A Chateau of One's Own by Sam Juneau

Author:Sam Juneau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2011-09-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Wild Boar and Vegans

‘What’s that noise?’ No answer.

Bud was sleeping soundly. Seven in the morning and for half an hour there had been a persistent, annoying buzz in the distance. Blue had been up most of the night crying in a fit of baby discomfort. Now this.

Rolling out of bed, I pulled on my trousers and shirt. I stumbled around looking for my shoes and finally went downstairs into the kitchen. I burst out the back door, grabbing a thick, long stick along the way, before launching into the woods determined to find out who or what was disturbing my precious sleep. As I walked deeper into the woods, the buzzing, whining sound of a chainsaw became more apparent, punctuated by the revving and idling of a tractor. After about five minutes, I came to the edge of the woods where I saw a blonde curly-haired farmer working away on a large, fallen tree. I watched for a few minutes so I could understand exactly what was going on. It seems the tractor was pulling a very large tree off our property and into the neighbouring field while the farmer worked his busy-bee way through branches and vines. I looked to the right, then to the left, and could see major, major work going on.

There in the distance sat a sprawling earth mover with a huge digging bucket clawing away at a small hill that separated my land from the farmer’s. We knew when we bought the chateau that Monsieur Cocteau was an aggressive farmer, chipping and angling and pushing his way centimetre by centimetre into Bonchamps’s grounds. So the former owner told us. Evidently, he had taken to cutting branches and uprooting trees that dared to hang over the property line, without permission. I’d ignored the warnings.

Cocteau had ripped out bushes and trees and an entire kilometre of hedges in the hope of gaining a few extra centimetres on which to plant his corn. It seems he had been very busy on previous days when we weren’t paying attention.

Furious, I spat out, ‘Bonjour. What are you doing?’

Cocteau walked over and offered his hand. I shook it impatiently and asked again, ‘What are you doing? I’m the new owner of Bonchamps.’

‘We are removing the talus [small hill-ditch]. It will make room for new crops and it is messy.’

‘And this tree? I think it is mine. Why are you taking it?’

‘Oh, well, it was dead. I was removing it for you.’

I think the technical word for Cocteau is ‘cheeky’. I was furious. Yet I stifled my outbursts for two reasons – one, I did not know the exact legal situation of the talus (whether it belonged to me or him) and two, I had some vague sense that one should, generally speaking, get along with the neighbours. Something inside me said well, of course, he was right to clean up his patch and make room for more crops. The tree, still cheeky. Theft, really. But with thousands of trees around the parc, I was willing to overlook it.

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