Cathar Country Info

Domaine de Cabanac, chapter 21.

By Val Wineyard

The story so far; Frank had bought the house called Cabanac and he and Josie were in love. Josie's son Marc was with them, her previous lover in Paris was called Jean-Luc. Back in England, Frank had his wife Lucy and his brother Stephen. One day Marc came back from the village of St. Andre, talking about a strange old man who had questioned him. Josie thought it might have been one of her crazy clients from her psychotherapy practice.

Later that afternoon Frank sat looking at Josie’s face, lit by the sun that was low in the sky and slanting under the verandah. All the planes of her face were lit with a golden light and he suddenly thought; “My God, I must get a sculptor to do a head of her!” He was so happy he thought he would die of it.

            What an afternoon they had had.

            Beside her was sitting the big ugly man. He was in his late seventies and the hand that lifted his glass of pastis was shaking a little so that he didn’t drink very neatly and kept swabbing his mouth with a huge and grubby handkerchief.

            Frank had witnessed, in the village, an incredible interview. They had walked into the café and asked if a Monsieur Swartzwald was staying there; the girl behind the counter pointed him out and said; “You’re lucky, he said he was going to leave today.”

            Josie had walked over to the man who had his head buried in a newspaper. He had looked up and said; “Ninette. You look like Ninette.” His French was correct, with no Languedocian twang, and a heavy German accent.

            “Ninette was my mother,” said Josie.

            “She was mine too.”

            Josie went white and reached blindly for a chair and sat down. “You must be Jean-Christophe,” she whispered. “I thought it might be you. They deported you before I was born.”

            The old man had started shaking then, and Frank had practically ran to get them three cognacs. “My name is Josiette Guiraud-Bonnac,” Josie was saying. “I was born in late 1943. They often used to talk about you. My grandmother thought you were dead, but Maman tried to trace you, she really did.”

            Jean-Christophe’s rheumy old eyes filled with tears and Frank felt a great lump in his throat. Josie embraced her brother. “Everybody died,” she said.

            “Julì?”

            “He committed suicide. He couldn’t bear to live without Peire.”

            “My father?”

            “He died in a train accident in 1943, near Bordeaux.”

            “Oh, I should have come home to Cabanac. I am so sorry. And my little brother, François?”

            “He was with the Resistance. The Gestapo shot him.”

            Jean-Christophe made a fist and thumped the table and then rubbed his knuckle into his eyes. “I don’t think I can bear the shame - I should have come home.”

            “But what happened to you Jean-Christophe? Did you have to work for the Germans?”

            “I was in the train with my comrades, it was a wooden truck, like that for cattle, but I think it had carried freight. It had a sliding door on the side. . . . you must realise there were no seats and no facilities, in the end the men relieved themselves where they stood, and no ventilation. I found I had a penknife in my pocket and my three comrades had folding knives, like the old men used for cutting string when they are gardening - we tried to cut a hole in the wooden side of the truck, just to get ventilation.”

            “That must have taken a long time . . .” said Josie.

            “We had a long time for the train was travelling very slowly - we sharpened the knives on some pebbles we found on the floor and then we realised that if we cut in a circle around the lock we would be able to slide the door open.”

            “You were very brave.”

            “It took a long time but we did it, and when the train was passing slowly over a cutting, we slid the door - and we all jumped - and oh, it was incredible, to fly through the air, the clean air, and feel ourselves falling - I survived, but some of my comrades fell on rocks and were injured.”

            He drank more cognac and Frank rushed to refill the glass.

            “The Germans started shooting but I ran and kept on running and a German girl hid me in her barn. I ended up marrying her. I changed my name to hers. Heidi - she’s dead too,” he was weeping. “I’d been meaning and meaning to come and explain everything, and then it seemed a silly idea, and then events overtook me and then I thought I might have embarrassed everyone and they would have despised me for mixing with a German family.”

            “Oh no,” said Josie. “They often talked about you. They said you were a moody young devil!”

            “Yes, I was. I don’t know how my wife put up with me. Now I am alone I had a chance at last to see what had happened to my family, my home. Then the young man told me the house had been sold to the English.”

            Josie put her hand over his. “That young man was my son, Marc. You must come home with us and meet him and see Domaine de Cabanac,” she said.

            Frank was listening to all this and was so impressed by Josie’s bigness of heart. And she had said “with us” as though she and Frank were a couple.

            He bought more cognac and when everyone had stopped shaking and stopped crying, they had walked Jean-Christophe to the car and brought him home.

Now, in the peacefulness of the verandah, she was talking kindly to the old man, and Frank saw in her the kindly therapist that her patients saw, and was thrilled he had seen other sides to her.

            She looked up and met his eyes. He smiled at her. Her answering smile was completely open to him.

            Her resistance to him had disappeared, somewhere in the smoky café room in St. André.

            It was one of those intense and knowing, but peaceful moments when a man and a woman realise that they are lovers.

            Josie turned back to her brother, to persuade him to forget his guilt, to reassure him he was forgiven, and it was almost as though she was talking about herself. Now she knows what guilt really is, thought Frank, her own guilt has left her and she’s like a beach washed clean of dross by a stormy high tide . . .

            Frank went to find Marc, who was doing some hammering in the west barn with a grim expression on his face that Josie called “doing a Jean-Luc.”

            Marc said; “What’s she brought him here for? Let him get off back to Germany!”

            “He’s an old man Marc, he’s 78 years old, and he’s suffered, and he’s terribly sorry. He just wanted to see his home. Old people get like that you know. His wife has recently died, and he started thinking of the past . . . “

            “He’s not staying here, that’s for sure.”

            “He’ll stay if I invite him Marc,” Frank said quietly.

            “Fuck you!” said Marc, and threw the hammer at the barn door and turned as if to storm off.

            Frank stepped around in front of him, knowing better than to try to physically restrain him. “Jean-Christophe said that his mother used to call him a moody devil - a bit like you really.”

            Marc glared. “There’s no need to turn the knife and remind me it’s your house now!”

            Frank took no notice. “And your mother told me that your grandmother Anna was the most stubborn old mule that ever lived,” he said. “Er - a bit like you? You’re a Guiraud you know Marc. You don’t need to prove it to me.”

            Marc glared, then relaxed, then grinned ruefully.   “You’re a bit of a devil yourself Frank, but you’re right. It’s not just my father I take after is it? OK, I’ll be polite to the old - “

            “Marc, now then..”

            “Oh all right, I’ll be polite to my dear uncle!” Marc declared.

They gave Jean-Christophe one of the rooms in the east barn, and as he stayed with them he increased in confidence and like the other two Guirauds, was able to walk about and admire everything Frank had done without any overtones of jealousy or possessiveness.

            Another woman emerged in Josie, the woman Frank had known she could be. He felt angry sometimes that she had wasted her youth on Jean-Luc, and then, looking at her figure as slender as that of a young girl, and admiring the laughing way she tossed her blonde head when her hair was loose, he thought again how amazing she was that she had overcome her past. He vowed that nobody would ever hurt her again, not as long as he lived anyway.

            He knew that she loved him, it felt like a golden warmth flooding his heart, filling his inner self with peace and security.

            That night Frank asked Josie to marry him. She just smiled and laughed gently; “You’re married already.”

            He told her he would marry her as soon as he’d divorced Lucy, or rather, she’d divorced him. “I shouldn’t bother,” said Josie, amazing him again. “I’ve never believed in marriage. Jean-Luc influenced me and he was right. If people want to be together, then they should be together. The idea of one person paying the bills for another is dreadful.”

            “Well, Jean-Luc never believed in it!” said Frank, in shock.

            She smiled as though Jean-Luc was someone she knew a long time ago, before the making of the world. “No, he didn’t. But he was right. I had my own career, and my own business, and I bought the house in my name, so you see, if I’d’ve been like your Lucy, I would have been searching the world by now for the man who could keep me in the style to which the previous man got me accustomed!”

            “But I want to marry you!” cried Frank.

            “But it’s not necessary. I’ll be with you if you want me to be.”

            “But Domaine de Cabanac was your home, it had been in your family for generations! If you marry me, you and Marc will have a claim on it.”

            “But that’s exactly it, don’t you see? I talk to so many of my clients who are getting divorced, and then finding someone else to live, and then going to court for this that and the other, and when there’s children involved it can be horrific. They get so stressed out by all this that by the time the get married they don’t love each other anymore!”

            He smiled. “I suppose you’re right, when you look at it like that.”

            “Oh Frank! What’s a house? My grandmother and my mother have told me something about their experiences. They gave up so much just to keep the house, to keep the inheritance. It was all they had. But times have changed. It honestly doesn’t matter to me, who owns the house. I’ve just bought a house in St. André just to be near you! If you died, or if I died for that matter, what would the house be worth without each other?”

            The complete reversal of the ideas of Lucy took him completely by surprise. Wasn’t it the idea of marriage that the man financially cared for the woman?

            “Did you really?”

            “What?”

            “Buy the house because you wanted to be near me?”

            “Well, obviously! Anyway, you’ve been married twice already. Why do it again when it hasn’t worked twice before?”

            Frank said; “You don’t want to marry me? You don’t want me to adopt Marc? You don’t want Domaine de Cabanac to be yours again?”

            She thought for a moment. “What I want, in a funny way, is to prove Jean-Luc was right. It’s the sentiments between the man and the woman that matter, not the bargain, the business deal, the money, the fixing of property.”

            “If I can prove he was right,” said Frank, “Will you love me forever?”

            Josie laughed. “Now then,” she said, “No bargains!” She kissed him. “But I might.”

That night she kissed him again, many more times, and made love to him teasingly and thoroughly, pulling him on top of her and then saying he was too heavy, then climbing on top of him, then whispering how wonderful he was, and then laughing and then being deadly serious as he felt as though his very soul had left his body and become hers, and then she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, her arm round his neck, and her thigh draped possessively over him.

            “Anyway,” she said the next morning, “Marc told me you were the one for me, and he’s psychic.”

Jean-Christophe relaxed and seemed to be stronger. They had rung the station and booked another train ticket for him for a week’s time. His slovenliness was decreasing, because Josie chivvied him. “He’s used to his wife looking after him, you see,” Josie said. Jean-Christophe’s memory was coming back, his French was improving, and he became better company.

            “Josie; I want to interview him and record everything he says,” Frank said. “Shall we do it together? Will you help?”

            They all worked intensively together and it was rewarding to put the story of the house and the family in it together. Josie and Jean-Christophe went through all the old photos she had, and he could tell them who the people were they didn’t know and add details about the places and dates of the photos.

            The old man worked hard at stretching his memory; and told them little anecdotes about his family life as a child in the ‘thirties, and described the characters of the people so that they came to life.

But nobody ever knew or found out that Paul was really Adrien and that Jean-Christophe’s story of running away and hiding in a barn, then being found by a beautiful young girl, was spookily similar to the story of Ninette and Adrien.

            And neither secret really mattered any more.

            Life moves on and history hides things. Historians have open minds but ordinary people look back at history and clothe it with the standards of their own modern lives, never dreaming that one day they too will be a product of the times they live in, reflect those times and suffer for them or benefit from them.

            In another place and time Adrien might have been a great politician, Martin an army general, the Occitan twins famous musicians, and François a leading scientist of his day, just as, born at the end of the war, Josie had carved out a career for herself that would have been impossible if she’d been born in 1899, as Ninette was.

            These were some of the ideas Frank wanted to put into his programme.

Frank drew a huge family tree, and made copies of the photos on his scanner, and hung the chart on his office wall. Marc had got copies of everything from the Mairie and they had found out the first Giraud was called Antoine and was born in during the Revolution. Antoine had been Jacques’ great grandfather, but he wasn’t born at Domaine de Cabanac, the girl he married was, and they had their first child, a son, in 1824, who was Jacques’ grandfather.

            What did these people look like? The earliest visual record they had was the photo of Jacques and Anna and the tiny Ninette, taken around 1905.

            Frank told Josie and Marc; “I’ve got enough material now to send a draft to the BBC. They’ll probably send a film crew and interview us all, how do you like that idea?”

            “I’ll be a star,” said Marc.

            Josie laughed but Frank said; “You’ll do very well. Honestly, you’re the sort.”

            “There’s just one thing,” Josie said, “Nothing about Jean-Luc, please. It won’t help him, and it doesn’t advance the story.”

            “No - it’s just the people who’ve lived in the house we’re interested in,” said Frank. “The programme is about the house.”

            Josie’s brother was due to return to Germany the next day and Josie got Jean-Christophe on his own, for there was the burning issue of the sale of Domaine de Cabanac to talk about. It was bizarre, because she and Marc lived there as though it was their home, and she knew that she and Frank would end up fully living together.

            “Once we get house renovations, previous wives, son’s career and long-lost brother’s visit and film crew sorted out!” though Josie to herself humorously. But that was Frank.

            She explained to Jean-Christophe about the house; “I paid a hefty premium for insurance when they couldn’t find you, so you can claim on that if you wish. The money from the sale of the house to Frank should have been shared between you and me.”

            “No, I don’t want it Josie.”

            “But haven’t you any relatives in Germany?”

            “Only Heidi’s sister, and she’s well set up and we hardly saw her anyway. And we had no children; Heidi was injured in an air-raid and she couldn’t have any.”

            “Oh, I’m so sorry. My poor brother. I see why Maman was a pacifist. Nobody wins a war, do they Jean-Christophe?”

            His eyes watered. “Nobody. Heidi and I were devoted to each other, you know Josie. It was a true love affair. I didn’t want to leave her.”

            “I understand. It’s natural mon cher. Don’t worry any more, eh?”

            “There’s another reason I don’t want the money,” he said. “I’ve got cancer, Josie. It’s too late to do anything, and I’m too old, and they think I might have about a month left.”

            “Oh, they shouldn’t define it like that!” she said, the health professional speaking.

            “I insisted on knowing,” he said. “It started in the liver, and was inoperable, and now I’ve got secondaries everywhere. That’s why I had to come and see my old home and family. Just to put things right before I died.”

            “And you have put it right, dear Jean-Christophe.”

            “Yes.” He sighed, an endlessly deep sigh that brought a lump to Josie’s throat. “I’ll give you a letter saying that on my death I leave everything to you. That should sort it all out. Have you been worrying about it?”

            “No, well, only a little bit, for your sake really. No, the house is Frank’s - and if anything happened to him, I don’t think I’d want it. I’ve got property of my own but - when death rears its ugly head, money doesn’t seem worth much, does it Jean-Christophe?”

            And they wept a little together.

It was a mild March day, one of the first days that they’d had lunch on the verandah that year. Two days previously they had seen Jean-Christophe to the station and Josie had retired to her own little house for a day or so, to think things over, she said.

            “There’s nothing wrong is there?”

            “Not in the way you mean Frank. I just want to think for a while about what my life would have been like if I’d had an older brother living at home here. We all thought he was dead, and now he isn’t, but he soon will be, so it all takes a bit of thinking about. And it’s made me realise how lucky I am,” she said softly.

            And over lunch Frank and Josie told Marc they planned to live together and he would be welcome to live with them.

            A complete smile illuminated Marc’s face like the sun. “At last! What on earth took you so long?”

            “Now don’t act your usual fool” said Frank.

            “I’m not acting the fool, you idiot of a man, I’ve known you and my mother were meant for each other since the day I first clapped eyes on you! And I’m so very pleased, so very pleased.” He was sincere.

            Embarrassed, Frank turned to practical aspects and told Marc that he’d been prepared to adopt him, until Josie had pointed out that one didn’t adopt people over the age of eighteen in France. But Marc was delighted all the same and gave full rein to his acting the fool talents.

            “Adopt me, adopt me!” he yelled. He started running around the swimming pool, pulling faces and pretending to put his thumb in his mouth. “Adopt me! I’m not too proud to pretend I’m only three!”

            “Marc! Behave yourself!” said Josie.

            “Oh lighten up Maman, this is a celebration!”

            She turned to Frank. “See? This is what you get when you bring your child up according to psychotherapy principles.”

            “An uninhibited genius!” said Marc.

            “Modest too,” said Frank. They all laughed.

            Marc wasn’t too proud either, to accept the west barn as his, to live in and renovate while he studied architecture. Josie and Frank had talked about it; Marc needed some stability.

            “Meanwhile you can make a fortune for us all by renovating houses for the Brits and the Dutch!” said Frank. “We’re going to send you out to work, my dear adopted son!”

            “Can I renovate the barn how I want?” asked Marc.

            “No,” said Frank. There was a shocked silence.

            “Why?”

            “When I was a student and learnt the clarinet so I could play jazz, all those years ago,” said Frank, “My music teacher said he would teach me blue notes, key change and syncopation after I’d learnt scales and arpeggios, not before.”

            Marc shrugged. He looked as though he was about to go into a major sulk any minute. Frank spoke quickly.

            “Look at it this way,” said Frank. “The first time I played in a jazz band, I had to improvise, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just played arpeggios, and I got away with it.”

            “Professionalism as competence, eh?”

            “You’ve got it,” said Frank.

            “You are the devil!” said Marc with feeling.

            Frank laughed. “In England we call it the iron hand in the velvet glove,” he told him. “But now we’re agreed, you can have a free hand with the barn, as long as you do proper plans and discuss them with me. I’ll trust your competence, Marc.”

Well, Frank thought, I’ve never had children of my own, so how am I supposed to bring them up, especially if they already are grown up?

            “What a quandary to be in,” laughed Josie.

            “You’ll tell me if I’m too pompous or severe, won’t you?”

            “Of course I will, cheri.” She kissed him.   

            He was finding Josie an intriguing and interesting companion, with all sorts of teasing tricks up her sleeve, especially when they were holding hands over the meal table as they left-handedly sipped their digestifs.

            “Sometimes,” she said once, “I adore you.”

            “Only sometimes?”

            “Yes,” she pouted like a child.

            “Which times?”

            “Well, I adore you when - ah, that’s a secret I’ll leave you find out!”

            At other times she was more serious and dramatic. One day she said; “I’ve got to leave you tonight - I’ve got so much work to do, I’ve just got to get it done. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            And just when he was lying in bed missing her, just about midnight when he’d tossed and turned so much he thought he might as well get up, he heard her car in the yard and she came rushing up the stairs. “Oh Frank, I missed you so much, I missed you, I missed you!”

Meanwhile, Frank and Marc were working hard on endless renovations in the house and the east barn, as well as helping Josie move into and organise the little house she’d bought in St. André. Frank supposed he ought to get on with his writing more. But what the hell! He was enjoying himself too much and his health had improved dramatically. He no longer got backache, he felt restless if he didn’t physically work during the day and he slept like a log.

            Thinking about his health, he found himself wondering how long he himself would live. His father had died at seventy, but his life had been artificially shortened by smoking. So, he thought, I might live well into my nineties, which means a good thirty years with Josie, living in this natural paradise of colour and light.

            He shaved off his beard. He remembered the previous summer when he’d had to shower every day and his beard itched in the hot weather.

            “Hey, you look really good,” said Marc, “Ten years younger at least!”

            “Do you really think so?”

            “Yeah. And when you get a tan with that white hair for contrast, you’ll be really stunning!”

            Frank looked in the mirror and said seriously; “I was thinking of shaving my head and getting a single hoop earring.”

            “Hey man, don’t go too far!” laughed Marc.

            And the next day Josie said he looked so much younger everyone would think he was her toy-boy.

            He wasn’t quite sure how he would tell Lucy that he didn’t want to return to England and in fact had no intention of returning. Josie had laughed at his idea of getting a divorce; and perhaps she was right, perhaps he should respect Lucy and let her come and stay now and then. After all, what did it matter compared to the eternal ebb and flow of the realities of life?

            And Lucy wasn’t a bad person. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to play with antiques all day and boast to her friends about her holiday villa in the south of France? Her image was important to her.

            It would be easier on the phone, he felt, to give Lucy a chance to get over it before they had to discuss it face to face, for her to adjust to the fact that he had basically left her, but that might be a little unfair.

            But he fell asleep while wondering what was fair in love and war.

            Ninette would have answered him.

Before he knew it, it was April, and Lucy and the girls had planned to come over at Easter. He knew he would have to speak to Lucy and so he rang her one evening, sitting at his desk under the window with his beautiful view of St. André.

           As he often did, he drifted into a reverie of how lucky he was, gazing at his view and his room, now finished and called his Perfect Room. His desk was under the first window, Lucy’s dressing table under the second. The bathroom had been built in the far north-east corner of the room.

            He had been going to box it in, but Marc advised him to get some wooden trellis from the garden centre and use that. In front of it was placed two double wardrobes; so the bathroom was invisible to visitors and business guests coming up the stairs. Also on Marc’s advice, all the woodwork, including the window frames and shutters, were done in Saxe blue; the walls were pale lemon. The furniture was light oak.

            It was spacious and Frank loved it. He turned on his swivel chair from admiring his books and looked out of the window again as he dialled Lucy’s number.

            “Frank darling!” said Lucy, “I’m so glad you’ve rang. How are you?”

            He thought at first she was glad he phoned because she preferred it if other people initiated calls, for financial reasons. From habit he launched into an account of all the things he and Marc had been doing to the house and Lucy made polite murmuring responses. “Marc’s mother is staying for a while,” he said, “Do you remember Josie?”

            “Oh that’s nice Frank, be company for you,” she said absently.

            There was a pause while he wondered what was going on. He remembered the day last summer when he had been talking business to Josie and Lucy had come up and put her arms round his neck.   He’d had the strong impression then that there was some unspoken rivalry going on between Lucy and Josie, over him. He’d felt quite gratified at the time.

            Suddenly Lucy said; “Frank, do you remember Guy Montrose?”

            He clicked his mind back to England and the life they’d had there - it was surprisingly hard to do so, his mind and life had been full of France for so long. “I’m not sure . . . “ Then he realised what she was going to say next.

            “He’s one of the dealers I meet regularly to get things for the shop,” Lucy said. “I’m sure you remember him, a really nice man.”

            “Yes - er - I liked him,” Frank said carefully.

            “Well, the thing is Frank, that he and I have sort of got together. I don’t want to hurt you Frank but I had to tell you. I was lonely without you Frank . . “

            “Oh Lucy, you don’t have to apologise, really. I’ve been so happy here and I didn’t really realise I might have been neglecting you. Um - is it serious?”

            “Yes.”

            “Can he keep you in the style to which you are accustomed?”

            She heard the teasing in his voice and responded in kind. “He’s richer than you Frank!”

            Suddenly they both laughed uproariously.

            “Lucy,” he gasped, “I am so fond of you you know!”

            “I know Frank, and I of you, but we’ve just sort of grown apart haven’t we, we like different lifestyles, don’t we?”

            “One of the things I wanted to tell you was how happy I am here. I intend to live here permanently Lucy.”

            “And could it be that a certain Josie had something to do with your decision?”

            He laughed at her archness. “No,” he said, “But my God, she’s the icing on the cake! I love her, Luce.”

            “Oh dear Frank, I’m crying you know, there’s nobody like you but - ”

            “I understand Luce. Really I do.”

            “Still friends Frank?”

            “Of course. And please continue with your plans to come with Amy and Vivienne for Easter, won’t you? You know you and the girls will always be welcome to come here for holidays.”

            “And Josie won’t mind?”

            “No. She’s not that sort of person, in fact, she suggested it.”

            “Is she living with you?”

            “Only in spirit at the moment. She’s just bought a house of her own in St. André. She’s very independent you know and is working on her next book.”

            “Oh. And shall I bring Guy?”

            How quickly Lucy got the advantage in situations and then pushed her luck! No wonder she was such a good salesperson.

            “It’s a bit soon for that! No. Anyway, it’ll keep him on his toes to wonder how you’re getting on with your elderly ex!”

            She giggled. “I never thought of you as being old Frank, but it’s nearly twenty years isn’t it?”

            “Tell him that then! He wouldn’t fit in here Lucy, but I’ll always be fond of you.”

One day in autumn 1997, the whole family ate out on the verandah. The vine was still growing, the leaves yellow and the grapes already picked, and new geraniums had been planted. Their bright scarlet petals caught the light and seemed to glow in the space where the verandah met the yard.

            Seated around the table, well, two plastic picnic tables pushed together, were Frank, Josie, Marc, Stephen, his wife Mary, the two boys, now 14 and 15, Leo and Harry, and surprisingly, Vivienne, who’d come to France to study, was working in Paris, and often drove down for weekends to Domaine de Cabanac.

            And Lucy? She had come for a week last August. Frank hadn’t fallen out with her, they wrote regularly, but she had her own life now and Amy too, seemed to prefer the bright lights of London to the more sedate pleasures of provincial Languedoc.

            Frank’s family and Vivienne had come down late in the year for a celebration. They came to see an advance viewing, for it took six months for programmes to be slotted into the BBC schedule, of his finished film about Domaine de Cabanac. And they were thrilled, as Frank was, and proud. He himself had come over particularly well, describing the Roman centurion he believed had been the first person to live in Domaine de Cabanac.

            They had sat in his Perfect Room, on chairs brought up from the dining table downstairs, and watched the film, which had taken most of the summer to make. Frank had arranged interviews with the dowser (who was quite an actor), and Marc had demonstrated his renovation of the west barn, and Josie had gone through the family photos and told their history, and there were beautiful moody shots of the landscape, complete with vague Anna and Ninette type figures in the vines and on the renovated cart, and the background music was the haunting songs of the Occitan Twins.

            Everyone was moved, and then the lumps in their throats subsided, and they started laughing, and they went down to the verandah and drank Blanquette de Limoux, a local wine much better than Champagne, Frank thought, to celebrate.

            They were eating traditional Languedoc food, half that they’d made themselves and half supermarket ready-made meals done in the traditional Languedocian style, and few people could tell the difference.   By now they loved their way of life - visiting the supermarket and coming back with huge piles of charcuterie and salads, then piling the lot on the table and letting everyone help themselves.

            From the kitchen wafted out the smells of whole roast chicken and earthenware dishes full of cassoulet.

            “It’s a dreadful heresy,” smiled Josie, “But there’s a lot going for it; sort of - buy food, put on table, eat.”

            In the French way, everyone just helped themselves and had just one plate for all the courses, and poured their own wine, and grabbed their own bread out of the bread basket.

            “One can be so deliciously greedy in Languedoc,” said Vivienne. “In Paris, you’re supposed to live on orange juice and salads, and smoke yourself to death.”

            “Oh, it hasn’t changed then!” laughed Josie. She liked Vivienne.

            Stephen said; “I’ll just pop in the kitchen and get the cheese.” He brought out a board, made of white chestnut wood by Frank and sanded for hours, covered with vine leaves. Resting on it was creamy Brie, rounds of local goat cheese, Roquefort and Cantal Doux for those who wanted something like Cheddar.

            Josie had a sudden flashback; her mother used to present the cheese in such a similar way, and had done when Josie had brought Jean-Luc to meet her all those years ago. Josie still felt a pang when she thought what a tragedy Jean-Luc’s life had been. Fate? Genetics? She didn’t know.

            She was distracted by Leo and Harry nagging their mother. “Mum, mum, can we get bikes and go down to the village?”

            “Maybe later boys.”

            Leo and Harry distracted people quite a lot.

            Frank looked at all the people round him. Christ, he loved them all! His life here in France had been so fulfilling, all the history he’d read when he was a student, it was all true, and with what beauty - there was no deception in it.

            He felt tears in his eyes. “I want to thank you all,” he managed to say, “For – for..”

            “For just being us!” cried Marc, leaping to his rescue, and they all raised their glasses.

            Marc had confided to Frank that he might marry Anataise after all. “The thing is,” he’d said, “She’s a really good comrade. I’ve explained to her it’s more like friendship than burning desire..”

            “What do you know about burning desire?” Frank laughed.

            “What I do know I found out in America!” Marc countered. “No seriously, she’s a good friend and she thinks a lot of me and I could do a lot worse than Anataise. She wants children - we both do. Marriage shouldn’t be based on falling in love anyway.”

            Frank smiled. “Marc,” he said, “You’re so French!”

            “I’ll invite her next week,” Marc had promised.

            The geraniums glowed red. The sky was striped yellow and purple.   They sat under the shelter of the verandah; it was still so warm, and the sky was so murky, St.André, the river, the distant sea, were all hidden in a slate-grey cloud.

            “Do you think there might be a storm?” said Mary casually.

            Frank felt a breeze, imagined the trees rustled. Was it getting cooler? He checked the thermometer he had tacked up onto one of the wooden uprights supporting the verandah.

            The temperature had dropped eight degrees in eight minutes.

            “Perhaps we ought to move everything indoors,” said Vivienne, her sharp little nose seeming to sense the change in the air.

            Lazily they stood up.

            “Feels like a four minute warning,” said Marc.

            “Here it comes!” said Frank.

            Then the rain rushed up the slope and hit the house. It came down in huge black drops and sideways sheets. The wind howled.

            “Get indoors!” cried Marc. His sophisticated Parisian/American persona had completely disappeared. “Get in the house! We’ll be safe there.”

The storm raged for three days and three nights. The river broke its banks and flooded St. André. We were up the hill, so we weren’t affected by floods. The wind battered my north wall, but it stood as firm as it had stood for five hundred years.

            On the second day Marc decided he was going to go down the hill and lend a hand to the Pompiers, who were working 24 hours a day to try and contain the flood-water.

Josie found him rampaging through the cupboard in the kitchen that held the rarely used mackintoshes, umbrellas and wellington boots.

            “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she said. “It’s not as though you’ve had any training, you know.”

            “At least I can lend a hand,” he said, “The more people the merrier.” He shrugged into a sou’wester. Josie’s eyes seemed nervous and he briefly put his hand on her arm. “Please don’t worry, Maman, it might even be fun, riding round in a little boat taking coffee to people on rooftops.” He grinned.

            “I know,” she said, “Maybe it’s just that the storm has spooked me. We tend to think of rain as just something good for the gardens . . .” her voice trailed away.

            He ran from the house into his old car. “Don’t forget to park it high up!” Frank shouted after him, laughing. He stood with his arm round Josie under the shelter of the verandah.

            The others came out. Leo and Harry told their mother they wanted to go too, but she persuaded them their lack of French language would hamper their work if they couldn’t understand instructions that were given them. “You just want us to learn French,” said Leo.

            “Well, yes,” Mary replied. “But in the middle of a storm isn’t the place to do it.”

            She turned to Stephen and smiled into his eyes. They had both decided that they hoped to come and live at Domaine de Cabanac one day.

            The rain abated a little during the day and was little more than a thick mist when Marc’s car came chugging up the hill and cut out very quickly in the yard as though it had breathed its last.

            He looked tired and his mother hugged him. “Come and have something to eat. Then you can tell us everything that happened.”

            Yes, he came back that first night.

            But not the second. It was dinner time when the realisation hit them he wasn’t coming home that night. Their churning stomachs told them they must take action.

            They rang all the hospitals. The search was quite hopeless. In some places telephone lines were down, others permanently engaged, and the emergency services were completely overloaded.

            “There’s only one thing to do,” said Frank definitively. “We must search the hospitals by visiting them, insisting on seeing all casualties admitted..”

            “And all corpses too,” whispered Josie, white-faced.

            “Well, we’ll take the casualties first,” said Frank calmly.

            “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?” said Stephen. “Many roads are flooded. You might not get through. We don’t want to add more casualties to the list.”

            “You’re right,” said Frank, “But at the same time you’re so wrong. We’ve got to go.”

            The others, Mary and Stephen and the boys, and Vivienne, waited anxiously in the house.

            They kept making quick trips to the verandah to bring everything in, for although the verandah was sheltered, the wind was blowing spray in sideways and everything was becoming soaked. By one in the morning the rain was still beating relentlessly down, drumming on the roof.

            They turned on the television in Vivienne’s sitting room in the east barn (Frank wouldn’t have a TV in his Perfect Room), and kept seeing warnings of gales. There was a general warning to people to stay indoors, but apparently the rain was lessening and the authorities were expecting the flood waters to start falling within twenty-four hours.

            “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Stephen.

            “Oh there’s no half measures when it rains in Languedoc,” said Vivienne.

            At two o’clock Mary made her boys go to bed. “I can see you’re dead-beat,” she said, “Look, take the alarm clock and get up early in the morning. You can make us all hot coffee.”

            Mary and Stephen and Vivienne heard the four-wheel-drive Toyota return to the yard around three o’clock.

            They ran out. The rain had slowed to a thin drizzle.

            “We found him!” said Frank, as he jumped out. He ran around to the other side of the vehicle. Josie more-or-less fell out into his arms and he carried her into the house, laying her on the sofa.

            “I won’t cry,” she said, “I won’t cry.” But the tears ran down her face.

            Frank explained to the others; “He was very brave. We found him in St. Paul's hospital in Narbonne, and the chief of the Pompiers was with him, he’s Monsieur Dupont, the son of the café owner here in the village.”

            “Was Marc hurt?”

            “They are keeping him in for observation, but they are sure he’ll be home tomorrow.”

            “Oh, that is good news,” said Stephen.

            “It’s not that he nearly drowned, they managed to clear his lungs, but he’s got concussion. Apparently he went to rescue an old lady who was trapped in her car. The flood waters came swirling around the corner, knocked him off his feet, and carried him along until he smashed his head against a stone doorway. They must keep him in for observation.”

            “And the old lady?” asked Stephen.

            “Oh, he got her out,” Frank said proudly, as though Marc was his own son. “He got her out. He saved her life.” For the first time he started to get a lump in his own throat. “The Pompiers say they want him to join them when he’s better . . ”

            Mary put her arm round him. “Come on Frank,” she said kindly, holding out a glass to him. “Drink some cognac. It will do you good.”

            Her kindness made him weak and he sat down suddenly. He was exhausted. “The roads were so bad,” he said, “But we found him, we found him.”

The next day they brought Marc home and put him in the cabin bed, so that he could doze, or talk to them, and still rest. They didn’t want to put him away in a bedroom all on his own in the west barn, they wanted him with them, and that was where he wanted to be too.

            Josie sat beside him, as though she was afraid to let him out of her sight.

            “Oh Maman, Maman, I was so scared!” said Marc. “I was dying, I was drowning, and it was so painful, I thought my lungs were going to explode . .”

            “Ssh dear ssh, you’ll be all right now.”

            “It was such a shock. When I was laying in hospital I had time to think, I’m nearly thirty Maman, it’s about time I settled down. I’m going to marry Anataise and stop having affairs and work hard to be a credit to you and Frank”

            “Oh my dear,” smiled Josie, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Just promise me one thing, will you?”

            “What’s that?”

            “Just stay being you, will you? Never change. We all love you so much!”

            He looked hard at her for a moment. “Even though I’m such a headstrong fool?”

            “Yes darling. Headstrong and moody, but so brave, we’re all proud of you. And we’ll ring Anataise for you tomorrow.”

            “Do you think she’ll come to see me?”

            “I’m sure she will.”

            “I don’t know where she’ll sleep,” said Marc after a moment. “I expect she’ll have to come in with me!”

The next day Frank, after a sleepless night, went out onto the verandah at first light and paced about the yard. In the distance he could see whole sheets of grey water, where the river had broken its banks in St. André.

            The weather was settling, and it seemed there was another band of misty rain approaching from the west. He went and stood at the entrance to the track, hands in pockets, watching it.

            At the same time a shred of clouds in the east separated, and the rising sun shone through, making a rainbow in the mist to the west.

            Frank looked from one to the other. He had a sense of the cycles of existence, of renewal, of beginnings and endings.

            He had no idea why he had been so disturbed by events. Marc was safe now, wasn’t he? So why was Frank feeling vulnerable?

            Then he looked at the rainbow and understood. It was the threat of losing something precious. Marc was the son he had never had; how his first wife would have loved Marc as well!

            Another shower of rain blew suddenly across the sky and the rainbow glowed brilliantly in all its colours, and renewed its eternal promise.

I remembered Marc shouting; “Get in the house! We’ll all be safe there!” It was true. They were safe within my walls. It was only when they went away that death or injury came to them. I watched them and cared for them but I couldn’t speak to them. They made their own decisions, went their own ways and lived their own lives. Then they saw the results of their own actions follow them down the arches of the years with a terrible precision.

            Like a mother, I protected them but only when they stayed within my walls, within my metaphorical arms. But when they went out? I was helpless.

            Like a mother, I had eyes in the back of my head for them, but even though my eyes were weeping, I could do nothing when they went away except wait for them to come back. Like a mother. Like Ninette.

            Marc was safe. I felt the old stones and histories of my walls breathe again.

            They were home, they were safe. I would protect them. They were mine and I was theirs.

            I was their house.

Val Wineyard's sites

Sites;
http://writingaboutrenneslechateau.blog4ever.com  Mysteries of the Corbières

http://viaaquitana.blog4ever.com  Roman roads and history in our region. http://visigothscentre.blog4ever.com The Visigoths in Languedoc