Provence
Looking back on it, apart from this year’s wildfires, the stultifying heat of high summer in Provence isn’t so bad if you accept that the time to exercise is 6 a.m. and work is only possible before midday and from late afternoon onwards. Holidaymakers and the better-off have pools to jump into and air conditioning to enjoy. But during the afternoons the rest of us lie almost naked on the bed under a ceiling fan, shutters closed, while the Rouge Noir varnish on our toenails melts. I’m told that Frenchmen sit in their pants watching the Tour de France.
During the afternoons the rest of us lie almost naked on the bed under a ceiling fan, shutters closed
One such afternoon about five years ago, Jeremy and I were lying side by side, inert, under the whirring blades of the fan, when we heard voices on the usually quiet public pathway below the bedroom window. An older man was animatedly telling a young woman about the house. He seemed to know more than I did about the place and spent a long time at the foot of the stone steps looking up at the front door. Curious, I pulled a dress over my head and went down.
Michel was from Marseille and had lived here in the cave house as a child in the mid-1950s. He’d brought his daughter, who lived in Paris, to show her. I invited them in. Michel had tears in his eyes when he saw the living room. ‘My mother slept here,’ he said pointing. ‘I slept up in the bedroom with my brothers and sisters.’ The dining space wasn’t there then he told us, nor the bathroom; there was no mains water. In the 1970s, the house was connected to the village water supply and the owner at the time, a ship’s captain from Brittany, drilled into the rock, enlarging the property and making it comfortably habitable. Soon the four of us – Michel, his daughter, Jeremy and me – were on the terrace sipping rosé.
Michel carried on with his story: ‘My mother was beautiful but chaotic, an early hippy. She never married any of the fathers of her five children but was kind and loving – did her best for us. But she couldn’t make me go to school. I was scared of the eagle owls who nest in the cliff here and, instead of attending class, I ran wild with the village boys.’ I asked him if he, like the boy in Pagnol’s La Gloire de mon père, had encountered ‘le grand duc’ close up, but he couldn’t remember. Eagle owls are big, they stand 60-75cm tall and have a wingspan of 160-180cm. A family of them still lives close by and sometimes late on summer evenings as darkness falls, I hear them; the adults hoot and the babies screech. If I’m lucky I see the youngsters taking their first tentative flights along the floodlit cliff, vocalising their whereabouts as they go. Once I saw an adult heading back to the nest with a 2ft-long grass snake in its beak.
Michel told us that when his Parisian father came to visit he was so appalled by how his son was being raised that he took him back to Paris. At the age of eight, having never attended school, Michel was sent to be educated by Jesuits. It was a wrench, but he was a bright boy, settled quickly and did well. A successful career in journalism was followed by an advisory post in President Mitterrand’s government.
During the canicule when the night-time temperature stays stubbornly high, I sleep with both the bedroom shutters and windows wide open. Michel came to mind the other night when at around 3 a.m., I heard an eagle owl land on the roof above me. Unnerved, I got up to close the shutters but as I leaned out of the window, the creature launched itself off the roof and swept down, then up. The draft from its massive wings hit me in the face. If little Michel had seen this, I could see why he freaked. In the pitch dark it looked like a vampire.
A day or two later. I poured myself a drink and began smoking what I hoped would be my last ever cigarette
A day or two later around 10 p.m. I poured myself a drink, sat down at the terrace table and began smoking what I hoped would be my last ever cigarette. Martin the cat lay sprawled on the low wall a few feet in front of me watching, unconvinced. From nowhere three eagle owls flew over us in formation. ‘Blimey!’ I said, as Martin’s eyes followed them. Soon the owls flew back towards the cliff, but the last one stopped short and landed right above my head on the corner of the bamboo awning. If I’d stood up I could have touched its huge talons and still-downy feathers. The scale of it was astonishing. I’d never seen such a bird close up and, anxious for the cat, I froze. So did Martin. His eyes were popping out of his head. For a full minute, the three of us were locked in, forming an equilateral triangle, the sides of which measured less than 4ft long. I couldn’t breathe, never mind smoke. Would Martin be taken like some feline Ganymede? A normal-sized healthy cat wouldn’t be in danger but a stunted, formerly malnourished one like Martin might.
After what seemed like an age, the eagle owl lost interest, took off and flew back towards its nest. Seeking reassurance, Martin came and sat on my knee, nudging and purring. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘you’re not nearly pretty enough.’
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