‘Is it far to where you live?’ the man asked.
‘Six hundred metres, just by the canal. I was counting on using Clémence’s wheelbarrow.’
‘Would you like me to give you a hand?’
She didn’t say no. She was expecting this.
‘Think you can carry the incubator on your own? Careful, mind, it’s fragile.’
And all the time, she kept glancing curiously at him, already with a satisfied expression.
‘I got it secondhand. I saw it outside the ironmonger’s, just as I was getting to market … I offered him two hundred francs. It was only when I was getting on the bus he let me have it for three hundred. Not too heavy, is it?’
It was awkward to carry but not heavy. Things rattled inside.
‘Careful, there’s a lamp in there.’
She followed him, laden with her baskets. They took a footpath lined with hazel bushes and deep in shadow, and the ground felt soft under their feet, as if in a wood.
Drops of sweat appeared on the man’s forehead.
‘Looking for work, are you?’ she asked, taking extra steps to catch up with him, since he was walking fast.
He did not reply. His shirt was beginning to cling to his body. He was afraid he might let go, as his hands felt slippery.
‘Wait, let me open the door.’
It was already open on to a large kitchen, and on coming in from outside it was hard to see anything in the semi-darkness.
‘Put it down there. In a minute we can …’
A ginger cat rubbed up against her legs. She laid the baskets on a scrubbed wooden table. Then she opened another door, and sunlight flooded the room from the garden side. As she went past, the man could smell her armpits.
‘Sit down a minute. I’ll fetch you a glass of wine.’
What was wrong? She was showing anxiety like an animal returning to its lair and sensing a foreign intrusion. How was it that she noticed the grease stain on the table? It was hardly visible. She looked up at the two hams hanging from a beam and suddenly her eyes flashed with anger.
‘Wait. Stay where you are …’
And she rushed out into the garden, which was a farmyard in fact, with a dunghill, a wagon tilted on to its shafts, and a mixture of chickens, ducks and geese.
He watched from the doorway as she strode off like a woman who knows exactly where she is going. He realized there was someone walking quickly ahead of her, as if running away, a slender young girl, about sixteen perhaps, carrying a baby.
The girl headed for a gate on the other side of which lay the canal and a footbridge. She hurried her step. But the widow was faster. She caught up with her, and he could see that she was speaking vehemently and angrily, though he couldn’t hear what was being said. The girl was holding the baby with one hand, the other was hidden under her blue checked smock.
That was the hand Madame Couderc grabbed, seizing a small packet wrapped in newspaper.
What was she shouting after the youngster, who was running away now? Insults, no doubt. She banged the gate shut, and came back towards the house, holding the packet. She opened another door, leading to an outbuilding of some kind, and hauled out an old man, whom she made walk in front of her, dragging his feet and hanging his head as he went.
‘Little so-and-so!’ she declared as she came inside and threw on the table the two thick slices of ham that had been wrapped in the newspaper. ‘Soon as I turn my back, she’s over here to see her grandad and pinch my ham. You wouldn’t understand. A slut! Only sixteen, and she’s already got a baby.’
She threw a ferocious glare at the old man, who was standing still, looking at nothing.
‘And that old goat would let her have everything in the house.’
The old goat did not flinch but stared with curiosity at the box in the middle of the kitchen, partly wrapped in grey paper.
‘He’s ashamed now … He knows he’ll pay for it. See his expression.’
She opened a brown-painted cupboard, took out two glasses, showed them to the old man and then put a jug in his hand.
‘He’s deaf as a post … Can’t even speak, ever since he fell off a hay cart. Just a waste of space. Doesn’t stop him being nice to Tati now and then for a bit of you know what …’
A glint came into her eyes, and she looked the stranger up and down.
‘That’s what they call me, Tati. Since I was little. I don’t even know why. He’s gone to draw off some wine. You’re foreign, aren’t you?’
It was as if she was hesitating to take him in hand. She was still a little suspicious.
‘No … French.’
‘Ah …’
That was disappointing. She did not hide it.
‘Now I’d have sworn you were foreign. We get them coming past like you, now and then. The Chagots, over in Drevant, they had one for years, a Yugo, slept in the stable and could turn his hand to anything.’
It was the man’s turn to murmur:
