Besides the ‘cathedral’, there is another Catholic church tucked into a neighbourhood less than a half-mile away. Cafés line the streets, and restaurants and pizzerias are dotted throughout the main part of town. There is a small, country supermarket in the centre of town, and two huge modern supermarkets on its periphery. One can live very easily in Louviers without needing to go anywhere else.
I called Michael that night to give him a report. I told him about the house, downplaying Bernard and Edith’s interest in it, simply describing it to him. He said nothing. Then he said, ‘Go look at it again, get more information.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘But we don’t have any money,’ I countered. ‘We can’t buy a house.’
‘Go get more information,’ was all he would say.
I am hopeless when it comes to money. My department is dreams. I rely on Michael to see the truth, so when he said get more information I figured that maybe it was, somehow, possible.
The next day Bernard saw the house and loved it. He thought it was an affaire- a deal. He said that if we decided to buy it he’d loan us the down payment if we needed it, and co-sign the loan. Bernard is a very successful entrepreneur who started a quality-control company almost two decades ago, well before anyone else in France had the idea. The company has done nothing but grow so that now it does business in most countries of the world. Bernard sold it not long ago, making him a very wealthy man. He is still the director, however, and spends most of his time traveling to distant points on the globe. When Bernard says something is ‘interesting’ it pays to listen. I suddenly started to get very, very excited.
I called Christian Devisme, a friend, talented architect and Edith’s brother, and asked him to come inspect the house and give me his professional opinion. He and his partner arrived and spent at least an hour poking, prodding and literally inspecting like detectives. They finished in the back garden, where I joined them, and we all gazed at the exterior wall, which was so full of holes it looked like lace. I asked Christian what he thought.
He slowly cleared his throat, shook his head then looked at me sideways. ‘Il ne faut pas sous-estimer le travail,’ he said gravely. ‘You must not underestimate the work.’ That sent a chill through me.
Then he swivelled to look at the little brick building behind the house, which belonged to the church. ‘You should try to buy that too,’ he said. ‘It would add a lot of value to the property.’
‘So you think we should buy the house?’ I asked.
‘If I were younger I might think about buying it,’ replied Christian, who was then forty-five. ‘At this point in my life it’s too much work but it’s a beautiful house.’
I understood Christian’s point. He and his wife Nadine had bought an old farmhouse nearly twenty years before when they had three tots, and had lived in a tent in front of it for a year while they made it habitable. It is not an experience he would want to repeat and he is convinced he accomplished it only because he was young. Yet he obviously thought this house in Louviers was full of potential.
‘Its walls and roof are solid,’ he said. ‘If you have to pay someone to fix it up you can’t afford it. If Michael can do it himself, you should seriously think about it.’
I took that for encouragement.
Edith came to pick me up and before we left we went through the house again, deciding what should be where when it was time to decorate the rooms. I could just imagine all the soirees we would have there, in the shadow of the church, l’Eglise de Notre Dame. That night I reported everything to Michael, who knew all the protagonists and could judge their responses. He seemed very excited. I thought the world was turned upside down.
I called an engineer, a plumber, a roofing specialist to come see the house. I got estimates for installing electricity. I took photographs, pasted them together and fedexed them to Michael, along with the estimates and every shred of information I could find about Louviers. I talked at length with Bernard, who assured me that there were no complications for a foreigner buying property in France. He said he would introduce us to his banker, and that would help expedite matters should we decide to buy it.
Michael and I talked, we debated, we each agreed we didn’t have the money to undertake the project. And then, with Bernard’s help, we decided to buy it.
I was beside myself. With excitement. With dread. With panic. With desire. My dream of owning property in France – a dream I had never actually articulated, even to myself – had come true. It didn’t matter that we would be so far from our families and American friends. It didn’t matter that we were moving to France on a wing and a prayer. It didn’t matter that we were always seeming to scrape by. It didn’t matter that life in France was bound to be more expensive than life in the United States. None of the realities mattered, at least not to me. Never big on paying attention to reality, I definitely put on my softfocus lenses this time. If Michael thought we could do it, well then we could.
We made an offer on the house which was immediately accepted. I met the owner, who was very strange but presentable, and signed the compromis de vente, or the contract to buy the house. Bernard was true to his word, taking time to help with all the paperwork and signing where necessary. On my last night before going back to the US we celebrated. Christian and his wife Nadine came for dinner, bringing a dish of richly flavoured braised pigeons from their farm, where they raised 800 of the squeaky birds for local restaurants.
Edith and Bernard opened champagne. Christian made a toast. ‘To Suzanne and to Michael, who have just bought a house in the Marseille of the north,’ he said with an evil smile. ‘That your car doesn’t get stolen nor your windows broken.’
My heart stopped. Marseille, a lovely city, nonetheless has a reputation of being full of voyoux – hoodlums. Was there something I should know? I asked.
They all burst out laughing. ‘He’s just trying to scare you,’ Nadine said.
I left the following morning for Paris, where I was to spend a few days before returning home. I met an American friend for coffee and showed her a picture of the house. ‘It’s gorgeous. I’ve lived here fifteen years and always wanted to buy a house!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did you find the perfect house in one week?’ I told her I didn’t know. I was in a dream, pinching myself. We were really going to do it, I thought.
I returned home and Michael and I prepared for our departure. We loved our house in Maine and decided not to sell but to rent it. After all, we imagined, after our two to three years in France we might return and, meanwhile, it was a good investment.
We were busy packing and organizing, trying to decide what to take and what to leave. After doing comparative studies of moving costs, we decided we would bring the bare minimum – my kitchen equipment, which included a collection of heavy copper pots I had amassed over the years, knives, baking dishes, scales and dozens of other small necessities in the life of a cook and food writer. We would also bring my office chair (a luxuriously comfortable one), file cabinets and computers. We would bring Michael’s most essential tools, a futon couch, Joe’s stuffed animals and as many of his toys and treasures as we could fit. We decided to send our Subaru station wagon over and gave it a complete overhaul.
An American friend of mine – also a food writer – was moving back to the States from Paris and she made a list of things she wanted to sell, which included lamps and book cases, chairs and a table, and an impressive array of coffee grinders which she used to grind spices. We bought what we thought we would need – she threw in many things
