CHAPTER 7 Taking Possession

About a week before Christmas Dick called me to let me know that his purchase in Agde had completed, and that he and a decorator friend would be driving down to southern France the day before Christmas eve, and would I like to go with them? They planned to stay for a week and paint the interior of the house top to bottom.

Just how Dick had managed to convince his wife Sybil, that he could abandon her and their three sons over the Christmas holiday I had no idea. I knew that Jane would be very upset if I tried to emulate his example, but probably not as much as Sarah would be. Apart from that I really enjoy Christmas day at home, watching Sarah unwrap her presents, while I get inebriated and eat too much.

I declined, but arranged to fly down the day after Boxing day. As arranged, in the late morning of the appointed day, I caught a flight from Heathrow to Montpellier, where I hired a small Citroen rental car.

It was around 4pm on December 27th, when I first stood forlornly before the back door of our purchase, wondering how a mere four months could have brought about such a transformation. This was first time since our September house hunting trip, that I had returned to Frasquenet.

The summer had been a good one, even by Languedoc standards. "A good year for wine" all of the property agents had told us. Well, I was now praying that the summer had not been too exceptional. I had noticed something was not quite right, as soon as I had driven out of the parking lot at Montpellier airport. Admittedly it was now the middle of winter and it wasn’t actually snowing, but it was cold, the sky was no longer a crystal clear blue, but overcast grey and it was drizzling. Now the lush green vineyards, dangling generous bunches of purple grapes, that had stretched as far as the eye could see, had become a series of brown muddy fields, sprouting thousands of evenly spaced, gnarled dead looking, woody stumps.

Our holiday home, which had been lavishly endowed with a leafy green outer layer, now lay bare before me, stripped of its colourful summer cloak, revealing a spindly twig like structure, clinging to grey cement rendering, which was peppered with a generous helping of damp patches and cracks. Also revealed were a couple of large iron crosses, apparently bolted to the back wall. These crosses I realised were to prevent the wall from moving, which it must have presumably started to do at some time in the past.

I reluctantly moved toward the door, half hoping the key would not fit, and that I'd made a mistake and come to the wrong house.

Alas, the key fitted perfectly. I turned it and with a small push, the door swung open. I was nearly knocked out by the stench. I staggered backward gasping for breath, "What on earth ...". I stood there feeling utterly alone, and realising that darkness would soon replace the failing grey daylight, I convinced myself that someone had left behind a rotting corpse to welcome me. Apart from the psychological effect, it would have made little real difference if the house had been bathed in brilliant sunlight, because all the shutters were closed so the interior would have been pitch black anyway. I cursed myself for not having brought a torch with me.

It took a while, but eventually boldness prevailed. I took a deep breath, raced into the house, found the electric meter, turned on the power and raced out again, for another lung full of breathable air. Back inside, I ran to the kitchen, turned on the light and then the taps serving the sink. Then interspersed with more exits for fresh air, I found the bathroom where I opened the washbasin taps and ran the shower.

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