Monday arrives too soon, in a haze of early morning mist. From the window of the guest bedroom in Mike and Suzanne’s house, we can see the lovely sight of many llamas, including ours, grazing on the lush green grass. For once, it is not raining.
There is no time to waste. We dress hurriedly and head outside to see if the chickens have survived their long journey and many-hours-long incarceration in their house in the horse-box. After unloading a muddle of damp miscellany onto a tarpaulin on the wet ground, we gain access to the door of the chicken house. With the cage at the ready, Simon opens the door and peers into the chickeny gloom. One, two…three……..four! All present and correct and, much to our relief, still alive. With the air of an expert chicken-handler (the lack of tentativeness actually resulting from a lack of time), Simon ‘encourages’ the little flock into the cage and carries them to the waiting chicken pen, that Mike and Sue had, very luckily-for-us, constructed at the same time as getting their llama fields fenced, in early readiness for the one-day when they would get their own chickens.
While the bleary-eyed poultry explore their temporary new stamping ground, we once again dismantle the house and carry its cumbersome parts to the pen, where it is swiftly re-erected, and immediately becomes an object of fascination for Mike and Sue’s curious puppy. And as soon as we have assured ourselves of the chickens continued well-being, reloaded the horse-box, reorganised the crazily-loaded car (so that there is actually room for me in the front passenger seat) and downed a hasty cup of coffee, we are off again, heading towards Moulins and the Moment of Commitment to Our New Life.
Convinced that we need to have arranged house insurance before the purchase transaction can be completed, Simon has already researched possible Insurance Agents in Moulins, and entered the address of his preferred option into the GPS. We have about an hour in which to drive the 40 kilometres to Moulins, find the place, sort the insurance and then get ourselves to the Notaire’s office in a different part of town, for 10.00am.
The drive to Moulins is lovely. Endless green, tree-speckled vistas open up on either side of us as we glide along the main-but-amazingly-quiet road. I wonder out loud whether any of the previous owners’ animals will still be at the house. We expect the horses to be gone, because the couple will need them to pull the horse-drawn caravan they are planning to live in. But what about the donkey? “If the donkey’s still there, will we keep it?” I ask Simon. “We don’t want a donkey! ” he snorts, “And, anyway, it’s such an ugly donkey.” I imagine the bedraggled Eeyore-like figure, standing in the rain, abandoned and unwanted outside the closed barn door. “Ah, now you’ve said that, we’ll have to keep it. How can you say that? Poor Ugly Donkey…nobody wants him…”
We arrive at the bridge over the Allier with twenty-five minutes to spare. Loads of Time.
And just as I think that thought, a massive hit of dream-like deja-vu kicks in. Bizarrely, there seem to be no satellites over Moulins today! The GPS goes down, just as we approach the town, leaving us with no idea where we are or where we need to go. And twenty-five minutes suddenly feels like a very-short-amount-of-time-indeed.
But there comes a point in Life, when there seems to be no point in worrying any more. There has been so much to worry about over the last few months – so many things that could have gone terribly wrong. And yet, somehow, in a way that seems barely possible, we seem to have arrived safely in the Allier along with all our llamas and chickens. I can’t help feeling that this is the way things are meant to be, so of course everything will be ok. And seriously, I really am too damned tired to worry any more.
So we let the Universe take over, and end up quite quickly stumbling across the Insurance Agent we are looking for, and there is even a free parking space outside it. Grinning complacently, we take our place in the small queue of People Waiting to be Insured. Our turn comes around. The Man is very smiley and helpful, and his French is very easy to understand. Simon capably answers his many questions as he completes the on-line forms. And then we hit a snag. It seems that our house is not a house. It is a farm. And it seems that this Insurance Company doesn’t insure agricultural buildings. “Mais, non, Monsieur!” We will have to go elsewhere.
The hint of a momentary panic flutters at the edge of my brain, but I look the other way. The Man suggests another place to try. He thinks it is on a road near the station. We sprint back to the car, and as I hurl myself into the passenger seat, slam the door shut (Simon winces), and shout “Go!”, I am reminded of how, once upon a time, I used to fantasize about being Aneka Rice.
Still no satellites over Moulins, so we revert to instinct and intuition. Simon has a vague mental recollection of an outline map of the town, and thinks he might know roughly where the station is. Except that we don’t know where we are now. So he just drives, and I just search for clues, and somehow we end up near the station, and “Jackpot!” there, up ahead of us on the right of the long, wide street, is a Groupama sign, jutting treasure-like into our field of view. But…
But it is not the right place. This is a head office – a centre of administration. It is very swanky, and plush and very alluring, but it is not a place where one can actually get insurance. That is in another building, in another street, in another part of town, in another Universe, where there is more time and a street map and a working GPS. And we are not there. We are here, with only ten minutes left till we are due at the Notaire’s office. And we don’t know where that is either.
“Ah, Sod It!” Simon exclaims, resigning himself to the insurance-free nature of our current situation. “I’ll just tell them I’ve done it on-line, and hope they don’t ask for proof”. Back in the car, we switch on the intuition radar again and head in a hopeful direction. Although I don’t really feel worried, I am aware that my heart is beating rather rapidly. I scan the passing street names for something resembling the one we are looking for.
“Damn It!” A red light stops us at a cross-roads that we were intent upon crossing. During the enforced moment-or-two’s wait, we glance about us. We see a hippy-looking couple crossing the road, carrying strangely-shaped instrument cases on their backs. Hang on a minute……. “It’s them”!” It is indeed the couple whose house we are, hopefully, about to buy. They spot us gawping stupidly at them out of the car window and wave to us. We look down the road they are heading towards and discover with glee that it is the street in which the Notaire’s office supposedly resides. So we turn right and drive into the first available parking space which just happens to be opposite the entrance to the office of Maitre Michel Vivier, Notaire.
We wait for our accomplices to catch us up, and enter the building en masse. We have arrived at exactly 10 o’clock. But this is France, and Me Vivier is a Notaire, so of course we have to wait. And while we wait, Simon asks the couple all the questions that have been on our minds over the last few days. What is the ‘puissance’ of the electricity supply to the house? Is is single or three-phase? Have the horses and the donkey gone? What are the rubbish-collection arrangements? Is the water supplied by a water company or the commune? And one other question that never gets asked….Where have you been emptying the composting toilet?
The couple happily answer all our questions, and pass on a few more bits of information. The three cats are still at the house. They are all female, and, no, they have not been neutered. There is one chicken still there – well, at least she was there last night. The others have all been eaten by a fox. The kitchen sink is disconnected from the drainage pipe because it is blocked. The hot water tank is switched off because the pressure-release valve leaks constantly. The phone is still connected, even though they have written a letter to say they are moving.
And just at the point where we have run out of questions and they have run out of answers, and the far-from-fluent conversation is grinding to an uncomfortable halt, Maitre Vivier appears, preceded five steps ahead by his vast ego.
Maitre Vivier is a tall, smartly-dressed man with a vigorous handshake and a lot of Presence. He is an Entertainer. He is a Showman. He loves to hear himself make witty and astute comments in perfectly-enunciated regulation French. He takes great care to appear off-hand. He is painstakingly relaxed. He ushers us into his neat and well-organised lair with vivacious gesticulations. I think fondly of Maitre Isard, and of our former dealings with a Notaire of Some Character. I suspect that this morning’s transaction will be completed with a qualitatively different degree of idiosyncrasy, and a far greater degree of alacrity. It will be swifter but nowhere near as charming.
The meeting progresses and I am struck by the fact that it seems to be impossible to generalise about the French process of buying and selling houses. Every such transaction that we have experienced has been different in so many ways from the previous one. I begin to wonder if there actually are any rules at all, and whether Notaires across the country make it all up as they go along. I am also struck by the fact that the Estate Agent has slunk into the room somewhere in the midst of the busy proceedings, and is now skulking in the chair on my right, smiling silently in anticipation of the Big Cheque that we are about to hand over to him for his disproportionately tiny contribution to the whole caboodle. I wonder briefly how he sleeps at night, and whether he has the capacity to feel embarrassment.
The point of similarity between this and every other French legal transaction in which we have previously been involved becomes immediately apparent at the point of the Signing. As always, Everybody has to sign Everything on Every Single Page. But Mr Entertainer is well-prepared for this part of the Show, and the papers fly in a perfectly-timed flurry of coordination, as Maitre Vivier uses both perfectly-manicured hands to prestidigitate the many-paged documents between the breathless members of his captive audience.
And then suddenly, it is All Over bar the shouting. No encores. No bows. Twenty minutes of hardly-noticed business, masquerading as a matinee performance. We pay the money and we get the keys. We all wish each other well and go our separate ways. No one notices the Estate Agent’s departure.
The house insurance turned out to be a non-issue, but we decide to look for the correct Groupama office anyway, and sort the deal before vacating the town. We are rewarded with an unbelievably low quote, and leave Moulins just as it is closing for lunch, with a folder full of Very Important documents, a pocket full of the biggest bunch of keys we have ever seen, and a car full of Thoughtful Anticipation.
As we drive back into the Green and Empty, the realisation hits us. We are Going Home.
