Jet-lagged from Australia, where I have spent the past nine weeks, I land in London. The city is in the grip of shopping fever, and the temperature seems to have settled at around freezing. The bookies are taking bets, short odds, on whether or not it will be a white Christmas. After the blinding white heat of Sydney and a crippling film schedule, I am spinning and want nothing more than to get directly out of the city and on the road again, south to the villa, to spend our first Christmas at home.
For weeks now, staring out at the Pacific Ocean from my hotel terrace, watching one bleached surfer after the next “hang nine,” a script forever in front of me, pining for Michel who was back in Paris, or trussed up in corsets and Victorian frocks in an ambient temperature of 100ºF, I have been dreaming of barbecued turkey on our open fire. The only cloud on that mental idyll has been that we are still not the legal owners of our olive farm, and we are both growing very apprehensive.
The purchase has not been going smoothly, and while we bite our nails and wait, reflecting on the money we have already invested, the sterling currency against the franc is going through the floor.
As far as we can glean, because no one is exactly keeping us informed, the delays seem to lie within le bureau des impôts. Apparently, the French tax authorities are querying Monsieur and Madame B.’s right to dispose of the estate. Investigations are now in progress into both their and their offspring’s inheritance deeds. The Belgian owners, through the offices of the French notaire, have written to declare their foreign resident status, furnished letters from the daughter to support this fact and relinquished all claims on the estate. As far as we can ascertain, they have filled out and furnished every document the French patrimonial tax system has ever drawn up on the subject. Now, it seems, we are awaiting only this unfathomable body’s acceptance of the situation.
Save for the death of poor ailing Monsieur B., which would complicate matters horrendously, Michel and I have been assured that all hiccups have finally been ironed out, all stumbling blocks removed; even the division of land has been satisfactorily registered, without any heart attacks, on the commune survey plans, le cadastre. Nothing else can further hinder or delay the sale. All we need is the official thumbs-up on the Belgians’ declared status and an agreed date when the three parties—the notaire, Monsieur and Madame B. and ourselves—can gather to sign and settle the matter. Given that France and Belgium, unlike Britain, do not close down for two full weeks over Christmas, Michel has telephoned to propose December 28. The notaire’s assistant has faxed back to say that she will be in touch. It’s a cliff-hanger!
At some pitch-of-night hour, we take a ferry that lands us at Calais before dawn. We drive directly to Paris, where Michel needs to spend some hours at his production office, and then we speed like a rocket to reach the house before the following morning. This self-imposed itinerary, wacky as its seems, actually suits me because I’m still on Sydney time.
A few days earlier, Michel put through a call to an Arab we ran across briefly in the summer who owns a Provençal gardening business—actually, Amar seems to have his finger in a mind-boggling number of pies—requesting him to supply us with a Christmas tree. A blue pine is our preference but not essential. When we arrive well after midnight, we find the tree slumped against one of the villa’s exterior walls on the top terrace. Its height and size make it better suited to Rockefeller Plaza, and we are obliged to lop almost three feet off its crown before dragging it like a corpse through the French windows.
Laughing insanely, loony with exhaustion and the pleasure of being together again, dying of hunger because we haven’t eaten a thing since an early-evening stop in Beaune, we hack at our tree by moonlight. We have decorations from Bon Marché, the big department store in Paris, which I purchased while Michel rushed from one meeting to the next. I suggest staying up all night to decorate our monster. Michel recommends sleep.
“We have our new bed,” he reminds me.
I had forgotten. We stagger exhaustedly to our bedroom to find, staring up at us from the floor, our old lumpy mattress now laced in cobwebs as well as months of settling dust and gecko droppings. What the hell, we fall into it like shot soldiers.
The following morning, Michel sets off for the market while I walk to the phone box to telephone the furniture store in Cannes and am informed by a most disdainful vendeuse that their driver kept the rendezvous, cutting a path with his load all the way up the corkscrew hills, but was obliged to take the bed back to the depot because there was no one at the villa to receive it. Jean-Claude and Odile, who had promised to be here for the delivery, have disappeared, gone away, are not contactable even by phone.
I apologize profusely, attempting to explain the problem, but this saleswoman remains unrelenting and froide. It is no longer her responsibility, she says. They have honored their side of the agreement. Our delivery, which next time around will cost us four hundred francs, about forty pounds, will have to wait until well into the new year. The date I eventually manage to drag out of her is weeks beyond our planned closure of the house. We will have returned north again.
So, no new bed for Christmas. But we are not too disappointed. It is so rejuvenating to be back. I wander the rooms, reinhabiting them, breathing in the evocative scents of pine and citrus wafting on the warm air. I peer through the glass at vistas cradled in my memory during distant weeks. A fire piled high with pine, oak and olive wood crackles in the hearth. Freshly made soup is bubbling in the makeshift kitchen: a whole free-range chicken in a bouillon spiced with bouquets of Provençal herbs, leeks, onions, carrots and bay leaves picked from our tree in the garden. Randy Crawford croons from the tape deck, high plaintive notes drifting through the near-empty rooms.
Holding hands, trekking from here to there, up stone steps, down rocky tracks, we reencounter our terrain and remain upbeat in spite of the clumps and thickets of weeds, the brush and thorny climbers. All have shot up as tall as sunflowers in the spaces we had cleared. So much summer threshing gone for nothing.
I glance back along the terraces toward the villa. Beyond the open French windows, our towering Christmas tree is garlanded with winking silver lights. On a table, a radiant blue glass vase I bartered for in the old town of Nice, after a visit to the Matisse exhibition at Cimiez, is crammed with long-stemmed yellow gladioli Michel picked up for a song at the market this morning. It glints in the winter sunshine. Gently hued bulbs blink on and off at a sleepy pace alongside the pool.
This mise en scène, with its early art deco feel, puts me in mind of a shabby yet elegant liner setting sail for the high winds, the open seas; or the faded glamour of a past era, a Hollywood just beyond my grasp.
My reverie is arrested by a strangled cry coming from somewhere near the parking area. We run to investigate and discover a cat tucked away in a dark corner in one of the stables. As I approach her, she hisses a warning. Michel presses my hand and inches me back. This wary creature is thin as a wisp, a scraggy-coated, white-and-marmalade feral, protecting a very newborn litter of blind pink faces. She could turn vicious, so I step back, pondering her and her young. What should we do? Cats are good ratters, and there are plenty of rats and mice about, or so we presume, though we haven’t seen any—only the telltale black pellets left on terraces and steps. Should we try and tame one or two? As if in response, the cat hisses her malevolent disapproval. No, let’s leave those furry orange balls to their destiny, to the same wild existence as their mother. Besides, after dear, much-missed Henri, how can I accept responsibility for any animal?
And then I remember our kidney-shaped pond and its prehistoric carp, and I feel sure this feline intruder will have poached them. But when we hasten to look, we count not seven, as we had calculated in the summer, but eleven! We dig out two of the sheets of curled mosquito netting slung in the garage and secure them across our pond. The squatting cats can fend for themselves.
HAVING LIVED ALL MY adult life in a big city, I was never aware of the tradition of calender-giving. Does it exist in villages and small towns in England?
Michel has disappeared to the fish market in Cannes in search of oysters. They are one of the mainstays of the traditional Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve menus here and are deliciously cheap, approximately thirty francs for two dozen. I am at my desk pegging away, trying to get to grips with my ideas for the story I want to set on the islands, when I hear honking in the driveway and look out the window. There beneath is a fire engine. Naturally, this concerns me and I hurry downstairs to find myself greeted by five stunningly fit, handsome young men clad in tight-fitting navy blue uniforms.
“Is there a problem?” I ask, trying to resist the temptation to be flirtatious.
“Bonjour, nos meilleurs voeux.” Each shakes my hand before a tender-faced member of the team shoves a bunch of calenders at me and asks me which one I would like. I don’t particularly want any of them but guess that this must be a local tradition—donations for a local charity, perhaps?—so I choose one and all five nut-brown faces light up, waiting expectantly while I run back upstairs to find my purse. There is no set price, I am told, so I offer a sum that seems to satisfy because each man shakes my hand one more time. Again they wish me warm felicitations of the season. They depart and I return to my work. But not for long. Now it’s the turn of Monsieur le facteur who climbs the drive on his yellow scooter. He honks, waves and settles. I descend and am greeted by yet another array of calenders.
I decline, explaining “Merci, we have one,” genuinely assuming that they are all selling on behalf of the same local charity, but I quickly understand by the scowl that runkles his bearded face that this answer is simply pas acceptable. Images of a triumphant Henri confronting the mailman, on his knees, flash before my eyes. Best not make enemies, or he’ll have us all in the doghouse. Smiling stupidly, I dutifully choose another calender and race back upstairs to collect my purse. I proffer the last cash I possess, a one-hundred-franc note, which seems to satisfy him, and he now wishes me the best of the season, steadies his overloaded bike and pitches off, skating down the drive at a precarious angle.
The garbage collectors arrive next. We go through the same rigmarole. Unfortunately, I am out of cash, which does not please them at all so I am obliged to hurry to the salon upstairs, where I all but wreck our luggage in a harassed search for my French checkbook. I pick my calender, write the check and wave merrily, offering good wishes as they depart. Back upstairs, I toss three calenders, all offering identical aspects of our village, onto the makeshift kitchen table, pour a large drink and begin preparations for lunch.
Michel returns, honking and smiling, laden with salads of every shade of red and green and clementines from Corsica still bearing sprigs of sharply scented leaves. I press my nose into the orange and green nobbly skin and inhale the tangy perfume. “Christmas!” I whoop. I unpack several plastic containers of Provençal olives. Dark, fleshy drupes pickled in brine, others marinated in oil and garlic or pimientos, and then our oysters, still locked within their salty corrugated shells: a dozen chanteclairs from Brittany. We place them, with all the care given to newly laid eggs, in the darkest, coolest spot at the back of our little fridge to await our evening meal.
Christmas Eve is the slot traditionally set aside for the French family Christmas dinner; because the girls are spending their holidays with Maman in Paris, we are looking forward to ours, à deux, by candlelight. While we are busy unloading the shopping, I recount the story of our host of visitors. Michel, uncorking a fresh young Chablis, laughs heartily and asks, “So, the police didn’t come by yet?”
THESE WINTER EVENINGS are enticingly mild. A new moon, slender as a child’s pearly hairslide, appears in our cornflower heaven. I am spinning my thoughts for the television series with Michel as we huddle on the terrace, keeping at bay the chill that descends with the fading light by wrapping ourselves in each other and thick cable-stitched woolies. I am describing my main character as she takes shape in my imagination while enjoying an al fresco glass of wine before the silvery shimmer on the water disappears into jet-blue night. Nutty, ambrosial whiffs of woodsmoke waft our way on the still, late-evening air. A neighborly owl hoots a bonjour. Bats swoop low, whizzing directly in front of us before wheeling and soaring like excited birds. We catch the distant call of the muezzin. The Arabs are at prayer. I grow silent and listen.
Although our house and its modest olive farm are situated in an area designated as zone verte, at the far end of the valley, tucked beyond gangling and bushy pine trees, is a settlement. It has been constructed on land purchased from the proprietors of Appassionata thirty or more years ago. At that time our local council, managing to overlook the small detail of the land status, stamped a permit that assigned to a syndicate of developers operating out of Marseilles the rights to construct upon the green belt site.
Although there were no immediate neighbors at that time, the local community was up in arms—as only the French can be when they feel their rights have been abused—and, we hear, lobbied furiously but lost. One can only speculate on how the permits ever negotiated the system in the first place, when to construct a garden shed or even a very humble lean-to in this zone requires a mountain of forms and months of badgering for planning permission. Such a blatant flaunting of the land codes would, of course, have contributed to the racist sentiments rife in southern France against all foreign workers, but aimed particularly against the Arabs. Southeast France is the heart of Le Pen country. No matter that the firm of developers and the managing agents, therefore the beneficiaries of all profits from the rudimentary housing, are French.
But we have no argument against the Arabs, and we love their tinny summons. It feeds my imagination, my attraction to diversity, and unlocks fantasies of caravans led by camels, treks across mystical Arabia on horseback, the new moon as our guide. Then, as the prayers grow silent, I settle back into life in the south of France and the prospect of our delicious oyster supper.
WE WAKE TO THE DISTANT bray of a donkey—another new sound on our horizon—and flocks of small chattering birds. These winter morns are glorious, gentle and pine-scented. The sun has a warm amber glow, rich as an autumn leaf; viewed from the upper terraces, it streaks across the sea in chilly silver strips. Winter is decked out as I have never known it, but our future home in another season also lays bear ill-considered responsibilities. During our months absent, without anyone to clean and care for it, the water in the swimming pool has turned a rich emerald green. Its floor is carpeted with decaying fig leaves. It cannot be neglected like this for months on end; it needs regular attention—skimmers emptied, pipes unclogged, filter system rinsed out, walls and base vacuumed—or the works we have invested in will have been a waste of precious funds. We add “maintenance of pool” to our growing list of chores.
I, who will swim in the most arctic of conditions and dankest of waters, decide to take a dip anyway. The water is so icy as I plunge into it that I hoot and holler. Blood courses fast through my veins. After, I run and leap about in the garden like a loony, gathering soil on my naked throbbing feet. Michel, passing by, shakes his head and disappears to collect wood and cones for the chimney. He builds monumental fires which thaw my chilled, goose-bumpy flesh and roar in the hearth like winds from Siberia. Their blaze envelops and heats me, roasts and reddens my flushed, damp cheeks.
Our winter existence revolves around the commodious sitting room. For this season, it has become the heart of the house. We sit for hours with our books and laptops, me at work on my prospective script, plumped on cushions at the hearthside. The light leaping from the flames makes shadowplay on our faces and shapes on the peeling walls.
Without resources for a kitchen, we are cooking our Christmas meals, as Michel had promised, on the open fire. When the piled embers have settled into hillocks of simmering scarlet red and blood orange like the sunsets, Michel sets the meat on the makeshift grill to sizzle and spit. Our fare is modest for this festive season: slender faux-filet steaks with crispy fresh salad from the fantastic food market in Cannes, accompanied by new potatoes, round and smooth as pebbles, boiled in a copper skillet I bought in Nice on Michel’s elementary gas ring, fueled by bottled gas. Instead of Christmas pudding, we have cheese, crumbly Parmesan and creamy St. Marcelin preserved in olive oil with herbs, washed down with glasses of deep red wine.
The heat of the fire, the Bordeaux and the food seduce and inebriate us. No meal has ever tasted this luxurious.
The room is perfumed with cloves I have scattered on the embers and the skins of the consumed Corsican clementines which sizzle and hiss, turn crisply brown and curl like potato chips. They give off a tangy sweet scent and recall memories of childhood Christmases and stuffed stockings ripped open at the foot of the tree. We crawl into bed early to treasure the last joys of the day on our lumpy mattress, which we have dragged from the room we had elected to be our bedroom to the warmth of the jumping flames. Cuddling up close, we count five geckos on the chimney breast.
“I wonder if they are aware of us here,” I say to Michel.
“Surely. They are guardians of the house. They are watching over us.”
Irrationally, it has a ring of truth. Every cupboard unlocked or door opened reveals a gecko scuttling from the glare of the light and discovery to anonymity and darkness, but here, within our simple festive sitting room, with flames leaping, they have taken up residence on the warm chimney breast to share Christmas with us.
“I doubt we could ever be this happy again,” I whisper as we close our eyes and listen to the crackle of olive branches burning. It is a passing comment spoken in a moment of blissful contentment, but better that it should never have been voiced, for it has risen up from a dark, unconscious prescience.
The following morning, Michel finally manages to get hold of Madame Blancot, the assistant at the notary’s office. Unfortunately, the paperwork has not arrived from the tax office in central France, and in any case, Monsieur and Madame B. have informed her that they are not available to travel during this period. When Michel replaces the phone, he smiles encouragingly, and I attempt cheeriness. This will be resolved, we reassure each other. But we are growing concerned.
CAUGHT UP IN THE biomass of weeds and herbs, cobwebby trailers and tangled climbers are the fruiting olive trees. Their abundant offerings are dropping from the unpruned trees and disappearing into the soil. Hidden in the overgrowth, they rot secretively. These fruits are returning unused to the earth, leaving only their stone hearts as witnesses. How it pains me to see the source of such a potent elixir go to waste.
It is essential, I suggest to Michel, that as soon as the sale has been concluded, we hire a professional to cut back the entire acreage of land. Amar would be our man, if we can agree on a price. Amar is a Tunisian who has been living in the south of France since he was a teenager. Unlike many of the foreign workers who spend certain periods of the year in France and then return to their families in one of the various North African countries for the remaining months, Amar is married and is raising his family as young French citizens. He is a rogue, but a kindly one who wishes no harm to anyone. He has a full-moon face rather like a newborn baby’s. Add to that the darker African tones of his skin, and he puts one in mind of a polished chestnut, but set within that shiny innocence are shrewd, calibrating eyes.
A call from Michel, and Amar pays us a visit that same afternoon. A fact we have yet to learn is that all foreigners buying properties in this part of France are automatically judged très riche and therefore easy pickings for the huge labor force—cowboys as well as true artisans—living off the villa trade close to the coast. Amar studies the width and breadth of the terrain, silently calculating the value of the property and then the road-weary, battered vehicle parked in the drive, which does not suggest wealth. To this he weighs how far he dares go and then names his price with due care, testing the water. The figure is astronomical. He reads our shock and instantly retracts. “But that is the market price, cher monsieur. Obviously, for you, I would consider a discount.”
Michel frowns, studies the ground, shifting dust with his shoe. He appears to be considering the proposition and, after due thought, counters it with a ninety-percent discount. Amar grins like a playful child, appreciating the daring of the counterplay. The ritual has begun. The bartering goes back and forth until a price is warmly agreed: one fifth of the sum originally requested. Everyone shakes hands. Amar accepts a soft drink—as a practicing Muslim, he never touches alcohol—and prepares to wend his way, but just as we reach the parking, he turns, smiling broadly.
“Ah, Monsieur…”
“Yes?”
“We have forgotten the Christmas tree.” We genuinely have. We apologize profusely.
“Yes, indeed. How much do we owe you?” Michel is digging about in his jeans pockets for cash, for these matters are always dealt with in cash.
Amar, with a smile as broad as a Cheshire cat’s, demands “deux mille francs,” approximately two hundred and thirty-five pounds!
NOW WE ARE AT THE beginning of March. At long last a date has been suggested for us to gather at the notaire’s panoramic office up in the hills behind the perfume town of Grasse to sign the papers for the purchase of the house. Unfortunately, I am rehearsing a new play which is due to open out of town, run for three weeks and then go straight to London’s West End for a three-month minimum season. The date fixed by Madame B. is a Monday toward the end of March, the only date that she has available in the forseeable century. It is the week after the play has opened in the market town where I am currently rehearsing.
“I can’t be there,” I say via phone to Michel, who is in Paris. “I will have to assign you power of attorney.”
“Would you prefer if we wait until the play has opened in London?”
“No. If we do that, it could be another year before we own the house.”
“That’s probably true,” he agrees. “We’ll organize the power of attorney. It will involve your going to the French Embassy in Kensington. Will you be able to arrange that with your rehearsal schedule?” Alongside requesting permission to fly to France, an hour in Kensington does not seem such an unrealistic demand, and I reassure Michel that a brief trip to London is entirely feasible.
Two hours later, the notaire’s assistant, Madame Blancot, telephones Michel to inform him that le maître will not agree to this arrangement.
“Whyever not?” I moan when he calls to pass on the news.
“Because we are not married yet, and here in France, with the Napoleonic laws in force, the girls have certain inheritance rights. Le maître is insistent that the signing take place when, and only when, you can be here. Madame Blancot assures me that it is your interests he wants to protect.”
“I see.” I am deliberating long-distance. “Do you think you could charm Madame B. into bringing the date forward? Why not suggest the week before I go into production?”
“I’ll try, but chérie, there’s one other small point the maître pointed out which we have overlooked…”
“What’s that?”
“Our promesse de vente runs out at the beginning of April.”
The impact of this hits me instantly. The contract we signed in Brussels bound us to purchasing the property before the fourth of April. If the purchase does not go through by that date, we will forfeit our hefty cash deposit as well as all monies dispensed on improvements to the property. Worse, we lose all preferential rights to the purchase of the property. It will go back on the market. It does not bear thinking about.
“But these delays have not been of our making! French bureaucracy is enough to send anyone to the madhouse.”
The fact is, Michel reminds me, that Madame B. had offered us one date in mid-February, which we were obliged to refuse because both he and I were back in Australia for a month of postproduction on the series I shot before Christmas, so any grounds we feel we have for complaint will be judged inacceptable. The long and short of it is, we both stand to lose everything.
I am sitting silently at the back of a smoky rehearsal room—in reality, a church hall—weighing up my options over a Styrofoam cup of coffee so disgusting it might have been brewed with water from our bracken pond at Appassionata. If the notary does not accept Michel acting for both of us, then the bottom line is I am forced to find a way to slip off to France. But how?
Where I am, things are not going great. The director is on his fifty-ninth cigarette of the morning. I fear that the leading actor, who is playing a psychopath—the play is a thriller—may be close to crossing the boundaries between acting and life. While the other actor—the cast is a mere trio—is an affable, easygoing fellow, he looks ready to lose his cool with his colleague’s uncontrolled outbursts. We are only eight days into rehearsal. Already there are daily confrontations between these two, and the situation shows signs of growing uglier. I am depressed and wish that I had not accepted the job, now, in light of my own predicament, more than ever.
The fact is that, although the date on offer is the Monday after we open, because the play is new, the chances are we will be called to rehearsals every day until after the first night in London, when the critics will have reviewed the piece and all damage to our sensibilities and the box office, if any, will have been achieved. Until then, there will be cuts, rewrites, new plot twists, different stagings, a host of directorial and managerial responses to the reactions of both out-of-town audiences and newspapers. This is all perfectly normal, but it does not help my present dilemma, and there are no scenes without me. The only reason I am not up on the rehearsal stage at this very moment is because the two men are debating the finer details of gun-toting. The tone of the conversation taking place at this very moment goes something like “Don’t keep sticking that f——thing in my eye!”
Timing is of the essence, in real life as in theater. I am going to have to wait my moment and then speak to the producer, who is a charming and reasonable individual. I decide to put the problem out of mind for the moment, wait till matters look a little more sanguine and return to work.
During my lunch break, from a phone booth a discreet distance from the theater, I telephone Michel in Paris. “Confirm the date,” I tell him, “and I’ll settle it with the management this week.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes” is my reply. The truth is I am not the least bit sure, but the fact is we have no choice.
I am not ready to return to the theater and still have another fifty minutes of lunch break, so I decide, insteading of sitting hunched up in a dressing room learning lines—which is what I would normally do—to browse the suburban shopping street. Coincidentally, I spent many years of my youth, my salad days, in this town of Bromley, so its homogenized modernizations hold a certain fascination for me. I range around, trying to remember how it was and which formative experiences took place where, until, passing one of the pubs, I catch sight of our supporting actor sitting alone on a stool. His head is bent over a glass, and he looks desperately glum. Although we barely know each other, having met only eight days earlier at the read-through, I decide to intrude on his mood.
“Hey,” I say as both greeting and to alert him to my presence. I notice that his drink is a tonic and something… gin, vodka? He turns to face me, and I realize immediately that he has downed more than one. His bloodshot eyes glare out from a face that looks bemused, hurt and despairing.
“How are you doing?” I ask. The question is redundant. The bartender saunters my way, and I order coffee. “Would you like one?”
My colleague shakes a mute head.
“I can’t work with him, he’s a f—er.” I can see this actor’s point, but I won’t say so. After all, we are three and have five months of work ahead of us in a piece that is demanding and intimate.
“I guess he’s nervous. Probably pinning a lot on it. Big role…” My coffee arrives, for which I am grateful because I do not believe a word of what I am saying. My fellow thesp takes the bartender’s presence as an opportunity to order another double. I look at him quizzically. He says, “Listen, why don’t you do a spot of shopping. I’ll catch you back there.”
I nod, leaving coffee and coins on the bar and my poor workmate to his angst and alcohol.
When I return, our leading player is sitting with the director in the rehearsal hall where they are sharing anecdotes, firing off one after the other. I find this a common practice among actors in rehearsal, and I have never quite understood why it happens: a performance within a performance. I concentrate on my script. The next time I look up, it is fifteen minutes beyond the allotted lunch hour, and my friend from the pub has not returned. The leading actor has begun to pace. His face reddens; his blood pressure must be mounting. He is growing manic. The director is chain-smoking. A few moments later, the company manager, a caring young woman in her mid-twenties, enters with a note which she hands to the director. He reads it, frowns furiously, screws it up into a ball and tosses it onto the floor.
“Tony has gone home. He’s not feeling too good.”
The leading actor explodes. We are all knocked backward by the sheer vehemence of his response and the foulness of his language. I turn to the company manager, who returns my duplicitous look. The director rises and announces that probably the best plan is to spend the rest of the day with the wardrobe mistress, who will take measurements for our costumes.
When Michel calls in the evening, I say nothing of the problems I am facing and only assure him that all is well and that I will be in France to sign the documents. I sleep fitfully.
My call for the next morning is slightly later than the others’. When I arrive, I discover the three I left behind the evening before, all wearing long, murderous faces. Before I have the opportunity to say good morning, I am informed that Tony has left the show. A treacherously unprofessional thought then creeps into my mind: we are two left in the cast, only one week to go before we begin technical rehearsals and production days, there is too little time, the management will be obliged to cancel or at least postpone the first night, and I will be free go to France! Obviously, I keep such rising delight well in check.
The morning is spent calling agents, casting directors and chums to find a replacement for Tony. I offer no suggestions because I cannot in all conscience recommend any of my pals to what I am beginning to perceive as a sentence rather than a job. Our star is fulminating and cursing, then suddenly rounds on me. “I suppose it’ll be you next!” he hisses poisonously out of earshot of the others.
“To do what?” I reply, a little shakily.
“You’ll be walking out on me, too.”
I refrain from pointing out that the play is not about him but a team effort. “No, I won’t,” I answer.
I have never walked out on a job, but at this very moment there is nothing I desire more. However, for many reasons, high on the list being the cost of house renovations and land-maintenance equipment, it would be an irrational act. I stay put and go on with the business of learning my lines and worrying about how I am now going to persuade the management to give me the Monday off, less than two weeks hence, to fly to France.
“So you’re going to stick it out then, are you?”
“Please,” I say, “let’s just drop it.”
A replacement is found. A jolly chap, resilient and good-humored. I try hard not to feel disappointed that the production has not been canceled. I need this job, and the actor is someone I have worked with before and like. He makes me laugh. He is exactly what we need and, astoundingly, learns the piece in two days. As far as everyone else is concerned, we are back on track. The other poor victim has been written off as unprofessional. Interestingly, our lead has met his match, for every time he grows even vaguely nasty or malevolent, the newcomer bats back with a quip or joke and the star has no brunt for his sadism. Or has he? As the days creep toward the out-of-town opening and he grows jumpier, he settles his attention on me. After one of the early runs of the piece, he accuses me in front of cast, technicians, management and crew of being entirely without talent and timing. Alone in my dressing room, I shed a few tears. Then, like every actress in desperate straits, I call my agent, who cheers me with “Oh darling, he’s famous for it. When so-and-so finished working with him, she went to bed for a week.” Now he tells me!
The sole high point of my week arrives with the blissful and unexpected news that we will not be rehearsing on the Monday after we open. It has been deemed a much-needed rest day. Our call will be the performance. In the light of this news and all that is going on, I make a precarious and highly unprofessional decision which is to go to France and not mention it. Such a move could lose me my job, but by this stage, I would be almost grateful. Still, it goes against the grain for me to behave with such dishonor, so I decide, for form’s sake and to offload a little of my guilt, to confide my plan in the company manager, who, when she hears, stares at me in sheet-white horror. “You have no understudy until we reach London,” she yelps. “I’d have to cancel the show.”
“I’ll be back, don’t worry,” I reassure her. “The signing is at nine-thirty. It will be over, latest, by eleven. There are two British Airways flights leaving Nice after that. Either would land me at Heathrow in plenty of time, and with a taxi to bring me to the theater, there’s no way I’ll miss the show.” She relents. What choice have I given the poor woman? Her sole request is that, should worse come to worst, I am never, never to mention that she had cognizance of my plan, or her career will be in ruins alongside mine. It seems a fair bargain. I agree.
ON SUNDAY, MICHEL, WHOSE plane from Paris landed earlier than mine, is waiting to greet me at the Nice airport. It is a glorious spring morning. In spite of a tense week and a dawn departure from London, the prospect of the following day’s trip up into the hills exhilarates me. Added to which, after an interminable wait, we are finally taking legal possession of our home, our farm. When we arrive at the house sitting atop its hill of dusky olive trees, which we have not visited for almost three months, it is unrecognizable. Amar has cut back the entire expanse of land. We are gazing upon new geography.
The bosky acres, the brush and brambles, the jungle have been trimmed, laid bare and raked into hummocks ready for burning. However, this fleecing has left Appassionata looking naked and vulnerable, a deserted, crumbling shell, yet newborn, with much to discover. We count sixty-four overgrown olive trees (ten I had not seen before) as well as space on the upper terraces for dozens more, terraces cut back in their entirety for the first time in many a year. The trees are now free to breathe, to grow anew and produce.
“I thought you had agreed with Amar to wait until after—”
“So did I,” says Michel.
It is both a lovely and troubling greeting, for we have no gates, no fencing, no boundary partitions of any kind. This will have to be addressed next. So much will have to be addressed next!
But aside from all future cares, there is a revelation too exquisite for words. The cutting back of the land has exposed a fabulous stone staircase. Unbeknownst to us, it has lain buried beneath the layers of brambles, forgotten and unused. Now, its secret unfolded, it rises like a bird taking flight from the foot of the hillside to the house itself. Michel suggests that it must have been the original entrance to the house before the tarmac drive was put in, before a route for cars was deemed necessary, before the lane between our entrance and the caretaker’s cottage was ever thought of. Judging by a series of small rectangular holes cut into the stones, it looks as though a rose bower covered pretty much the entire ascent, a distance of approximately three hundred meters. In full flower, it must have been an impressive sight, and what a perfumed entry!
Our approach also reveals soft pink almond blossoms, past their best, fading now, and all around us, bursting from the branches of the deciduous trees—figs, cherries, plums, pears—fresh shiny bamboo-green shoots, as well as literally hundreds of flowering wild irises, white and violet, bordering the terraces, at every level. Pale pink, bamboo-green, white, inky violet: a palette I have never associated with the south of France. We inch forward in the car taking in these sights, these explosions of unexpected color. What release must this nature be experiencing? When did this earth, the soil of these terraces, last feel the beat of sunlight? I consider the millions of creatures and insects who have been rendered homeless, who have lost their bearings, and alongside them, the plants that have been given back the light.
After lunch on the upper terrace, the sky clouds over.
We make the most of our chilly Sunday afternoon working, keeping warm through activity. It is such a pleasure to be outdoors, to be physically busy. Invigorating and reassuring. I weed the flowerbeds; Michel sweeps the steps, which are knee-high in mulchy leaves, then strips and prepares the garden chairs for painting: lilac and ocher. I discover tiny spring-green shoots at the base of the chopped trunks of what we had believed were dead orange trees. Somewhere in the middle distance I hear gunshots, a hunter out after rabbits or small birds. I feel my skin, which is tired and tight from being coated in layers of stage makeup, begin to breathe and glow in the sharp brisk air. As the day draws to its early close, it starts to rain. I jump in the brilliant green pool and swim for my life in the freezing water, circling and paddling like an otter in the drizzle while Michel readies the fire—we have unlimited supplies of firewood now—for our evening. A propitious moment in time: our last evening as official squatters, for tomorrow we will become les propriétaires.
Lounging on cushions in front of the fire, we listen to the rain beating hard and fast against the windowpanes and splashing into our well-used bucket in the makeshift kitchen. And we don’t care. Tomorrow, every leak, every flaking crumb of plaster, will belong to us.
The rain grows tropical in its intensity. All night it beats and slaps against the roof, and when we awake bright and early, ready for our excursion into the hills, our driveway is streaming with water. It runs in rivulets, taking sticks, a dead rabbit and rotting leaves in its wake. Only in the rainy season in Borneo and in the last throes of a hurricane in Fiji have I witnessed such a torrential downpour. As we bolt to the car, it soaks us. The force is so overwhelming that the wipers are barely able to beat back and forth, and in any case, they achieve little. Fortunately, Michel knows the route. We arrive on time but dripping like river rats. Madame B. awaits us, dry as a bone and impeccably turned out. Pierre is not with her. The notaire looks on in operatic horror as we drip and squelch across his pristine beige carpet to our appointed leather chairs.
The panoramic views in this area beyond Grasse, about which I have heard so much, are masked by the sheeting rain. “C’est dommage,” says the notaire, who sports a pince-nez and a well-cut but rather old-fashioned double-breasted navy suit and is as manicured and pointy-faced as a poodle. His elbows are poised on the armrests of his chair and never leave that position. He joins the tips of his fingers together regularly, as though in prayer, and I discover that he has an infuriatingly meticulous attention to detail. Here is a man who puts brackets between verbal brackets and then parenthesizes! Every law, bylaw and clause is thrown open for consideration, then explained at a rattling pace. The history of the estate of Appassionata is not only written into the contract page by page, franc for franc—husband of, wife to, born of—but is now read aloud and commented upon by him.
The villa was constructed in 1904. This was the year the great Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Because the process is ponderous and I have aready lost the thread, I search for a quotation of his I learned by heart recently, but it slips beyond recall when the notaire’s droning drums me back to consciousness.
I try again to concentrate but find myself completely, hopelessly lost. Le maître—all notaires in France are addressed as le maître; literally translated, it means the master, an acknowledgment of rank and learning equal, I suppose, to our addressing a judge as Your Honor—swivels his leather chair, as his is the only one not fixed, and talks at great length to Michel. Michel nods and interpolates every now and again, and once in a while, I am fired because I have caught a word or phrase, though I am unclear as to why this notary’s words are directed exclusively at Michel. Madame B. does not appear to be listening. She is crossing and marking the contract spread out on the desk in front of her as though it were a script in need of drastic and immediate rewrites.
When le maître pauses to draw breath, Madame B. interjects, politely but firmly, “Maître, s’il vous plaît…” I haven’t a clue what finer points they are debating, and I cannot possibly ask Michel. I long for the distraction of the view and am struggling not to steal a quick peek at my watch. A tiny worm of concern is wriggling about in my interior monologue: is all this just a teeny bit long-winded, or is it because I am on the outside looking in? Is it going to take all morning? I have to catch that lunchtime flight…
The rain is percussionless: no rolls of thunder, no crashes of electric white lightning, nothing but interminable rain.
Suddenly, when I have drifted far away, the notaire’s chair swivels once more and stops like a roulette wheel to directly face me. “Madame Drinkwater?” All eyes turn to me.
“Oui?” I reply weakly.
“Avez-vous compris?” Have I understood what? I am asking myself. I shoot a glance at Michel, who is gazing at me warmly. He speaks for me, explaining to the notaire that I am not familiar with all of this.
“Aaaah,” sings the man as though it explained my mute inattention, my lack of delight in dissecting these sacred deeds paragraph by paragraph. And then he launches into a history of my life. Where and when I was born, the name of my parents, which banks I patronize in England and France, my annual income (a figure I must have pulled out of thin air, for I have no guaranteed income), my profession, my mother’s maiden name, the sum I have contributed toward the overall price of the estate, the fact that no debts remain unpaid by me. I am stupefied. And then he pauses, throwing his text on the table. “So, you are from Ireland?” I nod, and he removes his glasses and opens up a personal parenthesis about Ireland and the various holidays he has enjoyed there. Green. I understand that word. Yes, I nod, very green. And wet, malheureusement. Yes, Ireland is wet, I counter. Everyone laughs and shrugs and throws their hands about the way the southern French do when they are discussing the living habits of those poor unfortunate folk forced to live in climes less blessed than theirs.
“Mais…” He gestures, Shakespearean-fashion, toward the window, which opens onto nothing but the blanket of rain. There is a pause while the rain is considered. I and my history have been forgotten, or so I think. Seconds later, he is back in his role, text in hand, and other details of my private existence are shared with the room. Madame Blancot is taking notes, though heaven knows how anyone could possibly keep pace with this man; silently tucked away in the corner is the estate agent, Monsieur Charpy, who first introduced us to Appassionata.
And so it goes on. And on. I am asked if I have been informed about the existence of Michel’s daughters, his ex-wife. The whole business feels like a preposterous interrogation. Then I am gravely warned about the risks I am taking in signing these documents and in part-purchasing a property with a man who has offspring elsewhere. I fear that were my understanding of legal French any better, I would pick up my bag and make for the door without signing a single page of what turns out to be five copies of a twenty-nine-page document. We are all obliged to initial every page and sign our full names at various strategic points after we have handwritten the words lu et approuvé: read and approved.
The whole process is really quite comical, a merry-go-round of papers and pens, with only one person doing nothing, the estate agent. He, I realize later, is there to receive his settlement from Madame B., which, she begrudgingly gives him in cash. The thick wad of five-hundred-franc notes is quite literally passed from richly bejeweled fingers to grasping hands under the table, but only after every last i has been dotted. I am amused by the notaire, who, while this black-market activity is taking place right beneath his desk, pulls out an enormous white handkerchief and busily blows his nose. The size of the handkerchief, little short of a sheet, manages most conveniently to cover his eyes and most of his face; hence he has seen nothing.
But first, the contracts are passed around the table, Michel followed by me, Madame B., the notaire and his assistant Madame Blancot, silently and concentratedly initialing and signing.
It is after midday when we finally get out of there, say our au revoirs to Madame B., whom we will meet once more when we go through the whole process again for the purchase of the second five acres of land.
The rain has grown heavier, if possible. The sky is dark and brooding. Madame B. disappears in a chauffeur-driven limousine, and we huddle tight beneath the notaire’s porch. We had planned an early lunch at the farm: a toast to our new, elevated position, to our home, the hillside, the new bed we found waiting for us the day before, but none of this is possible. We look at each other and smile.
“The airport?” Michel asks, and I nod. The drive is horrendous, the roads silted with mud and rivers of water. Everyone is driving with headlights on full beam, and the corkscrew hills and bends are treacherous. Descending through Grasse, where there are danger signs painted on the roads at the best of times, is a muddle of impatient, bad-tempered motorists. The journey is slow going, but we still have time. I try not to be anxious. We are silent because Michel is concentrating and I am sorry to be leaving, knowing that I won’t be returning until the end of June, which feels a lifetime away. There is so much I want to begin.
Upon arrival at the airport, I run ahead to check in for the flight while Michel returns the rental car. When I arrive at the desk, there is no one about, neither staff nor passengers. It is ominously deserted. I look at my watch. The flight is not due to leave for another thirty-five minutes. It is tight, but surely the check-in has not already closed. They should only begin boarding about now. In a frenzy, I spot the British Airways inquiry desk, where there is a worryingly long line and gaggles of troubled or angry passengers. At the desk, I learn that, due to the weather, the flight has been canceled. My stomach feels as though it has just been punched by Muhammad Ali. Everyone, including myself, is scrabbling to book the next flight. While doing this, I upgrade to business class, figuring that should there be any further problems, it will give me an advantage. Michel arrives. I explain what has happened. His flight to Paris is not for another hour and is due to take off from the terminal for national flights. He hurries over to the Air France desk and changes his flight to one that leaves around the same time as my new scheduled departure.
“Well then, let’s have lunch and celebrate,” he says, and leads me to one of the airport cafés. We decide not to go into Nice because the car has been returned, and in any case, I do not want to stray. I feel I must keep a careful eye on events here, though, after some mental arithmetic, I am reassured. Even traveling on the later plane, there is plenty of time to reach the theater comfortably before curtain. Still, I would have felt calmer if the earlier flight had not been canceled.
After a simple meal, we kiss a passionate, heartfelt good-bye, and Michel waves me off through security toward passport control. As I look back, I see him hurrying for the bus that will carry him away to terminal one. We will not see each other for three weeks. In spite of the events of the day, the securing of the house after almost a year of delays, my heart feels heavy. I am torn between two worlds—the past and present and the present and future—and two countries; my heart and home are in France now, but my work is still in England. It is confusing and unsettling for a child of the earth like me, who needs to know where her roots are. During these musings I have been only vaguely aware of information coming over the loudspeaker. It is repeated in English, and this time I pay attention. Due to the weather, the British Airways flight has been delayed.
“No!” I cry and run to the boarding gate, where a pretty young French woman is switching off the microphone she has just used for the announcement. “How long is the delay?”
She shrugs. “We do not know.” We both stare out of the window at a waterlogged runway and a fleet of planes standing idle. Should I telephone the theater? Could I hire a private plane? But if the Boeings cannot take off, what hope has a small jet? I decide to ask anyway. My fears are confirmed. All air traffic has been grounded. I return to the departure lounge. There is nothing to do but sit it out. The delay turns out to be a little over an hour, during which I am going over mental calculations involving arrival times, moving through passport control, finding a taxi. Fortunately, I have no luggage. Should I book a taxi to the theater from here? But I do not know when we will be departing. My brain is beginning to scramble. It is going to take a miracle…
Should I telephone the company manager? But if I do, what can she do? I have no understudy… I am going to be fired. Throughout a career spanning almost twenty years, I have never yet missed a show, not even due to illness and certainly not because of an act as irresponsible as this one. I am still berating myself when the boarding is announced.
As the fllight attendant directs me to my seat, I mention to her that I have a show, and I ask if there is any possibility of being given priority disembarkation.
“We all have problems. You should have taken an earlier plane.”
Chastised, I spend the flight trying to rest. I am exhausted with worry. A plump American woman from Texas tries on several occasions to engage me in conversation, but I am in no mood and close my eyes firmly until I am stirred by a hand resting on mine. “Honey,” she says, “I wanna tell you something…”
I open my eyes. “What is it?” I snap.
“You sure as hell are worried about something, and I want you to know that I know about it.”
“Know about it?” I rejoin weakly, for if she has some secret, I am so desperate I am ready to hear it.
“I see things,” she continues. “And you have nothing to worry about. You’re gonna make it.”
“I am?” I look at her in amazement, then realize that it is only my need trying to take heart from this utterly vague statement. “No,” I say, “I can’t make it. There is no taxi in the world that can transport me across rush-hour London in time for curtain.”
“Oh my God! You’re an actress! Have I seen you in anything? Anything on TV that shows in the States?”
I wish I had never been drawn in, but she is well meaning enough, and it is I who am foul-mooded and anxious. I give her the name All Creatures Great and Small, for it is usually the key that unlocks the door to my curriculum vitae. She is thrilled and “sooo happy! Let me tell you, honey, you will make that show, I have no doubt about it.”
I smile and thank her for her optimism, then close my eyes; whatever she says, it is now a physical impossibility, and I have decided that as soon as we land I must call the theater, which is what I should have done from Nice, and explain to our very dear company manager that she has two choices: to hold the curtain or cancel the show. Either way, I am finished.
We fasten our seatbelts and the plane prepares for landing. As we hit the runway, the flight attendant makes the usual announcements and follows them with: “And would Miss Drinkwater please make herself known to the cabin staff.”
I press the overhead button, and she approaches.
“We’ll be disembarking you first,” she tells me. “Please have your bags ready.”
I nod gratefully, even though I know this assistance cannot help me now.
My Texan friend brushes my hand and wishes me well, reassuring me once more that she knows I will make it and beaming with the pleasure of having met me (!) and how she will tell everyone that I am equally charming in real life (!).
As I exit the plane, a member of the British Airways ground staff stands holding a card with my name on it.
“Miss Drinkwater?” he inquires.
I nod. “Follow me, please,” he says, and strides on ahead with singular purpose. I follow obediently. “We have a short car ride across the tarmac, won’t take more than a couple of minutes. Your pilot is ready and waiting.” He smiles with professional reassurance.
“My pilot?” I am completely confused.
I am driven across an area of Heathrow Airport I have never crossed before, and deposited alongside a very capacious helicopter. I step out and the man shakes my hand and says, “Nice to have met you. Good luck.” Off he goes. The pilot waves and sees me aboard. I settle into the helicopter, which is equipped to seat ten. We prepare for yet another takeoff. “Sorry it’s so large. We had nothing smaller available.” I shake my head because I am speechless. “It’s fine,” I mutter. Have they made a mistake? I am thinking. I dare not ask. “We’ll be across London and landing at Biggin Hill Airport in ten minutes. All being well, there should be a taxi waiting to take you to the theater.”
This is a miracle!—which I am trying to figure out. That rather uncharming, or perhaps harassed, flight attendant must have thawed during the flight and notified the pilot, who notified ground staff. Or has the Texan woman some miraculous powers she only hinted at?
Finally, I ask, “Did British Airways arrange this?”
“No, your husband booked it.”
“My husband?” Thoughts whirl about in a flurry. I am not married. Have I taken someone else’s place? But no, my name was written on the arrivals card, and they have a taxi waiting to take me to the theater.
And there it is, a taxi waiting on the tarmac. Into it I fall, gratefully. The traffic is heavy because we are hitting rush hour, but my driver seems to have been briefed and knows that this is an emergency. He shoulders his way in and out of lines of vehicles with a cutthroat purpose usually known only to the French, depositing me fifteen minutes later outside the stage door. We are twenty-five minutes before curtain. My knees are weak, I am soaking with perspiration and feel little better than a damp rag, but I am here. I walk in the door, collect my dressing-room key and stagger along the corridor. The company manager finds me. She looks ashen. Officially, contractually, all actors are due at the theater by what is known as “the half.” The half is a theatrical abbreviation for half an hour before curtain up, but curiously, the half is actually announced thirty-five minutes before curtain up. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that, right now, it makes me ten minutes late.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Thank God you’re here,” she whispers, shoving me into my room and closing the door behind her. “No one knows a thing, but Christ, I have been having kittens.”
I nod. I cannot speak. I am trembling like a leaf.
“Are you OK?”
“Fine,” I manage.
“Want anything?”
“Rescue Remedy,” which is a Bach herb-and-flower homeopathic tincture for shock. I know she keeps a bottle of it in her first-aid kit.
“You got it.” She nods and rushes to the door. “By the way,” she throws after her as she exits. “He’s in the foulest of moods.”
I nod again, taking this in. “Make that a double brandy.” I never drink before a show, but tonight I doubt my knocking knees would transport me to the stage without it.
Later, once the performance—which has gone surprisingly well—is over, I pour myself a large glass of wine and ring Michel in Paris from my dressing room.
“How did you do it?”
He laughs and recounts his afternoon. He had been sitting in the national terminal waiting for the departure of his Air France flight to Paris when, by sheer chance, he glanced up from his laptop and noticed a British Airways plane sitting on the sopping tarmac. He inquired and was informed that it was the delayed Heathrow flight. There was no way he could reach me, but what he did know was that every second that ticked by without that plane leaving the ground lessened my chances of reaching the theater in time. With the brilliance and agility of mind of a film producer—a breed who lives by the motto that every catastrophe must be turned to advantage if financial disaster is to be avoided—Michel understood that what he had to buy me was time. He checked himself off his own flight, purchased several phone cards and began ringing helicopter firms operating out of Heathrow. It was the helicopter company that gave him the name of the taxi company who frequently services the private airport to which I was delivered.
And delivered I am! When the bill arrives, the whole exercise costs every penny I am to earn from the out-of-town contract, money that might have purchased us a gate or contributed toward the laurel-bush fencing we have decided upon, but I am no longer counting. My professional reputation has been saved and the show has gone on.
As night falls and I curl up and close my exhausted eyes, the extraordinary catalog of the closing day’s adventures (and misadventures) plays out again before me. In all the gut-wrenching and stress, I had almost forgotten that today we bought ourselves an olive farm in the Midi, overlooking the Riviera coast.
Pride and contentment wash over me for the first time, and the reality of our act sinks sweetly home. Then I contemplate the strikingly generous gesture of Michel. Reflecting on this, as my eyes grow heavier and my body slips warmly and safely toward sleep, I am lulled peacefully by the certainty that I have finally secured the shambling house that I have sought during so many years of travel and searching, and what is even more delicious, along the way I have encountered the one person with whom I desire to share that corner of paradise. What remains is for us to find the means to transform that crumbling shell into a home and, later, an olive farm. For the foreseeable future, until my West End run is over, I must set such dreams aside, because there will be no more snatched escapades in France.