Page 2 of A French Country Escape
‘It’s surprisingly roomy,’ Sasha had said as she followed Solange back downstairs. ‘It’s bigger than I expected. And No. 2 is the same?’
Solange had nodded. ‘In reverse.’
‘And the owners are happy to sell just the one cottage?’
Solange had stopped and turned to look at her. ‘No. The two are for sale together.’
‘But surely together they are out of the price range we gave you?’ Sasha had asked, smothering a sigh. She’d thought the cottage was too good to be true.
‘It’s five thousand euros over your top price,’ Solange had said. ‘But it’s literally two for the price of one. If you like the cottages, make an offer. Now I will show you the garden.’
Half an hour later when Solange had driven them away, they’d seen both cottages, the gardens with the tumbledown sheds they each possessed, and had walked around the lake. Sasha, to her own surprise, was already dreaming about living here on this wonderful estate. The only trouble was she couldn’t quite gauge yet how Freddie truly felt about the place. He’d asked all the right questions, seemed enthusiastic, but Sasha sensed there was something bothering him. It wasn’t until after Solange had dropped them back at their Airbnb that he admitted his worry.
‘On the face of it, the Cottages du Lac are perfect for us. We’d each get our own place in a beautiful setting, and hopefully have money left to live on whilst we settle in and find work.’ He’d given Sasha a serious look. ‘I love the cottages and can see us living there, but we could have a problem with privacy. Whathappens when the château and the grounds are open to the public? I know the gates will be locked at night for security, but during the day people will be able to wander anywhere. Right now, anybody could walk up and peer in through the windows.’
‘Did you mention this to Solange?’
‘Yes. She felt sure the Chevaliers – that is such a great French name, isn’t it? – would understand and find a solution. A small amount of land in front will come with the cottages for parking, so maybe a hedge or a picket fence could be put in place around that.’
‘Well, that sounds okay to me,’ Sasha had said. ‘Lots of the houses we’ve seen in villages open directly onto the street, so people could peer in there too. Shall we do as Solange suggested and make an offer? One that keeps us within the price range we agreed? And see what they say.’
‘Yes,’ Freddie had said. ‘And, for the record, I really hope they say yes.’
‘So do I,’ Sasha had answered, crossing her fingers for good luck and remembering the stables she’d glimpsed. ‘So do I.’
2
Ingrid Chevalier was carefully washing Merlin, the marble prancing horse statue recently returned from being restored, and now standing on his plinth in the main hallway of the Château du Cheval, when the estate agent rang. Moments later, she’d closed the large heavy oak door of the château and was striding purposefully towards the overgrown Mediterranean garden where Peter, her husband, was doing his best to chainsaw his way through the various vines and other plants that had claimed it as their own over the last few years.
Gladys, their Golden Labrador bitch, heard her approaching before Peter did and ran towards her, tail wagging joyfully.
Peter glanced up, stopped the chainsaw and put it on the ground.
‘It’s decision time,’ Ingrid said as she reached him. ‘Solange, theagent immobilier, rang. The brother and sister who viewed the cottages earlier this week have made an offer. I’ve told her we’ll let her know within the next twenty-four hours whether we accept it or not.’
‘We can talk about it this evening,’ Peter said. ‘Or we could walk over there now and talk about it on site.’ He gesturedbehind him at the tangle of overgrown plants. ‘I could do with a break from this. I swear that chainsaw gets heavier every time I use it.’
‘Come on, then. Let’s do that.’
And the two of them, accompanied by Gladys, began to walk through the château grounds towards the cottages that, in years gone by, had been two of several around the estate.
Ingrid gave a happy sigh looking at the view as they reached the boundary of their land behind and to the west of the château itself. A century ago, a large part of the estate had been forested, a mixture of oaks, cedar, pine, beech and fir, whilst the rest of the grounds had been a mixture of fields for arable land and sheep. At one time, an earth track had circled around the property, put there by a keen owner who had raised and trained thoroughbred horses. By the time she and Peter had bought the place about eighteen months ago, sixty-eight hectares consisting mainly of fields, some woodland and a couple of derelict cottages had been sold off, leaving the château and its remaining twelve hectares surrounded by fencing overgrown with impenetrable brambles and self-seeded saplings, and an impressive pair of wrought-iron gates on the main driveway. The traditional brick-built stables with their cobbled floors and iron metalwork dividing the stalls stood a few hundred metres inside the main entrance. A two-storey general-purpose building hidden behind the stables served as a store for farm implements, hay, straw and other agricultural supplies.
‘You okay?’ Peter asked as he heard Ingrid sigh.
She nodded. ‘I love the panoramic view we get from this side of the château – the rolling French countryside with its hills and valleys stretching away in the distance, the wind turbines visible on the high ground. There are very few signs of habitation, just the occasional house or small village with its church spire visible, and maybe a couple of tractors working the fields. Ican’t help but wonder how much it has truly changed in the last seventy or so years.’
‘Quite a lot, I suspect,’ Peter said. ‘There would have been horses and people working those small fields from dawn to dusk for days and weeks on end until about the sixties or seventies, I suppose. Hi-tech tractors and combines arrived then and got the work done so much quicker with less manpower. Cottages began to be abandoned as agricultural workers were needed less and less. Hedgerows were pulled out, joining three, four, five of the smaller fields together. The gallop dirt track around the estate was a casualty of all that. The stables that housed working animals alongside the thoroughbreds changed too as the world moved on after the Second World War.’
‘I’m so glad our land still consists of smaller fields and woods and copses. It’s better for the wildlife.’
‘Right now, I’m glad Jean-Paul is paying us rent for the use of some of those hectares.’ Peter’s voice was grim. ‘Together with that unexpected DIY livery in the stables starting soon, it does at least mean some money coming in.’ The enquiry from one of the villagers who needed somewhere to stable her horse had been a complete surprise. Neither Peter nor Ingrid had realised there would be a demand for something like that. Their long-term plan had been to turn the stable blocks into self-contained holiday accommodation.
Ingrid nodded. ‘We’ll see how this first one settles in and then clear the other stalls and ask around, see if anyone else would like to rent one. I still haven’t decided what to do with all the horse memorabilia I found in the tack room. Horses have been such a big part of the château’s history, we can’t just ignore it and throw it all away. We need to display it somewhere, I think.’
The path they were on took them past the empty house currently known asLa Maison du Jardinier,which they plannedto renovate sometime in the future. Soon they were standing looking for signs of life in the small lake in front of the Cottages du Lac.
‘D’you remember how last summer there were so many dragonflies, tadpole spawn and damselflies?’ Ingrid said. ‘I loved coming down here and watching them. Butterflies too love that buddleia by the front door of No. 2.’ She was silent for a few seconds before turning to look at the cottages. ‘I still think these would make two lovely gîtes. Which would be another source of income for us.’
