‘Bonjour, Monsieur,’ she said, walking up behind him.
‘Mon dieu!’ he exclaimed, jumping almost out of his skin. He swung around, and she realised what he was holding in his hands was an actual rifle.
‘Non, Monsieur,’ she said, waving her hands in a gesture that she hoped looked apologetic. ‘Je suis désolé, je… um, didn’t mean, to um, faire un choc, une… Une surprise.’
He nodded and smiled; his mouth only just visible under his enormous grey moustache. ‘Désolé, Madame,’ he said, nodding at the gun. ‘C’est pour le sanglier.’
‘Sanglier?’ The gun was still, disturbingly, pointed at her, despite his smile. The man seemed to have forgotten it was there at all. While she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to shoot her intentionally, there was every possibility she wasn’t going to come out of this exchange very well. She noticed a small bottle of whiskey balanced on the bonnet of the Land Rover, just past his hand. It was three-quarters empty. The man looked a little too elderly to be trusted with a gun at all, and she noticed to her horror that one of his hands seemed to have an occasional involuntary twitch.
‘Oui, le sanglier!’ he said, pawing the ground with his foot and making a snorting noise. ‘Le pig, le pig of the forest,’ he added in broken English. ‘Wild.’
‘Oh, wild boar?’ she said. She’d read there was hunting in the area.
He shrugged. ‘Je ne comprends pas, Madame.’
‘Right. OK. Um, je suis… je ne trouve pas… Faux la Montagne?’
He shook his head sadly and shrugged, lifting the gun slightly as he did so, so it pointed towards her head instead of her heart. At least death, if it came, would be quick and painless, she reasoned, trying to step away from his line of fire.
She took out her phone and typed in the name of the village into her notes, then, carefully approaching from the side, away from the pointed barrel, she showed him.
‘Ah,’ he said, his eyes beginning to sparkle, ‘Faux la Montagne!’ Only rather than her forks la montaGnee he gave what must be its correct pronunciation. Which sounded nothing like what she’d said at all. ‘Oui, c’est la, c’est la!’ he said, pointing to the road ahead, excitedly.
‘Straight on?’ she said. ‘Er, tout droit?’
‘Oui, OUI!’ he said, waving his gun in delight.
‘Merci,’ she said, backing away, only half sure she’d been given any directions of use, but quite happy to end the conversation anyway.
‘Bonne journée, Madame!’ he continued as she climbed into her car, still waving the gun with one of his hands. ‘Bonne après-midi!’
She roared away, her heart thumping – partly because of her recent proximity to the barrel of a gun; partly because she was beginning to realise that two years of evening classes may have made her on point when it came to writing things down, but speaking and pronouncing things correctly, remembering words in the moment, was going to be more of a challenge than she’d thought.
Half a kilometre on, she saw a small sign bearing the name ‘Faux la Montagne’. Sighing with relief, she rounded the corner and drove slowly past small stone houses that increased in number as she moved towards what must be the centre. About a hundred metres along, the road opened into a tiny square with a fountain at its heart, and the smallest church she’d ever seen on the right-hand side. Just ahead, a sign pointed to ‘Chambre d’Hotes’, and then suddenly she was there, parked in front of La Petite Maison.
Back in comparative civilisation, she began to relax. The village was charming, each house with its individual shutters – some wooden, some coloured pink, white or blue. There was a tiny boulangerie close to the fountain, and slightly down the road she could see the purple signage of a café. In the distance, she spotted a couple walking a dog on a long lead. ‘Maybe there is life on this planet after all,’ she whispered to the Nissan before climbing out and walking to the front door of the B. & B.
She’d chosen this particular accommodation because of its French rural charm – or at least what had appeared charming from the photograph on hotels.com – and its proximity to Broussas, which was just five kilometres away. And she wasn’t disappointed. The building was narrow, but three storeys high, with windows in the attic flung open to let in fresh air. The door was adorned with hanging baskets and each window had its own little row of flowerpots. It was, in short, exactly the sort of accommodation she wanted to create herself – welcoming, charming, beautiful, well cared for and unapologetically French. She put her journey out of her mind, banished thoughts of rushing home to Ben and Ty, and resolved that she’d really make a go of things. ‘C’est un nouveau départ’ – a new beginning.