Free A House in the Sunflowers by Ruth Silvestre Page A

from the wood and sawing them up. They whittled sticks to make individual, decorated toasting forks. These normally centrally-heated youths were endlessly fascinated by the great open fire.
    The house was full of vases of wild daffodils and Grandma had planted the yellow washing-up bowlswith great purple pansies. We cleared the straggly hazel hedge which obscured our view up the meadow from the front door and I began to dream about a terrace on the opposite, south-facing side of the house. This became my special project but, due to sheer incompetence, it took me several years to finish. The preliminary clearing of the ground was made difficult by stubborn lengths of old chicken wire embedded in the soil. It seemed probable that this was where Anaïs’s poultry had once scratched and squawked and each time I thought that I had removed the last tenacious piece, another buried end taunted me. The clean sweet air and the view which greeted me each time I straightened up kept me going.
    The debate continued about where to put the kitchen. Now that the other two bedrooms were habitable, should we make use of the small, low-ceilinged room which adjoined the main room? We might, perhaps, knock through a hatch, or even remove the upper half of the wall completely. We simply could not decide and eventually we did nothing. Just inside the front door where, after scraping the green lichen from the wall to paint it, we had first installed the cooker, became the kitchen’s permanent place. The ever-open door provided an extractor and all we needed now was a worktop and a sink.
    We consulted M. Albert the plumber. Yes, it was possible. The long runaway out to the septic tankwhich we had thought might be a problem did not seem to bother him. As he pointed out, the floor of the corridor was still earth. We chose a large, plain white china sink and M. Albert recommended a carpenter to build us a pine surround. A kitchen corner began to take shape. I felt that in a holiday home where all were encouraged to help, a separate kitchen was not a good idea and I had noticed that most of the simple local homes into which we had been invited were so arranged.
    M. Brut, the local
menuisier
or carpenter was clearly impressed by Mike’s rough designs for two wall cupboards and a worktop. ‘
Pardi!
’ he exclaimed, switching off his saw and brushing the mountain of wood-shavings off his desk to clear a space.
Pardi
, an archaic corruption of
Par Dieu
– By God – is one of M. Brut’s favourite expressions. He also undertook to replace those of our shutters which were beyond repair and when we returned that summer we were delighted to find all the work completed.
    What joy to wash up under hot running water! One of the bonuses of having lived so primitively in the beginning was the enormous pleasure at each improvement. The pine cupboards and surround were, like M. Brut himself, handsome and solid, the long ornamental hinges were very French and, most important of all, the cupboards were totally mouse-proof .
Et voilà
, a kitchen corner. In fact most of thepreparation of food is done out-of-doors, sitting on the porch or in the sun. The only thing we had not bargained for was M. Albert’s unfortunate positioning of the water heater. With about eighteen feet of wall to choose from he had fixed it right beside the original hand-hewn granite sink that we had uncovered. Its handsome edging stones were now partially obscured by a modern multipoint that would clearly at some time have to be re-sited, but I consoled myself with hot soap suds.
    As it was now not needed for a kitchen we thought again about the small, low-ceilinged room which faced south. One hot morning after breakfast we stood looking up at the badly worm-eaten false ceiling of tongued and grooved pine. Were the worms still active? Was it worth treating? We wandered out into the wide earth corridor behind it and looked up. There, at least two feet higher, were the original oak boards and