‘Shut your mouth, Tati! I won’t let a stranger …’
‘What won’t you let me do? Tell the truth? To say that your father’s an old goat, and that, just last week, he unbuttoned his trousers in front of a little girl coming home from school? Françoise knows her, by the way! She can ask her if it’s true or not! The Cotelle girl, from Moulin-Neuf …’
‘That doesn’t stop the house belonging to him,’ yelped Amélie, ‘and it doesn’t seem to stop you staying here with him and bringing in people that should be ashamed of themselves … Go and fetch Papa, Françoise. And Hector, you can go and sit on the doorstep, but don’t you dare go near the canal or you’ll get a walloping. You hear me? Go off and play.’
‘I don’t want to play. I’m thirsty.’
‘Well, have a drink of water.’
‘Don’t want water.’
‘Désiré, yes or no, are you going to make that child go outside?’
The door slammed. Françoise had gone out, plodding and puzzled, swelling with fear and anger.
‘We’ll soon see if we have to take this further,’ Amélie declared: she was clearly the brains of the family. ‘And I don’t mind telling you right away that I’ve been to see a lawyer.’
‘Why, to get Couderc chucked in jail?’
‘Don’t try to be funny. You know quite well you’ve not got a leg to stand on. We know all about you, my girl. We know you’ve always taken advantage, ever since you set foot in this house you’ve tried to have everything your own way. My poor brother – God rest his soul – knew that.’
‘Pour me another little glass, Jean. Why don’t you sit down? I already told you, didn’t I, this is a weird family.’
‘Have you no shame?’
‘What’s there to be ashamed of?’
‘Having a murderer living in here. Well, your son wasn’t much better. If Maman could see us now. Our poor mother. Who …’
She looked up at the faded portrait. Her eyes moistened.
‘Just as well she’s no longer with us, or she would die of sorrow and shame!’
They could hear Françoise’s voice on the path. She must have been talking out loud, perhaps to reassure herself, since the old man, who was following her, head down, as if she had him on a lead, was unable to hear.
‘Come inside, my poor old Papa.’
Dazzled by the sun, he blinked as he tried to distinguish the faces in the semi-darkness of the kitchen.
‘Sit down. Have you got the note, Désiré? And as for you, Tati, we’ll soon see what Papa thinks about your tricks. Where was he, Françoise? Out in the hot sun, I’ll be bound? Having to do heavy work at his age! He’s being treated like an old horse worth nothing, waiting to die in harness. Show him the note, Désiré.’
Since they could not talk to the old man, they had written to him. Désiré, being prudent, had taken the trouble to write in big letters, like print.
The family has decided that you should come and live with us. You can’t go on working like a beast of burden. We will take proper care of you and you won’t have to live with murderers any more.
He looked at the piece of paper stupidly, wondering what they wanted of him. He was not reassured. Strangely enough, it was to Tati that he clung.
‘Don’t you even know, out of the whole lot of you, that the old fool can’t read a word without his glasses? If I didn’t go and get them, you’d be in a fine mess, wouldn’t you? But I want him to read your bit of paper. Poor old man! If I wasn’t here, he wouldn’t even be able to button up his flies.’
She went to fetch from a drawer a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and put them on Couderc’s nose. He still hesitated to read, as if fearing a trap.
He made several attempts at it. Perhaps the glasses were not strong enough now.
‘Here, you old goat. You’ve a perfect right to a little drink as well.’
She defied them with her stare.
‘If you think I can’t see what you’re up to! You don’t really want the old man with you! He’d just be a nuisance. You wouldn’t keep him a week before you’d be shutting him up in a home. Yes, you would, don’t you scowl at me, Amélie. I know what you’re like. It’s not my fault you married a man who gets seven hundred francs a month and has to change jobs every year because he thinks he knows better than his bosses. And you, my poor Françoise, you’re so dumb I feel like giving you a handful of hay instead of talking to you. Go on then, what’s he got to say, your dear old Papa? Look at him. And just try to take him away!’
He was terrorized. A child that a stranger tries to tempt away in a park would show less anguish than he did, turning to Tati.
Nevertheless, Amélie was treating him to a toothy smile and nodding her head encouragingly, as if to tame a new animal in the house.
‘Write down that he’ll be well looked after, Désiré, and he’ll just be able to stroll about all day. And write down that there’s a murderer in this house, and that one fine day he might come a cropper.’
And, turning to Tati:
‘Because I can see what you’re up to. This man isn’t here by chance. One fine day, you’ll get Papa, somehow or other, to sign a piece of paper. And then you’ll be in a big hurry to get him out of the way before he changes his mind. Own up! Admit that the day you walked in here, when we were all little children, you decided you were going to be the boss. And our poor brother didn’t see through it. You were already a piece of work. Sometimes I wonder if what caused his death … Have you finished, Désiré?’
He passed her a black-covered notebook, where he had written a few lines.
‘And write again that his life’s in danger here.’
Old Couderc wanted to escape. He had drunk off his glass of spirits and Amélie sighed:
‘For heaven’s sake, she gives him alcohol when she knows he can’t take it, and the doctor’s told him he mustn’t …’
‘Read it, Couderc,’ said Tati, who seemed to be amused and was standing, hands on hips, in the middle of the kitchen.
