Léon and Louise (34 page)

So the two women sat there in the autumn sunshine and ate raspberry gâteau together. They ate slowly and in silence, passing each other the sugar, whipped cream and paper napkins. One of them occasionally said something and the other listened, then they both fell silent again and smiled.

Louise offered to go to the kitchen and make some coffee, and Yvonne said that would be charming of her. Meantime, Yvonne fetched a bottle of Calvados and two glasses from the sideboard and cut another two big slices of raspberry gâteau. The clock on the sideboard was ticking. Eleven o'clock had already come and gone. The children would be home from school in an hour. The two women ate and drank in silence.

‘And Léon?' Louise asked at last. ‘Is he well?'

‘Outrageously well,' said Yvonne. ‘You'll see, he's hardly changed.'

‘After all these years?'

‘After all these decades. I don't know how they manage it, but these Le Gall men certainly are durable. Not even war leaves a mark on them. We women show signs of wear and our warranty runs out, but Léon? He's indestructible. Rustproof and easy to maintain, I always say. Like agricultural machinery.'

Louise laughed and Yvonne joined in.

‘His hair's a bit thinner,' Yvonne went on, ‘and his toenails have developed these funny ridges in the last few years. Know the ones I mean? Do other men get them too?'

‘Most of them, after a certain age,' said Louise.

‘And do they sigh when they get up in the mornings?'

‘That too,' said Louise.

‘He never sighed once upon a time, but he does now.'

‘Does he still laugh?'

‘Would you say he laughed a lot in the old days?'

‘Not very loudly.'

‘No, he tends to smile.'

‘Especially when he thinks no one's looking.'

‘You ought to pay him a visit, he'd like that.'

‘You think so?'

‘Definitely. Why not, after so many years?'

‘When should I come?'

‘Not here. Go to the Arsenal harbour, he keeps a boat there. It's a blue and white boat called
Fleur du Miel
. He flies the flag of Lower Normandy, overgrown schoolboy that he is. Two golden lions on a red background. You know, William the Conqueror and all that. Anyone would think he was getting ready to cross the Channel in his cabin cruiser and conquer perfidious Albion.'

L
ouise and Léon met at the Arsenal harbour very, very often in the years that followed. From Monday to Saturday they spent their lunch breaks together, likewise the time between the end of office hours and supper. Sunday was the only day they didn't see each other. When it rained they stayed inside the cabin; at other times they sat on the wooden bench seat in the stern or went for walks along the canal bank. She took his arm and he sniffed the scent of her sunlit hair, and they chatted casually together.

But it wasn't until the end of the third week that they drew the cabin curtains for the first time.

When winter arrived in November they lit the cast-iron stove, made coffee and fried eggs. They bought a gramophone and some records by Édith Piaf, later by Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. They made friends with the other boat-owners and got on to first-name terms with them. Sometimes they invited them over for drinks. If anyone asked how long they'd been married, they said nearly thirty years.

But always, at exactly quarter past seven every evening without exception, Louise returned to the flat in the Marais obtained for her by the Banque de France and Léon went home to the Rue des Écoles to have supper with Yvonne and the children. Afterwards he helped the younger ones with their homework, played cards with the older ones, and then retired to bed with Yvonne.

By continuing to live like this, the three of them made no sacrifices, practised no deceit and kept no guilty secrets from each other; they merely continued their previous lives in the only possible way. There could be no new life without the old one, they knew, and because nothing could alter that, no altercations or arguments about the rights and wrongs of the situation were necessary.

So they kept silent about these things. Louise's name was never uttered in the Rue des Écoles and the boat in the Arsenal harbour was never mentioned. Yvonne, who had no wish to disrupt her feline, armchair-bound contentment, refrained from any needlessly explicit allusions to the arrangement, which would only have led to undignified scenes, sham reconciliations and insincere vows of fidelity. She did not, however, insist on keeping up false appearances because she was at peace with herself and Léon and the life they had led. All she asked was that her dignity be respected and tactless behaviour avoided.

There could in any case be no question of keeping the arrangement secret once Madame Rossetos had put two and two together, kept her eyes and ears open, and deemed it her duty to inform all the neighbours of what went on in the Le Gall family.

Even the children were in the know, but because they too maintained a discreet silence and communicated at most by means of ironical sidelong glances and muttered remarks, Yvonne could continue to live in peace inside her own four walls, which she seldom left.

Then came the time when the children moved out one by one. Because of his mediocre examination marks, Michel had vainly waited, term after term, for admission to engineering college. In the spring of 1947, when Renault opened a new factory, he took an assistant mechanic's job and moved into a furnished room at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Two years later his seventeen-year-old brother Yves joined the army and was posted to the Tchad Regiment. The same year, Madame Rossetos died in hospital after a short illness and her functions in the Rue des Écoles were taken over by a cleaning firm and an electric intercom system. In summer 1950, Robert also took leave of his parents and went to learn how to breed Charolais cattle at an agricultural college in Burgundy, and another two years later, when sixteen-year-old Muriel departed the Rue des Écoles to acquire a primary schoolteacher's diploma at a convent school near Chartres, Léon and Yvonne were left on their own with eleven-year-old Philippe, who was girlishly delicate.

Yvonne did not labour under her sudden solitude but accepted it as the natural course of events. All she wanted was sunshine and plenty of food and sleep.

For a few months in the mid-1950s she received visits from a Jehovah's Witness whose bloodthirsty tales of human depravity and retribution by a vengeful God amused her for a while. In winter 1958, when young Philippe went off to do his military service, she had a television set installed in the living room. Her favourite programmes were boxing matches and car racing.

One morning in May 1961, when running a flannel over her neck, she noticed a small, hard lump beneath her right ear. The lump grew bigger every day. Then another one developed beneath her left ear as well.

‘They may go away by themselves,' she said when Léon wanted to call the doctor.

‘Maybe, maybe not,' said Léon. ‘But the doctor should definitely take a look at them.'

‘No,' said Yvonne.

‘Yes.'

‘No.'

‘They may be serious. You want to die of them?'

‘Not necessarily,' said Yvonne. ‘But if the Almighty wants me to go, I'll go.'

‘The Almighty doesn't care whether you go or not, you silly thing. He's got plenty of other things on his plate.'

‘There you are, then.'

‘But
I
care, and I'm telling you they should be operated on.'

‘Are you a doctor?'

‘No, but I've got a pair of eyes in my head and a brain between my ears.'

‘So have I,' said Yvonne. ‘That's why I'm telling you to leave me alone. When I'm meant to go, I'll go.'

‘Just like that?'

‘Just like that.'

So the tumours in her neck continued to grow until they constricted her windpipe. After a few weeks came a night when her breathing was so bad she could hardly speak. She told Léon about her indiscretion with Raoul over thirty years earlier, and he took her in his arms and said it didn't matter any more. Then she fell asleep, or pretended to, and Léon fell asleep beside her.

On the first anniversary of Yvonne's funeral, Léon and Louise met at the Arsenal harbour at seven in the morning. It was a cool, fine day, and the sun had just risen above the buildings in the Boulevard de la Bastille. They were wearing their Sunday best although it was a Tuesday. A healthy, happy, good-looking couple, they were both sixty-two years old.

Louise had brought some bread, cheese and ham; Léon had come bearing bottled water, cider and red wine.

‘You're sure the tub won't sink?' she asked.

‘Positive,' he replied. ‘I've scraped and repainted the hull every two years, the way Caron asked me to. The engine is in tip-top condition too.'

‘Let's go, then. It's high time we did.'

They went aboard, stowed their supplies in the cabin, and started the engine. Then they cast off, put out into the Seine from the harbour basin, and headed downstream towards the sea.