Love in a Warm Climate Page 3
We drove down a road next to a long deserted beach, stopped the car and walked onto the sand. We even took our shoes off. The sand was cool but not uncomfortably cold. It felt great to be so close to nature, having just stepped off a plane from grimy London that morning. We walked for about an hour just looking at the sea with its endless colours and movement.
Nick took my hand. “We must bring the kids here. I can imagine Emily doing cartwheels on the sand and Edward kicking a football.”
“And Charlotte bossing them about,” I laughed.
“Amazing that they put up with it. I mean Edward I can understand, he is so much younger, but Emily was only a minute behind her,” he said.
“I agree,” I said. “They do rebel sometimes, although not for long. They seem to have got used to the benign dictatorship. I think it makes them feel quite secure.”
We stopped to watch a dog paddle in the sea. Nick put his arms around me and hugged me.
“This is such a good idea for us all,” he said, stroking my hair.
I hugged him back and was surprised by the intensity of the moment. It reminded me of our early days together, before the children and the daily grind turned us into Mr and Mrs Average. I could almost detect the kind of spark I used to feel and hadn’t felt for years, an intense feeling of anticipation and pleasure deep inside I had lost somewhere along the way. I was sure then that France was our future. I felt like an excited teenager on her first date. It was all going to be fine. I loved my husband, he loved me, and soon we would be living in this beautiful place. For the first time in several months I was just where I wanted to be.
After our walk we headed back to the car and drove to the hotel in Marseillan. The guidebook had not exaggerated. It was one of the prettiest places I had ever been to; there wasn’t a brick out of place, and even a rundown old barn close to the hotel was charming in its shabby chic decay.
“You’ve got to hand it to the French,” said Nick as we sat eating oysters for lunch on the quay looking out over the water. “They may not have won many battles and they can’t play cricket, but they know how to live.”
“Do you remember the Ile de Ré?” I asked.
“Of course I do, our honeymoon” he smiled. “It rained every day. We nicknamed it the Ile de Rain. Why?”
“I was just thinking that it would be nice to get back to that feeling we had for each other then,” I said feeling myself blushing slightly; we rarely talked about our feelings. “You know, how close we were, always talking, always, well it didn’t matter that it rained the entire two weeks and I just think that…”
“I agree,” he interrupted me. “But with normal life and kids and responsibilities all that kind of stuff suffers.”
“So what are you saying? That we just give up?” I was hurt that I had broached the subject of being closer to each other and it seemed to me he was rejecting the idea. Had he not felt the same spark I did on the beach? Why did he have to be so sensible?
His face softened. “Of course not, Soph. No, we never give up. I just don’t think we should beat ourselves up over the fact that we’re not pouncing on each other every few minutes any more. That’s all. Shall we get the bill? We’ve a lot of exploring to do this afternoon.”
He beckoned to the waiter and for twenty-four oysters we paid about the same amount we would have paid for half a dozen in London. Yet another good reason to move to France.
That afternoon we ventured inland through tree-lined avenues with views over hills covered with small oak trees, through deep gorges and chestnut hills as far as the Black Mountains, where the climate and lifestyle are totally different to those on the coast. It was like another world. Close to the mountains there are goats, sheep and even cows; the lack of grass closer to the sea would make it impossible for them to live there. We decided we would like to buy our vineyard somewhere between the two, so we could have the best of both.
The landscape across the Languedoc may be diverse but one thing remains constant: the vineyards. They are everywhere. It is impossible to drive for more than a few kilometres without seeing one. They are various shapes and sizes; some on hills, others flat, some tidy with neat rows of vines just starting to bloom, their fresh green leaves almost translucent in the afternoon sun, others with weeds growing freely. Some vines are tall and thin, others short and trestled in rows.
To me they made the landscape seem exotic and full of promise. We stopped to take a closer look at a vineyard close to a town called Montagnac. There were about fifty rows of vines in perfect lines following the gentle slope of the vineyard. The grapes were just starting to grow and the leaves were bright green, some of the newer ones the colour of a salamander, almost fluorescent. In the distance on the top of a hill was a building next to a tall tower, giving the impression that the main part of the church had been separated from the steeple. A large cypress tree grew nearby. It was hard to imagine a prettier view. There was a rose bush planted at the end of every third row of vines.
“How romantic,” I said. “Maybe the wine-maker planted them for his wife?”
Nick laughed. “It’s a nice idea, but in reality this is something a lot of wine-makers do because the health of the rose bush is a good indicator of the health of the vines, rather like a canary in a coal mine who warns of a gas leak by keeling over.”
“When we have vineyards, will you plant yellow roses?” I asked. They had been my favourite since I wept when Daniel Day Lewis gave them to Michelle Pfeiffer in The Age of Innocence. I imagined Nick and I walking around the vineyards checking on the vines and smelling the roses before heading home to an aperitif on a sun-bathed terrace.
“Of course, darling,” he said, hugging me. “Any colour you like.”
We walked onto a small track leading towards the hills. It felt so good to be out in the fresh air, moving and breathing deeply. We passed a field of olive trees; ten rows with seven olive trees in each one, more or less in a straight line. There was tall grass growing between them, mixed with white daisies, poppies, yellow sweet clover and forget-me-nots. The flowers and grass swayed in the gentle breeze. To one side of the field were mountains covered with thick green foliage and to the other the lane we were walking on, which led to the nearby village. There was a small stone hut in one corner of the field. I imagined the person who looks after the trees must spend his days gazing at the perfect views around him. The whole scene was so serene and pretty, I tried my hardest to imprint it on my mind and cursed the fact that I had left the camera in the car.
We made three trips to the region after that first visit but it took a while to find our dream house. I suppose that’s the problem with a dream: you have an image of what you want and not much lives up to it. We were shown places that are wrong for one of many reasons. Either they were modern and ugly, and like most British house-hunters in France we were after ‘old stone’. Or they were next to a motorway (not great if you want your kids to grow to be adults) or next to a kennel full of barking dogs (not ideal for a good night’s sleep, which I find hard enough to get without added variables).
My friend Sarah is mad about yoga and meditation and says you need to visualise things that you want. I met Sarah on my first day at university. She was standing in front of me in the matriculation queue and turned around and raised her eyebrows during a particularly condescending speech by the principal. We have seen each other practically every week since that day. She must visualise a lot of shoes. I have hardly ever seen her in the same pair twice.
In the visualisation of my ideal home I saw flowers. When I was a little girl my mother and one of her more tolerable husbands took me on holiday to a house in the Savoie. The little farmhouse was surrounded by mountains and close to a lake. It was one of the happiest holidays of my childhood that was otherwise rather interrupted by my mother’s constant remarrying, relocating and attempts at baking. The house was old stone, and one of the things I loved about it was its abundance of flowers. Roses grew up the old stone walls; there were
yellow ones, red ones, pink ones and white ones. Wild flowers grew in the grass. Daisies were planted in pots all over the stone steps and wisteria framed the house on all fronts. There were irises, petunias and even sunflowers. Each flower had its own scent, and I spent hours gazing at them and inhaling their sweetness. The owner was apparently mad about gardening and planted flowers to celebrate his wife and children’s birthdays every year.
One night I dreamt of a house surrounded by roses. They grew inside and out. They intrigued me, but when I tried to go into the house the thorns grew into monster thorns and created a barrier. I tried to force my way in and found blood on my hands.
That was the night before our final house-hunting trip. The dream was the culmination of my worst ever week in London.
I was out for a drink with my friends Sarah, Carla and Lucy one evening. Carla is a recent addition to the group, a mum I met at school who is Italian. She has three children too. Lucy is another friend from university. She is the sort of woman I would usually avoid; she has that kind of easy perfection that makes you want to curl up in a ball and die. But she is also one of the nicest people I have ever met, so we are still friends. She works in publishing and lives with her investment banker husband and two children on the posh side of the river. Her husband is called Perfect Patrick. Or at least he was Perfect Patrick until he lost his job and Lucy became the sole provider. Not so perfect any more.
Up until that evening, I hadn’t really realised that anyone else would notice the extent of my post-children decline. I felt invisible, I suppose – something that I think happens to a lot of women when they have children, age and put on weight. The latter two in my opinion being a direct consequence of the first one.
We went to Drake’s, the London hotel I used to run before I had the babies. We were having a lovely time, chatting, bitching about old college friends and enemies, comparing nail varnishes (I, for once, had some on; Sarah of course had the latest colour, which was yellow for no other reason, I concluded, than that was the only colour no woman had at home and hence was profitable for the sellers of nail varnish. It looked terrible.) Lucy was telling us about her latest Booker prize nominee, Carla was about to embark on an affair with her tennis coach, and Sarah had just been assigned to help with the re-launch of a magazine that was being overseen by the CEO of the publishing company she works for, so we had a lot to talk about.
There were two men sitting at the bar who sent over a waitress with four glasses of champagne. We didn’t want to be interrupted because were having a lovely time together, so we sent it back. One of the men, who had obviously had too much to drink, stumbled over to tell us how rude we were to refuse his generous gesture.
“And it’s not like you’re anything special,” he slurred. “Look at you,” he added, pointing at me, “with your mummy breasts.”
“Yeah,” his friend joined in laughing. “The phrase ‘beached whale’ comes to mind.”
I was wearing quite a low-cut top, which I had thought was fairly attractive when I put it on at home. Okay, so I know I am not Elle McPherson, but I’m hardly what Sarah calls “boilingly ugly” either. Suddenly I felt terribly exposed and unattractive – a feeling that has not really left me since. Luckily I still knew the security guard at the hotel and he threw the men out for me – not before Lucy, who studied Law when we were at university, had threatened to sue them for defamation and disturbing the peace.
But even that didn’t help my self-esteem or restore any pride I might once have had in my ‘mummy breasts’. In fact, I wondered how much luck Lucy would have suing for defamation; they were pretty mumsy-like.
The following day I was mugged on my way from Sainsbury’s to my car, in broad daylight. Someone just bashed into me and grabbed hold of my handbag; it all happened so quickly I didn’t stand a chance. It was like a gust of wind arrived and suddenly I was standing there without my bag. I felt like such a fool. I have always imagined I would be one of those brave victims of crime you read about in the paper. I envisioned headlines like ‘Mother of twins and toddler beats renowned thug (later to be unveiled as serial killer and mass rapist as well as solely responsible for climate change and just about every other ill in the world) into submission with can of baked beans’ and a picture of me proudly holding a dented can of baked beans with the children smiling benignly next to me. This would then lead to huge endorsements from Heinz, which I could use to surgically reduce my breasts. And free baked beans for life. But instead I just froze.
I wasn’t hurt, but since then I haven’t really felt safe in London; I am just always waiting for the next disaster. And our area of south London seems to be getting worse, not better. Only last week a young man was gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Just the phrase drive-by shooting would have seemed ridiculous ten years ago, like you were describing New York or somewhere miles away that you only ever see on TV. And it’s not just the violence; the whole place is in dire need of a makeover. There is graffiti all over the place, boarded-up shops, houses that look uninhabitable. Why has all this only started to hit me in the last couple of years? Maybe when we first moved there, before we were married, we were so excited to own a home we didn’t even notice the decay around us. But I don’t think it’s that I’m convinced that while some parts of London have become more gentrified, our neighbourhood has gone downhill. Rather like my ‘mummy breasts’.
Rule 3
Pick a lover who has as much to lose as you do
The French Art of Having Affairs
After the ritual humiliation of getting through airport security, we boarded our flight to Montpellier. This was always going to be our last trip over for a while; we couldn’t afford to keep coming back and forth. If it didn’t work out we had decided to leave it until after Christmas, although we had originally hoped to move during the Christmas holidays. I figured Christmas is so stressful anyway – would a small change of country, lifestyle and home make it any worse? And it would be satisfying to feel we had achieved the dream Nick first mentioned by the fire on Christmas Day a year before.
I looked out of the window. This was our fourth trip so I recognised where I was. When it lands, the plane does a kind of swoop over pink flamingos and water before it approaches the runway at Montpellier Airport. We disembarked into a different world to grey old Stansted. It was a bright, sunny and warm day, despite being late October.
Nick almost fell down the steps of the plane checking his BlackBerry. I thought he was checking work messages, but since the bra-in-bag incident, I now suspect he was responding to some sexy text from the French mistress. Maybe she was hoping I would find the text messages and got fed up with waiting for me to do so, which is why she planted the bra. One of the downsides to picking an unmarried lover is that they are likely to hope you’re going to get caught out.
The road from the airport was pale in the early morning sun and there was not much traffic.
“I can’t get over the fact that even the motorway is beautiful,” I said to Nick. “I’m sure it’s a good sign when they plant flowers and trees in the middle of the road.”
Nick laughed. “Yes, a sign that the people here pay too much tax.”
I ignored him; nothing could spoil my enjoyment. There were stunning views either side of the motorway of vineyards and mountains, and olive trees planted down the middle, mixed with oleander, some of which were still in flower. It was amazing how obvious the seasons are there compared with London. It was so autumnal; the leaves were turning from green to copper and were much less abundant than they had been on our last trip. The sun was lower and the shadows longer, but there was still real warmth in the air.
We arrived in Pézenas about an hour after landing. We had based our search from Pézenas for three reasons: one, we loved the town with its beautiful old stone buildings, bustling Saturday market and cobbled streets. Two, there are no less than twenty estate agents there. And three it is between the beach and the mountains, which is exactly where we wanted to be.
We were in a little bistro at the edge of the Place du 14 Juillet, where we had enjoyed a steak and frites in the October sunshine.
Nick shook his head. “Maybe it won’t be, but we have to keep trying.”
“In an ideal world, would you rather order another bottle of wine, or go looking at unsuitable properties?” I asked him.
“In an ideal world I would spend the afternoon looking at suitable properties,” replied my sensible husband, bless him.
I smiled. “Yes, but the chances are they will show us nothing we like. And it is so lovely here. And we probably won’t come back until next year, so I vote for whiling the afternoon away with another bottle of rosé. What do you think?”
“It’s a nice idea, Soph. But while I am not sure we will find anything this afternoon if we go, I know for sure we won’t if we stay here.”
“No you don’t. Remember me and the number 36 bus? That man over there might be a vigneron on the verge of a nervous breakdown desperate to sell his beautiful château for a knock-down price to the first person that asks him,” I said, pointing to a man in a beret sitting a few tables away drinking a white drink that I guessed was Pernod rather than milk.
“Go and ask him,” said Nick, laughing. “But ask the waiter for the bill as well, just in case he’s not. Remember, French women rarely drink more than one glass of wine – what was that Coco Chanel quote you read to me the other night from a magazine?”