THERE are days here – sometimes even several in a row – where I pass from room to room in my old farmhouse and get a quiet pleasure from each one. Certain factors have to be in place to do so. First I need to be breathing like you normal people, which means my mood is already lifted and my pace quickened.
Then, the sky needs that cerulean blue with a sun, however weak, that oozes through the windows and gives each room its particular stamp.
The guest bedroom, with its windows on three walls, is welcoming and enticing with the first light of the morning after the shutters are thrown back.
And my Hermes box painted hall and beige cashmere painted bathroom, set out like, really, a gentleman’s club cloakroom, glow for a brief hour or two.
The glass doors to the kitchen/dining room are sometimes too dazzling as the sun works its way around, so I move seats and face my books instead.
That’s always a mistake as they give me so many memories to dream about alongside the irritation of those that are out of place or stuffed on top of others. But of course I do nothing about that.
It is only in the afternoon that the sitting room and what used to be, and will be again perhaps, my bedroom, come into their own.
A warmth spreads through them with the sun’s passage and the rich, white, untouched bedding calls, particularly at the height of summer, for an afternoon nap bathed in its rays.
The marble of the adjoining cursed bathroom shimmers as invitingly, but after all that happened there; my time spent in the shower is fast if not furious.
I know it has been rendered safe again from the black mold, which over months further destroyed my weakened lungs, but wariness and constant checking have replaced my joy in it.
But at this time of the year, when the day dies quickly, it is my present bedroom tucked under the eaves which is giving me the most contentment as I settle down with a book, read by a lamp which burnishes my stone corner.
Through the open door lies a book-lined study; a monstrous treadmill centered in the room on which I must walk for at least 30 mins each day.
It faces a covered verandah looking down on to the courtyard where car and woodpile live. Beyond, the fields leading to Miriam and Pierrot’s house, the roof of which can just, just, be seen. A plume of wood smoke waves from the horizon.
Every room is crowned and crisscrossed with deep oak beams, some pre-Revolutionary spoils from greater houses.
Up here though, the hay was stored away from the cows below; their breath and bodies giving off warmth to the family who lived beside them in what is now sitting room, bedroom and bathroom.
Now the only sentient being, as I sleep under the beams, is Cesar who fears the steep stairs and no longer sleeps on my bed while pushing me to the edge like a selfish husband.
Instead he lies close to the front tread on hard tiles, content to be as near as he can to the one who feeds and scolds him.
It’s strange, or maybe it’s our contrary human nature, but I’ve always loved each house and apartment more once I’ve known I’m leaving.
Always, for I invest each one with feelings, I think of its thoughts as yet another moves on and it settles back into the tired anticipation of joy, or horror, to come.
Sometimes very old houses know when you’re no longer of use to them – when you’ve run out of cash, of time, or worse, of heart.
And so they too turn away and grow cold and will you to leave quickly so another more worthy can come and nourish them.
And some are themselves far too ancient and exhausted to go on and fight against all attempts to renew and renovate them.
An architect I once knew told me he dreaded such work for, without fail, there would be many tiny and sometimes large accidents on site.
Not known for such superstitious thoughts he surprised me in his certainty, and indeed bitterness, that these houses were evil bitches and the best thing was just to walk away.
Strange how ‘they’ are always women.
But then I’ve called Las Molieres a bitch from hell often, as she has done everything in her power to thwart or harm me.
And, call me fanciful or more realistically, mad, but she senses I am thinking or being called to escape and so she is seducing me once more as she did when I first set eyes on her ugly but somehow alluring frame.
I am feeling a new enjoyment in her, although nothing has changed in my need for a bigger, more vibrant life than this.
I was certain this was the year I left France or at least La France Profonde.
Certain the adventure was over. Certain my son and old friends were right – it was time to come ‘home.’
Ah, merde. This feels like home.
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