Reflections of Sunflowers by Ruth Silvestre Read Free Book Online

the rugs were moving, floating in three inches of water. Two dead mice swirled gently between them.
     
    We grabbed every available mop and pushed the water and the corpses out. We had only just finished by the time Hugh arrived for supper. We cooked veal cutlets from the famous, family calf, on the griddle over the fire but, sadly, they were not very tasty.
    The next day we looked for the leak in the
chai
. Where exactly had all this water come in? Dirty stains on one area of the wall gave us a rough clue. Mike, ever ingenious, drilled a hole through the pine panelling on the ceiling inside and by poking up a wire we gradually narrowed down the area outside on the long, sloping roof. We lifted and replaced thetiles carefully, one after the other. It took much patient investigation to eventually locate the cracked stop-tile. In the process of removing it, we found a chicken leg, picked clean, no doubt left by the
fouine
, when she was in residence. Whose chicken it had been would remain a mystery.

C HAPTER F IVE
    On Sunday the weather was still very hot but the air was heavy, and by evening there was just a suggestion of something brewing on the other side of the horizon. We had spent a lazy day alone. We swam and lay in the shade, ignoring the piles of garden rubbish that would soon, if the strong young men appeared as they had promised, be cleared for us. Raymond and Claudette had taken a few days holiday in that period which they call here ‘
entre la paille et la prune
,’ when the wheat is cut and the straw baled, but before the preparations must begin for the first plums to be harvested. They had gone to Cap d’Agde, where Véronique and Jean-Michel, their son-in-law, together with some of his five sisters, had bought a small apartment overlooking the harbour. We are thankful to escape from London to our rural idyll in Lot-et-Garonne; some of thosewho live and work in this wonderful space and quiet choose, for their diversion, a crowded, modern port.
    While they are there Claudette will still do most of the cooking and Raymond will, as usual, get up very early, but only in order to explore all the surrounding area by bicycle. He has always loved to travel, taking advantage of the annual trips organised by the
Syndicat Agricole
to look at the differences in farms in various departments of France and abroad. This idea of taking a few days off from time to time by themselves, however, is new and is gradually establishing for them both a more agreeable kind of life. Raymond had long been worried about becoming too old to work the farm and the idea of future leisure seemed impossible. Now, Jean-Michel takes on increasing responsibilities and, although not from a farming background, proves himself more than capable, although their frequent disagreements about the right way to do things, ‘
les systèmes
,’ can clearly be heard across the fields even over the roar of the tractor.
    As Jean-Michel did ten years ago, Raymond married into the farm, but unlike Jean-Michel, Raymond’s parents had always worked the land. In spite of this, he had to endure many a ticking off from Grandpa, Claudette’s father. On becoming part of the household, Raymond, always polite, would sit at the table, continue eating and fume quietly while the old man roared his disapproval of the new and less than traditional wayhe had sprayed the plum trees or treated the vines. Claudette, tactfully, would not take sides. Jean-Michel is neither tactful nor deferential. He is confident, gives as good as he gets and confounds Raymond by, as well as having become a competent farmer, being also able to build and decorate, repair and weld machinery and still find time to play football. It just seems rather unfair that Raymond should have had to endure criticism from first the older and now the younger generation.
    As we often do at the end of the day we walked slowly up through Raymond’s newest vineyard toward the wood. When we first came, in those early