Our House is Not in Paris by Susan Cutsforth Page B

had never experienced such a strong connection with the past. In fact, what was really interesting was that our second terrace in Newtown was in our ‘dream’ category. It was a magnificent, grand two-storey terrace in a line of about twelve similar ones on a wide, tree-lined street. When we lived around the corner in our smaller terrace, we would often walk past and admire them. We never dreamt that one day we would actually live in one. Yet we made that dream come true and, while the house was very grand, it always felt strangely distant and never embraced me in the way our little French farmhouse did almost straight away.
    Our life was so extraordinary, in fact, that parts of it had become ‘secret’. Off we went to work, to our two ordinary jobs, and yet we had such astonishing things going on that somehow we felt we could no longer share it all, simply because it was in the realm of being too amazing. It was not what ordinary people do at all. It was a very strange way to feel, especially as, at the start of our marriage, life was such a struggle. I think that’s what makes what we have achieved even more astonishing. The fact that Stuart was unemployed for the first year of our marriage. The fact that we had to scrape the money together at the end of each fortnight before pay day to find enough money for bread and milk. And now look at us. We were living a life we didn’t even know enough about to even dare to dream of. So, in that sense, it was more than a dream come true because we never imagined that, in the realm of our ordinary lives, we would ever have a house in France. What it did mean was that life felt perpetually surreal. That, for us, there was always another hidden dimension beyond the everyday routine.
    I think that was why, in the end, we were so mindful of not talking about it too much. That somehow, we had found ourselves in this undreamt of position of being able to invite our family and friends to France to be a part of it and share the dream with us.

Back in Cuzance
    The following morning, we woke to the cooing of wood doves and the utter quiet of the countryside. I opened the windows and then flung open the heavy wooden shutters. It was cool and damp and, to my joy, there were two rabbits, their bob tails a flash of white bouncing along the road. It is true that everything always looks better after a good night’s sleep, though perhaps not the fifth meal of pain in a row. As I couldn’t find the keys to open the door, I clambered over the stone windowsill to sit on the steps to have my morning café . The rabbits paused beside the stone pillars at the entrance to our jardin and silently contemplated the sight of someone sitting on the steps of the house that was usually shut up. Just at that moment, Stuart emerged from the bedroom and found me struggling to swing my legs back over the high sill. He was understandably bemused by what I was doing. The church bells rang at seven to signal the start of another day: our first new day back in Cuzance.
    With perfect timing, Jean-Claude arrived just after we had our showers and he was hugely relieved to see us. Strangely, they had not received either of my messages. My email was blank and the message did not appear on their home phone. It was all very mysterious. Just like every single day in France, it was on with the day’s full program of events. Jean-Claude knew that, first of all, we desperately needed to go to the supermarché , since last night’s plan to do so with him had not eventuated. He whisked us off to La Vieux Prieuré to greet Françoise, with whom we also had a joyous reunion. Then we set off to Martel, our nearest town, a mere seven minutes away. As we rounded the corner we caught our first glimpse of it, enveloped in the soft green folds of the hills. While quite small, Martel is beautiful, distinctive for its seven large towers, and steeped in history. It was then that we felt we were