She pinched her lips, lifted her head beneath the thick crêpe veil she wore. ‘Does anyone even know where this Burgères was born?’ she asked. ‘He has the worst reputation. He’s always out at parties; he’s a womaniser … He squandered his fortune, before the war, on young women. I know this from Simone’s aunt, the one who lives in Paris and is one of the Lille Hardelots.’
‘Well, now he has Simone’s fortune,’ the old man pointed out in a tone of voice that meant ‘And you stupid people let her get away’.
He actually knew exactly who Burgères was: he had made detailed enquiries about him. Burgères was from a good Parisian family, an orphan; he had spent all his inheritance early on. Just before the war started he had nothing left. He had fought courageously. A bit of good luck had placed Simone Renaudin in his path. He wanted her dowry. He’d married her. But Simone was a sensible girl. She knew how to protect her money in every possible way. She had only one desire: to wrench her husband away from Paris, from the temptations in Paris. A position in the Hardelot factory would be a sure way of keeping him in Saint-Elme. She would invest her capital in the factory; Julien Hardelot had coveted it for years, ever since the time when Pierre, in his sailor suit, had played ball with Simone, in her short dress. That money should have come to the family, of course, an outcome that had been made impossible by Pierre’s mistake. Now, at least, it could be invested in the factory. Julien Hardelot looked out at the spot where the battered factory stood, where it was now being rebuilt. He put on his hat and took his thick cane with the ebony handle. ‘Come on, my girl, let’s go and have a look around. Have you seen it all yet?’
‘No, Father, I came straight here.’
‘Come. You’ll see that everything’s getting back to normal. They’re rebuilding everywhere.’
She followed him out. They walked down the road that separated his house from Saint-Elme. She looked around in horror. The gutted earth spewed forth its insides — a yellowish slimy mud mixed with scrap iron, boots, tins of food, wood, steel debris, all tangled up, twisted, lumped together with wood, bones and stones. Signs had been put up on the road, an arrow with writing in French and English:
VISITEZ LES CHAMPS DE BATAILLE
VISIT THE BATTLEFIELDS
On both sides of the road were the desiccated remains of trees shattered by shells; they were discoloured, poisoned in the gas attacks.
‘A war that kills trees too.’ Poor Marthe sighed. ‘Who could have imagined it.’
But as for her father-in-law, all he could see was the factory. He walked on, his eyes fixed on the spot where it would be rebuilt. He struck the ground with his cane, moved his lips as if to speak, working things out in his mind. He wasn’t expecting years of prosperity. There would be ups and downs. But that wasn’t important. What truly mattered was that he could finally work again, that once more, every morning, he could go to his office, stay until noon in his little glass cubbyhole above the machinery room, supervise everything, control everything, feel he was master. What exquisite pleasure! Poor Charles had never understood that. And Pierre? He had placed a great deal of hope in Pierre, but, through his marriage, Pierre had let him down. He might forgive him, take him back in, give him back his place in the factory, but he would never trust him again. Ah, why hadn’t he married Simone? She was a girl after Hardelot’s heart: tough on herself and on others, thrifty, diligent. As for her husband, Roland Burgères … He’d got the measure of him straight away. He was pretentious and useless. She’d whip him into shape. At the factory he’d obey Hardelot. At home he’d obey Simone.
‘And she’ll do what I tell her to,’ thought Hardelot. ‘She knows what I’m made of … that I’ve got my head on my shoulders. She knows that if she trusts me to look after her interests, I’ll do it as she would herself.’
And, once again, a serpent nipped at his heart at the thought that she wasn’t Pierre’s wife. He stopped, pointed at a small pile of pebbles on the path. ‘Jault’s Inn,’ he said curtly.
Marthe stared in astonishment. ‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘But then, where is the street, where are the houses and Dubois ladies’ haberdasher’s shop?’
He made a gesture as if slitting his throat. ‘Razed to the ground.’
Women dressed in mourning wandered through the rubble, looking for what was left of their homes, unable to recognise them any more. Where they had once lovingly tended their gardens, only wild poppies now grew. A child ran past, tugging them out of the ground. Finally, they were on the street where the Hardelots lived. They were pulling down the ruins. Marthe saw her house, or rather, the corner of it that was left, unstable and frightening, with a hole in the wall through which she could see one of her sitting-room chairs caught in the beams.
She knew that the next day they would use dynamite to blow up these crumbling remains that threatened to come crashing down on their heads. She stood there, motionless, looking at her house the way one looks at a dead body in an open coffin.
A busload of tourists had just gone by. Indifferent faces appeared at the windows.
‘Visit the battlefields!’ a guide called out. ‘See where the bombs fell. This way, ladies and gentlemen.’
14
On 14 July in that year of victory, the day dawned cold and unsettled. A few drops of rain fell, then some pale sunlight shone through the clouds. Autumn was in the air. Crowds blocked the road; street vendors hired out ladders so people could watch the parade go by, and every folding chair, every stool, every rung cost a fortune. On the Boulevard de la Madeleine, people surrounded street singers, and the workers formed a chorus, belting out the refrain:
So we got ’em after all!
But it was strange, there was no real joy on their faces. They were thinking of all the dead, all the destruction. Yet that hadn’t stopped them from being wild with joy over the Armistice. No. This was something else: France was weary and only wanted peace. Even memories of its victories were unwelcome. More than anything, its people just wanted to stop thinking about the war. Everything now seemed more interesting, more vibrant, more relevant than the war: black music, new poetry, women’s short hair and short dresses, relaxed morals. ‘Peace. My God, just leave us in peace. We won, well and truly,’ thought the soldiers. ‘Leave politics to the schemers, the profiteers, the braggarts, the thieves. We just want to be left in peace.’ ‘We’ve been heroes long enough,’ said the oldest with a sigh. ‘Give us back our wives, our homes, our good wine.’ ‘Give us everything the good earth can provide,’ cried the young men as they returned from the grave, famished and voracious. ‘Lazarus must have enjoyed a good meal after his resurrection; how well he must have slept in his warm bed. Let us eat, drink, love. As for all the rest, we’ve had enough.’
The crowd welcomed the parade, the soldiers, Joffre and Foch and the foreign kings, cheered them on, but in their hearts they remained sad and nervous. People said that the soldiers marching beneath the Arc de Triomphe had never actually seen combat, that, as usual, glory was reserved for some and death for the others. And, no matter where you looked, there was nothing but mourning veils and armbands, children dressed in black.
A bitter wind blustered through the flags. The English and the Americans were having a good time. From the old dirty taxis that looked as if they’d been at the Battle of the Marne, they leaned out, kissed the women. On the pavements, disabled war veterans passed by in small wheelchairs. Pierre, pale and thin, unrecognisable with his forehead and arm covered in bandages, limped slowly along, supported by Agnès; he was bumped a bit in the mêlée, not maliciously, but because no one really noticed the wounded any more. During four years of war people had got used to seeing them. They no longer aroused either admiration or affection. ‘We don’t rank high nowadays,’ thought Pierre. ‘They pity us, of course, but only superficially and because we make them feel uncomfortable. But their pity will disappear long before our wounds heal.’ Like his fellow soldiers, Pierre was utterly exhausted: exhausted phy
sically, mentally, spiritually. He didn’t know what to do: return to Saint-Elme and accept old Hardelot’s offer, or try to make his own way, as he’d done before the war. But everything was more difficult now than it had been in 1911.
He had gone to see his former employers.
‘They’ve kept my job for me,’ he told Agnès. ‘They assured me that as far as I was concerned, nothing had changed. But I’m not as valuable to them as I used to be and they know it. Just look at me. They want to send me to Brazil, to a region that is barely civilised. “You’ll be riding a lot,” they said. “You’re an excellent horseman.’ ”
He stumbled a bit on the paving stones of the Rue Royale. ‘That’s all in the past. I’m all in the past.’
‘Don’t they have anything for you in Europe?’ Agnès asked softly.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you know what they told me? That Europe was too small for everyone coming back. And we thought we’d killed too many people. It seems we were wrong. It wasn’t enough, apparently.’
There was dancing in the streets. On a platform draped in the French flag, a blind soldier, who was extremely young, swayed to the music in the arms of an older woman who wore too much make-up. She was leading and, when the music stopped, she held on to him and planted a long wet kiss on his mouth with her thick red lips. And the soldier, the soldier just laughed, letting himself be led through the darkness by the horrible creature. At Weber’s some American officers were breaking the windows.
It was the final war. There would never be another. The thirst for blood had been satisfied. Not only was it necessary to forget the war: it had to be vilified in people’s memory. People rushed towards the dance halls and restaurants. They crushed themselves into Claridge’s and the Carlton dining rooms. It was evening. Dead leaves swirled about as if it were October. Above the mad, carefree and, in spite of everything, deathly sad city, above the pretence and the tears, a reddish, turbulent dusk began to fall. To attract the Americans, ordinary women and prostitutes placed widows’ veils over their dyed hair, and wore dark-coloured dresses and pink stockings.
‘You’ll be happier in Saint-Elme,’ said Agnès.
‘In Saint-Elme? Impossible. You would have to be accepted by Grandfather as …’
She interrupted with a laugh. ‘How silly you are. Why would I care about that? As long as we’re together, why would that even matter?’ She touched his arm gently. ‘I love you and nothing matters but you.’
‘That may be how it seems because we were apart for so long,’ he whispered.
‘No. I’ll feel the same way in twenty years.’
‘So, we must be very happy, then?’ he said with a teasing smile.
‘You mean you don’t think so, you ungrateful thing?’
‘The past four years have been so long,’ he said, ‘so difficult.’
‘Yes, but surely we have used up all our bad luck in one go.’
‘No doubt about that,’ replied Pierre. ‘No one should have to pay such a price twice.’
He stopped, placed his hand over his chest. ‘I’m out of breath. I can’t walk any more.’
‘I’ll get a taxi. We’ll go home.’
They returned quickly to their flat. There weren’t a lot of people left on the dark streets, beneath the moonlight. Families turned on their lamps and ate their dinner, without a thought for the rest of the world. The foreigners crowded into the dance halls and restaurants. Suddenly, Paris seemed half empty. Paris seemed bled dry.
15
Pierre’s and Agnès’s second child, a girl, was born in Saint-Elme in 1920. The young Hardelots were living with Marthe. The new house had the same proportions and was in the same position as the old one. Its solid walls stood between the main street and the garden, in the shadow of the factory; it proudly displayed its glass awning above its three stone steps. But the bower was no longer there and the trees had all been felled. Beneath the sunlight, the bare garden made Madame Hardelot sigh. ‘It’s scorching out … We have no shade any more,’ she said.
That summer was particularly hot. After lunch, Agnès took her two children, Guy, who was seven, and Colette, whom she was still breastfeeding, to the Coudre Woods. The baby was asleep in the pram, under a gauze cover to protect her from the flies. Guy was playing with the pine cones, wiping his dirty hands on his mother’s skirt. Agnès was sewing. After an hour, Madame Hardelot appeared, with Madame Florent at her heels.
‘Agnès, this child doesn’t have a hat on,’ Marthe remarked.
‘It doesn’t matter, Mother, there’s no sun here.’
‘There may be no sun but there’s a storm brewing.’
‘Look at this little girl; she laughs whenever she sees me,’ said Madame Florent.
The two grandmothers looked at the baby who was waking up, waving her arms about and crying shrilly. Each of them wanted to pick her up and rock her. The same scene took place ten times a day. Agnès waved a branch to shoo away the flies and mosquitoes that were stinging her bare arms and neck. After the two grandmothers had sufficiently upset the baby, they handed her over to her mother.
‘Poor little thing, she wants her mother. Don’t you, my darling, my little sweetie? Calm your daughter down. You don’t know what you’re doing. What’s wrong with her?’
‘She was happily sleeping and you woke her up.’
‘Me? But I didn’t touch her. It’s always the same. I won’t go near these children any more,’ said Madame Florent.
The pine needles were slippery. There was a sweet smell of decay. It was stiflingly hot. Earlier, Agnès had found a little silver ring in the Coudre Woods.
‘What’s that, Mama?’ her son asked.
‘It’s mine, my darling,’ she replied. ‘I lost it here ten years ago. I was going for a walk with your papa …’
She fell silent. She smiled. It was the first time they’d met here. She was listening to him talk and was unconsciously playing with the ring; it was too big and she’d dropped it; it rolled under some leaves. They tried to find it, but couldn’t and she’d come back the next day to look some more. And here it was; it had surfaced, after all these years. She wiped it on her skirt.
‘It’s funny that the soldiers didn’t find it …’
‘What soldiers?’
‘You know, my darling, the soldiers, the ones who were here during the war, when your papa was wounded.’
‘Mama, what’s this insect called?’
‘It’s an ant.’
The little boy stretched out on the ground, his cheek against the earth, watching the insect. Agnès tried to put the ring on, but it didn’t fit any more; she’d gained weight since she’d been feeding her daughter. She put down her sewing. She leaned on one elbow. She closed her eyes. Her dishevelled hair was tickling her neck. She was too tired to push it back. Lazy, fleeting thoughts ran through her mind.
It’s hot … I wish we were at the seaside. How annoying that I’ve made my blouse too tight; I’ll have to add an extra panel. ‘Guy, you’re getting your clothes all green, dragging yourself along the ground like that.’ I wonder if Pierre will come and find us? Ah, finally, some air. She sighed, as a puff of wind, a light breeze swept through the pine trees. Maybe there’ll be a storm? I want to eat an ice cream, stretched out in the sand, or floating in the sea. ‘Guy, don’t roll around like that,’ she said out loud. ‘You’ll make yourself even hotter.’
The afternoon passed slowly, with nothing happening. She fed the baby. Guy, who wanted to climb a tree, fell and cut his knee. At three o’clock Madame Florent left; she wanted to stop by the bakery to order some cakes for dinner the next day.
As soon as she had gone Madame Hardelot, now calm (no one could usurp her place in the good graces of little Guy), remembered that she hadn’t supervised the ironing of the delicate linen. She hauled herself up, put on her hat over her grey hair and sighed. ‘Well, I’m going back, my dear. Don’t you rush. It’s really hot along the road!’
‘We’ll be back by six,’ sa
id Agnès, knowing that if she got home a few minutes late, she would find Madame Hardelot leaning out of the window, watching the road and exclaiming, ‘Finally! I thought you’d died.’
Once her mother-in-law had gone, Agnès tried to pick up her sewing again; it fell from her warm fingers. At four o’clock she took from her bag some jam sandwiches, fruit and biscuits, and poured some cool water into Guy’s silver cup. ‘Come and eat something, Guy.’
Guy ate his jam sandwich and she watched the wispy clouds around the sun as it began its descent.
‘It’s impossibly hot, there’s bound to be a storm. No doubt the weather will take a turn for the worse when we’re at the seaside, it always does. It’s funny having found that ring. It’s been ten years since I lost it. Only ten years … It seems longer. So much has happened …’
Absent-mindedly she traced some patterns in the earth with her embroidery needle. ‘If, back then, the maid hadn’t gossiped … If the Hardelot-Arques ladies hadn’t seen anything … If Saint-Elme hadn’t found out that “the Hardelot boy and Mademoiselle Florent were meeting secretly in the Coudre Woods”, then I’d be married to someone else now. Happily? Perhaps. How little it takes to turn the course of your life in a different direction.’
She had a sudden thought: ‘What is it that binds Pierre and me together so strongly? Why is it that as soon as we got married, we stopped living, suffering, being happy, thinking as individuals? Why have we become so totally one entity? There are couples who never manage it. It’s a great mystery and a great blessing.’
‘Guy, come here, what are you doing?’ she called out. ‘Stop throwing those pine cones around; you’re going to hurt yourself or your little sister.’
‘Mama, can I have your ring?’
‘No. What do you want it for?’
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