Fish, fowl and the ferry
My little world BC (Before Clarissa) first took shape in Blaye with my then-girlfriend Claude. Before that (BCC), it was a year or two of, shall we say, interludes, some involving the odd guest or two at Villa Saint- Simon. All pleasant. All brief.
Claude, on the other hand, was a delightful friend, lover and partner for about seven years. We are still friends, and Clarissa, Claude and I had a fun holiday together not long ago.
Claude lives in a charming hamlet called Lansac, about 9 or 10 kilometres from Blaye. Her houses – there are two, separated by a pool – are exactly what one would imagine a French country house to be. Large stone fireplaces, lovely old French furniture and a garden vibrant with colourful plants and flowers, and fragrant with the aromas of the herbs that flourish in the garden. Claude’s daughter Daphne, or Daffers as I call her, lives in the second house when she is not in the city of Bordeaux.
During our time together, Claude had a dog, Mia, a beautiful Border Collie, with a gentle soul except when it came to chickens. Mia was a chicken hunter of note. On our walks I had difficulty restraining her whenever we crossed paths with these fowls. Claude’s neighbor’s, who all kept chickens, either for eggs or for the pot, were quite understanding about Mia’s occasional forays into their chicken coops. Whenever Mia came home with a faceful of chicken feathers, Claude would call around to the neighbors, offering reimbursement for the victims. They were generally forgiving, and mostly wouldn’t accept Claude’s offers to replace the lost birds.
Until the episode of M Marchadou, the neighbour in the opposite property. M Marchadou was very proud of a champion cockerel he had acquired. Apparently the cockerel had such a long and illustrious pedigree that if he was able to speak, he would certainly not converse with the likes of us. Mia, of course, was no respecter of pedigree, and one day the inevitable happened, and Mia despatched the prize cockerel to cockerel heaven. This was one bird too far, and when I returned that night after settling the guests in at Villa Saint-Simon, Claude told me the story:
M Marchadou knocked very loudly on the front gate, at the same time incessantly pressing the bell
When Claude opened the door, a spluttering, red- faced M Marchadou raged at her about Mia’s lack of respect for his aristocratic chicken, pointing to the offender who was lying on the porch in front of the door, cleaning some feathers from her mouth. “Look!” he shouted. “Your dog has my cock in his mouth!”
On occasion, socialising with various English speakers, I would ask Claude to tell the story………..
There was an acceptable ending, for the neighbour however, as she replaced the cockerel with one of equal breeding and M Marchadou was appeased.
For about 60 years, Claude’s family, first her grandmother, then her father, Claude and her brother, Stephane, have been running the family vine nursery. They have been the suppliers to all the great Grands Crus Châteaux in the Medoc. Mouton Rothschild, Lafite, Margaux and Latour and Haut Brion in Bordeaux, the stars of this region, have all had their vines supplied by the Renou family.
Most of the other classified growths have also been clients as well as many other famous châteaux in St Émilion, Graves, and other appellations. When our friends Charlie and Johnathan bought a house nearby, we gave them some vines for their pergola, and they dined out many times on the story that their vines were the same as those at Mouton and Lafite. Since then, that house has been bought and sold twice, and we count all the owners as friends.
Some mornings I would go to work in the nursery with Claude. She was the commercial director of the company, but she personally loaded the vines into the crates for delivery to her clients, checking each bundle of vines. She then used a forklift to move the crates into position for the delivery trucks. I found this very attractive and very sexy, this beautiful woman, loading and driving the forklift.
One morning, I arrived at the nursery, after leaving our guests at the villa to enjoy their breakfast, to find Claude in a state of great agitation. The two large company trucks had left to deliver vines, and had forgotten two crates urgently required for Mouton Rothschild. They absolutely had to be delivered that day.
Claude found one of the smaller company vans, just big enough for the two crates, so we loaded up and headed for the ferry, which docks just about 100 metres from the villa. Claude used it most days to go over to the Medoc, to see her clients, take orders and deal with any requirements the Châteaux may have had.
On the way she suggested that after the delivery we should drive to Arcachon (home to the highest sand dune in Europe) for lunch. This sounded good to me, so off we went. After a satisfying meal (Claude is famous for knowing all the best addresses), we suddenly realised we had very little time to get to Lamarque in the Medoc, to catch the last bac (ferry) back to Blaye.
After a fast and edgy journey, we arrived at the quay just in time to see the ferry chugging off. Claude hooted and simultaneously flashed the van’s lights. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes as the ferry turned, headed back towards us, docked, and lowered the side, so we could come aboard.
“How did you manage that?” I whispered to Claude. “We’re not even in your own car.” (She always drove a top-of’the-range black Mercedes.)
“Well,” she replied, “I use this ferry nearly every day, so when I tooted and flashed my lights, they knew it was someone important!”
The captain of the vessel invited us up to his deck, and they both had a chuckle at how amazed this foreigner was at how things rolled in the countryside.
I learned a lot from Claude. She was a great wine taster and a brilliant cook, adept at sourcing just the right wine to accompany the food. I learned that a nap for up to two hours in the afternoon is important. I learned that ex-girlfriends usually have no further role to play in one’s new relationship. She irreverently referred to my English ex as “the glue” even if the ex called me for the briefest chat. Of course she discarded these beliefs when she became the ex, and she is now firmly part of Clarissa’s and my lives, which are so much richer as a result.
Other things she tried to teach me? Well, one was that I should be “less democratic”, as she tactfully put it. Roughly translated, that meant I should be more discerning whom I greeted, with whom I engaged in discussion, and with whom I generally spent time. Claude is a bit of a snob, so I chose not to follow this lesson. Instead, to this day, I greet the street sweepers, garbage collectors and the people Claude refers to as “riff raff” in the betting shop with the same enthusiasm as I do the captains of the wine industry in Bordeaux. (I’ve found, by the way, that most of these owners and vignerons with whom I have been so fortunate to work for more than two decades are open, down to earth, and generally unpretentious and humble.)
Claude taught me not to pour wine into my own glass if we were guests for dinner, something that in South Africa would never have been an issue. I generally complied with this point of etiquette, except when dining with one of our regular hosts, who mostly forgot to top up (or didn’t see) empty wine glasses. To Claude’s horror, I said, after another 10-minute empty- glass wait, “May I?” At every meal after this, with this particular host, it was “Servez-vous” – help yourself.
There was the odd embarrassing moment. When buying fish at the market (held in Blaye on Wednesdays and Saturdays), most locals know that one checks that the eye of the fish is clear, not opaque. Claude had an additional test for freshness. This required a key on one’s key ring to be pressed into the side of the fish…
Woe betide the trader who claimed that a fish had not been frozen when it had: Claude could tell a formerly frozen fish at ten paces. She said the market traders took it all in good spirit, because she was a good and regular client. I confess, though, that I would wander off for a while whenever she bought fish.
Her English is better than that of most French people, but occasionally she provided some good laughs. I got used to her asking me to “low the mown”, (mow the lawn) for example, and her confusion between the words “cork, coke and cock” often caused much merriment.
I am very grateful to Claude: she helped me settle in this delightful but very different place, providing me with the softest possible landing. She also introduced me to wonderful people who remain acquaintances and friends to this day, more than 20 years later.