'Till I get bored.'
Might one not almost think Berthe had antennae of her own? She was busy doing her accounts at a small table near the window. From where she sat, she nonetheless called loudly:
'Don't forget, Emile, the last room is taken for Saturday.'
It was not entirely correct. The truth was that on certain Saturdays, a lawyer from Nice, who was married, used to come and spend the night with his secretary. It was never definitely arranged. And when there was no room available at La Bastide, the couple had no trouble in finding one in some hotel or other on the Esterel.
'It hasn't been confirmed,' he had replied.
And, to the newcomer:
'If you like I will show you the room.'
Leading the way up the stairs, he had opened a door. The Englishwoman had scarcely glanced inside. On the contrary, she had asked, as though she guessed a good many other things besides:
'Is that your wife?'
IV
AFTER twenty-four hours he still did not know whether he was attracted to her by physical desire or whether he was anxious to prove to her that he was not just the small boy she pretended to see in him.
She was called Nancy Moore, and according to her passport was; thirty-two years old. She was really a journalist.
'I write stupid stories for stupid magazines in which wretched women. try to find the path to happiness.'
It was not so much the words which had struck him as the accent, not. merely the English accent, but a disquieting blend of irony, cynicism and passion.
He had had time, on the Riviera, to get to know her compatriots, both men and women, and he divided them into two categories. First, the ordinary tourists who come and spend a certain time on the continent in search of the sun and the picturesque, to look at scenery and different human beings, to sample circumspectly various dishes they have heard mentioned and to leave again, more pleased with themselves than ever.
As for the others, he used a local term to describe them. He used to say they were the ones who had been 'bitten'. They were intoxicated by France or Italy, by a certain way of life, a certain easygoing philosophy, and these ones became more Southern than the Southerners, and in Italy more Italian than the Italians; they would not return to their homes except when it was strictly necessary, and some never went back.
There was one of them at Mougins, an extreme case, a boy of not more than thirty-five who some people said was the son of a lord. He lived the entire year round with his back bare to the sun and rain alike, hatless, with his ash-blond hair, which turned increasingly lighter, falling over the nape of his neck, and he let his beard grow; in winter he used to wear blue linen trousers, and in summer shorts of the same material; his shoes were espadrilles, or else he went about barefoot.
He painted. People came across him in vineyards, or at a turning in a footpath, with his easel, but this was probably no more than an alibi. He rarely went down into Cannes, was to be seen even less often on the Croisette, which did not prevent him from entertaining young men from all over the place and, as night fell, taking walks with them hand in hand.
Nancy Moore had almost as much disregard for her appearance as he had. Under her light cotton dress she wore no brassiere and her breasts, which were heavy, sagged a little; one could see their tips moving and brushing against the material as she spoke. Her hair was unkempt, and she did not take the trouble to make up nor, when her face was shining with sweat, to put powder on it.
Nobody before her had ever looked at Emile with so much irony, nor with so much tenderness and avidity all at the same time.
She had at once fixed her daily routine. She spent a good part of her time on the terrace, writing in a large hand slanting not to the right, as with most people, but to the left. From time to time, indeed frequently, she would break off to hoist herself on to a bar stool, even at nine o'clock in the morning.
'Emile! I'm thirsty!'
She had not waited to become an habituée before calling him by his first name. She would change her drink according to the hour, now vin rosé, now pastis, and finally, especially in the evening, whisky, and her voice was always a little hoarse, her eyes glistening, without it ever being possible to say that she was actually drunk.
One could sense in her an ardent love of life, of people, animals and things. He had seen her caressing, with sensuality, the gnarled trunk of one of the old olive trees on the terrace and she had done the same with the wine presses, their wood splitting beneath the varnish, which held up the bar.
'Are these real, Emile? How old are they?'
'At least two centuries. Perhaps three.'
'So they've been used to provide wine for generations of men and women . . .'
She would go into the kitchen to sample the smells, lift the covers of the pots, feel the fish and the poultry. She knew the different herbs and would rub them between her finger-tips in the way that other women do with scent.
'What do you call those little monsters the colour of corpses?'
'Calamaries.'
'Those are the ones which spit out a cloud of ink when they are going to be caught, aren't they?'
He had shown her the little pocket containing the black liquid.
'With this ink I make the sauce . . .'
She took notes which perhaps helped her articles. She always seemed to be defying him, brushing purposely against him, allowing her breasts to touch his arm; and when she leaned forward they were visible, naked and indecent, bronzed from her sunbathing, in the too ample opening of her dress.
'Your wife is older than you are, isn't she, Emile?'
Barely two years. It wasn't the difference in age which counted. What she meant to say was that Berthe was more grown up.
And Nancy was the most adult person he had ever met. Adult and free. Doing only exactly what she wanted. Accepting no rule and mocking the proprieties.
Between her and Berthe it was war, from the very first moment, and Berthe had turned a shade paler the first evening when they had heard a rumbling sound, at first inexplicable, from the Englishwoman's bedroom. Calmly, without permission or anybody's help, Nancy was busy moving round the furniture, the bed, the wardrobe, the chest-of-drawers, and next day, when they did the room, they had found the engravings which normally adorned the walls piled on top of the hanging-cupboard.
At this period Emile was still under the impression that it was an affair between Nancy and himself. In the end, he had long afterwards discovered that in actual fact it had been an affair purely between Nancy and his wife, and the discovery had humiliated him.
In spite of the other guests—for all the rooms were occupied and there were quite a number of people in for meals—it was as if there were just the three of them in the performance, moving from the shade into the sun and from the sun into the shade, from one room into another and from the house on to the terrace, of a play almost without words, a sort of ballet of which the spectators did not know the plot.
Emile wanted Nancy with a desire which was at times painful, different from any previous experience of desire. When she was sitting at the bar opposite him, or when she came to seek him out in the kitchen, he sensed her smell, could imagine the sweat which, under her dress, ran in great drops over her naked body, leaving marks on the material.
She incited him, and in the way she looked at him she appeared to measure the strength of his lust, which made her laugh, a provocative laugh, as if to say:
'Dare you?'
The first morning, towards eleven o'clock, she had gone out on foot and not come back until lunchtime. He didn't know which direction she had taken.
'I spent a delicious morning sunbathing in the pine trees. I found a huge stone there . . .'
'The Flat Stone.'
That was the name of the rock on which she was by no means the first person to stretch out, more or less naked, to get bronzed by the sun.
'I don't know if anybody saw me. I heard people in the woods, children's voices . . .'
Her eyes indicated the family having their meal in a corner of the terrace.
'Emile!' Berthe called.
She wanted him for something. She had wanted him for something constantly ever since Nancy had been at La Bastide.
'There doesn't seem to be enough bouillabaisse left.'
It was a stifling day. Nancy, who disliked drinking alone, invited him to have a drink with her. And still he felt that shooting desire, as painful as a wound.
He had to show her that he was not a child, that he was not afraid of his wife. For three days this thought had obsessed him. When for some reason or other Nancy went up to her room during the course of the day, she seemed to be expecting him to follow her. He did not dare to do so, sure that a few seconds later Berthe would come and knock on the door on some pretext.
Nor did he dare arrange a meeting with her in the Cabin, where he had already adopted the habit of taking his siesta, since she would be seen entering it from the house.
She provoked him continually, with her lips moist, at times as though she were expecting him to throw her on her back in that very room, on the red tiles, beside the bar.
She had returned to the Flat Stone. At last, after three days of it, he had seized a basket from the kitchen, set off for Maubi's kitchen garden at an almost normal pace.
He did sometimes go there to fetch vegetables or herbs himself. More often, he entrusted this task to Maubi when the latter came, early in the morning, to ask for his orders.
He must not walk too fast, for he would have sworn that Berthe was following him with her eyes, from one window or another.
Fortunately the lower part of the kitchen garden was not visible from the house. It adjoined the plantation. By vaulting a low tumbledown wall, there were only a hundred yards of undergrowth to cross before reaching the rock.
Nancy, who could not but have heard him coming, had not made the slightest move to cover herself. Her clothes, her plaited straw bag lay beside her, and she wore dark sun-glasses which prevented him from seeing her eyes.
He had had the impression of committing rape, awkwardly, clumsily.
He had never plunged with such animal passion into the warm flesh of a female before, and on account of those pupils whose expression escaped him, that mouth half open in a smile which he could not understand, he had raised his fist, at one moment, to strike her.
She had laughed, with a laugh which went on and on, while saying with that note of tenderness usually reserved for children:
'Emile . . . My clever little Emile! . . .'
It was she who all of a sudden had taken the initiative, who had played the man's role, triumphantly, to finish by murmuring, as she allowed her body to relax:
'Happy now?'
Somebody was calling, somewhere in the wood, not Berthe's voice, but Madame Lavaud's, and Nancy had once again put on her pitying smile.
'Off you go! . . . Your wife will be cross . . .'
For appearance's sake Emile had been obliged to put a few vegetables in his basket. He walked with his head lowered. Her face and body looking cool in a light dress without a crease out of place, Berthe was busy writing in the shade, beside the bar.
'I think Madame Lavaud wants you for something.'
Nothing was happening as he had expected. He was being allowed to reach the kitchen and get back into the rhythm of his routine. Then, a short while before lunch, Nancy came in, her straw bag in her hand, went up to the bar without anything happening.
'A drink, Emile! I'm dying of thirst!'
What was Emile afraid of? He reproached himself to find his hand trembling as he picked up the bottle of pastis.
'Have one too. On me.'
Berthe had not even raised her head. On an impulse, Nancy stretched herself and said ecstatically:
'What a marvellous morning's sunbathing, Emile! Your wife ought to try it. She lives on the Riviera and she's as white as a Londoner!'
What place did this incident have in the whole picture? Was it a cause among other causes ? Next day he was on the point of following Nancy. It seemed essential to him. It was almost an imperative. He had already collected the basket, from a dark corner of the kitchen where Madam Lavaud was drawing the fowls.
'No!' he had heard a voice saying.
It was his wife, of course, standing in the doorway. He had stammered :
'I'm just going to fetch some . . .'
'If you need anything from the kitchen garden Madame Lavaud will see to it.'
Nothing else. He had not dared to insist. But he had not forgotten that humiliation, nor the one that followed the next day.
It was market day. Emile had thought it all out. By hurrying, he would reach the turning, on the slope of the road back, with time in hand to leave his car there for a while, to go and join Nancy at the Flat Stone.
He was so confident about it that before leaving he made a rendezvous with her in a glance. She had understood. They already looked at one another like lovers of long standing.
Gaily he had plunged into the bright commotion and the smells of the Forville market, called at the harbour, then the dairy, the butcher, doing without his usual coffee at Justin's.
The steep track was not wide enough for two cars. The van was enough to block it. If a car came up or down, it would be obliged to hoot.
On foot, he ducked beneath the trees, caught the sound of children's voices somewhere, arrived panting at the Flat Stone, and found nobody there.
He was na'ive enough to wait a good ten minutes, telling himself that Nancy had perhaps been delayed, and he finally turned away to go back to his car, arrived soon afterwards in the hall where his wife was at her place, still making up the accounts, which was her share of the communal work.
She did not raise her head. He didn't question her. In the kitchen, it seemed to him that Madame Lavaud looked a little strange, but, as Berthe could hear them, he asked her nothing.
He would find out in the end. In a moment he would hear the voice of the Englishwoman clamouring for her aperitif. Time passed. The residents were sitting down to lunch. Berthe was seeing to an Italian couple who wanted a table in the shade.
While the hors d'oeuvre was being served, he ran up to the first floor, taking the stairs four at a time, opened Nancy's door and understood. Her cases were no longer there. The furniture had been put back into place, and the room had been turned out and aired so as to expel even her smell.
It was not until towards five o'clock, when Berthe had gone upstairs to show some new guests to their room, that he had looked inquiringly at Madame Lavaud, and she had not misunderstood the unspoken question.
'Your wife threw her out.'
That was all. He had never seen Nancy again. There remained only a somewhat confused memory. Three days, like days of fever, which he had lived without clearly knowing what was happening to him.
Yet those three days were to have their importance, rather like a scratch which turns septic.
He came to reflect more often than before:
'She has bought me.5
For a month he had had no sexual relations with his wife, who, besides, had not insisted. Sometimes, seeing her head bent over their bills, he wondered whether she loved him, whether she felt anything towards him apart from a sense of ownership. This still troubled him. He would have liked to find an answer to the question. He would have liked above all to be able to tell himself she did not love him.
Everything would have become easier. He would have felt freer. Another six months elapsed, of life without incident, of daily routine, before Pascali appeared one morning in the kitchen doorway, with his daughter at his side.
'Is your wife in, Monsieur Emile?'
'She'll be down in a minute.'
Berthe used to sleep late in the morning, had her breakfast sent up to her room and lingered over her toilet, no doubt realizing a girlhood dream.
Emile, who had recognized the young girl in black whom he had glimpsed occasionally in the plantation,
had not wondered about this visit. To be more accurate, he had told himself that Berthe had called in the builder to do some repairs, for it was she who saw to that side of things.
He could still picture Pascali sitting in a corner, cap in hand, with his white hair which, in the gloom, gave him a kind of halo. The girl remained standing.
'Give him a glass of wine, Madame Lavaud.'
It was autumn. The grape harvest was over and Emile was busy preparing a blackbird pate. It was one of his specialities.
He had realized from the beginning that he must concentrate on local dishes and he had studied them with care. If his bouillabaisse was nothing out of the ordinary, since he did not always have the right fish to hand, and also because of the cost price of making it, his calamary risotto, for instance, was famous among the gourmets of Cannes and Nice, who often made the trip, on Sundays, just to eat it.
His blackbird pate was no less renowned, as was his stuffed baby rabbit, for which he refused to reveal the recipe.
Had not Nancy, who was very fond of her food, told him seriously and, he was convinced, without a trace of sarcasm:
'If you set yourself up in London, in Soho, you would make a fortune in no time.'
He didn't want to live in London, but to stay here. He had taken root. He felt at home. If only there hadn't been Berthe . . .
She had come down in the end. He had called to her, from one room to the other:
'Pascali's here and wants to speak to you . . .'
She had shown the mason into the sitting-room and the girl had followed them in, walking in a way Emile only noticed now for the first time, the walk normally associated with Indians in Wild West novels, which is also found among gipsies who go about with bare feet. But she was wearing espadrilles and he noticed that her legs were dirty.
Without paying any attention to it, he could hear a murmur of voices. Then he saw Pascali going past in the sunlight of the terrace.
A moment later there were footsteps on the floor above, but half an hour elapsed before he found his wife by herself in the dining-room.
'I didn't see Pascali's daughter leave.'
'She's upstairs, arranging the attic which used to be a box-room. I have taken her on as housemaid and that is to be her room.'
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