A Clean Pair of Hands Read Free Page B

meditate on this question and I still am meditating on it.’
    Denis Diderot, philosopher and author 1713-1784
    Michel Bodin grew up in Paris in the 1950s and 60s. His mother Huguette was to be the major influencer of his life, during the early years as a mentor, and long into adulthood as a strong competitor. She had left home at seventeen to escape paternal discipline and improve her prospects, and married first, briefly, a young man who shared her taste for excitement; but once the whirl of dance halls and laughter had subsided, Huguette realised that her husband’s modest intellect and vision left him with little prospect of wealth acquisition, so for the foreseeable future she was faced with a daily reality of living in a tiny second floor apartment above a shop in an unfashionable Paris suburb, with a downstairs, shared outside toilet. She could see no way forward, and became increasingly frustrated with her narrow existence. She wasnot someone who would obediently endure.
    There had to be a way forward or out. Huguette was a talented singer and dancer and as a child had hopes of becoming a star. At the age of seven she had won a scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School, but her family’s limited resources meant there was no question of taking up the opportunity, even with a partial scholarship. Now, twenty and married, she was already too old for all that, but the idea lingered that she might try to get into show business. She had good looks, vivacity, and enough determination to succeed as an actress, so she continued to dream of getting into a drama school at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, her husband’s succession of business ventures, financed by his parents, all ended inconsequentially, but at least the experience she gained within their small-scale commerce demonstrated Huguette’s innate business sense and a facility with figures. If it wasn’t for the fact that her husband was less capable than her, slower on the uptake, and unwilling to let her take control, the results may have been better. Their ensuing arguments, mostly about lack of money, were loud and sometimes violent.
    After nearly two years of married life, Huguette felt like a trapped tigress. All her plans were blocked, but she determined to regain control of her life somehow, so at this point she swallowed her pride, went back to her parents and found a job at a local hardware and paint shop. There, she showed the young owner how to expand his business by offering decorating services to local shops and from the success of that basic idea, she developed a wider range of services including refitting local shops, bakeries and bars that had been neglected since the Second World War, engaging teams of artisans to carry out the work under her direction. François Bodin, the young owner of the business, which he had inherited from his father, wasimpressed by the ideas and by the woman herself, and soon after Huguette got a divorce, the pair married. Huguette’s theatrical dream was replaced by a more accessible new vision – success in business.
    Huguette’s marriage to François Bodin brought her fulfilment on several levels. François appreciated her flair for commerce, combined with toughness and ambition, which when teamed with his energy, enthusiasm, and creative skills as a designer, boosted their business substantially. He was happy to involve her fully as an equal partner, though his male pride demanded that when he told the story he tended to take full credit.
    What Huguette actually did was to make forceful and relentless demands for high standards at every level of the business. She had no training in quality control and had read no books on achieving excellence, but she knew instinctively what was right and would accept nothing less, and she had the courage to make it happen.
    She started with the artisans who carried out the shop-fitting work. Some had learned a trade and had some talent, but