'Now then,' said Julie, 'here is Monsieur le Comte come to see you. Sit up and show that you're alive at least.'
The man smiled, hollow-eyed, pale, and I saw that he was bandaged from the neck down to the arm.
'How are you?' I said. 'What happened?'
Julie turned from scolding the boy, who had not risen when I came into the kitchen.
'What happened?' she said. 'He nearly burnt his right side off, that's all. So much for your modern furnaces and machinery. You can have the lot. Sit down, Monsieur Jean, sit down.' She threw a cat off the single chair, and dusted it. 'Haven't you anything to say?' she asked the man, who looked too ill and wan to speak. 'Here is Monsieur le Comte back from the gay life in Paris, and you can't even raise a smile for him. It's enough to send him straight back there again. Wait, I'll make some coffee.'
She bent over the stove, rattling the fire with a bent poker.
'How long will you be laid up?' I asked the man.
'They won't tell me, Monsieur le Comte,' he answered, a wavering eye on the woman, 'but I'm afraid it may be some time before I am fit to work again.'
'That's all right,' said Julie. 'Monsieur Jean understands that perfectly. No need to fuss. He will see you get paid all right, and compensation too. And nobody is going to be out of work, either, for a long time to come, isn't that so, Monsieur Jean? We can all breathe again. Those sharks in Paris know better than to say no to us. Now then, drink your coffee. You like a lot of sugar in it, I know. You always did.' She fetched a small packet of sugar cubes from a cupboard, and the boy, seeing this, came to beg one from her, calling her grand'mere.
'Get off with you,' she said. 'Where are your manners? Ah, since your mother went there's no holding you,' and aside, in a loud hiss that the child must obviously have heard, 'The trouble is he misses her, poor little one, and with Andre laid up I'm obliged to spoil him. Go on, drink your coffee. It might bring some colour into your pale city face.'
It was Andre on the bed who needed colour, not I, and coffee too, but she did not offer him any, and looking above and about me I saw that the plaster was coming off the walls, and there was a great patch of damp on the ceiling that would spread with the first rain. She noticed my glance, with her shrewd brown eyes.
'What can one do?' she said. 'I must try and patch it up one of these days. It's a long time since any of these cottages were repaired, but what's the good of coming to you with our grumbling? We know you're short of money, like the rest of us, and you have enough on your hands already. In a year or two, perhaps ... How is everybody at the chateau? Is Madame la Comtesse well?'
'Not very well,' I said.
'Well, there it is. We are all getting older. I will go up to see her one of these days, when I can get away. And Madame Jean, when is she expecting?'
'I'm not sure. I don't think it's very long now.'
'If you have a fine boy a lot of things will be different. If I were younger I would come up and nurse him - it would remind me of the old days. They were good times, you know, Monsieur Jean. People are very different today, nobody wants to work any more. If I didn't work I should die. You know what is wrong with Madame la Comtesse? She hasn't enough to do. Drink your coffee. More sugar. Here, another lump.'
I saw Andre watch me drink, his wan eyes fixed upon my cup, and the boy too, and I knew that they both wanted coffee and sugar and would not get any, not because Julie wished to keep it from them but because there was not enough to go round. And there was not enough to go round because they had no money to buy coffee or sugar in any quantity. Andre did not earn enough at the verrerie, and the verrerie belonged to Jean de Gue, who did not mind whether it closed tomorrow. I put the cup and saucer back on the stove.
'Thank you, Julie,' I said. 'It's done me good.'
I got up, and without protesting, the ritual visit over in fitting fashion, she went with me to the door.
'He won't work again,' she said to me outside. 'You understood that, of course. It's no use telling him, he would only fret. Well, there it is, that's life. Luckily, I'm here to look after him. My respects to Madame la Comtesse. I'll cut her some grapes from the vine: she used to enjoy them in the old days. After you, Monsieur le Comte.'
I let her go back alone, though, to the foundry, telling her I had to fetch something from the car, and watched her cross the rough ground, passing the dumps of waste glass, crunching the scattered powdery fragments with her sabots, her stolid, powerful figure in its dark shawl and apron part of the background, merging against the grey-washed sheds. When she had disappeared into the tangled garden behind the old house I got into the Renault and drove back along the high road, the way we had come, with the forest on either side. About four kilometres west, before the road dipped, I drew up at the side of the road, lit a cigarette, got out and looked down to the country below.
The little community of the glass-foundry was tucked away in its clearing in the forest behind me, and now below, out of the line of forest, stretched acres of fields and scattered farms and distant villages, each village crowned with a church spire, and beyond them again further fields and further forest. Immediately below me was the village of St Gilles, and I could see the church spire, but the chateau was hidden by the mass of trees. Only the farm buildings showed, chrome-coloured, mellow, under the autumn sun, and the enclosing walls of the domain, a line of grey against the dark alleyways and trees.
I wished I could feel detached: I wished I could look down on the village of St Gilles and the walls of the chateau with dispassionate eyes. My morning mood had somehow gone awry. The amusement, the schoolboy sense of fun, was missing; playing at spies hit back, like a boomerang. The feeling of power, of triumph that I was outwitting this little group of unsuspecting people, had turned again to shame. It seemed to me now that I wanted Jean de Gue to have been a different sort of man. I did not want to discover at each step that he was worthless. It might have been an inspiration to take on the role of someone fine - the change of skin would have acted as a spur to endeavour. Instead, I had exchanged my own negligible self for a worthless personality. He had the supreme advantage over me in that he had not cared. Or had he, after all? Was this why he had disappeared?
I went on gazing at the quiet, secluded village. I could see a line of black-and-white cattle, prodded by a child, ambling past the church, and then from behind me I heard a voice. Turning, I saw the smiling, nodding face of the old cure, riding, of all things, a tricycle, his long cassock hitched above black buttoned boots. It was an oddly touching sight, moving because it was ridiculous.
'It's pleasant there in the sun?' he called.
I felt a sudden urge to confide in him, and I went up to the tricycle and put my hands on the handlebars and said to him, 'Father, I'm in trouble. I've been living a lie for the past twenty-four hours.'
His face puckered in sympathy, but the nodding head was so much like a mandarin figure in a china shop that I lost faith the instant I had spoken. What could he do, I asked myself, here on top of the hill, astride his tricycle, for someone like myself, caught up in deceit and trickery?
'When did you last make your Confession?' he said to me, and I was reminded of my schooldays, when the matron, having asked me a somewhat similar question, followed up her query with a purge.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I can't remember.'
He went on nodding, in sympathy, and also because he could not help it, and said, 'My son, you had better come and see me later on this evening.'
He had given me the answer I deserved, but it was no use to me. Later on would be no good. I wanted to be told now, on the hillside, whether to drive away and leave the people at the chateau to get on with life as best they could.
'What would you think of me,' I asked, 'if I left St Gilles, went off and disappeared, and did not come back?'
The smile returned to his old pink face, and he patted me on the shoulder. 'You would never do it,' he said. 'Too many people depend on you. You think I would condemn you? No, it would no
t be my place. I should continue to pray for you, as I have always done. Come on, now, enough of your nonsense. Remember, if you are depressed and low in spirit, it's a good sign. It shows that the bon Dieu isn't far away. Go and finish your cigarette in the sun and think about Him.'
He waved his hand and rode off, his cassock catching in the pedal, and I saw him free-wheel down the hill, enjoying his little spin. I watched him turn into the village, avoiding the cattle, and then he dismounted by the steps of the church, placed his tricycle against the wall and disappeared. I finished my cigarette, climbed into the car and drove after him, through the village and over the bridgeway to the chateau entrance. I saw Gaston by the archway to the outbuildings, and called to him to take the car back to the verrerie for Paul. Then I went indoors and up the stairs to the dressing-room, and on the table I found the packet of letters that I remembered seeing in the pocket of the valise.
Among them was one with the name and address of the Carvalet people stamped on the back. I read it through, and it was as I feared. They said that they regretted their unfavourable decision, in view of so much business between us in the past, and especially after the last personal interview they had had with me, but on further consideration they found themselves unable to renew their contract.
9
I did not, for the moment, mind about Jacques or any of the family here at the chateau, because presumably they had prepared themselves for the worst, and were merely surprised and relieved that they were able to believe the contrary. Here they could continue to live on the revenue from their land, or on their inherited income, the chateau becoming shabbier, the grounds more ill-kept, they themselves growing older and more discontented, blaming the outside world for everything that had happened. I minded, immediately, for the workmen I had seen at the verrerie this afternoon, stripped and sweating beside that furnace, and the others, working in the sheds at their separate skilled tasks, and above all for Andre, with his burnt, bandaged side, lying in bed in the cottage, and Julie, who had given me coffee and sugar from her small hoard. I minded that their eyes should change, that when I went back again to the foundry they would discover that the good news was not good news after all but bad, that I had lied to them, that the contract with Carvalet had not been renewed. Instead of that tolerant, indulgent smile of welcome they would look away, ignoring me, not even bothering to show contempt; and when Jacques explained to them that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding, and unfortunately, things being as they were, Monsieur le Comte could not afford to run his business at a loss, their faces would show - to a lesser degree, because they were not physically in pain - the same blank look of the burnt Andre. Something would have damaged them which they themselves were powerless to prevent, but which Monsieur le Comte could have foreseen and guarded against, had he only cared. They would watch Paul and myself drive back to the chateau, and then, the machinery suddenly idle, the furnace quiet, and the heap upon heap of little bottles waiting to be packed, they would return to the line of cottages in the sandy lane, with the plaster peeling and the damp on the ceilings, and say to one another, 'It doesn't matter to him, but what about us? What happens to us now?'
The thing that puzzled me most was why I cared. The loyalty in Julie's eyes, the patient acceptance in Andre's, the swift change from hostility to something near admiration in Paul's, and still more in Jacques', the welcome camaraderie in the workmen's, all this had not been given to me but to Jean de Gue. The scorn and disenchantment which must now follow would therefore go to him in the same way, and could not touch my inviolate self. This person who walked about wearing another's clothes, parading his features, colouring and manners, was guiltless, he was merely a covering, a facade, as remote from its original as a violin-case from the instrument it protects. Emotion should have no part in this. I had never for one moment been so blind as to imagine that any show of warmth coming from these people was due to qualities of my own, springing suddenly to the surface and finding a response: they came alight for him and for him only, however misplaced the glow. What was happening, then, was that I wanted to preserve Jean de Gue from degradation. I could not bear to see him shamed. This man, who was not worth the saving, must be spared. Why? Because he looked like me?
I sat in the dressing-room, staring at the polite yet definite letter from Carvalet, and I wondered what had passed through the mind of Jean de Gue when he put it in the pocket of his valise. I knew I must come to a decision - either to tell Paul directly he returned to the chateau that I had lied about the contract, or to allow him to go on believing it had gone through. The first would bring recrimination, scorn, admission of the lie to all the workpeople, and the immediate closing down of the foundry - which, I assumed, was what would have happened anyway had Jean de Gue returned. The second would bring even greater chaos: the manufacture and dispatch to Paris of goods which had not been ordered, and, when the first consignment arrived at the Carvalet works, astounded telephone calls demanding an explanation.
The present contract might have a few days or a few weeks to run. I did not know. Even if facts and figures were put before me, presumably they would make little sense. I knew nothing of business. My sole financial dealings were with the academic establishments which paid my modest fees, and with those editors and publishers who printed my articles and lectures. What, I asked myself, would be the procedure of the owner of a glass-foundry seeking to get in touch with the firm which bought his wares? No doubt, if the matter were urgent, the office telephone. I was not in an office. I was in the dressing-room of a chateau in the depths of the French countryside, and I did not even know where the telephone was kept.
I put Carvalet's letter in the inside pocket of my coat and went downstairs. It was almost four o'clock. There was no one about, and a feeling of siesta brooded over the place. The aftermath of lunch still clung to the air, escaping from the kitchen quarters, where I had not yet penetrated, suggesting that the dishes had been washed and dried and yet something of their substance clung to dark walls and a low ceiling, and that vegetables, earthy from the kitchen-garden, awaited rinsing and shaking before the evening meal. I ventured to the door of the salon, half-ajar, and after listening a moment and hearing nothing I stepped across the threshold and saw that it was empty, except for Francoise, who was lying on the sofa asleep. I crept out again and went back to the hall. Renee was doubtless doing the same upstairs, whether to ease her migraine or to try on the gossamer gift I neither knew nor cared. Marie-Noel, forced into lessons through my abrupt departure to the verrerie, was perhaps in that bare, bleak bedroom with her aunt Blanche, while outside the sun shone on the dovecot and the swing. I found the telephone. It could not have been worse placed, jammed between macintoshes in the dark, and the machine itself was an old-fashioned one, the mouthpiece fastened to the wall and the receiver hanging at one side. Pinned above, so that the eye must inevitably rest upon them, was further proof of Blanche's care for souls: two martyred saints, decapitated, their splashing blood licked by ravenous hounds.
I unhooked the receiver and waited, and after a moment there was a buzz and a nasal voice intoned the fact, 'J'ecoute'. I was not surprised when, fumbling with the local directory, I discovered that my number was St Gilles 2. Nothing could have been changed since installation. I asked for Paris and the number printed on Carvalet's letter, and waited for what seemed eternity, crouched in my dark hole. When I was told at last that Carvalet were on the line I panicked, dropping both letter and receiver, thinking I heard footsteps on the stairs. The exchange repeated its information, the sing-song patter echoing from the dangling receiver, and, seizing Carvalet's letter to decipher the sprawling signature at the bottom, I murmured into the mouthpiece my request for Monsieur Mercier. Who wanted him, came the question? The Comte de Gue, I replied. And suddenly the enormity of my deception appeared greater than ever, now that I could not actually be seen. I was told to wait, and in a few moments the Monsieur Mercier of the letter announced that he was at my disposal.
<
br /> 'Monsieur,' I said, 'a thousand apologies for disturbing you without first warning you of my intention to do so; also for my discourtesy in not acknowledging your letter. I was obliged to return home very suddenly, owing to illness in my family, or I would have called upon you again to raise one or two points which were not quite clear. I have now seen my brother and gone over the points with him, and we are prepared to lower our figure and meet your demands.'
There was silence at the other end of the line, and then the polite but exceedingly surprised voice answered, 'But, Monsieur le Comte, the whole question was gone into very thoroughly between us last week. You made your position quite plain, which we appreciated. Do you mean to say you now want to re-open negotiations between your firm and ours?'
'Exactly,' I said. 'My brother and I are prepared to make any personal sacrifice in order to keep the foundry working and our men employed.'
Another silence. Then, 'Excuse me, Monsieur, but this is in complete contradiction to what you yourself gave us to understand.'
'I know,' I said, 'but frankly I was acting without full consultation with my family. It is, you know, a family concern.'
'Naturally, Monsieur, and because of this we have always given you every consideration. We greatly regretted that a revision of the contract should have become necessary, and above all that you would have to close down if we could not come to terms, which unfortunately turned out to be the case. I recollect your saying that your personal feelings were not involved, and that the verrerie had become a liability you could not afford.'
The smooth, cool voice ran on, and I had a vision of the speaker and Jean de Gue sitting confronting one another on leather chairs, exchanging shrugs and cigarettes, the whole concern dismissed from their minds as soon as the interview was over. Here was I, a stranger, making myself ridiculous in a lost cause because I did not want a handful of workmen, and a peasant woman, and her maimed relative to despise their employer, who would not know if they did, and would not care.