Toute Allure: Falling in Love in Rural France
Karen Wheeler
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1849530661
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
There is so much to look forward to in the months ahead - to lengthening evenings, bike rides past fields of sunflowers or wild meadows of bluebells and poppies (just like the seventies Flake ad) and several months of fetes, vide greniers (car boot sales) and barbecues in friends' gardens. And I cannot wait to get back to see if Andy Lawton has called...After reaching the heights as a successful fashion editor, Karen said goodbye to all that and set about renovating a run-down house in rural Poitou-Charentes, in central western France, and living a simpler life. Her idyll is almost complete when she is blissfully ensconced in her fully plumbed, tiled, floored and 'warm as the hug of a pashmina' Maison Coquelicot - until, that is, a gang of macho Portuguese builders, a procession of Brits behaving badly and the ghosts of boyfriends past begin to arrive on her doorstep. Karen soon finds her (dancing) feet in the small rural community when she discovers the key to acceptance is le danse country. And after a few shuffles and twirls she meets the love of her life - he has dark, shaggy hair, four paws and a wet nose...
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bedroom ratchets up yet another level. And so, without even stopping for breakfast, we set off through the countryside again. This time I walk him for two hours and even at the end of that he shows no sign of tiring. It’s still only 10.00 a.m. when we arrive back in the square and I decide to take him to the Liberty Bookshop for a coffee. ‘Come on! Good boy,’ I say soothingly, as we enter the cafe. ‘Very good boy!’ This is another test. Will he, I wonder, lift his leg against the ‘local
fields in fruitless pursuit of birds, bounding along as if he has springs in his paws. At other times, running full pelt after a deer, he looks like a miniature black racehorse. I take vicarious pleasure in all of this, as if it is me that is running and bunny-hopping through the fields. And when I take him to friends’ houses for dinner in the evening, I am hugely proud of him as he lies quietly at my feet, or chases the little ball I have bought him around the garden on his own, like an only
feeling immediately mollified. As excuses go, this is pretty good. It doesn’t explain why he cut off all contact with me, but it takes the edge off my anger. And I’m actually pleased that he did the decent thing in the circumstances and stayed with Jenny. ‘Yeah, she’s in the clear but for a few months she was really worried.’ ‘But why couldn’t you tell me that over the phone?’ ‘I dunno. I thought you’d be really cross and upset. And I didn’t know how things would turn out or how long
arranged to meet outside the vet’s in Douhe, where Biff is booked in for his worming treatment. (I don’t like the sound of that but it turns out that it just involves a tablet.) Sarah will also bring along his pet passport and the necessary documents to transfer ownership to me. I feel a strange combination of guilt – it feels like I’m stealing someone’s husband or child – and euphoria. The thing I have wanted, dreamed about for months is about to be mine. Our bond is about to be made official.
nearly always sur la petite terrasse, surrounded by flowers. In the mornings he leaves early, just after the sun has come up. I lie in bed for a voluptuous few hours after he’s gone. Then I walk Biff and sit on the bench under the lime-blossom tree by the chateau feeling sedated by sex. Work deadlines, bills that need to be paid – none of that seems to matter very much. Life takes on an easy, almost liquid quality. I could live like this forever. Pulsating with life, always laughing, Luis is
