ABOUT ONCE A FORTNIGHT THE CAZAGNACS WENT TO A farmer’s cooperative wholesale grocers on the outskirts of Saint-Gaudens, where they stocked up with staple foodstuffs they couldn’t produce themselves, like flour, sugar, tea, coffee and huge quantities of natural yoghurt. Saint-Gaudens was the main town for the area, named after the Gascon martyr Sent Gaudenç. The locals know the town as just Saint-Gau.
Apart from the necessary trips to Saint-Gau for groceries, to L’Isle-en-Dodon for ducks, to Boulogne-sur-Gesse to go to the market or the abattoir, and to a local fête on a Saturday night, our world was largely confined to the Auberge, the village and the farm.
The Cazagnacs gave riding lessons to local children. They kept eight horses, all various shades of brown: some a light roan, some a chestnut sorrel, and a couple of big mares that were dark chocolate with dark manes and tails.
The field to the side of the Auberge served as a paddock, ringed with a portable electric fence. I remember the fence only too well. It was made from a bright orange nylon tape with fine metal wires woven into it, carrying the current. It was high voltage and low amperage, so it would shock but not harm. The tape was wound on plastic reels and stretched between metal poles with insulated hooks attached to them. With the current switched off the arrangement of poles was easily changed, allowing the horses to be moved around the field in rotation, grazing one part after another.
I had been warned not to touch the fence when the current was switched on. Curiosity got the better of me; after all, it couldn’t do me much harm, could it? Thud! The jolt made my brain thump against the inside of my skull and it felt as if my feet had left the ground. I didn’t touch the tape a second time.
There was a covered area where the horses were kept in bad weather and where they would sleep when the nights became cooler later in the year. It was a low, open-sided barn, with hay containers attached to the wooden posts. The saddles, bridles, reins and stirrups were kept in the tack room, la sellerie, to the side of the Auberge.
The local children came in small groups, by arrangement, to ride the horses for a small fee. They were matched with horses according to their size, but were too young to ride on their own. Paul, Bruno and I ran alongside the horses, holding the bridles, as we went round and round the paddock in a wide circle. The horses would walk at first, then we encouraged them to break into a trot. As the pace quickened the ride provoked very different reactions in the children. Some grew frightened and wanted to get off, others became overexcited and wanted to go faster and faster, crying out vite! vite!, laughing and waving their feet in the stirrups. It was exhausting for those of us running alongside; we panted more than the horses. The riding lessons were a slightly anxious time for the mothers watching from the sidelines.
Sometimes we rode the horses ourselves. I’d never ridden before. The first time we went out I was given a medium-sized mare and we set off towards the valley of the river Gesse. None of us wore a riding hat, showing flagrant disregard for health and safety.
As we started to speed up, I wondered how I might stop if I wanted to. ‘Où sont les freins? Où sont les freins?’ I shouted. Where are the brakes?
But I soon got the hang of riding. Lean to the left, the horse goes left. Lean to the right, the horse goes right. Pull on the reins, the horse slows down. Push the stirrups like imaginary brakes, the horse stops.
Paul led the way for our little posse, with Florence close behind him, then Bruno, then me, then Anja. We rode down into the valley of the Gesse, reaching the cascade in the river. Wild mint grew on the banks of the pool below the cascade. I caught faint wafts of the fresh smell of mint as the horses trampled it under their hooves. Leaving the clearing by the pool, we climbed the hill up the other side of the valley, where the terrain became rough. I clung on as my horse made little jumps over brambles and fallen tree trunks. The going grew steeper and the horses’ movements became laboured as they puffed and snorted their way up the narrow, stony path. They struggled to keep their footing. Small stones came loose beneath their hooves and skittered down the path.
The ride was exhilarating. At the top of the path we emerged onto an open, grassy upland and sat there on horseback to take in the view. The mellow countryside rolled on and on in all directions, bathed in golden light. Before us, a field of ripening yellow sunflowers sloped down towards Boulogne-sur-Gesse. The town capped a low hill. The tiled rooves of the houses clustered around the high gothic spire of the church. In the distance, the mountains rose up in two stages. First the land rose up towards the dark, flattish ridge of the foothills, the Piémont pyrénéen, then behind the real mountains soared steeply in a second tier. Looming and majestic, the summits were indistinct in the purple-hued afternoon haze. The Pyrenees always seemed remote and inaccessible; the mountains were a distant presence, a place where hardworking farmers didn’t go without time or good reason.
The Pyrenees have an ancient, mystical attraction. Their caves gave shelter from the cold during the Ice Age; their valleys provided good hunting and pasture as the ice retreated. Some of the earliest known art in the world was made in the Grotte de Gargas, a natural cave hidden in the forests covering the foothills. The strange prehistoric paintings, about thirty-five thousand years old, show hands with truncated fingers – some say mutilated, I’d prefer to think just folded – in outline on the cave walls. Gargas is a strange place, unsettling and chilly even in summer. The caves take their name from the giant Gargas who according to local folklore stalked the woods in the area. This mythical giant was the original for the sixteenth-century satirist François Rabelais’s literary giant Gargantua. At least that’s what the locals will tell you.