Driving through parts of France which we used to know well, it was hard to feel any sense of familiarity. It was very hot – a constant reminder of that looming threat to everything we knew and remembered. The towns had lost the endearing scruffiness of 30 years ago. There was a sense of quiet prosperity: everything well ordered. Since we first drove through all those old villages with their pale stone houses, shuttered and pan-tiled, we had driven through many more over the years and the picturesque was no longer surprising. We were on our way to the second and larger of the two rough old houses we bought 34 years ago.
To avoid the worst of the heat, we set off from our base at Aubeterre at 9, and half an hour later we reached the town of Chalais, passing through the streets where the market stalls used to be hung with dead rabbits and large, sturdy off-white brassieres. Now there are phone covers and luxury foods. To drive slowly through the little village of Passirac and out along the lanes to Collardeau La Lande was exhilarating. It was still the same – the nice old buildings, the lovely oak and chestnut woods, the fields of sunflowers and maize, and there it was, almost as it was when we sold it. (See above) The old pictures re-photographed, show it more or less as we bought it.
Almost – the barn with the big bales was new. We parked and walked along the track to see if there was anyone there, but it was shuttered and silent. The house itself had hardly changed – a new veranda – but the old cottage opposite had been replaced with something new and bland.
Here, in the summer we had woken to the gentle cries of the Hoopoes strutting around the grass. Just up the track was the patch of scrub woodland where, at dusk, we had first seen and heard Nightjars clapping their wings and churring.
The front door was exactly the same and, heart in mouth, I knocked. There was no reply, so we decided to try to find the lake where I had sat in the evening listening to the frog chorus, had watched a Hen Harrier perched in one of the trees, and had seen Hobby falcons swooping over the water catching beetles in their claws and then delicately transferring them to their beaks.
The parched woodland crunched underfoot, but the trees were the same wild mix of oak, chestnut and pine, light and open. The lake was less wild but still beautiful.
Happy with a sense of nostalgia satisfied, we drove back past the house.
“Wait” said Thelma. “The shutters are open. They must have come back.”
Again I knocked and this time the door was opened and a man of my own age stood there looking surprised. I went into my explanation in French but he soon stopped me:
“Parlez vous Anglais?” When I switched to English he asked if it had been me knocking earlier.
“We are not early risers” he explained.
He told me they were the very people we had sold the place to; we had never met because the sale had been conducted remotely. He had, however met my daughter Hannah who had called in years later. She and 8 of her art-student friends had stayed there and caused something of a stir locally. My first wife Jan had stayed there with her new husband. My mother had worked there with us, and of course we had stayed many times over the 4 or 5 years we owned it. I could have earned a living there, but Thelma had a good job in Bristol and only a few words of French, so reluctantly, we decided to sell. I’m still not sure it was the right decision.
We were invited in. He was friendly but his wife, sitting at the kitchen table looked unhappy, and didn’t get up. She was however pleased to see the album of old pictures I had brought and we talked about their 30 years living there. I asked if I could take some pictures and she showed us round. My chestnut floor in the sitting room which so nearly went badly wrong, was still there.
The big bedroom, then a dormitory for our student work-force was recognisable, as was our second bedroom, though all much smarter.
Sitting again in the kitchen I was delighted to see that the cheap rustic doors I had made with diagonal t&g boards were unchanged except for the colour, but I didn’t take pictures. Something had changed.
She, Daphne, was clearly still bitter about the state the house had been in when they took possession. We had left it clean and complete with all the furnishings. They had found it filthy and with all the portable items gone. It was clear that the place had been broken into, lived in, trashed and emptied. She still seemed to hold a grudge. My gut clenched and I couldn’t wait to get away.
Later my anger subsided and I began to understand. They had fallen into a trap we were familiar with from our time in France. You sell your house in Britain, buy something here for less than half your capital and live comfortably on the remainder. When I said how nice it was to see the place so little changed, it hurt. They had no more capital to put a new kitchen in or to develop the older part next door. They were stuck and there was tension between them. Perhaps we had ruined their day as they had ours.
Nostalgia is indeed not what it used to be, even a few hours ago.
