Crumbling dreams
Susana Raby
JUST as some men are attracted only to blondes with long legs, or buxom, curlyhaired brunettes, so there are certain architectural features that make my heart beat faster and others that leave me cold. Bay windows can certainly be very handsome, and they let in plenty of light, but they don't carry the same emotional charge as a pair of floorlength windows. The ultimate adrenaline rush, for me, comes from two (or better still, three) sets of French doors on to a terrace with a view of tall, venerable trees beyond.
But as with people, so with property: love at first sight can be a dangerous thing. A few years ago I fell in love with a barn in the Dordogne. I had spent several holidays touring south-western France as far south as the Pyrenees looking for something I liked, but nothing caught my fancy. I had deliberately steered clear of the Dordogne, which I knew to be full of English. But after a particularly dispiriting visit to Charente Maritime — a dull, flat, grey region where eels figure on every menu — I was clutching at straws. An agent in London had sent me details of a house in the Dordogne that looked like a Regency rectory: the outside was painted white, festooned with wistaria and had three sets of French doors. I couldn't afford it, and I was hundreds of miles from the Dordogne, without a car, but I wanted to cheer myself up, so I called the agent in London — who was Swedish, as it happened — and asked her how I could get to view it. 'Go to Riberac and stay at the Hotel de France. The estate agency is on the corner of the main square.'
I never got to see the rectory because I was seduced by a gorgeous little stone barn which was within my budget. There it was in the window, garlanded with roses and honeysuckle, with beautiful blue shutters, a small pond and an outbuilding described as 'une maison &amis., or a house for friends. It was a Saturday morning, and the agent wanted to make an appointment for Monday. 'Couldn't I see it today? I asked. Taken aback by my eagerness — the wheels of property buying grind at a very leisurely pace in France — the agent somewhat reluctantly called the vendors, who were English, of course, and they agreed to show me the house at three o'clock.
I took one look around the barn and was smitten by its boho grandeur. It was, in effect, one large, high room, with an enormous fireplace, and a bedroom and book shelves on what agents like to call a mezzanine. The elderly couple who owned the place, and lived in it all year round, had filled it with somewhat battered antiques that looked just right there — Regency fauxbamboo dining table and chairs, an enormous gilt mirror, a satinwood corner cabinet — and lots of paintings. It didn't bother me that the kitchen was in the corner of the living-room, as I'm not much of a cook. Nor was I concerned that there were no wardrobes — the wife kept her clothes in a chest of drawers and the husband, who was an artist and picture restorer, kept his, I was told, in an old caravan in the small wood next to the house. Oh, and there was a nightingale in the wood. The view clinched it: looking west across a small valley was a red-tiled pe'rigourdin farmhouse with a traditional pigeonnier surrounded by golden wheatfields. I decided to buy the property on the spot.
What I had not reckoned with was the terrible damp that afflicts limestone buildings when they are not lived in all the time. Or the myriad varieties of vermin that make themselves at home in every crevice, from the polecats that overturn the precious old roof tiles, letting water in through the holes they create, to the mice that nest in the insulating material and the fleas that jump out of floorboards. Over the years I painstakingly discovered various remedies: leave the windows slightly open but close the shutters when the house is empty, so that it is ventilated; place mothballs under the tiles to keep the polecats away; plug in an electronic device that emits sounds noxious to mice and other small beasties and leave it switched on at all times. I can't remember what I did about the fleas, but it probably involved spraying a deadly chemical bought at Merlaud, the shop in Verteillac, the nearest town, which describes itself as a magasin universe! and sells everything from food to fire-backs.
I didn't mind the fact that getting to the Dordogne was a pain (although Eurostar has made it much easier). I didn't resent spending every holiday there chopping away at the tangle of buddleia, briars and honeysuckle, or parting with a small fortune for constant running repairs. I didn't mind having to get the hazardous electrical wiring — a DIY job by the artist — redone. What did for me in the end was my meanspirited neighbour.
I should have known he had had intentions: the first time I went to the house after buying it, I found that, as soon as my predecessors had left, the wily peasant had put up an ugly corrugated tin shed on what was possibly a right of way. Instead of complaining, I grew buddleia to hide it. The Dordogne is hot in summer, but it rains a lot in the autumn and winter. and I found myself in a reverse Manon des Sources situation. Far from diverting the water supply away from
adjoining land, which is what happens in the Pagnol story, set in Provence, my neighbour decided he wanted to get rid of an overflow of water, and the most convenient place to dig a channel for the surplus was right next to my house. He did this, of course, while my back was turned. The maison d'amis, which the artist had used as a studio and occasional, very basic, guest-room, started to crumble. And my dream began to crumble with it, Caveat emptor indeed.
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