‘I know now what their lawyer’s called … Bocquillon, he used to be the notary’s assistant. He married a woman with a hunchback, and now he’s an estate agent, he handles properties. So I saw him … And I said I’d pay him more than they would, and he told me everything. If they find a doctor who’ll say the old man’s lost his wits …’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘What’s the matter with you? You seem different. I spotted it soon as I got off the bus. Is it because of your father?’
He forced a laugh.
‘You look sad, or as if you’re sickening for something. What did you get up to this morning?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You staked the peas?’
‘Yes.’
‘You fed the rabbits?’
‘Yes.’
‘The insurance man didn’t come?’
‘No.’
Too bad. She put off trying to understand. Couderc had come in quietly and sat down at his place. She unwrapped the cooked meats she brought from the town every Saturday.
‘All those women in Saint-Amand think the incubator won’t work or the chicks will die soon as they’re hatched. I went to see someone who deals in chickens in bulk: all you need to do is put a brooder in the wash-house. So I’ve ordered one, it works on coal.’
She could sense that he wasn’t listening, and that he was eating without appetite. She would have to wait longer. After the meal, the old man would go out. She would pour some coffee into her glass. She would put the sugar in to melt and push back her chair.
She had unbuttoned her black silk blouse, letting a glimpse be seen of a flannel undergarment and white flesh.
‘I’ve explained it all to you. I don’t know yet whether things will work out with Bocquillon, but if not, I can turn to someone else. I’ll defend myself to the bitter end, if I have to burn the house down! So, what do you say?’
‘I don’t say anything.’
‘If I made the old man sign a piece of paper now, Bocquillon says that wouldn’t do any good. You can always challenge a will, especially if it’s made by someone like Couderc. What do you think about the old man, anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’
With a glance, she reproached him for his unresponsiveness, a sort of absence that created a vacuum in the kitchen.
‘Well, I’ll tell you straight out what I think. Couderc’s not as stupid and senile as he looks. I won’t say he understands everything, but he guesses what people are saying, he reads their lips. He’s a cunning old fox. He doesn’t want to complicate his life. He has his little weaknesses. That’s all he thinks about. And he knows that, as long as he pretends not to understand, no one will be able to do anything to him. You saw how he was with his daughters the other day. If he went to them, they’d be watching him. And I’ll bet you anything it wouldn’t be long before they put him in a home, and the old goat knows that too. See what I mean? With me, he gets a little treat now and then. He’s not ashamed of it.
‘And that pair of bitches want me thrown out! Something happens to him tomorrow, they’d sell the house. They’ve got every right to, Bocquillon warned me. And after me doing everything here, my whole life, inching and pinching, moiling and toiling like a beast of burden, seeing to the old man, I’d just get a third, a third of what should really all come to me, because if they’d been in charge of this house, the bailiffs would soon have been round to seize everything … What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m not thinking about anything.’
This was true. He was simply feeling unsteady, as if sickening for flu. He was not digesting his lunch. He felt hot.
‘Look, it bothers me that you’re the son of Monsieur Passerat-Monnoyeur. When I think my sister was in service in their house … You probably knew her.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Ten years ago.’
‘Wasn’t she called Adèle?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘No reason … I remember now, she didn’t like my sister. I think my sister’s married now, to a doctor from Orléans.’
‘Yes, a surgeon, Doctor Dorman.’
Silence.
This was the moment they should be getting up from the table. There was no coffee left in the pot, or in their glasses.
‘Can you get some brandy from the cupboard? And you don’t mind me bossing you about, telling you to do things?’
‘Why would I?’
‘I don’t know. Oh, just a little for me, that’s enough. You can have a big glass if you want. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
Hands folded across her stomach, her eyes fixed on the bright panes of the window and the dusty road beyond, she murmured:
‘So you must have been twenty-three. That’s how old René is now. When René did it, he was only nineteen. Tell me, Jean …’
