Pat and Lee / Dordogne 

There is a place filled with thousands of medieval castles, caverns full of cave paintings, and food to die for. It is called the Dordogne, in the south western Perigeux region of France. It is a magical place. I was lucky enough to visit and live there for a while because of two dear friends who have now passed away. Patricia and Lee Barton.

Surrogate parents

My friendship with Pat and Lee goes way back to an earlier sojourn in France when I was a pre-teen, living in a village called Medan. It was a picturesque little town, filled with memories of the writer Zola and his impressionists friends. Zola hosted Cézanne, his childhood friend, and other artists such as Édouard Manet and Camille Pissarro, and naturalist writers such as Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant. This was way before my time, therefore I was ignorant when I lived there. All I knew was that down the street there lived 2 Americans who were fascinating people. Long before it became popularized by the Peter Mayle book “My year in Provence”, the couple had been restoring and selling old French houses. They made it a paying hobby by taking wrecks that no one wanted, turning them into palaces that everyone wanted, featured in home and garden magazines.

How to describe them? Bohemian Americans who were at ease with living in France. They met in France and married then began a dream life. First living on the St Louis island in Paris, he worked for the American Advertising agency Jay Walter Thompson and she was a fashion model. Lee looked like a mix of Tom Seleck and Sean Connery - a handsome man. Patricia was a red head, with freckles, and a funny nose; she she used to chain smoke. She was not shy. Through years of ups and downs they continued to live a life that many Americans could only dream of. They had no kids, but adopted many along the way. I was one of them.

I looked up to them, admired them and wanted to be like them.

My life became more entwined with theirs when I started to study art in Paris. I remember them inviting me out to their house in the Seine valley, when I had just arrived, where they were entertaining an elderly French couple. She was a retired teacher, he was a dentist. We sat outside in the early fall sun and talked about this and that. The dentist invited me to dinner at the Coupole restaurant, where he regaled me with more stories; he told me about a woman patient who was so proud of her breasts that she showed them off to him. He said, I quote, “my compliments Madam.” He urged me to make love with a woman in the snow. I always wondered about frost bite… Then he got a ‘crise de foie’. Ah the French.

I was to meet many interesting people through them, like the English illustrator -Robin Jacques - whose girl friend was called - I kid you not  - “Pussy”. He was self taught, son of a RAF cadet who crashed in WWII, leaving him to raise himself and his sister, a chorus girl. He did wonderful pen and ink art. All gone now.

Lee worked for Chanel. I remember him bringing home this gigantic bottle of Chanel 5. I didn’t think what it cost or if it was real, at the time. It was just Lee. He was an art director for Coco Chanel who fired him. Which turn ed out to be a good thing because he got more money unemployed than when he worked. Around that time they had discovered a region of France that I had driven through with my parents on the way to Spain. We had wanted to visit the caves of Lascaux but they were closed. So we went down to Bilboa and visited Altimira caves instead; one cave drawing is like another after all.

It was a magical place. The Dordogne.

France is a country of ever changing landscapes. Each village is different, and each region is different both architecturally and in culture. I always dreamed of retiring in France to just drive around drawing each place, or better yet, take a barge on the canals. 

When I finally arrived in the Dordogne, after a 8 hour drive, I was impressed. It is a land of small winding valleys, of villages that are build with golden coloured stone, and around each bend in the road is another breath taking vista. There is a place in the valley where you can see at least 4 castles and many more castelettes (one of them was the home of Josephine Baker). From the village of Dome you can spend hours looking down on the curve of the water and the land, as if you are a bird of prey. Each season in the Dordogne is different, and the colours change as well. Beauty becomes almost mundane, the eye becomes saturated.

Pat and Lee had invited me to spend Christmas in their unfinished house. I was to find out the meaning of unfinished on arrival. No bathrooms, no heat, no nothing but a roof made of stones called logges. My bed was their car, they slept on a table inside with at least a fire place. When I awoke the next morning (I have never been a lover of camping, even in cars) I saw my friend Lee naked taking a piss on the lawn. He smiled and made a nonchalant gesture. Typically Lee. Next up was the farmer, M. Constance who looked surprised to see me. He was dressed in his blue coveralls, a beret, and his old face crinkled up in a smile above his moustache and red cheeks. Later that day I received an invitation to sleep at his farm house which I grateful said yes to. He reminded me of my grandfather in 9 Forks Louisiana (yes, it really does exist) especially when we went out to the chicken hutch to collect eggs. In many ways I am still a country boy.

At night I was put to bed with a brick that had been heated on the fireplace. Madame Constance made sure of that. Monsieur was a truffle hunter, with his dog, and I had occasion to eat such fare. Black truffles come from the Dordogne. Added to an omelette they are food of the gods. Eating was primordial, this was France after all. 

I met their grandson Patrick. We became good buddies. One year I was invited to a Reveillon de Famille which lasted into the dawn and involved eating lots of dishes of scrumptious food and drinking abundantly. He also showed me his secret place, an abandoned chateau in the woods, built above a prehistoric cave, entwined with vines and trees. Chateau-de-commarque. Somehow I felt as if I was in an adventure novel, as I explored the place.

Later were to fall out over a woman, my fiancé. Patrick had a little bit too much to drink at one of Pat and Lees Christmas parties and he decided to play a prank on me by pretending to seduce my girl. I didn’t appreciate it, and I got very angry. We never spoke again. I regret that.

I am basically a very shy person who forces my self to be social. I would rather be by myself. I have/had a few good friends, like Pat and Lee who understand this about me. I used to drink a lot to overcome my shyness, with consequences. If I am in the mood I can be the life of the party. But I am more wall flower than bouquet centre piece. I remember a party in a chateau where I took up my pen and pencil to draw people. It was at the rich fellow’s chateau, with his beautiful wife and her pied noir family. Later the they would adopt two Indian girls, I drew them as well. Above the fireplace hung an expensive David painting, very impressive. He had an airplane parked outside the chateau and two great Danes. Impressive. Rich.

Pat and Lee were the first people I had ever known who had gone to a therapist. Over the years I had become aware of Lee’s bisexual tendencies. For awhile I think he was going to the street next to the Paris Opera known for its male prostitutes. It was obvious to me that he was homosexual; it never got in the way of our friendship. Though he did run out of gas one day when I was helping him move to the Dordogne. Such a facile trope. I have always known what team I was playing on, despite many offers. For Lee it was probably at the heart of his being; a kind loving man, who had sexual feelings for men. It must have been difficult. Now it is more accepted to be binary. Patricia always bragged that he had never cheated on her with other women… Ironic.

Looking back at those halcyon days, I wish I had been more self aware. My friends accused me of being a hedonist at the time. In many ways I was young and handsome and the women were willing. Mostly I was interested in living to the limit. I still live that way. But more vicariously. Perhaps I am more introspective. I think more about what I do and how I feel.

In my mind I can go back to those days and replay an inner film , reliving the good and bad times. Glad that I knew my friends Pat and Lee and was able to be part of their lives. Glad to have taken the choice of going to study in France. 

I remember the last time I talked to Lee. His wife Patricia had to hold the telephone up to his ear. He told me jokingly, “it is amazing how much weight you can loose when you don’t eat for a week.” He died soon after.