The Closed Harbour (5 page)

"By God," thought Manos, "that snake Follet might well be trying to find an excuse for getting rid of me. Yes, he might even be quixotically generous and give that bum my job, he'd take him for less salary of course, that's his way—"

He had a momentary vision of Marius, Marius shadowing the Heros building, Marius wearing them down.

"So many years my junior, just fifty, no no, what's this crazy imagination of mine doing to me—yes, it might happen, I'm getting old, and that's a worse terror than losing a ship, even killing a man, when one begins to feel the assaults of age—no no. Rubbish. Pull yourself together, you're crazy, man, crazy. Isn't it Manos, isn't it? You're an honourable man, and you've served Heros well, and Follet knows it, and after all it's he who's got most of the shares."

A hand on his shoulder made him jump and he swung round.

"Why Laurent. Good. Good. Let's go to my cabin," and they went off together, the mate following behind the waddling Manos.

"Just come away from seeing, Follet," Manos said as he sat down. "So rarely do I meet that fellow, and it's my instinct that keeps me away, that this time I hardly realized it was him, barely recognized him. I was annoyed with him, even a little disgusted. Such a well fed animal, so certain of himself, such a greedy swine, so indifferent to people unless they're putting money in his pocket. He asked me if I'd ship that Nantes bum."

"Ah," he cried, "listen to that. Something is happening, let's go out."

The crew were coming up the gangway, and there on the quay something that shed his terrors at a blow, made him smile, the two great lorries had arrived.

He watched the loading. "Good, good" thought Manos, "no man is free until he's away, and that's the living truth of it."

"Get for'ard and check up on the men, Laurent."

"Yes sir," and Laurent went for'ard.

At half past six the final sling had swung downwards, the limp fall came up. The hatches crashed down. There were shouts on the quay, the lorries were drawing away. Somebody was calling to Manos.

The sound of the
Clarté
's syren split the air.

Manos hurried to the bridge. He saw the first hawser go, heard the sullen crash.

"All clear aft." Manos listened. "Away for'ard."

He pulled his watch from his pocket, cried to himself, "beautiful, beautiful."

The
Clarté
was under way at a quarter after seven. She blew again.

"What about Marius now," he thought, standing triumphantly on his bridge, "to hell with Marius."

He gave a sigh of relief. The threshold of voyages always yielded up a kind of warmth, he was under way, he was free.

III

E
VERY
evening Labiche sat with his children on his knee and rocked them and sang to them, whilst in the kitchen his wife prepared the supper. In between snatches of song they exchanged conversation.

"I'm going out at nine o'clock, Marie," Labiche said. "D'you remember Madame Gilliat's girl, you know, the one they dote on, Jeanette, well she's somehow found her way into that Madame Lustigne's house."

"Mother of God."

"Yes, Father Prideau was telling me yesterday, her mother's in a terrible state. I'm seeing Madame Lustigne this evening. But I won't be late," and then Labiche forgot every thing as he lowered his head between those of his children and he hugged them and was happy.

But only when he got inside the house, and he was glad to do that, the journey up the hill always saddened him, the faces of children, he would sometimes stand and stare at them, leaning on his bicycle, looking at the dirt, the rags, the big eyes of innocence full of a dreadful melancholy.

He had once brought Philippe to tea, it was Yvonne's fifth birthday, and Philippe had found it difficult to refuse, but not so difficult to resolve that never again would he climb the hill of Accoules. The long dark street in which Labiche lived he called "the whore's left leg ".

"How the hell you live and like it," said Philippe.

"Many people live here" replied Labiche.

When Madame Labiche appeared, Aristide picked up his children and carried them off to bed.

To celebrate his rise in fortune there was a special bottle, a special salad.

"Perhaps," remarked Marie, "we could now move further away, one ought to get on," to which Labiche replied in an absent-minded way, "why, get on, where?"

"I don't know," she said, and didn't, it left her bewildered.

She was a foot and a half taller than her husband, large, fat and comfortable looking, she was a simple girl from the farm.

"You could try, for the children's sake, for Yvonne's anyhow."

"Many are worse than us," he said, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and then, re-assuringly, "I shan't be late."

"Diderot called this afternoon for the Mission money. I gave it him."

"I hope it's a bigger collection than last time."

"And the man from the hospital called, they want a shirt for Lanier."

"Poor Lanier," said Labiche, he wiped his mouth, "a beautiful meal," he said and pushed in his chair.

He took out his pipe, sat himself in the armchair and puffed contentedly. Marie cleared the table. Most evenings she sat and sewed. Watching her now as she bent over the table he thought she looked a little sad.

"Anything the matter, dear?"

"Nothing," she said.

"I'm not
always
out."

"You're not always in," she was on the point of saying, "you don't see things, though you think you do."

She was always glad to draw the curtains, even on a hot night.

"Sometimes I wish you'd give up the St Vincent de Paul, you're never in."

He noted her hands sudden gripping of the table, he sensed a tensity rising, it was most unusual. He got up.

"What's the matter, darling?"

"Nothing."

"Well then—"

"Everybody
uses
you," she said.

She went to the bureau, came back and showed him a letter from her parents. Was she never coming for a holiday, were they never to see Jacque, two years old now and they had never seen him.

"But I do not harm, I only help people, Marie, don't you understand me?"

"Sometimes," she said, "sometimes."

He stood by her, an arm round her shoulder, his huge, ugly head reached upwards, "don't you understand?"

She cried a little.

"There there." He held her tightly. "Then shall I not go out?" he asked.

When she looked at him she saw his eyes were on the clock.

"I don't know, please yourself, Ariste," and she walked away and left him and went upstairs.

"Am I wrong? he asked himself. "Am I right? What is
really
just?"

He went to the window and looked out. "The noise, yes, the tramp tramp up and down these streets, perhaps Philippe is right, we are living on a whore's back. Nothing stops," and he was watching some children playing, one of whom lay flat on its back in the gutter. He looked down the hill, and thought, "swarms with people, like lice, and yet it's miraculous."

He went to the foot of the stairs. "Marie. Shall I come up?" and when he heard no reply, he went up. He found her sitting on the stool between the children's beds. They were both asleep.

"I tell you this, Marie, I do tell you this, we'll take that holiday, yes, I'll ask Monsieur Follet if I can go next month, instead of November, somehow I always seem to be the last for my holidays."

He knelt down by her, placed his hands on her knees, looked gently at her. "Marie."

"I want to live myself," she said.

"Yes yes, I know, dear, of course, why not, and we shall, with the help of God we shall, but when I go out, when I go down this street, and I turn this corner, and that, and down that other street and I see what I see—"

"People should help themselves."

"They do, Marie, think of Madame Sorel?" She gave him a wan smile and said, "Ariste, you'd better go then."

He held her in a fierce embrace. It was not often that she sobbed, but she did so now.

"All day, all this day, it's strange, I could think of nothing, I just dreamed, I dreamed of our getting out of it, of our going, we
will
go, we will go?"

And he said, "ssh! ssh! We will go, Marie, my own love. Now may I go. Think of this child, with
that
woman?"

"Go."

He turned and left her sitting in the darkened room and seemed to hear more deeply the short, quick breathing of his sleeping children.

She heard the door close, but still sat on between her children. Labiche had hardly travelled ten yards before he heard his name called from a high window, and looking up saw Madame Sorel frantically waving to him from behind a curtain.

Her door was open, it was rarely closed, and Labiche went straight in and up the stairs. He found the old woman in some difficulties, she was on her knees by the door.

"Oh Madame, what is this?" he asked," what is this? Has not Marie given you your supper?"

The face, crawling with lupus, was turned upwards, the old woman nodded her head.

"I can't get back into bed," she said, "please Monsieur Labiche," and he helped her back to bed and covered her.

"Good-night Madame Sorel," he said, and closed the door, went downstairs and into the street and continued his journey downwards.

"Poor creature," he said, it came to his lips so often that it had a robot-like sound to it.

He looked at the long row of houses, how they hugged each other, embracing the ugliness of all, and this continued to the very end, and lower, to the next street, and lower to the next, and over it all the sun shone, hard and bright, and Labiche took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck.

"There are some holes here," he said to himself "where the sun never shines, it is much cooler in those places."

Labiche always paused when he came to the Rue Danielle. If there had been any other way of dodging it he would have taken it, for here in this street were the people who laughed loudest, youths who called after him, "the little black pudding", and once two drunken sailors had stopped him, tried to get him to dance, the memory of it had never left: him, he would sweat when he thought of it. But when he turned into it, the place was almost empty, as though all in this street had died. And then he heard the noises through the open windows.

"If I'm not mistaken her house lies somewhere between the Quai de Belge and the Cannabiere. This is the second time she's stolen somebody, says they come to her, rubbish."

"Philippe should come late at night," he thought, "it glows with horror," it made him think of Marie, quiet, sad, between those innocent beds.

"Am I right? Or wrong? And yet it's the first time she has wavered, ever."

Doubt flung itself up as powerful as a wave, fell quickly as he thought of Follet.

"There is a man who believes in nothing but himself, yet in some queer way, when I tell about my work, for he often asks me, then he says, 'I wish I were you, you are good, Labiche.' "

Where is the truth of it?

There was a tiny shop at the end of the Rue Thoird, and always by its door an old, old man, who would wait for Labiche to pass. He would say good-evening, Monsieur Labiche, are you after the devil again? and he would smile, and thinking of him as he approached the shop, Labiche hoped he would yet be there, there was something in the old man's smile that pleased him.

To-night the shop was closed, and no Monsieur Noste was to be seen. Labiche turned the corner.

Children everywhere, old people seated on doorsteps, women, in shifts, a mass of rubbish to kick under one's feet, he always called this, "the street of floating trash", and sometimes he asked himself if this were the children, or merely the rubbish of that day flung rudely out of doors. The grey of the stone, the blood shine of the brick, it struck at the eyes. The air stank.

"Not far to go now," he thought, and almost without realizing it he had reached the bottom of the hill.

"Now for that woman."

You could tell Madame Lustigne's house anywhere, because it looked the most respectable, and its high walls, pockmarked, smeared, with its one solitary climbing rose. It seemed to grin in the sun. It was situated at the end of the road. One high wall directly facing the hill was completely blank, windowless, and held only a large hideous Michelin placard, which now hung mournfully downwards, having been torn from the wall by a high wind, and needing only a single gust to send it flying into the road. And there was the door which was of brightest green, and in front of it the wrecked street lamp, headless, and above this the tall narrow windows, glittering in the sun.

Labiche had been here once before. He had used the front entrance. To-night he would use the back, and so passed through a court-yard littered with household utensils, pails, brushes, a heap of old clothes, an empty barrel, a bundle of soiled newspapers, and above this a long clothes line, but Labiche did not look that far. He found the door and knocked.

It opened. The interior was so dark that Labiche could not at first discern who the opener was. And he got the smell of scent and stale smoke and new wine to his nostrils.

"Madame Lustigne," he said.

"Who're you?"

"Aristide Labiche."

"Doesn't mean a bloody thing to me, names never do, what d'you want?

"I've already said, Madame Lustigne?"

"Are you from the police? The girls were examined on Tuesday. I say are you from the police?"

"
Me?
" said Labiche, and laughed, then wondered why he had laughed.

"I'm not the police Inspector."

"In which case you'd better come in."

"Thank you."

He saw him then, and recognized him. Henri. Her husband.

A man in the early sixties, his mouse-coloured, tousled grey hair upset Labiche at sight, and he noted that the man wore only a vest and black trousers, heel-less slippers. The face was grey and ashen, the eyes dull.

"This way," Henri said, and went off down the corridor, closely followed by Labiche, he talked as he walked.

"If you're a customer, the price's up five francs, how anybody lives to-day astounds me. This way," he said again.