Provence

The tiny village of Correns, two villages along, suffered more in the recent fires than we did. Even the green oaks on either side of the narrow road in were burnt to a dusty pale russet brown, like a New England fall but wrong. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see the huge wall of flames and smoke racing down the hill to American Cathy’s house when I helped her escape. Here I could picture a tunnel of flames. No lives were lost – people in vulnerable houses left before the fire took hold – but several homes in the surrounding woods were destroyed.

Most of the trees on this side of our biggest hill, the Bessillon, were wiped out by the fire and near the track I took on the outskirts of Correns, half the pines in the huge forest there were also reduced to -blackened stumps. A few telegraph poles, severed by the fire, hung suspended by their cables, -others lay charred on the ground, their cables broken and strewn about.

Beside the remains of a garage, a burnt out car – and across the road the scorched ruin of a house was -visible through what was left of its garden. Saddest of all, I saw a pair of doves with singed tails and wings struggling to fly. The further along the track I went, the more acrid the air became.

On my way home a helicopter wheeled above the crossroads, flew low over the car, then hovered a few feet above a big paddling pool thing. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by it all; the exhausted pompiers and pilots, the devastated landscape, and the farmers chugging along in their tractors towing tanks of water. The people who lost everything. The forest creatures. Even the doves couldn’t escape. Many of these fires were started deliberately. In tears I pulled over and called one of my daughters. ‘How could anyone do this?’ ‘I know,’ she said, ‘If these folk like fire so much, they should be burnt at the fucking stake… Well, maybe just their homes and possessions. See how they like it.’

In addition to the usual summer work, visits from family, and the fire, I’d moved six times in the previous three weeks. This entailed a lot of clearing and cleaning for rental guests. I spent hours lugging stuff up and down the cliff path in 38°C. My back ached and my head hurt. And the car had been screeching at me for months, complaining about its adBlue problem. The repair was ruinously expensive but at least I wasn’t getting shouted at any more. Rather like divorce.

Then I got a text. A friend, Jacob, whom I met last summer when I was invited to a swanky villa near the coast for a night, was back renting the same place. The kindest of men, on his way home via Spain he’d stayed in my little cave apartment and taken me out for a lobster lunch at an expensive restaurant, during which he commissioned a painting. In his text he asked if I would like to join him and his pals for the night later that week. I hadn’t had a day off for a month and said yes immediately. It was to be a fleeting visit, I wouldn’t get there until 7 p.m. and had to leave at 11 the following morning.

Jacob, wearing his long string of big black Tahitian pearls, was waiting in the doorway. We joined his friends on the terrace and I was all too briefly transported to another world; a sumptuous world of tended gardens, guest apartments, a heated pool and wooden sun loungers with cushions more comfortable than my bed at home.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see the huge wall of flames racing down to American Cathy’s house

One of the first things Jacob told me when we first met was that he hadn’t been with a woman for 41 years. Generally speaking, since I’ve been single I enjoy the company of women and younger or gay men more than I do that of straight men my own age. There’s no side, awkwardness or intention. You can talk about anything and no one mistakes friendliness for flirtation. Jacob’s life is very different to mine. At a fancy dress party he’d be Dr Frank; I’d be boring Janet.

After everyone else went to bed, he and I sat up talking. The air was balmy, a bat flitted about. There was no sound. The garden was lit only by underwater pool lights and a newish moon. At 2 a.m. I was tired but, not wanting the evening to end, suggested a swim. I hate swimming usually. Freezing cold water, swimwear; the chittering afterwards. In the darkness, and with no glasses, I can hardly see. I was also a bit drunk but felt perfectly safe and happy as I stepped down into the warm luminous pool. For the first time in my life I swam naked with someone I hardly knew. For ten minutes we swam a leisurely breaststroke side by side, chatting. Thunder rumbled far in the distance and it began to rain softly and then stopped.

For a few minutes before we went to our separate rooms, he in the main house – and me in a garden apartment, we lay side by side on loungers. Jacob turned and said: ‘You’ve got great tits. Not at all what I imagined.’