Before the snow came and rendered
transport a lottery, we travelled from the Lot into the deepest Corrèze to take
afternoon tea with old friends. They live half an hour further into the
interior from our old village, so the journey is significant.
When we left the Corrèze, already
almost a decade ago, we would tell all our French friends, We’re only moving
to the next department; it’s not as if we’re moving to another country. But
they were right. Effectively it is a different country. Reputedly,
even now there are still Corrézians who have never set foot out of their
department. I remember when some London friends moved from Kentish Town to
Crystal Palace. At the time, other close mutual friends complained that they
were moving south of the river and that they would never see them. So it has
almost proved.
It’s not just the geographical
distance involved; it’s travelling back into the past that complicates matters.
‘The past is a foreign country,’ L.P. Hartley’s narrator recognises at the beginning
of The Go-Between. They do indeed do things differently there. Being an
incurable optimist, my wife believes that life is all about enjoying the
present and looking forward to the future. Being a melancholic romantic, I
spend far too much time à la recherche du temps perdu.
Our friends Régine and Bernard live now in Marcillac, a
little market town of less than a thousand souls, not far from a 230-hectare
artificial lake that was created when the river Doustre was dammed in 1949 for
hydro-electric power. At over 600 metres above sea level, it certainly
qualifies for the label ‘Haute Corrèze’. In summer it becomes a holiday
destination and a centre for water sports. In winter, it’s a gateway to the
Land of Nowhere.
You follow the Dordogne past Argentat, past the final dam
and hydro station along the river’s upper reaches, and past what must be one of
the world’s most scenic campsites, in the grounds of a fairy-tale château built
hard by the river on the opposite bank. And then the road winds up, up and
almost away to a plateau planted with acre upon acre of geometric pine forests.
It was here that our friend Jean-Claude, the ethno-botanist, whom we christened
the Wild Man of Wongo, brought the three of us to hear the brame du cerf
one cold, dark night in autumn. We followed him by faint torchlight into the
woods, no doubt watched by assorted curious eyes, stopping dead in our tracks
to listen to the haunting mating calls of unseen stags. One echoed another and
soon the night was alive with what sounded like hounds of the Baskervilles
baying for blood.
And it was along this main road, which runs as straight
as a chalk line for several kilometres, dotted with menacing bands of
Sunday-afternoon hunters with their parked 4x4s, their day-glo hats and cradled
rifles, that I walked one fiercely hot afternoon in late August with a band of
virtual strangers and a trio of docile donkeys. We crossed the road and took a
side road, which led us to a house whose garden almost fell away down to the
Dordogne far below. That afternoon, I gorged myself on the most refreshing
peaches I’ve ever yet tasted, picked from one of our hosts’ copious trees.
As we drove through an isolated roadside village, we
marvelled at our naivety as young parents: to think that we could survive the
long winters with a young child in a cold house heated only by an
underperforming fire that consumed wood like the boilers of an old battleship.
But people do, and we did – without going stir-crazy. The past is a foreign
country and we both agreed that we couldn’t do it now. We love our insulation
and our creature comforts too much, and our proximity to a transport network.
Back in those
days, Régine ran a restaurant in the village where our daughter went to nursery
school. Bernard worked for France Telecom, when it was still a public utility.
He was one of the first people in the area who was able to talk sensibly (if
only I could understand him) about mobile-phone and computer technology. Now
that it’s privatised and Orange, he still works at the office in Tulle, where
countless people ask for him by name because they know that he will look after them.
They sure
looked after us when we arrived in France. Debs fine-tuned her colloquial
French at the restaurant each morning after depositing The Daughter, chatting
to Régine, Jo-Jo and other regulars who made up a morning salon. Then, when she
was ready to set herself up here as an aromatherapist and reflexologist, Régine
took her in hand, managed her publicity, engineered promotions and provided a
market at Christmas and mid-summer for her creams and oils. When the school
canteen refused to provide Tilley with a vegetarian lunch, Régine even met her
from school and give her lunch at the restaurant. Meanwhile, Bernard did
whatever he could to maintain my first computer, an unwieldy Compaq Presario,
which cost so much money at the time that I had to ask my father for a loan. At
Christmas and on other traditional family occasions, they would have us over to
eat with their extended family in their crazy, chaotic house on whose upstairs
walls the kids and parents alike would scribble jokes and pensées.
So a trip to
see them is never just a trip to see old friends, it’s like visiting family,
patrons and the Oracle at Delphi all rolled into one. Régine certainly holds
one of the keys to life. Eight or so years ago, she was diagnosed with some
very rare life-threatening disease. No one really knew how to treat her and she
was given just a year or two to live. For a restaurateur, she had to bear the
indignity of ingesting the liquid food that sustained her through a tube
inserted up her nose. They sold the restaurant and moved to Marcillac and
Régine re-invented herself as a broadcaster and author of books about regional
cooking. She’s now on her 12th. Every November, she signs her books
and holds court at the celebrated Foire des Livres in Brive. Once more she’s
become a local celebrity. Sometimes, before I slide a CD into the car stereo, I
catch her voice on Radio France Bleue Limousin.
We were
greeted like the prodigal son and daughter and taken proudly into their salon
to meet all the other guests gathered around the all-purpose table to drink tea
and/or mulled wine and eat all the goodies Régine had prepared. One couple, we
realised, had spent their wedding night in the gîte we used to run rather
half-heartedly. I had completely forgotten.
So we sat and
we chatted and exchanged snippets of news about our families and mutual
acquaintances. Régine, I noticed, wasn’t wearing her once omnipresent food
tube. Neither of us asked about the state of her health, because she hates to
talk about it, but we both assumed that she was better – which isn’t ever
guaranteed because, such is the irony of her condition, she can look her best
when at her worst. The fact is that, x number of years down the line, she’s
still confounding the doctors.
Their middle child, Charlotte, came and joined us after
she’d run around the lake or wherever she goes now that she’s in training for
the Paris marathon. Charlotte and I share a birthday and we’ve known her since
she was a nipper. Once she’d finished her education, and without a word of
English, she found herself a job in a Southampton hotel. My sister lent her the
money for the first month’s rent on a flat she shared with some local girls.
She lasted six or so years, loved living in the UK and now speaks English like
a native. Back in France now, she’s got a job in La Rochelle, but the
experience has given her an interesting perspective on life in France and,
especially, life in the Corrèze. We told her how difficult Tilley’s finding it
to make close friends at college in Paris and Charlotte revealed how much
easier she found it to make friends in England.
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