FIDELMA COOK

AS WE say in Ireland: I’m leppin’ and dancin’. Well, I’m breathing, feeling great and still here, thank God. I’m sorry to have disturbed your weekly read and thank you all for the many, many emails you’ve sent me. You’re a great and loyal lot, you know.

Anyway, upwards and onwards, although I need to revisit the hospital in Moissac one more time to tell you about the most extraordinary woman I met there.

Taken to a two-bed room I caught a glimpse of an exposed thigh before a modesty curtain was placed across the large space between us.

During the night I heard her groaning and gurgling, and when nurses came to attend to her needs, by her replies I was conscious of a pure French rare in these parts.

Once breakfast had arrived, an aide asked if I’d mind the curtain being opened. “Not at all,” I said, curious to meet my night traveller.

She was putting on lipstick; soft white hands and manicured nails holding up a compact. Her abundant grey hair waved into a groomed cap.

As she turned to greet me, I recognised that unmistakable look of the French upper caste. There is a pinch to the nose and the nostrils have a permanent, attractive flair while the mouth pouts into a moue formed by the always exquisite use of the vowel sounds.

Her face, round and very slightly puffy, was remarkably unlined for a woman I put in her late 70s. As we began to talk she uncapped a tube of cream and lavished care on a pair of fine legs.

She would have been a stunner in her day and even now would turn heads in an acknowledgment of her undoubted style.

I asked if she had slept well, knowing damn fine she couldn’t have. “Not really, the noise kept me awake.”

“Ah, the man across the corridor? The one who kept shouting? Me too.”

“No,” she said with a faint smile. “Your noise. You know you snore very loudly – obviously your breathing.” (So, it’s true and not as I’ve always thought a lie told by my son to keep me celibate since his father and I split up.)

Over the next few hours I learned she’d been a widow for more than 30 years after a lifetime with her highlevel engineer husband in several countries and several cities in France.

To be honest I missed several chunks of her conversation for she gave no quarter.

She’d had cancer, been successfully operated on but hence the gurgling as she dredged mucus from her body; she was blind in one eye and was about to have an op on the other with the prospects of a similar result.

“At the moment,” she said, “I can still drive, just in my little area. If the eye goes that is it and that is me.”

With another rather sly smile she mimicked putting a plastic bag around her head.

“It’s all right,” she laughed, seeing my horror. “I have discussed it, calmly, with my two children. Trapped in the house, blind, already having walking difficulties, what on earth would be the point going on?

“I’ve had a wonderful life and I’m ready.”

After that bombshell she proceeded to give me advice both philosophical and in terms of keeping well.

“Eat three times a day – I cook every day although one meal may be fruit only. Nourish your skin as much as your brain. Expect little from your children and they may surprise you but they can’t disappoint you.

“Have massages, particularly around your shoulders. You don’t, why not?”

I explained they worried me in case a blood vessel burst. She almost jumped out of her bed and was behind me in one fluid movement, powerfully strong hands gripping my shoulders, fingers digging into knots that made me yell.

“Stay still,” she commanded, digging again. Jesus. Leave me alone, I cried – enough.

She laughed, head on one side as she summed me up. “I have survived through many, many things because of my energy. I have tremendous energy although of course it’s much weakened now. And that energy is a healing energy. May I?”

I nodded. She clasped my hands and the heat built up and up as she stared at me. Then, like Roslyn my cleaner, who could do similar, she slid her hands off mine and shook them as if removing something distasteful. After she’d returned to her bed, I asked her if she would mind telling me her age. “Not at all. I’m 96.” It was clear she relished my astonishment and my spluttering equivalent of “bloody hell”. “Energy,” she said, winking. “And now you have just a tiny, tiny bit of it.”

Her son, a retired advocate, came to wheel her away. In formal French I told her it was a privilege to have met her and learn from her wisdom. She bowed her head and insisted on kissing me. Just before she was wheeled away, she turned, eyes dancing.

“You’re most welcome, even though you didn’t understand half of it.”

Now I’m left wondering if she meant the message or just the words.