La Colline de Chevalard.

Yesterday we left the city in an Opel the colour of cornflowers. Ten minutes later we found ourselves on a sun-bleached hillside, overlooking faraway rooftops, half-visible under a wintry haze. The white horizon blended up into cyan and, high above, that pure, clear blue an English winter clouds from memory. In the yellowed field before us were two horses, coats grown long like lambs’ fleeces. The sun set them alight from behind, so they were lined with an aura of bright white, their breath misting out periodically, glowing and fading. To our backs were higher fields and trees the sun had not yet reached; they were glazed in frost and bathed in deep blue shade. Every tree, every leaf, every blade of grass was crystallised, brittle in their icy coats. I bent down and picked a hemlock stem. Every crystal was visible, jutting outwards like jagged shards of glass lining city garden walls. The sunlight made them gleam.

We walked down the path, the four of us. Three strolling, leather boots clopping like hooves against the rocky ground, one lingering behind to look under logs and kick bottles, then running frantically to catch up. Sparkling frost gently flaked from leaves and telephone wires above us, like beautiful dandruff.  We descended to a small farm, hesitating in the sun-bright courtyard as a large dog whooped at us from the doorway.  “Est-ce que vous avez du chévre à vendre aujourdhui?” we asked the woman who came out. Non, she replied, no goat’s cheese at the moment. Disappointed, we left, carrying on down the hillside. In the distance was a village, tiny terracotta roofs and a church spire and a football pitch. We could see the teams playing, red ants versus yellow ants. Like on a T.V. screen, I said.

We climbed back up the hill and the little one slipped through rusty barbed wire to pick winter flowers for his grandmère. Très jolie, she smiled. We headed onwards; later he rushed back to us proffering more flowers – desiccated heads of hemlock, covered with ice crystals whose every facet caught the sun. More beautiful than any flower summer had to offer. Later he ran back again and crushed them with his fist.

When we reached the top of the hill again, I stopped and closed my eyes. “What are you doing?” I was feeling the sun’s warmth on my face, letting orange wash through my closed eyelids. My feet were incredibly cold; my toes felt like bruisy frozen raspberries. My hands too, were bitterly numb. But with my eyes closed, feeling that faint warmth kiss my pale skin back to life, on top of La Colline de Chevalard, I ceased to care. “I’m pretending,” I said. “I’m pretending that I’m in up to my shoulders in the cold sea, with the Mediterranean sun on my face.” She joined in, and we pretended together, the icy sea of a French January ebbing around our bodies.