it.
But at Nice the sun was shining, and it did not take very much to restore Gloria to her usual light-hearted self. In fact, it took no more than my renting a car for our trip to the last known address of Inge Winter. At work Gloria had seen me dictating and conversing in German, and - sometimes my imperfect Russian was used too. So she was ill-prepared for my halting French.
It went wrong right from the start. The beautifully coiffured young French woman at the car rental desk was understandably irritated when I tried to interpose news about my need for a car into a private conversation she was having with her female colleague. She didn’t hide her irritation. She spoke rapidly and with a strong Provencal accent that I couldn’t follow. When finally I appealed to Gloria for help in translating this girl’s rapid instructions about finding the vehicle, Gloria’s jubilation knew no bounds. No compree!’she said and laughed and clapped her hands with joy.
Despite Gloria’s uncooperative attitude we found the car, a small white Renault hatchback that must have been sitting in the rental car pound for many winter days, for it did not start easily.
But once away, and on to the Autoroute heading west, all was well. Gloria was laughing and I was finally persuaded that it had all been very amusing.
It was only a few minutes along the Autoroute before the Antibes exit. On this occasion, determined not to provide more laughs for Gloria I had a handful of small change ready to pay the Autoroute charge. Now, with Gloria bent low over a map, we began to thread our way through the back roads towards Grasse.
Once off the Autoroute you find another France. Here in this hilly backwater there is little sign of the ostentatious wealth that marks the coastline of the Riviera. Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and Ferraris are here replaced by brightly painted little vans and antique Ladas that bump over the large pot-holes and splash through the ochre-coloured pools that are the legacy of steady winter rain. Here is a landscape where nothing is ever completed. Partially built houses - their innards skeletal grey blocks” fresh cement and ganglia of wiring - stand alongside half-demolished old farm buildings. Ladders, broken bidets and abandoned bath tubs mark the terraces of olive trees. Heaps of sand - eroded by the rain storms - are piled alongside bricks, sheets of galvanized metal and half-completed scaffolding . The fruit of urban squalor litters the fields where the most profitable cash crop is the maison secondaire. But “Le Mas des Vignes Blanches” was not such a place.
Here, on the south-facing brow of a hill, there was a Prussian interlude in the Gallic landscape. The house had once been a place from which some lucky landowner surveyed his vineyards. Now the hillsides were disfigured with a pox of development, an infection inevitably rendered more virulent by the thin crescent of Mediterranean which shone pale blue beyond the next hill.
The house was surrounded with a box hedge but the white wooden gates were open, and I drove up the well-kept gravel path. The main building must have been well over a hundred years old. It wasn’t the grim rectangular shape that northern landowners favoured. This was a house built for the Provengal climate, two stories with shuttered windows, vines climbing across the faqade, some mature palm trees - fronds thrashing in the wind - and a gigantic cactus, pale green and still, like a huge prehensile sea creature waiting to attack.
At the back of the house I could see a cobbled courtyard, swept and scrubbed to a cleanliness that is unusual hereabouts. From the coachhouse jutted the rear ends of a big Mercedes and a pale blue BMW. Behind that there was a large garden with neatly pruned fruit trees espaliered on the walls. I noticed the lawns in particular. In this part of the world - where fierce sunshine parches the land - a well-tended lawn is the sign of eccentric foreign tastes, of a
But at Nice the sun was shining, and it did not take very much to restore Gloria to her usual light-hearted self. In fact, it took no more than my renting a car for our trip to the last known address of Inge Winter. At work Gloria had seen me dictating and conversing in German, and - sometimes my imperfect Russian was used too. So she was ill-prepared for my halting French.
It went wrong right from the start. The beautifully coiffured young French woman at the car rental desk was understandably irritated when I tried to interpose news about my need for a car into a private conversation she was having with her female colleague. She didn’t hide her irritation. She spoke rapidly and with a strong Provencal accent that I couldn’t follow. When finally I appealed to Gloria for help in translating this girl’s rapid instructions about finding the vehicle, Gloria’s jubilation knew no bounds. No compree!’she said and laughed and clapped her hands with joy.
Despite Gloria’s uncooperative attitude we found the car, a small white Renault hatchback that must have been sitting in the rental car pound for many winter days, for it did not start easily.
But once away, and on to the Autoroute heading west, all was well. Gloria was laughing and I was finally persuaded that it had all been very amusing.
It was only a few minutes along the Autoroute before the Antibes exit. On this occasion, determined not to provide more laughs for Gloria I had a handful of small change ready to pay the Autoroute charge. Now, with Gloria bent low over a map, we began to thread our way through the back roads towards Grasse.
Once off the Autoroute you find another France. Here in this hilly backwater there is little sign of the ostentatious wealth that marks the coastline of the Riviera. Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and Ferraris are here replaced by brightly painted little vans and antique Ladas that bump over the large pot-holes and splash through the ochre-coloured pools that are the legacy of steady winter rain. Here is a landscape where nothing is ever completed. Partially built houses - their innards skeletal grey blocks” fresh cement and ganglia of wiring - stand alongside half-demolished old farm buildings. Ladders, broken bidets and abandoned bath tubs mark the terraces of olive trees. Heaps of sand - eroded by the rain storms - are piled alongside bricks, sheets of galvanized metal and half-completed scaffolding . The fruit of urban squalor litters the fields where the most profitable cash crop is the maison secondaire. But “Le Mas des Vignes Blanches” was not such a place.
Here, on the south-facing brow of a hill, there was a Prussian interlude in the Gallic landscape. The house had once been a place from which some lucky landowner surveyed his vineyards. Now the hillsides were disfigured with a pox of development, an infection inevitably rendered more virulent by the thin crescent of Mediterranean which shone pale blue beyond the next hill.
The house was surrounded with a box hedge but the white wooden gates were open, and I drove up the well-kept gravel path. The main building must have been well over a hundred years old. It wasn’t the grim rectangular shape that northern landowners favoured. This was a house built for the Provengal climate, two stories with shuttered windows, vines climbing across the faqade, some mature palm trees - fronds thrashing in the wind - and a gigantic cactus, pale green and still, like a huge prehensile sea creature waiting to attack.
At the back of the house I could see a cobbled courtyard, swept and scrubbed to a cleanliness that is unusual hereabouts. From the coachhouse jutted the rear ends of a big Mercedes and a pale blue BMW. Behind that there was a large garden with neatly pruned fruit trees espaliered on the walls. I noticed the lawns in particular. In this part of the world - where fierce sunshine parches the land - a well-tended lawn is the sign of eccentric foreign tastes, of a
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