We were yet again in an animated discussion about marital fidelity. This was in the context of a man who according to the newspaper had killed his wife out of jealousy, I could even add a story about a local historical personality, member of the nobility, to whom the same thing happened. Mme El is rock-hard: the man had every right to do that, all she would have had to do was to be straight – ‘marcher droit’! I question her about this and that, she is adamant. She explains that she’s been brought up like that and if her husband didn’t behave straight, she would do the same to him, adding that, of course, she has to be straight, too, so as not to incur the appropriate punishment. She seems to shudder for a second, certainly not ready to die for a long time. I refer to ‘thou shalt not kill’, does it not apply in this case? She says spontaneously, it doesn’t!
But you, she says, you’re broader-minded – ‘esprit plus large’, are you not? I ask, is that a compliment. She is not sure. A statement of fact? I help. She nods and says she’s very ‘sévère’, severe on this point. I say, in principle I’ve been brought up like you. She looks questioningly. I have to think of somebody, a firm believer in marital fidelity who knew a hundred if not a thousand suggestive jokes and never went beyond patting ladies’ shoulders in public. Mme El is a great one for any possibilities of punning on this very subject, she loves it and welcomes talk about it. She became really lively during our discussion, a fully alert, rational being, quick-witted, ready to riposte and unafraid.

I tell Mme El about our travel plans next week, how it all came about. She regrets that she won’t have my company for a few days and then listens with interest. I tell her that I had to make myself accept it, giving all the pros and cons in the matter, and that I decided that the pros were more weighty. Of course, she exclaims, they would miss you and yes, the sea must be beautiful, she has never seen it and wants me to bring a sample back for her. And the most important point: you must be there for your husband! Then she laughs, sacrifice yourself for him, and more seriously, he will then sacrifice himself for you. All very consistent.
We were talking about things of the past while looking at the photographs on her wall. She was about to become melancholy, but then resolutely: ‘what’s the good? It’s over, finished, forget it! “es atal”, it’s like that’. 
I made her write into her diary that ‘the neighbour is going to England soon’. She looked up in alarm. I stressed ‘le’ voisin, not ‘la’ voisine! She was reassured, even if she can’t understand why a couple doesn’t do everything together. It’s every man for himself, isn’t it?
I told Mme El that my husband had gone away to Spain for a week. She looked aghast, asking ‘with an organization?’, that is, not alone… I reassured her: a meeting of Britishers which is of no interest to me. She could accept that, even if she can’t understand this approach to things by a married couple.
A few days later she complained like so often about feeling tired, listless, lethargic, lazy, ‘j’ai la chichette/la flemme/la cagne/la faignantize’. I quoted her favourite saying about eating, sleeping and loving to her and she said that obviously the third one is the one she prefers. I said, it stirs one up. And she ‘yes’ with determination, adding that it was ‘amusant’, amusing.
We talked about riding because her two great-grandchildren had been taken to a stables this morning. She brightened up saying that she liked riding very much, be it only the heavy draught horse which used to work on their farm in her grandfather’s and some of her father’s time, did I? I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest experience in this field, never once on horseback all my life and I didn’t miss it either, but I could contribute my daughters, both keen riders, especially Jenny whose husband had complained about it. But he has nothing to complain about, I said to Mme El, she pays for it out of her own pocket and doesn’t do any harm to anybody. Mme El heartily agreed, riding is wonderful and it’s better than running after men!
Mme El has a good day and a bad one in turns. Something must have happened to her right hand recently weakening it even further. It has been the weaker of the two for a long time, but she was able to write, even if I had to watch that she put her arm on the table instead of holding it up. But now writing is hardly possible because of pain in the hand. Today’s saint is, however, Bernard’s, her husband’s name and she made an all-out effort in her diary to greet him and wish him a ‘bonne fête’. After that she was happy to be entertained by me. I tell her about the small things in our life, for example my husband at the moment wanting to sell a chain-saw, he has three, a big, a medium and a small one – and then there’s you, Mme El chipped in – and he now finds that the biggest one is too heavy, I went on, so he wants to sell it – and you with it, she said which made me laugh and she concerned ‘I don’t mean it’. I’m sure she doesn’t, it wouldn’t be her idea of marriage, yet she’s shrewd. A few days before her final departure, bed-ridden and in pain, she inquired after ‘Monsieur Steve’, had he come back from his ramble? I could reassure her, he had.

She much admired my warmest pullover which I must wear these days because feeling cold. I explained it to her: knitted by me thirty years ago out of three natural shades of wool, brown, white and beige. She didn’t know the colour beige and I concluded there must be specific sheep not present in this country. Mme El’s grandparents and then her father had sheep, too, among them a ram which deliberately knocked down her grandmother, as a result of which he was sold and converted into lamb. They bought another ram, for the ewes can’t be without a male, she said. Just like the hens, I threw in. Yes, and her gander had a goose, didn’t he. ‘And I my mate’, she laughed, ‘mon copain’, referring to her husband.
Mme El has vivid recollections of her youth. When I ask her to tell me about it, she unfailingly responds full-heartedly and quite forgetting that she wants to eat: ‘une jeunesse ‘difficile’, a tough youth, she says seriously, a touch gloomy, regretfully.
The sour tone puzzles me: was she unhappy then? No, her facial expression tells me that she wouldn’t go as far as that. Only, her grandmother kept her under tight control, she was never allowed to go out and have fun with her girlfriends – and with the boys, I suppose – no dances or other merry-makings.
Mme El begrudgingly concedes that looking back it may have been a good thing. What about her father, grandma’s son, I ask her, I gather he liked to enjoy himself in various ways, why didn’t his mother clamp down on him?
Mme El waves this aside: He was a man, he could please himself – which later didn’t stop her from clamping down on her own son, to the point of then worrying whether this has had a negative impact on their relationship. However, I could reassure her on that. If he has no time for her nowadays, it’s because ‘he has to live with two women and only one of them can be the boss’, as once observed to me by Rose’s man who has done extensive works in their house. Mme El fully understands this situation and acquiesces, even if she tells me that it was a great joy to have a son, ‘was’, for she doesn’t seem to have one anymore.
I say to her that she was married young, at twenty-one.
Wasn’t that lucky, quite a few women never find a husband at all. She replies that she wouldn’t have been allowed to get married before coming of age because they wanted her to be responsible, fully aware of what she was doing. And then she had to marry the man her grandmother had chosen for her, and if not, she would have been turned out, the last thing Mme El would have wanted, she tells me, being mighty attached to the house where four generations of her family were born and where she had spent all her life. Casting loving glances around her room, she says she loves these walls.
So the marriage went ahead and never any regrets! Her grandmother had channelled her into the wanted path from which she didn’t deviate all her life. It basically meant one man only and everything within the law allowed, needless to say, and Mme El gives me to understand that she did have fun in her marriage.
La Coutigo⁸La Coutigo, poem by Frédéric Mistral translated by Jean Boutière /French philologist, specialist in Romance philology (1898-1967), head of the department of Romanian language at National School of Oriental languages at Sorbonne. As ‘Me faras la coutigo, Danis? ’ (‘Tu me chatouilleras, Denis?’ – ‘Will you tickle me Denis ’, followed by ‘Oh! que riren!’ ‘Et nous de rire !’ – ‘Let’s have fun ! ’). she laughs mischievously and in all fairness hints that she doesn’t know what she might have done, had her grandma not been so strict with her. In fact she can’t speak too highly of this physically small woman in spite of the spoil-sport factor, a woman she cared for as a matter of course when old age had struck her.
Trying to bring Mme El out of her mental ‘fainéantise’, I held out a bait and it worked: I told her about a new law allowing marriage between partners of the same sex. Didn’t she come to life! She opened wide her eyes in disbelief. Never before had she heard about anything as outlandish! She summed up her outrage in the one word ‘no!’, shaking her head vigorously.
I said I fully understood her reaction, remembering that I reacted just like that some thirty years ago when I first heard about such a proposition in Great Britain.
She asked me what my opinion was. I explained that personally I couldn’t care less. Would any third party be disadvantaged by this law? I didn’t see that this was the case, it only affects the two getting married. And why shouldn’t they? Nature has made them like that, they can’t help it and there’re more of them than you think. Why should they be disadvantaged administratively or otherwise? She looked nonplussed and said nothing.
Mme El’s village love-stories would have delighted Henri Pourrat⁹Henri Pourrat (1887-1959) was a French writer and anthropologist who collected the oral literature of the Auvergne, nine hundred and forty-five tales in thirteen volumes in Le Trésor des Contes, one of them entitled Les Amours. like one of the neighbours who for years has been known in terms of the sum of money he offered to another neighbour, a spinster, if she let him … The spinster declined and didn’t keep the secret.

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  La Coutigo, poem by Frédéric Mistral translated by Jean Boutière /French philologist, specialist in Romance philology (1898-1967), head of the department of Romanian language at National School of Oriental languages at Sorbonne. As ‘Me faras la coutigo, Danis? ’ (‘Tu me chatouilleras, Denis?’ – ‘Will you tickle me Denis ’, followed by ‘Oh! que riren!’ ‘Et nous de rire !’ – ‘Let’s have fun ! ’).
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  Henri Pourrat (1887-1959) was a French writer and anthropologist who collected the oral literature of the Auvergne, nine hundred and forty-five tales in thirteen volumes in Le Trésor des Contes, one of them entitled Les Amours.