Live Lament
As I pushed the small square window shut, I wondered at how easily one can be driven to spying on someone. I had sneaked a peak via a window in the downstairs toilet. For me, it’s a self-defence mechanism.
Some family situations push us to make decisions which, with hindsight, we would not have made if given a second chance. Knowing we can’t turn the clocks back, we have to deal with the results of that poor decision in the present.
This is not a post about me alone, although it is presented from my point of view. Take it with that proverbial grain of salt, but know I am trying to be as accurate as possible.
To situate this true story, we are in SW France.
My middle daughter is a hard-working woman. Literally, she has a difficult job which few women would be successful doing. She’s a farrier, but more than that, she has a knack with horses which has provided her with a substantial clientele, because she does not mistreat the horses she shoes. You’d be surprised how mean some farriers are with horses when the owner isn’t present — or sometimes when they are…
She works very long hours, especially in the summer when there are all sorts of endurance courses, treks and horse shows. That means she leaves home in her kitted-out van early and arrives home at dusk having travelled many miles between clients.
As she is on her own with my two grandchildren, and I’m retired, I live with her to help with the children’s care as well as the home.
The occasion presented itself where one of her clients, an American who owns four horses, was struggling with managing them. He’s a man in his seventies, diminutive (maybe five-foot-three inches which he augments with a cowboy hat) and generally rather frail looking. He owns two houses sitting on fifty acres of land. One of the houses was empty, so a deal was struck where my daughter would muck out the stables three times a week and take care of his horses generally. That included trimming hoofs and shoeing as well as taking them out to graze in the morning and bringing them in in the evening. In exchange, he agreed she could live in the house rent free. The house was built in 1900 and although it has sanitary facilities, it is still primitive according to American standards. I might add, it was rampant with mice until I bought ultra-sound gadgets, which reduced the numbers quite quickly. The flies are inherent due to the proximity of the stables.
Jump forward after two and a half months of ‘bonne entente,’ goodwill, which saw us going to restaurants together and inviting the owner to dinner frequently (at least a couple of times a week). Most evenings, as he passed in front of the house, we shared aperitifs with him.
Because the man in question (a man whom I’ll call Joe) had his driving licence removed for repeated infractions, I have been driving him around, and this without him ever paying for gas. I believe he expected me to chauffeur him around in payment for living in the house, too, but I didn’t mind the short trips. If my daughter arrived home later than Joe liked for bringing in his horses from grazing, I took her place and brought them in. I have a fair amount of experience with horses, and although they are not my passion, I managed them most of the time better than Joe, himself. Keep that in mind. He might have resented that fact.
My daughter was not able to muck out the stables on a Friday morning, but she was going to do it on the Saturday morning when she had no clients. One of Joe’s mares did not want to stay in the field and broke out twice (fencing was not electrified) by passing under the cord. Joe was not involved at that stage. A friend of my daughter’s helped her put the horse in the field a third time with the other mare. I stood some distance away waiting to help, if necessary.
Joe arrived and I greeted him with ‘good morning’ as he passed, but he pointed a finger at me and said, ‘You, you go back to the house!’ I was somewhat taken aback and didn’t reply. He continued on his way to the horses who had discovered the secret of being free.
Once with my daughter, he turned to me again and because of the distance, shouted while waving an arm, ‘You go back to the house. I don’t want you near my horses.’
This time I did reply saying, ‘Don’t talk to me like that, and I'm nowhere near your horses.’
He then shouted back, ‘If you don’t like it, leave!’ still waving his arms.
I left for the house.
The horses never stayed in the field and they haven’t been taken there since.
When my daughter joined me in the house, she was upset.
She had told Joe not to speak to her mother like that, and he had told her to leave as well. He didn’t mean where she was standing but from his property.
He gave us five days to vacate the place.
All out of the blue.
Of course, that hasn’t been possible as we needed to find another house.
When next I saw Joe, I told him I was going into town and asked if he had things to do there too, because I’d take him.
He shook his head ‘no’ and then said ‘I’m serious. I want you out.’
‘I know, and we’re actively looking.’
‘In five days!’
‘But no one only gives…’ I began.
‘A week’s notice? Oh, yes they do,’ he said with a smile.
This attitude had us looking on the internet for legal advice.
In fact, he cannot legally make us go in five days. He has to give us a fixed legal time to find somewhere.
He is, however, trying to make life unbearable for us in as many ways as he can.
When he sees we’ve left the house, he enters with his key and goes all over the place. One of the toilet seats was put up when I’m the only one to use it and I close the lid down each time (because of the flies). A light was left on in a room which was closed when I left. He’s deliberately shown he’s been in. I don’t think he would steal anything, but who knows?
Another time, because he had trouble opening the door, he forced it causing the screws to come loose in the lock. I arrived home to the door wide open and one of our dogs running loose. Then he returned with an electric screwdriver.
Last week, he tried to force his way in with the electricity supplier to cut off the electricity without warning. I was able to circumvent that problem, but it is a permanent worry that he’ll verbally aggress me again.
My daughter’s friend suggested Joe was hoping a romantic interaction might develop between us, but when I showed no interest, he wanted me away (his second wife has left him and wants half his belongings).
‘I don’t like you and you don’t like me, so go back to your husband,’ being one of his virulent observations.
So, I have been driven to spying on the man in an attempt to avoid further contact.
I’m too old for this sort of drama in my life, but until we have somewhere to go, I’m going to have to oil the hinges on that window, because I want to know where he is. No more unwarranted attacks for me….
End of the Live Lament
The flies should have warned me.
We own horses and in warm weather, flies are a permanent fixture wherever we’ve lived. Nothing, though, that a bit of flypaper can’t handle.
This new place was different.
We live in France where my daughter is a farrier by trade.
She had struck a deal with a small, frail man in his seventies whereby she would take care of his four large horses in exchange for an empty house he had on his property next to the stables.
The 1900 house was somewhat rundown inside, but a couple of rooms and a bathroom had been added over the garage in the past ten years—a small compensation for the state of the rest of the house.
The kitchen was perhaps the worst room with its years of accumulated grease on what had been green painted walls. The red tiled floor had a half inch crack running the length of the room and the single window had a hard time letting in enough light to brighten the place. The mice were rampant until I bought ultrasound apparatus which I placed in the cupboards.
But, it was the flies which added the final depressing touch to this unhealthy environment. Half a dozen flypapers needed to be changed weekly when there was no room left on them for more flies. I had never seen flies kill themselves in a sink before, either.
Each time I went to the kitchen sink, I had to clean it of flies which appeared to have gone for a source of water.
I began to suspect that the water might be slightly toxic, so, very quickly we began to buy bottled water…
Even so, my daughter felt sorry for the man and his horses which he could no longer handle. Without her, they would never leave their stalls…
The man lived on his own in a house behind the one we were now in. He would pass in front of ours a dozen times a day as he traipsed back and forth to the stables. I found it a little disconcerting as I felt he was also spying on us. But, the day we came home from shopping to find our dogs outside on the loose was perturbing. He’d opened the door in our absence and let them out.
So, we decided to lock the door.
In France, if you live anywhere for more than 48 hours, or have a contract, you have the right to privacy. If an owner of a place wants you out after that time, he has to go to court. He is not allowed to take action himself as he can be fined—or imprisoned.
The locked door did not prevent him from entering with his duplicate key. As soon as we were gone, he entered.
We changed the lock, which is when things took a turn for the worse.
I will skip the intermediary details, but it ended with the man telling us to leave by the end of the month, which gave us five days!
He obviously didn’t know the law because we had three months to find somewhere and move.
In the meantime, he was mean and aggressive at every opportunity. He tried to break the door down when he thought we were gone, but I prevented him, although it scared me as he shouted insults from the other side.
We found somewhere else and began the arrangements to move again after only four and half months. My daughter had told him we would be leaving at the end of the month, prompting him to write on a piece of paperthat he wanted us gone for the end of the month (repeating what she’d told him) and he wanted us to take all our belongings and nothing belonging to him!
We began moving on the 30th of the month and had rented a van for the 31st as well. On the last day, we made a penultimate trip with our belongings and returned to the house to finish and to clear up.
We arrived at a house which now looked like a dump. He had broken the door open with his tractor’s shovel. He had been in the house and thrown our remaining belongings out the windows.
He tried to physically stop us from picking up what he had dumped but between us, we managed to get a few things. Rather than struggle, my daughter telephoned the gendarmes who said they’d come. That was when he went berserk.
He grabbed me around my throat in a stranglehold yelling and spluttering comprehensible words. It was only because I was a bit taller and heftier that I was able to get him off me.
I was grateful that my daughter came to my rescue immediately. She punched him in the jaw telling him to leave her mother alone… I kicked him out of pure fury.
He backed off a little and my daughter phoned the gendarmes a second time saying he had tried to strangle me. They arrived within five minutes, but not before the man had picked up a three-pronged fork and threatened me yet again.
When they arrived, the gendarmes told us to get as much as we could into the van while they were there. The crazy man continued to prance and rant but at a distance.
We couldn’t get everything as some of our belongings were broken. Later, I realised he’d kept a bag I’d prepared with two computers I was buying on credit. The gendarmes were able to recover them some days later from where he’d hidden them under the stairs.
I’m sorry to have lost a large watercolour painting and all my fossils. The furniture was replaceable.
We don’t know if this will go to court or not. We made a charge against him and a doctor certified the marks on my throat, but to be honest, I really don’t want anything else to do with the man. Don’t they say that flies thrive in the company of bad spirits?
Today, I wonder if he drinks that water which was killing the flies—or was he naturally nasty?
I really don’t want to know.