All Our Wordly Goods (16 page)

Pierre said nothing. He knew that if she even hinted in Saint-Elme that she intended to pull out of the factory he’d be finished. All the existing credit would be cut off. She would ruin him, because in order to avoid bankruptcy he would spend every penny he had, all of Agnès’s savings; he was a Hardelot; he would not be disgraced. But if he sold his shares to Simone, he thought, the factory would be saved.

‘Your grandfather left you with a heavy burden,’ she said. ‘He was very rich, but for a fortune to last from generation to generation it needs constant reinvestment, sustained by inheritances …’

‘Or by marriages,’ said Pierre.

He could barely conceal his anger. He looked at her with hatred. Agnès was right. Simone still held their broken engagement against him, after twenty-six years. These women, good Lord, these women … It was only by thinking of Agnès, by picturing Agnès’s sweet face that he finally calmed down.

‘What are you proposing?’ he asked.

She hesitated.

‘It would be possible to help you this time, once again … oh, not you, but the company. It’s only the company that’s the issue, you know that very well. It’s clear that we are both prepared to make sacrifices so the company can survive. What I could do would be to sell my mother’s jewellery; Rose will reproach me for it one day,
but too bad. With that money I could buy out your shares and then you would owe me nothing.’

‘The shares are worth more than that, as you know very well.’

‘And you know what you were offered for them in Paris,’ she said, turning away so he couldn’t see the look of triumph on her face. She had made sure she was well informed.

After a moment she leaned towards him. ‘You can’t have everything,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re happy with Agnès and your delightful children. Your family can be your consolation for your difficulties.’

‘Don’t bring my family into this.’

‘Why not? It affects them. Do you think that Agnès will reproach you for having regained your freedom? All in all, this factory is a burden. You’ll have enough money to live on. And you’re not like your grandfather who cared about nothing in the world except the factory. It was his passion; it isn’t yours. I envy you. A business like this is less certain, more dangerous than a love affair. Think of the cost of running it, of working in it, of worrying about it and what it will cost in future … And think of how many people would love to get their hands on it. How vulnerable it is,’ she insisted. ‘After me, Rose will inherit it. So her husband will become the head of it. What kind of husband? Sometimes I can’t sleep for worrying about that. She’s not the kind of girl you can marry off as you please; she’s so stubborn. But I’ve become attached to the factory. I was brought up with
the idea that one day it would belong to me and it must have been in my blood, you understand, because even though I gave up the man, I couldn’t give up the company. And since then I’ve grown even more strongly attached to it. People become attached to other people or to bricks and mortar; I don’t know which is wiser. Here is a company that should be the best in the country but is on the verge of bankruptcy. Why? If there were a reason, at least, or if it were my own fault. But no … Sometimes everything is handed to you, sometimes it is all taken away and you never know why. So I will save the business this time. Agreed? But then what?… Do I know what laws they’ll come up with next? Do I know whether war will break out tomorrow? Or revolution? Or … In such circumstances I will have sacrificed my youth, my happiness, for nothing. Roland hated Saint-Elme. He was … I don’t want to talk about it: he’s dead. I don’t get along with Rose. She knows that all the money belongs to me and that she can’t do as she pleases. I’m telling you all this … because we’ve known each other such a long time and we’ve never spoken honestly to each other. This is all I have left,’ she said, pointing to the chimneys of the factory.

Pierre too looked out at them with a strange feeling that was a mixture of bitterness and pity. The Hardelots had lived for this factory. They had married ugly women; they had skimped and counted every last penny; they had been rich and had enjoyed fewer pleasures than the poor. They had stifled their children’s interests, thwarted their
loves. All this for the factory, for their possessions, for something that was, to their eyes, more durable and faithful than love, women or their own children. When Julien Hardelot thought Charles was a fool, he comforted himself by thinking that the factory, at least, was a product of his very own inspiration and wouldn’t let him down. When his wife had died, he had stood and contemplated the bricks and the land that comprised his business, and peace had returned to his heart: everything else was ephemeral, but his possessions would endure. Pierre himself had shared this illusion. Was it an illusion or reality? He didn’t know, couldn’t know. No one knew. It was one of God’s secrets. But at the moment, property was almost as much at risk as human life. Simone was right. To him, at least, the factory was gone for ever.

He pulled himself out of his reverie and turned towards Simone with a sigh. He would leave Saint-Elme, go and live in Paris. He wouldn’t be bored. He would take Agnès to concerts, the theatre. He would read all the history books that interested him and that he’d never had the time to take notes on, to study, as he had wanted to. He would grow old in peace. He would have more friends in Paris than in this provincial place where, even to this day, Agnès was considered an intruder and treated with cold contempt. Adieu, Saint-Elme!

On the eve of 1 January 1938, Pierre Hardelot and his wife were alone in Paris, in their little apartment on the Boulevard de Courcelles. Colette, who had passed her exams in October and was now studying Law at the university, had been invited to a party; she had gone out an hour earlier, very happy, in a new dress. The previous night Guy had said that he would stay in, that he’d go to bed early, but ageing parents who are still in love create an atmosphere of ghost-filled, contented melancholy that is intolerable to the young. So, having drunk a glass of champagne with them, Guy had ended up going out for the rest of the evening. He had found a position as an engineer in a factory; he led an ordered, gloomy life, as if, two years ago, he had spent all the passion, all the pain, all the love of which he was capable. With his parents he was more affectionate than before, but even more distant.
What he read, his friends, his thoughts were unknown to Pierre.

So the husband and wife were alone. Pierre opened another bottle of champagne. The year 1938 began cold; light snow was falling. They lit the fire in the dining room. The radio was on low in the darkness. Pierre was assessing the year that had just passed.

‘What will
this
year bring?’ he asked. ‘We looked forward to the past two years with such confidence (like this one too, alas, like this one too), but they had nothing much to offer: that business with Guy …’

‘Oh, please don’t talk about it,’ murmured Agnès.

‘Poor Roland’s death, our problems, the money we lost, the factory taken over by someone else. I wonder what this year will bring?’ he said again.

‘Well, you’ve already had your first gift …’ said Agnès, touching her husband’s hand, ‘… a bad cold. Please, go to bed and don’t drink any more cold champagne.’

‘It does me good,’ said Pierre, coughing.

The next day he had a fever. Half of Paris was ill that winter; he had flu, complicated by a chest infection, which kept him in bed for two weeks. Meanwhile the last of the Hardelot-Arques ladies died, making Pierre her heir. But all she had was a few pieces of silverware and some furniture she’d bought in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine during the Great Exhibition of 1900. It had been badly damaged by having sat in the basement for four years during the war, so it was immediately obvious
that this inheritance would bring nothing but problems with the taxman. Neither Pierre nor Agnès could travel to Saint-Elme to attend the elderly lady’s funeral and deal with her affairs, so Guy had to go. He received permission to be away from work for three weeks (which would be deducted from his annual holiday). He would stay with his maternal grandmother, Madame Florent, who had never left Saint-Elme, despite her hatred for the sleepy, cold little town. How she had dreamed of getting away from it. But when it had been possible, when Agnès had offered her a room in their Parisian apartment, it was too late. She had reached the age where you recoil at the idea of any kind of change, as if it were an omen of the greatest change of all: death. Like all the good middle-class ladies of Saint-Elme, she barely left her house; she fell asleep reading the papers; she got a new maid every six months. This was her only entertainment now. It excited her, annoyed her, added a little spice to her life. She had no money left whatsoever: her husband’s legacy had been spent on Agnès’s Russian bonds. Her children sent her money every month. She was very happy to see her grandson; she gave him the bedroom next door to hers and, at every meal, made him all the dishes he had liked as a child but which now, sadly, were the ones he most disliked as an adult.

The elderly Mademoiselle Hardelot-Arques was buried. All of Saint-Elme was present in the new little church. The black curtains at the entrance fluttered in the soft wind that blew in from the sea on rainy days.
During Mass, the clouds in the sky vanished; a silvery ray of sunlight lit up the white flagstones, the blue statue of the Virgin Mary and the one of Joan of Arc, whose tunic was painted blue and gold. The candles around the bier were reduced to transparent flickering flames and from the coffin rose columns of luminous dust that floated upwards towards the stained-glass windows. Guy recognised the faces all around him, people he’d known since childhood: Father Gaufre’s massive red face, Billault the bell ringer’s black moustache. In the congregation he saw his aunts, his cousins, every remaining Hardelot from the region that ran from the English Channel to Arras on one side and the Belgian border to Paris on the other. And here, too, were the younger generation, who lived in Lille or Calais: the women wore make-up, elegant suits, beautiful fur coats over their Flemish bodies, heavy breasts and wide hips. The older men were also present, with their beards, pince-nez, black frock coats and a slight family resemblance in their features; they were rivals in business, brought long, drawn-out court cases against each other, argued over legacies eaten up by the taxman; they were malicious, suspicious of each other, but in spite of everything they were united in circumstances such as these, even when the departed had nothing much to leave.

Colette had gone with her brother to pay her respects to the dead woman; she was to stay for two days. ‘She’s the spitting image of Marthe Hardelot,’ everyone said. She looked sweet and young, not very
clever, with pink cheeks, brown eyes and a warm, shy expression.

Both Guy and Colette felt nervous at being back in Saint-Elme.

‘This hideous hole,’ thought Guy. ‘I hope I never see the place again.’

Opposite him he could see Simone Burgères and Rose; the young woman was tall and beautiful, he thought vaguely. There was seven years’ difference in age between him and Rose; it was the first time he had actually seen her. But he looked at her with hostility: she was part of a different clan, the enemy, the daughter of Simone, who had ruined him, and of … Ah, he didn’t like recalling that time, that man. He had never seen his mistress again. He wasn’t in love with her any more; he had forgotten her. But that man, no, he still hadn’t forgiven him. The memory of the first betrayal wounds the pride more than the heart and fades more slowly.

Once the ceremony was over, everyone went back home, back to the warm fire and set table with that feeling of comfort and joy you have after a long walk in the rain, or when you’ve buried someone whose life and death are equally meaningless to you. Everyone in Saint-Elme was talking about Colette and Guy Hardelot. They had waited with great curiosity for the moment when the Burgères and the Hardelots would come face to face as they all filed by to offer their condolences. And, at the Hardelot-Demestres’ house, it was
announced that the next day Guy would be invited to visit the Burgères.

‘How do you know that, Grandfather?’

Hardelot-Demestre always knew everything. He was an old man with slim shoulders and a white beard. He walked slowly through the dining room, round the cleared table, rubbing his dry hands together and smiling, with a gleam in his eye, making everyone beg him to tell them what he knew. He had seen Madame Burgères’s maid hand a note to Madame Florent’s maid and, also, the Burgères’s car had been seen going to the next town to buy food, which was only ever done the day before they were having dinner guests. ‘Ah, the Burgères don’t throw their money out of the window,’ people said with respect. In these old families of Saint-Elme, people admired thriftiness as much as they did wealth: both were prime virtues, the cornerstones on which a family’s prosperity was built. While they were talking, the radio was broadcasting the world news. Everything was unstable, falling apart; it seemed as if the clatter of swords, the tramping of boots, the distant rumble of marching armies could be heard even in this peaceful Saint-Elme sitting room. At the home of the Hardelot-Demestres they discussed the dowry of Rose Burgères. The young woman would be twenty-one in 1941.

‘Her mother will marry her off while she’s young; they don’t get along,’ people said.

The next day Guy and Colette were indeed invited to the Burgères house. It was a small dinner party,
because of the mourning period, but Saint-Elme was meant to know that the former and new proprietors of the factory were on good terms. All the bad feeling between them was masked by these subtle details of behaviour: just as the sludge at the bottom of a lake is hidden by clear, sparkling water.

Colette was very happy to be invited to dinner; she put on lipstick, though the girls in Saint-Elme never wore make-up. Two of Rose’s female cousins were also invited; they wore dark-brown taffeta dresses with high collars; their necks and cheeks were shiny, and they looked at Colette with envy, consoling themselves with the thought of their dowries, for they all knew that this little Hardelot girl … After dinner Madame Burgères sat down in an armchair, her knitting on her lap and some official papers on a table in front of her. She looked them over and knitted at the same time; she was using thin, rough wool to make clothes for the workers’ children. Sometimes she would stop, put down her knitting needles and pick up a red pencil to make notes in the margins of the letters.