On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town. Susan Loomis
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seriously think about it.’
I took that for encouragement.
Edith came to pick me up and before we left we went through the house again, deciding what should be where when it was time to decorate the rooms. I could just imagine all the soirees we would have there, in the shadow of the church, l’Eglise de Notre Dame. That night I reported everything to Michael, who knew all the protagonists and could judge their responses. He seemed very excited. I thought the world was turned upside down.
I called an engineer, a plumber, a roofing specialist to come see the house. I got estimates for installing electricity. I took photographs, pasted them together and fedexed them to Michael, along with the estimates and every shred of information I could find about Louviers. I talked at length with Bernard, who assured me that there were no complications for a foreigner buying property in France. He said he would introduce us to his banker, and that would help expedite matters should we decide to buy it.
Michael and I talked, we debated, we each agreed we didn’t have the money to undertake the project. And then, with Bernard’s help, we decided to buy it.
I was beside myself. With excitement. With dread. With panic. With desire. My dream of owning property in France – a dream I had never actually articulated, even to myself – had come true. It didn’t matter that we would be so far from our families and American friends. It didn’t matter that we were moving to France on a wing and a prayer. It didn’t matter that we were always seeming to scrape by. It didn’t matter that life in France was bound to be more expensive than life in the United States. None of the realities mattered, at least not to me. Never big on paying attention to reality, I definitely put on my softfocus lenses this time. If Michael thought we could do it, well then we could.
We made an offer on the house which was immediately accepted. I met the owner, who was very strange but presentable, and signed the compromis de vente, or the contract to buy the house. Bernard was true to his word, taking time to help with all the paperwork and signing where necessary. On my last night before going back to the US we celebrated. Christian and his wife Nadine came for dinner, bringing a dish of richly flavoured braised pigeons from their farm, where they raised 800 of the squeaky birds for local restaurants.
Edith and Bernard opened champagne. Christian made a toast. ‘To Suzanne and to Michael, who have just bought a house in the Marseille of the north,’ he said with an evil smile. ‘That your car doesn’t get stolen nor your windows broken.’
My heart stopped. Marseille, a lovely city, nonetheless has a reputation of being full of voyoux – hoodlums. Was there something I should know? I asked.
They all burst out laughing. ‘He’s just trying to scare you,’ Nadine said.
I left the following morning for Paris, where I was to spend a few days before returning home. I met an American friend for coffee and showed her a picture of the house. ‘It’s gorgeous. I’ve lived here fifteen years and always wanted to buy a house!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did you find the perfect house in one week?’ I told her I didn’t know. I was in a dream, pinching myself. We were really going to do it, I thought.
I returned home and Michael and I prepared for our departure. We loved our house in Maine and decided not to sell but to rent it. After all, we imagined, after our two to three years in France we might return and, meanwhile, it was a good investment.
We were busy packing and organizing, trying to decide what to take and what to leave. After doing comparative studies of moving costs, we decided we would bring the bare minimum – my kitchen equipment, which included a collection of heavy copper pots I had amassed over the years, knives, baking dishes, scales and dozens of other small necessities in the life of a cook and food writer. We would also bring my office chair (a luxuriously comfortable one), file cabinets and computers. We would bring Michael’s most essential tools, a futon couch, Joe’s stuffed animals and as many of his toys and treasures as we could fit. We decided to send our Subaru station wagon over and gave it a complete overhaul.
An American friend of mine – also a food writer – was moving back to the States from Paris and she made a list of things she wanted to sell, which included lamps and book cases, chairs and a table, and an impressive array of coffee grinders which she used to grind spices. We bought what we thought we would need – she threw in many things she didn’t want to sell but didn’t want to ship back either – and arranged to have it all moved out to Edith’s. Yet another friend, warning me of how expensive everything was in France, listed all of the things in her attic that she’d been going to give away but would save for us if we needed them. With all of that we figured we could get to work immediately. What we didn’t have we would gradually acquire.
We sold or gave away just about everything we weren’t going to take with us, which accentuated the feeling that we were embarking on a huge adventure, a new life. Joe observed all the activity and it made him nervous. Children don’t generally like change and he likes it less than most – I had to scheme to get rid of anything that had once belonged to him, for the minute he saw something he’d say, in his two-year-old English, ‘I love that, I just love it!’ and try to grab it.
Meantime, Edith and I talked regularly. She described the garden, the size of the apples on the gnarled old tree in the yard. The hydrangeas turned out to be purple, one of my favourite colours, the roses were pink, red and white. She and I planned the garden and talked endlessly about the house. I would report what she’d said to Michael, and then he and I would plan and scheme some more. He spent a lot of time with paper and pencil sketching out ideas for the house, all based on the photographs I had taken. We never talked about the financial aspect of it, which seemed daunting. Our attitude was: ‘It will all work out.’
We spent the month of September 1993 visiting our families and friends on the West Coast as a sort of farewell, then we embarked for France, landing at Charles de Gaulle/Roissy airport, where Edith met us. We piled into her turquoise VW van and she flew down the autoroute toward Louviers at 150 kilometers an hour, the equivalent of about 100 mph. I looked at Michael, who raised his eyebrows. It was great to be back in France!
Both Michael and I were so excited we could hardly sit still. Joe, a boy who doesn’t like to miss anything, had been awake for days, it seemed, as we took him to and fro to see family and friends. He hadn’t slept much during the twelve-hour plane trip either, but once the van started moving he conked out, draped over his father’s knees. I looked at his pale, chubby, toddler’s face. We knew he was upset at the move because he didn’t quite understand what was happening. We hoped it wouldn’t take him long to adjust.
Our first stop was Louviers and the house, for Michael’s first look. He removed the still-sleeping Joe from his knees and laid him tenderly on the back seat. Edith passed the house keys over to him and waited in the car with Joe while Michael and I went to look. The house was as beautiful as I had remembered, if a trifle gray and neglected. A large red and white vendu – sold – sign hung over the door, physical proof that the compromis de vente still held good. It gave me a sense of ownership, which helped override the panic I felt as I approached the front door. Michael opened it and we walked through. I held my breath as I wandered with him through the rooms. We didn’t talk. We were both too busy looking. I let out my breath as I looked at the curved staircase in the foyer – it was still as graceful as I recalled. Michael walked through the door into what I supposed had been the kitchen, a high-ceilinged room with a big window onto the back garden, an angled back wall and a beautiful fireplace – it was so filled with dusty antique furniture and piles of newspapers, buckets of stones and wood and other rubbish that it was hard to get a real sense of it. We poked our heads in the other rooms on the ground floor, all of which looked as if small bombs had exploded in them.
As we went Michael banged on walls, scraped surfaces, looked in nooks and crannies, wiggled doors, opened and closed windows, all things that it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do. At the best of times Michael is a man of few words. He was absolutely silent, intent on his inspection.
The crisp fall weather meant that the house was cold inside, and as I focused on the holes, the grit, the lath showing