Castles and Railway Stations

The castle in the picture at the top of the page is called Neuvicq-le-chateau and it sits on top of a low bluff along the high road from Angouleme to La Rochelle in western France.  A fairy-tale castle, a Sleeping Beauty castle, it is a magical place with mystical powers in my own personal mythology.  For decades it has served to remind me that I am approaching, or leaving , a place and people that I love.

When I was a little girl my mother, brothers and I used to make the seven-hour train journey from Paris to Angouleme every two years to spend the summer with my French grandparents.  An only child, my mother had left France and her parents to marry my father, an American.  Although my grandparents loved and admired my father, they missed their daughter and grandchildren terribly, so the reunions at Angouleme train station were often fraught with anxiety and feeling.  I remember the tightness in my chest as the train pulled into the station and the mad scramble to get our luggage down the steps or through the window in the allotted three minutes.  My grandmother, a strict and stern French schoolteacher, would be sobbing on the platform, joyful to see us again and already dreading the separation at the end of the summer.  My grandfather, mild-mannered and suffering terribly from the angina that would claim him, would beam at his beautiful, elegant daughter and try to speak to my brothers and me in a few words of English.  From time to time he would clutch his chest and murmur, "Du calme, du calme" as if reminding himself that he was not supposed to get excited, it was bad for his heart.  My great-aunt Madeleine, whom I adored, would stroke my long hair and tell me I was "grande et belle."  My poor brothers, both them painfully shy, would look miserable.

In due course we would pile into the cars and drive through the steep, narrow streets of the town, over the bridge crossing the Charente River to the high road leading to our house, forty-five kilometers away.  With the lovely steeples and fortified walls of Angouleme behind us, the road would climb up onto the limestone plateau, dipping and curving and weaving through fields, pastures and vineyards.  Stately plane trees lined the road and small villages marked our progress to the house:  Saint-Genis-d'Hiersac, Saint-Cybardeaux, Rouillac, their creamy stone houses glowing in the golden summer sun.

As the plateau flattened out and the vineyards stretched farther to the horizon, our eyes were drawn to the left, to the south.  Would it still be there?  Who would see it first?  And then it was there, the slate roof glinting in the late afternoon light, the massive towers strong and comforting, the little houses of the hamlet nestled around it like chicks around a hen.  Neuvicq-le-chateau... eleven more kilometers 'til home....