The Closed Harbour (22 page)

"He stopped coming two days ago, why should he suddenly look in now. And think of the efforts before, melting like ice in the sun."

"There it is. Monsieur Follet has had a change of heart in the night."

He leaned over Labiche, "but also," he said, patting the other's shoulder, "you have prayed, too. I've no doubt of that, Labiche, no doubt at all. It may be the answer to your own prayers. A special prayer for a special bum."

As he went out he said over his shoulder, "and what a surprise for the bum himself, after four months of it, crawling about looking for a job. Been to any amount of shipping people. You know I think Monsieur Follet put them all wise," he turned to smile at Labiche and then went out.

"What Philippe does not know," thought Labiche, "will certainly do Philippe no harm."

He counted eleven visitors up to lunch-time, but Marius had not appeared.

On his way out Philippe said, "you watch. Just before five that bum'll turn up. A little lapse of memory. Never forgive himself for forgetting us."

The door had been wide open. Labiche had walked straight in. Approaching it he had sensed that it was empty; he had stood across the road and looked at it. A miserable place, a house all points and corners, a flat, dingy, ugly little house. The rear door was as wide and gaping as the front one. And once inside there were more doors and these were open. Labiche had stood inside the front door, had called out twice. There had been no answer. He listened to the clock's tick, looked at the cheap curtains, walked across to the stairs, called again. His own voice answered him. It was as ugly inside as out.

"Even the house seems to have rheumatics."

He sat on the kitchen table, then called again. A pity that Madame Touchard had been out. He would have called on her first, he knew her husband, he had a fish stall in the market.

There was nothing on the table, cupboard doors stood wide, but these were empty. It made him think of ransacking, a hurried flight. He hesitated at the foot of the stairs. Should he go up? Instead he went to the rear of the house and stood at the door. He saw what they had seen, the distant sea, riding ships, a roaring noise from the quays.

"What a place to have come to, to have brought such people," he thought, and returned to the stairs.

To make quite certain he put a foot on the first stair, making a noise, then called again. Receiving no answer he went up. Bedroom doors were open. On the landing he stood, looking downwards. The sheer emptiness of the house gave him a chill feeling, as though life had never been there, his the first breath drawn, the first foot upon the stair, the first voice.

Number 47 Rue des Fleurs gaped at the world. He went into the first bedroom, moved straight to the window and looked out, then down into the untidy back area. He shut the window, turned and stared about him. The bed seemed monstrous, but what struck him at once was its untidiness, it gave the appearance of just having been left, perhaps he might find those tumbled blankets still warm, and he crossed the room and put his hand on the bedclothes.

In amongst them he found tiny fragments of what had obviously been a letter. He gathered them together and held them in his hand. Furious fragments, insensate fingers, the scene was coming clear, he could now see the letter being torn, and then he noticed the pillows.

"There has been a struggle on this bed," he thought, "a struggle for a letter," and at once he saw them, the old and the young woman, grappling, fighting to get possession of the letter. The unlovely shapes of bodies struggling in a black moment, the creak and rattle of the old iron bedstead, the raised voices.

"My imagination is running away with me," he thought, but then he looked at his hand, the gathered fragments, back to the tossed bedclothes. "I wonder why they've flown?"

Suddenly he walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. It was like shutting out the wilderness. Labiche paused at the next room.

"I've seen worse things," he thought, "the old, fighting, old, old, women, the Massier sisters—dreadful." He walked into Marius's room.

A closed window and a drawn curtain, an untidy bed, things scattered about the floor, a crowded little mantelshelf. He saw the old binoculars, the sextant hanging by a piece of string, a pile of letters, Marius's pleas, Marius crawlings, Marius whinings, hopes, threats, but he did not look at these. Instead he took the brown paper parcel and opened it and sat down and looked through the charts. And for the first time Labiche hesitated, quickly folded them up, wrapped them in the brown paper, then let them lie on his knee, these, the sacred relics, humbly wrapped, zealously guarded. Marius had often sat on the bed and opened them likewise, and had stared and stared at them, the red and the blue dots, the straight lines and the wavy ones. The seas that had dried up, the ships that lay rotting, the rivers carrying nothing, the lighthouses without lights.

Labiche got up and put the parcel back on the mantelpiece.

"Perhaps they've all gone," he thought.

"And every day he set out from this room, went down those stairs, and walked and walked and walked into days and through weeks, and Follet was very busy."

He could see Marius walking out of the Heros offices.

"I suppose he did in fact walk everywhere."

Moving the single pillow he saw the tobacco plug lying beneath it, and flung it back again. He picked up the empty wine bottle, held discarded clothes in his hand, saw bread crumbs upon the table. No altar here, as in the other room, no night-light, nothing but Marius, and his dead seas, and some faded flowers in a vase.

And as he descended the stairs there rose in him the same feeling he had had when approaching the house, he had paused for an instant to stare, its gaping doors seemed to say, "come in, gorge yourself."

For a few minutes he sat in the kitchen. He remembered a large peeled onion lying on the drain-board, some evidence of cat in one corner, flies on the windowpane, peeling wallpaper. But wherever he now looked he seemed to see only the big iron bed and the women on it. When he opened his fist he found he was still holding the now sweated fragments of this letter. He stepped off the table and dropped them into the firegrate. It was then that he heard the key in the lock, a woman's voice. He went out. Madame Touchard had just returned.

"Good afternoon, Madame," Labiche said, he raised his hat and approached her. "I hope Francois is well."

Madame Touchard was short and wiry, and might have been draped in grey granite. She frowned at Labiche, and he noticed the cast in her right eye.

"Who are you?" she asked, the hand holding the key suspended in air, "what is it you want? Have you been in there?"

"My name is Labiche, your husband would know who I am. I have been next door but there is nobody about. I found all the doors open."

"They're not mine to shut," Madame Touchard said. "The church mice have flown. If the owner is interested in her property she should call and lock it up."

"Have they left you a key?" he asked. "Strange that they did not close the doors. Do you happen to know where they've gone, Madame Touchard. I am trying to get in touch with the man."

"They have gone to the station. I saw the taxi call. Will you come in, Monsieur?"

"Thank-you."

Labiche went inside.

This house was small, clean, orderly. He sat down on the proffered chair. "Once or twice that man has rolled past our window and I have heard your name mentioned, Monsieur. Very late at night. Do you know them? They are strange people. They never spoke to me, though often I was abreast of them on my way to Mass."

"Were they always at home?"

"Always."

"What did you think about them?"

"I thought they were swells, down on their luck, until I saw
him
. After that you could think anything, and never be surprised. We're glad they've gone."

"You saw them go?"

"No, Monsieur, I did not. I did see the taxi-man arrive, and he could get no answer to his knocking, he came to me and asked me if they were in. I joined him outside. Then he looked up to the bedroom window, hearing raised voices, he saw the old creature with her back to the window. She was quarrelling with her daughter, or perhaps the man—"

"The son, you mean."

"A man anyhow. The taxi-man got into the house. I heard him shouting up to them that if they didn't hurry their train would be gone."

"SThey came down then."

"I did not wait to see. I had to meet my husband. When I came back they were gone. The house as you see it. It is not my house, it is no business of mine."

"Did the man go with them, Madame?"

"No. Indeed if you move down to the quay you will probably find him. The children often come upon him there, asleep. They have stolen some money from him when he has been drunk, Monsieur."

"Thank you very much, Madame. I am glad of the information. Like you, I do not know them, they are strangers here, but the man I have often seen in our office, he is trying to get ship out of here."

Madame Touchard nodded, she had no comment to make. Labiche went away.

"Father Nollet advised them to return to their own home. They may well have done so."

Labiche paid his bill, and from the restaurant he bicycled down to the office in the Place de Lenche.

"If I could once talk to this man," he thought as he climbed the stairs.

There was no sound in this office but that of Mademoiselle Moreau's knitting needles.

"Good-day Mademoiselle," said Labiche.

She raised her head and smiled. "Good afternoon."

After a pause she said, "there are one or two messages. There is a letter marked Urgent. Left here in my absence. There was a telephone ring from Madame Lanier's daughter. Her husband died in hospital last night."

"Poor Lanier," Labiche said.

"Poor
Madame
, you mean," said the assistant, "oh, and this note from your home, Monsieur Labiche."

"Thank-you" he said.

He sat down with his back to her. She never moved from her chair and her knitting needles made odd noises in Labiche's ears. He tore open the note from his wife.

"Dear Ariste,

I will be away until seven o'clock, I am taking Madame Sorel to her doctor."

"Of course," he exclaimed under his breath, "this is her day."

He opened the note marked Urgent, read it, put it in his pocket. He looked at some other letters, he marked some, tore others up, handed one to Mademoiselle Moreau, the technique of mercy was at work.

"Well, I must be off," he announced, turned to the spinster in the chair, and somewhat surprised her by his expansive smile. But he did not inform her that from next week he himself would sit in her chair.

"He hasn't gone and I'll find him. He'll be certain to return to the house. If I could get him along to the presbytery I feel certain that Father Nollet would do something."

How strange it was that this Marius should imagine that he, Labiche, was an agent of the police.

"How curious," he thought, "that I should match him against the mountain of misery in this city," and he saw the children in the gutter, Madame Sorel with her mask of affliction, the Massier sisters tearing at each other over a will, Lanier in the long white ward, and the frightened eyes turned to the ceiling. Madame Lanier lonely and life turning cold.

"And even at that Madame Lustigne's—he might have taken that little girl
...
" the very thought gave Labiche a shock.

"I will call at the house this evening. If he is not there, I shall wait. I feel that this man only wants to see a hand held out to him, to feel the warmth of it, a frightened desperate man, about whom many rumours are flying about, a tired, miserable creature who crouches through his days."

Labiche could see the stairs again, and Marius climbing, the silent women below.

"It is hard to believe, yet she told Father Nollet that if she once possessed the proof she would give him up to the law."

"There must be blindness there," he thought, "blindness without limit. A mother giving up her son. I wonder what is true and what is not. I wonder why the women followed him here?"

"A proof of what?"

He saw again the squat ugly house, the disordered bedroom, the tossed bedclothes, the sextant on a string, the scattered fragments of a letter. Labiche thought of the quays, Marius lying against timbers, the sound of a syren tearing through his brain, the childish hands at his pockets, the sea smashing against the breakwater, and over all, the sun in splendour.

XI

M
ARIUS
came out of the Bistro, and as he walked down the road he could still hear them laughing. He had asked for a drink and they had given it to him, but when they had demanded payment it was awkward. He searched in his pockets, but he had no money. He did not speak. The people in the bar had watched his frantic search with some amusement. Nobody had offered to pay. When he looked at the barman he saw him laugh. As he turned away, leaving the untouched drink on the counter, the others joined in. It was growing dark as he approached the house. The door being wide open, it looked like a large eye in the white wall, and as he drew nearer he looked about him, stopped, stared up at the house. He walked straight in, but closed the door after him and locked it. He had not seen the man standing on the corner, who, as soon as he saw Marius enter, walked round to the rear of the house. Marius struck a match and held it high, and looked about him. He went to the table and put his hand on it. The match went out.

He called out, "hello!"

There was no answer. He struck another match, he went to the corners of the room and stared into them. He continued to strike matches. It had not occurred to him to switch on the light.

"Hello!"

When the matches ran out he groped his way into the sitting-room. This room was empty and silent. He found the small cupboard high in the wall, and took from it another box. He started striking again. It was difficult to understand. The two chairs in the window were empty. The sentries had gone. He sat down on the one nearest the door. He felt the seat of the other one. He called again. "Hello!"