France Profonde

Our Ghost

We have a ghost. Or we had a ghost, or at least a presence and maybe we still do. At least that’s what I hear. Our ghost is well known. We hear about her from the experts in the field (?), from dinner guests, and children’s friends, from past tenants, neighbors, and now-a-days, from potential renters. If this ghost starts scaring people off, than I may have a problem with her. We thought we had gotten rid of her, had someone come in to ask her nicely to move on. But I am not sure if she did. Not that I believe in ghosts.

The kids do. As they will. They are the ones chipping away at my cynicsm. They seem to know something. We have a whole floor that is pretty much off limits for anyone under 10 to venture to on their own. In groups the kids flock up there, for the sheer joy of the fright. Kids love ghost stories. But this ghost and this story pass approval with listeners of all ages. This may be why I have always coveted a ghost. Now I have one. People love that.

The place looks like a perfect haunted house. Before the previous owners renovated it, it had been left to ruin, slowly, over its probable 500year history. Mme Chaumont, claims to know the house to always have been uninhabited, her grandfather, and his grandfather as witness. That should cover a couple hundred years. The previous owners of the curious little place across the way used to farm this land, this giant stone edifice was an extension of their barn. Paulette, Mme Chaumont’s good friend, says they used to store their beets up there, and make their cider over here. Others report how the walls were beginning to separate off the whole. An abandoned ruin, it was, attracting wayward spirits.

Legend has it, that this house was constructed as a hunting lodge for the lords of the nearby castle, Chateau de L’Herm. A garconierre my husband suggests, a Boys’ Club. Makes sense, hunters also like to gather. Though a garconierre, in the very French fashion, suggests that these boys clubs do NOT have a “ no girls” policy. Au contraire.

The house is linked to the Chateau de L’Herm, by more than legend. It has the same unusual cross bow window construction, a similarly grand fireplace, and the right age. Its rock walls are 2 feet thick. Its ceiling beams impressively wide, were hued, we were told, in the 15th century fashion. The nails in the floor boards in the great room upstairs, indicate 16th century construction. The giant planks that make up the staircase, seem to be recycled ceiling beams from an even older time, polished smooth with age. Also, the patriarch of the L’Herm lineage was married to someone named Anne de Prouillac, like our lieu dit, or hamlet. Our house is named Grand Prouillac, and it was the first and only one up here back then, according to the Napoleonic records, still kept for consultation at la mairie. If there ever was the underground passage that we’ve heard about, connecting our house to the chateau, it doesn’t show up on the cadastre. Nor do we learn about the first owners or whether or not they are the ones haunting the place. Chateau de L’Herm dies have a triple murder/matricide attached to it though, so could be.

Before we took possession of Grand Prouillac, eight Junes ago, the house and been left empty for months again. The previous owner, Mme Tooth past away in November. It took for time for the testament to be finalized, for the house’s ownership to be transferred to her two brothers, one in the U.S. the other in Australia, and then a number of months again for them to consider what to do with a 500 year old renovated hunting lodge on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere in the South of France, in a language they don’t speak. The siblings are Russian, having relocated to three distinct continents from London via Paris a generation earlier. Their parents’ pre-revolution emigration was timed so as to escape an untimely demise in a dank cellar, 29 steps, below uncle Alexi’s summer palace. Mme Tooth’s gravestone, simply states, Mme Tooth, née princess Her maiden name, Romanoff, was added later.
The house of two princesses, so auspiciously connected to violent deaths, ought to be haunted.

And so it is.

Philippe had visited it at Easter time; and had the council of our friend in the region, “Buy it or I will buy it first.” We signed a promisary note in at brother Romanoff’s place in Nor Cal in April, made a deposit of intention and got the keys in May and flew over from San Francisco to take possession in June. Here I was for the first time, at its front door, enthralled by the simple gesture of turning the key, my key, to our house, our first house, our castle.

In those seven elapsed months, spiders and mice had had the run of the place, perhaps some of those hunters as well, and they left it a crazy mess. A beautiful, rich, historic, castle like mess. Pots of jam were left open on the table. Walnuts, cracked and half eaten in all the corners and cupboards, furniture was uprighted, scanes of fabric spread across floors. The walls were grey with spider webs and soot. Bulbs burnt out. Old dusty sheets over old dusty furniture it the Scoobydoo shorthand for Haunted House style.

We camped out at our friends’ place for a couple of nights as we chipped away at layers of crud days, and discovered things. We came across Mme Tooths’ gardening journals, notes on her dinner parties, Msr. Tooth’s dissertation, his hat locker, and hats, made by “Royal Order of HM The King”. The small room at the top of the stairs was filled with her sewing and her glove making paraphernalia, scraps of fur and a leaopard’s tail, knitting needles and rat poop. The atelier in the tour, had clearly been his shop where his clock repair tools and wood working materials lay about. Off it was the old mildewed darkroom and laundry. We found treasures among the trash: an amesthyst, othodox crosses, bottles and jars of food and wine, paintings of the house by his sister, a haloed Virgin Mary signed and dated someone Romanoff, 1924, an old passport, an invitation to the funeral of great aunt, The Queen Victoria, books and records, photographs and negatives. Remnants of a good life and interesting people. It took a few days to restore a semblance of habitable to the place and then we moved in, with our ghost.

That first night, we all bedded down together in what seemed to be “the bedroom.” Faux wood paneling, chintz drapes and a master bath. Philippe and Cleo went to bed first. I stayed up to nurse Lucien and soak this all in, on the canapé by the fireplace, in the great room. There were some mice who still felt quite comfortable cohabitating with us, discreet and little mice luckily. The kind that don’t scare me. I was still so entirely enthralled by this place: the vast room, this history, and my place in it. As I went to switch off the remaining reading light to join the others, baby Lucien asleep on my shoulder, I heard a noise. It sounded like breathing. I left the light on. There was a little boy asleep on my shoulder, and I figured, the breathing may have been his. I went to put him down, and came back to get the light. The breathing was only louder. It seemed to be coming from that corner; from right where I had been sitting. A deep, throaty pained drawing in and a Slow, and long, screeching breathing out. Each one seemingly harder to draw than the last. I went to wake Philippe up, for the first time ever. “honey, I hear something.” Such a comic strip cliché.

He was quick to search for the noise’s source. He was going to go look in the bushes outside for a wounded animal or some such thing. I wouldn’t have it. I didn’t want him going out there, in the dark night, on this isolated hilltop, into the unknown, and with that noise. “Why” he says,”what do you think it is?” “Mme Tooth.” Evidently. Mme Tooth. To me it was obvious. Mme Tooth, nee princess, had died of lung cancer in this house only months earlier. He hastily switched off the light, and went back to a long night of cold sweats. I slept like a baby. I had no reason to fear Mme Tooth’s rath. Her house was in good hands. And I presumed we would be as well.

To be contintued.