At convent school, Hallowe'en meant slimy spinach and lots of church visits, writes Michele Roberts

The other day, I overheard a young woman exulting that she had always loved celebrating Hallowe'en because it both allowed her to eat huge quantities of trick-or-treat sweeties and had nothing to do with religion. That made me laugh. The nuns at convent school drummed into us the necessity of praying with extra vigour at that time. The Feast of All Saints (for those in heaven) came first on 1 November, followed the next day by the Feast of All Souls (for those in purgatory). So on the Eve of All Saints - ie, Hallowe'en - the streets were filled with

children not trick-or-treating, but rushing in and out of churches

to pay visits to the Blessed Sacrament. According to those well-meaning, superstitious nuns, every visit to a church on that day meant a soul released from purgatory. A serious responsibility. Sweeties were nowhere to be seen. It was eating things you hated, such as nuns' slimy spinach, that helped the holy souls.

In France, the custom at the fete de la Toussaint (All Saints, a national holiday for the French) is to visit the local cemetery and place pots of flowers on relatives' graves. On the previous Thursday, the market spills over with chrysanthemums and azaleas. I bought a pot of white azaleas for Claude, my dear neighbour up the hill, who died recently. I had taken flowers from my garden to the funeral: the last dahlias, roses, asters. I've written here before about how Claude was a great gardener. He taught me how to hoe and dig properly, collected my dandelions for his rabbits, cracked jokes, often in impenetrable patois, over a glass of pastis in my kitchen. He was a lovable man, merry on the outside, tormented inside. To dull his pain, he would vanish to the shed and get drunk.

Now we were all sad. I asked Gisele to a Toussaint lunch. Yvette, her oldest friend, necessarily came, too. Eugene being away, harvesting, just the three of us sat down to our private wake. We had all dressed smartly. Gisele wore a black cardigan with large white spots. I cooked a classic dish, chicken in half-mourning. This involves slipping slices of truffle under the skin of the chicken before wrapping it in a muslin shroud and poaching it in broth. The black discs of truffle on the white skin of the chicken formed the reverse pattern of the white spots on Gisele's cardigan. We began with fish soup on which floated croutons spread with rouille, mayonnaise spiced up with red pepper. "What's rouille?" demanded Yvette. "No, no, it can't be French, I've never made this." I suggested that perhaps it was Parisian. "Ah, that must be it." Eyes watering, she none the less ate three helpings, all the while instructing Gisele: "Rouille, yes, that's what I use to spice up magret de canard."

And she laid down her spoon in triumph next to her empty plate, as round and sparkling as the halo of a saint.

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