From chapter 4, November. A paysan’s Saturday night.
I thank the stars above Kerkelven, my rural home in Western France, that for the past fifteen years and more I have had the good fortune to know and be befriended by my neighbour, Mathurin le Belligo, retired farm labourer of this parish. He’s at a great age now, is Mathurin and for the last three of these years he’s not been well. But you’ll be well advised to get to know Mathurin, for he is unlike anyone else I’ve ever met.

Mathurin, Angèle’s husband, father to Philippe, Pascal and Marie-Laure is, I think, one of a dying breed, a true man of the soil. He’s a manual worker, someone you could easily call a peasant but it would be a rich compliment, no insult whatsoever. The first time I met Mathurin I noticed how tightly he held my hand in friendship and for a little longer too than was comfortable. But he also held me with his eyes and I couldn’t fail to see in these bright blue pools the warm, impish delight that he was taking, just from meeting me. Mathurin’s handshake was firm, sincere, his hands worn, tough but gentle, his grip the steady, sure grip of someone who instantly, genuinely, has taken a liking to you, yet unassumingly anticipates that you, too, will take to him equally. His time, with which he’s generous, he gives to you alone.

From Mathurin I’ve learned a lot, but most valuably he’s taught me to appreciate that there’s nothing worth more in this life than an honest and true friend. And there’s no one to be envied more than he who is sincerely, simply happy and wants for nothing but that which he has already.

Simple though his life might seem, my neighbour Mathurin is one such man, ‘an honest man, the fairest work of God’, as the poet Burns put it. And quietly contented too.

Other than a brief sortie to play his part in a foreign war, Mathurin has spent all his life within the boundaries of our Breton commune. He was born a few kilometres from here. Angèle has never travelled further than a day’s journey by car. Everything they need or want is close by, within easy reach, including his now extended family, who all live an easily achievable drive away, or less.

Until his retirement 25 years or so ago Mathurin was a tenant farmer, a locataire, owning no land himself but working land owned by others, or he worked for others as a daily-rate hired hand. In such spare time as he had he needed to work his small field, his extensive vegetable garden, for to survive and raise his family he had to be self-sufficient in garden produce. He raised his own chickens, ducks, guinea fowl and rabbits too. A heavy manual toil was Mathurin’s daily lot, but I never saw him without a smile nor ever heard him utter either complaint, criticism, or cross word. His day’s work was unremitting and thinly rewarded, yet to all who knew him Mathurin seemed to be the picture of happiness, passing each day with his cheery round red face wreathed in smiles of deep contentment.

Mathurin’s cheerful hospitality was always infectious and irresistible. Despite his own retired state, he’s always been a great respecter of our need to work. Yet almost invariably whenever he saw us he’d invite us round for coffee. We always knew coffee was not uppermost in his mind and most of the time we’d decline but every now and then it was our great pleasure to accept and pass the afternoon in the genial company of Mathurin and wife. Then we’d wave goodbye to the rest of the day, because an afternoon of coffee with Angèle and Mathurin would lead unfailingly to everything else being put on hold. The eau de vie (his own make, of course) and the robust St Emilion would appear, sometimes accompanied by homemade cider and the local apple wine (pommeau). However warm the weather or hot their kitchen was from its wood burner, Mathurin was rarely seen without his cap at a jaunty angle and his shirt buttoned to the neck under a thick woolly jumper. Often the sweat would roll off him as he passed the glass around, but when I’d suggest he try shorts and a tee shirt like me he’d laugh as if it was the finest joke he’d ever heard. Conversation with Mathurin and Angèle was always easy, usually chock full of scurrilous local gossip, or considered analysis of international politics.

I’ve seldom if ever known a couple happier with each other than Mathurin and Angèle and this was doubly evident when they were in a group as at the fete du quartier, or with their family. We celebrated their golden wedding together and later equally enthusiastically we enjoyed Mathurin’s eightieth birthday. These celebratory gatherings were priceless times and it was a privilege indeed for Marie and me to share in them. Outsiders we unquestionably were but we were never allowed to feel it, even for a moment. To pass a Saturday night with the Le Belligo family is to celebrate the past week in a simple, homely way, a tradition that perhaps once would have been found frequently in rural communities across Europe but now is a rare, precious and a dying thing. Though to us it seemed they would and should continue forever, we were fortunate indeed to see them as they should be, in their heyday.

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From pages 153 to 158 of The Field by the River, © Ken Burnett 2009. All of the delightful drawings are by Juliet Percival, her original illustrations for this book.

Ken Burnett’s other books mainly focus on fundraising, communication and the wider universe. They include the classic Relationship Fundraising: a donor-based approach to the business of raising money and The Zen of Fundraising. For information on all Ken’s books, click here. To order your copy of The Field by the River, £12.99 (US$21.00) plus P&P hard cover, £7.99 (US$13.00) paperback, click here.