A Life (34 page)

Jeanne held them and inspected them, leaving her fingermarks on the accumulated dust; and she remained standing there in the midst of all these old things, beneath the dim light coming in through a few small panes of glass let into the roof.

She examined some three-legged stools minutely to see what memories they might recall, a copper warming-pan, a battered foot-warmer which she thought she recognized, and a heap of kitchen utensils which were no longer used.

Then she made a pile of the things she wanted to take, and when she came downstairs, she sent Rosalie up to fetch them. The maid was indignant and refused to bring down 'that filthy rubbish'. But Jeanne, though she no longer had a will of her own, held firm this time; and her wish prevailed.

One morning the young farmer, Denis Lecoq, Julien's son, came with his cart to take the first load. Rosalie went with him in order to supervise the unloading and to put the furniture where it was to go.

Left on her own, Jeanne began to wander through the rooms of the house in sudden, awful despair, kissing all the things she could not take with her in surges of passionate affection, the great white birds on the drawing-room tapestries, some old candelabras, everything she came across. She went from room to room, distraught, her eyes streaming with tears; and then she went outside to 'say goodbye' to the sea.

This was towards the end of September, and a lowering grey sky seemed to weigh upon the world; the drab, yellowish-looking waves stretched away as far as the eye could see. She remained standing on the cliff for a long time, mulling over a series of  anguished thoughts in her head. Then, as night was falling, she returned to the house, having suffered as much in this one day as during any of her previous periods of greatest sorrow.

Rosalie had returned and was waiting for her, delighted by the new house and declaring that it was considerably more cheerful than this great barracks of a building which wasn't even by a main road.

Jeanne spent the evening in tears.

Ever since they had heard about the chateau being sold, the farm tenants had treated her with the bare minimum of respect, calling her 'the madwoman' among themselves, without knowing exactly why but no doubt because they sensed, in their brute, instinctive way, her increasingly morbid sentimentality, the dreamy exaltations to which she was now given, the utter disarray to which her poor soul had been reduced by relentless misfortune.

On the eve of her departure she happened to walk into the stable. A growl made her jump. It was Slaughter, whom she had scarcely thought about for months. Blind and paralysed, having reached an age which dogs of his sort rarely attain, he clung to life lying on a bed of straw, and looked after by Ludivine, who never forgot him. Jeanne held him in: her arms, kissed him, and took him into the house. Fat as a tun, he could scarcely drag himself along on his stiff, splayed legs, and he barked like those wooden dogs that are given to children.

The last day finally dawned. Jeanne had spent the night in Julien's old room, the furniture having been removed from her own.

She got out of bed, exhausted and gasping for breath, as though she had just been running a great distance. Down in the courtyard the cart carrying the trunks and the remainder of the furniture had already been loaded. Another cart, a two-wheeled trap, was standing harnessed behind it, which was to take the mistress and the maid.

Père Simon and Ludivine would remain behind on their own until the new owner arrived; then they were to retire to live with relatives, Jeanne having arranged for them to receive a small  annuity. They had some savings also. They were now very old to be servants, at once talkative and not able to do very much. Marius, having taken a wife, had long since left the household.

Towards eight o'clock rain began to fall, a fine, icy rain blown in on a gentle sea-breeze. They had to spread covers over the cart. The leaves were already being blown off the trees.

On the kitchen table stood steaming cups of café au lait. Jeanne sat down at hers and drank it in little sips. Then she got up and said: 'Let us go.'

She put on her hat and shawl and, while Rosalie was helping her on with her rubber boots, remarked, with a lump in her throat:

'Do you remember, Rosalie, how it rained the day we left Rouen to come here. . .'

She had a sort of spasm, clutched both hands to her chest, and fell back unconscious onto the floor.

For more than an hour she lay there as though dead; then she opened her eyes again and began to heave convulsively as tears flowed from her eyes.

After she had calmed down a little, she felt so weak that she could not get up. But Rosalie, who was afraid that there might be further attacks of this kind if they delayed their departure any longer, went and fetched her son. Together they took hold of her, lifted her up, carried her out, and placed her in the two-wheeler, on the wooden bench covered in polished leather; and the old servant, having climbed up beside Jeanne, wrapped a rug round her legs and put a thick coat over her shoulders. Then, holding an umbrella over her head, she shouted:

'Quick, Denis, let's be off.'

The young man clambered up beside his mother and, perching with one thigh on the edge of the crowded bench, put his horse to a fast trot, and the two women began to bounce up and down to its jolting rhythm.

When they turned the corner in the village, they caught sight of someone pacing up and down the road; it was the Abbé Tolbiac, who seemed to have been waiting for their departure.

He stopped to let the carriage go past. He was holding up his  cassock with one hand to keep it out of the puddles lying on the road, and his spindly legs, clad in black stockings, disappeared into enormous muddy shoes.

Jeanne lowered her eyes so as not to have to meet his gaze; and Rosalie, who knew the full story, was filled with rage.

'Ignorant boor,' she muttered, and then, grabbing her son's hand, cried:

'Give him a flick of your whip.'

But just as he was passing the priest, the young fellow guided the wheel of his ramshackle conveyance smartly into a rut at full speed, sending up a sheet of mud which covered the ecclesiastical gentleman from head to toe.

And Rosalie turned, with a beaming smile on her face, and brandished her fist, as the priest took a large handkerchief and wiped himself down.

They had been under way some five minutes when Jeanne suddenly exclaimed:

'Slaughter! We've forgotten him!'

They had to stop, and Denis got down and ran back to fetch the dog, while Rosalie held the reins.

The young man eventually reappeared, carrying the large, flabby, mangy animal in his arms, and he placed it on the floor between the skirts of the two women.

XIII

The carriage drew up two hours later outside a small, brick-built house surrounded by an orchard of espaliered pear-trees and standing by the side of the main road.

Four trellised arbours covered in honeysuckle and clematis marked the four corners of the garden, which was laid out in small squares of vegetable beds divided by narrow paths bordered by fruit-trees.

A very tall hedge ran round the whole property, which was separated from the neighbouring farm by a field. There was a forge about a hundred metres up the road. The nearest houses after that were one kilometre away.

The surrounding view extended over the plain of the Pays de Caux, dotted all over with farmhouses, each of them hidden by the four double rows of tall trees that enclosed its apple-yard.

As soon as she arrived Jeanne wanted to rest, but Rosalie would not let her, fearing that her mind might start to wander again.

The carpenter from Goderville was on hand to help them move in; and they began at once to arrange the furniture which had already been delivered, while they waited for the final cart-load which would be arriving soon.

It was a major task, requiring long deliberation and extensive discussion.

An hour later the cart appeared at the gate, and they had to unload it in the rain.

When evening fell, the house was in total disorder, full of objects piled up higgledy-piggledy; and Jeanne, exhausted, fell fast asleep as soon as she got into bed.

During the days which followed she was so busy that she had no time for tears. She even took a certain pleasure in making her new home pretty, continually mindful of the fact that her son would one day return there. The tapestries from her former bedroom were hung in the dining-room, which served also as a sitting-room; and she took particular care in arranging one of the  two rooms on the first floor, which she began to think of as 'Pullie's room.'

She took the other for herself, while Rosalie was to live above her, next to the attic.

Once furnished with care, it was a nice little house: and Jeanne liked it at first, although something was missing which she could not quite identify.

One morning the notary's clerk from Fécamp brought her thirty-six hundred francs, the value of the furniture left behind at Les Peuples and which had been estimated by an upholsterer. She felt a thrill of delight as she accepted this money; and as soon as the man had gone she quickly put on her hat, wanting to get to Goderville as soon as possible to send this unexpected sum to Paul.

But as she was hurrying along the main road, she met Rosalie on her way back from market. The maid suspected something without immediately guessing the truth; but when she found outfor by now Jeanne found it impossible to keep anything from herRosalie put her basket down on the ground the better to give full vent to her anger.

With fists clenched on her hips, she stood there shouting at her. Then she grabbed her mistress with her right arm, and her basket with her left, and set off back to the house, still furious.

As soon as they reached home, the maid demanded the money. Jeanne gave it to her, keeping back six hundred francs. But her subterfuge was soon discovered by the servant, who had now been put on her guard; and she had to hand over the whole sum.

Rosalie agreed nevertheless to this residue being sent to the young man.

He wrote a letter of thanks some days later:

'You have done me a great service, my dear Mama, for we were living in dire poverty.'

Jeanne, however, could not get used to living at Batteville; she felt constantly as though she were no longer able to breathe properly, that she was even more alone now, more abandoned, more lost. She would go out for a walk, as far as the little hamlet of Verneuil and back via the Trois-Mares; and no sooner was she  home than she would be up on her feet again, wanting to be off as if she had forgotten to go where she had originally intended, where she really wanted to take her walk.

And she carried on like this every day without understanding the reason behind her strange urge. But one evening a chance remark revealed to her the secret cause of her restlessness. As she sat down to dinner, she said:

'Oh, how I long to see the sea.'

It was the sea that she had been missing so much, her great neighbour for twenty-five years, the sea with its salty air, its angry moods, its scolding voice, its powerful gales, the sea which she could glimpse every morning from her window at Les Peuples, whose air she breathed day and night, of whose presence nearby she was always conscious, and which she had come to love like a living person without realizing that she did.

Slaughter, too, was extremely restless. Since the evening of their arrival he had installed himself in the open space at the bottom of the kitchen dresser and refused to budge. He would lie there all day, hardly moving, merely turning round from time to time with a muffled growl.

But as soon as night came, he would get up and drag himself over to the door into the garden, bumping into the walls as he went. Then, when he had spent the few minutes he needed outside, he would come back in and squat on his haunches in front of the stove, which was still warm; and after his two mistresses had gone to bed, he would begin to howl.

He would howl like this all night long, in a plaintive, mournful tone, sometimes stopping for an hour only to start up again in an even more heart-rending manner. They tethered him in a barrel at the front of the house: he howled under the windows. Then, since he was sick and going to die soon, they put him back in the kitchen.

Sleep had become impossible for Jeanne, who could hear the old animal continually moaning and scratching, trying to find his bearings in this new house and quite aware that he was no longer in his own home.

Nothing could pacify him. Having dozed all day long, as if his  failing sight and the awareness of his own infirmity prevented him from stirring when every other living thing is up and about, he would begin to prowl around ceaselessly as soon as dusk fell, as if he only dared to live and move about in the darkness, when all creatures are blind.

They found him dead one morning. It was a great relief.

Winter was coming on; and Jeanne felt a growing sense of overwhelming despair. This took the form not of an acute sorrow of the kind that seems to wring the soul, but rather of a dismal, mournful sadness.

No distraction could rouse her. No one paid her any attention. The main road stretched to right and left outside her front door, almost always deserted. From time to time a tilbury would trot by, driven by a red-faced man whose smock billowed as he sped along and looked like a blue balloon; sometimes a cart trundled past, or else it was two peasants approaching in the distance, a man and a woman, very tiny at first on the horizon, then getting bigger and bigger, and then, when they had gone past the house, getting smaller again, till once more they were no bigger than two insects, away in the distance, at the end of the white line that stretched as far as the eye could see, rising and falling over the gentle undulations of the ground.

When the grass started to grow again, a little girl in a short skirt would come by the gate every morning, leading two bony cows that grazed along the edge of the ditches beside the road. In the evening she would return, at the same sleepy pace, moving slowly forward every ten minutes as she followed her beasts.