The day before leaving for our sojourn in the High Alps, I received my first ever suicide text. It was a woman we'd known in the Corrèze, an outsider like ourselves, whose large family moved from Lille to a nearby village. Their youngest daughter was our daughter's best friend during the first few years of école primaire, so we got to know them rather better than we might have chosen.
Poor soul went off the rails just before the family gave up on their great adventure in France Profonde. For the last year or so of seeing her on a semi-regular basis, she was on so much medication that she was confined to their big house on a hill, wherein she would wander about like a Stepford wife. Mind you, her five children included an Arian-looking boy who could have been a Hitler youth in another era and a wild-eyed curly-haired child destined to end up as either a modern-day Einstein or a troubled schizophrenic. Stir into the mix a husband who was a little bit... odd, and you understand what might have happened to her.
The first time I met her husband, he fixed me with a stare as we shook hands in their house. Je te regarde, he told me. I'm looking at you. Errrr, yes? How are you supposed to answer to that kind of greeting? I learnt that he was someone who fancied himself as an amateur therapist. He believed that he had the power to enlève le feu (as, indeed, people can in these parts). In other words, someone who could place his hands on a person's burns or raging acne or some such malady and 'remove the fire'. It seemed that he had looked at me and mistaken me for someone whose customary winter pallor is life-threatening. No need to look at me in that tone of disquiet, mate; I'm quite OK, thanks.
Anyway, the day before the day before leaving – a day of making lists to ease the stress of last-minute preparations – the unhinged woman phoned me on my mobile, only to breathe heavily and utter my name despairingly. I cut her short to answer the other phone. So when the text arrived the next morning, I interpreted her brief words as a kind of explanation: a combination of medication and alcohol did it. My wife, however, clearly knows her conditional tense. She pointed out that the word 'devrait' put quite another slant on it. A combination of medication and alcohol should do it.
We agreed that the best course of action was probably to ignore it. Sure enough, when I foolishly answered the phone later that same day, it was her. Still with us, she wanted to read me the last page of some epic work on which she is currently engaged. So I sat back and listened. And lo! It was surprisingly good – given that I couldn't translate every word. 'Surprising' being the operative word, since I wasn't expecting poetry and certainly not a relentless rhyme scheme that made her sound like MC Solar. Without actually suggesting a career in rap, the encouragement I offered may at least keep her away from the pill bottles for a few weeks.
It's a long, long drive to the Hautes Alpes: up across the Vulcans, down past Clermont Ferrand, over the Plaine de Limagnes, up and over the Parc Naturel Régional du Livradois (or 'Little Canada', as it's known by the cognoscenti), over the Monts du Lyonnais by way of the new A89 extension, under Lyon, down to Grenoble and then up, up, up the epic road to Briançon, the highest town in Europe, via the intimidating Col du Lautaret. It was an exceptionally beautiful autumnal day befitting such exceptionally beautifully scenery. The final stretch puts the 's' in sublime. But it costs a packet in tolls and it takes an epoch to get there.
We've done it just about every year since landing in France almost 20 years ago. A best friend from college days lives there – hemmed in for five months by perma-snow – with her newly retired French husband. Cursed or blessed with a creative drive, she's a talented artist who has wrestled with familiar self-doubt for as long as I've had the pleasure to know her. She showed us over the beautiful Alpine village house they have done up for parties of skiers, walkers and nature lovers, which has become her unofficial art gallery.
Talking of which, we went to see some art in Turin on the Saturday. It's a half hour drive across the Italian frontier to the little town of Oulx, where you catch an inexpensive train to the capital of Piedmont. (Of course, I twigged for the first time, foot of the mountain.) Only after arriving at the station much too early for the train, did we realise that it was the Italian equivalent of All Saints' Day. A public holiday; not just in France. A Sunday timetable in other words.
The wide Haussmann-esque boulevards with their characteristic pavement arcades were unnaturally deserted. After an affordable and authentic lunch, we headed for the GAM (or the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, if you prefer the full mouthful). Apart from a Modigliani and a fine Otto Dix, the collection was a bit thin and unsatisfying – like American coffee. Perhaps in an attempt to give it some substance, it was displayed in rather specious themes (such as ‘Infinity’ and ‘Velocity’), which demanded a host of pretentious explanatory texts that didn’t fool any of us. Despite the exhibition of Cecily Brown’s huge and dazzling abstract-figurative painting, I would have preferred to spend my time and money at the Museum of Italian Cinema, mooning over posters of Monica Vitti, La Lollo and the like in the extraordinary sky-scraping synagogue known as The Mole.
With evening falling, the previously deserted streets teemed with throngs of Torinotti, or whatever you call natives of the city. We ducked into a little bar near the station for some of the indigenous aperitivo: snacks approximating Spanish tapas to accompany your drink. I had my first Campari soda for about 40 years and wondered why I used to be so fond of the drink.
With the first snow of the season threatened on Monday night, I came over all noyvuss and unnezzizzary. Would we get over the pass next day? Would we ever see our house again? What would happen to the cats and our dog in our protracted absence? As it happened, a high wind blew through the Alps and there was a dusting of snow on the highest peaks. Reminded, however, by the motorway signs to 'moderate our allure', we made it home in spite of the relentless rain. We got back to find that the trees had turned in our absence and winter was coming on strong. It was time to light the first symbolic fire of the season.
And time to think about where I would hang the beautiful still life that my friend gave me for my recent significant birthday. The trouble is, the house is fast turning into a Galleria Domestica d'Arte Amicorum e Familiae. We're running out of suitable wall space.