A Year In Provence

They were pleased with their tip. We hoped they would go out and have a glorious, messy meal, and let someone else clear up.

DIDIER WAS SQUATTING on his haunches with a dustpan and brush, sweeping crumbs of cement out of a corner. It was heartening to see this human machine of destruction engaged in such delicate chores; it meant that his work was over.

He stood up and emptied the dustpan into a paper bag and lit a cigarette. 'That's it,' he said.'Normalement, the painter will come tomorrow.' We walked outside, where Eric was loading the shovels and buckets and toolboxes onto the back of the truck. Didier grinned. 'It doesn't bother you if we take the cement mixer?'

I said I thought we could manage without it, and the two of them pushed it up a plank ramp and roped it tight against the back of the driver's cab. Didier's spaniel watched the progress of the cement mixer with her head cocked, and then jumped into the truck and lay along the dashboard.

'Allez!' Didier held out his hand. It felt like cracked leather. 'See you on Sunday.'

The painter came the next day, and painted, and left. Jean-Pierre the carpet layer arrived. The wives had obviously decided that everything should be ready for their state visit.

By Friday night, the carpet was laid except for the last couple of meters.

'I'll come in tomorrow morning,' said Jean-Pierre, 'and you'll be able to move the furniture in the afternoon.'

By midday, all that remained to do was to fit the carpet under a wooden batten at the threshold of the room. It was while Jean-Pierre was drilling the holes to screw in the batten that he went through the hot-water pipe which ran under the floor, and a jet of water rose in a small and picturesque fountain, framed by the doorway.

We cut off the water supply, rolled back the sodden carpet, and called Monsieur Menicucci. After a year of alarms and emergencies, I knew his number by heart, and I knew what his first words would be.

'Oh la la.' He meditated in silence for a moment. 'The floor will have to be broken so that I can solder the pipe. You had better warn Madame. There will be a little dust.'

Madame was out buying food. She was expecting to return to a bedroom, bathroom, and dressing room that were dry, clean, and carpeted. She would be surprised. I advised Jean-Pierre to go home for medical reasons. She would probably want to kill him.

'What's that noise?' she said when I met her as she was parking the car.

'It's Menicucci's jackhammer.'

'Ah yes. Of course.' She was unnaturally, dangerously calm. I was glad Jean-Pierre had left.

Menicucci, in his search for the leak, had drilled out a trench in the floor, and we were able to see the hot water pipe with its neat hole.

'Bon,' he said. 'Now we must make sure there's no blockage in the pipe before I solder. You stay there and watch. I will blow through the tap in the bathroom.'

I watched. Menicucci blew. I received a gout of dusty water in the face.

'What do you see?' he shouted from the bathroom.

'Water,' I said.

'Formidable. The pipe must be clear.'

He made his repairs, and went home to watch the rugby on television.

We started mopping up, telling each other that it really wasn't too bad. The carpet would dry out. There was barely enough rubble to fill a bucket. The scorch marks from the blowtorch could be painted over. All in all, as long as one disregarded the jagged, gaping trench, it was possible to look at the rooms and consider them finished. In any case, we had no choice. Sunday was only hours away.

We weren't expecting anyone before 11:30, but we had underestimated the magnetic appeal that champagne has for the French, and the first knock on the door came shortly after half past ten. Within an hour, everyone except Didier and his wife had arrived. They lined the walls of the living room, awkward with politeness and dressed in their best, darting away from the sanctuary of the walls from time to time to swoop on the food.

As the waiter in charge of keeping glasses filled, I became aware of yet another fundamental difference between the French and the English. When the English come for drinks, the glass is screwed firmly into the hand while talking, smoking or eating. It is set aside with reluctance to deal with calls of nature that require both hands-blowing the nose or visiting the lavatory-but it is never far away or out of sight.

It is different with the French. They are no sooner given a glass before they put it down, presumably because they find conversation difficult with only one hand free. So the glasses gather in groups, and after five minutes identification becomes impossible. The guests, unwilling to take another person's glass but unable to pick out their own, look with longing at the champagne bottle. Fresh glasses are distributed, and the process repeats itself.

I was wondering how long it would be before our supply of glasses ran out and we had to resort to teacups when there was the familiar sound of a diesel engine in labor, and Didier's truck pulled up behind the house, and he and his wife came in through the back door. It was strange. I knew that Didier had a car, and his wife was dressed from head to toe in fine brown suede which must have sat very uneasily on the gritty seat of the truck.

Christian came across the room and took me aside.

'I think we might have a little problem,' he said. 'You'd better come outside.'

I followed him. Didier took my wife's arm and followed me. As we walked around the house, I looked back and saw that everyone was coming.

'Voila!' said Christian, and pointed at Didier's truck.

On the back, in the space usually reserved for the cement mixer, was a bulbous shape, three feet high and four feet across. It was wrapped in brilliant green crepe paper, and dotted with bows of white and red and blue.

'It's for you from all of us,' said Christian. 'Allez. Unwrap it.'

Didier made a stirrup with his hands, and with effortless gallantry, his cigarette between his teeth, plucked my wife from the ground and lifted her to shoulder height so that she could step onto the back of the truck. I climbed up after her, and we peeled off the green wrapping.

The last strips of paper came away to applause and some piercing whistles from Ramon the plasterer, and we stood in the sunshine on the back of the truck, looking at the upturned faces that surrounded us, and our present.

It was an antique jardiniere, a massive circular tub that had been cut by hand from a single block of stone long before the days of cutting machines. It was thick sided, slightly irregular, a pale, weathered gray. It had been filled with earth and planted with primulas.

We didn't know what to say or how to say it. Surprised, touched, and floundering in our inadequate French, we did the best we could. Mercifully, Ramon cut us short.

'Merde! I'm thirsty. That's enough speeches. Let's have a drink.'

The formality of the first hour disappeared. Jackets came off and the champagne was attacked in earnest. The men took their wives around the house, showing off their work, pointing out the English bathroom taps marked 'hot' and 'cold,' trying the drawers to check that the carpenter had finished the interiors smoothly, touching everything in the manner of curious children.

Christian organized a team to unload the great stone tub from the truck, and eight tipsy men in their Sunday clothes somehow managed to avoid being maimed as the lethal mass was maneuvered down two sagging planks and onto the ground. Madame Ramon supervised. 'Ah, les braves hommes,' she said. 'Mind you don't get your fingernails dirty.'

The Menicuccis were the first to leave. Having acquitted themselves with honor among the pates and cheeses and flans and champagne, they were off to a late lunch, but not before observing the niceties. They made a ceremonial tour of the other guests, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, exchanging bons appetits. Their farewell lasted fifteen minutes.

The others looked as though they were settled for the remainder of the day, eating and drinking their way steadily through everything within reach. Ramon appointed himself the official comedian, and told a series of jokes which became progressively coarser and funnier. He stopped for a drink after explaining how to determine the sex