Sunday (3 page)

He had never been further than La Roche-sur-Yon and Les Sables-d'Olonne to the north, La Rochelle to the south, Niort to the east.

He saw only local country folk, a few commercial travellers, pedlars, the occasional lawyer lunching at the hotel and, in summer, tourists merely passing through.

He could not remember any real conversation with his father. As for his mother, she seemed to bear a grudge against him for being born six years after her two other children, when she was counting on not having any more.

Even as a small child he had not dared tell her, for example, that he had a tummy ache, as she would then look at him with the eye of somebody who knows better, somebody who is not to be deceived.

'You're just pretending to have a tummy ache because you haven't done your homework and you're afraid of going to school.'

This had struck him forcibly. She used to reason in this way about everything. And as there was some truth in it since indeed he did not know his lesson, it had bothered him for a long time.

He had ended by finding out that he really did have a tummy ache— so he was not
pretending
—because he did not know his lesson and therefore because he was afraid.

As for his father, he did not trouble about such matters. He lived in a world of big personalities, men who talked about meadows, hay, heads of cattle or local politics, over carafes of wine or glasses of liqueur.

Perhaps Emile had only accompanied him that day because it had been raining since morning, and he was bored in the house where he had never had any place to himself. His sister, Odile, who was twenty-two, had her own room. He slept in his brother Henri's room, an attic like Ada's, and he had nothing in common with Henri who, at twenty, was already the replica of his father.

Henri worked with a cattle-dealer and would become a cattle-dealer in his turn, which would not prevent him from taking over the Ox and Crown. It all went together.

It was not long before Odile married a tall fair-haired clerk from Luçon.

As for Emile, he would have to look after himself as best as he could.

That was more or less his situation at this period. He was smaller than the rest of the family, and while the others were tough and gnarled he was ashamed of the chubbiness of his body.

The cart had stopped first at the Goods Station, where his father loaded up with some sacks, probably of fertiliser. Then, not far from the Cathedral, while the rain was still falling in buckets, they had made a halt at the Three Bells.

'Out you get,' his father had said.

The Three Bells deserved to be called a hotel because of its big white façade, its two dining-rooms, the bathroom on each floor and the coat of arms displayed at either side of the door, but it was also an inn where, on market days, the stables were full of horses, there were waggons in the yard, and more or less drunken peasants in the dining-rooms and kitchen.

Louis Harnaud, called Big Louis, was a friend of his father's and passed for a rich man. His complexion was highly coloured, almost violet, for he drank from morning to night, in his white uniform and chef's cap, with customers whom, had it been necessary, he would have gone out to find in the street.

'Good to see you, Honore . . . Have you brought the lad along? . . . Sit down, while I just go and fetch a bottle . . .'

There was, as well, a cash-desk in the hall, at which, on days when there was a crowd, the worthy Madame Harnaud would take her place with as much gravity as if she were ascending a throne.

Their daughter, Berthe, had gone to the same school as Emile, but being two years older, she had already passed her certificate. He had not seen her that day. Perhaps she had gone to her piano lesson?

The three of them were ensconced in a corner of the room where the set meal was served, and through the lace curtains Emile could see the rain falling, passers-by holding their umbrellas like shields.

'I was saying to my wife only yesterday that I wanted to talk to you . . .'

Emile was used to these conversations, slow to get started, as if each mistrusted the other, and one might still have thought they were discussing the sale of a meadow or a cow.

'Do you like it at Champagne?'

His father, who did not know what was coming next, prudently said nothing.

'What about your elder boy?'

'He's doing all right . . .'

'I gather your daughter's getting married?'

Everybody in the neighbourhood knew about it. These then were just preliminary manoeuvres, yet despite the apparent futility of the words, each one of them counted.

'If I thought of you straight away it was because I had the impression —though I may be wrong—that you were ambitious for your sons . . .'

As he said this he was looking at Emile as if to enlist him as his accomplice.

'It never occurred to you to set yourself up in a more important place than Champagne?'

'It was good enough for my parents and grandparents. I suppose it's good enough for my children.

'Listen, Honore . . .'

They had been at school together and both of them were innkeeper's sons.

'Anyway, here's to you!'

Just then Madame Harnaud had pushed open the door and, seeing the two men talking, had withdrawn without a sound.

'Mind you, I don't want to influence you. I'm going to say what I have in mind because I like you, and I know your worth . . .'

He was taking a long, roundabout route before coming to the point.

'You must have heard that Madame Harnaud and I finally treated ourselves to a holiday . . .'

He was not the only person to call his wife by her surname. Most of the local businessmen did the same.

'For years she's wanted to see the Riviera, and we went and spent three weeks in Nice . . .'

He was tipping his chair back, his glass in his hand, a more sly look in his eye.

'You've never been there, have you?'

'Never.'

'Perhaps it would be just as well if you never did.'

That made him laugh.

'Do you know that in November, down there, you can go about without an overcoat and there are still enough tourists to fill half the hotels?'

When he finally got to the matter in hand, the bottle was empty and he went off to fetch another.

'I'm fifty-eight years of age, seven months younger than you are. See how well I remember? For some time now I've been thinking about retiring, as my liver and my kidneys are giving me trouble and the doctor says my way of life doesn't help matters. Wait a second . . .'

He went out, came back with some postcards and photographs.

'First, just have a glance at those . . .'

There was a panorama of Nice, with the Baie des Anges in deep blue, other views of the town, of Antibes, Cannes, women in picturesque costume, their arms loaded with flowers, a little fishing port, probably Golfe-Juan, with nets drying along the jetty.

'Do you know what sort of people you meet mostly in Nice and around those parts? People like us, like you and me, who have drudged all their lives to put a bit of money aside and finally made up their minds to have a good time. That's what it is! I must say I began by wondering whether I wouldn't follow their example, buy a flat or a bungalow and retire there with my wife and daughter.

'Then I started looking at the advertisements. The place is full of agencies, as they call them, which rent and sell villas and businesses.

'Just look at that

He spread out on the table some photographs ranging from those showing Provencal farmsteads to some of five-storey blocks on the Promenade des Anglais.

'It took a chance visit to a little restaurant I had been recommended for me to catch on. The owner is a man of our age. I realized, from his accent, that he wasn't from those parts and he told me he came from the Dunkirk area. A fellow like us, in fact! One fine day he got fed up with working in a place where it rained half the year round. As he hadn't enough money to live off his investments, he took this small restaurant I was telling you about. He doesn't have to worry. Half the year he is to all intents and purposes on holiday, and in the morning he goes out fishing . . .'

Big Louis was becoming excited, and finally he played his trump card, the photograph of an old farmhouse, somewhat dilapidated, flanked by two big olive trees and surrounded by a pine wood. Between the hills, on the horizon, could be caught the shimmer of the sea.

'It's mine, Honore! Too bad if I've made a fool of myself, but I've bought that little lot and I'm going to build it up into something good. There's a fellow on the spot who isn't an architect but knows the business better than if he were one, who's busy drawing up the plans. There will be a restaurant, a bar, five bedrooms for tourists and I will even be able to keep chickens and rabbits, not to mention that I've enough vines to make my own wine.

'I'm selling the Three Bells. I need hardly add that if you like the idea, I'll give you first refusal and you can have as long as you like to pay for it . . .

'With two sons . . .'

Honore Fayolle had limited himself to a nod of the head, without saying yes or no. In the end, after discussions in low voices in the inn at Champagne, it had been no.

Big Louis had duly sold the Three Bells to someone who had made enough money in a Paris bar and had dreamed of ending his days in a small provincial town.

The Harnauds, father, mother and daughter, had left the district to set up house at La Bastide between Mouans-Sartoux and Pegomas.

In actual fact, this was the real beginning, in so far as a beginning exists.

For four years, Emile had heard no further mention of the Harnauds nor of the Riviera.

After he had passed his certificate, his father had asked him:

'What are you planning to do?'

He had no idea, except that he had decided to leave Champagne.

'The owner of the Hotel des Flots at Les Sables is looking for an apprentice kitchen-hand for the season.'

He liked the vast beach at Les Sables-d'Olonne, the swarms of people from the far corners of France. He had scarcely been able to take advantage of it that summer, confined as he was for most of the time in the basement kitchen.

In October the proprietor had recommended him to a colleague in Paris, who kept a small restaurant near Les Halles, and he had worked there for two years. He had even followed, if somewhat erratically, a course in hotel management.

He was nineteen and was doing a season at Vichy when he received a letter from his father, which was a rare event. It was written in purple pencil, on writing-paper sold in packets of six sheets with six envelopes at the grocery in Champagne.

'Your mother is well. She has hardly any more trouble with her rheumatics. Your brother is getting married, in the spring, to the Gillou girl, and they are both setting up house here. I'm just writing to tell you that Big Louis, who used to keep the Three Bells at Luçon, as I am sure you will remember, has had a stroke and is half paralyzed. He has started a good business near Cannes and his wife has let me know he would be pleased if you would like to go and work with them. Their daughter Berthe is not married. They have no son and they are in a difficult position . . .'

A further link in the chain. He had read this letter in the huge kitchen of a big hotel at Vichy where there were fifteen of them, with napkins around their necks, caps on their heads, bustling round the ovens.

Was it, perhaps, the change which had attracted him? He did not like the chef, and the chef did not like him. He had left that very day, and on the next he first set eyes on La Bastide, which had become only a part of what it was now.

Big Louis, who was no longer big, but flaccid, with cheeks which hung like those of an old dog, was seated in a wheel-chair, on the terrace and could utter only barely distinguishable grunts.

His wife, whose hair had turned white, made an attempt to appear delighted, but the moment she was no longer in her husband's presence began to cry.

'I'm so glad you've come, Emile! If only you knew how unhappy I have been down here! When I think that it was I who dreamed about it all my life and persuaded Louis to come and spend his holidays in Nice . . .'

As for Berthe, she was just as she was today, as calm, as secretive, as wanting in softness, and yet she was a pretty, fair-haired girl with a well-rounded figure.

From the first months everything had gone badly for the Harnauds at La Bastide. First of all the famous Van Camp, who had sold them the property and pretended to understand everything better than an architect, had made plans which, when the masons and carpenters tried to execute them, had turned out to be impossible.

He had not taken into account the slope of the ground nor the distance from the well, nor the thickness of the existing walls, so that they had to undo part of what was already finished, dig a new well, change the position of the septic tank.

On the pretext that this was the Midi, Van Camp had not allowed for heating, and the very first winter they had been frozen up, in spite of having electric heaters on so that they blew the fuses.

Finally Big Louis had discovered, at Mouans-Sartoux, a
bistrot
where at every hour of the day he could find company, and he had switched over from white wine to
pastis.

At this period Ada must have been about nine years old, and if she were already in the neighbourhood, Emile had taken no more notice of her than of the other children he used to see sometimes on the roadside. Nor had he heard any mention of Pascali, who had, however, taken part at one stage in the building operations.

That the inn had been finished in spite of everything was almost a miracle, and, with Big Louis now incapacitated, there were only the two women left to look after it.

Big Louis had lived another two years, part of them in his bed, part in the downstairs room or on the terrace, and Emile eventually succeeded in understanding, as Madame Harnaud and Berthe did, the sounds he emitted.

It was Emile, at that time, who occupied the attic which had now become Ada's room, and there were already the same iron bed, several of the stains on the wall, but not the coloured print of the Virigin Mary.