by William Boyd
It had to come out, Eric thought. They had been talking earnestly about sex all afternoon. Under cross-examination Eric had mentioned an older girl-cousin called Jean and suggestively introduced the notion of a seaside holiday and a sand dune picnic à deux. He had tried to keep the details vague but conversations of this sort remorselessly turned towards the specific and Pierre-Etienne and Momo (Maurice) had been unsparing in their search for the truth. They had really pinned him down this time. Yes or no, they demanded; did you or didn’t you.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Momo said. ‘You never?’
Eric shook his head, trying to smile away his blush. They were sitting at a café in the main square of Villers-Bocage. It was market day and the place was full of livestock and people. Momentarily Eric’s attention was distracted by the sight of a red-faced farmer in the typical knee-length Normandy blouson, energetically tugging on the tail of a cow as if he was trying to wrench it out by the roots. Eric winced.
He looked back at his two companions. Pierre-Etienne was the same age as him; last Easter he’d spent two weeks in England at Eric’s home. Momo was Pierre-Etienne’s brother, a little older – nearly seventeen, plump and trying to grow a moustache. Eric didn’t like him that much; his air of amused tolerance towards the two younger boys was extremely irritating. Momo had a girl friend of sorts, Eric knew, but he’d never seen Pierre-Etienne with one.
Eric sipped his Diabolo-menthe. He adored the chill green drink, clear and clinking with ice cubes. It was the best thing about France he decided. He’d never learn the language, he was sure, and as far as he was concerned it wasn’t worth the last two weeks of his summer holiday. Pierre-Etienne’s father was the director of the Villers-Bocage abattoir, and as a result of his job the family ate meat for every meal; every sort and cut imaginable: pork, veal, beef, kidneys, heart, brains, revolting spongy tripe, lamb, ox-tails, trotters, fatty purple sausages, all of it pink and undercooked and oozing with blood. Eric was returning directly to school in three days and he sometimes found himself longing for shepherd’s pie or a thick Bisto stew.
‘But surely you’re one – a virgin – too?’ he said to Pierre-Etienne in half-hearted counter-attack.
‘Of course not.’ Pierre-Etienne looked offended.
‘But you don’t have a girl friend,’ Eric said. ‘How could you?’
‘No,’ Momo said, ‘he don’ have a girl friend, but he has Marguerite.’
‘And who’s she?’
Marguerite Grosjean shouted good-bye to her mother and eased her bulk into her tiny 2-CV. As usual her mother didn’t reply. Marguerite lit her fifth Gauloise of the day, She sat for a moment in her car. It was only half past five and Villers-Bocage was just ten minutes away through the early morning mist. She puffed on her cigarette and scratched her thigh. Her mother leaned out of the upstairs window and shouted at her. It was just a noise. Her mother ran out to the car screaming abuse. Marguerite flipped down the window. Arcs of spittle from her mother’s mouth spattered on the glass. Marguerite let it go on a few seconds. It was like this every morning. Then she started the engine and drove off leaving the small dishevelled figure still shaking with rage alone in the yard.
She arrived at the abattoir a little early so she went to the nearby bar and ordered a café-calva. The waiter brought her the drink. He was new to the café. He smiled and said good morning but Marguerite appeared not to notice him. He found this somewhat unusual as he had taken her against the wall at the back of the café only three nights ago when she came off night shift. He said good morning again but she didn’t reply. He shrugged his shoulders and walked off, but he kept the tab. It wasn’t much but it was something. One of the butchers who worked in the abattoir had told him about Marguerite and all the butchers, farm hands, meat packers and lorry drivers. You just need to ask, the man had said, that’s all, a simple request, and he had tapped his temple with a forefinger. The waiter had met her on her way back from the toilet. The butcher had been right.
He thought of asking her again, just now, to see if it was really true, but the clear morning light was unkind to the fat woman so he went on wiping the tables.
Eric, Pierre-Etienne and Momo stood at the back of the abattoir looking over a wall at the stream of departing workers from the morning shift.
‘Which one is she?’ Eric asked.
‘That one there, the big one, going in the car.’
Eric saw lots of cars and quite a few large women.
‘Which car?’ he asked.
‘That one,’ Momo said, pointing to an old 2-CV being driven away. Eric couldn’t really see the driver, just a white face and black hair.
He felt a thump of excited pressure in his chest. ‘What do I have to do?’ he asked.
‘You just go and tell her what you want,’ Pierre-Etienne said.
‘Is that all? Just ask?’
‘Yes, it’s all.’
‘But why does she do it? Do . . . do I have to pay her or anything?’
The two French boys laughed delightedly. ‘No, no,’ Momo said. ‘She do it for nothing. She likes it.’
‘Oh,’ said Eric knowledgeably, ‘a nympho. But are you sure? You’re not lying? She does it just like that?’
‘Everybody is going to Marguerite,’ Momo said with emphasis. ‘We have gone.’
‘Bloody hell. Did you?’ Eric asked Pierre-Etienne.
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I have been three times. It is easy.’
‘God,’ said Eric quietly. The ease of the whole venture astonished him. It really was going to happen. ‘But I still don’t understand why. What for? Why does she do it?’
Marguerite parked her car at the back of the abattoir near the packed cattle pens full of grunting and shifting beasts. As she walked into the room where she worked the familiar pungent ammoniacal smell of guts and excrement tickled her nostrils. She took her plastic overall off the peg and buttoned it tightly across her massive chest. She stepped into her gum boots and pulled the white cap over her wiry black hair just beginning to be streaked with grey.
She heard the men arrive, the jokes and the early morning banter. A few stepped in for a moment and said hello. She stood looking at the huge stainless steel basins. She leant back against the mangle. She wasn’t thinking about anything, just waiting for Marcel to wheel in the first shivering gelid tub of brown and purple guts.
Then she heard the familiar sound of the slaughter begin. The compressed air phut of the humane killer as the retractable six-inch spike was driven into the animal’s skull. The clang as the side of the pen fell away to let the beast tumble down the concrete incline, the rattle of its hooves on the cement. Then there was the whirr of the hoist as the carcase was lifted up by a rear leg and almost simultaneously the splash as the blood poured from twin slits made in the throat. It took barely a minute for the skin to be removed before the buzzing circular saw carved down the length of the suspended body opening it wide. The first today was a cow, she recognized the second splash – this time of milk – as the udder was halved by the whining blade. Then there was the slithering slopping waterfall as the insides fell out. The moan of the overhead rails – as the carcase was swung down the line to the butchers and the cavernous refrigerating plant – was punctuated by the thumps and splashings of the second animal being killed.
Eight cows later Marcel wheeled in the first of the buckets. He was simple and had a hare lip. He never spoke much. He turned on the hoses and water sprays and plunged his bare hands into the gelatinous mass of entrails and heaved great piles into the brimming sinks. There were arm-length, rubber gloves for this purpose but Marcel maintained that they only made his job harder.
Marguerite stood above the overflowing steaming basins and quickly sorted the larger pieces of offal from the long strings of intestines. She flung the stomachs onto a recessed tray which Marcel later took through to the tripe room. Her overalls were soon covered by a green slime of blood and feculence. She took a bucket of the washed viscera over
to the mangle and forced an end of gut between the rollers. She grunted slightly as she turned the handle to run them through. Green and purple efflux plopped and spouted from the other end, splashing onto her boots and the floor where it was hosed into the drains by Marcel.
Pale emptied ropes of intestine were collected in a zinc bucket on the other side of the mangle. Marguerite gave them a final wash through with a high-pressure hose to remove all remaining particles before Marcel took them to be prepared for tripe. She worked on this way until lunchtime, pausing occasionally to smoke a cigarette or take a drink from a bottle of Calvados she kept on a window ledge.
That night Eric lay in bed thinking about the next day. It was all arranged for lunchtime. Apparently Marguerite always ate lunch in her car. Momo was going to write a note for him to give to her. That was all he had to do.
Eric wondered what it would be like. What it would feel like. He wondered what Morton and Haines would say when he told them back at school. Was it going to be any different from when he did it himself? He slipped his hand into his pyjama trousers and touched himself, ran his fingers over his neat bush of public hair. He couldn’t imagine it at all. It seemed so easy. What if something went wrong?
The three boys were waiting at the back of the abattoir by 11 o’clock. Eric kept clearing his throat and his palms were wet with perspiration even though it was a cool morning. Momo had written out the brief note; he was being especially nice that day.
‘What is it I have to say?’ Eric asked for the tenth time.
‘Just say “Vous êtes Madame Marguerite?” and give her the note.’
‘Vous êtes Madame Marguerite?’
‘Good,’ Momo said, ‘Très bien,’ and handed him the piece of paper. Eric unfolded it. Momo had printed in block letters ‘JE VOUDRAIS TE SAUTER GROSSE TRUIE’.
‘What does it mean?’ Eric asked Pierre-Etienne.
‘It means “I want to make love with you, you lovely woman.”’
Eric frowned. ‘Are you sure? I always thought sauter meant to jump.’
‘Oh it’s an expression you can use,’ Pierre-Etienne said quickly, glancing at Momo who added,
‘It’s a more agreeable way to say it.’
‘Ah. I see. Okay.’
When Marguerite appeared Eric was surprised at how big she was. When she climbed into her car it tossed on its springs like a boat in a storm. At once a blind funk seized him and he felt convinced that he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But Momo and Pierre-Etienne were urging him on relentlessly as if they were aware of the weight of self-doubt building up in his mind. The consequences of backing out at this stage were too severe to be contemplated; the immense agonies of shame and abuse that would have to be endured. It was too late for second thoughts now. In any case he felt strangely cushioned from events and embarrassment by the barrier of language; it was like watching yourself on a home-movie. Besides if she swore at him or called the police he just wouldn’t understand and, anyway, he was going home tomorrow.
However, as he crunched across the gravel of the car park he felt very lonely and exposed. He looked back at Pierre-Etienne and Momo who eagerly waved him on. They had made it sound like the most natural thing in the world, something any youth in Villers-Bocage did as a matter of course – an easy initiation. There had been disparaging remarks about the effeminate, gelded sissies who balked at the opportunity. ‘Ils sont vraiment les gonzesses, les tantouzes.’ Eric asked what they were. ‘Les pédés, homosexuels,’ plump Momo said, his voice hoarse with disdain. Now as he walked across the car park he felt the gaze of the two boys at his back like a goad.
Marguerite sat in the passenger seat of her small car which listed heavily. She had finished her sandwich. Eric looked at her forearm which rested on the sill. It was very white, white as a fridge, and large and soft. There was a dark shadow of hairs running down it. Her fingernails were rimmed with what looked like brown ink.
Eric cleared his throat. ‘Etes-vous Madame Marguerite?’ he asked, holding out the note.
‘Etes-vous Madame Marguerite?’
Marguerite looked round. The boy was standing against the light and at first she couldn’t really see him. She took the note he was holding but he didn’t go away. She opened it up and read the message. She felt her face grow hot with anger and her mouth tightened. To her surprise the boy remained standing; she had expected to see him scampering off laughing delightedly at his filthy joke. But he was not even smiling; he seemed a little nervous.
Marguerite opened the door of the car and got out. She folded her arms across her bosom and glared at the boy. He was tall and slender with straight blond hair that fell across his forehead. His face was awkward and uneven with adolescence as if he’d borrowed some features from a larger person. He had small pink spots at the corners of his mouth and on his chin.
‘Ah, bon,’ she said, her anger making her voice tremble. ‘Tu veux m’sauter.’
‘Um . . . ah, pardon?’ the boy said.
She heard his accent. Her anger began to fade. It never lasted long anyway. The joke was on him. ‘Anglais?’ she asked.
He nodded. Marguerite looked around for his friends, the ones who had played the joke, but she couldn’t see anyone. She flourished the note.
‘C’est ordurierça.’ But he didn’t understand her. His quick smile was nervous and uncertain and she suddenly felt sorry for him. She breathed out slowly and looked at him again. The anger had barely rippled the placid lake of her total indifference. She seldom let her mind contribute anything to the flow of experience. It had only brought her anguish and difficulty. So now she passively received the sensations it threw at her. She had no doubts and she had no complaints.
‘OK,’ she said and beckoned him to follow. She led him out of the car park and round a corner to a cluster of outbuildings, garages and store rooms. She opened a wooden door at the back of a garage and showed him in. A shelf of sunlight on the wall from a high window illuminated some old packing cases and cardboard boxes. In the corner was a bed of sorts; a mattress and a blanket. There was a grimy sink and a table and a chair. Some newspapers and magazines lay on the table. The room was used by the security guards; somewhere to go if the rain was heavy, a place for an undisturbed smoke and a chat, somewhere to take Marguerite.
She came up behind the boy who was looking around him uncomfortably. She touched his hair; it was very clean and shiny. He was surprised and looked round quickly, automatically raising a hand to the back of his head. Marguerite smiled at him, enjoying his youth and his reticence.
‘Vas y,’ she said, pointing to the mattress. The boy started to unbutton his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. He kicked off his shoes. Marguerite was surprised; no man had ever bothered to undress for her before – at the most trousers were lowered to the knees – and she only removed what was essential.
The boy stood there in his underpants, uneasy in the intensity of her gaze. With a start she realized he was waiting for her to undress. She looked at his hairless body, the slim legs, the shadows of his ribs, the lean jut of his pelvis, and he seemed to her almost painfully beautiful. As she fumbled with the buttons on her dress she felt a strange thick sensation in her throat and for a brief moment the utter grief of her life cut like a razor and her eyes spangled with tears.
Eric lay still in Marguerite’s arms. She was holding him tight running her hands up and down his body, muttering soft phrases that he couldn’t understand. Eric was aware of an unfamiliar tiredness and now that it was all over he longed to be away from this small room and this large white woman with her curious smell. At the beginning he had been numbed and filled with nervousness when she had taken off her clothes and lain down beside him on the mattress. What struck him was not the heavy flat breasts with their stark brown nipples, the bushy armpits or the overhanging belly, but the shocking nude whiteness of the woman. She was so white she was almost grey, as he remembered his arm had once been when it was removed from a plaster cast.
/> The brief unsatisfactory coupling was completed within seconds, or so it seemed to Eric, who now ran through his past sensations like a clerk at a filing cabinet, seeking for something that was memorable, that retained traces of excitement. She had kissed his face and rolled him on top of her, manipulating and pushing him around like a worker he’d once seen operating a die stamper. But now it was over she just seemed to want to hold him and Eric didn’t know what to do. And there was the smell. At first he thought it came from the mattress but then he realized it rose from her skin, a thin acidic smell, almost organic and living.
Eric was confused about his role; it had not been like the books he’d read or the stories he’d heard. He had been passive, merely fulfilling a function. He hadn’t felt anything. Once, when waiting for the school train, Haines had pointed to a group of women in black overalls carrying long brushes who were heading up the platform towards the sidings. The women who cleaned the carriages, Haines said, were notorious. They’d do it for ten bob, anywhere, with anyone.
Tentatively Eric brought his hand up from the mattress and touched Marguerite’s breast. The nipple was coarse and thick like a small brown raspberry. His palm cautiously inched up the slack bulge of her breast. He gently touched the nipple and let his fingers trickle over it. As he touched it she said something and hugged him close to her with a strength he found surprising, so that he felt in a moment of panic that the viscid-white flesh might envelop him, lapping round his body like mud. She reached down for him, her other hand pressing his face into her neck, and he could smell her, he could feel it filling his lungs like water.
With a wriggle he broke free and sat up. He pointed to his watch. ‘I have to go,’ he said, and quickly pulled on his clothes. Marguerite, alone on the mattress and suddenly aware of her nakedness, covered herself with her dress.
Eric crouched in the corner tying up his shoelaces, his face hot with embarrassment, unable to say a word, the silence heavy in the air like a threat. From the corner of his eye he saw her leg, the purple veined thigh with its furze of dark hairs and he felt his top lip twitch with distaste. He went over to her, carefully avoiding her gaze and breathing through his mouth.