I don’t think any of us were really that interested in being shown over his 14th-century chateau, and very quickly it was clear that neither did he really want to show it to us. But a personally guided tour of his chateau was on our itinerary, and presumably a fee had been agreed, perhaps when he was in a more expansive mood, and the time had come for him to meet his obligation.
We decanted from the minibus and gathered under a tree, five of us, on the far side of his courtyard, and after a few minutes he came crunching across the gravel. He was a tallish, broad-shouldered man in a blue, well-tailored shirt, faun slacks and tasteful loafers. He was about 40, his hair had been beautifully scissored and he spoke English better than I do.
His handshakes, though, were perfunctory. There was not even a hint of a welcoming smile or a word of welcome. He just plunged straight into his spiel. Was this the famous French hauteur at last? If it was, I was glad it was on the itinerary.
Throughout his introductory spiel he referred repeatedly to a ‘business partner’. They had bought the place together, they lived there and they were painstakingly restoring it with their own cash. Maybe living in a 14th-century chateau had gone to his head and made him imagine he was a 14th-century aristocrat, and fair enough. But if he objected to mixing with peasantry, then why volunteer to personally show us around his home? It was baffling.
It was rare in France, apparently, to find a 14th-century chateau that was unfortified, in its original condition and still lived in. He led us down into a vaulted wine cellar beneath an outbuilding and we stood in the coldness and gaped politely at the pillars and the intricate stone arches. Following an earnest question from Irene, who was from Canada, about state funding for historical buildings, he allowed himself a short denunciation of his president. ‘Sarkozy doesn’t know what culture is,’ he said, bitterly. And with that thought, he led us up a winding medieval stone staircase to a roofless chapel on the first floor. On one of the walls, I noticed, a swastika had been carved clumsily into the soft stone.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Carlos spoke only Portuguese, and Vera, his wife, had to translate what our host was saying, while he was saying it, because it seemed to try him further. When Vera started up in Portuguese, he’d halt his exposition in mid-sentence and look bemused, as though he’d never had his words translated simultaneously like this before, in his own home, and it was rare for him to encounter such discourtesy.
Still I couldn’t put my finger on the root cause of his coldness. Was it his nationality? Ours? Or was it our social class, perhaps, compared with his? You couldn’t actually accuse him of rudeness. He never entirely gave himself away with a word or unambiguous gesture. But the ironed creases in his shirt, his polished loafers, his perfect English, his precise haircut, his unsmiling manner, his bemused pauses while Vera translated, all these combined seemed perpetually to admonish us. Perhaps I worried too much. Perhaps he and his business partner had had a row, and his disillusion with us was simply the aftermath of that and had nothing at all to do with our own shortcomings.
Returning back down the stone spiral staircase in single file, he was last and I was second to last. At the foot, just before we stepped out from medieval darkness into bright sunshine, I stopped, turned to him and said, ‘I’ve a question.’ Pausing on the step above me, he regarded me and my question with baleful indifference. ‘The French revolution,’ I said. ‘A good thing or a bad thing?’ ‘It isn’t finished,’ he said shortly. ‘More heads need to come off.’ The current President’s included, he added.
Finally, he led us inside the chateau and vouchsafed us a glimpse of the living apartments in which he and his business partner resided. On the threshold he reminded us that we were about to enter a private space and must under no circumstances take photographs.
The master bedroom with its restored wall paintings was very austere. ‘You sleep here?’ I said, venturing another question. He stood beside the bed, his chin resting contemplatively in his right palm, and he regarded me with something like interest for the first time. I’d hit on a subject — sleeping arrangements — that aroused him. ‘Oh, yes!’ he smiled. ‘But it gets bloody cold in the winter.’ And he pertly jutted out a buttock, sideways, camp for ‘Hello, you!’ and suddenly his objection to us became clear. We bored him. Simple as that.
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