Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog (21 page)

  'Madame.' I stood still, making her turn back towards us. 'We're building the house here.'

  'We'll see.' She took out her phone.

  'Who are you calling?'

  'The mayor, he's a close friend.'

  'He'll be on holiday, like the rest of Provence.'

  'I have his mobile.'

  The woman dialled. We were precisely thirty minutes into the work of building our house. We'd just agreed to the illegal walls, and already an unknown woman was on the phone to the mayor. Each ring brought with it a heightened feeling of nausea.

  
'Oui, allo.'

  
'Oui, bonjour, Miriam à l'appareil.'

  
'Bonjour Miriam, ça va?'
The mayor sounded pleasantly surprised, as if hearing from an old friend.

  Eavesdropping on the conversation, we learnt that Miriam lived across the valley from us and had done for the last twenty years. Like us, she'd purchased a plot of land and built. One of the guarantees that had persuaded her to put pen to paper was that nothing would be built on the hillside opposite. Miriam had paid for an uninterrupted view of nature and now it was being wrecked. According to her, she was quite within her rights to demand that our house wasn't built at all; however, since we were such a nice charming couple, she'd settle for us hiding the construction in the trees. That way everybody would be happy. Her voice was confident and her sense of righteousness undeniable.

  Given our luck, the mayor's response was bound to be a crack squad of
chantier
police to shut down the project, leaving us houseless and penniless.

  'I miss Ange,' I joked feebly.

  'I don't,' replied Tanya.

  The tone of Miriam's voice changed as the mayor took over the conversation. She nodded her head, looked at the ground and repeatedly said,
'Oui, je comprends.'
The digger continued its work, hauling the steel reinforcements towards the holes for the foundations. People had always reassured us that once the construction started the build would progress quickly. Tanya and I had longed for this moment. However, in all likelihood the huge and growing pile of excavated earth would simply have to be used as refill.

  'So we'll see you in September for a drink. OK then, goodbye.' Miriam finished her conversation with the mayor. Their farewell was so cordial I feared a stitch-up.

  'Apparently the plans have been available for the last year at the
préfecture
, so I have lost my chance to object.' Miriam smiled. Her manner became calmer, less austere. 'I still think you'd be better off building nearer the trees, much more shade.'

  I cut her off. 'We can't. Our soil survey is specific to this precise location. The same with our engineer's report for the foundations.' There was no way I was going to move the house anyway, but these were solid, convenient reasons to give for my intransigence.

  'What's the soil?' asked Miriam.

  'Clay.'

  
'Oh là là, les pauvres,'
exclaimed Miriam, with apparent pity in her voice. 'You must come with me now.'

  Tanya and I didn't speak much as we bumped our way across the valley behind Miriam's Citroën. Instead, I lost myself in a confused maze of thoughts. What should have been a happy morning was quickly turning into a disaster. Things would probably be fine, I reassured myself, but it was apparent that if Miriam had the slightest suspicion our building didn't conform to the plans she'd be straight back on the phone to her chum the mayor. Why did it have to be so hard to put brick on brick and build a house?

  Miriam lived in a small villa perched on the hillside. The views of the village were, if anything, slightly better than from our plot. The iron bell tower of the church was just that bit closer and the curve of the dome acted as a frame for the fields beyond. Mature trees provided plenty of shade and the garden was filled with fragrant blooming flowers. A sprinkler lassoed water into the air and the droplets fell in a multicoloured rainbow onto the verdant lawn. Pebbles crunched underfoot as we headed up the path to the front door.

  
'Regardez.'
Miriam jabbed a finger at a crack the width of a ruler which zigzagged from the roof, striking the top of the door like a lightning bolt.

  'Come with me.' She ushered us into the large open-plan living area. The floor tiling was uneven, discoloured and split in places where the ground seemed to swell gently, like the sea on a calm day. Paintings filled entire walls, almost obliterating the plaster behind. Half-finished canvasses were scattered on the kitchen tops, on the sofa and on the central dark wooden table. A large picture window looked out across the village towards our plot of land. The digger moving across the hill was no bigger than one of Elodie's toys but it was instantly clear that Miriam would be able to observe our construction in minute detail.

  'Look at the ceiling,' Miriam directed.

  Waves of deep cracks fanned out above our heads. Individual pieces of plaster, some the size of chocolate bars, were dangling by fine threads and metal braces had been inserted at the top of the walls to try to stop the infection spreading. Judging from the fine fingers of blistered wall weaving their way through the paintings, these joists were failing. I began to wonder whether we should be wearing hard hats.

  'This house was built twenty years ago on clay soil, just like yours, and now look at it. Whatever you paid for your piece of land, it wasn't worth it. Your house is going to fall down, just like this place.'

  'Ah, but we've invested thousands in foundations and an engineering report,' I said, relieved.

  Miriam wouldn't be halted, though. 'Foundations? I've seen your foundations. They're exactly the same as the foundations of this house and they'll be crushed just like my foundations. Clay expands with the heat and contracts with the cold. It moves and absorbs water like no other soil type. Concrete foundations are mere matchsticks when compared with the power of the earth.'

  She pulled an A4 file from a long row that occupied a shelf in the kitchen where the cookbooks should have been. Crumpled well-used plans were spread across the table and Tanya and I looked at drawings of foundations remarkably similar to ours.

  'See the rest of those files,' Miriam waved a hand along the line, ' – correspondence between my lawyer and the insurance company. They're refusing to pay to stabilise the house. I haven't got the money and so if I lose it will probably fall down.'

  If the demonstration was part of a well-rehearsed plan to stop us building, it was extremely effective. I felt immediately sorry for Miriam, who was facing the prospect of being kicked out of a home she'd built. The inside might be falling apart but the garden showed how much she loved the place. And her argument about our house was persuasive. Did we really want to go through the heartache of building in the knowledge that the house would probably fall down? If the worst happened, the insurance company that notionally guaranteed the build would, rather than pay up, doubtless bombard us with disclaimer letters. Then again, what choice did we have but to go ahead? We'd paid the money for the land, we'd signed the contract with the builders, there really was no way out, other than accepting financial ruin.

  'Thank you for showing us all this,' I said. 'We really must get Elodie to bed, it's been a long morning.' I got to my feet, reeling with shock, like a boxer who has taken one too many punches.

  Miriam nodded and pulled on a painter's smock.

  'Are these all yours?' I steadied myself and motioned to the coloured canvasses which were twirling like a kaleidoscope before my eyes.

  'I have an atelier in Avignon.'

  Sitting on a shelf by the door I noticed a collapsed golden telescope. It was of the type used by the captains of great sailboats in distant centuries.

  'Does that work?' I blurted out.

  'Have a go.'

  I pointed the telescope across the valley, scanning the trees until my eyes settled on the construction site. The head of a builder was poking out from one of the foundation holes; another builder was resting on a pile of bricks smoking a cigarette. The magnification was such that if and when we built the house, Miriam would be able to see us get undressed.

  'Belonged to my father, and his father before that; quite collectable, I believe. Good luck,' said Miriam as we opened the door to leave. Despite the phone call to the mayor, it seemed she genuinely meant it. Somehow we were now comrades in arms fighting the onslaught of clay soil. A summer of extreme heat and a winter of extreme cold would, according to Miriam, concertina our house before we even had the chance to move in. With her naval telescope, she'd be the first to know.

A
t the beginning of September I organised a Côtes du Rhône wine tasting. The purpose of the event was to thank customers of our wine business but there was also a personal motivation.

  Just over a year before I'd struck the village of Gigondas and all its satellite appellations from my wine list, vowing never to drink another bottle from the area. Clients still wanted the wines but guilt as fresh as New Zealand Sauvignon prevented me from selling them.

  The reason? Just a sniff of a heavy Côtes du Rhône brought the following unpleasant memory tumbling back:

  I am bouncing along in the back of the car belting out the last few verses of 'In the Navy' by the Village People – think 'YMCA' but more camp – believing I am quite possibly the funniest man alive. Tanya is heavily pregnant and driving. A vague sense of foreboding penetrates the misty veil of inebriation.

  Next to me is my father-in-law, Stuart, who yes, just happens to have served in the navy. He's singing along half-heartedly but really he is wondering just why his son-in-law has the presumption to be ridiculing his military service.

  Of course, it wasn't my fault. The evening had started convivially with a couple of Kirs in a small cafe. As the alcohol flowed so did the bonhomie, the conversation gradually became more raucous and my father-in-law and I ordered a bottle of Gigondas to accompany our main course.

  Neither of us looked at the alcohol percentage until it was too late; at a whopping great 15.5 per cent, it was nearly a fortified wine. The effect was not so much to loosen my tongue as to unravel it and wrap it around a nearby tree, handily forming a noose for me to hang myself with after my bawdy rendition.

  I sing the lyrics with gusto as the car bumps along the Provençal roads, giving my father-in a-law a mock salute.

  And so there you have it; the explanation for why I received a pair of socks last Christmas rather than the usual jumper and for why Gigondas was removed from my wine list. However, at Tanya's bequest, I'd decided it was time to mend bridges with my father-in-law, hence the Côtes du Rhône wine tasting, for which he had travelled over from England.

  Before the tasting, though, I had a very important meeting to attend – a dog training class. Following directions I headed through the industrial hinterland outside the town of Orange, passed the municipal dump and a low-slung office block, over a rattling iron bridge, into the middle of a barren field. Three other cars and a battered van were already parked in a line. There was a row of orange bucket seats which appeared to have been wrenched from a sports stadium, and a gate leading to a fenced-off area filled with bollards, hoops, rings and ropes. I opened the car door. The acrid smell of boiling chemicals, emitted from a nearby factory, drifted in the air.

  Snuffle leapt from his seat and excitedly greeted his fellow pupils: an enormous bull mastiff with shoulders as high as my waist, restrained not by a lead but by a chunky rope; a prim, trim Airedale that danced skittishly away; and a golden retriever, groomed to perfection but with a nasty set of fangs. As we waited more dogs arrived – fierce Alsatians and two enormous cross-breeds.

  'How's Rocky?'

  'He was at the bins again.'

  'And Hercules?'

  'Went missing for a day.'

  The owners so far were universally women and so I could only assume they were talking about their dogs. Their dress was certainly diverse. Rocky the bull mastiff's owner looked like a rock band roadie. She sported greasy dark hair, leather trousers and a leather jacket with cut-off arms. Unsurprisingly, she dripped with sweat in the autumn sun. Her jewellery, if it could be called that, consisted of leather bands studded with silver spikes. Hercules, an Alsatian, belonged to a petite middle-aged lady. She wore jeans, a T-shirt and a jerkin with the silhouette of a large guard dog on the back.

  The dogs detected Gaspar's arrival first. All the barking and bottom sniffing stopped and they marshalled themselves into an obedient line, sitting, waiting, tails wagging, watching the ten-time champion trainer approach across the field.