Read Love in a Warm Climate for Free Online Page B

column in the centre. On two opposite sides of the column were two spouts shaped like snakes from which cool clear water poured. On top was a flower arrangement that had red, pink, yellow, white and blue flowers that must have been in baskets, but it was so abundant it looked as if they were growing from the fountain itself.
    We walked over to the fountain and drank some of the clear, cool water.
    “The water comes from the mountains,” said Mr Vorst, pointing to them. It tasted cold and fresh and a little earthy.
    Across the road from the square the stone church tower was bright in the afternoon sunlight. The bells rang four times signalling the hour. We walked over to the war memorial, an obelisk-shaped statue with a brass soldier perched on top of it. A la mémoire des enfants de la commune de Boujan morts pour la France 1914–1918 read the inscription. There were about thirty names carved into the stone; I read some of them, imagining the young men who had their whole lives in front of them and the mothers and lovers who musthave mourned them: Hippolyte Pierron, Joseph Courtois, Ernest de Sade, Marcellin Bartin. Underneath there was a smaller section dedicated to the Second World War. Around the bottom of the memorial were small colourful flowers. Wooden boxes of colourful plants lined the square and the streets as well. Even the bar, La Petite Auberge with its rather dilapidated exterior and old-fashioned yellow faded sign headed Consommations Choisies and listing drinks in pre-war writing like Bière Pression le demi and Café Noir la tasse , had hanging baskets of bright flowers.
    “Maybe they’re gearing up for the France in Bloom competition,” I said to Nick. “Did you know that a third of French villages enter it every year?”
    He looked at me as if I had finally lost the plot.
    I longed from that moment to be part of the life they lived here, even if it did mean that Nick took up boules . This was not just because of the way it looked, though, but because there was an atmosphere of community here. It reminded me of the England of my childhood that I would like my children to grow up in but that no longer exists, where the pace of life is slow and there is a real sense of community, somewhere people still care enough to keep an eye out for other people’s kids and there isn’t just CCTV watching. This was a place we would all be safe in, a place in which they could be children without fear. In London I daren’t let them out of my sight for a second, the papers are endlessly full of horror stories of abductions of children and people being stabbed for doing nothing more than walking down the road at the wrong time.
    We went back to the car and drove through the village, past a bus stop where a group of women wearing slippers sat chatting under a giant painted Dubonnet poster slowly being erased by time and the elements. They stopped their talking and looked up as we drove past. They didn’t really look like they were actually waiting for a bus. Sure enough, I saw another elderly lady walking from her house with a fold-up chair to join them. She too stopped to stare at the unknown car.
    “Imagine living in a place where a car you don’t recognise constitutes an event,” I said to Nick. “I think I would rather get to like it.”
    Nick nodded. “It sure beats the drive-by shooting that makes for an event round our way.”
    We drove down another tree-lined road towards what was to become our new home. Close to it was a château that looked more like a mini-Versailles than a Languedoc wine grower’s home. It was absolutely magnificent, with turrets and towers and a long avenue of cypress trees leading up to it. I imagined the inhabitants must be terribly glamorous, and might possibly even wear 17 th -century clothes.
    “That is the Château de Boujan,” the agent told us. “Their land adjoins the land of Sainte Claire, but they have around thirty hectares, whereas you have only sixteen. They used to