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We were lucky enough not to see Marie-Thérèse for many years after that, we even managed to weasle out of inviting her to our wedding (as a similar case had caused the family rift when Reg's brother refused to invite her to his) by planning the civil part of the wedding* on a day when we knew she wouldn't be able to come, and pretexting that there wasn't enough space in
the hotel to be able to accomodate them. A lame excuse, but it worked. The one time we couln't avoid seeing her was when, after a late diagnostic of generalised cancer that had spread from the lungs, Reg's grandfather died. When the phone rang at 5am on the Monday, we knew it was bad news, and we left just after the call to be with Grandmother, and got there before lunch. She was, of course, devastated, after 60 years of marriage, at finding herself alone, waking up with her husband lying cold beside her. Marie-Thérèse rang back a little later on, apologising because she had been "out having fun on a boat" and too busy to take the call. Yeah, right. She would be arriving later. Grandmother's first reaction was to hobble off to the post office to make sure the money on her late husband's account was transferred onto hers before "her scheming brat of a daughter got to it". Meh, I just love that family. The funeral was to be on theWednesday, and until then, the body of the Grandfather was kept on a special refrigerated table provided by the funeral parlour, placed next to his bed. When the dreaded duo arrived, they brought their 3 granddaughters (ages 3 to 8) and of course, without warning them, walked straight into the bedroom to show them "the dead body". Needless to say, the 3 girls came out crying and not getting it at all, so we spent the next couple of hours trying to take their minds off it (and stay out of the way of Marie-Thérèse). Raymond had more or less doubled in both belly size and stupidity since we had last seen him, and I was greeted with a "Hah, you've heard they want to ban anyone from speaking your damn language in our country, have you ?" We left. The next day, we arrived after lunch to keep things as short as possible. Grandmother was, understandably, still under the shock of things, and as we went to say hello, she wispered to us: "They slept in our bedroom. With him lying there. A shame !" She had slept alone in the room next door, where there were 2 free double beds. Knowing Raymond's passion for groping his wife in public and making rude comments all the time, our minds hardly dared to wander. Ewww. The day of the funeral turned out to be swelteringly hot and sunny, just perfect for wearing something long, black and covering. As we had already been asked to drive grandmother from her home to the church and then to the graveyard because she was having problems walking, we decided that Reg's mother would come with us, as she isn't exactly the best walker in the best of cases, with a lack of sleep and the heat, we all knew she wouldn't make it all the way on foot. At the news of this, M-T stamped her foot and sulked, even though we offered to drive her too. "You're disgusting !" she yelled at her sister and mother as the herse drove away and they got in the car. From that moment on, I was a hair's breadth away from punching her in the face. As if it hadn't been bad enough putting up with her badgering me all day about "why I was looking so sad ?" while she drank and partied with her kids and grandkids, acting as if it was a summer picnic. A whole new party was planned for that evening, with plenty of party food and stuff, but strangely enough, we weren't particularly in the mood and left earl. They partied 'till 2 in the morning, needless to say that the poor widow didn't get much sleep, yet again.
*In France, the church has no power to marry people legally, you have to get married before at the local Mairie (Town hall) and then turn up at the church, already married, which is probably the weirdest thing ever. Both ceremonies are usually held on the same day in the same village/town/city. As we chose a church near my parents' house and the Mairie of Toulouse, where we live, and the two are about an hour apart, we decided to have them on different days, also because it was handy to be able to invite some people only to one of the two.
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