‘What a nasty lot!’ exclaimed Jean, livid with indignation.
Lise was taking a jugful of boiling bleach from the cauldron and when she heard mention of Jacqueline, whom she herself used to joke about sometimes, she started laughing.
‘And since I've started, I might as well go on to the end,’ Frimat's wife continued. ‘Well, there's no end to the horrors they talk about, since you've been coming here. Last week, you gave both of them a silk scarf, didn't you, and they wore them at Mass on Sunday. It's disgusting, they say that you go to bed with both of them!’
At this, trembling but with his mind suddenly made up, Jean stood up and said:
‘Listen, Madame Frimat, I'll answer that here and now. I'm not ashamed. Yes, I'm going to ask Lise if she'll marry me… Do you hear what I'm saying, Lise? I'm asking you, and if you say yes, you'll make me a very happy man.’
At that moment she was just emptying her jug into the copper. But she did not hurry, she carefully poured it over the washing before she turned towards him, with her bare arms wet with steam, looked him in the face and said seriously:
‘Do you really mean it?’
‘Yes, I really mean it.’
She did not seem surprised. It was something quite natural. However, she would not say yes or no; there was obviously something in her mind that was worrying her.
‘You mustn't say no because of the Cognet girl,’ he said, ‘because she…’
She stopped him with a gesture; she knew very well that what went on at the farm was of no importance.
‘There's also the fact that I've only got what I stand up in whereas you've got this house and land.’
Once again, she made a gesture to say that in her position, with a child, she took the same view as he did, those things balanced each other out.
‘No, it's not all that,’ she said finally. ‘But there's Buteau.’
‘But since he doesn't want to.’
‘Of course, and we're no longer friends, because he's behaved so badly… All the same, you must consult Buteau.’
Jean thought this over for a good minute. Then, in his reasonable way:
‘If you like… I ought to, because of the child.’
And Frimat's wife, who was also solemnly emptying the overflow bucket into the cauldron, felt it incumbent on her to approve such a step, while still favouring Jean, a decent young man, not rough and stubborn like the other one: and at that moment they heard Françoise coming back with the two cows.
‘I say, Lise,’ she shouted, ‘come and see… Coliche has hurt her foot.’
They all went out and when she saw the animal limping with its left front foot bruised and bleeding, Lise flew into a rage, one of those sudden rages which she used to vent on her sister when she was young and had done something wrong.
‘Another bit of your carelessness, I suppose?… You went to sleep in the grass like last time.’
‘No, I didn't, I promise… I don't know what she can have done. I'd fastened her to the stake, she must have caught her foot in the rope.’
‘Don't lie to me… You'll kill my cow one day.’
Françoise's dark eyes glowered. She went very pale as she spluttered indignantly:
‘Your cow, your cow! You might at least say our cow.’
‘What do you mean, our cow? A cow belonging to a little girl like you?’
‘Yes, half of everything here belongs to me. I've got the right to half of it and to mess it up if I feel like it!’
And the two sisters stood glaring threateningly at each other, sudden enemies. In their many years of fondness for each other, this was their first painful quarrel, sparked off by ideas of ‘yours and mine’, one of them irritated by her younger sister's rebelliousness, the other stubborn and violent when faced by injustice. But now the older sister gave in and went into the kitchen for fear of slapping her sister's face. And when the latter, after shutting the cows into their shed, came back and went to the bread-bin to cut herself a slice of bread, there was silence.
Meanwhile, Lise had calmed down. The sight of her sister, tense and sulky, now made her feel sorry. She broke this silence first, trying to end their quarrel by introducing a piece of unexpected news.
‘What do you think? Jean's just asked me to marry him.’
Françoise, who was eating standing up in front of the window, showed complete indifference and did not even turn round.
‘Why should I care?’
‘You should care because he'd be your brother-in-law and I want to know if you like him.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Why like him? Him or Buteau as long as I don't have to sleep with them… But there's one thing I should like to say: I think it's all a bit disgusting!’ She went out to finish eating her bread in the yard.
Jean hid his embarrassment by trying to laugh, as if this was the petulant outburst of a spoilt child; whilst Frimat's wife declared that when she was a girl, they'd have thrashed such a young hussy till they drew blood. Lise looked serious and remained silent for a moment, busying herself again with her washing. Finally she said:
‘Well, Corporal, let's leave it like that, I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no… It's haymaking time, I'll be seeing our family, I'll make enquiries, I'll know what's what. And we'll come to some decision… Is that all right with you?’
‘Yes, that's all right with me.’
They shook hands on it. Her whole person, soaked in warm steam, had a smell of good housewifery, a smell of bleach and orris root.
Chapter 4
FOR the last two days Jean had been driving the mechanical reaper on the few acres of meadow belonging to La Borderie down by the Aigre. The regular clatter of the blades had been heard from dawn till dusk and this morning he was coming to the end of his task and the last line of swathes was dropping on the ground behind the wheels in a fine layer of tender green stems. As the farm had no mechanical tedder, he had been allowed to take on two hands to do the tossing, Palmyre, who was working like a Trojan, and Françoise, who had accepted the job half jokingly, amused at the thought of doing this sort of work. They had been there since five o'clock in the morning, spreading out with their pitchforks the grass that had half dried out and been heaped up in stooks the evening before to protect it from the night dew. The sun had risen in a clear, burning sky, but the breeze was cool. Just the weather to produce good hay.
When Jean came back after lunch with his two haymakers, the hay of the first acre he had mown was ready, crisp and dry to the touch.
‘I say,’ he called out. ‘We'll turn it over just once more and then we'll start making the ricks this evening.’
Dressed in a grey linen dress, Françoise had tied a blue handkerchief over her head, with one end hanging down over her neck and two corners flapping loosely over her cheeks to protect her face from the glare of the sun. Swinging her fork, she picked up the grass and flung it into the wind which carried it away in a pale golden shower. The wisps flew about in the air giving off a powerful penetrating smell, the smell of new-mown grass and withered flowers. As she walked along through this continual cloud of hay, she was very hot and full of high spirits.
‘Ah, 'my girl,’ Palmyre said in her doleful voice, ‘anyone can see you're young… You'll feel it in your arms tomorrow.’
But they were not alone, the whole of Rognes was mowing and tossing the hay in the meadows all around. Delhomme had arrived before daybreak because grass is more tender to cut when it is soaked in dew, whereas it hardens up under the heat of the sun. You could hear it now, tough and crackling under the scythe as he swung it continuously to and fro with his bare arms. Closer still, next to the farm meadows, there were two small fields, one belonging to Macqueron, the other to Lengaigne. In the first one, all dressed up in a flounced dress and a straw hat, Berthe had joined the other girls haymaking, to pass the time; but she was already tired and leaning on her fork in the shade of a willow. In the other one, Victor, who was reaping for his father, had sat dow
n and was dressing his scythe with a hammer on an anvil held between his knees. For the last five minutes the only sound that you could hear in the quivering, silent air was this persistent hammering, the quick taps of the hammer on the blade. At that moment, Françoise came up close to Berthe.
‘Had enough?’
‘For the moment, I'm just beginning. When you're not used to it…’
They chatted, talking about Suzanne, Victor's sister, whom the Lengaignes had apprenticed to a dressmaker's in Châteaudun and who had run away after six months to lead a gay life in Chartres. It was said that she had gone off with a lawyer's clerk and all the girls in Rognes were secretly gossiping about it amongst themselves and imagining all the details. A gay life meant orgies of redcurrant syrup and soda-water amidst a riot of men, dozens of them, getting up you in the backrooms of wine-shops.
‘Yes, my dear, that's what it's like… I bet they're letting her have it good and proper!’
Françoise was listening to the older girl wide-eyed, quite flabbergasted.
‘What a queer sort of fun,’ she said at last. ‘But if she doesn't come back the Lengaignes will be left on their own, because Victor's going to be conscripted.’
Berthe shared her father's dislike of the Lengaignes; she shrugged her shoulders: Lengaigne didn't care; all he was sorry about was that his daughter hadn't stayed at home to attract more customers to his own shop by sleeping with them. Hadn't one of her uncles, an old man of forty, already had her before she went off to Châteaudun, one day while they were scraping carrots together? And lowering her voice, Berthe described in detail how it had happened. Françoise found it so funny that she bent double trying to stifle her laughter.
‘Oh, I say, isn't it silly to do things like that to each other!’
She started work again and moved away, lifting up her forkfuls of grass and shaking them in the sun. You could still hear the persistent sound of the hammer tapping on the scythe. And a few minutes later, as she came up to the young man sitting there, she spoke to him:
‘So you're going to be a soldier?’
‘Oh, I don't leave till October… I've lots of time, there's no hurry.’
She was trying to refrain from questioning him about his sister but her curiosity overcame her.
‘Is it true what they say about Suzanne being in Chartres?’
‘Seems so… If she likes it there…’
Seeing Lequeu come strolling up in the distance, seemingly by chance, he went on quickly:
‘Well, well! There's someone after Macqueron's daughter… What did I tell you? He's stopping and poking his nose into her hair… Go on, you dirty old clown, sniff away, you'll never get nearer than the smell!’
Françoise laughed again and Victor, sharing the family dislike, started taking Berthe to pieces. Of course the schoolmaster wasn't much of a man, with his bad temper and always clouting the children as well as being a sly old devil who never spoke his mind honestly, the sort who'd make up to the daughter so as to lay hands on her father's money. But Berthe wasn't a particularly nice person either, in spite of all her grand airs and boarding-school education. All right, she wore flounced skirts and velvet bodices and stuffed towels down her backside to make it look bigger, but underneath she wasn't any better, quite the opposite in fact, she knew a thing or two, you'd learn more going to a boarding-school in Cloyes than you would staying at home and looking after the cows. There was no danger of her getting herself landed with a child; she preferred to ruin her health all by herself.
‘How do you mean?’ Françoise asked, not understanding what he was saying.
He explained with a movement of his hand. She stopped laughing and said, seriously and without embarrassment:
‘So that's why she's always making dirty remarks and pushing herself so close up against you.’
Victor had begun hammering his blade again. He grinned and said, in the gaps between his hammering:
‘And then you know. Not got any.’
‘Not got any?’
‘Berthe, of course! “Not Got Any” is the nickname the boys have given her because she hasn't grown any.’
‘Any what?’
‘Hair all over… Hers is just like a little girl's, as smooth as a billiard ball…’
‘You're fibbing.’
‘I'm telling you!’
‘Have you had a look?’
‘No, I haven't, but others have.’
‘Which others?’
‘Oh, boys who've sworn blind to boys I know.’
‘And where did they have a look? How did they do it?’
‘Good Lord, like anyone can see when they've got eyes in their head and when they spy on her through a crack in the door. How do I know? If they haven't gone with her, there are times and places when you pull your skirts up, aren't there?’
‘Of course, if they've been watching out specially.’
‘Anyway, what's it matter? Apparently it looks so silly, it's so ugly, all bare like those horrid little spadgers without feathers holding open their beaks in the nest, really horrid, enough to make you sick all over it!’
Hereupon Françoise was once more attacked by a fit of giggles at this funny idea of sparrows without feathers. Then she quietened down and went on tossing the hay but only until she saw her sister coming down to the meadow. Lise went up to Jean and explained that she was off to see her uncle about Buteau. This step had been agreed between them three days ago and she promised to come back again to tell him the reply. As she went off, Victor was still hammering away, and in the glare of the vast clear blue sky Françoise, Palmyre and the other women went on tossing the grass again and again and again, while Lequeu was most obligingly giving Berthe a lesson by sticking the fork into the grass, lifting it up and lowering it again with the stilted precision of a soldier on parade. In the distance, the reapers were lunging forward without a pause, all in the same rhythm, their bodies swaying from the hips and their scythes swinging steadily to and fro. Delhomme had stopped for a minute and was standing still, much taller than all the rest. He had taken his honing stone out of the cowhorn filled with water hanging from his belt and with long rapid sweeps was sharpening his scythe on it. Then once again he bent forward and you could hear the sharpened blade make a crisper sound as it bit into the grass.
Lise had arrived at the Fouans' house. At first she was afraid there was nobody at home because the place seemed so dead. Rose had got rid of her two cows, the old man had just sold his horse and so there were no animals, no work being done, nothing stirring at all in the empty buildings and farmyard. However, the door opened when she pushed it and, going into the room, dark and still despite all the cheerful activity outside, Lise found old Fouan standing up and just finishing a piece of bread and cheese while his wife sat idly watching him.
‘Good morning, Auntie… I hope everything's all right?’
‘Yes, my dear,’ the old woman replied, her face lighting up with pleasure at the visit. ‘Ever since we've been retired and come up in the world, we've nothing else to do but enjoy ourselves from morning till night.’
Lise was anxious to make herself agreeable to her uncle as well:
‘And you haven't lost your appetite, Uncle, I see.’
‘Oh,’ he answered. ‘It's not that I'm hungry… It's just that having a bite to eat keeps you busy, it helps to pass the time.’
He looked so miserable that Rose started exclaiming again how happy they were at not having to work anymore. Yes, they'd really earned that, it wasn't any too soon to be able to watch other people working away while they had their pension… Getting up late, twiddling your thumbs, not having anything to worry about, not a care in the world, what a change that made, it was sheer heaven. Encouraged by these remarks, Fouan livened up too and waxed even more enthusiastic than his wife. And yet underneath this forced gaiety and excitement you could sense the utter boredom, the excruciating idleness that had been tormenting these two old people ever since their arms, suddenly stricken with i
nertia, were going rusty for lack of use, like old machines in a scrapyard.
Finally Lise ventured to mention the reason of her visit.
‘Uncle, someone told me that you'd seen Buteau.’
‘Buteau's a blasted nuisance!’ cried Fouan in a sudden outburst of rage, without giving her time to finish. ‘If he hadn't been as obstinate as a mule, I shouldn't have had that trouble with Fanny.’
It was the first disagreement between him and his children, which he had been keeping to himself but which had left a bitter feeling behind, as he had just shown by his outburst. When he had put Buteau's share into the hands of Delhomme, he had asked him to pay rent for it at thirty francs the acre whereas Delhomme simply wanted to pay him a double pension, two hundred francs for his share and two hundred for Buteau's. This was a fair arrangement and the old man was furious at being caught in the wrong.
‘What trouble?’ enquired Lise. ‘Aren't the Delhommes paying you?’
‘Oh, yes, certainly,’ replied Rose. ‘Every quarter at noon precisely, the money's there on the table. All the same, there are ways of paying, aren't there? And Father is sensitive and would like a little courtesy at least. Fanny comes here with the air of someone going to the bailiff, like she was being robbed.’
‘Yes,’ the old man added. ‘They pay up and that's all. I don't think that's enough, myself. They should show some consideration. Is their money just like settling a debt? That makes us nothing but creditors. And yet we're wrong to complain. If they only all paid up!’
He broke off and an embarrassed silence ensued. Always ready to defend the scamp who was the apple of her eye, his wife was pained by this allusion to Jesus Christ, who had not paid a penny-piece and was drinking his way through his share, which he was mortgaging piecemeal. She was afraid that this second grievance might be revealed, so she hurriedly said: