House-Hunting

      I flew to France on my own for two weeks to find a house for us to live in. For so long I had dreamed of returning, hankered after the life I had known, my friends, the fragrance of golden butter, fresh bread and coffee that is simply part of the French ethos.

      By now Michael and I had our two-year-old son Joseph, a chubby, curly red-haired bundle of sweet energy and constant motion, and we thought it would be wonderful for him to grow up bilingual. Moving to France to live while I researched a cookbook would give him that chance. Michael was personally less enthusiastic about the idea of going to France because he has no inherent passion for the country. But doing creative work and being with his family is what is important to him and France, he decided, would offer him that.

      After poring over the map of France and considering every region we knew and some we didn’t, Michael and I had decided we would live in Normandy. We wanted to be near Paris and near friends, and we’d grown to love the Normandy coast on earlier trips. So on arriving I took the train to Le Vaudreuil, in Normandy, where my dearest friend Edith Leroy met me at the station. She was delighted at the idea that we were moving back, and had not only asked if I would stay with them while I looked for a place to live, but had offered her help.

      We wasted no time, after making coffee and toast, which we enjoyed with her homemade blackberry and redcurrant jelly, in beginning to plot how I should go about looking for a house. I decided to consider anything within a thirty-minute drive of Edith and Bernard’s village. We didn’t care if we lived in the village, but we wanted to be close to it since we knew almost everyone who lived there and were comfortable with its rhythm. After our breakfast I went out to the village café and bought newspapers, brought them back and checked the ads. I made several appointments to see houses, and the following day set out early to look.

      Mostly what I looked at were contemporary bungalows which didn’t fit my romantic notion of a house in the French countryside. I spent another day looking, going all the way to Vernon in the east, to Houdan in the southeast and Honfleur in the northwest, though that was getting pretty far afield. I didn’t find a thing.

      After two days I regrouped. A friend of Edith’s, Christine, a woman I didn’t really know, said I was going about it all wrong and offered to accompany me the next day. ‘I’ll show you how we rent houses here,’ she said. The next morning we headed off into the countryside stopping to ask everyone we saw if they knew of anything to rent, including hailing a tractor and asking the farmer inside. We discovered a few places but nothing fit my criteria. I was looking for space – both Michael and I work at home – proximity to a choice of schools for Joe and shopping so that I didn’t have to live in the car, charm, a low price.

      I decided to try the realtor in Le Vaudreuil. Edith, out of curiosity, came with me. The man had nothing to rent but as we flipped through his book of available properties he pointed out two houses for sale, both in nearby Louviers. Michael and I had no money to buy, so I discounted them. Not Edith. ‘Allez, Suzanne, let’s go look, it’ll be fun. I’ve always wanted to see what these places looked like inside.’ I decided I could take a break from my house search, and away we went in the realtor’s car.

      We arrived in Louviers, a mid-size town whose centre is a tasteful blend of ancient and post-war architecture. It was badly damaged during the Second World War – burned by the Germans on their way through – and, like so many towns throughout France, it had to rebuild itself quickly afterwards. The rebuilding was done with style – shops and lodgings are capacious, cream-coloured stuccoed buildings with sharply sloping, slate roofs. A boulevard surrounds the centre, with small streets coming off of it into the heart of the town, where a central cherry-tree-lined square serves a multitude of purposes. Mostly it is a parking lot, except on Saturdays when it hosts the farmers’ market that transforms Louviers into a vibrant fete. The square is also used for special presentations; go-kart races; a twice-yearly, town-wide garage sale where individuals set up stands and sell everything from antiques to children’s trading cards; and a spring plant and flower sale.

      Another large, grassy square which is about a five-minute walk from the main square is bordered by homes, and the police and fire stations. It is here that, regularly, huge stages are erected and theatre performances and concerts are held, and big tents are erected for traveling circuses.

      Louviers was once an important textile town and still has one textile factory to show for it, as well as a series of canals which once powered the textile mills. Houses built along these canals are generally large and prosperous, and they have private, often fanciful wooden bridges that allow them access from across the water. Louviers also boasts the remains of cloisters from a Franciscan convent which was built in 1646, supposedly the only cloisters in France ever built over a canal.

      The town is known for its extremes of government. When we first arrived, the mayor was a woman known for her conservative and rather bungling ways. Shordy after we arrived elections resulted in an administration which leans increasingly far left and has a permanent overdraft in its bank accounts, primarily because one of its mandates is to provide the citizenry with regular music and theatre performances which it offers free of charge.

      The river Eure runs through Louviers, and it is in the process of being rediscovered. The current mayor and his administration want to resurrect its banks, which are mosdy wild and overgrown, making it a focal point of the town. A kayak club is already based on it at one end of town, and there are a few riverside paths that are pleasant to walk along, though they eventually peter out into wild growth.

      The streets of Louviers, which are generally very busy during the day and empty quickly after 8 p.m. when shops close, vary from wide – the main boulevards -to extremely narrow, winding and cobbled. There are ancient, leaning plaster and beamed houses which look right out of a fairy tale. Many are three stories high and just the width of a single room. Most of the older houses in Louviers have lots of windows that can be easily looked into – I admit, one of my favourite activities is peeking inside an open window and glancing at furnishings and style – but these are tighdy closed with shutters at the first sign of nightfall.

      There are, happily, sidewalks throughout most of Louviers, though occasionally one is obliged to walk single file and on tiptoe to avoid being squashed by a speeding car – speed limit signs are placed for decoration rather than for observance, it seems. Parking places have been inserted wherever there is room for a car and many people park on the sidewalk, or angle themselves into impossibly tight spots.

      We drove into Louviers, wound our way through a maze of streets and stopped in front of one of the tiny, room-wide houses. Outside it was charmingly derelict. Inside it was a complete wreck, and smelled like the Bowery. Piles of clothing and rags in a corner showed that it was a way-station for homeless travelers. We sped out of there.

      The second house was another story. It was across from the lavish Romanesque/Gothic church right in the town centre, which is so large and imposing that everyone refers to it as a cathedral though it isn’t, since it is not the principal church of the diocese. The house had been a convent for 300 years, and before that it was purportedly owned by an artist. For the past twenty-five years it had been the property of a Parisienne who had purchased it to live in, and to transform the ground floor into an antiques shop. It was dry and didn’t smell at all. Its old walls were timbered, its clay tile roof sported a tiny bell tower, the windows were paned with old, wavy glass. Inside, it was all blue and gray. And a wreck. The downstairs looked like an archeological dig – big holes, mounds of rubble, a mess. The walls were in terrible shape, their pale blue paint streaked with grime. Dust covered everything. But the house was filled with a palpable, warm presence.

      We followed