It was a very small family business which he had inherited after the 1914–18 war and which he’d run in relaxed prosperity with three cheerful woodworkers at his side whilst she kept the books in big, black-cloth-bound registers with ruled paper and pages she had numbered in violet ink. The rest of the time she led an almost peasant-like existence, busy with the backyard chickens and the kitchen garden, making jams and pâtés.She’d have done better to sell up and go back to the farm where she’d been born. Rabbits and chickens, some tomato plants, and a couple of beds for lettuces and cabbages – what more did she need? She would have sat by her fireside amongst her placid cats, listening to the clock ticking, to the rain falling on the zinc drainpipes, and the seven-o’clock bus passing by in the far distance; she’d have carried on warming her bed with a warming pan before getting into it, warming her face in the sun on her stone bench, cutting recipes out of La Nouvelle République and sticking them into her big kitchen book.Instead of that, she had developed, transmogrified, metamorphosed her little business.
