the magnolia grandiflora. From there we have views to the sea and the mountains. Golden, lambent light from the antique oil lamp I brought from England illuminates our late-evening gathering. Water trickling into the pool threatens to drown out Billie Holiday’s “Easy Living.” We hardly care. The flow itself is music to our ears. Still, at this rate, we calculate it will take three weeks to fill! Chris, one of my oldest friends, offers to purchase us several hoses as a housewarming gift. We drink to that and assure him that he has guaranteed himself a welcome return.
We recount our search for water to the unexpected new arrival. In response, rather like an embittered old Cassandra, he predicts, “Once a water problem, always a water problem. In my house in Spain…” and tells with relish his woeful story as though he were wishing us an equal measure of ill luck. The table goes silent, nothing more than water spluttering into the pool, distant chirring of sleepless crickets and strains of “Good Morning Heartache” can be heard.
“But the problem is solved. Now we have water,” I chip in cheerily.
“And there is always wine,” rejoins Michel, replenishing glasses all around.
LATER, WINED AND REPLETE, our numerous guests set off down the drive, heading over the hills to the cozy amiability of the little hotel and perhaps a last nightcap at the bar. There is much kissing and embracing; much drunken teasing, a dozen repeated “good nights,” bonhomie and promises of outings to the beach and the various flea markets over the course of the next few days. Then, with the receding hum of the last of the cars, we are left alone. En famille.
For a short while before turning in, we sit together gazing at the canopy of stars, arms slung loosely around one another; a man, his two adoring daughters and the new woman. An actress. Another breed of woman, nothing like Maman. Little is said. I occasionally read perplexity or guilt in the girls’ behavior, particularly today, when a thick letter arrived from Maman and they snatched it like small squirrels and hiked it off to read in the privacy of their bedroom. I am aware that to like me might well be seen as an act of infidelity to their mother or their parents’ past life, but still I sense we are creeping toward one another. Shattered after work-filled days, in the hot sticky evenings, in the silence or the lack of language, mosquitoes buzzing like dive bombers, slowly, I dare to believe we are growing to accept one another.
After an embrace, we all drift off to bed.
Michel’s back is acting up. I think it is the result of scaling the hills and spending our nights on the lumpy old mattress, but it doesn’t seem to stop him from sleeping while I lie awake thinking a million different thoughts, such as how I wish we could afford a proper bed. Yet, I am happy. I love the man breathing peacefully at my side. I love this old house, although I am beginning to comprehend the enormity of our task. But we are not in any hurry. This is our first summer. Officially, the property is not yet ours. That hurdle—oh Lord!—has yet to be faced. For the moment, we have achieved electricity and water. With these two precious commodities, we can live here in a basic sort of fashion. Tomorrow, work on the pool-cleaning system will begin. We have a barbecue for summer, plenty of fresh salad from the colorful market in Cannes, a choice of fine cheeses, oven-warm bread and many bottles of local wine. How better fed could we be? Michel says that when we return at Christmas, he will teach me how to cook on the open fire.
I reshuffle myself, trying to avoid the springs, and cuddle into the arc of his soft back, preparing to dream of our first winter here: log fires, barbecued turkey and outings in search of woodland cèpes, when I hear a pitter-pattering above me. I lift my head into the warm starry darkness, trying to locate the sound. The roof is flat. Is it a small animal running to and fro? Then, as the sound grows faster and more furious, I realize that it is rain. Yes, it is raining. The first I have seen here. I drag the flimsy summer sheet fast around me and listen to its falling. Summer rain, after so many parched and waterless days. With it will come a whole host of new perfumes. Drenched nature. We have our own thin stream of water trickling into the pool, and as if to assist it, the heavens have opened. What a cloudburst. I fall asleep to streams of it drumming fast overhead.
The next morning, the rain has stopped. The ground is damp and earthy-smelling and the air is clear, washed of its heavy, thick heat.
Unusually, I am the first out of bed, and I creep sleepy-eyed to the kitchen to brew coffee. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly find it is wet underfoot and look down to discover three puddles sitting like rain clouds on the tommette-tiled kitchen floor. At first, I am ready to blame poor Pamela for slinking into the kitchen in the dead of night in search of food and piddling there. Then the horror awakens me. I lift my head ceilingward and realize that in among all the flaking strips of plaster there are three holes. Tiny holes, barely bigger than pencils, but they are lethal for they are letting in rainwater.
“Michel! We have a leaking roof!”