I only saw my grandfather once, in the hospice where he was to die three months later. Holding me by the hand, my father took me through a huge ward and led me between two rows of beds up to a little old man with a fine head of white, curly hair. He was a kind-hearted soul, laughing all the time as he watched me with his twinkling eyes. My father slipped him a quarter bottle of eau-de-vie which he hid between the sheets.

Every time someone mentioned him, they started by saying, ‘He could neither read nor write,’ as if this initial statement was necessary to explain his life and personality. My grandmother had learned how to read and write at convent school. Like the other women in the village, she was employed as a cottage weaver by one of the factories in Rouen. She worked in an airless room, where the faint daylight came through long, narrow apertures scarcely wider than arrow slits. The material had to be protected from the sunlight. She was a clean woman, with regard to both personal hygiene and domestic matters. In our village this was seen as the greatest virtue of all: the neighbours inspected the washing on the line to see how white and worn it was, and they knew exactly whose night bucket had been emptied. Although the houses were separated by hedges and embankments, nothing escaped people’s attention, not what time men rolled in from the bar, nor which woman’s sanitary towels were conspicuous by their absence on the clothesline.

My grandmother even had style. On feast days she wore a cardboard bustle, and she didn’t piss standing up and fully dressed, like most country women did, simply because it was more convenient. As she approached her forties, having borne five children, she was given to 21bouts of depression and would stop talking to people for several days at a time. Later she developed rheumatism in her hands and legs. In the hope of getting better, she would visit Saint Riquier or Saint Guillaume du Désert, rubbing the statue with a cloth which she applied to her inflamed limbs. She gradually lost the use of her legs. They hired a carriage to take her to see the saints.

They lived in a small house with beaten earth floors and a thatched roof. Before sweeping the floor, you just sprinkled it with water. They lived on their own poultry and garden vegetables, and the dairy produce my grandfather got from the farmer. Confirmations and wedding receptions were planned months in advance. People went hungry for three days so as to make the most of it. On one occasion a child who was recovering from scarlet fever died choking while he vomited the pieces of chicken which had been forced upon him. On Sunday afternoons in summer they went to ‘village fêtes’ where people danced and played games. One day my father reached the top of the greasy pole but slipped down before managing to unhook the basket of provisions. My grandfather flew into a rage which lasted for hours. ‘Espêce de grand piot.’2