2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees (3 page)

“What is it?” he said, when he saw the look of horror on my face.

“Monsieur L’Agent says that my offer has been accepted!”

Suddenly, reality had kicked in. I felt weak. What had I done?

Kevin shook my hand, and I immediately began thinking about how I could get out of things. It wasn’t too late to halt proceedings. A quick phone call to Monsieur L’Agent and it would fall to him to let down the vendors.

“I can still back out of this,” I said to Kevin as he picked at the crumby remnants of his breakfast.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he replied with an air of the statesman about him. “I think you’ve got it at a good price and it’s an excellent house.”

“Oh,” I said, now rather confused with this sudden approval. “I thought you were of the opinion that I’d been too reckless.”

“Oh yes. You have been ludicrously reckless, but you should still go through with it.”

By now it was beginning to dawn on me. I worked out what had caused the sudden shift in Kevin’s role from confirmed sceptic to enthusiastic supporter. Two words summed it up.

Free holidays.

It all made perfect sense. As one of my oldest friends he knew that he would naturally fall into the ‘keys are yours whenever you want them’ category. Overnight, he’d realised that the biggest beneficiary of my hopelessly ill-prepared lurch into the world of overseas ownership would be none other than his good self.

“So you think it’s a good deal?” I said, feeling a little emotionally drained.

“Oh yes,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Just think—soon you will be the proud owner of a home in France.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. The big gulp said it all.

Célibataire

Back in England I pondered and deliberated. I fluctuated between thinking that this purchase would be the most foolish thing I’d ever done, and giving in to bouts of reverie that saw me lying on the cool tiles of the living-room floor in my Pyrenean home as the sun streamed in through the French windows. These daydreams were vivid—I could even hear the distant reverberating bells of grazing cattle and sheep, and picture the snow-capped mountains towering over them on the horizon. In these dreamy moments it all seemed irresistible. What a contrast to the frantic pace of life in London, with all its competitiveness, noise, pollution, flurry, stress and anxiety.

However, there were doubts too. Big ones. Surely buying a property overseas was the preserve of the married couple? Hadn’t Kevin been right to ask his question: “Isn’t there a good chance that you’ll just end up sitting on your own and admiring the view?” Also, at a time when more and more English people were moving to France and pushing up the price of property so much that it was becoming difficult for locals to buy, wasn’t there a risk that I was going to be greeted by aloofness and resentment? Would a single forty-four-year-old man be accepted with open arms into a remote Pyrenean village?

Every night in bed, the doubts and the dreams fought it out in the battleground of my mind, until one further consideration started to tip the balance in favour of returning to France to sign the contracts.

The small matter of the piano…

It wasn’t until I was at the back end of my adolescent years that I’d begun to fall in love with the piano. From the age of eleven I’d dutifully done my nightly twenty-minute ‘piano practice’, but this had largely consisted of routinely crucifying the classical pieces allotted to me by my music teacher. However, by the time I was sixteen, I had begun sitting at the keyboard for hours, experimenting with different chord sequences, composing little melodies and trying to hammer out boogie-woogie rhythms with my left hand. I started to teach myself, and I no longer felt bound by the shackles of the musical notation before me. I was playing the music of’Tony’ and whether it was any good or not didn’t matter. I was expressing myself.

Soon I had made myself a little promise. One day I would find a romantic location somewhere and install myself therein with a piano, devoting my time to reaching my fullest potential on this instrument—a potential that at the time a combination of peer pressure and youthful foolishness was causing me to squander, hopelessly grappling as I was with the first throes of adulthood.

Maybe, just maybe, a quarter of a century later, it was time to honour that promise.

And that’s as good a reason as any to explain why, two weeks later, I was driving down the narrow lane back to the village. I had been invited by Jean-Claude, the owner of the house, to come over to meet him and his family. We would share ‘un cafe’ before heading off together to the
notaire
’s office to sign the legal papers.

Rather inconsiderately, the UK and French authorities have completely different methods of interfering in the affairs of those who buy and sell properties. Stamp duty and the solicitor’s fees all get rolled into one payment made to a fellow called the
notaire
. It’s about 6 per cent of the purchase price, and frankly it’s a bit steep, but that’s the way it works, and who was I to question it? An occasional and quiet whinge would be the way I dealt with this inconvenience, much in the way that the British deal with most problems encountered abroad.

The system also differs in that the
notaire
represents both the vendor and the purchaser. One might imagine that this could open up the
notaire
to bribery—one party might seek favourable treatment by baking him a succession of delicious cakes. How could I be sure that the
notaire
who was allotted to me hadn’t already been nobbled? How did I know that he wasn’t one of those Frenchmen who allegedly hate the English? What could I possibly do to even things up if I had no access to decent baking facilities?

As I drove, my thoughts turned from worries about the
notaire
to concerns about the property I was actually here to purchase. As I turned the final corner, I felt a tingle of nerves. Well, more than a tingle. A veritable knot. What if I went off the place? The fear of the ghastly error returned with a sudden savagery. Being single, I’d had no partner with whom I could talk this whole thing through. Instead of endless pillow talk on the pros and cons of the purchase, I’d relied on ‘trusting my gut’, and now I was seriously beginning to wonder if it had let me down.

Immense relief greeted me, then, after that final turn on the narrow lane. Instead of regret, there was comfort. I loved what I saw. It may not have been the loveliest of days, and the view of the mountains may have been concealed by a blanket of grey clouds, but the house looked warm, welcoming, inviting and reassuring as it nestled neatly on the hillside. This felt right.

I stood on the front porch and rang the bell, perhaps for the last time if the next few days went well. Maybe on the next occasion I was here, I’d have a big bundle of keys and a list of chores as long as the garden.

The door opened and there stood a stocky, burly man. I was struck by an immediate thought. Rugby player. The house was in the heart of French rugby country, and there was no doubting that the man before me had indulged. His cauliflower ears bore testimony to a youth misspent grovelling around in mauls and scrums.

“
Bonjour, je suis Jean-Claude
” he said. “You are Tony, yes?”

I nodded and Jean-Claude shook my hand. It was a big, second-row-of-the-scrum-type shake. We sat down for drinks and I looked around the house. Although it wasn’t decorated to my taste, it looked cosy and I could easily picture just how nice I could make it. Soon I was chatting to Jean-Claude’s wife Annie and his thirteen-year-old son Jerome, as well as being offered some rather delicious cakes that Annie had baked herself. This worried me a little. Could it be that the
notaire
had already been the beneficiary of this culinary talent?

After refreshments, Jean-Claude treated me to a technical tour of the house. Soon I was being lectured on radiators, boilers, ovens, fridges and fuseboxes. Everything was being explained at great length, but only a few centimetres were being taken in.

“
Il est simple, Monsieur Tony
,” said Jean-Claude as he leaned over a drain in the garden.

He was on his haunches, endeavouring to explain something which, despite his ‘
il est simple, Tony
’, patently wasn’t simple. A house’s drainage system is a complex business even when related to you in your native tongue, but now my rusty A-level French was being severely tested by Jean-Claude’s rapid-fire delivery of technical plumbing information, spiced up with a strange twang that I took to be a regional accent. I nodded profusely at the conclusion of each utterly incomprehensible sentence, thinking that not to do so would have been an act of rudeness.

Jean-Claude came across as a proud man, but an affable one who liked to laugh, particularly at his own jokes. I took each of his guffaws as a cue to smile politely, assuming them to be emitted at the conclusion of what he believed to be an extremely humorous remark. The explanation of the exact location of the septic tank was terminated with a comment of such hilarity that this also required copious giggling from both his wife and son—although this seemed to be more dutiful than spontaneous, an ersatz chuckle which appeared to be something they could produce on demand. After the detailed house tour, Jean-Claude announced that we should leave right away for Bagneres or we would be late for our appointment at the
notaire
’s office. Another tingle of nerves. This purchase was getting ever closer to the point of no return.

§

The
notaire
, or rather our
notaire
, wasn’t at all what I was expecting. He didn’t seem a legal type at all. I felt he had more the demeanour of a maverick doctor—the type that gets struck off for seducing patients. Tie-less and in rolled-up shirtsleeves, he had a cheeky grin and a mischievous glint in his eye. In his bland office in a Bagneres backstreet, he ushered me to sit down. He kicked off proceedings with a menu of the bureaucratic courses that were to follow. Jean-Claude and his wife Annie were beside me, whilst Monsieur L’Agent was seated on the periphery of proceedings, ready to offer timely translations of big words. Appropriately enough, the whole thing had the air of the registry office about it—after all, I was on the verge of making a huge commitment.

For what was supposed to be a formal meeting in a lawyer’s office there was an awful lot of jollity. Jean-Claude and the
notaire
laughed at each other’s jokes and Monsieur L’Agent tittered obsequiously. I did my best to join in by smiling at everyone, but since I didn’t really know what was going on and couldn’t respond with a comment, this probably just made me look like a vacuous buffoon. Or a politician.

Irritatingly the
notaire
found something about me deeply amusing, and every time he looked my way it was accompanied by a smirk or a snigger, followed by a comment that prompted laughter from all present. I felt like the new boy at school—totally ignorant of how things worked, unaware of who held what status, and nervous about what to do when laughed at. I was hugely relieved when the
notaire
finally got down to formal business and began reading from a document.

It began with the personal details of the vendor. Jean-Claude was announced as being a married ‘
fonctionnaire
‘—a state worker or civil servant. This prompted approving nods all round.

I was next.

“
Monsieur Tony Orchs
,” announced the
notaire. “Ecrivain
”. (Writer.) All present turned and looked at me, raised their eyebrows and then looked at each other. Then the
notaire
said something, and everyone began chuckling. I smiled, but with the faintest hint of resentment. What could the joke have been? Had it been derogatory? Had it even been that funny? One thing was for sure, I would have to brush up on my French as a matter of urgency so that in future I could respond appropriately when this kind of banter kicked in.

“
Monsieur Orchs
”, continued the
notaire. “Demeurant à Londres, Angleterre—cèlibataire
”.

Upon delivery of this last word, he looked up, threw his head back and made a comment that drew the biggest laugh so far. Even Monsieur L’Agent, who’d been doing his best to be professional, laughed this time. I was getting a bit fed up now. Instead of smiling, I chose to adopt a gentle scowl. I didn’t much like the way this meeting was being conducted.
Cèlibataire
I knew meant’bachelor’. What was there to laugh about? Had the
notaire
made some comment questioning why I might still be a bachelor at my age? Had there been some homophobic questioning of my sexuality? What else, I wondered, could have caused such merriment?

I guess I was also irritated by the very word itself.
Cèlibataire
. What a terrible word for bachelor. To think the Conservatoire in Paris is desperate to preserve the purity of the French language and to defend it against the increasing pressure of Anglicisation. What’s the point of preserving a language that calls a bachelor like me a
cèlibataire?
It has all the wrong implications. Instead of coming across as a carefree, fun-loving man about town who has a new girl on his arm every month, it has the ring of a loser who can’t get his leg over however hard he tries. “
Monsieur Orchs—cèlibate
” How dare they! It was true that I’d split up with my girlfriend some months previously and I hadn’t exactly been a Don Juan since then, but I’d got off with lots of girls in my life and I was still extremely capable of getting off with a lot more. I was tempted to stand up and argue this point, warning them to lock up their daughters when the sale was completed and I moved into town.

Fortunately a part of me reminded myself that this probably wasn’t the best way to kick things off as an outsider trying to establish himself in a quiet little community.

My smouldering indignation was suddenly punctured by the voice of the
notaire
who had launched into a long passage of French ‘legalese’.

“
Le vendeur en s’obligeant aux conditions génélares qui suivent…
” This continued for some time, and I had to stop myself daydreaming. I had to keep reminding myself that this was important stuff that was legally binding and involved a lot of money. It was hard, though, because the
notaire
kept droning on about lead and asbestos inspections, service charges, local taxes and insurance. It really wasn’t any fun at all.