FIDELMA COOK

THERE is no house or flat I’ve ever owned that makes me want to see it again. When I leave somewhere, I walk through the rooms, take a last look around, remembering good times, say goodbye and thank you to each room, then leave without a last glance.

I find anyway that once stripped of furniture, books and paintings, the house itself turns away and settles into a low-level wait for the next people to give it life.

Sometimes one can almost sense its impatience to wave you on your way. You’re leaving, so go.

For although I often say “only bricks and mortar”, some houses are far more than that and demand more from you as a result.

And also, as the French say so frequently, that page has turned when you’ve slipped the leash.

The house, once no longer mine, will take on its new owners, and although the outlines will obviously remain the same, the character won’t, the feel won’t. So there is nothing to go back for. Just bricks and mortar.

It’s also why I rarely return to even the town or country in which I once lived, preferring those I left to travel to me. For nothing can live up to memory or rather the exaggerated memories one has of places and people. Returning is always a letdown and a disappointment.

Last week, I met a man who contacted me for some journalistic advice. It turned out he lives in a house several villages away, in which I’d once had lunch during my second year here.

The English owners were firmly embedded in expat life and wined, dined, joined clubs and groups and seemed to relish life in France. Their stone house was pretty but large, rambling and one of those houses you knew would be a money-pit.

Suddenly it was on the market and although I rarely came across them, I heard that with grandchildren and increasing age they’d decided to return to England. The usual.

Off and on through the years since then I’ve spotted them in the town, at markets, usually with their old friends, on holiday from the English town in which they’d settled. To me it was rather sad that like the swallows they returned again and again.

I spoke about this to the new owner. “Actually,” he told me, “they do more than that. They return to the house – my house – again and again.”

The first year it was just a courtesy knock on the door to see how he was getting on and ask if they could have a look around. Then it was the taking of roses from the garden to give to friends; the snipping of cuttings to take back; the automatic move towards the terrace to look at the view; the little suggestions of what he should be doing or what he hadn’t done.

If it happened once then perhaps you could stomach it. But if it became an annual, almost possessive ritual? No.

He found himself getting twitchy as summer came round and he heard their car. Hiding in his own house, feeling dreadful, for he is a courteous man.

“They just peered in through my windows instead and walked around to the garden and just sat there. For ages.

“I was trapped until finally, and obviously reluctantly, they left.”

I did hear of one other story a while back of a man whose wife hated France and so they returned to the UK. Another familiar reason.

He missed here so badly that he would fly over and, without arrangement, turn up at the doors of former friends, confident of his welcome.

Let us just say he is the type of man who should not be indulged beyond two nights. He expected a fortnight at least.

I have been caught myself like this, you may remember, a few years back, and good manners initially allowed it. Until I cracked.

Were I to leave here I can confidently state I would never return. I would possibly venture for lengthy summer periods to other parts of France but not here.

Not because I wouldn’t think of it and its undoubted bucolic beauty from time to time, but simply because, yes, been there, done that.

And I would not like to see Las Molieres in any new incarnation – perhaps allowed to turn inwards and lonely again as a holiday home, or stripped of the foliage which clothes her awkwardness.

But then my roots have never run deep. They’re roots that hold on and do their job for a while, but are easily transplanted.

Of course there is always initial sadness, which is why one should never look back. But there is also excitement at what is to come or what may be. Another home to fill with books and corners to find for photos and paintings. New people to meet, new stories to hear.

The same man who hides in his house told me there’s a whole slew of expats selling up to return with all the uncertainty over Brexit.

They don’t want to leave but feel they must.

I imagine them returning to old haunts over and over.

Perhaps you have to leave willingly to never return. To have no unfinished business.