A Year in Provence(27)

The Coustellet market is small compared to the weekly markets in Cavaillon and Apt and Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, and not yet fashionable. Customers carry baskets instead of cameras, and only in July and August are you likely to see the occasional haughty woman down from Paris with her Dior track suit and small, nervous dog. For the rest of the season, from spring until autumn, it is just the local inhabitants, and the peasants who bring in what they have taken from the earth or the greenhouse a few hours earlier.

We walked slowly along the rows of trestle tables, admiring the merciless French housewife at work. Unlike us, she is not content merely to look at the produce before buying. She gets to grips with it—squeezing aubergines, sniffing tomatoes, snapping the matchstick-thin haricots verts between her fingers, poking suspiciously into the damp green hearts of lettuces, tasting cheeses and olives—and, if they don’t come up to her private standards, she will glare at the stall holder as if she has been betrayed before taking her custom elsewhere.

At one end of the market, a van from the wine cooperative was surrounded by men rinsing their teeth thoughtfully in the new rosé. Next to them, a woman was selling free-range eggs and live rabbits, and beyond her the tables were piled high with vegetables, small and fragrant bushes of basil, tubs of lavender honey, great green bottles of first pressing olive oil, trays of hothouse peaches, pots of black tapenade, flowers and herbs, jams and cheeses—everything looked delicious in the early morning sun.

We bought red peppers to roast and big brown eggs and basil and peaches and goat’s cheese and lettuce and pink-streaked onions. And, when the basket could hold no more, we went across the road to buy half a yard of bread—the gros pain that makes such a tasty mop for any olive oil or vinaigrette sauce that is left on the plate. The bakery was crowded and noisy, and smelled of warm dough and the almonds that had gone into the morning’s cakes. While we waited, we remembered being told that the French spend as much of their income on their stomachs as the English do on their cars and stereo systems, and we could easily believe it.

Everyone seemed to be shopping for a regiment. One round, jolly woman bought six large loaves—three yards of bread—a chocolate brioche the size of a hat, and an entire wheel of apple tart, the thin slices of apple packed in concentric rings, shining under a glaze of apricot sauce. We were aware that we had missed breakfast.

Lunch made up for it: cold roasted peppers, slippery with olive oil and speckled with fresh basil, tiny mussels wrapped in bacon and barbecued on skewers, salad, and cheese. The sun was hot and the wine had made us sleepy. And then we heard the phone.

It is a rule of life that, when the phone rings between noon and three on a Sunday, the caller is English; a Frenchman wouldn’t dream of interrupting the most relaxed meal of the week. I should have let it ring. Tony from advertising was back, and judging by the absence of static on the line he was hideously close.

“Just thought I’d touch base with you.” I could hear him taking a drag on his cigarette, and I made a mental note to buy an answering machine to deal with anyone else who might want to touch base on a Sunday.

“I think I’ve found a place.” He didn’t pause to hear the effect of his announcement, and so missed the sound of my heart sinking. “Quite a way from you, actually, nearer the coast.” I told him that I was delighted; the nearer the coast he was, the better. “Needs a lot doing to it, so I’m not going to pay what he’s asking. Thought I’d bring my builders over to do the work. They did the office in six weeks, top to bottom. Irish, but bloody good. They could sort this place out in a month.”

I was tempted to encourage him, because the idea of a gang of Irish workmen exposed to the pleasures of a building site in Provence—the sun, cheap wine, endless possibilities for delay, and a proprietor too far away to be a daily nuisance—had the makings of a fine comic interlude, and I could see Mr. Murphy and his team stretching the job out until October, maybe getting the family over from Donegal for a holiday during August and generally having a grand time. I told Tony he might be better advised to hire local labor, and to get an architect to hire it for him.

“Don’t need an architect,” he said, “I know exactly what I want.” He would. “Why should I pay him an arm and a leg for a couple of drawings?” There was no helping him. He knew best. I asked him when he was going back to England. “This evening,” he said, and then guided me through the next hectic pages of his Filofax: a client meeting on Monday, three days in New York, a sales conference in Milton Keynes. He reeled it off with the mock weariness of the indispensable executive, and he was welcome to every second of it. “Anyway,” he said, “I’ll keep in touch. I won’t finalize on the house for a week or two, but I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve inked it.”