
A Wail of a Departure for Chalabre
Our rendezvous was Richmond station, my hosts to be for the coming months were lining up the stars or killing two birds with one stone, they had a meeting to do about a bronze sculpture of Virginia Woolf, intended to simper on a bench on the Thames. I new little of my hosts; I knew that Laury Dizengremel was an American accented French-Dutch sculptress and the resident artist for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, and that Joe Caneen was an American accented American videographer, who was the hubby of. I had arrived early to the rendezvous and I brimmed jovially from a pleasant lunch I had in the midst of Holborn with my old chum Merry, unfortunately for him, whilst I made for the O’Neil by the station at Richmond, he was suffering the hefty oppression of sitting a LPC examination.
At five o’clock, I was informed that I would meet Joe Caneen and Lady Higgins outside the station. Do not mistake Lady Higgins as such a highbrowed individual yet, but rather as a curly, silvery and milky browed Shih Tzu. I made myself comfortable in the smoking garden of O’Neill’s, ordered a pint and gave broad thoughts to the adventures I wished to be found down in the south of France. On the table next to me, a pair of very reposed professionals made a kind comment on my Grandfather’s walking stick, with its forked deer antler handle and hawthorn spine, and invited me to join them. Both were extremely affable, well bred and endearing. Slesha looked deceivingly behind her years, she was Nepalese, smart and quick witted. Himasha held the charm of the favourite child, he was Sri Lankan and had that swooning accent thereof. With the air of thrown ties and unbuttoned shirts, they held their posture in relief of work and were finding reward at the bottom of a bottle of red. I pulled cigarettes to share and soon another bottle was ordered.
I had almost forgotten I was leaving England, for Himasha told the most mind dis-converging stories that I have ever dared to suspend a judgement of belief or not. There was a man in Sri Lanka, a Christian Shaman who lived a hermit existence, and even given his poverty and piety, he deterred nobody. Himasha told me of the queues winding off his hermitage, the ambivalent gratuitous service he gave and the corrections and miracles that he had miraculously manifested in the villages. He told me a personal tale, which I am obliged to not reiterate. I look at my watch, noticed the time and bounced off my feet in search of my hosts. Slesha had gone for her flight to Gatwick, but Himasha was extant and ready to look after my bags and order another bottle of red.
It was easy to locate Joe among the crowd, not because I had seen or knew any detail of him beforehand, but because of a little Shih Tzu waiting patiently, with a blue dyed crown of curly hair, sat under leash of an owner. Joe and I shook hands and I led him to O’Neill’s on the corner where I was to kennel Lady Higgins for two hours whilst waiting for the artiste and then our departure for France. For some reason, Joe had an essence of Peter Mattheissen, my first encounter having impressed upon me as if this man was carved out of the rock of the Rockies in America, a frontier type man. His voice was a softly, well homed American, his words were precise and unsuperfluous, as if it seemed you could ask him anything and a straight answer would come out. My initial time with him was brief, before he left me in full care of Lady Higgins. Himasha and I continued our boozy chat. but is was not long before Lady Higgins became terribly upset, she began a series of high pitched moans not unakin to a squeaky tire or a pet toy. Himasha and I look at one another concerned and searchingly, our brilliant conversation was being stuccoed more and more with this unwarranted addition of dog wails. But it was only two hours until the second rendezvous with my hosts, surely Lady Higgins could wait. She let out a shrill, a cry which brought ‘awes’ of compassion to the faces of the desirable ladies nearby, and suddenly we were in situation of being thieves and abductors. Quickly, Himasha and I adopted our minds to solving this issue. Water, I said in a moment of genius, and requested a bowl as such from the barman. No hope, Lady Higgins merely quenched her parched throat, like an operatic singer and belched her way into full contralto. Himasha puzzled his way across the crossed stone work and then rose to me wide eyed and shocked in a moment of eureka, Walk he said, and I began to believe once more. I stroked the leash from under the chair leg and pointed and winked to Himasha to keep my glass full and ready for my triumphant return.
Lady Higgins and I went off like a boyfriend in charge of his girlfriend’s poodle, and to me, already, she seemed well reoriented enough: sniffing the lampposts, patting excitably and serving across the pavement, an impolite attitude which nigh swept on-comers off their feet. I envisioned my return to Himasha, Lady Higgins dashing to lie prostrate as if beside a roaring drawing room fireplace of a chateau, and as I sat down a hand outstretched itself from within a high towering armchair with tumbler of swirling amber.
Well contented in the success of settling Lady Higgins with a walk, I came back to O'Neill’s and becalmed myself in my seat whilst Himasha raised a glass to appeasement. But no sooner than we clinked our glasses, we slowly reeled in suspense as Lady Higgins readopted her previous position sat longingly looking at the exit which Joe had left through. Lady Higgins murmured, we held our gasping gobs with our hands; she made a step forward as if uncertain and we lent forward as if to grasp at a fallen coin, and then she broke upon the interval with a full throttled mezzo-soprano howl of anguish that turned heads and spilled the rounds. Helplessly, we gathered Lady Higgins up in our arms and in turn groomed her as quiet and distracted as we could possibly achieve. I looked at my watch, it read half five, another hour and a half until the second rendezvous. We managed it in stressfully, but not without consistent attention to Lady Higgins and some aid from a neighbouring table. When the time came to part, Himasha and I shared details and said our good graces.
Lady Higgins and I found Joe a few streets up, dealing with a large BT box trailer attached to a Land Rover. As I approached, Laury Dizengremel wandered up, the first highlight was her electrical blue hair voluminously falling off her short cut (a fashion she shared with Lady Higgins), she was instantly energetic, although she proclaim her tiredness from all the meetings she had just endured. We orientated the luggage into the trailer and in no time made off out of London to Dover. Laury snoozed on the back seat with Lady Higgins at her feet, whilst Joe and I engaged in flowing conversation which caused Joe to miss time and time again the run offs for the service stations.
We took a French liner, then plummeted south as fast as we could drive through the night, playing musical chairs in the Land Rover that between Laury and Joe taking turns driving, we sat or snoozed in the front or back seats - Lady Higgins enjoying the variety of ankles to rest her cheeks on. The next day, as Toulouse approached ever nearer on the road signs, the heat accumulated. The air con refused to function, so the windows were lowered and a billow of air thundered in, but it had that charming effect of agitated hair and a sense of escapism that one sees in the movies. We past through the Midi, a wondrous landscape of undulating hills and sudden steepled villages on the knolls of hills, bustling with trees.
Toulouse went by, the hinterland rose into plains bordered by hummocks and low mountains, we took a road which went straight south to Pamier along a plain of husbandry, and ahead the shins of the Pyrenees began to kneel up in front of us. We turned parallel to the chain and went between the nodes, clusters of tiny red tile roofed villages in the hollows of valleys passed, a ruinous castle appeared like a craggy cliff on a peninsular, stood up on a hill like a set of dentures with missing teeth. It was Chateau de Lagarde. I was told of one of its occupants, who having missed many sessions of court in Versailles or Toulouse (can’t remember which), was asked by the king or count why, the seigneur replied, ‘It is obvious that Your Majesty by your question, with all due respect, that you have never experienced the pleasures of Lagarde?’, the king or count replied no, ‘Because if you had been, your Majesty, you would understand why one is so unable to so easily part with my country’. The country had once flowed with groves of vines, the crops were abundant and the climate ideal. This was the land of the troubadour and romance, the songs of courtships and love that spawned the age of medieval romance in the courts of the French aristocracy. The country in the middle ages was once rich in life and commerce, the burghers were uncommonly freer and the Counts of Toulouse were exceptionally wealthy. This was at the time of the crusades, Raymond IV had, I believe, had the largest contingency of the first expedition that massacred Jerusalem. But I was now in the lays of the Cathars, where the people once subscribed to an heretical sect of Christianity, whose populism in the region of the Languedoc led them to the pyre by the hands of the Crusading soldiers in the name of the Papacy. France has always been a wealth of history that is a shadow on my mind and especially here, in the Ariege, my new home in the low Pyrenees.
My hosts lived in the center of the small town called Chalabre, on the Place d’Halle, a roofed square where music and fetes are enjoyed. A resin replica of Laury’s Lancelot Capability Brown statue strode at the door of her home; it was a tall town house, wash in a render of yellow and touched up on the shuttered and borders with a dark caulk blue that mimicked the tones of the square. An elderly lady lent out of the first floor window as we pulled up, it was Lore, she was in her eighties, white haired with spectacles on the end of her nose and extremely fit — later, we amusingly watched her nigh spin around the bars of a park swing, apparently a hobby of hers since her youth. Lore was a master of yoga, made a fantastic salad with pesto and could speak many European languages — she was Laury’s step mother.
Lady Higgins burst out of the car and squealed at two ladies who’d just come out to meet us, they were Eve and her daughter Deirdre. They were both American, Eve had found settlement and sanctuary here after four years in Ireland after facing eviction from the visa police, she had a ‘boo’ (Laury’s word) and worked in selling cosmetics. Deirdre Darling was tall and had the most beauteous and captivating visage under spacious peach dyed locks, she was an artist and at seventeen she’d gone on a Italian renaissance art tour in Italy, we hit off instantly.
Inside the abode, busts of previous works mantled drawers and tables, like John Travolta in the living room, Churchill in the loo and Chinese countenances in the library. In the kitchen and dining room, a chandelier of polished brass pots, kettles and urns dangled upside down and let out a curious ambiance, best felt in romantic bars. Where rooms had been finish, great artistic care had detailed the paint and the furniture, there were heavy wooden chests and wardrobes, the library was half complete but already full with curious variations of French encyclopedias, Larousses and reference books; large hardcover tomes that kept pictures and texts of chateaux, sculptures, architecture and famous painters; there were novels of Napoleon, books of Victor Hugo and short works of French poetry.
I had found myself in a place of intrigue and energy, the coming weeks would unfold in a series of summer hued memories and good conversation. There was work to be done, castles to see, things to read and wine to drink. People of various relations of friends and family would pass through in quick blips, excursions to the sea, the lake, dinners and fetes to sing and dance on tables. This was where a wail was to be had in Chalabre.