Читать книгу Our House is Certainly Not in Paris - Susan Cutsforth - Страница 24

Time adds a rich layer of meaning to friendships from afar. A chance encounter on the streets in Trabzon, a small town on the Black Sea, twenty years ago, has led to a friendship sustained through letters for many years and now emails. We had noticed Erick and Lydia on the small plane from Istanbul as they were the only other tourists heading to a remote part of Turkey, at quite a dangerous time. It was the first Gulf war and there were bombs being dropped on Iraq. When we stayed in Trabzon, the four of us were the only tourists, so we all teamed up to share our adventures. There was a curfew each night; helicopters constantly hovered overhead and there was a real sense of imminent danger.

As with many of our friendships, chance seems to play a strong role. We had been booked to go on a ferry to eastern Turkey, but as I was heading back to our flat, after collecting my final pay from my teaching job – paid in cash and given to me in a large brown paper bag, just like real-life Monopoly – I encountered Stuart in our local market, heading home too to our flat in Besikatas. He had been to pick up our ferry tickets but on the eve of departure, we found out quite by chance, that the ferry had been burnt and destroyed. We made a last minute decision to fly instead and so, two new friends entered into our lives.

There was no way in those early days that I would have ever dreamt of having a house in France. Just a few days into our travels, Stuart spent all his money on a Turkish carpet, while just a few months later, I paid for my own engagement ring. Who would have ever thought too, that I would go from sleeping on a beach alone in Greece for three weeks to save money, to having a petite maison? We were both backpackers on a shoestring when we met Lydia and Erick. We stayed in rooms that cost only a few dollars a night; rooms that you would rather not glimpse in daylight. From soldiers with guns at checkpoints and in the streets and markets, to châteaux glimpsed as you round a corner on the way to the supermarché from Pied de la Croix. What a long way we’ve come. Life is truly an adventure when you take risks and push the boat out from the safety of shore to sometimes turbulent seas and uncharted territory.

As with many of our travels over the years, we have met up with people along the way, spent a few days exploring together, traded life stories, and shared meals. Most of these people are just transitory travel companions, bound by the place and time. So it was that after meeting Lydia and Eric, we spent the next week with them exploring eastern Turkey. This has been a special friendship though that has spanned almost two decades. The years have seen us both renovate our many homes and share our unfolding life stories, including that of their two children, Jorn and Eleni. Then finally, after many years, we all met up on our first trip to France.

It was the time we rented a house for a fortnight and we seized the opportunity to gather our family and friends. There was a little studio at the bottom of the garden, so Liz, our friend from Wales, was booked into that. Stuart’s brother John, was in a nearby gîte, a short bicycle ride away, while Lydia, Erick and the children were able to camp just nearby. And so, for a week, eight of us gathered each evening for meals in the jardin under the damson tree. This is not the sort of thing that comes readily to us at home, yet, across the other side of the world, somehow this is now woven into the French part of our life. Time dropped away, we laughed and filled in the gaps of the intervening years, and now, once again we are to be reunited in our own petite maison.

Just a matter of a few weeks before leaving, Lydia emailed to let me know that their summer holiday in the Basque country meant that they would also be able to visit us for a few days. What did I think of that plan? My fingers flew across the keyboard in excitement to let her know that is exactly what we hoped Pied de la Croix would be, a place for spending time with those we love. Somehow, again completely unlike the person I am at home, it doesn’t matter that we don’t still know John’s plans; whether there will be eight or ten of us in our petite maison, that there aren’t enough beds, enough linen and one petite bathroom. We simply know that it will all be perfectly fine, it will all work and our everyday selves at home will be transformed by the seductiveness of summer days in France.