The Thibaults (19 page)

M. Faîsme accompanied him to the gate, begging him to present his respects to M. Thibault. As he spoke, he never ceased laughing, puckering his eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. The hands he pressed almost affectionately round Antoine’s hand were plump and yielding as a woman’s. At last Antoine managed to free himself. Looking back, he saw the little man standing in the road, bare-headed in the sunlight, still laughing and wagging his head with every sign of amity.

“Really, I’m as silly as a hysterical schoolgirl, letting my imagination run away with me like that!” Antoine was saying to himself as he walked to the station. “That show is excellently run, and Jacques isn’t a bit unhappy.

“And the silliest thing,” he suddenly thought, “is that I wasted my time cross-examining the boy instead of having a friendly chat with him.”

He was almost inclined to believe his brother had been positively glad to see the last of him. “But it’s a bit his own fault,” he concluded with some exasperation; “he seemed so … so callous!” Still he was sorry he had failed to make the first advances.

Antoine did not keep a mistress and was satisfied with casual adventure. But. he was twenty-four, and he sometimes felt an almost painful yearning for the nearness of some weaker being on whom he could lavish his compassion, whom he could protect and shield. His affection for Jacques was growing stronger with every step he took away from him. And now—when would he see him again? On the least pretext he would have turned back.

He walked with his eyes to the ground, to escape the glare of the morning sun. When, after a while, he raised them again, he saw he had missed his way. Some children showed him a short cut through the fields. He quickened his pace. “Supposing I missed the train,” he thought, “what should I do?” Playing with the idea, he pictured his return to the reformatory; he would spend the day with Jacques, would tell him of his fantastic fears, and this journey he had kept secret from their father. And this time he would play the part of a real confidant, a comrade, and remind the boy of the scene in the cab on their return from Marseille, and how that night he had felt they might become real friends. His desire to miss the train became so urgent that he slackened his pace, though he had not yet come to an actual decision. Suddenly he heard the engine whistle, and a plume of smoke rose on his left, above the clump of trees. Unthinking, he began to run. The station was in sight. He had his ticket in his pocket, had only to jump into a car, running across the rails, if necessary. His head thrown back, his elbows pressed in to his sides like a professional sprinter, he took deep breaths of the keen air. Proud of his athletic fitness, he felt certain he would get there on time.

But he had reckoned without the embankment. To reach the station the road made a bend, passing under a little bridge. Vainly he made a spurt, getting the last ounce out of his muscles; when he came out on the far side of the bridge, the train was already moving out of the station. He had missed it by about a hundred yards.

Such was his pride that he would not admit he had been beaten in the race; he preferred to think he had missed the train on purpose. “I could still jump into the caboose if I wanted to,” he thought, “but that would settle things peremptorily; then it would be impossible for me to see Jacques again.” He stopped, pleased with his decision.

Immediately all he had been picturing took concrete form; he would lunch at the inn, go back after lunch to the reformatory, and spend the whole day with his brother.

ANTOINE was back at the reformatory gate a little before one. M. Faîsme was just going out, and was so taken aback that for a few seconds he seemed like a man of stone, but for the little eyes twinkling as usual behind his glasses. Antoine explained, what had happened. Only then did the superintendent burst out laughing and regain his wonted loquacity.

Antoine explained that he would like to take his brother out for the afternoon, for a walk.

The superintendent looked dubious. “That’s a bit of a problem. The regulations, you know… .”

But Antoine pressed his point with such insistence that the man gave in.

“Only I must ask you to explain the particular circumstances to the Founder… . Well, I’ll go and fetch Jacques.”

“I’ll come with you,” Antoine said.

He regretted it; they arrived at an unfortunate moment. They had scarcely entered the corridor when Antoine came on his brother squatting, for all the world to see, in the retreat known to the staff as the
vater-closette
. The door was being held open by Arthur, who was leaning against it, smoking a pipe.

Antoine walked quickly past and entered Jacques’s room. M. Faîsme was rubbing his hands with an air of jubilation.

“You see!” he said. “The boys we look after are looked after—even there!”

Jacques came to his room. Antoine had expected he would seem embarrassed, but nothing of the sort. Jacques was buttoning up his clothes quite unconcernedly as he entered and his face was expressionless; he did not even seem surprised at Antoine’s return. M. Faîsme explained that he would permit Jacques to be out with his brother until six. Jacques watched his face as if he wanted to be sure of understanding exactly what he meant, but made no comment.

“Now I really must fly, if you’ll excuse me,” M. Faîsme said in his brisk falsetto voice. “There’s a meeting of my Municipal Council. Would you believe it, I’m the Mayor here!” He was roaring with laughter, as if he had cracked a joke of the first order, as he vanished through the door. Even Antoine was infected by his merriment.

Jacques dressed composedly. Antoine was struck by Arthur’s attentiveness to Jacques as he handed him his clothes. When he volunteered to give his shoes an extra shine, Jacques made no objection.

The room had already lost the well-kept aspect that had so favourably impressed Antoine in the morning. He tried to discover why. The luncheon-tray was still on the table; there were an empty mug, a dirty plate, bread-crumbs. The clean linen had disappeared; a single soiled hand-towel hung on the rail; under the basin was a square of dirty, tattered oilcloth. The white bed-linen had been replaced by rough, unbleached, shabby-looking sheets. And suddenly all his suspicions were reawakened. But now he refrained from asking questions.

They set out onto the high road side by side.

“Where shall we go?” Antoine asked in a cheerful tone. “You don’t know Compiègne? It’s only about two miles’ walk, along the banks of the Oise. Like to have a look at it?”

Jacques agreed. He seemed decided to agree with everything his brother proposed.

Antoine slipped his arm through his brother’s and fell into step with him.

“What did you think of the towel trick?” he asked. He looked at Jacques, and laughed.

“The towel trick?” his brother repeated blankly.

“Don’t you remember? This morning, while I was being trotted round the place, they took advantage of it to lay your bed with clean sheets and hang nice clean towels by your washstand. Very clever! Unluckily I turned up again, like a bad penny! One in the eye for them!”

Jacques stopped abruptly, a faint, uneasy smile on his lips.

“Really one would think you want to find fault with everything that goes on at the institution,” he blurted out, his deep voice quivering a little.

He fell silent for a while and continued walking at his brother’s side. A moment later he spoke again, obviously forcing himself to do so, as if it bored him desperately having to enlarge on so futile a topic.

“You don’t realize, Antoine. It’s quite simple, really. The linen is changed on the first and third Sundays of each month. Arthur, who has been looking after me for the last ten days, had changed the sheets and towels last Sunday, so he thought it was his duty to change them again this morning, as it was a Sunday. The people at the linen-room told him he had made a mistake, so he had to take back the clean linen, which I’m not due to get till next week.” Again he fell silent, gazing at the landscape.

A bad start! Antoine applied himself to turn their conversation into another channel, but he was still feeling annoyed at his clumsiness; somehow he could not strike the note of everyday good-fellowship he wanted. Jacques answered briefly, yes or no, to Antoine’s questions, and did not show the slightest interest. At last he spoke, of his own accord.

“Please, Antoine, don’t mention the business about the towels to the superintendent; it would only get Arthur into trouble over nothing at all.”

“All right.”

“Nor to Papa, either,” Jacques added.

“I’ll tell nobody, don’t worry. As a matter of fact it had passed out of my mind. Now, look here, Jacques,” he went on, “I’m going to tell you the truth. Just imagine, I’d got it into my head, I don’t know why, that this was a rotten place, that you were having a bad time here.”

Jacques turned a little and examined his brother’s face with a serious expression.

“I spent the morning nosing round,” Antoine went on. “Finally, I saw I’d been mistaken. Then I pretended to miss my train. You see, I didn’t want to go without having had time for a good talk with you.”

Jacques made no reply. Did he relish the prospect of a “good talk”? Antoine felt uncertain and, fearing to make a false step, kept silent.

The road fell steeply towards the river, and they began to walk ahead more briskly. Presently they came to a bend of the river, which was converted at this point into a canal and spanned by a narrow iron bridge, crossing a lock. Three empty barges, their fat brown hulls almost entirely above the water-level, were floating on the all but stagnant stream.

“How’d you like the idea of a trip in a barge?” Antoine asked. “It would be fun dropping down through the morning mists, between the poplars on the banks, stopping at the locks now and then— wouldn’t it? And, in the evening, at sunset, smoking a cigarette in the bows, thinking of nothing, dangling one’s legs over the water… . By the way, do you still go in for drawing?”

Jacques gave a very definite start, and Antoine was certain he saw him blush.

“Why …?” he asked in an uneasy voice.

“Oh, I hadn’t any special reason for asking.” But Antoine’s curiosity was aroused. “I was only thinking one could make a rather pretty sketch here, with the barges, the lock, and the little bridge.”

The towpath broadened, became a road. They were coming to a wide reach of the Oise, whose swollen waters rolled towards them.

“There’s Compiègne,” Antoine said.

He had stopped and put his hand to his forehead to shelter his eyes from the sun. On the horizon, above the green mass of the woods, he saw a group of pinnacles around a belfry, the round tower of a church. He was about to tell the names of the churches to his brother —who, like himself, was holding his hand over his eyes and seemed to be gazing towards the horizon—when he noticed that Jacques’s eyes were fixed on the ground beside his feet. He seemed to be waiting for Antoine to go on with the walk; without a word, Antoine started forward again.

All Compiègne was out of doors. The brothers joined the crowd streaming across the bridge. There had evidently been a medical examination of recruits that morning, for groups of young men in their Sunday best were buying tricolour ribbons from street venders and lurching down the pavements arm in arm, leaving no room for the ordinary townsfolk, and bawling soldiers’ songs. On the Mall, amongst young women in summery attire and booted cavalrymen the local families were strolling, greeting each other affably.

The sight of all these people was making Jacques feel more and more ill at ease and he begged Antoine to come away.

They took a street that turned off from the main thoroughfare; shaded and quiet, it gently rose towards the Palace Square. When they came out into the open again, the sunlight almost blinded them. Jacques blinked his eyes. Halting, they sat down under the trees, neatly set out in alternating rows, shadeless as yet.

“Listen!” he said, putting his hand on Antoine’s knee. The bells of Saint-Jacques’s were ringing for vespers, and their long vibrations seemed to merge into the sunlight.

Antoine supposed that at last, unwittingly, the boy had responded to the bright enchantment of that first spring Sunday.

“A penny for your thoughts!” He smiled.

But, instead of answering, Jacques rose and began walking towards the park. The majesty of the scene did not seem to evoke the slightest response from him. What he wanted most of all apparently was to get away from places where there were people about. The calm that reigned around the château, on the great walled terraces, drew him towards it. Antoine followed, making conversation about whatever caught his eye: the clipped box borders skirting the green lawns, the ringdoves settling on the statues’ shoulders. But the boy’s replies were always evasive.

Suddenly Jacques asked: “Have you spoken to him?”

“To whom?”

“Fontanin.”

“Yes, I met him the other day in the Latin Quarter. Do you know, he’s a day-boy now at the lycée Louis-le-Grand?”

“Really?” was all Jacques said at first. Then he added, with a faint tremor in his voice that for the first time had something in it of the peremptory tone familiar with him in the past: “You didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”

“He didn’t ask me. Why? You’d rather he didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because …!” He did not go on.

“An excellent reason!” Antoine laughed. “But I suppose you’ve got another, eh?”

Jacques stared blankly at him; evidently he had not realized Antoine was joking. Aloof as ever, he started walking again. Then abruptly he asked another question.

“And Gise? Does she know?”

“Where you are? No, I don’t think so. But with children one can never be sure of anything.” Now that Jacques himself had started a topic of conversation, Antoine made the most of it. “And Gise is such a quaint litde thing. Some days you’d think she was quite grown up; she listens to everything that’s said with her eyes full of interest —and pretty eyes they are! And on other days she’s just like a baby. Would you believe it, yesterday Mademoiselle was looking for her everywhere, and there she was playing with her dolls under the hall table! And she’s going on eleven, you know.”