A DARK and dreary wet night in Paris and the rain is bouncing off the cobblestones on the streets around the imposing 17th century Church of St Eustache in the 1st arrondissement in a scene that would not seem out of place in a novel by Victor Hugo.
It seems a far remove from the burnished browns of the rugged rocky countryside of Toormore in west Cork and the meandering boreen which led Sophie Toscan du Plantier to a holiday home there that promised a retreat but instead delivered tragedy.
But it soon became apparent the journey from Paris to west Cork was not that far as Sophie’s mother, Marguerite Bouniol, in welcoming guests to “a homage” to her daughter, recalled her great love of Ireland and her dream of living there.
A mixed audience – family, elderly friends of the Bouniols, friends of Sophie from the world of film – they came to an anteroom attached to the church where Sophie was christened to remember the life of the 39-year-old mother of one taken so violently from them.
They watched one of Sophie’s films, a documentary on African art made in 1985 which opens with the pretty and vivacious blonde smiling at the camera.
Sophie’s curiosity about other cultures was also reflected in two poems read by her friends Agnes Thomas and Frederique More, about Bombay and Calcutta which she wrote when she visited India with her husband, Daniel Toscan du Plantier.
Testimonies from so many friends made for an emotional evening for Georges and Marguerite Bouniol, both clearly burning with a fierce fidelity to their dead daughter.
That commitment was perhaps best caught by Sophie’s son, Pierre Louis Baudey, who said afterwards: “My grandparents are remarkable – they have shown such fortitude and determination in the face of this tragedy that it encourages us all. They are an inspiration.”
