Provence for All Seasons. Gordon JD Bitney
some days of driving into the village for croissants, one morning I dressed in warm clothes, found a pair of gloves, pumped up the tires and rolled my all-purpose bike out of the garage. I pushed it down the driveway and then started off quickly pumping the pedals to build up body heat against the cold morning air. I accelerated down the hill and around the first wide bend, then braked hard for the switchback at the bottom of the hill, all the while weaving back and forth dodging potholes. I crossed the bridge over the stream and reached the outskirts of the village, passing first the Intermarché, where we shopped for food, and then the old terminus of the railway line that had long since disappeared from the landscape. At the tabac presse I stopped to buy the Trib and then pedalled slowly through the walled arcade and out the other side to the boulangerie. The patrons looked me over once again, taking in my arctic clothing as I peeled off my gloves.
The ride back to our villa felt good to start with, but by the time I had pumped and puffed my way back up the hill like a small steam engine, I felt ridiculously tired. Still, it had to be better than driving and could only get easier as my conditioning improved. After the effort of the ride I noticed the coffee tasted richer than usual.
Chapter 4
the welcome blossoms of spring
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived light in the spring . . .
AGRICULTURE REMAINS THE ECONOMIC BASE; it forms the way of life in Provence. The seasons—printemps, été, automne and hiver—are the real measures of each year, not the weeks and months created for a calendar. For farmers, life revolves around the seasons, and each one brings a different set of tasks and new rewards.
With the approach of spring, the sun rose noticeably earlier each morning and lasted longer into the evenings. The warmer weather brought renewed activity and colour to the fields. Grass began to grow again beneath the trees in the orchards. Blossoms appeared first on the almond, followed by the apricot and then the cherry. The rows of grapevines in the vineyards lost their black gnarled look as the leaves unfurled. Birds returned. Spring affected the villagers as well—smiles came more naturally, along with more sonorous bonjours. Everyone moved with a relaxed new vigour. There was a new quality to the air. Shop doors were propped open, allowing the smell of baked goods and coffee to filter out onto the streets.
One day asparagus arrived at the Thursday market. We had already seen the long rows of plastic in the fields covering the new spears to keep them white and tender. Bundles were piled high on the tables according to size, from thick and stubby to long, thin tendrils, their white tips sometimes tinged pale purple. They were still muddy from the fields, like the earth-stained hands of the ruddy-faced farmers who had cut and brought them to the market. We stopped at a stall to talk to a woman who was still wearing her rubber boots, and bought a kilo for the week, knowing that the best asparagus would not be available for long.
“It grows so fast we have to cut it quickly,” she said, “before it shoots up and goes to seed.” She held a thick spear upright in her fist as if to demonstrate its quality. “It is at its best very young.”
• • •
Our gardener, François, who had been recommended to us by friends, began to look after the tasks that we couldn’t do ourselves. During our winter absence, he had cleaned up the garden and pruned the olive trees. He was not a tall man, and although he was muscular, he did not look particularly athletic. When I shook his hand the first time we met, I learned he was also very fine-boned. By any standard, he should not have been as strong as he was. All the same,
I watched him take on tasks that I would have avoided. Once, when a tree trunk that was over a foot in diameter had to be removed, he skilfully used a hatchet, the only tool available.
He was an exceptionally self-effacing, almost shy, person who always wore a smile that was as genuine as his willingness to see a job to completion. His other skill was correcting my French. In other words, he often worked on both me and the garden at the same time.
One day while we were unloading the stones for the garden path off his truck, another truck drove up with the stone bench I had bought at the used materials yard. A man got out to confirm that they were at the right house, while the other man parked the truck. Then the two deposited the bench along with its two pedestals in the middle of the driveway.
“Can you move it to the other side of the house?” I asked.
“That’s not our job,” one of them said, got back in the truck and waved as they drove away.
François and I looked at the bench lying in the driveway. I attempted to lift one end and quickly realized it was too heavy for me to move.
“Pas de problème”—no problem, François said. He climbed onto the back of his truck, where he extricated a two-wheeled handcart from among his gardening tools and then handed it down to me. Next, he hopped down and proceeded to work the bench onto the cart; together we towed it across the gravel patio to the other side of the house. We set the pedestals into the ground and then, in one joint effort, heaved the bench into place.
My wife had been watching from where she was gardening and walked over with her pruning shears in her gloved hand. “Wow! Does it ever look good in front of that stone wall. All we need now is a clump of lavender at each end. When it blooms this summer, it’ll be awesome!”
We all stood back admiring our success when Tabitha walked over, rubbed her chin against the bench and then hopped on to it, as if laying claim to this new object.
Light rain settled in that afternoon, so we stayed indoors to do some household tasks and relax. My wife was reading M.F.K. Fisher’s translation of Brillat-Savarin’s treatise The Physiology of Taste, and I was working on my French with a Georges Simenon mystery.
Tabitha had hopped onto the sofa, curled up on my lap and gone to sleep.
“This is interesting,” Hélène said. “He says that a dinner should move from the most substantial courses to the lightest, while the wines should move from the lightest to the headier and more aromatic.”
“That makes sense,” I said, and went on reading.
“Wow, is he keen on cheese! Listen to this: ‘A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.’ What a brutal comparison!”
“Ugh,” was all I said, trying to focus on the mystery again. However, the bizarre nature of the comparison stuck in my mind. “Would you like some tea?”
“That would be nice,” she replied, without lifting her head from her book.
As I got up, I moved Tabitha from my lap onto the sofa. By the time I had put the kettle on, Tabitha was curled up on the warm spot where I had just been sitting. I picked her up and put her on my lap. When the kettle came to a boil,
I moved her again, and once again she settled onto my warm spot on the sofa. This time as I returned Tabitha emitted a grumble and hopped onto the floor. I picked her up and put her back on my lap.
“Aren’t you going to pour the tea?”
“Tabitha won’t let me. Maybe you can.”
She poured two cups of tea and put one next to me.
Instead of returning to her book, she reached for the morning Trib and began scanning the pages. Then she laughed. “Here’s an ad in the Personals section. A woman wants to meet a mature man. She gives quite a flattering description of herself and then states that the man she is looking for must be ‘pas de pantoufle’! He can’t be an old man wearing slippers!”
“I don’t quite get it.”
“It’s a French expression for a man who just shuffles around the house and doesn’t do anything. She wants someone young, not an old fart.”
That evening I was setting the table for dinner when Tabitha came in and sat by her empty food bowl. She looked at me while I set the table, then she meowed. I ignored her; she