In the ’30s, on a day thick with a fog you could cut with a knife, this woman distinguished herself with some extravagance by saving a score of sailors from a merchant vessel that had run aground. She leapt into the water fully clothed and, using the strength of her arms alone, dragged ashore what remained of an enormous lifeboat in which they had all sought refuge. Postcards from the time commemorating the event are available for sale at the newsagency. It shows Rose in her traditional Breton dress and bonnet, her chest bedecked with awards. When I was little, the adults in my life predicted I would look a lot like her, which I took as a compliment seeing as I thought she was really very pretty. Except that it wasn’t my grandmother who featured in those photos. The photographer must have thought that a woman of character was incompatible with the graciousness befitting such an event, because he chose some inane beauty from the island to pose in her place, with her medals.

In fact, there remains only one photograph of that valiant Bretonne. It shows her standing next to her husband, beaming, because unlike me and Granny Soize, my grandmother Rose was madly and happily in love. It’s true she had a slightly don’t-mess-with-me air about her in the photo and there is a family resemblance, but it’s my grandfather who really catches your eye: a scrap of a man like you see only in the colour plates of war-era medical books. An old cripple from the war of 1914–18, whom they’d set on a barrel because he was missing his legs, and part of his face too. Renan de Rigny: the perfect illustration of our island proverb concerning the scarcity of men: If you find one, sink your hooks in, there won’t be enough to go round!

So, it is to this World War I veteran that we owe such a curious family name, whereas everybody else from these parts never ventures far when it comes time to marry, with almost all of them being called Cozan, Botquelen, Tual, Miniou, Malgorn or Jezequel. That should have told me something but there had never been any doubt cast as to our sense of belonging to the community: we always took our turn peeling vegetables at the village fêtes, went to all the funerals, and knew of every falling out that had ever taken place for the last thousand generations. This was where we came from, and that was all there was to it.

‘So, how is that daughter of yours, Juliette?’