Summer among the paint pots
Saturday, August 24, 2024
Dear Valued Customer,
Heat wave is a relative term in Normandy. Fresh air blowing off the Atlantic Ocean keeps summer temperatures très supportable. We look forward to the canicule, a wave of extremely hot weather, especially when kernels of golden wheat begin to swell and sprays of ripening barley tremble in the breeze.
After a long, wet spring and a cold, wet start to the summer, the last week of July at Courtomer was like a staycation at St Tropez.
But we couldn’t linger in the transat or under the parasol in front of the Chateau sipping a sirop frais. Our work crew of nephews and nieces were departing for the airport with packed bags on July 31. And they intended to visit Mont Saint-Michel, the landing beach at Arromanches, and three of the royal châteaux of the Loire before the car – a small bus -- arrived to pick them up.
In the three workdays that remained, there were 20 box-stall doors to paint, two sets of stable doors, iron railings, and various farm gates. There was the imposing, spiked, and very tall grille at the entrance to the Chateau.
Twenty years of faded paint on the stable doors.
On the first hot day as July waned and August began, our new gardien power-washed the stables in preparation.
He and Monsieur Martyn have been steadily sorting through a decade and a half of accretions– it would be disingenuous to call it storage -- in the box stalls.
Some people are said to attract stray cats. Our old stables attracted chipped crockery, broken appliances, and disemboweled power tools. Jumbled in with the piles of useless objects were unexpected treasures. We finally found where a delivery of new waste baskets and toilet bowl brushes had disappeared in 2015. There were unopened boxes of bolts and screws. And paintbrushes still in their pristine wrappings.
The paintbrushes came in handy. Although some of our relatives had gone home the week before, there were still eleven members of the family to equip, including myself. I had sworn off painting and DIY home repairs after our first old house renovation many years ago. But all hands were needed now.
Monsieur provided us with his old shirts. I recognized mine, a light brown tattersall. The sleeves were now chopped off above the elbows. It was daubed with oxblood paint from the barn doors, an earlier project. The faint odor of a sweaty child still clung to it. I hung it out the kitchen window for an airing while I loaded the dishwasher and wiped away the crumbs.
When I came out to join the crew, two of the older boys were painting the railings on the back steps. Younger ones were painting the farm gate on the driveway behind the Chateau, between the back pasture and the moat. They sat side by side on swiveling office chairs which they had extracted from one of the box stalls. Country music wailed from a speaker at their feet. Over in the stables, another boy was painting the tall double doors into the feed room. And the équipe feminine, aged 48 to 12, had started on the stable doors.
The last comte de Pelet had built out the original stable block, adding a modern row of 20 box stalls and transforming carriage bays, a grange, and the 17th-century Protestant temple into loose boxes for broodmares and stallions. A naisseur, breeder of thoroughbred gallopeurs, he trained and raced them as well. His silks were a yellow sautoir – the Saint Andrew’s cross -- on a blue field. By the time we came to Courtomer, though, the stable doors were painted blue and red. Perhaps these were the colors of Isabelle de Mortemart, to whom the comte rented some of his box stalls and who continued at the Chateau for several years after his death.
As kind-smiling fate would have it, blue and red were my colors, too. I’d worn them as an amateur event rider. Those old silks are a bright clear red, like the roses growing next to the Chateau. The blue is the color of a warm summer sky. During long hours with a paint brush, it helps to appreciate the colors in the paint pot.
Matching paint chips -- some more faded than others -- on a handy Farrow & Ball "nuancier." Our new gardien made up test versions with various reds.
In the cool shadow of the morning, the scraping, sanding, and painting went along briskly. In the afternoon, when the sun’s rays beat down without mercy from above and the eaves of the stable roof were no protection, the cousins sustained themselves with Schweppes, ice, and more country music. I tried introducing a little musical variety.
“La Déclaration d’Amour” was a summer tube of 1974, half a century ago.
“Quand je suis seule et que je peux rêver
Je rêve que je suis dans tes bras…
Juste deux ou trois mots d’amour
Pour te parler de nous…
Une déclaration, ma declaration…”
“I guess you like that song, Aunt Elisabeth,” said the cousine on the stable door next to mine, politely.
“When I’m alone and I can dream
I dream I’m in your arms…
Just two or three words of love
To tell you about us…
A declaration, my declaration…”
I do like that song. But perhaps it lost something in translation.
We went back to streaming Hot Country hits.
“Long live cowgirls,” hummed our niece, who had just turned 18 a week before.
“Loves old John Wayne movies
Waltzin' under them stars
She's sun up in the saddle
Cuttin' through the herd
Loves brandin' her cattle…”
A paean to work, well-suited to the circumstances. I like this song, too.
Our next project was the entrance grille to the Chateau. Our son Henry and one of his friends had painted it almost 20 years ago, when they were still in lycée. These entrance gates are not only very tall, they are protected with bristling spikes on wheeled bases. They twirl when you try to grip them. Parts of the gate overhang the outer moat.
The group swarmed over the ensemble like industrious bees. Some were on long extension ladders, reaching up to paint the coat of arms above the gates. Others stood on the stone bridge over the moat. Every stepladder from the house and Monsieur Martyn’s hedge-pruning scaffold was assembled for the job. Jugs of ice water stood at the ready in the shade of the bushes.
At work on the "grille," the iron gates at the entrance to the Chateau.
During the evenings, after the sun went down, we sporadically watched the Jeux Olympiques. Perhaps the exploits of swimmers and swordsmen did not seem particularly exciting, compared to standing on a plank suspended over murky water. The cousins slid away for ping-pong championships and billiard tournaments in the converted old kitchen beneath the Chateau.
On Sunday, we took a break. The Fête de Courtomer had begun the night before, with les manèges and jeux in the market square of the bourg. Now, tables were set up along the streets for a vide-grenier. In the place du marché, the owner of the local café had set up a tent where sausages and frîtes were already sizzling.
Outside Courtomer’s church, patriotic associations gathered, carrying banners trimmed in gold braid. Veterans of Algérie, grizzled but still straight, carried their étendard. The maire and his adjoints stood with them, waiting to join the march down the aisle. We could hear strains of organ music and the choir warming up.
Afterwards, under the partial shade of umbrellas and pollarded tilleuls, we ate lunch in the place.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the heat wave was over. The cousins left in their little bus for the airport. I picked up my red paint and a brush and finished the last two stable doors. The next day, I painted the rest of the grille – at least, as high as my ladder would go. I painted the small gate into the back pasture.
Then I cleaned my brush and hammered shut the paint pots.
My brother and his family were about to arrive. So would one of our daughters and her family. Another two birthdays to celebrate, a cake to make, early apples to gather, raspberries to transform into confiture. There would be riding lessons for the little children. The procession of l’Assomption, with songs and prayers, in mid-August.
As I write, the month of August is almost at a close. One little green wheelbarrow and a small green watering can stand beside the rose border, where four-year-old Charlot put them down on his last morning at the Chateau.
We’ll spend the next few weeks putting the Chateau in order before la rentrée begins in September. Works are planned in the basse cour and the haras, including a new door for the Temple. The old four à pain, a building where bread was once baked for the Chateau and its many workers, needs foundations and a wall repointed. We’ll be able to decorate the little Gatehouse soon: the last light fixtures are coming in, having been held up in Paris during the Jeux Olympiques.
And we are thinking about a new project. The beams supporting the étage of the maison de l'Orangerie look as though they might finally give way.
Until mid-September then!
Amicalement,
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At Chateau de Courtomer, we are taking bookings for 2025 and 2026. The Gatehouse, the "petite maison" in the haras, will soon be ready for guests.
Heather (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be delighted to help you with your enquiries and dates, and to preview the property on site.
English and French spoken. Concierge services available.