The Yellow Villa Read online

  Susannah takes it all in and makes the occasional comment about the views or the lovely light in each room. Dominic asks practical questions about the heating and plumbing. Ben admits that, since the weather is still so warm, they haven’t yet put the radiators to the test. Installing the internet has apparently been the main priority but he’s concerned about the electricity cutting out intermittently.

  The rear of the ground floor has a long reception room with one entire wall of French windows that open out into the garden. The only furnishings are a refectory table and a variety of mismatched chairs. Off this room, a short hallway with a couple of small utility rooms, one being a butler’s pantry, the other a storage room that leads to a spacious kitchen in the north-east corner. The kitchen has the original marble worktops, polished timber cupboards, a smaller table and chairs and a combustion fire that will be cosy in the winter.

  ‘You’re very lucky to have an intact kitchen,’ says Susannah. ‘In France people pack up their kitchen and take it with them. Such a nuisance.’

  Mia gazes around the room. ‘We love all this old furniture. Just the whole style of it. It would have taken us months to furnish the place.’

  ‘I expect you’ll get rid of a lot of it,’ says Dominic. ‘Other people’s junk …’

  ‘You never know what you might find in a house this age,’ says Susannah.

  ‘Hundred-year-old junk, is still, by definition, junk,’ Dominic points out.

  ‘Well, we’re not in any rush,’ says Mia. ‘We’re just exploring room by room.’

  Having looped around the downstairs rooms, they come full circle to the entry vestibule, and continue up the main staircase to the first floor. Susannah picks up Lou and is touched to see Mia pick up Chou and carry her up the stairs.

  ‘So … when did you actually see the property?’ asks Susannah. ‘It’s been for sale ever since we arrived in Cordes a year ago.’

  ‘Actually, we noticed it four years ago. We came here to Cordes-sur-Ciel on our honeymoon,’ explains Ben. ‘We stayed at the B&B Le Bleu de Pastel for a few days. It was summer then and we came for a walk down rue Albert Bouquillon one evening.’

  ‘It was for sale back then. We loved the place; it seemed so sad and neglected. We came again in the daytime to get a better look but didn’t have time to arrange a viewing,’ says Mia.

  ‘Or even seriously consider buying it,’ adds Ben.

  ‘Then, earlier this year, Ben looked online and saw it was still for sale … we made an offer and …’ Mia shrugs as if she doesn’t quite understand what happened. ‘It’s as though it was here waiting for us.’

  ‘You can just buy a house over the internet?’ Susannah is constantly dazzled by the scope of this new world.

  Mia smiles. ‘You can find one, at least.’

  ‘It was kind of a spontaneous purchase. A mad experiment,’ says Ben.

  Intrigued, Susannah wonders what the objective of this experiment might be. Obviously the beginning of a new chapter, but what happened at the end of the last one? ‘It was meant to be,’ she agrees. ‘Congratulations to you both.’

  The upstairs bedrooms are decorated with floral wallpapers and dark furnishings from early last century but are wonderfully spacious with high ceilings and tall windows that look over the countryside of green fields, hedgerows and woods stretching off into the distance. The back bedrooms look towards the Harringtons’ property; the front ones have a perfect view of the village on the hill.

  ‘You’ve got an awful lot done in a short time. I’m amazed you even managed to get the EDF to connect the power so quickly,’ says Susannah.

  ‘We’ve had some help along the way. Plus Ben is a brilliant planner. He’s the master of the spreadsheet; nothing’s left to chance.’

  The men go down to the basement to inspect the boiler and Susannah follows Mia to the kitchen where she sets about locating four glasses and a corkscrew, preparing to open the bottle brought by the Harringtons.

  ‘Oh, please, don’t open this on our account. I can duck home for a bottle of plonk if need be. Don’t waste it on us.’

  Mia looks up in surprise. ‘I have other wine … I just thought …’

  ‘Dominic’s a collector, a connoisseur. Sorry – that sounds so horribly pretentious.’ Susannah gives an embarrassed laugh. ‘But truly, you should save it for a special occasion. Or a rainy day. There won’t be rainy days. The sun will shine eternal. Take no notice of me.’ She pulls herself up short. ‘By the way, whatever happened to those awful goats?’

  ‘We still have them. They’re not so bad.’ Mia opens a bottle of white wine from the fridge and fills a bowl with water for the dogs, who are panting noisily.

  ‘I was always terrified of the beasts. Vicious horns. Someone left the gates open once and they terrorised the entire neighbourhood, eating people’s washing and chasing the children.’

  ‘They’re quite secure now. We’ve got them running on a wire up the back, eating up the grass.’

  ‘This is a nice big room – kitchen table’s not bad,’ says Susannah, pulling up a chair. ‘Mixed blessing, inheriting bits of Madame Levant’s old furniture. The French have rather odd taste in furniture …’ Susannah glances at Mia. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean …’

  Mia laughs. ‘I do know what you mean. As I said, we like old things.’

  ‘You’re very enterprising and you obviously have good French, out buying fridges and beds and whatnot.’

  ‘I learned French as a child, but Ben is struggling. He’s been trying to learn; it’s not easy.’

  ‘He will, he’s young. You’re very practical, the two of you.’

  Mia pours two glasses of wine. ‘I’m not sure you could call buying this place practical. I wake in the night wondering if I’ve dreamed it.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I had the same experience when we arrived. I wasn’t sure if I even liked the house. Dominic was mad about the cellar. I did love the swallows nesting in the eaves … sounds silly, doesn’t it? I’ve never told Dominic that, he would think it ridiculous. I just thought … they mate for life, swallows, don’t they. It seemed a good omen.’ Susannah abruptly lifts her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to the great enterprise! Bon courage!’ Their eyes meet as they clink glasses, and Susannah asks, ‘Have you met any of the other local expats?’

  ‘We really haven’t had a moment. I hadn’t thought of us as expats. Aren’t we migrants?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. I’ve always thought of myself as an expat. I’ll never be French.’

  ‘So, would you move back to England?’

  ‘In a heartbeat.’ Susannah surprises herself with a brittle laugh. ‘Sorry. Take no notice of me. Of course not, we love it here. Besides, we couldn’t really afford to go back. Even if we wanted to.’

  Of course she’d love to go home, and she wonders for the thousandth time if there will ever come a day when they can show their faces in London again.

  Chapter Three

  The morning after their meeting with the Harringtons, Ben wakes to the realisation that his sense of displacement has eased slightly. He’s never been someone who needs people around him all the time, but he had already begun to feel isolated. He prides himself on being a man who develops, strategises and considers all aspects of a situation. In a teasing mood, Mia calls him Dot-Point Boy. Colleagues often rib him about his ‘listamania’ and ‘spreadsheetitus’. Planning, he often hears himself explaining, is not the same as procrastination – it’s due diligence. It helps avoid mistakes. But there was little forethought or planning in his uncharacteristically impractical proposal to buy a house in France. It was purely emotional, driven by desperation. He knew it would instinctively appeal to Mia, the more impulsive, adventurous one. That was as far as his plan went.

  Now here they are in this large, dusty house filled with furniture left behind by a dead stranger. Every morning he wakes disoriented, as though his ponderous self is lagging behind the new reality created by his spontaneous self. Every day h
e reminds himself that geographical location is irrelevant, Mia is home for him, and she will always be. His heart knows this to be the truth but his head is still bumbling around, trying to come to grips with it all. He resists contemplating the countless disadvantages of living in France for him. Feeling displaced is natural. That’s why he needs to hold firm to the here and now.

  He liked Dominic right away. He reminds Ben a little of his dad who was also taciturn and easily irritated. His dad is a long time gone: twenty years since his death. Memories of him have slowly diminished, fading and losing clarity. Maybe that’s why Dominic seems oddly familiar.

  Today Ben plans to set up his work station in the smaller of the back bedrooms and let his team leader know he’s online and ready to join the new project. Starting work will normalise things. The virtual world is a constant. Right now it’s the lack of structure he’s finding difficult to navigate. He feels a rush of enthusiasm for this plan. About to roll out of bed, he hesitates, pausing to watch Mia sleep.

  Her breathing is low and soft. She wears a gentle smile, a sight that never fails to bring a slight contraction to his heart. This time he must stay alert. He’s sure that his absorption with work was a factor in everything that went wrong. More than anything, in his new iteration, he wants to be awake to everything. To look out the window just for the pleasure of the scene beyond. To step outside and feel the air. His natural tendency has always been to bury himself in work. When he was studying, he’d worked part-time with a landscaping firm, often toiling on properties with views only the ridiculously rich could afford. It was only later that he realised how seldom he looked up from the work, instead focusing entirely on the task, registering the weather in absolutes: hot, cold, wet, dry. Now he is determined to be open to nuance, to develop his finer senses.

  Mia murmurs something inaudible, turns on her side, away from him. He edges across and tucks his knees behind hers, shelters her within his body. She half rolls towards him and gives him a sleepy kiss that makes him glad he didn’t follow his first instinct to get up and start work. He slides his hand across her belly and she wriggles into his arms, entwines her legs with his. This is something new, something he thought they had lost forever, something he had yearned for when it all fell apart. But here she is, embracing him, welcoming him home. He feels a sting of tears. Relief. Gratitude.

  Chapter Four

  In the sanctuary of his study, Dominic finds it impossible to concentrate on his reading with the unholy racket that Susannah insists on making all over the house; a discordant symphony of slamming doors and cupboards interspersed with the wheeze and drone of the hoover. The problem persists that the woman possesses no organisational talents whatsoever. No concept of time and motion. It would never enter her mind to systematic ally clean one room at a time or hoover the whole house in one sweep. She persistently starts one thing and then becomes distracted by another, undertaking multiple tasks simultaneously – and none of them terribly well. Most infuriating is her habit of leaving the hoover in the middle of the living room for a week, arguing that she hasn’t finished. By the time she gets back to the bloody thing, it’s time to start again.

  Dominic abandons his book (A.A. Gill’s memoir, an exhausting read at the best of times) and indulges himself with a finger of Scotch and warm memories of bygone days when they could afford help. Their last housekeeper had been a Polish woman who belted through the place like Napoleon taking Austerlitz, marshalling the house into a state of cleanliness, terrorising everything in her path. He admired her rigid strategy: she did the entire house in precisely the same order every week. No good expecting that kind of efficiency from Susannah. He probably should have married a Polish peasant instead of a pampered prima donna. He closes his eyes and visualises the anatomy of Madame Gomolka. On reflection, she was built like a wrestler: compact and somewhat rectangular, likely the genetic inheritance of generations of pickaxe-wielding females. Lacking allure, certainly, but perhaps that was a small price to pay for having one’s house running at peak efficiency. He abhors mess. Anyhow, there is something to be said for Susannah actually cleaning the place in preparation for the visit from their new young friends. Usually her idea of preparation is faffing about filling every blasted vase with flowers and rearranging cushions and whatnot.

  It is some time since they’ve entertained and he feels a cosy sense of anticipation. Fresh blood and all that. Of course, he has his own preparations to attend to, selecting the tipple for the evening. He toys with the idea of something local, perhaps the Gaillac Chateau de Laven. Not too pricey but guaranteed to impress even the most uneducated antipodean palate.

  Despite his best efforts to avoid her, Susannah intercepts him en route to the cellar, announcing: ‘I’ll go to the market shortly. I’m doing poulet à la provençale and crème brûlée.’

  ‘Dear God, can’t we do better than that? We might as well take them to the bar in the village.’

  ‘Dominic. We don’t want to intimidate them. They’ll be terrified to invite us back.’

  ‘You must think highly of your culinary prowess if you really think a decent cassoulet would strike terror into their hearts.’

  ‘I want to make them feel comfortable,’ insists Susannah. ‘At home.’

  ‘Why not make them feel entirely at home with a barbecue or Vegemite soldiers? Shouldn’t we give them something to aspire to?’ Dominic gives a sigh and capitulates, ‘Oh, do whatever you want. Unlike you, I obviously haven’t developed an entire strategy around the event.’

  ‘I want them to like us. They’re so lovely. Young idealists.’

  ‘Dreamers, you mean. The cost of heating that place in the winter … it’d be cheaper to shut it up and fly back to Australia first class. I’ll be surprised if they last the winter.’

  ‘Well, considering you have such a negative opinion, they seem to have put you in a good frame of mind.’

  ‘All these years and you still can’t differentiate negativity from pragmatism. Not sure about her but I liked him a lot,’ admits Dominic. ‘He’s got a lot of youthful energy. Focus and passion.’

  ‘Now you’re going to tell me that he reminds you of yourself at that age.’

  ‘Is that because I’m a narcissist who can only appreciate reflections of myself? Anyway, you didn’t even know me then. I was on fire. A man’s in his prime in his thirties. Brimming with ideals and passions. Even an old sourpuss like me. Actually, I’m planning on taking the lad under my wing. He has the French of a newborn: grunt and point. How’s he possibly going to manage?’

  ‘He seems to be doing all right so far. Besides, Mia obviously speaks decent French. What I’m saying is … as long as you’re kind to him … to them both.’

  ‘Yes, yes … obviously, why would I be unkind? You evidently think me a complete boor incapable of being pleasant to people.’

  ‘Not incapable, just unwilling sometimes. They’re wholesome and charming …’

  ‘How many inane adjectives can you possibly dredge up to describe two ordinary people? Besides they’re ’straylians – they don’t share our national obsession with manners. Very refreshing too. Didn’t we leave England to get away from all that nonsense?’

  ‘Dominic. Now you’re being absolutely ridiculous. You know perfectly well that’s not true. And on that topic, please don’t let them find out about that. Don’t drop any hints, just stay off the topic altogether.’

  ‘Anything else? Any further directives?’

  ‘All I’m saying is, we don’t know how much is on the internet for someone who wants to find it. So don’t leave any crumbs for them to follow …’

  ‘Aren’t you getting a bit ahead of yourself? A mere second ago you were waxing lyrical about their wholesome loveliness, now you’re worried they’re going to start stalking us?’

  ‘Dominic! People can just look things up on the internet. They don’t consider it stalking. It’s called being “informed” … or googling … or whatever …’

  Infuriatingly,
Susannah views the internet with a childlike wonder, believing it a storybook wardrobe through which one can enter a magical hidden world. She’s the clichéd primitive, baffled by the sight of the giant silver bird spilling its vapour trail overhead. She used to be intelligent. The twenty-first century has rendered her stupid and he fervently wishes, for both their sakes, that she would desist from commenting on modern technology altogether.

  ‘For Christ’s sake …’ he barks, startling the slumbering pugs who look up with the plaintive expressions of children fearing an impending divorce. Suddenly weary of the argument, Dominic realises he’s quite forgotten exactly what he felt so strongly about only moments earlier. Before Susannah can get going on another topic, he makes his escape to the cold silence of the cellar. His nirvana. A place where he feels completely at one with the world.

  Built under the kitchen, the cellar comprises a series of brick tunnels making it soundproof to such an extent that it feels as though one is wearing earplugs. A sort of sensory deprivation experience. When they first viewed the cottage as a potential bolthole, the cellar was the major selling point for him. Naturally an ideal temperature for wine storage, always cool and dry, with the house above insulating it from extremes of heat and cold. It was an expensive exercise to ship his wine collection over from England but truly a joy to behold all his precious bottles nestled snugly in their purpose-built racking.

  As he inspects the troops, pulling out a bottle here and there, considering it and replacing it, he recalls Mia’s comment about the house waiting for them. At the time he’d dismissed it as typical of that generation’s self-absorbed magical thinking but now it occurs to him that he felt something similar about this cellar. Most rural French houses have cellars; he and Susannah had seen dozens in their search. Damp, smelly holes many of them – one half expected to find the remains of some poor sod held captive since the war, or a kidnap victim whose ransom remained unpaid. But this cellar is a thing of beauty: half the footprint of the house and crafted with both artisan skill and a fine aesthetic sense. He must bring Ben down to inspect it; he’s sure to have an appreciation of the finer structural elements. In fact, he’ll introduce the boy to some wines – undertake to educate his palate. Now, there’s a project! Susannah is right about one thing: the Tinkers are terribly sweet. Although too much sweetness can be cloying. It’s a little saltiness that adds depth and flavour.