Deep France (43 page)

I flexed my vocabulary, got ready with a magazine of ‘
effectivements’
and ‘
de toutes façons
’, and pointed out that nothing is more difficult than
to top a success, let alone a global-phenomenon-sized success. Think of Edmond Rostand, half-killed by the success of
Cyrano de Bergerac
. Furthermore, the Potter series was approaching the
toughest part of the narrative cycle, so a hard time for the author was normal. The books were, in my opinion, a magnificent achievement, they thoroughly deserved their success. As the critics had
said about
Cyrano
, it made you feel good just to know there was such a great talent in the world. Furthermore – this clinched it with the other women at the table, some of whom had
been looking thoroughly alarmed – the
author, having been a single mother for so long, was now enjoying the happiness of a new marriage and was about to have a baby. So
possibly she had a few things besides writ­ing on her mind.

My antagonist listened carefully, then reverted to his favourite topic, the pan-global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Didn’t I realize that Tony Blair was Jewish? And Jack
Straw? For a moment, I was happy to be going home. There are probably plenty of people in London with such objectionable attitudes, but it is much easier to avoid them.

A la Prochaine
. . .

I gathered my final crop from the potager, the Jerusalem artichokes. By then, they were mighty plants with woody stems and wilting yellow flowers. I stuck a fork under the
first one and levered it out of the ground, revealing a clutch of white racemes nestling in the root ball. These I arranged artistically on a spade for a Monty Don-style photograph, but in the
chaos of packing I couldn’t find the camera.

The owner of Maison Bergez hoped to rent it to a Danish couple who were looking for somewhere to stay while they were house-hunting for their retirement. There was no need to restore the
knickknacks to their former homes. Amandine did a final clean-up, while I weeded the rest of the vegetable plot and tucked it up under a layer of black plastic for the winter. The first compost
heap – by now I had two – was ready-rotted, and I could use some of its rich russet compost on the stony borders around the house.

On my last night, Annabel and Gerald took me to dinner at their favourite
auberg
e, in a little village in the valley
called Audaux.
Garbure
,
Jurançon,
confit
, a Béarnais last supper.

Gordon was going to drive for me. He wanted to go to Scotland to scatter his father’s ashes near the place where he had been born. The urn, in its discreet travelling box, would join my
computer in the back of the car. Since my ankle still wasn’t strong enough for eight hours on the road, I was immensely grateful. I paid a last visit to Tarmac’s grave, left a bag of
biscuits and a bowl of water for Henri Cat, loaded Piglet and the Duchess into their baskets, locked the door of Maison Bergez and set off for the caravan in Bellocq.

The Pyrenees did their best to make me stay. On my last night they were grey silhouettes with a mother-of-pearl sky behind them, rounded shapes in the distance, a herd of fossilized dinosaurs,
one humped dark back after another.

In the early morning there was mist in the valleys, so the peaks looked as if they were resting on pillows of silver silk. There was a strip of brilliance at the horizon, backlighting the whole
chain. The second range, which is most often hidden in a haze, suddenly came clear, a series of steep, rounded hills, all a brilliant green, with wisps of mist lingering around their shoulders. By
the time I was ready to go, the highest peak, the double-pointed Pic du Midi d’Ossau, was as clear as day and again I had the illusion that I could see every snow-covered stone.

The most haunting of all the Bearnais songs is ‘Aqueras Montanhas’, a local variation of a lament that is sung in all the provinces that made up the Pays d’Oc, the land of the
troubadours. It is attributed to Gaston Fébus himself; somehow the melody evokes the sense of wonder which the mountains inspire, the longing to grasp an eternal mystery that lies up there
somewhere in the mists and crags. That
was the feeling that brought me here, and I still had it when I left. So of course I promised to come back.

Aqueras Montanhas

I looked different. It was hard to define exactly how, apart from the bad highlights done by a French hairdresser who’d sploshed on the bleach as if he was plastering
bricks, but one of my friends said, ‘There was a darkness in you and it’s lifted.’

I felt lighter. I had more energy – that lasted about nine months. I could see that my face was softer, my eyes were brighter. I discovered a deep reservoir of serenity and a new capacity
for patience. There is still a subtle sense of being centred, which allows me to make decisions about my life and work more calmly. They seem like better decisions than those I made before my year
away, though of course only time will tell. But I care less. I seem to have acquired that sense of being in the moment, as my Buddhist friends would say.

Some of the qualities which I know that I used to have, before the long struggle of lone parenthood and the suffo­cating pressure of a semi-public life, seem to have reasserted themselves. I
have a sense of fun, and of adventure, and of possibilities. The suspicion that life is completely futile doesn’t seem well founded any more.

Some of my friendships are stronger, although I don’t think Gill will ever forget how her sun-kissed summer holiday turned into a week of non-stop rain and no beaches. I’m still
aware of the pressure on a friendship in a city. If you don’t fancy a Carrie Bradshaw life, out in bars every night,
it’s hard to create another context of
relaxation and shared experience. Some old friends have drifted away. I didn’t fall over myself to pick up with the chaps – two of them – who rang me up in Orriule only once, to
ask me how much I thought my London house was worth.

Before my year in France, I was sure that I didn’t want to live there permanently, not least because I would be too far away from Chloe. She gained a year of unfettered independence while
I was away, and enjoyed a lot of adventures in a new culture, but I suspect that I made the classic mistake of a baby-boom parent, and assumed my child was longing to be free of me when actually
she was perfectly happy to have me around. She looks rosier now that I’m never far away, and seems to have more confidence. ‘I’m gloriously happy that you’re not in
France,’ she said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you’re here,’ she said.

Coming home was always the plan. Even a year ago, I had seen enough of ex-pat communities to know that full-time lotus-eating is not for me. One thing above all which I’ve always found
scary is the degree to which these enclaves are so detached from reality that they are almost a parallel universe. Deliberately or not, people acquire fantasy identities. They lose the ability to
discriminate between fantastic gossip and verifiable facts. Ridiculous vendettas take up all their attention, while important realities fade from their consciousness, so they suddenly wake up to
find they’ve inadvertently broken the law or lost their savings.

Expatville is a fun place to visit but a bad place to live, especially for a writer. I’m a person who enjoys putting down roots, although it was good to be repotted for a year.

In my year in the Béarn, I met people who were third-generation ex-pats, people whose grandparents had moved abroad and whose families had never gone ‘home’. Some spoke fluent
French and had integrated quite far – but never
fully – into their host community. Some spoke undiluted London English and were not fully literate in either
language.

The crassness of some of the earlier immigrants was astonishing. Many of them had burned their boats financially, and could never afford to buy back into the British property market. These were
the bitter ones. A surprising number spoke no French and had given up trying to learn. One of these was a woman who joked, ‘My finger speaks French,’ meaning that she could do her
shopping by going into the market and pointing at what she wanted to buy.

All this is changing, very fast. There are, and always have been, good, brave, intelligent and curious people among the British in France. The balance is shifting rapidly towards them, as more
and more cultural migrants arrive. Some of these are people buying retirement homes or holiday houses. Some of them make their living in the tourist industry, sharing their own delight in the
country and its culture with short-term visitors.

Increasingly, however, people in the middle of their working lives are leaving their native countries for France. There are people like me, or like Andrew and Geoff, artists who can work
anywhere. There are people who want to establish businesses, to farm, to make wine or cheese, to breed horses or to run restaurants. There are people with young families, who have looked long and
hard at what they want for their children. This corner of ‘old Europe’ is becoming a New World for British settlers.

Most of these new immigrants are drawn by their love of rural France, and what it represents. In the case of the British they are also pushed by a growing horror of life in their own country.
They want schools where their children will learn at least one language properly. They want streets that are safe, good roads, trains that run on time, clean
hospitals,
villages with living traditions, towns with vibrant centres, a flourishing countryside.

They’re looking for all the infrastructure of a truly civilized country, which means everything that successive British governments have not considered worthy of ade­quate
investment.

The French, who took the crucial decision to define themselves as a rural society, have provided this infrastructure for their own citizens as of right, at the cost of high taxation. How long
they will be happy with their new settlers remains to be seen. Many a moribund French village is being revitalized by foreigners; sometimes the villagers are delighted, sometimes it is undeniable
that they feel invaded and worry that their own culture will be smothered.

I miss my new friends and I miss our shared life of dropping in, passing by, sharing meals and setting off on explorations. I miss my garden; in London, I have a ten-foot patio; perhaps the most
gorgeous patio in Hammersmith, but still a patio. I miss shopping being a pleasure and I miss having the time to cook. More than I could possibly have imagined, I miss the mountains.

I miss the paradoxical sense of freedom which came from living in a small community, in which the sense of personal safety is significant. On the night Gordon and I drove into London, two
schoolgirls out trick-or-treating were raped in the local park. A few weeks later, a crack-head broke into my neighbour’s house by throwing a brick through her sitting-room window and diving
head-first after it. Since then, my chequebook and wallet, separately, have been stolen, my car has been broken into and my next-door neighbours have emigrated to Australia with their children,
aged four and one.

Of course, more important things have happened in the world.

Andrew and Geoff restored their barn and James English France, their new company, was booked solid with photographers from the beginning of June 2003. They wanted to spend
the next winter in Bordeaux, improving their French.

Roger painted a portrait of me, and included my profile in a mural in McGuire’s Irish Pub in Saliès.

Every time he came out of hospital, Glynn Boyd Harte said he’d never felt so good and embroidered sparkling anecdotes about his adventures. In December 2003, at the private view of a new
and wonderfully successful exhibition, he felt faint and returned home. A few days later, he died, at the age of fifty-five. The obituaries described his life as ‘a vehicle of genius’
and called him one of the most brilliant and influen­tial artists of his time. I have a fond memory of him sitting by the fire in Maison Bergez and saying to Piglet, ‘Do you realize
you’ve got asymmetrical whiskers?’