‘I don’t think so. Sorry, Lise.’
‘Look, Franck, I don’t want to fight about this. After everything I’ve been through in the last two years, I’m not fighting about this. It’s not a big deal. I’ll go on my own.’
‘It’s you that I’m worried about, Lise. What happens if you don’t like it after a couple of days? There’s literally nothing there, it’s in the middle of bloody nowhere. I looked it up on Google Maps and there’s nothing nearby, not even a village. Just hills and trees.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m looking for.’
‘Don’t you think there’s something a bit funny about the website? There’s something about it that doesn’t feel right.’
Franck had compared the page with a couple of other rental websites and found a few things that worried him. The house had clearly not been up on the website for long, as no one had left a comment or a review. Perhaps even more unusually, it was almost June and the gîte was still free for the whole of August.
‘I think that’s a good thing!’
For Lise, the fact that the house was still available when everything else was booked up was further proof that it was meant to be. They were meant to rent it. As for the lack of amenities, she had already come up with a plan. If there was no washing machine, she could already see herself washing their sheets in the river and hanging them outside to dry in the fresh air. There was nothing that could have put her off the house – more than anything she wanted to get back to nature, to practise meditation among the trees, to paint something other than city scenes and urban life, and to walk off the beaten track, safe in the knowledge she would not encounter another soul.
The person whose contact details were given on the advert seemed to take a long time to respond to emails, and when they did the messages gave little away. Twice Lise had dialled the 0065 number provided. The voice on the other end spoke neither French nor English, and when someone rang her back it was always at two or three o’clock in the morning and the caller never left a message. But the website was certified; it couldn’t have been a scam. In any case, Lise had decided not to let any of this worry her. This would be her approach to life from now on: she would let her instincts guide her.
Franck was also gradually coming round to the idea. He told himself that at least if it went badly, he would be proved right. He wouldn’t labour the point, he would simply say, ‘You know, I said from the beginning we’re not cut out for country living.’ He wasn’t worried; he knew it wouldn’t end up being three weeks there. Work would give him an excuse to make regular trips back up to Paris, and he would have plenty of ways to limit his time there. Unlike Lise, he had no desire to cut himself off from civilisation and not see anybody.
‘You know no one would come and visit us there, right?’
‘So that’s what you’re really worried about! You don’t think we’ll be able to cope for three weeks on our own, just the two of us, do you?’
‘No, Lise, I just think that … you don’t know what it’s like, living in the countryside.’
His own feelings aside, he reflected that for Lise this would be a chance to test her intuitions about her health and the new daily regime she was putting herself through. She wanted a month away from absolutely everything that was bad for her. Spending such a long time fearing for your partner’s life takes a toll on a relationship. Even if at times you’re not sure you still love each other, even if you often have arguments and swear that it’s over, when one of you suddenly finds themselves waiting months for diagnoses and test results, then all that love that seemed to have faded is revived; all that love you’ve stopped showing each other comes back with renewed force. He had lost count of the number of times he had told himself during the six months of her treatment that if he lost Lise, he would lose everything. He didn’t make sense without her. He had enormous respect for the courage she had shown all through her illness, for the way she accepted the doctors’ appointments and treatments without doubting them, or without appearing to. He admired that in her – her ability to stay calm and relaxed. Since Lise had recovered, he had taken care of her. Without making it obvious, he looked after her, even though he knew that she was more resilient than he was. He understood how her cancer had affected her, her need to get close to nature, how furious she became each time she switched on her computer and discovered dozens of Wi-Fi connections available, how she disliked seeing everyone on their phones in the street, on the Métro or in cafés, because now she could physically feel the electromagnetic radiation. She felt irradiated by the waves from those millions of connections, phone calls and networks which were always there, passing through us, to say nothing of the hotspots and myriad communications on RER trains and in cafés. And on top of that were the warnings about pollution and air quality, the constant reminder that, in the city, even breathing was dangerous. She had grown to hate the scooters and the buses belching black fumes, the coaches which kept their engines running even when they were at a standstill, the lack of consideration that was at the root of everything. She worried about the ever-increasing traffic or the daily revelations about the pesticides everywhere or the endocrine disruptors found in green beans … At least, at the gîte, there would be no farming nearby, no fields, just limestone plateaus.
She wasn’t thinking of changing her way of life, but she was absolutely certain that her environment was toxic. It was like a daily assault, and, from what she understood about the gîte, whilst there she would be safe from pollution. She had emailed the owners with a question that probably surprised them. She asked if it was correct that there was no internet, and more importantly, no mobile signal at the house. They took three days to reply, ‘No, sorry, no signal at the house,’ fearing that was the wrong answer.
August 1914
When war was declared on Saturday, 1 August 1914, people expected human deaths. What they did not foresee was that alongside the tide of humanity sent to die there would also be millions of animals. In cities and in the countryside, horses were requisitioned even before troops had been gathered. Mobilisation posters that had mouldered for years in drawers in town halls were dusted off, pasted on walls and a date inserted in the box provided. Immediately, in response, husbands, fathers and sons filled entire trains taking them to kill those other husbands, fathers and sons who had been designated their enemies. Animals that had done nothing to cause war were caught up in the madness.
All over Europe, animals were enlisted for war. Hundreds of thousands of terrified horses were sent into battle, ridden by light cavalry or dragoons, carrying officers through the battlefields or towing all that was yet to be motorised. Oxen were yoked to cannons on impossible paths. It took three pairs to pull one wagon overloaded with munitions or kit, or heavy artillery weighing tons. They were exposed to the line of fire. All the docile, loyal animals man had domesticated now found themselves engaged in the fury of war and became targets for the enemy.
As soon as hostilities began, everyone was ordered to declare all their animals to the army recruiters. The prospect of war seemed to have unleashed madness. It was a madness that led to kennels and pounds being emptied in order to quickly train up dogs to sniff out mines or gas. Fearsome hounds and cuddly lapdogs alike suddenly found themselves in the heat of combat, detecting bombs. Sometimes they were loaded with explosives and a fuse and sent to blow themselves up in the enemy trenches. Just as the Romans threw flaming pigs at Hannibal’s elephants, so, in 1914, men forced sheep onto minefields so that the mines exploded under hooves rather than feet.