A Life (17 page)

After the initial words of welcome and the exchange of neighbourly pleasantries, no one could think of anything else to say. Mutual satisfaction was expressed, albeit without evident reason. Each party did so hope that they might continue to maintain such excellent and cordial relations. It was such a blessing to be able to meet like this when one lived in the country the whole year round.

And they could feel the glacial atmosphere of the drawing-room entering their bones, and their throats became hoarse. The Baroness was now coughing without having quite stopped sneezing. Then the Baron gave the signal for departure. The Brisevilles would not hear of it:

'What? So soon? Do please stay a little longer.'

But Jeanne had already risen to her feet, despite signs from Julien who considered the visit too short.

They wanted to ring for the servant to call the carriage to the front. The bell no longer worked. The master of the house  rushed out, and returned to inform them that the horses had been stabled.

They would have to wait. Each of them tried to think of something, anything, to say. They talked about how rainy the winter had been. Jeanne, trembling involuntarily with nervousness, enquired what her hosts could possibly find to do all year long, living entirely on their own together as they did. But the Brisevilles were astonished at the question; for they were constantly kept busy, writing frequently to their noble relations scattered throughout France, spending their days engaged upon minuscule matters, as formal with each other as with perfect strangers, and conversing majestically about the most trivial of concerns.

And beneath the high, blackened ceiling of this vast, unlived-in drawing-room, all wrapped in dust-sheets, this man and this womanso tiny, and neat, and properseemed to Jeanne like conserved specimens of the nobility.

At last the carriage came past the windows drawn by its pair of ill-matched nags. But Marius was nowhere to be found. Thinking he was free until the evening, he had doubtless disappeared off into the countryside.

Furious, Julien requested that he be sent home on foot; and after much bowing and salutation on all sides, they set off back to Les Peuples.

As soon as they were safely ensconced in the carriage, Jeanne and her fatherthough still borne down by the memory of Julien's brutal remarksbegan to laugh again as they mimicked the gestures and speech of the Brisevilles. The Baron imitated the husband, and Jeanne the wife, but this touched the Baroness's aristocratic nerve and she said to them:

'You're quite wrong to mock like that. They are thoroughly
comme il faut
and belong to excellent families.'

The pair of them fell silent so as not to upset Mama, but from time to time they just could not help it: Papa and Jeanne would catch each other's eye and begin again. He would bow ceremoniously and enquire in a solemn voice:

'Your chateau at Les Peuples must be very cold, Madame, exposed as it is every day to the full force of the wind from the sea?'

And she would assume a pinched expression and reply in a simpering tone, with a tremulous little toss of the head like a duck bathing:

'Oh, my dear sir, there is always something to keep me busy here, you know, the whole year round. And then, of course, we have so many relations to write to. And Monsieur de Briseville leaves everything to me. He is engaged upon learned research with Monsieur Shovel, the abbé. They are writing the religious history of Normandy together.'

Then it was the Baroness's turn to smile, in tolerant vexation, as she reminded them:

'It's not right to laugh at people of our own class like that.'

But suddenly the carriage stopped; and Julien was shouting out to someone behind. Then Jeanne and the Baron leaned out of the windows and saw a singular creature apparently rolling towards them. Legs entangled in the swirling skirt of his livery coat, blinded by his headgear as it teetered now to one side, now to the other, flapping his sleeves like the sails of a windmill, floundering wildly through the large puddles, tripping on every stone along the road, jigging and leaping about, all covered in mud, it was Marius running after the carriage as fast as his legs would carry him.

When he had caught up, Julien leaned down, grabbed him by the collar, and hoisted him up beside him; then, letting go of the reins, he began to rain blows down upon the hat, shoving it right down onto the lad's shoulders as it echoed like a drum. The boy was sscreaming inside it, trying to get away and jump off the seat, while his master held him with one hand and kept hitting him with the other.

Distraught, Jeanne stammered: 'Papa . . . Oh Papa!', and the Baroness, filled with indignation, grabbed her husband's arm and said:

'Jacques, for goodness sake, make him stop.'

Then in a flash the Baron lowered the front window, grabbed his son-in-law by the sleeve, and shouted in a shaking voice:

'Have you quite finished hitting that child?'

Julien turned round in astonishment:

'Can't you see what the little blighter's done to his uniform?'

But the Baron thrust his head out between the pair of them and replied:

'What does it matter? That's not a reason to be so hard on him.'

Julien grew angry once more:

'Please, let me be, it's none of your business,' and he raised his hand again. But his father-in-law seized it in a trice and brought it down with such force that he banged it against the wood of the seat; and he shouted, 'If you don't stop now, I shall get out and make damn sure you do!' so violently that the Vicomte calmed down at once, and, shrugging his shoulders without further reply, he cracked the whip and the horses set off at a canter.

Ashen-faced, the two women sat quite still, and the pounding heartbeats of the Baroness could distinctly be heard.

At dinner Julien was more charming than usual, and behaved as if nothing had happened. Jeanne, her father, and Madame Adélaïde, calm, affable people unaccustomed to bearing grudges and mollified at seeing him be so pleasant, now relaxed into merriment with a convalescent's sense of well-being; and when Jeanne mentioned the Brisevilles again, her husband joined in the fun, though he added at once:

'All the same, they do have the grand manner.'

No further visits were undertaken, each of them being afraid to broach the question of Marius again. They decided simply to send their neighbours a card at New Year, and then to await the first mild days of spring before going to call on them.

Christmas came. The priest and the mayor and his wife came to dinner. They were invited again for New Year's Day. These occasions provided the sole distractions to break the monotonous chain of passing days.

Papa and Mama were to leave Les Peuples on the ninth of January. Jeanne wanted them to stay on, but Julien was far from enthusiastic; and the Baron, in the face of his son-in-law's increasing coldness, ordered a post-chaise to come from Rouen.

On the eve of their departure, when everything was packed,  and as it was a clear, frosty night, Jeanne and her father decided to go down to Yport, which they had not visited since her return from Corsica.

They went through the wood where she had walked on her wedding-day, then completely at one with the person whose lifelong companion she was in the process of becomingthis wood where she had received her first caress, and quivered with her first, trembling foretaste of that sensual love which she would come finally to know only in the wild setting of the Val d'Ota, beside the spring where they had drunk, mingling their kisses with the water.

The leaves were gone, and the climbing vegetation too, leaving only the sound of the branches, and the dry rustle of denuded thickets in winter.

They entered the little village. The empty, silent streets reeked of the sea, of fish and kelp. The huge, brown nets were still there, hung up to dry outside the doors or else spread out on the shingle. The cold, grey sea, and its unceasing rumble of breaking surf, was beginning to recede with the ebbing tide and to uncover the greenish rocks beneath the cliffs that ran towards Fécamp. And all along the beach the large fishing-boats lay heeled over on their sides like huge, dead fishes. Night was falling, and the fishermen were arriving in small groups on the upper part of the beach;
*
trudging along in their great sea-boots, their necks wrapped in woollens, a litre of spirits in one hand and a ship's lantern in the other. For a long time they moved about among the tilting craft; with Norman deliberation they loaded their nets, their buoys, a large loaf of bread, a pot of butter, a glass and their bottle of
trois-six
.
*
Then, having righted the boat, they gave it a shove towards the water's edge, and it would begin to career noisily down the shingle before breasting the foam and rising on the waves, where it hovered for a few seconds and then unfurled its brown wings before disappearing into the night, its tiny lamp glowing at the top of the mast.

And the tall figures of the fishermen's wives, their bony frames protruding under their thin dresses, stayed until the last fisherman had left and then made their way back to the sleeping village,  their raucous voices disturbing the deep slumber of its dark streets.

The Baron and Jeanne stood there watching these men vanish into the distance, departing as they did each night to risk their lives in order to avoid starvation, and yet still so poor that they never ate meat.

The Baron, exalted by the spectacle of the ocean, murmured:

'What a terrible beauty it has. How magnificent the sea is, with darkness falling and all those lives in peril upon its waters? Don't you think, Jeannette?'

She forced a smile:

'Nothing like the Mediterranean, though.'

But her father was indignant:

'The Mediterranean! Pah! It's like oil, like a glass of cordial, and blue like the water you wash clothes in. But look how fearsome this sea is, and how rough the waves are. And think of all those men who've set sail on it, and already they're out of sight.'

Jeanne conceded with a sigh:

'Well, perhaps you're right.'

But the word 'Mediterranean' which had sprung to her lips had caused a further pang, casting her mind back to those far-off lands, where her dreams lay buried.

Instead of returning through the woods, father and daughter now made for the road and climbed the hill at a steady pace. They said little, saddened by the imminent departure.

From time to time, as they walked beside a farm ditch, they would be assailed by the smell of crushed apples, that aroma of fresh cider which seems to hang over the entire Norman countryside at this time of year, or else by the rich scent of cowsheds, the good, warm stench of manure. A small, lighted window at the far end of the yard would indicate the presence of the farmhouse.

And Jeanne had the feeling that somehow her soul was expanding and could grasp invisible things; and these little glimmers of light scattered through the fields suddenly gave her an acute sense of the isolation in which all creatures live, of how everything conspires to separate them and keep them apart, to remove them far away from that which otherwise they might love.

Then, in a tone of resignation, she said:

'Life is not all fun.'

The Baron sighed:

'I'm afraid not, my child, and there's nothing we can do about it.'

And the next day, after Papa and Mama had gone, Jeanne and Julien were left alone together.

VII

Card-playing now entered the lives of the young couple. Each day after lunch Julien would play several games of bezique with his wife, while he smoked a pipe and washed his meal down with cognac, of which he was soon drinking six to eight glasses. Afterwards she would go up to her bedroom, sit by the window, and as the wind rattled the frame or the rain beat against the panes, doggedly embroider a petticoat frill. Sometimes, when she grew weary, she would look up and gaze into the distance at the dark sea and its foaming waves. Then, after a few minutes of blank contemplation, she would resume her work.

Indeed there was nothing else for her to do, since Julien had taken complete charge of the household by way of satisfying to the full his need to rule and his taste for thrift. He displayed ferocious meanness, never tipping the servants and reducing expenditure on food to the strict minimum. Ever since she had come to live at Les Peuples, Jeanne had been in the habit of ordering a small Norman pastry from the baker each morning, but Julien put a stop to this particular outgoing and condemned her to toast.

She said nothing, in order to avoid all the remonstrations and discussions and quarrelling; but each new manifestation of her husband's avarice was like the prick of a needle. To her, who had been brought up in a family where money counted for nothing, it all seemed unworthy and hateful. How often had she heard Mama say: 'But money's there to be spent!' Now Julien was always saying to her: 'Will you never learn to stop throwing money away?' And each time he had managed to reduce a bill or someone's wages by a few pence, he would slip the change into his pocket and proclaim with a smile: 'Little streams make big rivers.'

Meanwhile, on certain days, Jeanne began once more to dream. She would gently lay down her needlework, and with her hands limp and her eyes vacant, she would reconstruct one of her girlhood fantasies and duly embark upon a sequence of charming  adventures. But all of a sudden the sound of Julien's voice giving Père Simon an order would snatch her from her soothing reverie; and as she resumed her patient work, she would say to herself: 'Ah, that's all over now,' and a tear would drop onto her fingers as they pushed the needle forward.

Rosalie too, once so cheerful and always singing, was a changed person. Her plump cheeks had lost their rosy sheen and, nearly hollow now, sometimes almost looked as though they had been smeared with mud.

'Are you feeling unwell, my dear?' Jeanne would often ask her, but the maid always replied: 'No, my lady.' Her cheeks would colour slightly, and then she would quickly make her escape.

Where once she had raced about the place, she now walked with difficulty, dragging her feet; she seemed to have lost interest in her appearance and had stopped buying things from the pedlars, who now showed her their silk ribbons and their bodices and their various bottles of scent all in vain.