Travelling to Infinity (60 page)

On 7th November, Lucy’s two-week run in London began at the Half Moon Theatre on the Mile End road. She came out of school at 4 p.m., with just half an hour to spare before catching the
coach. The play demanded huge reserves of energy and concentration of its young cast, who changed roles with every scene, sometimes appearing in individual parts, sometimes in the chorus. She would
arrive home after midnight, and the next morning, by nine o’clock, would have to be back in school for a full day’s work. Her schedule was punishing, but the general stress was eased
somewhat by Stephen’s decision to go off to California with his retinue for a whole month the day after the first night. Thereafter the quality of life improved dramatically at home, and we
all heaved a long sigh of relief as we withdrew into comparative peace and seclusion.

With unaccustomed self-indulgence, I was sitting idly thumbing through the Sunday paper the next weekend when an article on the availability of property in France caught my eye. Beneath it there
was a modest advertisement for an English agency, offering to search for suitable houses in the French countryside for its customers. I followed the telephone number up, and within a few days
photocopies started arriving in the post from northern France. The photographs looked as if they had been taken in thick fog or a snowstorm, and the terminology used often sent me searching for the
dictionary, but the prices were remarkably low. None of them were more than about half the price of a two-bedroom Victorian terraced house in southern England, and, although it was impossible to
tell what state the properties were in, they were patently much more substantial in terms of ground area. Clearly further investigation was called for, which was how Tim, Jonathan and I came to be
sailing to France one Saturday in mid-November.

France in November was bleak and dreary indeed, and bitingly cold and dark. But at seven o’clock in the evening, Arras, our destination, was still brimming with life and
activity as the shops disgorged their last customers out into the brightly lit streets. They were full of enticing displays of Christmas delicacies and toys, which promptly made a hole in our
pockets. Moreover, much to our surprise, signs everywhere announced that
Beaujolais Nouveau
had arrived! The weekend began to assume a different perspective, especially after an excellent
meal in the bar of our pension, where the ruby-red new arrival met with general critical acclaim. If all else failed, the weekend held the promise of dealing with most of the Christmas shopping and
a certain amount of pleasure in liquid form as well.

The next day, the heavy sleet was hard and unrelenting, and although I could summon no interest whatsoever in quaint little houses dotted about the landscape, a pleasant, helpful agent and his
assistant were waiting, prepared to give up the best part of their Sunday to escorting us round what they considered to be the most suitable properties on their books. What a Sunday that was, and
what sights we saw as we huddled in the back of the agent’s car! The rain beat down, now and then giving way to driving snow. When finally the sleet and snow had exhausted themselves, a dark,
penetrating mist set in while we looked at tumbledown houses with leaking roofs, cardboard bungalows, and a house where the passage between the kitchen and the dining room was in fact the bathroom.
We were looking for an old house with character, but basically in good condition, possibly with some opportunities for renovation, and with plenty of ground floor accommodation for the elderly and
infirm members of the family, especially for Stephen. Nice views were desirable, and the distance from the main road was a prime consideration. Nothing we had seen that first day even approached
our requirements.

As it happened, the next day dawned bright and clear and the countryside sparkled under a fine layer of crisp, fresh snow. On our way back to Boulogne we stopped at a small market town to call
on just one more agent, Mme Maillet. She led the way out of town in the direction of the coast. The road climbed out of the hollow in which the town nestled, up onto the windswept reaches of an
extensive plateau – in fact, a broad ridge between two river valleys. We passed a small race track on the right and sped through a tiny village. There was little sign of habitation, only the
occasional church spire, water tower or ruined windmill. Then, suddenly, Mme Maillet turned right – we followed, and there it was, a kilometre or so away from the main road, long and low,
whitewashed and red-tiled. “That’s our house, Mum,” said Tim, then aged nine. And so it was, unmistakably beckoning us across the fields, an old friend from a past existence,
instantly recognizable, immediately appealing. “
Un vrai coup de foudre
”, the French would say – love at first sight. Nor were we disappointed when we turned into the
driveway of the Moulin – for that was what it was, an old mill house, its windmill long since destroyed. The low, smiling façade we had seen from the road proved to be but one of the
three sides of the house, which embraced a courtyard, rather in the style of a Roman villa, the sort of house that Stephen and I had dreamt of in the golden days of our engagement. The aspect
inside the courtyard was as delightful and welcoming as the exterior had been from the road. The living rooms, including the kitchen, all looked onto the yard or out to the garden and pasture at
the back; they were wild and unkempt, at the mercy of a flock of hostile geese, except for a corner of traditional vegetable garden.

The sleeping quarters in the long side of the building which had first caught our eye and our imagination from the road were ideally suited to Stephen’s needs, being on the ground floor,
and the accommodation could be considerably expanded by completing the conversion of the vast, light, airy attic, which ran the whole length of that wing of the house. It was almost too good to be
true. As far as we could tell, the house fulfilled every requirement; it was within an hour’s drive of the coast, no further away from Cambridge than parts of the West country, and certainly
closer than Wales. It enjoyed lovely views sweeping across fields to woods and it was well away from the main road although the access was easy. It was old and bursting with character but,
apparently, in reasonably good condition. There was obvious potential for further improvements and, most significantly, the price left a sufficient margin for any renovations.

All the way home my mind was fixed on the Moulin, programming in the impressions, the excitement, the ideas. Once back in England, I hastened to write it all down and, with pen, paper and ruler,
to make rough sketches of the property and plans for its adaptation to our needs, and fax them all to Stephen in southern California. Stephen replied positively. It was much less complicated to
communicate with him by fax across the Atlantic than face to face, and I interpreted his terse comment “sounds good” as approval. Then the wheels for the purchase of the Moulin were set
in motion at remarkable speed. Equally quickly I had to learn the language and the procedures for house purchase in France which, from the outset, proved to be very different at every stage from
the English equivalents. I had to get to grips with French law and legal terminology, the French banking system, French building terms, insurance French-style, local taxation and the eccentricities
of the public utilities. Sterling was buoyant against the franc at the time, so I had the consolation of benefiting from a favourable exchange rate. The comforting thought was that the same amount
of money could not have bought us anything worth having in England. Deep down inside me I felt an assurance and a certainty that I had not known in years. This project, based on my input, my
knowledge of French, would be my contribution to family life – although, of course, it would be jointly financed. So many of our excursions in the past had had a single objective, the pursuit
of science. This project would combine all our interests and talents – languages, love of France and the French way of life, relaxation, gardening and music as well – with that
scientific pursuit. The more I looked at my plans and drawings, the more I realized that the Moulin had an even greater potential than I had at first deemed possible. There was an old barn attached
to the house which was ripe for conversion into accommodation upstairs, with potential for a conference room downstairs, permitting Stephen to have his own summer school, to which he could invite
his scientific colleagues and their families. I had visions of establishing our own version of the Les Houches summer school in the undulating countryside of northern France, and it was my hope
that there we would once again find the unity and the harmony which we had achieved before the events of 1985, and which since then had eluded us in England.

My plans for the Moulin were put on hold at the beginning of 1989 because I was busy proofreading the French edition of
A Brief History of Time
. It proved not simply
to be a question of checking the language, but of delving much deeper. The English edition opened with an introduction by the American scientist Carl Sagan; I was perplexed to find that this had
not been translated into French and that, unknown to Stephen, Flammarion, the French publisher, had commissioned an introduction from a French physicist to replace it. I found the disparaging tone
of certain remarks in the French introduction extraordinary, and I took it upon myself to delete them. The launch of
Une Brève Histoire du Temps
was scheduled for the beginning of
March in Paris and would coincide neatly with the completion of the house purchase. The weeks before the launch brought a procession of French journalists and television cameras to Cambridge, while
the completion of the conveyancing process focused my attention more and more on the other side of the Channel. My horizons were expanding, no longer constricted by the four walls of the home in
England.

The intricacies of the French legal system, the mechanisms for setting up a bank account, the details of the insurance contract – all these I attacked with enthusiasm, helped by the
delightfully idiosyncratic characters with whom I was coming into contact in the quietly rural Ternois region of northern France. The plans for renovation were already in the pipeline when,
en
route
for Paris, I signed the house purchase agreement at a formal ceremony on 1st March, itself a considerable achievement, since all parties to the agreement had to be present and Stephen
had decided that he could not spare the time to attend. He had after all only just returned from a trip to New York on Concorde. When news of the house in France began to percolate through to
friends and relations in England, I was baffled by some of the reactions. “Stephen doesn’t like the country,” his mother announced adamantly in his hearing, as if intent on
predisposing him against the Moulin. Had she forgotten Llandogo? Certainly Stephen’s mistrust of the country might be justified after that experience. But to condemn the Moulin, which had
been chosen so carefully and was being prepared so meticulously for his enjoyment, seemed very unfair. The image of Stephen that was being cultivated by his relations, and some of his nurses, was
that of a playboy who lived for the bright lights of the city and who found the rural life boring. This image of him conflicted with my own perceptions of his character, and the aspersions cast on
my venture were already undermining his interest in it.

The few days in Paris after the purchase of the house certainly intensified Stephen’s love of the bright lights. He was fêted and pursued wherever he went, the darling of the media
and the prized possession of the publisher. As I loved Paris too, it was no hardship for me to enjoy the bright lights as well. We dined at La Coupole; we ate in the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower,
where Stephen was invited to add his name to the signatures of the rich and famous in the visitors’ book; we visited the newly opened Musée d’Orsay and we entertained friends and
Stephen’s French relations, including his cousin Mimi, to a dinner in celebration of the launch. Photographers followed us everywhere, and journalists clamoured for interviews, for which
either I or a French colleague of Stephen’s did the interpreting. I was flattered to be asked for an interview by a leading radio journalist, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, at the radio station
Europe 1. When I arrived, my interviewer was involved in a long and heated discussion with Jean Le Pen, the nationalist leader. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach quickly recovered his composure and treated me
with Gallic charm and deference. The interview was broadcast all over France, and as a result we and our circumstances were introduced to our new neighbours in our village in the north before we
had taken up residence.

Within three weeks I was setting out for France again: this time with Tim and Lucy in a car laden to the roof with packaged cupboard and bookshelf kits, linen, crockery, cutlery, utensils and
food. As if in our honour, we found that a new motorway had just been opened, cutting twenty minutes or so from the journey from Calais, so when we arrived, earlier than expected, at the Moulin, we
found the house full of workmen, putting the finishing touches to the Herculean effort of making suitable arrangements for Stephen – and of converting the attic to bedrooms, which they had
completed in seventeen days. Their beaming pleasure in our delight was obvious as we toured the house that they had so swiftly transformed.

Stephen had recently bought a Volkswagen van which had been fitted with a ramp and fixtures to hold the wheelchair steadily in place. It also proved invaluable in transporting large items of
furniture. Late that evening, Jonathan arrived at the wheel of the van, which was packed with yet more furniture and luggage. The next day he drove to the airport at Le Touquet – so
fashionable with the British in its heyday – to meet Stephen, Robert and the entourage of two reliable and trusted nurses. The advances and royalties coming in from the several editions of
A Brief History of Time
permitted Stephen the rare luxury of chartering a small aeroplane from Cambridge airport to bring him to France by the simplest and most comfortable means possible.
The genial Australian pilot had opened up spaces in the wing to store suitcases and bits of the wheelchair, and he invited one of the passengers, on this occasion Robert, to sit beside him in the
cockpit of his tiny six-seater aircraft.