ON A whim, driving to a nearby town, I took a detour off the main road and into a drive almost hidden behind unkempt, huge hedging.
I noticed the mailbox had been half wrenched off and bolt cutters had attacked the padlock on the heavyweight chain that once kept out intruders.
My car came to a halt pretty quickly as the drive, for all practical purposes no longer existed. Presumably, wind, rain and ice had broken up the once compact clay, and weeds, encroaching fields, had reclaimed the rest.
Part of me wanted to just back out as trudging through overgrowth in a land of snakes and ticks has never appealed; but as usual curiosity drove me huffing and puffing onwards.
Once the house had been a fine country mansion, discreetly positioned but with breathtaking views down the fertile Gers valley.
God knows how many rooms it comprised, because even on viewing many years ago, there were rooms too decayed and dangerous to enter.
I remember being entranced by the huge stable block, stalls properly dressed with oak paneling and brass fittings – burnished nameplates proudly telling of horses long, long gone.
Gingerly following the new owners, a 40-something English couple, I reconfigured whole rooms with ripped out chimney pieces and missing wainscoting into the vision they laid out before me.
Here would be a morning room with full height French windows opening out onto a wide terrace that would wrap around the whole house.
Interior stonework would be cleaned and repointed; traditional techniques only used. The stable block would be transformed into a huge kitchen/dining room for the guests they hoped would flock for a very special chambre d’hotes experience.
Cookery courses would be offered, guided tours to historic villages: the possibilities were endless, she told me and all I could do was be as enthusiastic in my responses.
It could be, I genuinely agreed, absolutely magnificent with an elegance and refinement random in La France Profonde.
But, but, but….the cost. Even an untrained eye could see it had all the ingredients to become a grasping, greedy devourer of money.
‘Well, we won’t do all at once,’ said the woman. ‘Obviously, and we’ll both still be working in England and coming out as often as we can to supervise.’
My heart sank. I hadn’t known them long and they hadn’t been together long, both on second marriages. The house was his, bought he admitted in the madness after his divorce and he knew he’d paid far too much in the red haze of anger and self-pity.
We looked upwards where a fine new roof was almost completed and this was where I came in. Could I look at the bill and meet with the roofer and them that afternoon, as they weren’t confident in their limited French.
A quick look sent me reeling. Close reading was worse with enormous sums also asked for the rebuilding of a chimney. They were to hand over cash that evening.
Cowboys are cowboys whether in Montana, Margate or Montauban, and the shifty specimen now opposite us in the local bar didn’t need spurs to advertise that.
At first he was aggressive but finally, given a way out in that his pen had slipped with the number of zeros, he looked again and oh shock, horror, how did that happen?
They were thrilled at the few thousands saved but sometimes you can smell disaster and my unease only grew each time I saw them.
I had taken to putting them up on their visits over, as the house was uninhabitable and money tight. They returned each night exhausted after futile hacking at brambles to even get to the door. The roof was letting in water and a costly survey had concluded it was so badly constructed it should be removed.
The visits grew fewer and so they disappeared from my life.
Of course, as is the way here, I heard that vandals had been in to the house, stolen the last remaining fixtures and there had been no sign of the couple for a few years.
It was quietly being floated on the market for a laughably high price.
Still nothing prepared for the shock of seeing it now. The stable block had collapsed in on itself; the front door gaped open but uninviting, and, as always, nature proved its fortitude in its steady march of conquest.
The silence was heavy and menacing but perhaps that was my state of mind as I stared at this broken house of broken dreams.
I had no desire to push my way through the undergrowth to the back and the stunning view that was the one certainty in all of this.
Great sadness overcame me. I was here I now realised because of news that had reached me in a roundabout way.
Still ridiculously young, that irrepressible woman had died. Her life in France was never to be – perhaps, as was obvious, never was to be from the start.
Before turning away forever, I looked up at the roof. Apart from a few slipped tiles it seemed as solid as the day it was finished.
Oh, bitter irony. It’s seen them all out.
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