to ride on Raymond’s tractor and was fearless in our neighbour’s pool. When he was about five years old I had watched his face change from excited apprehension to delight as he swallowed his first oyster. I did not imagine then that one day he would be over six feet tall and would take on those tasks which we could no longer manage.
They made short work of trimming our straggling hedge, restoring our view up to the vineyard and, as they pulled up the splendid growth of weeds behindthe hedge, we discovered something else that we had forgotten; a neat stack of about two hundred, very old Roman roof tiles. That reminded us that we had still not found a solution to the roofing over the small terrace outside our fourth bedroom, which we had made in the
chai
. As long as the weather was fine, guests who stayed in that room were happy to walk outside to the shower. When it rained hard, however, they got a shower of a different kind and too often had also to negotiate a small lake. We left an umbrella just inside the bedroom door but year after year we puzzled about what to do.
The difficulty lay in the joining together of two roof edges, which sloped in different directions. ‘There must be a solution,’ said Mike after a particularly spectacular downfall, which threatened to reach the step of the
chai
and flood the room. He made a paper model, we began to see a possibility and felt at least one step nearer to getting the problem solved. Who would actually do the job was yet another problem. Then the previous summer we had had the chance to acquire some really old tiles. They had come from reroofed outbuildings at the local chateau, which we learnt had just been sold, and restoration work had begun.
From the first year that we bought Bel-Air we have known about the local chateau. On brief moments ofrespite in those early days, as we sat outside in the sunshine, with a hastily concocted sandwich and a glass of wine, the distant cry of peacocks would often drift up across the fields when the wind was from the south. Later, when we had more time and began to explore our region, on our way to our nearest town of Monflanquin, we would catch a glimpse through the trees of a large shuttered house with an elegant but crumbling loggia on one side and a high-turreted belfry. Although we could not see it, we knew that there was also a lake, because Grandpa, as the local
gardien de chasse
, had permission to fish it for trout and crayfish.
From various people we heard the sad story of Monsieur, the late owner of the chateau and the last in the line of the once proud family De Becay, who in happier times had been close to the Royal Court. The locals seem to have been fond of the old man, the sole survivor. They understood and respected his decision to remain unmarried and not to have children, fearing that any offspring might inherit the madness of his older brother. However, we learnt that, later in life, Monsieur did eventually marry a middle-aged widow with children of her own. One of the sons, the story said, became involved in Paris in a court case involving fraud, causing his stepfather a great deal of unhappiness. The years passed, Madame died, and Monsieur, now old, alone and frail, and presumably infinancial difficulties, made, with the man who normally sold his sheep for him, a perfectly legal arrangement that is quite common here. It would, he hoped, assure him of an income for the remainder of his life, but as it turned out, it also provided a source of local gossip for years to come.
Raymond had, in fact, acquired Bel-Air in 1961 by a similar arrangement.
Rente viagère
, as it is called, is a life annuity agreement between an elderly person and a relative, or a trusted friend or neighbour. Simple and very practical, it is designed for people who reach a stage in their lives when they need support but do not wish to leave their home. Each agreement is an act, carefully drawn up by the
notaire
to suit each particular
They made short work of trimming our straggling hedge, restoring our view up to the vineyard and, as they pulled up the splendid growth of weeds behindthe hedge, we discovered something else that we had forgotten; a neat stack of about two hundred, very old Roman roof tiles. That reminded us that we had still not found a solution to the roofing over the small terrace outside our fourth bedroom, which we had made in the
chai
. As long as the weather was fine, guests who stayed in that room were happy to walk outside to the shower. When it rained hard, however, they got a shower of a different kind and too often had also to negotiate a small lake. We left an umbrella just inside the bedroom door but year after year we puzzled about what to do.
The difficulty lay in the joining together of two roof edges, which sloped in different directions. ‘There must be a solution,’ said Mike after a particularly spectacular downfall, which threatened to reach the step of the
chai
and flood the room. He made a paper model, we began to see a possibility and felt at least one step nearer to getting the problem solved. Who would actually do the job was yet another problem. Then the previous summer we had had the chance to acquire some really old tiles. They had come from reroofed outbuildings at the local chateau, which we learnt had just been sold, and restoration work had begun.
From the first year that we bought Bel-Air we have known about the local chateau. On brief moments ofrespite in those early days, as we sat outside in the sunshine, with a hastily concocted sandwich and a glass of wine, the distant cry of peacocks would often drift up across the fields when the wind was from the south. Later, when we had more time and began to explore our region, on our way to our nearest town of Monflanquin, we would catch a glimpse through the trees of a large shuttered house with an elegant but crumbling loggia on one side and a high-turreted belfry. Although we could not see it, we knew that there was also a lake, because Grandpa, as the local
gardien de chasse
, had permission to fish it for trout and crayfish.
From various people we heard the sad story of Monsieur, the late owner of the chateau and the last in the line of the once proud family De Becay, who in happier times had been close to the Royal Court. The locals seem to have been fond of the old man, the sole survivor. They understood and respected his decision to remain unmarried and not to have children, fearing that any offspring might inherit the madness of his older brother. However, we learnt that, later in life, Monsieur did eventually marry a middle-aged widow with children of her own. One of the sons, the story said, became involved in Paris in a court case involving fraud, causing his stepfather a great deal of unhappiness. The years passed, Madame died, and Monsieur, now old, alone and frail, and presumably infinancial difficulties, made, with the man who normally sold his sheep for him, a perfectly legal arrangement that is quite common here. It would, he hoped, assure him of an income for the remainder of his life, but as it turned out, it also provided a source of local gossip for years to come.
Raymond had, in fact, acquired Bel-Air in 1961 by a similar arrangement.
Rente viagère
, as it is called, is a life annuity agreement between an elderly person and a relative, or a trusted friend or neighbour. Simple and very practical, it is designed for people who reach a stage in their lives when they need support but do not wish to leave their home. Each agreement is an act, carefully drawn up by the
notaire
to suit each particular
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