I have known Mme El for nine years. We met her, a true-blue native of this land, when we moved into her neighbourhood.
She was glad it was us, law-abiding citizens, and not some hippies with unpredictable ways who had also made a bid for the property. We became friendly with her from the start, she must have liked the look of us, open-minded as she was to foreigners, she who’d never been beyond the limits of her native canton, never seen the sea nor the high mountains except from her farmyard or better still from her first-floor bedroom window. Her husband had been to Germany in a military capacity and they had had a German P.O.W. working¹P.O.W. German prisoners of war were sent to French farms to work there for them who wept on the day of her wedding, she told me with moist eyes full of sympathy for his plight, they had lost trace of him. This was about sixty years ago.
Mme El lives in the farmhouse across the road. She was eighty at the time of our first meeting, her husband eighty-two and still growing cereals on the meadow part of our land. Leaning on a walking stick, she was expecting us in their farmyard. I was disappointed to see such an elderly person, with bad hips, I later learnt, who had staunchly refused the offered replacement operation, not trusting hospitals or anything to do with them. However, this surface impression quickly faded before the warm welcome we were given. Mme El was certainly lively enough with hardly any wrinkles in her face, pleased to meet the new neighbours, serving them their own green-gages pickled in some strong alcohol I preferred not to drink and making them welcome in every respect. A few days after our first meeting they had their wine harvest, their vineyard almost bordering on our property, with a subsequent meal for their workforce of friends and neighbours and we were invited to partake. It felt like immediately integrated into the local community.
With her poor mobility she relied on people to come and see her. She encouraged me accordingly and I became a frequent visitor like other village people or family members whom I met on such occasions. Mme El was holding court at her large round kitchen table, conversation was flourishing, drinks were offered. I soon learnt where cups, coffee, milk and sugar were kept and lent a helping hand. Her husband, Mr Bernard, who liked to potter around the yard, an able metal worker, an expert in welding, I was told, repairing his own tractor, harvester, wine press and the like seconded by a friend, used to join everyone in mid-afternoon for a coffee.
In our early days he was still driving the car, but Mme El didn’t trust him anymore, she didn’t feel safe with him behind the wheel and when it came to visiting family in a village up the road, she asked me behind his back, would I drive them there? Of course, I would and received instructions how to handle him: simply inform him that I would take them on the appointed day. Sweet-tempered according to his daughter-in-law, he wouldn’t resist such scheming and indeed he duly acquiesced without asking any questions. Mme El had assured me that behind closed doors and alone with her, he wasn’t as easy as that. I could well believe it.
Another time Mr Bernard had to have a blood test in a laboratory in town. What an expedition! Steve driving, I next to him, slender Mr Bernard in the back and of course Mme El with her walking stick, portly, weighty, who had insisted on personally supervising everything, majestically installed at his side. Then we all entered the laboratory where lots of people were already waiting and galled to see that I negotiated preferential treatment for our elderly neighbours, as a result of which we did not have to wait for an hour or two.
We also shopped for them once a week. Coming back we handed the heavy bags to her through her window which is at ground level on the side of the road and in the afternoon. I went there for a chat and the reckoning up. She always paid by cheque and I admired the flourish and the verve of her signature. She still had a very nice hand then, she had always enjoyed writing, she told me and showed me some exercise books she had filled, at our predecessor’s suggestion, with sayings in Oc, (The language of Gascony) commonly known ‘patois’ ²Patois : Language of Gascony, The Langue d’Oc, a Romance language in its own right which was suppressed by the French usurpers who imposed their language and deprecatingly gave the name ‘patois’ to the original language. For an assessment of the two languages, cf. Michel de Montaigne who assigned a superior quality to the Langue d’Oc.. Mme El being bilingual.

• 1
  P.O.W. German prisoners of war were sent to French farms to work there
• 2
  Patois : Language of Gascony, The Langue d’Oc, a Romance language in its own right which was suppressed by the French usurpers who imposed their language and deprecatingly gave the name ‘patois’ to the original language. For an assessment of the two languages, cf. Michel de Montaigne who assigned a superior quality to the Langue d’Oc.