The Other Lady on the hill.

'That will be you when you’re old mummy' - the words of my daughter as an old lady appears, clambering through the bushes on a misty morning...

Sitting in quiet contemplation… the other lady on the hill.

“That will be you when you’re old mummy….”

I smiled when my daughter whispered these words to me as the lady emerged, rather curiously from between brambles and blackthorn one very chilly May morning. We watched her gathering broom flowers and something else I couldn’t quite identify from a distance, searched the place she’d come from once she’d gone again but it was quite simply a hole in the scrub that came from nowhere and led nowhere either. She was my elder by at least twenty years, perhaps more. Dressed in clothes that many of the older generation still wear here in this rural part of France. Thick beige stockings and gum boots, an old wool coat over a nylon pinafore and a hand knitted hat, an outfit not chosen for anything other than undertaking the practicalities of the day with the minimum of washing afterwards and maximum warmth and comfort.

I smiled because I hope, pray even, that one day I will be lucky enough to grow that old and still be capable enough to roam this hill. That I just might appear in front of another person from the prickles and thorns as she did and raise a curious stare from the passer by. More especially that I would entertain such madness as roaming a hill alone in the mist at that lonely hour of the morning.

I was intrigued by the quiet lady who appeared out of nowhere that day, I deliberately walked more often on the far side of the hill in the hope of seeing her again. To spy on her would be the appropriate word — perhaps not kind but I am inquisitive by nature and I have been known to stretch to such wickedness — any malice was not intentional.

Au contraire!

I made many delightful discoveries; a small meticulously kept vineyard run by one elderly gentleman from another small town in the valley. A holiday home in the woods owned by another English family who I meet once, later in the summer of 2020, they were friendly but strangely I never come across them again — perhaps they didn’t like the scarecrow type look I sported that day? Who knows? I found many new tracks, most unkempt and used only by wild animals, one that was lined with Honesty flowers (Lunaria)¹ which has become a favourite circuit for me in spring. Providing, that is, I don’t bump into the rather too friendly bachelor who lives at the foot of this track - a less welcome discovery!

It was late in the following spring when our paths cross once again. The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn from that gloriously luminous lime green of rebirth to the warmer, darker olive tones of summer, the air was warm and buzzed with the sound of bees busy at their minuscule works on clouds of wild broom. The scent, which always reminds me of a certain suntan oil my mother used every summer, filled the air around me, intoxicating and heady. I found her seated quietly, in an apparent reverie, on a very rustic bench at the foot of the vineyard. I approached her smiling and asked if I could sit with her a while to which she smiled back and said she would be happy to share her seat with me if that was my wish.

We sat for a long time that morning, we watched the mists clear as the cool air turned warm, we heard deer in the forest below us and we both looked up, simultaneously, as they shouted their bellows at one another. We exchanged, briefly, the stories of our lives, our family history — the vast difference between them evident. And of course, I couldn’t resist asking exactly what it was she had been doing on that first morning, she replied with a chuckle and her ‘always’ smile;

‘Mais vous ne les avez pas trouvé? Je m'occupais de trois jeunes hérissons et de leur mère...’

She let the sentence hang in the air a while knowing and feeling my discomfort at being discovered that day when we believed otherwise and added;

‘Je savais que vous étiez là, et je vous ai vu chercher dans les broussailles.’

I smiled at her and feeling a little flushed apologised for my incurable curiosity. To which she smiled back replying she would have done exactly the same. We both laughed then — the friendship sealed. She rose from the bench, easily, without a fuss or a groan, as one might expect from someone as aged as she and disappeared back down the hill.

Surprisingly, it is only recently that I learned who her son was, a man I have known in passing for many years. He lives with his mother, although not in the same house, his home is an ancient dark green caravan buried in ivy and shrubs at the end of her garden. At a guess, he must be about my age. He has the air of someone who has suffered a hard life though. I have never learnt his mothers name but I know where she lives and how she has done for her entire life but really, so little of her story. I know that she has never travelled further than the local town in the valley, that her entire life she has lived in the same house on the opposite side of the hill to me and that she is more than content to have done so, would repeat it if she could. Her told me she is always smiling, always content. Even when he found her not so many months ago, unable to move from her bath of freezing cold water becuase she had slipped and hurt her hip. She had waited for his return for 17 hours.

I am reminded of a line from the book Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

“What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough?”

I have walked many times this year in the hope that our paths might cross again but they haven’t — I try hard not to fear the worst and haven't the courage to ask.

Wild Broom - Cytisus scoparius - grows abundantly on the hill, it’s roots help to keep the shallow soil from slipping in wet weather - a glorious and useful asset.

My daughter has returned home from her city life in Toulouse at last, she even managed to catch a train at the very last minute and arrived earlier than anticipated. I feel like bursting with the joy of seeing her again — I’ve done my best to ensure that the few short days we have together are filled with enjoyable moments for us both. That is to say, at the very least no housework, no logging or weeding, no chasing of escaped chickens or sheep. Invariably, by the time she arrives I’m exhausted but we do have maximum hours to use just for us. Mostly we will walk, miles and miles…

Tomorrow we will rise early and take the track to the vineyard in the hope that my smiling old friend will have also risen to climb her side of the hill. I hope that we may, all three of us, sit on that rustic bench for a while, breathing in the sent of the wild broom, perhaps even spy a hedgehog mother and her babies in the tangled briars.

Lunaria Annua - commonly known as Honesty, Moonwort or Money plant…

1. Unusually, there is an error to the online entry in A Modern Herbal for Lunaria so I have not added the link. However, just so you know the next time you pass this heavenly spring flower, all parts of this plant are edible. A member of the brassica family its leaves, which should be harvested before the flowers appear have a slight mustardy flavour, the flowers can be added as decoration to salads and the green, flat, seed pods which can be eaten straight from the plant, have a pungent horseradish flavour. Roots can be roasted like potatoes and again should be used before the plant produces flowers. Medicinally, there no known uses.