10. Noël 2015
We had arrived at our new home in France just before Christmas. How exciting. No duties for me this year! Fire roaring in the fireplace. Elizabeth cozy and happy, living her dream. We are getting to know Patrick and his wife and family who live a stone’s throw away in another Chateau property. He is originally from Zimbabwe, an Englishman whose life on an estate there made for beckoning him to the same manner of life here.
Patrick met his wife in Manhattan. Both worked for Ralph Lauren. Elizabeth had googled her and upon seeing her face said, she was the brunette model face for Ralph Lauren. Not my terrain.
That was now some years ago. She had left the busy New York lifestyle in exchange for raising a family and living in rural France. They now had three girls, one of them an accomplished polo competitor, like her father. Patrick would in time woo the Federation Nationale de Polo to Courances, which had several superb grounds for the sport.
We would come to learn a bit more about his wife Isabelle, née Townsend. Her father had courted Princess Margaret, and they would pass weekends at Courances during this time. He was the famous Royal Air Force flying ace from World War Two and could buzz the two of them down to France from England after the war in his jaunty aircraft. We know him now from the series “The Crown,” which fortunately had not yet appeared during our time there. It was not a series that put her father in a flattering light. (I have not seen it).
We went to Christmas Mass in what would be our church home in the nearby market town of Milly-la-Fôret, prior to my taking up duties as the Anglican chaplain in Fontainebleau. That would still be some months off, due to background checks. Having lived in the UK, Canada, and the US, agencies in these respective countries joined the FBI for security clearances. I was happy to have the time to enjoy our village and our neighbors.
There are several very nice restaurants in Milly. We enjoyed a lovely Christmas lunch there after church. The French would not understand a nice lunch at less than 2 hours, and at Christmas longer still. We nodded to faces we had seen in church who were dining there. They would become very close friends.
Milly, as it is called, was the home of Jean Cocteau, whose pleasant home and gardens are at the end of the lane across from the parish church. He did the mural paintings at a chapel on the outskirts of town, la Chapelle de Saint-Blaise des Simples. Saint-Blaise was renowned for healing miracles, associated with his knowledge of medicinal herbs, called “des simples.” The parish church looking down on our home was named for St-Etienne, St Stephen the martyr, a physician and during the Middle Ages revered as the saint known for healing miracles. The word “Courances” is likely associated in some way with the verb courir, to run, as in running or flowing water. The abundant spring water that fed the famous water gardens at the chateau, also gave birth to the medicinal herbs of wide variety found in this region.
Christian Dior, the famous fashion designer, had a country retreat a short walk from our house, the Moulin de Coudret, complete with landing strip and a dozen bedrooms for guests. It had passed into the hands of a famous camera lens developer from Paris and was during our time in desuetude. But the memory of Dior was preserved in a perfume he created and named, well of course, “Milly la Fôret.”
Patrick and Isabelle invited us over for drinks on New Years Day. Several of the other property renters (locataires) were present. Most of these rental properties were on a single lane in Fleury-en-Biere, as noted above the sister chateau and only partially inhabited. It was fun to meet our new neighbors. I felt excited about our dawning new life and was also thrilled my wife could speak French like a local. Isabelle’s father was born in Rangoon, Burma, and she had lived all over the world. She spoke excellent French as did Patrick. They were raising their children at the international school in Fontainebleau, and they were bilingual.
To stretch our legs on the unusually clear day, we decided on a long walk to Fleury. There are dedicated hiking trails linking the two chateaux villages, next to the forest track owned by the de Ganay family. One can also go through the woods, a favorite of our Braque d’Auvergne to come. It takes about 90 minutes. I walked with Isabelle and learned about her upbringing and her adventures, her decision to leave Ralph Lauren to become a happy mom of three girls. She was now something of a free-spirited woman, dressing as she pleased, liberated from what must be an intense life of clicking cameras and public over-exposure.
The days are short at this time of the year, but dusks are long. I had lived for nine years in Scotland and was familiar with sundown at 3.30 pm. We too, Elizabeth and I, had been liberated from our life in the US, and were to become companions with these fascinating neighbors. The families in Fleury were from Paris. They came down to relax, ride, hunt and just enjoy the change of pace. They had nothing to prove and were intent on slowing down and putting away the watch.
The Marquis of the Chateau of Courances was no longer alive, though the aged Marquise was often in residence in her lodgings on the top floor. Her husband had been the mayor of the small village. By stratagems I no longer recall the specifics of, he had found a way to preserve a sort of carve-out in this region but 50 minutes from Paris. The train lines passed to the east (Fontainebleau) and to the west of us (a slow commuter train, or RER, with 16 stops to Gare de Lyon). You would not pop on a train to come to Courances or Fleury. It was like a preserve, keeping the 17th century life much as it had always been.
This is now our life, we realized as we walked back under the slowly darkening sky. The key and entry gate to the Moulin were becoming familiar.
We were home.