and Gallic charm that both disarmed
you and endeared him. He never once
raised his voice and went to such lengths
to make you welcome it disguised
a layer of self preservation that survived
an Algerian war and two wives,
an itinerant life and a complicated son
whom he loved from an oil platform off the
West African coast until he retired and
returned to Provence and stopped smiling.
And when we saw him for the last time,
we thought someone else had occupied his
body, until after he died and his boy cried
that the selfish bastard had contracted AIDS
and never told him until the last moment.
John H Davies
9th February 2011
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