The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (6 page)

‘You see, Uncle, Jean will start his apprenticeship with his new employer tomorrow. They don’t want any money from me, and they’ll give him board and lodging … So I thought that
Pépé and I would be able to manage. We can’t be worse off than we were in Valognes.’

She did not mention Jean’s love-affair, letters written to the young daughter of a local nobleman, kisses exchanged over a wall, quite a scandal which had made her decide to leave; and she had accompanied her brother to Paris above all to watch over him, for she felt maternal fears for this big child, who was so handsome and gay and irresistible to women.

Uncle Baudu could not get over his surprise. He began to repeat his questions. However, when he heard what she told him about her brothers, he used the familiar second person singular.

‘So your father didn’t leave you anything? I really thought he still had a bit left. Oh, I told him often enough in my letters not to take that dye-works! He had a good heart, but no head for business … And you were left with these lads on your hands, you had to feed these youngsters!’

His bilious face had lightened, and his eyes were no longer bloodshot as when he had been looking at the Ladies’ Paradise. Suddenly he noticed that he was blocking the doorway.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Come in, now that you’re here … Come in, it’s better than gaping at that nonsense.’

And having directed a last furious scowl at the displays opposite, he made way for the children and went into the shop, calling his wife and daughter as he did so.

‘Elizabeth, Geneviève, come down, there are some people here to see you!’

But the gloom of the shop made Denise and the boys hesitate. Blinded by the daylight of the street, they were blinking as if on the brink of an unknown chasm, feeling the ground with their feet with an instinctive fear of some treacherous step. Clinging even closer together in their vague fear, the little boy still clutching the girl’s skirts and the big boy behind, they made their entrance gracefully, smiling and nervous. The bright morning light made the black silhouettes of their mourning clothes stand out, and a slanting ray of light gilded their fair hair.

‘Come in, come in,’ repeated Baudu.

In a few brief sentences he explained everything to his wife and daughter. Madame Baudu was a little woman wasted by anaemia, and quite white, with white hair, white eyes, white lips.
Geneviève, in whom her mother’s physical degeneration was even more pronounced, had the debilitated, colourless appearance of a plant left to grow in the dark. And yet she had a melancholy charm which she owed to her magnificent black hair.

‘Come in,’ said the two women in their turn. ‘Welcome!’

And they made Denise sit down behind a counter. Pépé immediately climbed on to his sister’s lap, while Jean, leaning against some panelling, kept close to her. Beginning to feel more at ease, they looked round at the shop, their eyes getting used to the darkness. Now they could see it, a low ceiling blackened with smoke, oak counters shiny with use, ancient show-cases with strong iron hinges. Bales of dark-coloured goods reached up to the beams. The smell of cloth and dyes, a sharp, chemical smell, seemed to be intensified by the dampness of the floorboards. At the back of the shop two male assistants and a girl were putting away pieces of white flannel.

‘Perhaps this little chap would like something to eat?’ said Madame Baudu, smiling at Pépé.

‘No, thank you,’ replied Denise, ‘we had a cup of milk in a café opposite the station.’

And, as Geneviève was looking at the small parcel she had put on the floor, she added:

‘I left our trunk there too.’

She was blushing, for she knew that in polite society people did not turn up out of the blue like that. Even on board the train, as it was leaving Valognes, she had felt full of regrets; and that was why, on their arrival, she had left the trunk at the station and given the children their breakfast.

‘Look,’ said Baudu suddenly, ‘let’s be brief and to the point… I did write to you, it’s true, but that was a year ago; and you see, my dear, business hasn’t been going at all well, for a year …’

He stopped, choked with an emotion he did not wish to show. Madame Baudu and Geneviève, with a resigned look, had lowered their eyes.

‘Oh!’ he continued, ‘it’s a crisis that will pass, I’ve no doubt… But I’ve reduced my staff, there are only three here now; and it’s certainly not a good time to take on someone else. In short, my dear, I can’t take you on as I offered to.’

Denise listened, and turned very pale. He rubbed it in by adding:

‘It wouldn’t be worth it, either for you or for us.’

‘All right, Uncle,’ she finally said with an effort. ‘I’ll try to manage all the same.’

The Baudus were not bad people, but they complained of never having had any luck. When their business was flourishing they had had to bring up five boys, of whom three had died before they were twenty; the fourth had gone to the bad; the fifth, an army captain, had just left for Mexico.
*
They had no one left but Geneviève. Their family had cost them a great deal, and Baudu had completed his own ruin by buying a big broken-down house at Rambouillet,
*
his father-in-law’s home town. All this was slowly embittering the fanatical old tradesman.

‘You might have warned us,’ he went on, gradually getting angry at his own hardness. ‘You could have written to me; I’d have told you to stay in Valognes … Of course, when I heard of your father’s death I said the usual things. But you turn up without warning … It’s very awkward.’

He was raising his voice, relieving his feelings. His wife and daughter, submissive people who would never have dreamed of interfering, still kept their eyes on the ground. Meanwhile Jean had turned very pale, while Denise had clasped the terrified Pépé to her bosom. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘All right, Uncle,’ she repeated. ‘We’ll go away.’

At that he stopped. An embarrassed silence ensued. Then he resumed in a surly tone:

‘I won’t turn you away … Since you’re here you might as well stay the night. Tomorrow we’ll see.’

At that Madame Baudu and Geneviève understood with a glance that they could go ahead and make arrangements. Everything was settled. There was no need to do anything for Jean. As for Pépé, he would be well looked after by Madame Gras, an old lady who lived on the ground floor of a house in the Rue des Orties, where she took in young children for forty francs a month, full board. Denise declared that she had enough to pay for the first month. It only remained for her to find a place herself. It would be easy to find her a job in the neighbourhood.

‘Wasn’t Vinçard looking for a salesgirl?’ said Geneviève.

‘Of course!’ exclaimed Baudu. ‘We’ll go and see him after lunch. We must strike while the iron’s hot!’

Not a single customer had come in to interrupt this family discussion. The shop remained dark and empty. In the background the two male assistants and the girl continued their work, talking to each other in low hissing tones. However, three ladies eventually appeared, and Denise remained alone for a moment. She gave Pépé a kiss, her heart heavy at the thought of their impending separation. The child, affectionate as a kitten, hid his head without saying a word. When Madame Baudu and Geneviève came back they remarked how quiet he was, and Denise assured them that he never made any more noise than that; he would go for whole days without saying anything, living on kisses and caresses. Then, until lunch-time, the three women talked about children, housekeeping, life in Paris and in the country, in short, vague sentences, as relations do when they feel awkward at not knowing each other very well. Jean had gone to the shop-door, and stood there watching the passing crowd and smiling at the pretty girls.

At ten o’clock a maid appeared. Usually the first meal was served for Baudu, Geneviève, and the first assistant. There was a second meal at eleven o’clock for Madame Baudu, the other male assistant, and the girl.

‘Come and eat!’ exclaimed the draper, turning towards his niece.

And as the others were already seated in the cramped dining-room at the back of the shop, he called the first assistant, who was slow to join them.

‘Colomban!’

The young man apologized, saying he had wanted to finish arranging the flannel. He was a big lad of twenty-five, stupid but crafty, with an honest face, a large, flabby mouth, and cunning eyes.

‘What! There’s a time for everything,’ said Baudu, squarely installed before a piece of cold veal, which he was carving with a master’s skill and prudence, weighing each meagre portion at a glance to within an ounce.

He served everyone, and even cut the bread. Denise had put Pépé next to her to make sure that he ate properly. But the dark room made her feel uneasy; she felt a lump in her throat as she
looked round, for she was used to the large, well-lit rooms of her native province. A single window opened on to a little inner courtyard which communicated with the street by means of a dark alley by the side of the house. This yard, sodden and filthy, was like the bottom of a well; a circle of sinister light fell into it. In the winter the gas had to be kept burning from morning to night. When the weather allowed them to do without it, the effect was even more depressing. It took several seconds before Denise’s eyes were sufficiently accustomed to the dark to distinguish what was on her plate.

‘There’s a fellow with a good appetite,’ Baudu declared, noticing that Jean had finished his veal. ‘If he works as well as he eats, he’ll get really strong … But what about you, my dear, aren’t you eating? And now that we can talk, tell me why you didn’t get married in Valognes?’

Denise put down the glass she was raising to her mouth. ‘Oh! Uncle, get married? How can you say that? … What about the little ones?’

She was forced to laugh, so strange did the idea seem to her. In any case, would any man have wanted her, without a penny, as thin as a rake and showing no signs of becoming beautiful? No, no, she would never marry, she already had enough with two children.

‘You’re wrong,’ her uncle repeated, ‘a woman always needs a man. If you’d found a decent young chap you wouldn’t have landed on the streets of Paris, you and your brothers, like gypsies.’

He stopped in order to divide, once more, with a parsimony that was scrupulously fair, a dish of bacon and potatoes which the maid had brought in. Then, pointing to Geneviève and Colomban with the spoon, he continued:

‘Those two will be married in the spring if the winter season is good.’

It was a patriarchal tradition in the shop.
*
The founder, Aristide Finet, had given his daughter Désirée to his first assistant, Hauchecorne; Baudu himself, who had arrived in the Rue de la Michodière with seven francs in his pocket, had married old Hauchecorne’s daughter Elizabeth; and he intended, in his turn, to hand over his daughter Geneviève and the shop to Colomban, as soon as business improved. If that meant having to postpone
a marriage which had been decided on three years earlier, he did so from scruple, from a stubborn integrity: he had received the business in a prosperous state, and did not wish to pass it on to a son-in-law with fewer customers and worse prospects than when he acquired it.

Baudu went on talking, introducing Colomban, who came from Rambouillet like Madame Baudu’s father; in fact they were distant cousins. He was an excellent worker and for ten years had been slaving away in the shop and had really earned his promotions! Besides, he wasn’t just anybody, his father was that old reveller Colomban, a veterinary surgeon known throughout the Seine-et-Oise,
*
an artist in his own line, but so fond of food that there was nothing he wouldn’t eat.

‘Thank God!’ said the draper in conclusion. ‘Even if his father does drink and chase skirts, the boy has been able to learn the value of money here.’

While he was talking Denise was studying Colomban and Geneviève. They were sitting close to each other, but remained very quiet, without a blush or a smile. Since his first day in the shop the young man had been counting on this marriage. He had passed through all the different stages, junior assistant, salaried salesman, etc., and had finally been admitted to the confidences and pleasures of the family; and he had gone through it all patiently, like an automaton, looking on Geneviève as an excellent and honest business deal. The certainty that she would be his prevented him from desiring her. And the girl, too, had grown accustomed to loving him; but she loved him with all the seriousness of her reserved nature, and with a deep passion of which, in the dull, regular, everyday life she led, she was quite unaware.

‘When people like each other, and when it’s possible …’ Denise felt obliged to say with a smile, in order to seem pleasant.

‘Yes, it always ends up like that,’ declared Colomban, who had not yet said a word, but was slowly munching.

Geneviève, after giving him a long look, said in her turn:

‘When people get on together, the rest comes naturally.’

Their fondness for each other had grown up in this ground-floor shop in old Paris. It was like a flower in a cellar. For ten
years she had known no one but him, had spent her days beside him, behind the same piles of cloth, in the gloomy depths of the shop; and, morning and evening, they had found themselves elbow to elbow in the cramped dining-room, as chilly as a well. They could not have been more hidden, more lost, in the depths of the country beneath the leaves. But a doubt, a jealous fear, was to make the girl discover that, from emptiness of heart and boredom of mind, she had given herself for ever in the midst of those conniving shadows.

However, Denise, thinking that she could see a dawning anxiety in the look Geneviève had given Colomban, good-naturedly replied:

‘Nonsense! When people love each other, they always get on together.’

But Baudu was keeping a sharp eye on the table. He had distributed slivers of Brie, and to welcome his relatives he ordered a second dessert, a pot of gooseberry preserves, a liberality which seemed to surprise Colomban. Pépé, who had been very good until then, behaved badly at the sight of the preserves. Jean, whose interest had been aroused by the conversation about marriage, was staring at his cousin Geneviève, whom he thought too weak and pale, comparing her in his mind to a little white rabbit, with black ears and pink eyes.