A Life (31 page)

As soon as the boy was free, he would come down to help his mother and aunt in the garden. They had developed a passion for gardening; and they would all three plant saplings in the spring, and sow seeds and eagerly watch them germinate and grow, and prune branches, and cut flowers to make bouquets.

The young lad was particularly interested in growing different varieties of salad leaf. He was in charge of four large squares in  the kitchen garden where, with the utmost care, he grew cabbage-lettuce, cos lettuce, royal lettuce, chicory, endive, succory, in fact every known variety of edible leaf. He would dig, and water, and hoe, and prick out, assisted by his two 'mothers' whom he kept to the task as though they were hired hands. They were to be seen kneeling in the plant-beds for hours on end, getting dirt on their dresses, their hands busy inserting the roots of young plants into the holes they made by pushing a single finger straight down into the soil.

Pullie was growing tall, and had almost reached the age of fifteen; and the scale in the drawing-room showed one metre, fifty-eight; but mentally he was still a child, ignorant and foolish; smothered between these two petticoats and this kind old man who belonged to another era.

Eventually one evening the Baron talked of sending him to school; and immediately Jeanne burst into tears. Aunt Lison, aghast, sat quietly in a dark corner of the room.

The boy's mother replied:

'What does he want with all that knowledge? We'll make him a man of the soil, a country gentleman. He can cultivate his estates, the way lots of noblemen do. He can live and grow old happily here in this house where we have lived and where we shall die. What more could one want?'

But the Baron shook his head:

'What will you say when he comes to you at the age of twenty-five and says: ''I'm nobody, I know nothing, and all because of you, because of your selfishness as a mother. I don't feel equipped to work, to become someone, and yet I wasn't meant for this thoroughly dreary life of humble obscurity to which your thoughtless affection has condemned me."'

She was still crying, and appealing to her son:

'Tell me, Pullie, tell me you won't ever reproach me for loving you too much. You won't, will you?'

And the tall lad looked surprised, and promised:

'No, Mother.'

'You swear?'

'Yes, Mother.'

'You do want to stay here, don't you?'

'Yes, Mother.'

Then the Baron said in a firm, loud voice:

'Jeanne, you have no right to decide his life for him. What you're doing is cowardly, almost criminal. You're sacrificing your child to your own personal happiness.'

She hid her face in her hands, her sobs coming in rapid succession, and she stammered through her tears:

'I've been so unhappy . . . so unhappy! And now that life is peaceful, here with him, he is to be taken away from me. . . . What will become of me . . . all, alone . . . from now on?'

Her father got up, came and sat beside her, and took her in his arms:

'And what about me, Jeanne?'

She suddenly flung her arms round his neck and embraced him wildly. Then, still choking with tears, she managed to say in a strangled voice:

'Yes, you're right. . . . Perhaps you're right . . . Papa. It was silly of me, but I have suffered so much. Yes, of course, let him go to school.'

And Paul, not quite understanding what was going to happen to him, began to cry also.

Then his three 'mothers' embraced him, cajoling him and trying to cheer him up. And when they all went up to bed, they each had a heavy heart and cried into their pillows, even the Baron, who had been hiding his feelings.

It was decided to send the boy to the college in Le Havre at the beginning of the coming school year; and throughout the summer he was spoiled even more than he had been before.

His mother's heart sank repeatedly at the prospect of their separation. She assembled what he would need as if he were departing on a voyage that was to last ten years. Then one morning in October, after a sleepless night, the two women and the Baron boarded the carriage with him, and the two horses set off at the trot.

On a previous visit they had already chosen his place in the dormitory and where he would sit in the classroom. Jeanne, with

Aunt Lison's assistance, spent the whole day unpacking his clothes and arranging them in the small chest of drawers. Since it was not big enough to hold even a quarter of what they had brought, she went to find the headmaster to ask him for a second. The bursar was summoned; he pointed out that such a quantity of linen and personal effects would never all be used and would simply serve to get in the way; and he refused to allocate another chest of drawers on the grounds that it was against the rules. Mother was heartbroken, and decided thereupon to rent a room in a small hotel nearby, instructing the proprietor to take Pullie whatever he needed as soon as the child asked for it.

Then they went for a walk along the quayside to watch the ships passing in and out of the harbour.

This sad day was drawing to a close, and dusk fell on the town, which was gradually lighting up. They went to a restaurant for dinner. None of them was hungry; and they looked at each other with moist eyes as dish after dish was placed before them and went back almost untouched.

Then they set off slowly to return to the college. Children of all ages were arriving from every direction, brought by their families or by servants. Many were crying. The sound of weeping could be heard all over the dimly lit courtyard.

Jeanne and Pullie held each other in a long embrace. Aunt Lison stayed in the background, completely forgotten, her face buried in a handkerchief. But the Baron, who was becoming upset, cut short the farewells and dragged his daughter away. The carriage was waiting by the gate; the three of them climbed in and drove back through the night to Les Peuples.

From time to time a loud sob echoed in the darkness.

The following day Jeanne wept until evening. On the day after that she ordered the phaeton and set off for Le Havre. Pullie seemed to have got over their parting. For the first time in his life he had friends of his own age; and the desire to go and play made him fidget as he sat in the visitors' parlour.

Jeanne returned like this every other day, and on Sunday for the exeats. Not knowing what to do between break-times, during the lessons, she would remain sitting in the parlour, having  neither the strength nor the courage to leave the school. The headmaster asked to see her and requested that she visit less frequently. She ignored the suggestion.

He then informed her that if she continued to prevent her son from playing during the recreation periods and from working without her constant interruptions, they would be forced to send him back home to her; and the Baron was informed accordingly in writing. So she remained at Les Peuples, under detention as though she were a prisoner.

She waited for the holidays even more anxiously than her son. And her soul was filled with constant worry. She began to roam around the countryside, spending whole days on solitary walks with Slaughter the dog, absently dreaming. Sometimes she would remain sitting all afternoon gazing out to sea from the top of a cliff; sometimes she would go down to Yport through the wood, retracing the steps of former walks the memory of which still haunted her. What a long, long, time ago that was, when as a young girl she used to wander round this same countryside, intoxicated by her dreams.

On each occasion that she saw her son again, it was as though they had not met for ten years. With each month that passed he was turning into a man; and with each month that passed she was becoming an old woman. Her father seemed more like her brother now; and Aunt Lison, who seemed not to age, having lost the bloom of youth when she was twenty-five, looked more like an elder sister.

Pullie hardly did any work; he had to stay down for a year in the third form. Somehow he got through the fourth form, but he had to do another year in the fifth; and he was still only in the lower sixth by the time he had reached the age of twenty.

He had grown into a tall, fair-haired boy, with sideburns that were already bushy and the beginnings of a moustache. It was now he who would make the journey to Les Peuples every Sunday. Since he had been taking riding lessons for some time, he simply hired a horse and rode home in two hours.

In the morning Jeanne would set out to meet him, accompanied by her aunt and the Baron, who was now becoming more  and more stooped and walked along like a little old man, his hands clasped behind his back as though to prevent himself pitching forward onto his nose.

They would walk slowly along the road, occasionally sitting down by the roadside and peering into the distance to see if they could catch sight of the rider yet. As soon as he appeared like a black dot on the white line of the road, the three of them would wave their handkerchiefs; and he would put his horse to the gallop and arrive like a hurricane, which left Jeanne and Lison with their hearts in their mouths but delighted his grandfather, who would cry 'Bravo' with the enthusiasm of one whose riding days were over.

Although Paul was a head taller than his mother, she always treated him like a small boy and still asked him 'Are your feet warm enough, Pullie?'; and when he went for a walk at the bottom of the front steps after lunch, to smoke a cigarette, she would open the window and shout:

'Please, you really must not go out without something on your head. You'll catch your death of cold.'

And she worried terribly when he set off to ride back after dark:

'Whatever you do, don't go too fast, my dear little Pullie. You will be careful, won't you? Think of your poor mother, how miserable she would be if anything happened to you.'

But then, one Saturday morning, she received a letter from Paul announcing that he would not be coming home the next day because some friends had arranged an outing to which he was invited.

She was beside herself with anxiety throughout the whole of Sunday, as though some disaster threatened; and by Thursday she could bear it no longer, and set off for Le Havre.

He looked different to her, without her being able to explain quite why. He seemed excited, and spoke in a more manly voice. And all of a sudden he said to her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:

'You know, Mother, since you've come to see me today, I think I shan't come home again next Sunday, because we're planning another outing.'

She was completely taken aback, dumbstruck, as though as he had announced that he was leaving for the New World. Then, when at last she could speak, she said:

'Oh, Pullie, what is it? Tell me, what's going on?'

He began to laugh and gave her a kiss:

'But absolutely nothing's going on, Mother. I'm just going to have fun with some friends. People of my age do that sort of thing.'

She could think of no reply, and when she was alone in the carriage once more, some singular thoughts occurred to her. She had not recognized her Pullie, her little Pullie of old. For the first time she realized that he was grown up, that he no longer belonged to her, that he was going to start living his own life without worrying about his elders. It seemed to her that he had changed overnight. Was this her son, the same dear little child who had once had her pricking out lettuces, this grown man with a beard and, increasingly it seemed, a life of his own?

And for the next three months Paul came home to see his family only on rare occasions; he was always clearly eager to be off again as soon as he could, and each evening he tried to leave an hour earlier. Jeanne was becoming alarmed, and the Baron kept endeavouring to comfort her:

'Let him be. The boy's twenty now.'

But one morning a rather shabbily dressed old man called and asked in German-sounding French for 'Matame la Vicomtesh.'

After much bowing and scraping he took a dirty wallet from his pocket and said: 'I hab a leetle beet of paper for you;' and he unfolded a sheet of greasy paper and handed it to her.

She read it once, read it twice, looked at the Jew, read it a third time, and then asked:

'What does this mean?'

The man explained obsequiously:

'I vill tell you. Your son is habing need of a leetle money, and since I am knoving zat you are a good movver to heem, I lend heem a leetle zumzing to help heem.'

She was shaking.

'But why did he not ask me himself?'

The Jew explained at length that it was a matter of a gambling debt which had to be paid by noon the next day; that since Paul had not yet reached the age of majority, no one else would have made him a loan; and that his 'honour vould hab been compromised' without the 'leetle favour' that he had done the young man.

Jeanne wanted to summon the Baron, but she was so numb with shock that she was unable to get up. Eventually she said to the moneylender:

'Would you be so kind as to ring the bell for me?'

He hesitated, fearing a trick, and mumbled:

'If I deesturb you, I komm back anover day.'

She shook her head. He rang the bell; and they waited, in silence, the one facing the other.

When the Baron arrived, he saw the situation at once. The note was for fifteen hundred francs. He paid him a thousand and said, looking him straight in the eye:

'And don't come back.'

The man thanked him, bid them good-day, and disappeared.

Mother and Grandfather set off at once for Le Havre; but on arriving at the school, they were told that Paul had not been there for the past month. The headmaster had received four letters signed by Jeanne saying that his pupil was ill and subsequently giving news of his progress. Each letter had been accompanied by a medical certificateall forgeries, of course. They were flabbergasted, and sat there staring at each other.

The headmaster, having expressed his regrets, escorted them to the police station. They spent the night at a hotel.

The next day the young man was found lodging in the town with a kept woman. His mother and grandfather took him back to Les Peuples, and not one word was exchanged throughout the journey. Jeanne wept, her face hidden in her handkerchief; while Paul looked out of the window with an air of indifference.