Crusader's Tomb Page 11

  It was dusk when he reached the Rue de la Cathédrale. And now, though he had kept his spirits up well enough throughout the day, a frightful despondency fell upon him. The deadly strangeness of this narrow little room, smelling of old wood, mildew and camphor, creaking at his every step; the sense of being so utterly alone, deceived by Chester, trapped in a hopeless future; the suspicion, too, that his landlady had begun to regard him with dubiety – all this rose up and overcame him. Without warning he flung himself upon the bed and, turning his face to the whitewashed wall, cried like a child.

  The bout was over soon, but unluckily it had started off his cough. Throughout the night it troubled him severely, since in his anxiety to avoid disturbing the household, he suppressed the spasms and so increased their frequency. At last, towards dawn, with his head beneath the covers, he fell asleep.

  It was late, nearly eleven o’clock in the forenoon, when he awoke – first to a brief moment of restful brightness, then to the dulling consciousness of his predicament. He got up, dressed without shaving, and went into the town. The agitation of his mind imparted a queer weakness to his legs. He was walking without purpose or objective. Suddenly, as he began, for the second time to traverse the market square, he heard someone running after him. Then a hand was laid on his own. He started almost out of his skin and swung round. It was the clerk from the mairie.

  ‘Excuse me, Monsieur.’ The young man paused for breath. ‘ I have been watching for you during all my lunch hour. You see, since our meeting, I have made some inquiries on your behalf. And Madame Cruchot who with her husband keeps the épicerie there,’ he pointed across the street, ‘has two little daughters whom she wishes to be taught English. It is possible you might suit her. In any case, it is worth your while to try.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Stephen stammered, overcome. ‘Thank you very much.’

  The young clerk smiled.

  ‘Good luck.’ He pronounced the words between his teeth, carefully, in English, then, as though pleased by this achievement, he shook hands, raised his hat, and stood watching as Stephen hurried across the street.

  The Cruchot grocery, occupying a prominent position in the square, with double plate-glass windows and a glittering signboard which read ALIMENTATION DE RENNES, gave every indication of a prosperous establishment dealing in a large and tempting assortment of foods. A constant stream of customers passed in and out of the doorway, narrowed by hanging hams, nets of lemons, a tree of bananas and various baskets of choice vegetables. Inside, the shelves were heavily stocked with the generous produce of land and sea, with sausages and goose liver, sardines and anchovies, lard, olive oil, cheese, with fruits in syrup, old brandy too, cordials and wines, coffee, spices, tripe and trotters, the bowls and bottles glittering upwards in shiny pinnacles above the sawdust-strewn floor.

  Entering, Stephen was held back less by his own nervousness than by the noise and movement, the shouted orders, the bustling of two white-coated assistants: a heavy-shouldered Norman girl and a lame, harassed-looking man.

  It was not long, however, before he felt himself singled out by a voice of penetrating timbre.

  ‘M’sieur desires?’

  Presiding at a small desk, controlling the commotion, it seemed by the fullness of her bosom and the boldness of her eye, there stood a yellow-haired woman of thirty-eight with a curved, well-covered figure, smooth complexion, and pink ears supporting heavy gold drop earrings. She wore a mauve dress of the latest provincial fashion – inset at the neck with a square of lace – several rings and bangles, a large cameo brooch.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Edging forward, Stephen spoke in a low voice. ‘My name is Desmonde. I understand you might require an English tutor for your children.’

  Realisation that he was not a customer had driven the mechanical smile from Madame Cruchot’s lips; her eyes narrowed with the cold appraisal of one who, in the market, could gauge to a hair’s-breadth the weight and quality of a grunting porker as she inspected Stephen. But the word ‘tutor’, which by good fortune he had used, flattered the vanity that ranked high amongst the many strong characteristics she possessed, which was indeed the main motive behind the notion that her two little daughters should be taught the English tongue. Also this young man before her looked personable, ‘ refined’, and diffident enough to give no trouble.

  ‘M’sieur can offer me some account of himself?’

  Quite frankly, Stephen did so.

  ‘So M’sieur is a student of the college of Oxford.’ A gleam illuminated Madame’s china-blue eye, but in the interests of bargaining was quickly concealed. Doubtingly, she shrugged. ‘Of course we have only M’sieur’s word for that.’

  ‘I assure you …’

  ‘Oh, la, la … I am prepared to trust you, M’sieur. But naturally, considering the tender years of my little ones, I demand the highest standards of conduct and morality.’

  ‘Naturally, Madame.’

  ‘Then what …’ She broke off, in a shrill command, her words rattling out with the sound and fury of a salvo of small artillery. ‘No, no, Marie, not these eggs, stupid, they are already commanded by Madame Oulard … and Joseph, must I always tell you to take the sugar from the open sack? What salary would you require, M’sieur?’

  Hurriedly Stephen tried to calculate the barest stipend which would support him.

  ‘Should we say, with daily lessons, thirty francs a week?’

  With a gesture of dismay, Madame Cruchot raised her plump, ringed hands. Then she smiled gently, flashing a gold tooth at him like a bullet.

  ‘M’sieur amuses himself.’

  ‘No, really …’ Nudged and elbowed by the milling crowd, Stephen turned a dark red. ‘ I am quite serious.’

  ‘We are honest people, Monsieur Crochet and I, M’sieur, but far, oh, very far from rich.’ She touched a note of pathos. ‘The utmost my husband empowers me to offer is twenty francs.’

  ‘But Madame … I am obliged to live.’

  Madame Cruchot shook her yellow chignon sadly.

  ‘We too, M’sieur.’

  Stephen bit his lip, rage and pride swelling in his heart. The weekly rent of his room was twelve francs. How on earth could he keep himself on the eight francs that would remain after he had settled with his landlady? No, whatever his extremity, he could not submit to such an imposition. He half turned to take his leave. But Madame Cruchot, who did not wish to lose him and who, in the interval, had from the corner of her eye probed him through and through, arrested him with a delicate gesture.

  ‘Perhaps …’ She leaned forward, spoke with an air of solicitude. ‘Perhaps if luncheon were provided here for M’sieur it might somewhat aid the situation. A good, substantial repast.’

  Brought up short, Stephen hesitated. Abased beyond endurance, he could not lift his eyes. He muttered:

  ‘Very well … I accept.’

  ‘Good. Our bargain is made. You will start tomorrow. Come at eleven o’clock. Do not forget that I shall require instruction of the highest class. And doubtless in future M’sieur will not neglect to shave.’

  Stephen inclined his head. He could not speak. Yet despite his humiliation, ignominious though his position might be, he could not but experience a sensation of relief. With twenty francs and a daily lunch, for the time being at least he was saved.

  As he left the shop he heard Madame Cruchot’s voice loudly proclaiming to the regions in the rear.

  ‘Marie-Louise … Victorine.… Your kind Mamma has just engaged an English tutor.’

  Chapter Three

  Now, in the stiffling dullness of this small provincial town, there began for Stephen a strange existence. Every morning he was awakened by the great bell of the cathedral, which swung thrice, heavily, at the Elevation of the seven o’clock Mass, sending the pigeons flying, breaking the ecclesiastical silence of the empty cobbled square. When dressed he clattered downstairs – at least he could leave the house without fear of meeting his landlady. Crossing the square to the Café des Ouvrier
s, which stood a stone’s throw from the high-walled convent garden, he encountered always the same scattering of pious black-garbed women, and a few nuns, in pairs, emerging – floating, it seemed, upon the wide wings of their wimples – from the church. The café, marked by a withered branch of box above the lintel, was not an especially reputable place, no more than the stone-flagged kitchen of a low dwelling furnished with a rough table and some backless wooden benches. Here for five sous he took the usual breakfast of the house: a cup of black coffee full of grounds, chased down by a tot of white wine served in inch-thick glass, a combination amazing in its restorative power. Often there was a paper of the night before, Intelligence de Rennes, which kept him occupied for half an hour. Or he might talk for a while with Julie, the quiet, dark-eyed fille de comptoir who served the primitive bar with discretion and who had apparently other functions of obligement, or with another of the customers, perhaps a travelling packman, a railway porter, or a man delivering charcoal.

  Punctually at eleven he presented himself at the Cruchot home, situated behind the shop, and approached by a walled side door. Here, in the trellised arbour which adjoined the enclosed patch of lawn, or, on wet days, in the stiffly ornate room referred to by Madame as the ‘salon’, Stephen gave his attention to the little Cruchot girls: to Victorine, aged eleven, and Marie-Louise, who was only nine.

  They were, on the whole, not disagreeable children, a trifle spoiled, but with all the attraction of their tender years. Sometimes, indeed, they were very sweet in their ways, especially the younger, a pretty little thing with brown curls and apple-red cheeks. Stephen did not find them difficult to manage and soon grew fond of them. Yet already the parental attributes were manifest – they knew the price of everything, figured like mathematicians, could glibly recite moral aphorisms on the virtue of thrift. Each kept a small metal savings bank, shaped like the Eiffel Tower but actually a cash register, of which the key was worn adjacent to a holy medal on a ribbon around the neck. Often they would repeat, quite innocently, remarks which they had overheard.

  ‘Monsieur Stephen’ – he had insisted they call him by his Christian name – ‘Mama said to Papa that you must be extremely poor.’

  ‘Well, Victorine, I must confess she was right.’

  ‘But Papa said at least you were not a drunkard.’

  ‘Good.… Papa is my friend.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Monsieur Stephen. For he also said that although you had certainly done some wrong at home and run away, it was not likely to be a serious crime.’

  Stephen laughed, somewhat wryly.

  ‘Come along then … it is time to commence our reading.’

  So rapid had been the progress of their agile little minds that he had actually brought them on to Alice in Wonderland, and their interest in the story was making even the hard words possible.

  Monsieur Cruchot, though occasionally in a proprietary fashion he put his head round the door, did not come often to the lessons. He was a man of medium size, with a restless manner, darting coffee-coloured eyes, the corners injected with yellow, and a heavy, black, up-curled moustache, who wore spats and, without and within, except in the sacred precincts of the salon, a hard, shiny straw hat. His place, of course, was in the shop, but two days a week he spent buying in the market at the neighbouring city of Rennes, whence, indeed, both he and his wife had originally come. Linked to Madame by an ostensible felicity, by the two pretty tokens of her affection, and above all by their mutually passionate desire for gain, Albert Cruchot had nevertheless an air, at certain moments, as if the physical proportions of his spouse, her shrill laugh and penetrating voice, were an oppression greater than a man of his stature could reasonably sustain. He did not shrink exactly, yet his bespatted feet would move uneasily and in the pupil of his café-au-lait eye there flickered a restive gleam.

  In plain truth, behind her smile, her amiable attitudes and the specious glitter of her gold tooth, Madame Cruchot was a bully. Every day she came to witness ‘for herself’ the conduct of the lesson, sitting erect, in a posture of supervision, her eyes uncomprehending yet alert, travelling from Stephen to the children, upsetting them, causing them to make mistakes.

  ‘You understand, M’sieur … I desire them not merely to read, but to speak colloquially … and to recite poetry … as one does in the best society.’

  In answer to her repeated demands Stephen taught the children the first stanza of To a Skylark. Then, on a day appointed to demonstrate his pupils’ progress, Madame appeared with three of her intimates, wives of prominent shopkeepers, members of the haute bourgeoisie of Netiers, who arranged themselves expectantly on the factory-gilt chairs of the salon.

  Marie-Louise, chosen first for the test, was placed alone on the island of fake Aubusson.

  ‘Hail to thee, blythe spirit …’ she began, then stopped, glanced round, and suppressed a titter.

  ‘Begin again, Marie-Louise,’ said Stephen in a kindly manner.

  ‘Hail to thee, blythe spirit …’ Again the child broke down, blinked, twisted her sash, and glanced timidly at her mother.

  ‘Go on,’ said Madame Crouchot in a strange voice.

  Marie-Louise cast an imploring look at her teacher. A light sweat was breaking on Stephen’s forehead. In a tone of cajolery which disgusted him he said:

  ‘Come along, my dear. Hail to thee, blythe spirit’

  A brief silence, during which Madame Cruchot seemed turned to stone; then, without warning, she reached forward and slapped the child’s cheek. Immediately Marie-Louise burst into tears. In the moment of consternation which followed, indignant glances were bent on Stephen, the sobbing child, now clasped to the maternal breast, was comforted with a praline, and Marie’s voice was heard calling loudly from the shop.

  ‘Come quickly, Madame … the liver is here from the slaughterhouse.’

  In the confusion accompanying Madame Cruchot’s departure Stephen stood helplessly, foreseeing with sardonic fatalism the possibility of his dismissal. Yet when her mother reappeared, Marie-Louise ran across the room, took hold of his hand and burst forth instantly with the poem, which she recited completely in a single breath. Victorine, not to be outdone, followed, of her own accord, with a perfect performance.

  Immediately the complexion of the gathering changed, there were little cries of acclamation, smiles and nods were bestowed on Stephen, Madame Cruchot glowed with pardonable triumph. Indeed, after she had shown the ladies out, she came back to Stephen in a mood of odd indulgence. Instead of the usual thin slice of ham, she gave him for lunch a plate of hot meat ragout, garnished with carrots and Bordeaux onions. Then, seating herself opposite at the table in the pantry, she remarked:

  ‘Things went well, after all.’

  ‘Yes.’ Stephen did not look up. ‘It was only stage fright at the beginning.’

  For a moment Madame Cruchot continued to watch him eat.

  ‘My friends were much pleased with you,’ she said, suddenly. ‘Madame Oulard … she is the wife of our first pharmacien, a lady of some position in the town, though, naturally, she cannot afford a tutor for her children … considers you très sympathique … a most gentlemanly type.’

  ‘I’m very grateful for her good opinion.’

  ‘Did you think her a pretty woman?’

  ‘Good gracious, no,’ said Stephen, absently. ‘I scarcely noticed her.’

  Madame Cruchot patted her pads of yellow hair, and having pulled down her corset, stroked her firm haunches with a conscious gesture.

  ‘Let me get you more ragout.’

  In the days which followed, the quality and, indeed, the quantity of the English tutor’s midday meal mysteriously improved, and in several other ways the mistress of the household continued to demonstrate her altered attitude, one might even say, her favour. It was a fortunate change for Stephen, upon whom lack of adequate nutrition and that persistent, harassing cough had wrought considerable physical damage. He began to feel stronger, new currents of life moving slowly in his veins, an
d as the weather was unusually fine, he experienced suddenly, one day, for the first time since his coming to Netiers, a burning desire to paint.

  The impulse was irrestible and, on leaving for the grocery, he took with him a block of India paper and a handful of coloured chalks. When the lesson was almost over he set the two children to read from the same book, together, in the arbour, then with all the longing of a pent-up passion, with swift, sure, happy lines, he made a pastel of their heads. The thing was done quickly, so fierce was the inspiration – in a matter of less than half an hour. Never had he achieved anything so vivid, so fresh in its impressionistic composition. Even he, who always underrated his own work, was moved, startled, and excited by this lovely thing which had sprung to being, mysteriously, out of nothing, at his touch.

  As with head to one side he sat pointing the background with a yellow crayon, he heard a sound behind him: Madame Cruchot, over his shoulder, was gazing at the pastel.

  ‘Did you do that, M’sieur?’

  Her expression of stunned incredulity made him smile.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  Perhaps she did not fully understand the picture. But she saw her two children there, beautifully suggested in a few lines, a few shades of pure and brilliant colour. She knew nothing of art. Yet her astute commercial instinct made her instantly, if subconsciously, aware that here was something rare and fine, something of the highest quality. Immediately she coveted it. But beyond that, she experienced a singular quickening of her feeling for this strange young Englishman, that emotion which had begun when, on the day of the recitation, the fog of her indifference had lifted and she had seen him, through the chatter of her friends, as he really was, a most attractive young man, with his slight figure and sensitive face, his dark eyes and delicate pallor. The little girls were still spelling out their book. She came round to the front of the settee and seated herself beside him.