Madame Jacobs died this week.
She had been working for us for over twenty years.
Jacqueline Hennebert was born in 1928 in Beaumont, a small town in the Belgian Ardennes. During World War II the large family was evacuated for a time to the South of France, but they made their way back as it was easier to find food and work in the rural Belgium they knew. Already at 14 she had a job in a factory. Later, after the war, she came to work in Brussels. She started living with the older Pierre Jacobs whose wife had run away. They helped run the Jacobs family small laundry business together, in the days when the well-to-do would still pay for the service of having their dirty washing collected and brought back clean and ironed. They had two children, Michelle and Jean-Marie. The first was born before they could marry as in those days it was dificult to obtain a divorce. She came in for some unpleasantness on that count which she much resented.
She also worked looking after other people's children and cleaning.
Pierre died in 1979 leaving Mme Jacobs a young widow. Although she had a small widow's pension she preferred to remain active, doing laundry on a smaller scale, child-minding and also for a time managing the stock of a toy importer.
One of the people she worked for was Clara's landlady, on whose recommendation she began to clean for Clara in 1981.
When Clara moved in with me to my rented flat in 1986 one of her conditions was that Mme Jacobs would continue to clean for us. I was initially reluctant as I had always cleaned for myself. However, when I learned that Mme Jacobs would also be doing the ironing, a chore I particularly loathed, this seemed like a good proposition. I was at once pleased with the professional results so there was no looking back.
In 1989 Clara was pregnant and we bought a house of our own in which to start our family life. We were going to need someone to look after the future children once Clara had returned to work. Given our irregular working hours it had to be someone reliable who could be available at all times and who preferably could also do the cleaning of the much bigger house when the children were asleep or, later on, before fetching them from school. However, we didn't really want someone to live in. Mme Jacobs was the perfect choice. She had recently lost some of her regular customers and so was more than pleased to take up the offer of full time employment with us on a regular wage. She helped a lot with the move and setting up home in the new house as I was convalescing from hepatitis at the time and could not do much myself.
So she became very much part of the family in our new house in Ixelles. She was the children's nanny or 'nounou', a constant presence for them and who would become a grandmother figure to them as their real grandparents were too far away to be seen often. She was the one who provided the French speaking part of their upbringing alongside our Italian and English, and satisfied their needs when we could not be there. Julia and Thomas developed a deep affection for her and they in turn were the grandchildren she for so long never had, as Michelle could not have children and Jean-Marie had his very late.
As the years went by and the children needed her less and she became well past the retirement age of most people and gradually frailer, she still wanted to continue coming to work in our home. To a certain extent she needed the money, not so much for herself as for her entourage (of which more later) for who she paid for things she denied herself; but also I think she could not conceive of an idle life for herself and she enjoyed seeing our family and being in the atmosphere of what had become her other home. She used to like coming round to enjoy our garden during our long summer absences.
So there was a tacit agreement that she could continue as long as she felt she could and wanted to.
We took on Nadia, an Algerian lady who was one of Mme Jacobs' many protégés to do the heavier chores, reducing Mme Jacobs' duties to washing and ironing, cooking the odd meal, sewing and other lighter tasks. The transitional process was not easy as Mme Jacobs had become used to organizing all the housework and being in charge. In the end we arranged to have them come at different times to avoid disputes and they became once more on good terms with each other during the shorter periods they coincided. We had never imagined we would have to resolve problems managing our 'staff', but I suppose that is one inevitable aspect of job creation.
By this year she would come three days a week from 11 till 4 and one from 1 till 4. The last time she came was in late September. On our way to Italy with Julia to start her year in Pavia, we dropped her off at Jean-Marie's in the Ardennes as her second grandchild was about to be born. She returned to Brussels ten days later not to her home but to hospital. Old age had finally caught up with her and her body was failing her. Still her end came unexpectedly quickly. We had always thought she would spend her life working till the end, as that was her nature and so it was.
Mme Jacobs had a larger than life personality and (until her last year) a large body to go with it. She had a powerful voice and a strong Walloon accent, she was in a way still the country girl come to the big city. She liked to talk and It was not always easy to get a word in edgeways. She was one of life's optimists and would laugh off difficulties, having seen worse in her time.
For us she came to epitomize Belgium and things Belgian, we certainly enjoyed her Belgian culinary classics such as 'carbonnades', 'chicons braisés' and cakes. She was our finger on the pulse of contemporary Belgian life. She had an abiding suspicion of the Flemings but was unconditionally proud of any Belgian achievement whether by Walloon or Fleming.
She continued to live in the large house in Etterbeek which had once housed the laundry. She kept the first floor to herself. On the ground floor lived her daughter with Mario, her Angolan husband and his much younger brother, Ninho, who acted as a substitute son for the childless marriage. Further up lived a series of tenants, likely as not hard-luck-story foreigners not actually paying rent but enjoying her generous protection. For a time she was also involved in active work for NGO's that looked after foreigners. It's perhaps not surprising that Michelle works for the Petit Château refugee centre and Jean-Marie also married an African. There were always lots of people about in the big house. She would tell horror stories about Mario, true to the classic role of mother-in-law, but was very fond of Amina who was mother of her grand-daughter. We were always kept up to date of recent developments in her family and house. I assume that in turn we were the subject of conversation over the meals which she continued to cook for Michelle and family.
We sometimes felt her good nature and generosity led her to be exploited by those around her, but she didn't see it that way. We thought she should take more time for herself to rest, but she liked to be occupied. For years she would spend her Sundays often in miserable weather selling things from her stall at jumble sale style 'brocantes' to make a bit of money on the side for the family.
For Mme Jacobs it was normal to work hard to help others, which is really what she did right to the end of her life, until her body could take it no more.
She will be missed, especially by Julia and Thomas.
Adieu Nounou.
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