The fires are lit

The fires are lit on the first of November, every year, whatever the weather is doing. It has been done that way since long before the house was ours, and there is no argument in favour of it beyond the fact that it is done.

This year the first was mild — eleven degrees, damp, a low grey ceiling sitting on the shoulder of the Brevent. Lighting a fire in the great room felt faintly absurd until about four in the afternoon, when the light went and the walls began to give back the warmth they had been taking in all day.

The wood is beech and it comes from the same forest above Les Houches that has supplied the house for thirty years. It is cut in March, split in April and stacked to season through two summers, which is one summer longer than most people bother with. You can hear the difference. Properly seasoned beech does not spit or sigh; it simply burns, with a sound closer to breathing than to crackling.

Sylvie lays them. She has a method involving a great deal of air and very little kindling, and she is quietly contemptuous of anyone who builds a fire like a bonfire. Four fires, morning and evening, from November until the middle of April. She estimates she has laid something over eleven thousand of them.

Guests will sit in front of one for two hours and then say, on the way up to bed, that they cannot remember the last time they did nothing for two hours. This happens perhaps twice a week. We have stopped being surprised by it.