Free Last Tango in Toulouse by Mary Moody Page B

rinse it off. Neighbours come to the rescue, helping to prime the pump and get things moving again, at least for a day or so.
    The animals are also taking time to adjust to the new place. Floyd, our half-blind Labrador, disappears for hours at a time and David worries that he may wander as far as the highway, where he could be skittled or, worse, cause a terrible accident. Searching for him one day, he encounters a half-naked elderly man in one of Russell’s rented cottages who introduces himself as Frank. He has a thick Dutch accent and a broad sense of humour.
    â€˜Have you seen a Labrador?’ David asks.
    â€˜Sure I have,’ says Frank. ‘He was here two minutes ago and killed one of the geese.’
    David reels back in disbelief and becomes instantly defensive.
    â€˜That couldn’t have been our Floyd,’ he stammers. ‘Floyd has grown up with chickens and ducks. He loves poultry. He would
never ever
kill a bird. He’s a Labrador.’
    Frank roars with laughter. ‘And I’m a fucking Dutchman. Don’t worry about it. I hate those bloody geese. I hope your Labrador comes back and kills the rest of them.’
    David slinks off and eventually Floyd returns looking quite innocent, no traces of blood or feathers around his mouth.
    The cats have been allocated the laundry to settle in, but eventually David starts to let them have the run of the house and garden. Disoriented, they immediately start messing in the corners and he rings Miriam in alarm.
    â€˜The cats have crapped on the carpet,’ he reports in some disgust.
    â€˜Well, clean it up,’ she says with little compassion. As the mother of four small boys, her life is a constant round of bum wiping and associated mess, and she has little time for her father and his helplessness.
    The cats are banned from the house until I return and some semblance of normal life is restored.
    Mid-October the weather suddenly turns bitterly cold and there is a black frost that burns the tips off every tree and shrub in the garden. The wind howls across the paddocks and buffets the house in icy blasts. David isn’t very good at keeping the fires going and the atmosphere is bleak and dreary.
    Already prone to depression, during this period alone at the farm he falls into a black hole. When I phone him from France, bubbling with excitement about living in the house in Frayssinet and catching up with all my friends, the intrigues of village life and the joys of the local food, he sounds totally down in the dumps and negative.
    â€˜Don’t you like it there?’ I ask with some degree of guilt.
    â€˜Not really,’ he says. ‘It’s cold and the house is very large and very empty. I wish I was back in Leura.’
    My heart sinks at this news. I am beginning to feel that I have pushed for too much change in too short a time. Not only have I insisted on buying this little village house so that I can escape to it every year, I have also uprooted David from our home at Leura so that when I am away he is living in unfamiliar surroundings. Yet I also feel unreasonably irritated by his inability to adapt and cope. After all, Miriam, Rick and his four grandsons are only twenty-five minutes away by car and he can easily spend more time with them if he’s feeling lonely or down. In the back of my mind is always the niggling resentment from years gone by.He repeatedly left me to cope with a large house and four young children for months at a time, and now it’s my turn. It’s not that I don’t feel some compassion for his predicament, it’s just that I am determined to hang on to this precious time when I can be my own person.
    Just before Ethan and Lynne catch the plane back to Australia for the birth of their baby a surprise party is held in their honour – a combined farewell and baby shower. Our English friend Carole organises the party, collecting money for a present for the baby – an