Merci, Provence!
Time meant nothing. TV was obsolete. We ate exquisitely but lost weight. Despite the filthy mutt who adopted us, life was sublime . . .
PETER MAYLE’S memoirs of life in sun-kissed France entranced a generation. In tribute to the author, who died last week, we are serialising his richly comic tales in the Mail. Today, he tells of the moment his wife Jennie brought home a dog . . .
Going native. i don’t know whether it was meant as a joke, an insult or a compliment, but that was what the man from London said. He had dropped in unexpectedly on his way to the coast, and stayed for lunch. We hadn’t seen him for five years, and he was obviously curious to see how life in Provence was affecting us, examining us thoughtfully for signs of moral and physical deterioration.
We weren’t conscious of having changed, but he was sure of it, although there was nothing he could put his finger on. For lack of any single change as plain as delirium tremens, rusty English or premature senility, he put us in the vague, convenient and all-embracing pigeonhole marked ‘going native’.
As he drove away in his clean car, telephone antenna fluttering gaily in the breeze, i looked at our small and dusty Citroen, which was innocent of any communications facility. That was certainly a native car. And, in comparison with our visitor’s Cote d’Azur outfit, i was wearing native dress — old shirt, shorts, no shoes.
Then i remembered how often he had looked at his watch during lunch, because he was meeting friends at nice at 6.30 pm. not later in the day, not some time that evening, but at 6.30pm. Precisely.
We had long ago abandoned time-keeping of such a high standard, and now lived according to the rules of the approximate rendezvous. Another native habit. The more i thought about it, the more i realised that we must have changed.
i wouldn’t have called it going native, but there are dozens of differences between our old life and our new life, and we have had to adjust to them.
it hasn’t been difficult. Most of the changes have taken place gradually, pleasantly, almost imperceptibly. All of them, i think, are changes for the better.
We no longer watch television. it wasn’t a selfrighteous decision to give us time for more intellectual pursuits; it simply happened. in the summer, watching television can’t begin to compare with watching the evening sky. in the winter, it can’t compete with dinner. The television set has now been relegated to a cupboard to make space for more books.
We eat better than we used to, and probably more cheaply. it is impossible to live in France for any length of time and stay immune to the national enthusiasm for food, and who would want to?
Why not make a daily pleasure out of a daily necessity? We have slipped into the gastronomic rhythm of Provence, taking advantage of the special offers provided by nature all through the year: asparagus, tiny haricots verts barely thicker than matchsticks, fat feves, cherries, aubergines, courgettes, peppers, peaches, apricots, melons and grapes, blette, wild mushrooms, olives, truffles . . .
And we now eat less meat. An occasional chicken from Bresse, the wild rabbits that our neighbour Henriette brings in the winter, a cassoulet when the temperature drops and the Mistral howls round the house — meat from time to time is wonderful. Meat every day is a habit of the past.
THErE is so much else: fish from the Mediterranean, fresh pasta, limitless recipes for all those vegetables, dozens of breads, hundreds of cheeses.
it may be the change in our diet and the way it is cooked, always in olive oil, but we have both lost weight. only a little, but enough to cause some surprise to friends.
We have also been accused of the crime of cheerfulness, of turning a blind eye to minor problems, and of deliberately ignoring what is invariably described as the dark side of the Provençal character.
This ominous cliche is wheeled out and festooned with words like dishonest, lazy, bigoted, greedy and brutal.
it is as if they are peculiarly local characteristics which the innocent foreigner — honest, industrious, unprejudiced and generally blameless — will be exposed to for the first time in his life. it is true that there are crooks and bigots in Provence, just as there are crooks and bigots everywhere. But we’ve been lucky, and Provence has been good to us.
We will never be more than permanent visitors in someone else’s country, but we have been made welcome and happy. There are no regrets, few complaints, many pleasures. Merci, Provence. My WiFE first saw him on the road into Menerbes.
He was walking along beside a man whose neat, clean clothes contrasted sharply with his own disreputable appearance.
And yet, despite the matted coat and burr-encrusted head, it was obvious that this dog was one of a breed peculiar to France, a species of rough-haired pointer known officially as the griffon Korthals.
Beneath that shabby exterior lurked a pedigree. one of our own two dogs was a Korthals, but they are not often seen in Provence, and so my wife stopped the car to talk to a fellow owner.
The man looked down at the dog, who had paused to take a dust bath, and stepped backwards to distance himself from the tangle of legs and ears that was squirming in the ditch.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘he accompanies me, but he is not my dog.
‘We met on the road. i don’t know who he belongs to.’
When my wife returned from the village and told me about the dog, i should have seen trouble coming. Dogs are to her what mink coats are to other women; she would like a house full of them. We already had two, and i thought that was quite enough.
A few days later a friend called from the village to say a dog just like ours was spending every day outside the epicerie, drawn by the scent of hams.
Each night he disappeared. nobody in the village knew his owner. Perhaps he was lost. My wife had a crise de chien, a doggy panic attack. She began to spend several hours a day in the village on the pretext of buying a loaf of bread, but the dog had vanished.
When i said that he had obviously gone back home, my wife looked at me as though i had suggested roasting a baby for dinner.
Two weeks passed without sight of the dog. My wife moped. And then our contact at the epicerie came up with some hard news: the dog was living in the forest outside the house of one of her customers, who was giving him scraps and letting him sleep on the terrace.
i have rarely seen a woman move so quickly. Within half an hour, my wife was coming back up the drive with a smile visible from 50 yards away. next to her in the car i could see the enormous shaggy head of her passenger. She got out of the car, still beaming.
‘He must be starving,’ she said. ‘He’s eaten his seat belt. isn’t he wonderful?’
The dog was coaxed from his seat and stood there wagging everything. He looked frightful — an unsanitary fur-ball the size of an Alsatian, with a garnish of twigs and leaves entwined in his knotted coat, bones protruding from his body and an immense brown nose poking through the undergrowth of his moustache.
i held out my hand to him. He got up, took my wrist in his jaws and started to pull me into the courtyard. He had very impressive teeth.
‘There you are. He likes you.’ i asked if we could offer