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wife, and avoid gossip, he permitted the erection of the Mini-Market on the old vegetable garden of the house which belonged to his mother-in-law. His wife, a warm-eyed, splendid figure of a woman, Florette Ranchett, became the owner. It shut her up: she turned a blindish eye to the mistress on her doorstep and threw herself with alacrity into the role of shopkeeper in this unlikely modern box set among the olives and rough-walled vegetable garden of her mother’s house.
    The trouble was that, even with the imposing awning in brown and orange with
Mini-Market
in gold all along its scalloped edge, the glitter and the hum of the freezer, the sparkle and shine of the brilliantly tiled floor (mashed carrot and spinach), in spite of all these attractions no one very much came into the place. Its very glamour put them off and inhibited them. They much preferred the cold, cruddy, dark little shop which had apparently originally stood in its place, run by Madame Ranchett’s mother. It was comforting, it had worn linoleum, I was told, fly papers, good bread, and gave credit. In the new shop a new and alarming machine rolled out your bill, all figures and signs, and at the end, after
Thank You for Shopping Here
(in English) there was a more alarming note which, hastily translated, simply said NO CREDIT.
    No good French peasant could put up with that for long. And they didn’t. They went elsewhere, even if it meant taking the local bus, and Florette Ranchett sat stoically behind her counter, among mountains of lavatory rolls, kitchenpaper and serried rows of Harpic, Tide and Omo, on her own. Sometimes, very occasionally, someone would hurry in for something they had suddenly found themselves to be short of, and tourists parked to buy stuff for picnics to take down to the beaches or up into the hills. Otherwise the tins and bottles gathered dust, the stall of vegetables outside under the awning wilted, and Madame Ranchett read
Nice-Matin
from cover to cover six times a day.
    I think that the first thing I ever bought from her was a tin of Kiwi dark brown. Her warmth and gratitude was such that I had the distinct impression that I had, by mistake, bought up her entire stock of champagne. She handed me change from my twenty-franc note and explained that the machine was American and that she really couldn’t help what it printed on the receipt. Of course she gave credit! In an agricultural village how could she not? They were not million-aires here, depending on the
rose de mai,
jasmine and olives for a living, and sometimes the corn for feed. She was convinced that with patience she could sit it out and that business would become brisk. After all, they all knew and liked her, the mayor’s wife and all. Give them time, she’d say, they are as suspicious as goats, and as silly. She was right of course: in time people did begin to drift back - the added bother of the bus, the extra money for the fare, the red pencil ripped through NO CREDIT (a modest suggestion of mine) made it easier, and pleasanter, to run down the hill, across the road, or walk up from the crossroads to do the shopping. Also she had a varied selection of things. She was brave, wise and very handsome. We got on extremely well together, and as soon as she found out that I was a
propriétaire,
had already applied for my
permit de séjour,
and intended to remain in thearea for the rest of my life, we eased into a close and affectionate friendship. She never came to my house, I never went to hers. That is not the way in France – a failing of many English people who are neighbourly, if not nosey, and simply don’t understand the laws of French family privacy. It works splendidly if you do: you eat together in restaurants but seldom, if ever, dine or break bread at their table. Sensible and a great saving for the cook.
    Stuck on a shelf behind the till, with a strip of Sellotape, there was a battered photograph of Madame Ranchett, hair piled