Pieces of Identity

By Donald Naismith

Not everything is as it seems. No-one was more aware of this than Simon Fielden--unscrupulous art-dealer--in his personal and professional life. But nothing prepared him for the discoveries he made researching the abandoned French farmhouse he had bought as an escape from the pressures of London life and his own demons.

Tracing its story from its origins in the eighteenth century through the years of the German Occupation, Simon’s maison de reve became, through a terrible error of judgement, a place from which he and his wife, Becky, had to flee. A study in ambiguity, ‘Pieces of Identity’ accompanies Simon on his journey of self-discovery where, even in his new life, not everything, as he found to his cost, was as it seemed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665557276

Donald Naismith

After a distinguished career in education administration, Donald Naismith retired to ' one of most unfashionable and unknown parts of France' where he now lives with his family and which provides the setting for this story. Educated at Belle Vue Boys Grammar School in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire where he grew up and at Clare College, Cambridge where he held an Open Exhibition in History, he was appointed CBE and Chevalier des Palmes Academiques in 1995 for services to education in England and France.'

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© 2022 Donald Naismith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/28/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5726-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5725-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5727-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022907385

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Le Grand Pré

Chapter 2 There is One Other Property I Think You Should See

Chapter 3 Lunch at The Resto Campagne

Chapter 4 It’s Got Your Name On It

Chapter 5 Supper at La Porte De L’Écurie

Chapter 6 Goodbye, Piccadilly

Chapter 7 Simon Fielden

Chapter 8 La Vie Est Belle

Chapter 9 Pierre Solignac’s Wedding Day

Chapter 10 Pieces of Identity

Chapter 11 Putting Flesh on The Bones

Chapter 12 Occupation

Chapter 13 Monday 12 June 1942

Chapter 14 Catherine’s Story

Chapter 15 The Catalan and The Farmer’s Daughter

1

LE GRAND PRÉ

Sud Ouest Pyrénées, France, August 1975

Every morning on Christmas Day, when the weather was fine, the sun appears over the horizon between the posts of the gateway at Le Grand Pré with such druidical precision that I often wondered whether the house had been so positioned with this orientation in mind. If so, would it not be interesting to know something about the man who built it? This account describes the search for him and the people who lived and worked here until we bought the farm.

Pleased with what he had written, Simon Fielden rocked back on his chair and, through his study window, looked out onto the meadow that had given the house its name—pleased even more so that he had at last put pen to paper and made a start. Words did not come easily to him. Figures were his forte. He found writing hard, and feared he would not do justice to his subject. But it had become important to him to record what he had discovered and to make sure that the people he felt he had come to know and the events they had lived through were not forgotten.

What he would do with his memoir he was far from sure. He would certainly not want to benefit financially in any way, although he knew it might well have commercial value. And although his story deserved the widest publicity in its own right, the natural caution that had served him so well in business advised against. In any case, he would need to be careful. There were significant gaps in his account. Much could not be corroborated. How far could he trust his understanding of the French language on which he had to depend? He had been unable to involve his neighbours and others in the town in any meaningful way. They simply would not talk about the war years. What snippets he had managed to prise from them had been couched in an almost impenetrable patois. In addition, his own family background instinctively inhibited any but the most tentative enquiries, and there might very well be people affected by what he was about to disclose still alive. Nevertheless, he was sure that in all material respects, what he had to say was correct. For the time being, the best he could do was to set down as dispassionately as he could what he knew and tackle the issue of publication later.

Simon had bought Le Grand Pré with his wife, Becky, as their retirement home. They had always wanted to live in France, and the sale of his family’s little-known but immensely profitable insurance firm in the City, Fielden, Klein, to Goldberg and Goldberg for a very large cheque indeed had enabled them to do so in style. Both had thrown themselves into restoring their abandoned corps de ferme in the middle of nowhere with, well, abandon, Becky laying out the remarkable garden she could never have contemplated in London, Simon indulging his passion for interior design, antique furniture and objets d’art.

Simon had been the company’s chief loss adjuster and had specialised in claims arising from art and jewellery theft. Many of the spectacular heists that hit the headlines, and more importantly, many of those that did not, had at some point involved his attention. He particularly prided himself on his skill in weighing up evidence, his shrewdness in reconciling conflicting claims—more often than not overwhelmingly dishonest—and his absolute discretion, qualities which had earned him a formidable reputation among London’s artistic freemasonry and Scotland Yard’s fraud squad in equal measure. He was well equipped, he reckoned, to complete the relatively straightforward task of uncovering the origins of the house that had come to mean so much to him.

In spite of this, Simon was the first to admit surprise and not a little disappointment that the completion of the purchase of the house had not brought with it the usual bundle of deeds and other papers which in England would have registered the changing fortunes of such a property through the generations and which he had assumed would get him off to a flying start. Instead, all he had was a single document, the acte de vente, the contract, itemising in unforgiving detail a description of the farmhouse, its outbuildings and land, the identities and entitlements of the people involved and the modalities of payment.

The meeting at the solicitors’ to complete the purchase contained further surprises. Instead of being invited to sign the various papers without any further preliminaries, Simon found himself, for almost an hour, having to listen to Maitre Duclos, the notaire, the