Le Vieil Hôpital

Situated in the medieval part of the village, the ‘Old Hospital’ is an ancient three

story stone construction accessed by a huge wooden door set in a stone arch in the wall

leading into an inner shady courtyard. The ancient wooden door is so big that one actually

enters through door within a door. Its black hinges should creak, but they rarely have to open.

There is not a straight line in the place. Ancient wooden beams hold everything up more in

hope than in expectation. Creepers adorn its walls. Fig and almond trees grow in its

courtyards and deep down its caves in the basement provide shelter from the baking hot sun

of summer, and of course provide a storage area for wine should you be so inclined to do so.

From the inner courtyard on the ground floor one ascends stone steps into a central

hallway in which the staircase ascends up three flights in four stages. These steps are a mix of

well worn and cracked wood and hard red ceramic tiles. The wooden framed windows sit in

the space allocated to them within the walls, but in such a way as to provide light between the

frame and the wall, and also providing access to little flying things. This gap between the wall

and frame would cause many an Englishman to reach for the filler in order to fend off winter.

There is no need for such heroics in Provence.

Air and light are in abundant supply as is the cold and dark should you require it. The

walls are covered with old paintings, large and small. The many nooks and crannies will have

an ornament. There are ancient dusty books of the sort found in very old bookshops tucked

away in dark alleys in University towns. There sits a Buddha, then a Catholic icon of Jesus

and miniature musicians in black. This is not Ikea. This is Bohemia reflected back at you by

the mirrors on the walls. Nothing looks remotely planned. Haphazard is more apt but in such

a way as it all works together to provide more than just a pleasing aesthetic sense of well

being, unless of course you are averse to ill-fitting doors, windows and dust. Those who like

modernist steel, glass and fully functioning fittings will wince. But this place has been here for

centuries and should not be given over readily to ‘modernisation’. The taps work, lights turn

on and the toilet flushes. There are no skeletons of patients past who died for want of modern

medicine and thus of unspeakably hideous diseases, well at least no material skeletons but I

suspect many hide in the many closets in the many floors.

This is a house with a story that inhabits every room, and for every stone step leading

upwards to its sun terrace, a thousand feet have trod. One does not really own a house like

this, one merely borrows it and shares it with ghosts of the past and with myriad tiny

creatures and plants that live within it. The heat of the day and the cool of the night make

the house breathe as timber creaks, expands and contracts.

The pictures that decorate the walls are many and eclectic. In one room there are 5

black framed sketches of French characters in cartoon form. In another, a line of 5 white

framed abstract colours in addition to portraits of 19th century ladies and old sepia

photographs of the countryside both provincial, wild and exotic. Thankfully there are no

clichés of a copied Monet or a Matisse. There are no Parisian scenes of can-can girls or of

the café tables of Montmartre. No Eiffel Tower.

This first-floor window overlooks one of the three courtyards of fig trees, stone

ornaments reflecting an Asian taste and a small bistro set of table and chairs. Along its

windowsill a creeping plant appears with its red bell shape flowers as adornment. The

window is open, its two frames swaying gently inwards while its glass is of the quality required

to provide a wind stop but no more. It is thinner than translucent lace. How it survives the

Mistral is anyone’s guess. As for preventing sound, the window would have first to be closed.

I stand at the window listening to the gainsaying dogs. Opposite stands the wall of the

neighbouring house, and the roof, so close I could lean out and nearly touch it, across the tiny

passageway that is a ‘street’. Looking up, the stars twinkle down, it is warm. It is about 3 in

the morning. I’m half awake and realise that the dream I was having of barking dogs in a

Provençal village was indeed not a dream but stark reality. I close the window and

miraculously the thinnest of thin glass actually damps down the sound.

There is no other sound to be heard by the somnambulant, or the sleep deprived wine

infused homme anglais au pays étranger. The pigeons, starlings, sparrows and martins are in bed;

olive farmers’ tractors have been long parked. Even the wind has stopped. Cypress trees stand

quite still. Cicadas are absent, the clicking and chirruping are no more. Just the two dogs

provide the soundtrack to a sleepy town near the slopes of Mont Ventoux.

There is still a few more hours before sunrise, and the comfort of a return to bed calls.

A big glass of cold water and a shrug help one towards the renewed peace of what is left of

night time. The small bedroom window is open to let in what ever small amount of breeze, or

high pitched buzzing mosquito, should bother to turn up. The breeze will have to flow

through the old red rust ironwork railings on the outside of the window to make its presence

felt. The window outlooks onto another small shaded enclosed shrub shrouded courtyard of

the ‘Le Vieil Hôpital’, ensuring the bedroom is protected from the sunshine and kept cool

(ish).

The sun itself at its allotted hour lights up the sky behind the shoulder of Ventoux, its

actual rise hidden from view until it is high enough in the clear blue sky to creep above the

land and explode in orange and bright white light to call in a new day. The sky has to be seen.

There are not enough English words for ‘blue’ that does it. Not one cloud. Not one. Provence

does have clouds of course, often of the thundery sort. Massive, dark, grey threatening, awe

inspiring towers of billowing anvil shaped cumulus promising a deluge of biblical proportions,

but this morning they have run away over the Vaucluse plateau and the Luberon Hills and

hidden themselves to strike at a more opportune moment. They choose such times as when

one might be cycling alone across the unsheltered flatlands with the nearest cover over 5 miles

away.

But this morning belongs to the sun.

As it does most mornings, the sun drives the country into fecundity and prosperity. It

enriches the sap in the olive trees which will in time produce virgin, oil rich fruit in the

presses. It gives energy to the sugar producing vines and their black bursting grapes, allows

the green and yellow juicy succulent melons and the tomatoes to ripen rich red in the fields.

High up in the hills of the Luberon to the south, truffles shelter from the sun in the roots of

oak trees only to be discovered by trained pigs, dogs or someone with a stick and an eye for

the tell tale signs of hidden gastronomic treasure. The taste of the sun is to be found in the

wines of the Cotes du Rhône: Beaume de Venise, Rasteau, Gigondas and Ventoux. Lavender

fields bloom in their richness in bright blue row upon row because the sun gives them life.