Deep France Read Online Free Page A

Something black shot out of the woodpile into the undergrowth
this morning. It was a rat – there are half-gnawed walnut shells in all the gaps between the logs. I’m not a woman to freak over domestic rodents. I think mice are rather sweet, but
only outside my own living space. Rats really aren’t my style. I decided it was time to let the cats out for a stroll.
    Tarmac, old and stiff as he was, was still a deadly hunter. He stalked down the front steps and investigated the garden systematically, spending a lot of time sniffing around the kitchen window.
He made the other two look like amateurs, and they watched him gratefully.
    Maison Bergez seemed to have a terrifying case of subsidence. There were huge cracks in all the walls, and the floors sloped in all directions. By local standards, none of this was cause for
concern. However, I was so unused to uneven floors that the first time I got out of the bath I nearly fell over.
    My spiritual friend Adrienne had given me her feng shui guide, from which I diagnosed the house as a major disaster zone. The front door jammed and wouldn’t open, nor wouldthe door to the room that was now my office. Instructed by Adrienne, I had packed away the clutter from the hall and the landing, but feng shui divides a home into areas bringing good
luck to various specific aspects of life, and it seemed that the wealth zone of this house contained the loos, the drains and, worst of all, the septic tank, all guaranteed to bring ruin on the
occupants. When I worked it out, the bathroom has been in the wealth area of every house I’ve ever owned.
    Adrienne advised a mirror or several to attract the right chi. I moved a mirror into position and the pin holding it fell out of the wall immediately. On the phone, Adrienne cackles with
laughter. ‘That’s what happens,’ she says, ‘houses fight back.’
    Where Are You, Exactly?
    People are calling, people are emailing, and this is the question everybody asks. I’m in the Béarn, I say. They’re confused. They ask: Er – where
is
the Béarn? Between Pau and Biarritz, I say briskly, having worked out that a lot of people have heard of Biarritz, the big seaside resort on the Basque coast, and some have also
heard of Pau, which is not only the Béarnais regional capital but also one of those towns to which the English, in the past century or so, have taken a particular fancy. Pau is also the
setting for
Aspects of Love
, the story by David Garnett which inspired the Lloyd-Webber musical. So the Pau–Biarritz formula seems to have the highest recognition factor.
    Not a high recognition factor, however. People say, ‘Is that near the Dordogne? Is that near the Lot? Is that near Beziers / Foix / Cahors / the Aveyron?’ No, no, no, no and no.
I’m south of the Dordogne, where the British are so well established that some have even become village mayors. I’msouth of the Lot, with its hard-baked fields of
sunflowers. I’m even south of the Gers, which the British property finders are pushing as the new Dordogne.
    I’m hundreds of kilometres west of Beziers and the rest. They’re on the Mediterranean side and I’m near the Atlantic coast. Oh, people say, groping for geography, you must be
near . . . er . . . Bordeaux? Not really. Two and a half hours south of Bordeaux.
    Then there is silence. People run out of map references. I’m in the south, I say. The deep south. As far south as you can go without getting to the Basque Country. Mystification can be
heard. Isn’t the Basque Country in Spain? Not entirely. There are seven Basque provinces. Four in Spain and three in France – Soule, Labourd and Basse-Navarre. The Soule is nearest to
us, it starts on the other side of the big river down in the valley here. Then people say, ‘Oh.’ Then they say, ‘And when are you back in London?’
    It doesn’t help that there are at least four perfectly accurate ways to describe this location. First, the departmental. Orriule is in