Page 5 of Summer at the Château
The waitress arrived with their breakfast crêpes at that moment and wished them ‘Bon appétit’ before leaving them to tuck in.
‘That was delicious,’ Pixie said five minutes later, placing her cutlery on the empty plate. ‘Another coffee?’
‘A small one this time, please. Give us a bit more time to sit and watch the town wake up,’ Gwen said, watching a shopkeeper on the corner rolling up the security shutters of his art gallery windows. Across the road, a woman was positioning a postcard display stand near the shop door of a touristy gift shop.
By the time they’d drunk their coffees and paid the bill, the streets of Roscoff were alive with early-morning activity.
‘Shall we walk around town and the harbour before leaving?’ Pixie asked. ‘Have a proper sniff of the sea air?’
The first holiday weekend of the year would begin on Saturday and there was a definite buzz of happy anticipation in the air as the two of them strolled through the town with its ancient stone buildings towards the harbour. Several shop windows had displays with an exuberant Easter theme – lots of yellow chicks, daffodils and Easter eggs.
Standing by the harbour breakwater looking out to sea, Pixie took a deep breath, smelling the tangy air drifting across from a couple of fishing boats unloading their night-time catch of crabs.
‘I know it’s bigger, but it always reminds me of Brixham harbour,’ she said, watching several seagulls swooping and diving over another fishing boat making its way in.
Gwen nodded. ‘Very similar. Did you and Frank ever go over to the Île de Batz?’ she asked, looking out to sea. ‘When I was here back in the fifties, there was an abandoned tropical garden over there which has been restored since.’
Pixie stared at her. ‘You never mentioned you’ve been here before.’
Gwen shrugged. ‘Haven’t I? I know I’ve told you about being a childminder when I was about twenty – more of an au pair really as I had to do the domestic stuff too – because both you and Gus laughed and said you couldn’t imagine me doing other people’s housework when I barely did my own.’
‘Yes, you told us that, but I thought it was Paris you went to.’
‘The family had a second home in Brittany. We spent August here. It was wonderful.’
‘Did you ever go over to the island?’
‘No. We planned to, but then…’ Gwen shrugged. ‘It didn’t happen.’
‘We?’ Pixie looked at her mum, who was still staring out to sea, but Gwen didn’t answer. ‘We could take the ferry over one day if you’d like to?’ Pixie offered.
‘Maybe,’ Gwen answered, staring out to sea again.
‘Well, think about it. Right now, though, I think we’d better make tracks. It will take us over an hour to reach Château Quiltu.’
The smell of freshly baked pastries drifted out of the boulangerie as they walked back through town to the car park and Pixie quickly nipped in and bought a couple of still warm pains au chocolat.
‘Elevenses,’ she said, tucking them carefully on the top of her tote, trying not to squash them.
Twenty minutes later, Pixie had set the satnav with the postcode for the château and they were navigating the narrow streets of Roscoff, heading for the main road south. The road was relatively free of traffic and they sped past field after field where the artichokes were beginning to sprout at the start of a new growing season. They reached the road that crossed the Parc d’Armorique within half an hour and soon the tall telecommunications mast that dominated this side of the moor was in view. A few kilometres later, the satnav instructed Pixie to turn left at a large roundabout, direction Huelgoat and Carhaix.
‘Another half an hour and we should be there,’ she said, glancing across at Gwen. ‘The château is in the countryside between the two towns. A few country lanes to negotiate before we get there.’ Driving through the nearest village to Château Quiltu, Pixie pointed to a small road down the side of the église. ‘Auberge de Campagne, where we’re staying tonight, is just down there.’
At the crossroads outside the village, Pixie turned right and five minutes later the entrance to the château appeared.
‘You were right when you told me it was in the depths of the countryside,’ Gwen said.
Pixie turned onto the drive and the tyres scrunched on the gravel. ‘Monsieur Quiltu told us that the lime trees here on either side of the drive were planted in the eighteenth century at the end of the revolution. Apparently, the French regard them as a symbol of liberty. Imagine – the five or six that are left are over two hundred years old. It must have been a wonderful sight arriving here in a horse-drawn carriage when the whole drive was lined by them.’
Gwen caught her breath as Château Quiltu came into view as they drove further up the driveway. ‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘What a place.’
Pixie smiled to herself. Gwen had had the same reaction as herself the first time she and Frank had seen the château. Built from a mixture of the coloured granite stone that Brittany was famous for, it stood proudly at the end of the driveway. With its round towers at either side, one castellated and the other with a steep conical roof, it looked like a perfectly proportioned fairy-tale castle.
Pixie stopped the car and they both sat looking at the front facade for several moments. Three storeys high, on the ground floor shutters painted in a faded Bretagne red hid the tall windows on that level. In front of them was a terrace with a stone balustrade running the length of it, separating the property from the drive. On either side of the centrally placed heavy oak front door were classic stone urns standing on stone plinths. Windows on the first floor were rectangular and placed immediately above the windows and the entrance below, while the third floor had arched dormer windows set into the roof. Fifty metres away to the right was the cottage that years ago had housed the housekeeper and the gardener.
‘Come on,’ Pixie said. ‘Let’s show you the inside,’ and taking the large bunch of keys out of her tote, she opened the car door and got out. She glanced across at the cottage, noticing a display of primroses and daffodils in its neat front garden with not a weed in sight and the closed shutters. If it hadn’t been for the closed shutters and the general locked-up appearance of the cottage that mirrored the château itself, she’d have suspected the place was occupied.
The lock on the thick oak door turned with a satisfactory clunk when Pixie inserted the key, but it took a hard push to get the door to open. Inside it was much as Pixie remembered. The doors to the large rooms on either side of the hallway were open and she walked in and switched on the lights in the left-hand side one.
