A Life (27 page)

'Father . . .', then she hesitated.

'Father . . .', she said again, and fell silent, completely tongue-tied.

He waited, his hands crossed over his stomach. Seeing her embarrassment, he encouraged her:

'Well, my daughter, it would seem you cannot dare to speak. Come, don't be afraid.'

She made up her mind, like a coward steeling himself for the plunge:

'Father, I would like to have another child.'

He made no reply, not understanding the problem.

Then she tried to explain the position, panicking as the words failed to come.

'I am all alone now. My father and my husband barely get on. My mother is dead, and . . . and only the other day,' she whispered in a shaking, voice, 'I nearly lost my son! What would have become of me then?'

She fell silent. The priest looked at her in bewilderment:

'Come now, to the point.'

She repeated:

'I would like another child.'

Then he smiled, accustomed to the coarse jokes of the farm-workers who were seldom inhibited by his presence, and he replied with a sly nod:

'Well, it seems to me that the matter lies entirely with you.'

She raised her candid eyes towards him and stuttered in embarrassment:

'But . . . but . . . you see . . . ever since that . . . that business . . . you know. . . . with the maid . . . my husband and I . . . we live . . . we live quite separately.'

Accustomed to the promiscuous and undignified mores of the countryside, he was quite taken aback by this revelation. Then immediately he thought he could guess what the young woman really wanted. He gave her a sideways look, full of benevolence and sympathy towards her in her distress:

'Yes, I quite understand. I see that your . . . your widowhood is a burden. You are young and healthy. And after all, it's natural, only too natural.'

He began to smile again, carried away by the earthy humour of a country priest, and he tapped Jeanne gently on the hand:

'It is permissible, thoroughly permissible even, in the context of the commandments.''Thou shalt seek carnal knowledge only within marriage."You are married, are you not? Well, you didn't get married just to plant out the turnips, did you?'

She for her part had not quite understood his hidden meaning at first; but as soon as she realized what he did mean, she turned bright crimson, profoundly shocked, and her eyes filled with tears.

'Oh, Father, what are you saying? What are you thinking of? I swear to you . . . I swear to you . . .' And the sobs choked her into silence.

He was surprised, and tried to console her:

'Come now, I didn't mean to upset you. It was just a little joke really, and there's no harm in a joke between decent people. But you can count on me, you can count on me. I shall speak to Monsieur Julien.'

She did not know what to say any more. She wanted to prevent this intervention which she feared might be dangerous and the wrong way to go about things, but she did not dare; and she made her escape with a stammered 'Thank you, Father'.

A week passed. She lived in a constant state of anxiety.

One evening, at dinner, Julien looked at her oddly, as a particular smile played across his lips that she associated with him in his more puckish moments. He was almost, with just a hint  of irony, being amorous with her; and when they were walking subsequently in Mama's long avenue, he whispered in her ear:

'It would appear that we have patched things up.'

She made no reply. She was staring at the remains of a straight line running along the ground, almost invisible under the grass that had grown over it. It was the trail left by the Baroness's dragging foot, and now fading like a memory. Jeanne felt her heart contract, overwhelmed by sadness; she felt lost in the midst of life, so isolated from everyone.

Julien continued:

'Nothing would make me happier. I was afraid you might not want me.'

The sun was going down, and the air was mild. Jeanne felt like crying: it was one of those moments when a person needs to open her heart to a friendly soul, to hug someone and confide her troubles. A sob rose to her throat. She opened her arms wide and flung herself against Julien's chest.

And she wept. Surprised, he gazed into her hair, unable to see the face hidden under his chin. He thought that she still loved him, and he placed a condescending kiss on her chignon.

Then they went indoors in silence. He followed her to her room, and spent the night with her.

And so their former relations began anew. He undertook them as a duty which was not, nevertheless, unpleasurable; she underwent them as a distasteful and painful necessity, fully intending to bring them to a halt once and for all as soon as she was pregnant again.

But presently she noticed that her husband's caresses seemed different from before, more refined perhaps, but less complete. He treated her rather as would a circumspect lover, and no longer as a carefree husband.

She was surprised and then realized, having observed matters more closely, that all his embraces ceased before she could be made pregnant.

Then one night, her lips against his, she murmured:

'Why don't you give yourself to me completely the way you used to?'

He began to sneer:

'Good heavens, so as not to make you pregnant, of course.'

She gave a start:

'But why don't you want any more children?'

He was almost speechless with astonishment:

'What? What did you say? Are you mad? Another child? Honestly, what an idea! It's bad enough having one of them bawling its head off, and having everybody running after it, and costing money. Another child? No thank you!'

She held him to her, kissed him, wrapped him in love, and whispered:

'Oh, please, I beg you, make me a mother just once more.' But he became angry, as though she had insulted him:

'Really, you're out of your mind. Please, no more of such silliness.'

She fell silent but resolved to trick him into giving her the happiness of which she dreamed.

So she tried to prolong his embraces, pretending a wild passion, holding him tightly in her arms in simulated ecstasies. She tried every ruse, but he remained within the bounds of self-control. Not once did he forget himself.

In the end, tormented more and more by her desperate desire, driven to the limit and ready to face anything, to take every risk, she went back to see the Abbé Picot.

He was just finishing his lunch and looked very red in the face, for he always had palpitations after meals. When he saw her enter the room, he cried: 'Well?', anxious to know the result of his negotiations.

Filled now with resolve and no longer bashful and timid, she replied at once:

'My husband doesn't want any more children.'

The Abbé turned towards her, profoundly interested, ready to pry with priestly curiosity into these mysteries of the marriage bed that made the confessional such an agreeable place for him.

'How do you mean?' he asked.

Then, despite her determination, she found it difficult to explain:

'Well, because he . . . he refuses to make me a mother.'

The Abbé understood; he knew about these things; and he began to question her in precise and minute detail, with the avid relish of a man who has been fasting.

Then he reflected for a few moments, and calmly, as though he had been talking of a harvest safely gathered in, he outlined a cunning plan of action, arranging it in every particular:

'There's only one thing you can do, my dear child, which is to make him think that you are already pregnant. He will stop controlling himself; and then you really will be.'

She blushed to her eyeballs; but, being prepared for everything, she persisted:

'And . . . if he doesn't believe me?'

The priest knew what it took to have a hold on a man and make him do what was wanted:

'Tell everyone, wherever you are, that you're pregnant, and eventually he'll believe it himself.'

Then he added by way of exonerating himself for this stratagem:

'It is your right. The Church tolerates relations between men and women only for the purpose of procreation.'

She followed his astute advice, and a fortnight later she announced to Julien that she thought she was pregnant. He jumped:

'It's not possible! It can't be true!'

At once she specified the reason for her supposition. But he was reassured:

'Pah! Just wait a while. You'll see.'

Thereafter he enquired each morning: 'Well?' And each time she replied: 'No, not yet. I shall be very surprised if I'm proved wrong.'

He in his turn became anxious, at once furious and downcast, as well as thoroughly baffled. He kept saying:

'But I just don't understand it. If only I knew how it happened. It's quite beyond me.'

A month later she announced the fact to all and sundry, except for the Comtesse Gilberte, out of a complex and delicate reticence.

Ever since he had first become worried about the matter, Julien had stopped going to her room. But eventually he swallowed his anger and accepted the situation:

'Well, that's one we didn't ask for.'

And he began once more to visit his wife's bedroom.

What the priest had foreseen came to pass perfectly. She became pregnant.

Thereupon, filled with delirious joy, she locked her door each night, dedicating herselfin a fit of gratitude towards the ill-defined deity she worshippedto eternal chastity.

She felt almost happy once again, and surprised at the speed with which the pain she had felt at her mother's death had eased. She had thought herself inconsolable; and now in barely two months the wound had healed. She was left with merely a sense of affectionate regret, like a veil of sorrow placed across her life. No new major event in her life now seemed possible. Her children would grow up adoring her, while she herself would grow old in peaceful contentment, not giving a thought to her husband.

Towards the end of September the Abbé a formal visit, wearing a new cassock with only one week's stains on it; and he introduced his successor, the Abbé Tolbiac. This priest was very young, thin, and extremely short, with a portentous way of speaking, and his deep-set eyes surrounded by dark rings bespoke a violent soul.

The old priest had been appointed Dean of Goderville.

Jeanne felt real sadness at this departure. The good fellow's face was bound up with all her memories of early womanhood. He had married her, baptized Paul, and buried the Baroness. She could not imagine Étouvent without the Abbé's paunch passing along the line of farmyards; and she liked him because he was cheerful and unaffected.

Despite his preferment he did not seem to be in good spirits.

'It's not easy for me, Madame la Comtesse, it's not easy,' he kept saying. 'I've been here these eighteen years now. Oh, the parish doesn't bring in much, it doesn't have much. The men have no more religion than they need, and the women, well, the women are not exactly well-behaved. The girls only come to  church to get married after they've made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Fat Stomach, and orange blossom comes cheaply in these parts. But, no matter, I've loved it here.'

The new priest was gesturing crossly and getting red in the face. He said sharply:

'Now I'm here, that will all have to change.'

He was like a child having a tantrum, all scrawny and frail-looking in his cassock that was already well-worn but clean nonetheless.

The Abbé cocked an eye at him, as he always did in moments of merriment, and continued:

'Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé, you know, to stop that kind of thing going on you'd have to chain your parishioners up. And even then it wouldn't help.'

The little priest replied curtly:

'We shall see.'

And the old priest smiled as he took a pinch of snuff:

'Age will calm you, Monsieur l'Abbé, and experience too. You'll only succeed in driving the rest of the faithful away. People round here believe all right, but after their own stubborn fashion. So beware. My goodness, when I see a girl coming to church who looks a bit fat, I tell myself"Well, that's one more parishioner she's bringing me"and I try and find her a husband. You won't stop them sinning, you see. But you can go and find the lad and prevent him from abandoning the mother. See them married, Monsieur l'Abbé, see them married, and don't worry about anything else.'

The new priest replied roughly:

'We think differently, that's all. There's no point in our discussing the matter further.' And the Abbé Picot resumed his expressions of regret at having to leave this village of his, and the sea which he could see from the windows of the presbytery, and the little funnel-shaped valleys where he would go and recite his breviary, as he watched the boats passing in the distance.

Then the two priests took their leave. The old one embraced Jeanne, who nearly burst into tears.

One week later the Abbé Tolbiac returned. He talked about the  reforms he was introducing as though he were a prince taking possession of a kingdom. Then he requested the Vicomtesse always to attend Mass on Sundays and to take communion on every feast of the Church:

'You and I,' he said, 'are the leading figures of the locality. We must rule over it and always set an example for others to follow. And we must act as one if we are to be powerful and respected. With the church and the chateau walking hand in hand, the cottage will fear us and obey.'

Jeanne's religious beliefs were entirely a matter of sentiment. She had that star-gazing faith that no woman ever loses; and if she observed almost all of her religious duties, it was largely out of habit following her convent upbringing, for the Baron's free-thinking philosophy had long since undermined all her beliefs.

The Abbé Picot had been satisfied with the little she could give him and never admonished her. But his successor, having noticed her absence from church the previous Sunday, had come rushing to see her, troubled and ready to rebuke.

She did not wish to sever relations with the presbytery and promised to do as he asked, privately intending to oblige him as a dutiful churchgoer for no more than a few weeks.