For several years, I’ve bought some or all of our weekly vegetables from a woman called Giselle, who once ran a stall at the Martel market but now sells them direct from her barn. She’s had some quite serious health issues of late, which has meant that she can’t work quite as hard in her fields as she once did. Nevertheless, I can count on her courgettes and tomatoes and potatoes, and her asparagus and walnuts when in season. When the hens are laying, I buy our eggs from her, too. This summer, though, the supply has dried up. Either they’ve been conserving their energy during the heat-waves or it’s chickens’ way of protesting against human-induced climate change.
Anyway, Giselle’s a cheery soul who manages to remain positive in spite of it all. She always greets me with a smile and we often exchange tips on delicious ways to cook vegetables. She knows that we’re nominally vegetarian and therefore a little odd, but she values me as probably her most loyal customer. I suspect that her politics are a little right of centre, but I don’t let that spoil the tenor of our relationship. I send her a text every Friday to check that it’s all right to drop by the following morning on the way back from the market, and she always replies yes or no and to wish me a bonne soirée.
On the last Saturday morning of the not-so-merry month of August, I pulled up outside her barn. I normally telephone her to tell her that her best customer is ready and waiting for her, but this time I spotted her further down the road among a group that included her husband, their daughter and grandson (who live next door) and his worship the mayor (who lives and farms across the road). I waved cheerily, as is my wont, but she didn’t exchange the greeting, as is not her wont. Aha, I surmised, something’s afoot. Sure enough, when I joined the disparate group, I saw that something was indeed amiss. They were all busy picking debris from the roof of the mayor’s farm buildings out of Giselle’s field of beans across the road. What the chuffin’ ‘eck!?
Giselle described what had happened the previous evening. An American-style tornado, just like the twisters you see in photographs or on news footage, had swept through the vicinity. Admittedly, it was on a smaller scale than you might experience in the Mid West, but it did some considerable damage nonetheless: his worship’s asbestos roof had been ripped off in chunks; Giselle’s beans had been flattened and the poly-tunnel where she grows her tomatoes was in a state of semi-collapse; and a couple of plum trees had been rent asunder as if struck by a bolt of lightning. It was, she told me, quite terrifying.
The curious thing was, I suggested, we live less than a five-minute drive away on the other side of the main road and we saw and heard nothing. I noticed the rain at one point hammer onto the back balcony as if blown from a water cannon. The Good Wife was busy in the reading area with a client and she was so involved that she didn’t even notice the rain. Apart from deepening the barranca that runs down our drive of limestone chippings like a knife wound, there was certainly no damage to report. Giselle wasn’t at all surprised. These phenomena are localised. She was philosophical. Usually it’s somewhere else that’s hit; this time, it was her neck of the woods. Life’s a matter of chance.
Before we wandered off together to visit her barn of plenty, someone else pulled up to see what was afoot. Someone in one of those awful aggressively macho pick-up trucks beloved of good ol’ boys. Everything about him said ‘hunter’ and potential right-wing storm trooper. He shook everyone’s hand in turn, including mine. I would’ve withdrawn mine to leave him shaking fresh air, but felt that such a gesture might be a little incriminating. One of these days, he and a band of camouflaged pals might turn up on our front porch. Better to shake the hand and live with hypocrisy.
Later that morning, I was recounting the twisting saga to the Dame while we were out walking Daphne. She was as surprised as I was. Meteorology is not one of our strong points. Is it something to do with hot air rushing into cold or vice versa? During our discussion, a car pulled up beside us. It was VeeVee. I wrote about her back in April, likening her to little Edie in Grey Gardens. I speculated at the time whether the death of her diminutive mother might open up a whole world of possibilities. Well, the rubbish is still piled up in bags on the front porch and the garden is still an indescribable mess, but it seems that the man in the passenger seat is here to stay.
It seems, too, that he is both very nice and very good for VeeVee. She seems much happier and full of the joys of late summer. When she cuts the engine now, it’s still a cue for sinking hearts because you know you’re in for a long haul unless a car arrives and she’s obliged to move on, but it’s not such an arduous ordeal as it once was: her man interjects, he smiles, he laughs, he contributes and gives an impression of being a thoroughly bon oeuf.
The conversation turned to the common denominator of twisted sisters. Hers, a supply teacher, lives the other side of Souillac, a safe distance away even if not quite as safe as New Mexico where Deb’s sister weaves her tangled web. The two still speak, VeeVee explained, but rarely now that their mother has shuffled off. VeeVee’s man-friend chuckled sardonically; he knew the sister before he knew VeeVee. His gesture suggested that she’s hard work. I stayed on the edge of the conversation because I’m lucky to have a good relationship with all three siblings.
A car arrived to release us. As we continued on our merry way, we confirmed that conversations with stationary cars are not now so irksome and that it behoves us to enter into the spirit of such occasions for the sake of inter-cultural neighbourhood entente. After all, VeeVee never fails, as her mother didn’t either, to enquire about la petite. Yes, she’s doing quite well, thank you. We do have to explain each time what it is she’s doing in London, but then there are times when we have to ask ourselves the same question.
There are few things in life quite as heart-warming as late-flowering love (unless it involves Rupert Murdoch). So we both felt a warm glow from the encounter. For many years, VeeVee’s been shut up behind closed shutters inside… inside God only knows what, looking after parents who both appeared quite dotty. And now she’s blooming like a houseplant that suddenly perks up when you’ve lost all hope for it. We wondered how they met and speculated that it was probably at a Day Centre for Funnies. The Good Wife, who’s good in so many respects, doesn’t approve of such a politically incorrect label as funny, but it was conceived in the spirit that best approximates the French term brave. As in someone who’s very nice, but there’s just a little something lacking in the upper storey. Nothing too drastic – the equivalent of a door handle or a banister perhaps – but not quite all there.
And so we find ourselves now in September. The days are contracting, the nights are pulling in and an extra layer is sometimes de rigueur. We’ve had our now annual Night of the Neighbours and both sets of Parisians have gone back to the capital. Hopefully, too, we’ve had the last of the severe-health-warning heat. Now it should be plain sailing till the autumn, give or take a tornado or two. Oh, and the good ol’ boys with their rifles and pick-up trucks. Hey ho, hey ho, a-hunting they shall go. The bastards!
