Bleuette - my mother's china doll

WW2 was over and family units were gradually reconstituted, men folk missing or back from the war in an appalling state, women exhausted by the burden of running family and work together in great hardship.

Now was the time for my parents to lick their wounds and face a new life. As soon as my father was strong enough to travel after his ordeal in concentration camp, we left Normandy to visit my maternal grandparents on the island of Oléron, their native island, where they had been virtual prisoners for the duration of the conflict.

I was seven years old at the time and did not remember ever seeing my grandparents. We arrived at the big house, a “Psycho” look alike building, amid cries of joy and anguished comments on the state my father was in. We children didn’t have any idea what was going on and were quite frightened by the tension and misery around us.

After a long road journey and a hectic two-hour sea crossing on a very battered, uncomfortable and smelly small ferry, we were crying with exhaustion. A quick supper was followed by bed. We woke up the next morning, fit and ready for fun and games but all the grown ups in the house came down on us to be quiet and well behaved. Father needed sleep and rest.

My brothers aged five, three and one were taken out to stay with cousins but I was allowed to stay and play with my mother’s old toys. Grandmère opened an old wooden chest and I could play with anything I liked: spinning top, marbles, chess pieces, dominoes, cards, an old tiny metal cooker with even tinier pots and pans and a great assortment of odd and mysterious junk. I had never seen such a collection of toys in my life.

Boredom quickly set in though as there was no one to play with and I started whining to my gran. Exasperated, she took me to a locked cupboard, which she reluctantly opened. She extracted a three-foot long bundle all wrapped up in tissue paper, put it on the couch near by and, without a word, slowly unwrapped it.

Finally, there, right in front of me, was the most beautiful thing I had ever cast eyes on: my mother’s prize possession, her very own china doll!

She said in a firm tone: “Voilà Bleuette, tu regardes, mais tu ne touches pas!”, you may look but you may not touch. She put the doll on her feet and it stood. She delicately held her hands and magically, it started to walk. She picked it up and cradled it and it closed its eyes. I was riveted! Grandmère then sat her safely in the corner of the couch and reminded me not to touch before she disappeared again to tend to the kitchen chores.

Bleuette was staring at me with the largest deep blue eyes as I was left spellbound, kneeling down in front of her. She was made of some sort of china (“biscuit”, I later learnt) and her whole skin radiated a browny-pink uniform glow. She had nimble fingers with red nails, pencil eyebrows and rosy cheeks, with a faint smile on her cherry lips. I so wanted to touch her hair and slide my little finger into the numerous blonde ringlets surrounding her face! There was a pink bow on either side of the parting, matching her pink organza dress. Fine cotton knickers vest and petticoat, white frilly cotton socks and white kid leather strapped shoes. My little finger was exploring timidly, jerking back as soon as I could sense Grandmère peeping round the door.

Bleuette came out every day after that as I had been a “good girl” and she sat, watching me play. I still wasn’t allowed to handle her but I cooked for her on the miniature stove and read to her, chatted to her and she became my confidante as the weeks passed.

Finally, it was time to move on to a new life, Father had mended and was heading for a new job down south. Bleuette was put away, only to come out again when we came to visit at holiday time and when the boys were out of the way. She was my special secret treat.

Sadly my grandparents died, their house was sold and their possessions dispersed. Bleuette came to my mother and found a corner in my parents’ garage where she languished for years, having been forgotten by all, including me!

By the time she was rediscovered on the occasion of a radical spring-cleaning of the house, poor old Bleuette look very much worse for wear. Even her hair was full of creepy crawlies, the ringlets dull and lank. Fortunately, I was there with my own children, able to rescue her from the skip.

I was finally allowed to touch her. She felt very stiff and heavy, cold and lifeless, what a disappointment! My children turned up their nose, wondering why I was interested in that old smelly unwanted doll that had not even ever been mine.

I “owed” her though. Bleuette was washed and deloused, her clothing mended, her hairstyle revamped although I was never able to revive the ringlets. She has moved to England now and sits proudly in my living room, away from my grandchildren’s busy little fingers, a grand old lady approaching her first centenary and still not a single wrinkle!

The arrest

July 10th 1944, the Allies were progressing down country slowly, liberating the population from the grip of the German occupation. They were still to reach my parents’ village in this part of Normandy. Times of terror as the oppressed fell victim in the last throes of a losing army, a most dangerous and unpredictable period.

Movement in the school yard. Footsteps on the gravel. DEAD OF NIGHT. Light wrapping on the door. Mother pulls the blackout screen slightly to look through a tiny gap. Three shadows cowering against the wall. Father was out scouting with the dog, on another Resistance errand. In the dark, she makes out two of the faces, friend! She rushes downstairs to let them in.

Over the last two or three years, the school house where they lived had become a “safe house” where my parents could hide fugitives and Allied personnel till it was safe to process them on their way, mostly to the coast of Cornwall. BBC coded radio messages secretly received on my parents’ “illegal” set would confirm later that the escape had been successful.

Two of the men were part of the silent army dedicated to the war effort, the third a rather battered and bloodied young man in great pain. Shot through the ankle, a severe wound. Michel, a French pilot (strangely enough called by the same name as my brother), was shot down the day before and rescued up country by the two farmers. Dodging prying eyes, they walked him and carried him 10 miles across fields to bring him to what they knew was a safe haven.

By the time Father came home from his errand, the farmers had been dispatched and Michel was heaved upstairs to bed in the spare room, undressed and washed. The wound was too extensive and the pain too obvious for my parents to apply general first aid. Medical attention was urgently needed and Father hopped on his bicycle to fetch a doctor in the next village, known to be sympathetic to the Resistance.

In the next few days, Mother learnt a lot of nursing skills and at last, the pilot began to show signs of improvement. He revealed that he had been involved in a dog fight. He was pursuing an enemy fighter plane through the clouds and got him (his 8th kill). As he came out of the cloud, he was downed by a USA AF Thunderbolt expecting the Messerschmitt to emerge first. “Friendly Fire”!

By now, it was nigh impossible to go outside without the great risk of being arrested, captured or shot and the population stayed in hiding in their homes, such was the panic on all sides. Needless to say that there was no question of Michel moving on to a safer place, even though my parents felt they were being watched. Soon, the first sounds of the approaching Allied forces could be heard in the distance, increasing the sense of immediate danger.

Lunch time, August 2nd, a car outside. The gate was flung open and two Gestapo officers marched to the front door, accompanied by an ex-gendarme who had joined their ranks. As they entered the room where the family was having lunch, they announced that they were going to search the house as they suspected some fishy goings on. They soon found Michel upstairs, brought him down and started questioning Father, Mother and the wounded man. Getting no cooperation from their quarry, some degree of violence was applied, to no avail. Finally, Father and Michel were whisked away in the German car.

Mother closed the door, pressed her forehead against it for a moment, taking stock of what had just happened. When she turned round, her face hardened and white with the shock, she asked the maid to carry on with her duties, nothing was to change, the Allies were on their way.

A week later, Father’s bundle of clothes were returned. Mother refused to think the worst and rather took it as a ploy to weaken her strength. She also knew she was being watched… but only at night! She stayed committed to her duties as a Resistant and took on what she could of Father’s work.

Another two weeks and the village was liberated.

The Pram

Normandy, Spring 1943 – 45

Baby Michel was born, in the middle of an increasing turmoil that would end in disaster for the family. What a start in life!

Mother and father were both doing their utmost to resist the overwhelming presence of the occupying forces. The Resistance movement was, by 1942, better organised thanks to the dedication of its members and the leadership from London. The Maquis, fighting for the same cause, were hiding in the woods up the road, its members being on the wanted lists of the Gestapo. Although very resourceful and resilient, these poor displaced men and women needed the help of the population who often risked their lives to keep them supplied with food, medication and clothing through all weathers.

With the birth of baby nº3, the pram came down from the attic and was promptly put back in circulation. Of course, my brother Jacques and I fought to push baby around, not a mean feat as the vehicle towered above us. We loved to rock it as the suspension responded so very well. A huge body, hanging low on sturdy rubber wheels, with a surprisingly small canopy. Baby Michel, just as we had before him, sat quite high in the contraption, like a prince in his carriage. One third down the bodywork of the pram, you could imagine a Plimsoll line corresponding on the inside to the level of the shelf supporting the baby’s mattress. Below the shelf was a great void which you could access through a little trap door under the mattress. This void was extremely useful to store potty, nappies, baby’s milk bottles and a change of clothes……sten guns, revolvers, medical supplies, false papers, emergency clothing and provisions to help the army in hiding.

Mother often used to take Michel in the pram up the hill, to the woods, especially when we, Jacques and I, had our afternoon nap in the house. She’d take ages to get ready, and then, all of a sudden, she and baby were gone, leaving us in the care of our nanny.

On her way up the hill, she would frequently meet the German patrols who were used to see her walking the baby in all weathers. They would invariably stop her and try to chat with her, congratulating her on having such a healthy looking infant. Soon, they were showing her photographs of their own children back in Germany, expressing how they missed home and how they wanted war to stop. Mother humoured them for a while, fighting to keep her composure, worried about the safety of her precious cargo and wary of the dangers posed by appearing to sympathise or fraternise with the enemy.

Once she’d reached the small wood, she’d meet up with the Maquis leader and distribute what she had brought, also exchanging information that would be of great use to those directly involved in the war effort.

However, Father soon put a stop to this highly risky enterprise and baby Michel was quite content to be pushed around the school playground by his older siblings. Then, Michel graduated to the pushchair, an “Art Deco” all metal, squeaky and very uncomfortable vehicle which was in the habit of ejecting the occupier when on bumpy ground. The pram was relinquished once more to the attic.

On August 2nd 1944, Father disappeared at the hands of the Gestapo. For the next twenty days, the Gestapo agents were watching Mother closely, hoping she would lead them to other members of the resistance in the area. Baby nº4 was due to be born in February. Mother, determined to continue the war effort,------- brought the pram down, ostensively in anticipation of the birth of the next infant. She started to use its cavity to hide all sorts, from false papers to allied uniforms ditched by those she was helping in their escape from the enemy.

The village was liberated on August 22nd. Mother had no news of my father and was facing “the most difficult time in her life”, she says. She immediately became heavily involved in the welfare of the community in the aftermath of the Occupation, as well as resuming her teaching post and raising three young children without a father. Baby François was born on February 27th, Father’s birthday. She never gave up the hope of seeing him again…………..but that is another story!

The pram, a little worse for wear, eventually found a new home in the village. How I wish we could have kept it!

Evacuated

1943

My three year old brother Jacques and I, four, were becoming a liability for our parents’ work in the French Resistance. We witnessed too many goings on, on a practically daily occasion and couldn’t be trusted to know what to say and above all what NOT to say to our visitors. Our father’s widowed aunt who lived on her own in Burgundy had offered to help look after us if necessary.


Mother’s work at the village Mayor’s office enabled her to obtain travel permits and we soon found ourselves on a railway voyage that was to end in Montargis, in the heart of Burgundy, where the aunt’s daughter lived. Although mother had said we were going there because it was safer for us, the same night we arrived the sirens went off and we ended up diving for the air-raid shelter just before the bombs came down. My brother and I were very relieved because we had been having pumpkin soup for our supper and neither of us could bear to swallow the sweet gritty orange mulch, no matter how much coaxing or threatening.

Mother seemed to disappear the next morning, she hadn’t wanted to provoke tears as she was leaving and, all of a sudden, we were just the two of us, on our way to unknown territory with a mountainous aunt who smelt of garlic and spoke in a very coarse burgundian accent. She was taking us to her home, a one up, one down diminutive cottage in the deepest part of the country. We were very tearful of course but Tante Irène was a darling and adored us.

Bewildered and clinging to each other, we were taken on another train journey. Once the train stopped at Toucy, the nearest market town to her home, a horse and cart was waiting for us, driven by an acquaintance. Tante Irène and the strange man started talking in a local patois we couldn’t fathom out…..but there again, we were used to hearing foreign talk back in Normandy when the visitors came to see our parents. We couldn’t help wailing for our mother but the man decided to give us turns at driving the horse and we got lots of smelly cuddles from the aunt. That made things much better and we soon calmed down! Some long time later, we finally rode down a very bumpy narrow lane, past three lonely cottages and, at the end of the path, stopped outside the tiniest house we had ever seen. I wondered how Tante Irène was going to squeeze through the door!

Tante Irène may well have been living on her own but she had many visitors, principally nephews and cousins who were working in the neighbouring fields, all too young to be doing a man’s job. They’d been up at dawn, gone out with little breakfast and, by mid morning, needed a hearty meal which the “aunt” could guarantee. She had a reputation for being mean with her resources but she knew how to feed a starving lad. She kept chickens, geese, ducks, a couple of pigs and a goat, she ran a good vegetable garden and had some fruit trees. The visiting lads helped her with the heavy chores and she made sure to repay them with sumptuous food.

Our arrival caused little upset with her routine as we were very much left to our own devices. We were soon adopted by the lads who treated us like their own young siblings. Most days, we rode on the heavy horses and helped with the animals. We went snail hunting after a rainfall and were taught how to catch frogs for supper. By midday, we were often so tired we could hardly eat our lunch and the aunt insisted we had an afternoon sleep. We had to climb the steep outside steps to the one bedroom we shared with her. Two enormous roll top beds filled the room, one for her gigantic frame, the other for the two of us.

Many months went by when we learnt to speak in a coarse burgundian drawl, eat most things with our fingers, drink well water tinted with local red wine, wear the same clothes for days on end, sleep sometimes five or six to a bed when there was a visit from the family in Montargis. We didn’t have to wash every day as we were going to get dirty again straight away and we spent most of our time outdoors. We got up early and all went to bed at sundown. The aunt always made sure we knelt down by the bed and said prayers after her before climbing in for the night.…and she insisted we confessed all our sins! The first problem was that we didn’t know what a sin was. Then, we had to wrack our brains to find our daily sin to confess, bare knees on the hard floor, hands joined in prayer, eyes tightly shut…..Even when we had been naughty (like the day we jumped on the big puffed up eiderdown on our bed…. and it burst!) she would love us and laugh till she shook all over.

When mother came back for us, we were proper little strangers and we’d grown shy of her. She looked so sad and preoccupied, father had been captured and disappeared, and it made her cry in the night. It was so hard to leave the aunt!

Grandmère

My grandparents lived on a small island (Oleron) off the coast of France, not far from La Rochelle. Both of them had many sisters (all the brothers seem to have been killed in WW1) and we had numerous cousins, most of whom we never recognised when we came for our regular summer holidays. Two months of bliss, those holidays were! In those days, the summer break was from the end of June till the end of August.

My four brothers and I yearned for summer when we cycled or walked to the beach every day. The best time was when our parents left us in the care of Grandmère when they went back to work. Grandpère always thought that children’s care was the premise of the woman in the house and we only looked to him when we wanted stories of his time as a soldier (he was wounded twice at Verdun) or when there was a special tide and he would take us far out on to the sands to catch shellfish of all kinds. We would come home exhausted and very sunburnt (no one bothered about suncream factors in those days). When we got home, Grandmère would sort out the catch and soon the house would fill with the smells of cooking. After a wholesome supper, all to bed for a well deserved sleep.

Only Grandmère stayed up to clear up and do the washing up. In those days, no dishwasher…no hot water…no running water indeed no electricity in the early days either (this was installed in the early 50s). The water was fetched from the well, using a zinc bucket dangling on a chain which you let down by turning the fat handle of the pulley mechanism. You’d let the bucket down easily until you heard the splash and then you had to hoist the full load using both hands. Retrieving the bucket was quite perilous and the well was very deep and scary!

One old lady told us (I think she was a great aunt…anyway, she was old and had stiff hairs on her cheek that stabbed you when you were made to kiss her on her visits to the house), she told us that naughty noisy children were thrown in people’s wells quite regularly.

The three eldest shared this chore. Once the water was brought in, first of all, some had to be filtered through cotton wool in a funnel for the drinking bottles. It was fascinating to watch little water shrimps and other creatures wriggling on the cotton ball. We could play with them for hours! The rest of the water was divided up for the washing up, cleaning the stone floors, cooking and to fill water jugs in all the bedrooms (we had washstands as there was no bathroom, just a WC with three holes in the wooden shed in the garden, by the palm tree). Every morning, we did “the slops”. Once a week, the water was warmed up and we took turns to be washed in a zinc tub with carbolic soap. We were glowing…no little beastie had a chance to pester us!

Poor Grandmère worked so hard and we were such a lively bunch! She was feared, mind you! Very tiny but browny-black eyes that could melt you down. We had three sitting down meals a day, counting breakfast, all seven of us at least plus the odd visiting cousins. Most years, a nanny would also be there or a maid that my parents employed all the year round. It was not unusual to find a dozen sitting round the table. We were expected to be on best behaviour. Any misbehaviour and Grandmère would send the culprit to the scullery to fetch the horse whip. “Va chercher la police!” This was a six foot long black rod that had lost its leather strip. Grandmère kept it by her side for the rest of the meal, threatening to whack anyone who made a noise. The threat never failed to work. She probably would not have carried it out. Grandpère presided at the head of the table but he wasn’t allowed to talk about the Great War or he would suddenly receive a well aimed kick on the shin from Grandmère sitting by his side.

We woke up early, to the sounds of swallows on the electricity wires outside the bedroom windows. Grandmère was up already. My bedroom was above the kitchen and I could hear her grinding the coffee beans ready for breakfast. Then, the most gorgeous smell of fresh coffee would rise through the ill fitting floorboards. Ablutions at the washstands, all bedding thrown to air on the windowsills and straight down for breakfast. We all raced one another to get the crust of the cream that topped the milk pan after it had boiled relentlessly on the solid fuel stove.

After breakfast, the chores began. Sweeping, dusting, polishing, cleaning, slops and making the beds. Making the beds was a very tough task as they were huge. Big wooden frames encompassing a big canvass bag two foot deep with slits in the top. Inside the bag was jam-packed with dried maize leaves. On top of that rested an enormous feather mattress with a cumbersome bolster. The bed linen consisted of heavy linen sheets, thick woollen blankets and a fat eiderdown. Totally unwelcome when the daily temperatures are around 25º to 30º. Making the bed was the most demanding chore. You slide your arms through the slits into the maize to regain a flat base. You ease the mattress back and pummel out all the bumps, you shake the bolster so that it returns to the desired fat sausage shape and then you can distribute the linen suitably so that it passes Grandmère’s inspection at the end of the morning (lucky is the one of us in charge of getting the fresh baguettes up the road). Of course, the minute you get back into the bed, you’ve made your nest for the night and can’t climb out of it till you are fully conscious.

Grandmère was a superb cook and to this day, she is responsible for our great love of sea food of all kinds. Both main meals had at least three courses and the shopping lists were astronomical since she never used tinned or frozen food. Everything was fresh and in season. Grandpère had a vegetable garden (see Grandpère's garden) which helped a lot. Being naughty was often sanctioned by spending a couple of hours helping him in the garden but Grandmère didn’t realise we saw that as great fun…so did he! Nothing was ever wasted and our plates had to be polished clean with every course.

Table manners were strictly respected and although we lived in our bathing costumes, we had to cover up for our meals. I was the only one with a birthday in August. My father always mysteriously forbade any such celebration in the family but on my special day, just as mysteriously, the best china came out and a big bouquet of Grandmère’s garden jasmine filled every vase in the house (see Smells and childhood memories).

Grandmère had made every single outfit my mother wore and she kept them all in big trunks in the attic. I was allowed to explore the trunks when my brothers weren’t around. I used to try some on and pretend I was “maman”, and I used to dress the dressmaker’s dummy as well. There were boxes full of buttons, beads, sequins, hats, handbags, shoes, dress patterns…She even saved and used Grandpère’s old army uniforms to make coats, hats and capes for my mother.

My best childhood memories rest with my grandmother and her house. She was such a character. She taught us to whistle proper melodies and she could sing beautifully. Sometimes, she would break into the local patois which left us speechless. We thought this language came from a heavenly place. She could beat all of us at marbles and we had to win them back by doing some extra chores. Now that my own granddaughters are growing up, I often wonder how they will remember the holidays we spend together in Dorset.

Twinkle twinkle little star...

Normandy1943…

My brother and I (shown left!) were increasingly in the care of the live-in maid, Simone, employed to help my mother with the house chores and the “babies”. Life in the school house was full of excitement for us children.

Both our parents were busy teaching in the school part of the building and going about their work for the French Resistance. There were many visitors outside school hours and we were often shooed out of the way upstairs where Simone kept us amused.

She had a beautiful voice and knew many old French songs which we tried our best to learn. One of our favourites was “Ah vous dirai-je Maman” to the tune of “Twinkle twinkle star”.

We could would clap in rhythm, stamp our feet, beat a pan with a wooden spoon, march around the room, laugh till we became quite silly……We would count 7 stomps and pause on the 8th and then start again. As Simone’s singing progressed through the song, she would quicken the tempo and, by the 7th stomp, we couldn’t stop without tumbling all over the place. We were hysterical by then and truly exhausted! Quite surprising results from such an innocuous little song!

Sometimes, Simone was not there for us and we were allowed to stay downstairs where we could meet those intriguing visitors we’d never seen before and who spoke in mysterious fashion. We had to be quiet and stay in the corner of the room but we always ended up being spotted by those strange men. They picked us up and sat us on their knees, speaking softly to us in words we’d never heard before, looking very thoughtful. Sometimes, they would reach for something yummy in the depth of their pocket, other times, they would do magic tricks and sometimes, they would start singing a song to make us snuggle up to them.

One day, to our astonishment, one of them started to sing “Twinkle twinkle little star” and we soon could sing “our” song in English. Our father made us promise we wouldn’t sing that version to anyone else. We had a secret! Was it our first one? We were respectively three and four years old.

Most days, we were visited by German soldiers who came to the school building on “business”, to see the village Mayor or his secretary who ran his office from the same premises. Some German soldiers who were so very homesick could not help wanting to hold us and cuddle us, while thinking what war was depriving them of.

Sometimes they got lucky while my mother was busy and they would snatch a quick moment. Some other times, it was difficult for my mother to stop them and we would sit on the doorstep while they too would speak in a strange way.

One November day even, a German soldier started to sing “Morgen kommt der Weihnnachtsmann” to the tune we were so familiar with! He’d managed to teach us the first line by the time our mother appeared and the game was spoilt.

After that incident, the tune, so delightfully developed in Mozart’s Variations, was out of favour. My parents were conscious of the risks involved by us singing the wrong version to reveal our contact with Allied pilots using our house on their escape route back to England. After procuring the necessary travel documents, my mother took us to my father’s aunt in Burgundy and left us there till the end of the war.

This simple tune still holds great fascination for me and I can spend hours listening to Mozart’s interpretation of this very old French melody. It fills me with a mixture of excitement and melancholy, a sense of awe and mischievousness and an indefinable nostalgia for times past.

Grandpère’s garden

During the 1930s and 1940s, my grandparents were living in a big rambling house in Boyardville, on the island of Oléron. This is where I was born and where I spent many holidays. I even spent a whole year there while doctors and surgeons were trying to put my parents right after the onslaught of the war.

At first, there was no electricity and water had to be lifted out of the well situated five steep steps down in the garden. The only tap in the house was at the bottom of a little ornate enamel cistern, no bigger than a watering can. The cistern was fixed on a vertical wooden board fastened to a wall in the kitchen, hanging over a matching little tray that collected the used water.

Grandmère used to fill the container with well water and I could wash my hands, being careful not to be seen to waste a drop. I loved letting the water trickle all the way down my arms. I used to squeeze the cube of carbolic soap so hard that it jumped out of my hands and went flying in all directions. Grandmère turned a blind eye because, in the end, I had the cleanest hands in the house.

Grandpère loved gardening. He’d taken over almost the entire garden, with the exception of one big oval area near the house, near by the well, which was the part reserved for Grandmère’s flowers. The ground was very sandy and no one on the island grew a lawn of any type. Sandy paths ran the full length of the large rectangular plot between very neat raised vegetable beds lovingly tilled with good quality well manured top soil. In the long growing season, watering the plants was a twice-a-day chore, no hose pipe then, watering cans had to be lowered in the well time and time again.

The garden was entirely walled in except for a wooden gate leading to the driveway. We were warned of visitors by a loud bell on a spring rigged up on the gate itself. Right at the end of the garden, grew an enormous fig tree laden with fruit in the summer. My brothers and I would climb up the tree and gorge ourselves till our stomachs couldn’t cope anymore. Sometimes, we took our children’s magazines there and read in the shade, often falling asleep on a precarious platform we’d rigged up on the lowest branches when it was too hot to do anything else.

Halfway down the garden, at the end of a well trodden path, was the one and only privy, a little windowless brick building with a tiled roof. It was built over a cess pit and consisted of two little rooms back to back with a wooden floor and a large fixed wooden box in each. In either room, you had the choice of three holes where to sit, each hole a slightly different size to suit the user and with a wooden lid. I was always terrified at the thought of dropping the lid down below! In fact, the whole contraption terrified us as it felt that one day one of us with small bottoms would disappear down there, never to return. The smells, the flies, the spiders, the cold draft from down below………….we had to steel ourselves to go and we always used to do so “en famille” for reassurance.

The supply of paper used to hang on a string by the door, newspaper squares meticulously cut which Grandpère always read before using, just in case he’d missed a bit of news. It was quite light in there because, although the doors were made of oak, the fierce sunshine had dried great big gaps between the slats. Hardly worth locking yourself in, anyone could reach the metal hook latch inside by sliding their hand though those gaps. We always tried to use the toilet in daylight, going at night meant carrying a candle in a jar. Fortunately, we had an enamel toilet bucket with a lid in all the bedrooms for night use. Every morning, we had to do the slops, a very noisy and quarrelsome affair.

Apart from growing cherries, pears, peaches, apricots, apples and soft fruit, Grandpère grew all sorts of wonderful vegetables. Right next to the privy was the thriving asparagus bed and next to that, enormous artichoke plants. Then there were peas, beans, carrots, herbs, leeks, cabbages, tomatoes, lettuces…………..through the year, and more than enough for our needs. In fact, one of his sisters used to come by every week and he would fill up her hand drawn little cart with kilos of produce for her to sell at the market and supplement to her war widow’s pension.

However, the big bugbear was, and still is, that the island was riddled with termites! Termites rarely munch on live plants, they prefer dead wood, especially if a little damp. Grandmère used to push old broom handles or sticks into her flower bed (carnations were her passion) and every morning, she would pull them up and shake them into a bucket. Dozens of squirming ghostly termites fell in and much expurgated cursing would be heard. For some reason, if she forgot the precaution, the next morning, the entire bed of carnations could well have keeled over. She had her own private war against the dastardly insects and kept a vigilant eye on any sign of their activity.

Grandpère was not just a keen gardener, he also loved shooting and catching eels with his cousins at the week-end. He subscribed to the “Chasseur Français” magazine. Grandmère used to get impatient with him reading it for hours on end. Eventually, he took to reading it in the little house in the garden which he regarded as a sacred place for privacy. One day, he disappeared down the garden path, armed with his newly delivered magazine, Grandmère raining warnings on him that lunch time was near (he was always very punctual for his twelve o’clock lunch).

That day, 12h00 went by, then 12h15, Grandmère was furious…another occasion for expurgated cursing. She finally resolved to go and draw him out of the dreadful place. As she approached the privy, puffs of sandy dust rising under her impatient feet, she could hear a muffled sort of cry for help coming from that direction. She quickened her step, her fury fast turning to wonder she pushed her hand through to reach the latch in the door and was met with such an awesome sight she would never forget.

The termites had got the better of Grandpère, they’d chomped enough of the wooden supports to allow the floor and box of the privy to collapse into the cess pit. Grandmère being a diminutive lady could not manage to help him out of his predicament and she had to summon the neighbours who roped him out of there. Countless buckets of water, scrubbing brush, carbolic soap, cursing of the non-expurgated kind……Grandpère was not re-instated into the conjugal bedroom for a few weeks, due to a pervasing malodour that put his wife’s nose out.

After that, poor Grandpère was the butt of many jokes for a long time but he could laugh at himself too and I dare say that his popularity in the village gained by it. Soon after this episode, mains water, electricity and mains drainage came to the village, and the little house in the garden was turned into a shed. Grandpère installed light and brought an old armchair to his sacred place so that he could take refuge from the demands of house duties….and to enable him to read his magazine in peace. No hard feelings!