Not a lot of any real consequence happens in these parts (and sank ‘eavens for that, as Maurice Chevalier might have crooned), but a death in the commune always sets tongues a-wagging. Particularly if it’s two deaths. Admittedly, both protagonists were on their last legs, so the deaths came as little surprise and probably in both cases as a considerable mercy.
In the case of Alain, it’s Black I feel sorry for, his little Jack Russell crossbreed that runs to the gate and barks at passers-by. I’ve never dared to put my hand through the uprights and give him a friendly pat in case he should bite the hand that pets him. With Alain gone, Black is left alone to roam the enclosed garden. His sister-in-law across the road feeds him but certainly doesn’t walk him, and his must now be a forlorn existence. Poor Black.
I don’t think ‘poor Alain’ because his death was a long time coming. I liked him well enough; he was a genial chap and he and his brother Jean-Louis helped lift some tiles with their tractor onto our roof during construction. He also emptied our fosse septique once or twice, so I owed him a debt of gratitude. Like his brother, he smoked like a chimney and I would imagine they rolled their cigarettes together during breaks when working on the farm they co-owned. Those cigarettes did for both of them: Jean-Louis went first: it must be almost 15 years since he shuffled off with lung cancer and we went to the funeral in the little graveyard near the mairie. We filed past his grieving wife and two daughters to offer our condolences, but subsequently there have been disquieting rumours about domestic abuse. I didn’t necessarily pick up on what the Good Wife always found unsettling about him, but his strange, spiteful way of saying oui put me in mind of a Mexican drug-runner.
Alain by contrast seemed quite harmless. More put-upon than the putter-upon. Being the eldest, he inherited the crumbling family home opposite ‘Treblinka’ (the grim cowsheds where they incarcerated their bovine mothers and calves). He then helped his kid brother construct the modern family home about 50 metres away on the other side of the road: a kind of garish yellow Lotois replica in concrete blocks. Alain would go there for his morning coffee and probably, too, for Sunday lunch and the occasional dinner.
Some six or seven years ago he had a severe heart attack, almost certainly brought on by smoking. From then on, he was confined to the old house, which gradually fell apart around him. I pictured him sitting there in the gloom, no doubt with the telly on all day and all evening, not moving far from the oxygen tank that kept him alive. Twice every day, a nurse would come and check on him. Occasionally a medical vehicle would turn up, presumably to replenish his life-support system. And thus he faded out, not with a bang but with a whimper. He was whisked off to hospital after another heart attack around Christmas, never to return.
Wandering past the house the other day with Debs and Daphne, we wondered what was hidden away inside that gloomy, insalubrious house. What mementos of a human life would be left behind? I suggested that he might have had a very valuable record collection – original Blue Note jazz from the ‘50s perhaps – but we scotched that idea very quickly. Best not to think about it. A few days later, I saw his cousin, his worship the mayor, and offered my condolences. I excused our breech of etiquette, but we hadn’t seen any book to sign outside the house. Apparently there hadn’t been one. It was complicated. He’s buried now aside his brother, so if there’s any such thing as a spirit world, they can get together for a celestial clope or two.
The other dearly departed went a week or so earlier. I never knew her name, but she seemed a sweet old moustachioed crone. After the death of her husband about a decade ago, she and her daughter lived together with a dog and a cat behind closed shutters. Judging by the indescribable squalor outside – with sacks of rubbish and old furniture and life’s assorted detritus piled up on a veranda and spilling into the overgrown garden – you wouldn’t want to go inside – unlike the poor daily nurse. I trust she had the good sense to turn down any offer of refreshment.
Together, the old woman and her daughter must have co-existed in some half-lit half-life, rather like Big Edie and Little Edie, Jackie Onassis’ aunt and cousin, as featured in that unforgettable documentary, Grey Gardens. From time to time, VeeVee the daughter would emerge to walk Sasha, the little Yorkshire terrier. If we were unlucky, one or both of us might stumble upon the pair of them while walking Daphne – to engage in some fruitless conversation while witnessing the unedifying spectacle of VeeVee tugging on Sasha’s lead to keep her from wandering away from the road and doing what dogs that have been shut up in Gris Jardins all day want and need to do.
Sometimes, they would go out together in VeeVee’s little car, the frail, twisted mother barely big enough to peer over the dashboard. Again, if unlucky, VeeVee would pull over to speak to one or both of us while walking Daphne. The diminutive mother, would always enquire about la petite. What was our daughter doing these days? Pauses would become increasingly pregnant until a car from either direction would compel the daughter to wind up the window and be on her way. Whereupon one or both of us would breathe a sigh of relief, free at last to be on our way.
VeevVee stopped the other day and wound down the window for another chat while I was out walking Daphne. Having failed to sign the book of sympathy, I was able to offer my condolences in person. ‘Oh no,’ VeeVee demurred. ‘It’s one of those things.’ ‘But even so,’ I insisted. I wondered whether she was simply putting on a brave face in the French way that seems to deny emotions. But maybe… Maybe her mother’s passing might be a blessed release. Maybe she will start living her life now. She and Sasha. Perhaps she’ll open the shutters.
In fact, the shutters have remained closed. Old habits clearly die hard. However… only the other day I was out walking Daphne when a car pulled up beside me. It was VeeVee – with a man in the passenger seat. Not exactly a handsome devil, but reasonably personable. Fortunately, a car came along and she had to be on her way, but she seemed a little brighter than before. Could she… could he…?
And then the other day I was passing Gris Jardins on my bike, with Daphne trotting along behind me, and I spotted VeeVee and self-same man in what I shall call for the sake of convenience ‘the garden’. Perhaps my imagination hadn’t run away with me the other day. I wondered whether they might even be discussing ways of tidying up the place and getting rid of all that accumulated rubbish. Or… perhaps he worked for a French TV channel and he was prospecting Gris Jardins for an episode of one of those house-blitzing programmes often found on the UK’s Channel 5?
My guess is as good as yours. One thing’s for sure, though. I shall keep my ears and eyes open and let you know of any significant developments. Will Black find a loving home, for example? Will VeeVee blossom and find a loving man? And who was the chap in her passenger seat? Perhaps I should open an Instagram account.
