A Love Story Read online

  And as Hélène, taken by surprise, made as though to get up, she said:

  ‘Oh, do stay, there’s no hurry! Henri, pass me my smelling salts.’

  Three or four people, close friends, were in no hurry to leave. They sat down in front of the fire which had gone out, chatted in a delightfully relaxed way in the already sleepy, exhausted atmosphere of the large room. The doors were open, you could see the small empty salon, the empty dining room, the whole apartment still lit and fallen into a deep silence. Henri was full of gallant tenderness for his wife; he had just been up to their bedroom to get her smelling salts which she breathed in as she slowly shut her eyes; and he asked if she had not overtired herself. Yes, she was rather tired; but she was thrilled, everything had gone really well. Then she said that on the evenings after her parties she was unable to sleep, she tossed and turned in her bed until six in the morning. Henri smiled and they joked. Hélène looked at them and shivered, in this somnolence which gradually seemed to be taking over the whole house.

  Meanwhile there were only two people still there. Pierre had gone to fetch a cab. Hélène stayed till last. One o’clock chimed. Henri, completely relaxed, got up from his chair and blew out two candles from the chandelier which were heating the rings. It looked like a sunset with the lights going out one by one, the room gradually sinking into an intimate darkness.

  ‘I’m stopping you from going to bed,’ faltered Hélène, getting up abruptly. ‘Tell me to go home!’

  She was flushed and her colour had risen. They saw her into the hall. But as it was chilly out there, the doctor was concerned for his wife, in her low-cut bodice.

  ‘Go in, you’ll take cold... You have been too warm.’

  ‘Well then, farewell,’ said Juliette, hugging Hélène, as she often did when she was feeling particularly fond of her. ‘Come and see me more often.’

  Henri had taken the fur coat and was holding it open to help Hélène into it. When she had slipped into the two sleeves, he raised her collar himself, and smilingly put it on her, in front of an immense mirror which was covering one whole wall of the hall. They were alone, they saw their reflections in the mirror. Then suddenly, without turning round and wrapped up in her fur, she leaned back into his arms. For the last three months they had exchanged nothing but friendly handshakes, trying to subdue their love. He stopped smiling; his face changed, suffused and passionate. Madly he pressed her to him, kissed her neck. And she bent her head back, to return his kiss.

  Chapter 2

  Hélène did not sleep a wink that night. She tossed and turned in a fever and whenever she sank into a slumber the same anguish always woke her with a start. In the nightmare of this half-sleep she was tormented by one thought and could not get it out of her head: she wanted to know where they would meet. It seemed to her that it would be some relief to know that. It could not be in Malignon’s little flat in the Rue Taitbout that was often mentioned at the Deberles. Where then, where then?... And in spite of herself it was going round and round in her head and she had forgotten all about the affair itself in order to engage in an enervating research so full of unspoken desires. When it was light she dressed and caught herself saying out loud:

  ‘It’s going to be tomorrow.’

  With one shoe on, her hands idle, she now mused that it might take place in some furnished rooms somewhere. A secret little room rented by the month. Then she was disgusted by this thought. She imagined a delightful apartment with thick hangings, flowers, huge bright fires burning in every hearth. And it was not Juliette and Malignon there, but herself and Henri in the depths of this cosy hideaway where the sounds of the world outside could not reach them. She shivered in her unfastened dressing gown. Wherever was it then, where?

  ‘Good morning, Maman!’ cried Jeanne who was the next to wake.

  She was sleeping in the adjoining room again since she had recovered her health. She came in barefoot and in her nightdress, as she did every day, and threw her arms around Hélène’s neck. Then she ran off and snuggled up for a moment in her warm bed. She liked to do that, she laughed as she crept under the blanket. She said again:

  ‘Good morning, Maman!’

  And again off she went. This time she burst out laughing, she had thrown the sheet right over her head, and underneath it, a deep muffled voice cried:

  ‘I’m not here, I’m not here!’

  But Hélène was not playing like she did on other mornings. Then Jeanne grew bored and drifted off to sleep again. It was scarcely light. Towards eight Rosalie appeared and started to tell them what had happened to her that morning. Oh, it was a fine mess outside, she had almost lost her shoes in the mud when she went to fetch her milk. The thaw had really set in. The air was close because of it. You couldn’t breathe. Then suddenly she remembered: an old woman had called on Madame the day before.

  ‘Goodness!’ she cried, hearing a ring at the doorbell. ‘I’ll wager that’s her!’

  It was Mother Fétu, but she was extremely clean and resplendent in a white bonnet, a new dress, and a tartan scarf folded over her chest. But her wheedling voice had not changed.

  ‘It’s me, dear lady, I hope you don’t mind... Come about something I’ve got to ask you...’

  Hélène looked at her, rather surprised to see her so well-turned-out.

  ‘Are you feeling better, Mother Fétu?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m better, more or less. I still have something funny in my belly, you know; it rattles around inside, but still it’s a lot better. Well, I had some good luck. I was surprised, because you see, good luck and me... A gentleman has asked me to clean for him. Oh, it’s quite a story.’

  She faltered and her small beady eyes darted around in her wrinkled face with its countless lines and folds. She seemed to be waiting for Hélène to ask her something. But the latter, sitting near the fire that Rosalie had just lit, was only half listening, and wore an absorbed, distressed expression on her face.

  ‘What do you wish to ask me, Mother Fétu?’ she enquired.

  The old woman did not answer immediately. She had a good look round the room, at the rosewood furniture, the blue velvet curtains. And with the fawning voice of the humble poor, she murmured:

  ‘You’ve got a really lovely home here, Madame. Forgive me. My gentleman has a room like that but his room is pink. Oh, what a story! Imagine, a high-class gentleman’s come to rent an apartment in our house. What I’m saying is that on the first and second floor the apartments in our house are very nice. And so quiet! Not a cab to be heard, you’d think you were in the country... Well, the workmen were there for more than a fortnight; they have made it into a little gem...’

  She stopped, seeing that Hélène had become very attentive.

  ‘It’s for his work,’ she went on, with an even more pronounced drawl. ‘He says it’s for his work. We haven’t got a concierge, you see. That’s what he likes about it. He doesn’t like concierges, that man, and he’s quite right.’

  But she stopped talking again as though another idea had struck her.

  ‘But wait a moment! You must know him... He is seeing one of your friends.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Hélène, her face pale.

  ‘Yes of course. The lady next door, the one you used to go to church with... She came over the other day.’

  Mother Fétu’s eyes narrowed, surreptitiously trying to gauge Hélène’s reaction.

  ‘Did she go up and see him?’

  ‘No, she changed her mind, she’d mebbe forgotten something... I was at the door. She asked for Monsieur Vincent, then she got back into her cab and shouted to the coachman: “It’s too late, go home!” Oh, a very lively lady she is, very respectable. The good Lord doesn’t put many like her on this earth. Apart from you, she’s the only one. May God bless you all!’

  And she went on threading her vacuous words together, as effortlessly as a nun who has been interrupted in her telling of the rosary. And her wrinkled face continued to pucker mysteriously. She was beaming now, very sa
tisfied.

  ‘So,’ she went on without transition, ‘I’d really like a pair of good shoes. My gentleman has been really kind, but I can’t ask him that. I’ve got some good clothes, as you see, but I need a pair of good shoes. Mine have got holes in, look, and these muddy days you catch the colic. I had colic yesterday, and that’s a fact, I was jiggling around all afternoon. With a good pair of shoes...’

  ‘I’ll bring you a pair, Mother Fétu,’ said Hélène, waving her away.

  Then as the old woman was backing out with curtseys and thank-yous, she asked her:

  ‘What time will you be alone?’

  ‘My gentleman’s never there after six,’ she answered. ‘But don’t trouble yourself, I’ll come and get the shoes from your concierge. Well, whatever you say. You are an angel from paradise. The good Lord will reward you.’

  You could hear her exclaiming as she got to the landing. Hélène, still seated, remained dumbstruck by what the woman had just told her, with her oddly pertinent remarks. She knew where it was now. A rose-coloured room in that tumbledown house! She could see the stairs oozing with damp, the yellow doors on each landing blackened by sticky hands, all that poverty which had touched her heart last winter, when she went up to visit Mother Fétu. She tried to visualize the rose-coloured room in the middle of all that ugliness and poverty. But as she was sunk in a deep reverie, two warm little hands were placed on her sleepless red eyes and a laughing voice asked:

  ‘Who is it? Who is it?’

  It was Jeanne, who had just got dressed by herself. The voice of Mother Fétu had woken her. And seeing that the door of the adjoining room was shut she had hurried to play a trick on her mother. ‘Who is it? Who is it?’ she demanded again, more and more overcome with laughter.

  Then as Rosalie came in with breakfast:

  ‘Don’t say anything, will you? It’s not you I’m asking.’

  ‘Stop it, silly!’ said Hélène. ‘I know it’s you.’

  The little girl slid on to her mother’s lap, and there, leaning back, swinging to and fro, pleased with the idea she’d had, she insisted:

  ‘Well, it could have been another little girl, couldn’t it? A little girl who might have been bringing you a letter from her mother to invite you to dinner. Then she would have made you shut your eyes.’

  ‘Don’t be a donkey!’ Hélène replied, setting her on her feet. ‘What are you talking about? Serve us, Rosalie.’

  But the maid was studying the little girl, and saying that Mademoiselle was dressed in an odd fashion. In fact, Jeanne in her hurry had not put her shoes on. She was in her underwear, a short flannel petticoat, with a corner of the bodice protruding over the gap. Her unhooked flannelette camisole revealed her naked young body, a flat exquisitely slim chest, and the faint wavy outline of breasts that were scarcely pink. And with her dishevelled hair, walking in her stockinged feet, all put on back to front, she was adorable, all white in her higgledy-piggledy underwear.

  She leaned over, looked at herself and burst out giggling.

  ‘Look at me, Maman, how nice I look! Don’t you think so? I’m going to stay like that... I look so nice!’

  Hélène suppressed a gesture of impatience and asked the question she did every morning:

  ‘Have you washed your face?’

  ‘Oh, Maman,’ the child muttered, suddenly in a bad mood, ‘oh, Maman... It’s raining, it’s awful weather...’

  ‘Well, you won’t get any breakfast. Wash her face, Rosalie.’

  Normally she performed this task herself. But she was feeling really ill. She hugged the fire, shivering, although the weather was very mild. Rosalie had just pulled up the little table on which she had placed a cloth and two white china bowls. In front of the fire the coffee steamed in a silver coffee pot, a present from Monsieur Rambaud. At this time of the morning, the untidy room, still full of sleep and the night’s disarray, had a pleasing cosiness.

  ‘Maman, Maman!’ Jeanne shouted from the back of the bedroom, ‘she’s rubbing too hard, it’s burning me! Oh, how cold it is!’

  Her eyes fixed on the coffee pot, Hélène was in a deep reverie. She wanted to know. She would go. It annoyed and worried her when she thought about the hidden rendezvous in that squalid corner of Paris. She found its mysterious nature in execrable taste. She recognized the signature of Malignon all over it, his romantic imagination, his craze for reviving the maisons de passe of the Regency* with little cost to himself. And yet, in spite of her disgust, she was excited, fascinated, her senses full of the silence and the dim light which would prevail in the rose-coloured bedroom.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ Rosalie kept saying, ‘if you don’t let me wash you I’m going to call Madame.’

  ‘Watch out, you are getting soap in my eyes!’ replied Jeanne. Her voice was choked with tears.

  ‘That’s enough, let me go! You can do my ears tomorrow.’

  But the water kept running, you could hear the sponge dripping in the basin. There was the noise of a struggle. The child cried. Then almost immediately she emerged, very cheery, shouting:

  ‘It’s all over, it’s all over!’

  And, with her hair still damp, and clean-smelling and pink from the rubbing, she gave herself a shake. In the struggle her camisole had slipped; her petticoat was coming undone; her stockings were falling down and revealing her little legs. She really did, as Rosalie said, look like the infant Jesus. But Jeanne was very proud of being clean; she didn’t want to be dressed again.

  ‘Look at me, Maman, look at my hands, my neck, and my ears. What do you think? Perfect! You won’t believe it, I’ve certainly deserved my breakfast today.’

  She had curled up in a ball in front of the fire, in her little armchair. Rosalie poured the coffee. Jeanne took her bowl on her lap, gravely dunking her toasted bread with a grown-up expression on her face. Normally Hélène did not let her eat like that. But she was still preoccupied. She left her bread and just drank the coffee. When she had got to the last mouthful, Jeanne was remorseful. She was overcome with sadness and threw her arms round her mother’s neck when she saw she was so pale.

  ‘Maman, are you poorly now? Did I make you sad?’

  ‘No, darling, you are a lovely girl,’ murmured Hélène, giving her a kiss. ‘But I’m a bit tired, I didn’t sleep very well... Go and play, and don’t worry.’

  She thought that the day was going to be dreadfully long. Whatever was she going to do until night came? For some time now she had not touched a needle, the work seemed to weigh heavily on her. She sat for hours, her hands idle, finding it stuffy in her room and needing to go out for fresh air, but not moving. It was that room that was making her ill. She loathed it now, cross at having spent two years in it. She hated it, its blue velvet, its panoramic view of the city, and dreamed of a small apartment in a noisy street which would have numbed her feelings. Oh heavens, how slowly the time passed! She took up a book, but the thought which she couldn’t get out of her head continually evoked the same images between her eyes and the page she had begun. Meanwhile Rosalie had tidied the room, Jeanne was dressed and had done her hair. Then the little girl, who was having one of her noisy, jolly days, began a great game amongst the furniture which was back in its place, while her mother, at the window, was trying to read. She was alone; but that didn’t bother her, she played the part of three or four people with a conviction and a seriousness that was very funny. First she played the part of a lady making visits. She disappeared into the dining room, then came back with a greeting, a smile, and a coquettish turn of the head.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame. How are you, Madame? We haven’t seen you for such a long time. It really is a wonder... Oh, I’ve been so poorly. Yes, I had cholera, it was very disagreeable. Oh, you can’t see it at all. You look younger than ever, I do declare! And how are your children, Madame? I have had three since last summer.’

  She went on curtseying in front of the little table, which no doubt represented the lady she was visiting. Then she moved over to the sofa and ca
rried on a general conversation lasting an hour, with a really extraordinary wealth of phrases.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Jeanne,’ said her mother from time to time, impatient with her chattering.

  ‘But Maman, I am at my friend’s house. She’s speaking to me so I have to answer. Isn’t it true that when you have tea, you don’t put the cakes in your pocket?’

  And off she went again:

  ‘Goodbye, Madame. Your tea was delicious... Say hello to your good husband.’

  Suddenly it was completely different. She was going out in her carriage, she was going shopping, sitting astride the chair like a boy.

  ‘Jean, not so fast, I’m scared. Now stop! We are outside the hat shop... How much is that hat, Mademoiselle? Three hundred francs, that’s not dear. But it’s not very nice. I’d like one with a bird on top, as big as this... Come, Jean, drive me to the grocer’s. You haven’t any honey? Yes, we have, Madame, here it is. It’s very good! I don’t want any, give me twopence worth of sugar... Oh, do be careful, Jean! The coach has turned over! Monsieur le Sergent, the cart crashed into us. You are not hurt, Madame? No, Monsieur, not in the slightest. Jean, Jean. We’re going home. Giddy up, giddy up! Wait, I am going to order some chemises. Three dozen chemises for Madame. I also need some little boots and a bodice. Get along now! Get along, for goodness’ sake, we shall never get home!’

  And she fanned herself, she acted the part of the lady going home and telling her servants off. She was never short of things to say. It was an excited and constant stream of fantastic imaginings, a condensation of the life that was simmering away in her little head and coming out in stray bits and pieces. In the morning, or afternoon, she ran round, danced, chatted. When she was tired, a stool, a sunshade she saw in a corner, a rag she’d picked up from the floor was enough to get her started on another game, with new spurts of inventiveness. She created everything, the characters, the places, the scenes; and she enjoyed herself as much as if she had a dozen children with her of her own age.