Pedigree (17 page)

‘Was she squiffy?'

A family word which served for Léopold and Félicie, and which one day, alas, would serve for Marthe.

‘Why do you say that, Désiré? Félicie doesn't drink.'

‘Then what would she be like if she did?'

‘You don't understand my family.'

He scented danger and made no reply, searching for something else to talk about.

‘You just can't understand people who've had a hard time of it.'

She was on the verge of tears, and he lost no time in finishing his meal and lighting his cigarette.

‘Poor Félicie! If you only knew …'

‘Oh, yes! Coucou, I know … Well, if he beats her, she's only got to leave him. Good-bye, Élise.'

Roger was asleep. The sound of footsteps faded away downstairs, the street door closed again, and Élise took fright at the idea that she had come close to telling Désiré everything.

She waited for the child to wake up. She did not want to wake him herself, but the time seemed to drag, and possibly, getting dressed to go out, she made rather more noise than was necessary. With her hat already on, she fed him, made up the fire, closed the window, and went downstairs.

She simply had to speak to somebody and she had decided to go to Coronmeuse to see her sister Louisa.

‘Poor Louisa! If you only knew what Félicie said to me this morning…'

No! She wouldn't tell her what Félicie had said.

‘Louisa, poor Louisa, I do believe our Félicie is mad.'

She had forgotten the insult. Nobody would believe it, and yet it was the absolute truth. It was not for her own sake that she was hurrying like that along the interminable Quai de Coronmeuse. It was in her nature. She would have run like that for anybody, for she always felt an urge to help others, only to sigh afterwards, with head bowed:

‘People are so ungrateful!'

She wanted to do something for Félicie, to save her. She had noticed a great many things, but it was all so subtle, so difficult to explain to anybody who did not feel things like a Peters …

On certain mornings, for instance, Félicie burst into tears as soon as she saw her sister and clasped her in a long embrace, as you would after a disaster.

‘Is it Coucou again?' Élise would ask.

Élise had never talked about this to anybody; indeed she had never dared to think about it, as she was doing now. Félicie might sigh:

‘He'll kill me one of these days!'

But Élise felt, Élise knew that it wasn't because of her husband that her sister was crying. She even guessed the real reason. But it was even harder to believe. She guessed that Félicie wasn't really unhappy, that she was acting a part, in the brightly lit room which smelled of bacon and coffee, acting the part of the unhappy wife, and darting a furtive glance now and then at her reflection in the mirror.

Félicie gave her some money. She would have given her all that she had. She plunged her hand into the till.

‘Take it! … Yes, do! …'

Who could tell whether, about ten o'clock or eleven o'clock, her mood would not have changed? Once, not long after a tearful scene of this sort, Élise had passed the café again and she had seen her sister roaring with laughter with a commercial traveller. She had been laughing like a …

No! She mustn't say the word, or think it.

‘Listen, Louisa. Once when we were both living with Mother…'

Would she tell her sister Louisa about that?

She walked on and the setting changed around her. She had left behind the less pleasant part of the quay, the part which was not shaded by a single tree and beside which the Meuse flowed along, broad and shining. She had come to another quay, the Quai de Coronmeuse, and with it the canal and the port in which a hundred or two hundred barges, perhaps more, lay side by side, sometimes ten abreast, with washing drying, children playing, dogs dozing, an invigorating smell of tar and resin.

Would she tell Louisa?

Here was the shop window, an old-fashioned window cluttered up with starch, candles, packets of chicory and bottles of vinegar. Here was the glazed door and its transparent advertisements: the white lion of Remy starch, the zebra of a grate polish, the other lion, the black one, of a brand of wax.

And the door-bell, which you would recognize among a thousand others.

Finally, the unique and wonderful smell of that house where there was nothing commonplace, where everything had a rare, exceptional quality, as if years had been spent on it.

Was it the smell of gin that predominated? Or was it the more insipid smell of the groceries? For the shop sold everything, barrels oozing American lamp-oil, rope, stable lanterns, whips, and tar for boats. There were jars containing sweets of a doubtful pink and glazed drawers stuffed with sticks of cinnamon and cloves.

The end of the counter was covered with zinc, three round holes had been made in it, and out of these holes there protruded bottles crowned with curved tin spouts.

And there was another smell too, the smell of wicker, which came from the end of the corridor, for Louisa's husband was a basket-maker and worked with a hunchbacked assistant in the back room overlooking the yard.

‘Why, it's Élise!'

Louisa looked as if she were Élise's mother, with her grey hair, her thick waist, her black dress and her lavender-blue apron. Her features were delicate and regular, her smile as morose as her sister's.

‘Poor Louisa…'

‘Come into the kitchen.'

Louisa finished serving a bargee's wife who had three children clinging to her skirts. Élise went through the double glazed doors with their curtains embroidered with white flowers, and, in the kitchen, which was lit by a peculiar skylight, she found absolute calm, neatness, cleanliness and quiet. One of the girls, probably Anna, the eldest, was playing the piano in the drawing-room, on the other side of the corridor. Between serving two customers, Louisa came and planted herself in front of her sister, her belly thrust forward, her smile tinged with sadness.

‘Is your husband keeping well?'

Louisa detested Désiré. Nobody in the Peters family liked big Désiré.

‘Yes, he's keeping well, Louisa, thank you. You know that we've moved: we're living in the Rue Pasteur now. It's healthier for the child, you see.'

Louisa, who knew that Élise had come for a particular reason, poured her a cup of coffee and went to get some sugar from the shop.

‘Take your things off. You've got time.'

‘No. I have to get back. I've been making some jam. Louisa, listen, I have to talk to you. I saw Félicie this morning. I wonder…'

Would she dare to say it?

‘I wonder whether Félicie isn't going mad.'

‘Come, come!'

Down-to-earth Louisa shook her head with a look of pity.

‘Poor Élise! The ideas you get into your head!'

‘It's true, Louisa. You can't understand …'

‘You're mistaken. Félicie may not be very happy with her husband. She isn't very strong. She's always been highly strung.'

She felt like adding:

‘Like you!'

For they still regarded with a certain condescension the last two children, the two nobody had expected.

‘There are some days when she's so peculiar, Louisa.'

Without realizing, they had started speaking Flemish.

‘I assure you Félicie isn't what you think.'

Élise had sat down on the edge of the wicker armchair, which was just like Désiré's. She had taken a handkerchief out of her bag, automatically, as if she could see tears coming which somehow failed to materialize.

‘Drink your coffee while it's hot.'

The best thing would be to tell the whole story. She didn't dare, not here, in this cosy atmosphere, impregnated with the most reassuring of smells, cinnamon, wickerwork, cloves, all such everyday smells!

‘How do you account for it, Louisa …'

‘I tell you it's all imagination.'

Yet what about that night long ago, that night Élise had been thinking about since the morning, since the moment she had stopped feeling angry with her sister?

It was the time when the two of them, she and Félicie, were living with their mother. Félicie was working as a shop-assistant at a draper's in the Rue Saint-Léonard. Now, to begin with, Élise knew that her sister was lying when she said that the shop closed at half past seven. It closed at seven o'clock. What did Félicie do every day during that half-hour?

‘Whatever happens, don't ever tell Mother or anybody else.'

Once, in the winter, in the darkness of the Rue Hors-Château, Élise had caught sight of her sister standing in a doorway, clasped in a man's arms. The silhouette was not that of a young fellow, and Élise could have sworn that he was a married man.

She had not said anything, but since then she had always regarded her sister with alarm, and, as they slept in the same bed, Élise felt a certain embarrassment at each contact.

Already, Félicie had her moods, sometimes singing gaily at the top of her voice, sometimes spending several days without uttering a single word, as tense and anxious as a cat waiting for a storm; or else she would start sobbing in bed, and whisper to Élise, who was then barely fourteen years old:

‘Don't ever tell Mother about me crying. If only you knew how unhappy I am! I wish I could die.'

Who knew about all that, apart from Élise? And then there had been the most serious thing of all, during their mother's illness, a bad attack of bronchitis: her bed had been moved into the kitchen, because there was no stove in the bedroom, and every evening she was given a sleeping-draught which eased her breathing and sent her into a deep sleep.

‘Aren't you going to get undressed, Félicie?'

She remembered Félicie's eyes that evening, those staring eyes which had looked at the frightened little sister like—yes, like a lunatic's eyes!

‘Shut up … Don't say anything … I'll be back…'

Félicie had slipped out, holding her shoes in her hand, and taking the key with her. Alone in the dark, Élise had trembled for hours, jumping at every noise in the street.

‘Félicie! … Félicie! …'

It was she at last. Élise had struck a match. She had seen the time by the alarm-clock. It was three o'clock.

‘Félicie!'

‘Shut up, you little fool. Put that light out.'

She had undressed in the dark, then slipped between the damp sheets. Élise had smelled something. First the smell of drink: Félicie had drunk something strong. Besides, she dropped off into an unnaturally deep sleep.

Then another smell, as if there had been somebody else in the room, in the bed.

Élise had never said a word about all this. In the morning, her features had been drawn. Félicie's face did not look any more rested than her own. She did not dare to say anything. She washed and dressed with weary gestures.

‘What do you want me to give you?'

And the younger girl, on the verge of tears, had answered:

‘Nothing! For heaven's sake, no!'

And yet Félicie was unhappy. Élise who knew nothing of life, felt vaguely that it wasn't her sister's fault, that she couldn't help it.

Hadn't she married a man of forty afterwards? And now, if he beat her, wasn't there a reason for it?

‘You're all upset. Wait a minute while I get you a drop of something.'

Élise sat up and exclaimed:

‘No, Louisa!
For heaven's sake, no!'

Not like Félicie, like Léopold, like her sister Marthe who also drank!

‘I don't want anything, Louisa. Thank you all the same. Thank you very much. I can't help it, you see. I'm certain that Félicie is hysterical …'

She had uttered the big word whose exact meaning she didn't know, but which seemed to her to express the truth. At that word, Louisa's face had frozen, her features had hardened, and she gazed sternly at foolish little Élise.

‘Will you kindly refrain from using words like that in my house!'

For two pins she would have gone to make sure that her daughter Anna, who was still playing the piano, had not been touched by the dreadful syllables.

‘You don't even know what it means.'

Why did her sisters insist on treating her as an insignificant little girl? Did Louisa know what she knew?

‘Then how do you explain…'

‘There's nothing to explain. You've got too much imagination. I'm beginning to wonder whether it isn't you who are what you've just said.'

There! Élise had been wrong.

‘I'm sorry. But that scene this morning …'

‘What scene?'

‘Nothing. I can't remember. Don't take any notice, Louisa.'

Louisa shook her head. If Élise was forever murmuring ‘Dear God!' her sister of the Quai de Coronmeuse, for her part, stammered with a strong Flemish accent:

‘Jesus-Mary!'

And her head wagged from one shoulder to the other as a sign of pity for all that was not the perfect order and neatness of her home.

‘Aren't you happy with Désiré?'

‘Of course I am, Louisa. Désiré's a dear.'

Did she want to make amends for what she had said about Félicie, that accusation which ought never to have been made by a Peters? She in her turn shook her head. It was contagious. She looked around her at this house where you only had to stretch out your hand to touch shelves and cupboards.

‘He's a Mamelin, you see. He hasn't any ambition. He doesn't need anything else. I'd have liked to start a little shop, any sort of shop, and I'd have made a success of it, I can tell you that! But he has never wanted to. And do you know why? Because he says that he wouldn't be able to eat in peace any more, that he'd always be being disturbed by the shop bell. But wouldn't that be better than living on the bare necessities of life?'

She was off on her hobby-horse. Was this what she had come for? Had she already forgotten Félicie?