They had been inseparable for much of their adult lives – in their professional lives too. It is quite something to think that for twenty-five years your life has been bound up with the person you live with, to the point that you are almost fused together. Lise had been filming a lot when they first met, getting one role after another and often travelling to the USA. She had even helped him produce his first feature film out of her own pocket. Franck had only produced short films before meeting Lise, small things that won awards at festivals but made no money. His first two feature films were flops, and again Lise had saved his skin and stopped him from going broke. Maybe that’s what being a couple means: needing someone absolutely and relying on them, knowing that depending on the circumstances, one of the couple will need to be doing well when the other isn’t, otherwise the relationship would not be balanced.
She knew better than anyone what an ordeal it was to produce a film; she had a huge amount of respect for the work producers did, having to put on a show of strength and reassure others while deep down they were terrified of losing everything. Without her, Franck might not have succeeded in building the career he now had. Had they not met, he might still have been producing short films or adverts, or maybe he would have opened the restaurant he had talked about at the time, the kind of back-up plan you cling to when things aren’t going well. Over the years, Lise and Franck’s roles had balanced each other. For ten years they had both succeeded in their own careers. They had never worked together but they had always loved and supported one another, until Lise could no longer find roles at her level, and then she lost the desire to act. Acting is a profession that leaves little room for you to be yourself, and once she had reached forty, Lise had no longer wanted to be somebody else, to play a character more or like her, to appear in front of a camera that captured the slightest wrinkle or lack of sparkle. She could no longer stand the feeling of having that eye focused on her, observing everything. Because screen acting always comes back to lying about your age: you play thirty-year-olds at forty, forty-year-olds at fifty, and you lie more and more desperately. Having played one character after another, she no longer knew who she really was, or what she liked, or what kind of life she wanted. What she was really searching for was authenticity, calm and peace. That’s why Lise felt completely at home here before she had even seen the whole house or explored its surroundings. At least here she had everything she wanted, for three weeks minimum.
Down at the bottom of the valley, Franck had not lost heart. She was reminded of a man struggling to keep up with the times. Over the past few months, she had realised that he was worried. He was uncomfortable with the direction cinema was taking, the trend for young people to watch films on increasingly small screens. She had known for a year now that he felt that he was making old-fashioned cinema. Things were also going badly with his two new partners, two men in their thirties who didn’t talk about film, but about content, and dreamed of one thing only: a co-production with Netflix.
Franck was a stubborn man. He had vanished from her field of vision ten minutes ago. She thought how ironic it would be if he spent his three weeks here just searching for somewhere to get a signal. She walked out onto the perfect little south-facing balcony and decided that this was where she would set up her easel in the morning. When she had started painting again two years ago, she had promised herself that she would have her first exhibition next year, whether she had a gallery or not, and there was no lack of inspiration here. From this viewpoint overlooking the hill, she decided she would do her hour of meditation among the reeds and box beside the water tank as soon as the sun came up. She would relax in the shade of the big lime tree. In the evenings she would paint under the great oak tree. Everywhere she looked, she was happy; everything was full of the promise of activity. Franck finally came back into view. He appeared from the undergrowth at the very bottom of the hill and began to climb back up to the house, no longer looking at his phone. She called out to him again.
‘Well?’
He replied with a weary gesture. The slope was clearly steep. It was strange to see Franck in this environment, with his polo shirt and trousers that he had obviously just torn in the brambles. The grass was taller than it looked, and he had to lift his knees up to get through it, as if he was wading through water. He did not look like a man who could cope with this, especially not in his calfskin moccasins. He was out of breath and soaked in sweat.
It was then that Franck heard insects buzzing around him and the frantic chirping of cicadas in the distance, as well as a pounding in his temples. In fact, it was not as silent as all that here. And then his phone rang – at least, he thought he heard it. He hurriedly took it out of his pocket, pulling it out as if it was burning. But nothing, not even one missed call. It was a phantom ring, a kind of mirage. They say this happens to people who are truly addicted. After an hour, he was already getting hallucinations. Lise understood what was happening, and how much it would bother him. The hill was an island where they would be completely alone, isolated, and she had a strong feeling that they could be happy here, making the most of the wholesome ambiance. They could be happy here … Or it might be hell.
August 1914
The first problem of the war was the fact that it had started at the height of summer. The sun had ripened the ears of wheat throughout spring, and the crop seemed as promising as ever, but the call-up had started just as they planned to start harvesting. The fields were bursting with grain and there was no one to harvest it. The nation’s bounty was in danger of dying unreaped. Millions of francs would simply evaporate from the fields, and across the country there would no grain for bread.
The day after war was declared, the President solemnly called upon the nation’s women to stand in for the men so that the harvest could begin. Even though the women would have stepped in anyway, notices were printed and the village police sent to drum up support. The President went as far as to plead with his female citizens in the newspapers:
Arise, women of France, arise children, arise sons and daughters of the homeland! Take your place in the fields to replace those on the battlefields … Prepare to show them on their return cultivated land, gathered-in harvests and fields sown with new crops! Arise! To action! To work! Tomorrow there will be glory for all. Long live the Republic! Long live France!
In Orcières-le-Bas, as soon as the husbands, fathers and sons departed, the women took over. As the men were heading in trains to the eastern front where killing was the only way to avoid dying, the women turned the other way, towards life. The men were moved from position to position, mere pawns on the great chessboard of death, while the women kept things alive. On 4 August they started to harvest, cutting and threshing the wheat and then bringing in the straw. They had to pull the ploughs themselves. Before the war, three horses or two oxen had been harnessed to a plough but now they had to make do with a single old ox or nag that could barely shift the plough, so that the women had to use all their force to engage the ploughshare. Because the tools were designed for men, they were always too high or too heavy. As soon as the ploughshare snagged on a stone, the handles of the plough would catch the women in the chest and the earth in the furrows would hit them as if rejecting them. Some women, who had no oxen, hitched themselves to the ploughs like beasts of burden. Working the land was a hundred times harder for the women than it had been for the men, but still they harvested, they threshed, they ploughed and spread the straw out to dry, and on top of that they had to feed the children and look after the old people. Each woman put their own wishes to one side in a world stalked by death. They took it all on. They often worked for fifteen hours straight, did the washing, cooked, sowed and got no sleep. In that village nothing daunted the women. Except the sound of the lions growling and the fear that one day they would meet them face to face.