Marie-Hélène and I had the keys and immediate possession of the house. It was now ours. So, giddy with expectation, we drove over, unlocked the front door and walked in. We looked around at the dusty rooms, peered out the dirty window panes and began to realize the amount of work we had ahead of us. The empty rooms echoed as we walked about. The realtor’s ‘À Vendre’ sign was still nailed to one of the shutters. We found some dust-covered tools the vendor had left behind and pried the sign loose.
That we were starting from scratch hadn’t fully occurred to us. We needed everything: beds, chairs, fridge, stove, dishwasher, cutlery and much more. As agreed, the toilets, sinks and the kitchen cabinets were still there. Fortunately, friends had lent us their house to stay in for the time being.
As every room in the house was wallpapered, we decided the bathrooms were the place to start. We bought scrapers and litre-sized spray bottles that we filled with water and used to soak the walls. The glue softened and we began to scrape and peel the paper. However, it only came away in small pieces. This proved intolerably slow considering the amount of wallpaper to be removed. Then I noticed a four-gallon garden sprayer that had been left behind in the garage. I filled it with hot water and sprayed a strip of wallpaper from floor to ceiling. The entire strip peeled away in a single piece. We began to make progress and moved on to other rooms.
Friends came and went, each contributing labour as well as moral support. They had looked at the condition of the house and knew we needed it. Their enthusiasm helped us continue. All the same, we knew that we had gotten ourselves into far more work than we had thought. Without their assistance we could easily have been overwhelmed and dispirited. We dug in and stayed at it.
Looking around the garden that first spring, I stopped to examine a pile of wood that was infested with a colony of large black ants. The house didn’t have a fireplace, so the wood had to go. There was too much to burn in the yard and I had no means of hauling it away. Our neighbour, an observant man, I came to learn, leaned over the fence just then and introduced himself as Monsieur Jean Drouin. We chatted amiably for a few minutes and then he asked, “What will you do with that wood?”
“I don’t know what to do with it. It’s infested with ants.”
“Pas de problème,” he said. “It’s olive wood and burns very well.”
I clued in. “Would you like the wood?” I asked.
In less than an hour we had moved it all over the fence and he had carried it to his garage. The wood and the colony of ants were gone and, with another problem solved, I breathed easier.
That spring I had returned to Vancouver and my law practice, leaving Marie-Hélène to finish stripping the wallpaper and painting. She had also been trying to put up curtain rods, in order to hang drapes. The walls were not wood-frame construction, however, but stone and concrete. The electrician had been using an industrial-sized hammer-drill for boring through the walls, which he lent her. The job involved holding a ten-pound drill that was two feet long at the top of a six-foot ladder. The vibration from the drill made a deafening noise and set everything shaking, including the ladder. When she put the drill down for a moment to rest, Marie-Hélène heard someone knocking. Covered in dust, she opened the front door. It was the neighbour’s wife, Suzette.
“Marie-Hélène, are you using an electric drill?”
Marie-Hélène nodded, “Oui.”
Suzette looked absolutely horrified. “Mais non! C’est un travail pour un homme! I’ll send my husband down immediately to help you. Please wait.”
A few minutes later Jean appeared. “Can I help in some way?”
They spent the day drilling holes in the stone walls, screwing curtain rods up and hanging drapes. That day a close friendship was established. Our neighbours had taken it upon themselves to look out for Marie-Hélène, and so they did. They asked her for dinners, took her away from her work for walks, and offered every type of assistance.
• • •
That first spring we made shopping trips for furniture and assorted other things to make the house liveable. Once we had the basic necessities like beds and kitchen appliances, we decided to furnish the house as much as possible with genuine provençal pieces. Their simple rustic craftsmanship has a relaxed elegance that immediately attracted our attention. We resisted the detailed and fine antiques, opting instead for furniture that could be used for day-to-day living. The wear and patina only added to their charm.
I came across a small oval-shaped keg with a long leather strap to carry it over a worker’s shoulder. He would have filled it with wine each morning which he drank over the course of his day working in the vineyard.
For pottery the village of Dieulefit just north of Nyons was the place to go. It had become a centre for potters because of the fine clay deposits nearby. We drove over to visit the pottery studios scattered along the streets. The variety was astonishing and some of the pieces so artistically made we sometimes bought just for the pleasure of owning them.
Some villages had Sunday marchés for antiques and a slew of other goods. We carefully searched through the junk spread out on the sidewalks, hoping to turn up a genuine piece that had been painted or damaged but was repairable. We began to understand that a lot of paint remover, steel wool and furniture wax can often bring back the finish of a unique table or chair made from a rare wood. The seller either couldn’t be bothered to do the work himself or didn’t recognize what he had for sale. Before buying the house, neither of us had ever guessed that treasure-hunting would become one of our most absorbing pastimes.
There are different qualities of used furniture outlets, selling anything from high-grade antiques to worthless junk. The antiquaires sell the real thing at prices that assure the buyer the piece is both genuine and valuable. Then there are the brocantes, selling a second tier of quality where old and increasingly rare provençal furniture is more likely to be found. We bought a chest of drawers with an inlaid wood pattern.
In the summer, villages hold vide-greniers where anyone can come and spread out their goods on makeshift benches or on the ground, to sell anything from old shoes to their grandmother’s linen and silver. Often our best buys came from these attic sales. I found a set of old boules still in their worn leather carrying case. Marie-Hélène picked out a two-seat wicker chaise.
We were told that the gypsies on the outskirts of Nyons were good at recaning. Marie-Hélène drove over to their encampment with the chaise and returned the next week to pick it up. The man had done an excellent job, but when she handed him a fifty-euro banknote he had to call his son over to give her the correct change. He couldn’t add or subtract.
On weekends the village marchés aux puces are places to buy smaller things like bric-a-brac. We tried the trocs that sell furniture nobody wants, hoping to find some misplaced bargain, but gave up on their inventories of junk after a few visits.
Never knowing from week to week what might turn up, we returned now and then to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. It is by far the best hunting ground for antiques in the area, and is the second-largest market in France. The merchants share large buildings and their pieces arrive and sell daily. To hesitate buying something expecting to return the next week is to miss out. In all likelihood it will already be on its way to New York or San Francisco by air freight, or in a van operated by Hunter’s Humpers headed for England. I couldn’t help but think that at the rate these pieces were selling it was highly unlikely Provence would have any provençal furniture left in a few years.
It was at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue that we found the bistrot Chez Nane, where we
