Outside the trees in the park cast sharp-edged shadows; the pale-coloured château stands in its own deepening aura of obscurity, seeming to grow paler as evening advances, as though it might finally dissolve. The air is warm and still: only the pallor of the sky and the sharpness of the shadows betray the fact that it is not yet summer here, in these benignant rolling fields with their foliage already lush. We are south of Paris, north of Dijon and a few miles west of Auxerre and the River Yonne, whose landscapes Françoise Sagan describes as representing the eternal boredom and beauty of the French paysage. This is the heartland of fine wine and fine food: satisfaction and plenty seem to roll off its plump yellow hills. Nearby lies the village of Noyers, in whose soft golden buildings the fat, rich, productive spirit of the soil makes itself fully manifest. In a little bar on the main square we play babyfoot and drink wine from tulip-shaped glasses while boys on bicycles and scooters whirr up and down the pavements outside. The bar is full of men, who look at us with brazen, friendly curiosity, and indeed there must be something extruded and untranslatable about us, beset as we are by the joy of escape and by the knowledge that we who consumed porridge in a Sussex village that morning have found our way, by a mixture of randomness and design, here.

  There are one or two restaurants nearby. They have an appearance of Masonic discretion. We peer into their dimly lit interiors from the pavement. We scan their uncompromising menus. We have been awake a long time. Is it possible that this same day will oblige us to scale the treacherous peaks of haute cuisine, with the children roped to our backs? We recall that Monsieur suggested the pizzeria: at the time this seemed a form of veiled insult, but his economy of manner proved again deceptive. The pizzeria is perfectly correct: Monsieur could have told us it would be so. This is not the moment to induct minors in spécialités du terroir, no, no! They must eat simple food and be hurried back to the nursery tout de suite! And indeed they take to their beds in the Red Room with unwonted gratitude and remain there all night, under the bridled eye of the rocking horse and the wide-awake gaze of the china doll.

  In the morning I walk across the fields in a bright, arid light. When I return I can hear the grand piano being played through the open windows. I stand in the garden and listen. The lucidity of the sound seems more real to me than anything we have left behind us, than home, than the days whose repetition had laid a kind of fetter on my soul. In its solitariness it speaks to my own single nature. It startles me to be spoken to; as though I have been silent, absent, unconscious; as though my life, the life of home, were a fake, and the real life was roaming somewhere in the world, fleet-footed, unique, uncapturable, to be glimpsed sometimes through an open window, and then to vanish again.

  *

  By afternoon we are down in the Rhône valley, west of the Rhône Alps, east of the Ardèche. Lyons lies behind us, and the Saône. The temperature gauge is singing like a canary; the clear light of the Mediterranean is filling the dry green basins of Montélimar. It is five o’clock. We are searching for the establishment where we are to spend the night, the house of a man named Bertrand. Bertrand’s domain is at once more outré, more esoteric, and more aesthetically confounding than Monsieur’s. It takes a long time to find it; and when we do it is as thick in its own enchanted slumber as Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  There are strange pelted hills that rise like a dromedary’s humps from the plain. We wind around them, asking directions of everyone we see. The hills are fragrant, forested with brittle chestnut trees and herbs and carpeted with twigs and dried leaves that crackle underfoot. At the very end of a narrow road that twirls abstractedly upwards through the wilderness and is then extinguished, we find a potholed track traversing the hillside. At the end of that is a very high stone wall with a pair of giant doors in it that are resolutely closed. There is no doorbell or knocker; there isn’t another house for miles around either. But our directions were increasingly clear; there can be no mistake: we are certain Bertrand is in there somewhere.

  Presently we try one of the doors and its great iron handle turns, admitting us into a large stone courtyard. The courtyard is completely enclosed: the wildly forested hillside grows up all around its perimeter. Yet inside it is spacious, orderly, well tended. There are no weeds in the borders: the flowers spill from their stone urns by intention, not neglect. They have recently been watered: bright beads still tremble on their petals. Yet everything is silent: there is no one here. In fairy tales, such places are the deepest emanations of magic: the castle in its forest of thorns, the mountain room unlocked by a keyhole in the ice, the lake with its pleasure boats that lies beneath the floorboards. It is in the elision of the human hand that the magic expresses itself. A fire burns with no one to stoke it; a meal stands hot on the table in an empty house. Here, there is a room, not inside but out: it stands in the right angle of the courtyard, two sides of which, I now see, are formed by an old house. It has a large low roof supported by a pillar on its far corner. Under it there are beautiful rugs, and an arrangement of furniture. There are two long sofas, an armchair, a baroque standard lamp, a mahogany coffee table, a bookshelf, and a parrot in a cage hanging from the rafters. We cross to the front door and ring the bell, which unexpectedly makes the noise of a croaking frog. Then we sit down on the sofas: they are extremely comfortable. Ten minutes pass, perhaps more. At last the door quietly opens and a man slips out of the shadows of the house and into the sun. This is Bertrand. A squat little dog with a bunched-up face like a boxer’s fist slowly follows him. Bertrand greets us with quiet sincerity. He is sorry he took so long to come: he was asleep.

  Like Monsieur, Bertrand is in his late fifties, or perhaps a little older; and like Monsieur he appears to operate alone. He wears the same outfit of canvas shorts and scuffed deck shoes. But he has something delicate and hopeful about him, something of the choirboy or cherub; something childlike, with his full curving mouth and large tremulous eyes and soft fine white curling hair, with his inconvenient afternoon nap. An enormous white cat has followed the little dog out into the courtyard. These are Pollux and Nestor. Bertrand excuses himself: he must make a small adjustment to our rooms. One of the beds he has made up for the children will be, he now sees, too small. He must aménager. We will do him the kindness of waiting.

  My tutored female soul is alerted by the prospect of Bertrand, white-haired and eminent as he seems, aménaging alone. I am even a little outraged on his behalf. What English male of nearly pensionable age bestirs himself to ensure that children are in beds of the proper sizes, even for a modest fee? Bertrand reappears and we are ushered inside. The house is as puzzle-like and perplexing inside as out. Its rooms all face different ways and seem to live in distinct eras. There is a kitchen out of a Victorian novel, with copper moulds and saucepans on the walls and an iron range in front of which I expect to see Mrs Beeton in a white apron and cap. There is a large, light, high-ceilinged room full of paintings and modern furniture like a Parisian atelier. There is a library like a cabinet, with a door concealed behind the shelves.

  Upstairs, at the end of a long, creaking passage, there is a semi-circular window that sheds a strange, spectral light. Our rooms are ghostly too: they have an air of occupation, with their antique beds and embroidered counterpanes, their oval mirrors and threadbare tapestry rugs. I stand at the window and see the dark, forested hill plunging downwards and the countryside far below that reaches on and on into its mounded, mysterious distances. It all seems familiar, though it is not: I feel that I have stood at this window a thousand times and looked out, as I am doing now. This was something I often felt as a child, when I would remember things I had read in books as though I had lived them myself. It never struck me that there was anything wrong with it, though it was disturbing. But sometimes I would read the book again to find what I had remembered so clearly, and discover that it was no longer there.

  Later, Bertrand invites us on to the terrace. The terrace has the same view as our bedroom upstairs: it is a view, Bertrand says, of the Ardèche, with its forests and gorges and massif. He goes back into the house and returns with an apéritif, an unlabelled bottle of effervescent rose-coloured wine. A friend of his, a friend who lives on the other side, towards the Rhône Alps, produces it. He thinks we will find that it is very good. Bertrand tells us that he is a native of Paris: until five years ago, he was a city banker. He retired early and bought this house. It was his dream to do so, aménagement included, for he needs to be active; besides, it seems natural to him to faire un succès with his time. He retains his Paris apartment: the friend with whom he shares this house is there now. Personally he does not like to go to Paris any more. He would rather be here. He gazes at his view with his melancholic childlike eyes. He has changed for dinner: he is wearing an immaculate white shirt and loafers and a navy cashmere sweater knotted round his shoulders. His fine white waving hair is combed back from his well-modelled face. He is tall and slender in his elderly cherubic beauty. The feeling of enchantment that pervades this house emanates, I now see, from Bertrand himself. He is like a maiden in a fairy tale, all modesty and correctness and virtuous industry, waiting forlornly in his tower.

  The children are in the garden with Nestor the dog. The blue pall of evening deepens around them in the trees. Finally, Bertrand suggests that we go in: it is getting dark. He is expecting more people but they have not yet arrived. It is irritating, for dinner must be at eight. He has informed these people of this fact: it is a shame they cannot be punctual. But some people are like that. There is no accounting for them. Distressed as he is, I venture to ask what he wishes me to do with the children. His large, orb-like eyes grow larger still. There can be no question: we will all eat together. The food is quite simple. It is merely a question of waiting for the reprobates to arrive. Shortly afterwards they do. They are a grey, narrow, pinched-looking couple: they have been walking all day in the Ardèche and misjudged the time it would take them to get back. It is a little inconvenient, cette loisir, is it not? And the road is so potholed, so slow! The woman’s pale, angular cheeks wear a hectic pink flush beneath her spectacles. The man is bearded and severe. Bertrand brings more glasses. We arrange ourselves in the cultured sitting room, with its canvases and totemic masks and abstract sculptural forms. Beyond the large windows the vast, watery, blue-tinged darkness deepens. The other couple reveal that they have been staying at Bertrand’s for the whole week. Tomorrow they return to Lyons. It is their hobby, to take walking holidays. They take several a year. They have walked in every significant part of France, though not, until now, the Ardèche. They have not been disappointed by the Ardèche, though it does not attain the heights of their favourite, the Cévennes. The Cévennes are nearby, as are the Rhône Alps, another favourite of theirs. But this area certainly has its merits.

  Bertrand announces that dinner is ready. We pass through the house, through the circular hall, through a passageway that elides the kitchen and twists and turns, and into a long vaulted stone room with great glass doors all along one side. This, I now see, forms the end of the courtyard that is at right angles to the house. The table is shrouded in white damask, laden with candelabra, silverware and glass. We are served hot asparagus and tissue-thin leaves of smoked ham. We are served pale yellow wine from a crystal decanter, and warm rolls with cold butter. The bearded man and his wife seem to take all this as a matter of course, but we feel an amazement that borders on consternation. What does it signify, all this refinement, this correct and devotional passion for sensual things? At home, certainly, I often felt that our life lacked beauty: I looked for it in music, in poetry and painting, sometimes in the world itself, when a particular evening sky or fall of light, a glimpse of city trees in leaf or of the forms of my children, seemed to become more than itself, to become representational. I would put peonies in a vase, wash the floors, tidy up; but I never found much art in daily things. There was always too much reality, churning just ahead, mixing everything together into a grey, agitated mass. It was only in writing that I could separate them again, and distinguish the bad from the good. But this man Bertrand lives behind a high wall, far from other people. He has asked that only beautiful things come near him. Is this the right way to be? Is it permitted, to turn your back on churning reality?

  We ask the bearded man what he does for a living, and he replies that he is retired. We are surprised: he can barely be more than fifty. What was his trade? He says he was an employee of the French national railway. One retires early there, at fifty, and the pension, a final-salary scheme, is very generous. The bearded man is rather defensive as he relays these facts. Bertrand explains that there are many French people who find the arrangement somewhat unfair, outrageous even, and the bearded man sits erect while the explanation is given. Then he proceeds to cut up his food and place the pieces methodically in his mouth. Bertrand watches him, a glint in his eye. This couple have irritated him, grey and complacent and ungiving as they are. They swallow his food without comment; they weigh up his domain coldly, rationally, indifferent to all but their own preferences. Why does he expose himself to the world in this way? I don’t believe he does it entirely for money: there is no need to treat us as lavishly as he does. He does it, perhaps, for the same reason that artists show their work, for the same reason I choose to publish the books I write rather than lock them in a drawer. Indeed, this couple have their exact equivalent in the field of literary criticism. It doesn’t trouble them at all, that they could never create something beautiful, as Bertrand has. Nonetheless, their presence here indicates that after all Bertrand does need the world, so that it may look on what he has done. In the end he needs reality, to measure his creation against.

  But Bertrand wants to talk about les Anglais. He has the impression that the English male, in his most fully realised form – the English politician, for example – is more various, more cultivated, more branchée somehow than his French equivalent. He has a broader knowledge of life, a bigger range. He heard such a man talking on the radio the other day, a politician, what was his name? Douglas Hurd. This Douglas Hurd was a man of culture and sensitivity and yet also a man of power. In France this is unthinkable. The man of culture is a man of culture, the politician a politician. Bertrand has by now served us with a melting feuilleté de poissons, a salad of crisp herbs and leaves and lemon, and a new, paler wine from another crystal decanter. I say that probably the English male is troubled by precisely the same feelings about the French. I am not entirely certain that this is true. Bertrand nods his large head thoughtfully and disappears into the kitchen. The two children have eaten very little of their food. They were struck dumb by the arrival of the asparagus, and have remained that way for the rest of the evening. They do not dislike asparagus: on the contrary, at home they eat it often. But they appear surprised to have met it here, amidst the spectacle of Bertrand’s dining room. The wife of the bearded man is looking at them with the diffident French expression that I always mistake for disapproval – though this time it turns out that I am right. I ask her whether a French child would have eaten everything on its plate. Of course, she says. She does not care for my veiled English compliment: she merely shrugs at my obtuseness. A French child eats what it is given. It has to be done from the beginning, she adds, lest I am thinking of making up for lost time by forcing the food down their throats then and there.

  There is a beef stew and more wine, and the conversation goes faster and faster until I cannot keep up. Bertrand sends the dish around for second helpings, and when it is her turn Madame takes the serving spoon and dabs it on her plate, an act that seems hieratic in its significance, like the motions of a priest at the altar. It spots her plate with a portion the size of a fingernail, which she does not touch. Later Bertrand brings chocolate mousse in chilled glasses, decorated with beautiful candied orange peels that wear little half-casings of chocolate. He admits that he made them himself. Afterwards I take the children upstairs along the creaking passage. I lie on their bed and read to them, among the dark forms of unfamiliar furniture, while the owls hoot outside. I think of how fortunate it is that there is a word – holiday – which not only explains the experience of going to bed in strange rooms but decrees it to be pleasurable. When I return downstairs it is to find the cognac out and the laughter loud and even Madame grown a little garrulous in her cardigan and blouse and gathered skirt. There is coffee; I ask if I may smoke. Of course, says Bertrand solemnly, I myself was once a great smoker. J’étais un grand fumeur. It sounds like the beginning of a story, but of course it is only the end of one. At some point Bertrand smoked his last cigarette: it is very clear to me, this moment of renunciation. It decorates him like a priestly robe, or a medal. Bertrand has thrown off the temptation to live life without recognising the finality of all things.

 

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