The Closed Harbour (20 page)

"I cried myself to sleep and I knew I'd never grow up," and then he felt a tap on his shoulder, and there was Philippe, the table, the other people, the sunshine on the pavement, the door bell ringing, the big clock ticking, and Philippe waiting, stiff and business-like again, and Labiche said, "sorry, sir, I'm coming," and together they walked down to the door.

"Day dreaming, Labiche?"

"Thinking," said Labiche, and then they were out on the avenue, ringed in the bright sunlight.

Again Philippe paused, surveyed the scene, and then remarked, "makes me think of the country, a day like this. By the way, when d'you go for your holidays?"

"November 15th" Labiche replied, and at once Philippe exclaimed, "Ooh!" feeling the cold.

"Poor Labiche, you simply can't avoid the sackcloth and ashes," and seeing the little man colour up he patted his shoulder and said kindly, "well well, no offence Labiche, none at all, just my manner, forget about it. Sometimes, I must confess, I look at you through my window and I ask myself if you are happy, I never hear you laugh, Labiche, but I suppose you are, really. How's the family?"

"They are quite well, thank you."

"One day we must go out to lunch," Philippe said as they reached the entrance.

"Thank you, Monsieur Philippe. To-day I shall eat sandwiches with my family, under the plane trees, it's always cool there."

"How nice."

They separated the moment they went through the door, each to his own desk. A moment later the sheet of glass had divided them.

"I've never seen Philippe so sociable," thought Labiche, as he sat down to begin his work.

Then the telephone bell on Philippe's desk rang out and it raised a solid wall between the two men. Labiche forgot Philippe. The little man remembered only the coffee, he had enjoyed it because Philippe had been nice this morning.

But now, business was business, and a door in his mind shut the other man out. He had forgotten him, but not the moment in which he had stood at the Dernier table, that hand on his shoulder, Philippe looking downwards. The shadow of a smile crossed Labiche's face.

"A look of lofty commiseration," he thought.

"Are you packing?"

Madame Marius stood at the foot of the stairs. "Yes mother," replied Madeleine, but she was not. She was standing in her brother's room, and she knew she had seen the last of him. She was like a boat, helpless against the pull of the tide. Leaning against the bedroom door she looked without interest at the objects in this room. The bed he had slept in, the chair, the table, the personal objects, the dark wine stains on the floor board, his pipe fallen there, an old cap.

"You're very silent up there," her mother called again. "Where are we going?" asked Madeleine of herself as she stood there, staring into the deserted room. "Why are we here, what does it mean?"

"All right, mother, I'll be down directly," she called below. She closed the door noiselessly, and something in her very action brought relief, shutting out something she had never understood. This dreadful hatred of her mother, this iron determination to pursue her brother to the bitter end. "D'you want me to pack in this old shawl?"

"Why not. Pack everything, I said so, didn't I?"

"Very well. But where are we going, mother?" She stood at the top of the stairs, but Madame Marius had not answered. Madeleine could hear her busy at the task, and something of the old woman's energy, her determination, seemed to flow upwards to her. She went into their bedroom and began to gather the personal belongings. "Don't be up there all day, will you?" Madeleine called loudly, "I told you, mother, I'm packing."

" I thought you might be slobbering in his room," replied Madame Marius.

In the sitting-room the old woman was bent over a large black trunk, and into it, neatly folded, she was laying her things. There was something almost forbidding in the rude energy with which she packed, somehow it did not belong to age.

Sometimes she would lift up a dress, a pair of shoes, pause, holding them aloft against the light, and then fling them down into the trunk like a riddance of something hateful from the hand, as though she were piling into the slowly filling trunk, weight upon weight, the burden of stone to be dragged into the world and to another place.

On the table behind her, there lay a letter as yet un-sealed, the ink still wet upon its page. Naked to the light one could see the bold handwriting, even from a distance.

Dear Father Gerard,

Thank-you for your kind letter. It gave me a sudden lift of the heart, but I must admit at once that it's pure nonsense to say that we should return. There is something crawling about mercy and I want none of it. A good man here, a Father Nollet, you may know him, Father, has said almost the same thing. But there is a contradiction in what he says, and he does not face it. How can one live among good people any more?
We're all tainted. If I came at all it was to drag the truth from my son, and nothing more. To get it from that mouth is satisfaction, something finished, final, done with. But hiding the sin behind mercy, it's beyond me. Yours sincerely, Genevieve
Marius.

Madeleine had come down, was in the room, standing by the trunk over which her mother was bent. The old woman, absorbed in her work, and in her thoughts, had not heard her come in, yet felt she was there. She was on her knees now, arranging the contents of the trunk. After what seemed a long silence, she exclaimed, without looking up, "perhaps you could assist me instead of standing there so helpless."

Madeleine knelt down by her side. And more and more things were pressed into the trunk.

"Where
are
we going, mother? I have the right to know."

"We've seen a bit of the world, we may see a bit more."

"But Eugene, he's ill, mother."

"I forbade you to speak to him, and you broke your word to me. I am his mother, and I'm the person to be told what must be told. Do you take me for a fool? D'you suppose I came hundreds of miles just to watch him at his drinking and whoring, his bouts of misery, his self pitying hours up there, hiding away in his room like some horrible old woman who has thrown her skirts over her head just because the mice are there."

"But he's ill, mother, please believe me, I know, he's ill."

"In time he would have told me. That's all that I wanted of him. Nothing more. To hear him say it, to see him open up, to see it flowing out, all that dirt, those lies, that beastly horror inside him. He didn't drown like a man, he couldn't. That he should have dared to raise a hand against that child, all that innocence, for his selfish ends.

"On his knees, that's his place, on his knees, he's entirely without shame. Do we have to acknowledge the good and the bad in the same breath. In the name of the good Christ what are we coming to? You know nothing of him, I do. I've travelled with him, every mile of his bone, I know. Rotten from the beginning. Are you asking me to forgive him? Where is your son? My name? My God! You're half awake, child, and that's the truth of it."

She had risen to her feet, and leaning over the trunk, she put out her hand, appealingly, offering it to her, and Madeleine took it and held it.

"That priest was right, Madeleine, that Nollet man, there is something in you, and it shuts ruin out."

Then she withdrew her hand. "Go and see the time."

And when she came back and said it was nearly noon Madame Marius said casually, "then make ready the lunch, such as it is. I do not intend to be here to-night and that is all. I won't see the darkness fall and neither will you."

"And Eugene?"

"He has never loved us. That is an answer. Go and get ready the lunch."

"I'm breaking up," thought Madame Marius, "I can feel it, it's like being blind, losing one's footing, unsure of it."

She was standing near, and facing the wall, the big black bag in her hands, which she kept clasping and unclasping, putting in her hand and drawing it out again, opening it wide to the light and peering down into it. She stood hunched, holding this tight to her body, as though behind her, eyes were spying upon it.

"Lunch mother."

"I'm coming."

"If I'd the proof of it I'd give him up, and that would be just," she thought, as she made her way to the kitchen. She had put the black bag in the trunk, drawn down the big lid and locked it.

Madeleine had laid the table and was already seated as her mother came in. The old woman came slowly.

There was the chair in which he had sat, facing her, the stains and cigarette burns at his end of the table, a shiny patch where his elbow had used to rest. She could hear the noise of his drinking, see the fist that might at any moment crush the glass to shreds, hear the crunch of the high-smelling onion.

"A whiff of him," she thought, and only then appeared to see her daughter.

She then sat down.

"We will say the grace," she said, folding her hands.

"Fish," she exclaimed, "one is sick of fish," but she started to eat the mackerel that Madeleine had cooked for them.

"You're certain the man will call for the bags at three o'clock?"

"He promised faithfully," replied Madeleine.

"Then that is well enough."

"You've still not said where we're going, mother," and Madeleine looked directly into her mother's eyes.

Madame Marius paused in her eating, "At forty five she's still a child. It's I who am looking after her, not she tending me" the old woman thought.

"There is the place of the Evening, that calm time of the day," said Madame Marius, "for old souls, the door is never closed, and they say the nuns are kind."

"You should write to Father Nollet to thank him, mother."

"He requires no answer from me" said her mother.

"He was kind."

"Are you instructing me?" asked Madame Marius, and then went on with her meal.

"No mother, I only said he did his best."

"We all do our best, Madeleine, everyone of us. We are not completely stupid. Life isn't a fairy-tale, we know that already. We don't have to be told. Our eyes are open. There's goodness, but there's horror, too. But some people think that just by being merciful the difficult situations are resolved. Rubbish. The mercy of men sometimes adds flames to the horror. Noble gestures with shut eyes. Father Nollet supposes that if I follow my son and embrace him the matter is ended. It is not so simple as that, Madeleine, you poor, innocent child."

She pushed aside her plate, saying, "actually, I'm not hungry. Bring me some water, please."

Taking the water from her she drank.

"I was thirsty," she said.

"It was strange this morning," she said, "Kneeling by my bed, beginning my prayers, my beads suddenly turned themselves into railway lines and I was on a train again, rolling across deep and silent country, and then I was back where I belonged. I was sitting in a white chair, under a fig-tree, giving suck to you. It was so quiet a morning, I could hear the tiniest stir of the leaves, and the sky was so blue, so deep a blue, and so overwhelming, that I closed my eyes, and then I could feel you warm in my arms, strong against my breast. Father Gerard got off his bicycle and peeped in over the gate and saw me and we both smiled, but he said nothing and went off again. The morning grew, and it was still peaceful, still silent in the garden, and there you were, snug in my arms, and I thought of your father a thousand miles away, in an ocean, and somehow he seemed to speak to me across the distances.

"And in the afternoon I was sat by the stove in the kitchen, and it was still silent, still as peaceful. Annette had gone off for the day, and I found myself knitting in the chair she used to sit in, by the stove. A long day and it seemed to have no end. There, in the bowl were the flowers she had cut from the garden, and from the table the smell of the fruit was powerful. That was what came into my mind this morning, and as suddenly as the pictures came, so they also vanished, and there I was, on my knees, in this place, asking myself how I came here, and why did I kneel and go on kneeling, in this hateful house."

"Poor mother."

"Leave me alone," her mother said.

Madeleine got up and left her, and left the room, and the house, and walked far away from it. She walked quickly and with resolute step. She took a tram and was borne inwards. She alighted and walked half the length of the Place, then turned, and dived out of sight. And at the third building in this alley she paused to look up. Behind the long high windows she saw cars and bicycles, rubber tyres, nuts and bolts, and looking higher, she saw painted upon the window of the second floor, "The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. Branch office." And she went in and climbed the stairs. The sign on the door said, "Please enter", and she opened the door and went inside.

There hung upon the facing wall a large framed picture of the good man, and below it some flowers in a vase, which Madeleine saw at once were faded, and she was of a mind to go behind the counter and clear the dead flowers away, and to refill them with fresh cuttings from the shop below. Instead she lifted the pen, chained to the desk, clipped it in the dust-covered ink, and upon a sheet of paper drawn from the box, she wrote,

"Dear Sir,

My brother Captain Eugene
Marius
is ill. Please see that he comes to no harm, for the love of God. Madeleine
Marius,
Rue des Fleurs
47."

There seemed no life in this office, the air was still, nothing moved, even that door had opened noiselessly. Madeleine folded up the note and placed it on the counter. There was a bell at her left hand, and she rang it. It gave a weak tinkle, and she waited. There was no response. The office was empty. Perhaps the secretary was out to lunch. Perhaps that man upon the wall was watching over it in his absence.

Madeleine wrote "Urgent" upon the envelope, and then, "To the Secretary of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul."

She left the building and caught a tram on the corner, and was borne outwards. Then she walked back to the house.