‘Maybe not now, you’re not. But how do you know you won’t be any time soon? One fine day, you’ll be waiting there and the bird will have flown. And you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take a few souvenirs …’
‘Jean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get her out of here, can you?’
‘I’m going, I’m going. Well. You’ve been warned. If anything happens to you, you’ll know the reason why. And Papa asked me to fetch …’
‘He didn’t ask you for anything of the kind. Jean! Don’t let her into any of the bedrooms, don’t let her take anything …’
‘You’re surely not going to let our father go without a shirt?’
‘Throw her out, Jean. She’s making me tired … Take my stick, don’t be afraid.’
‘Goodbye, you old …’
‘Goodbye, yes.’
And they watched as Amélie rode back along the towpath to Françoise’s house.
‘What did I tell you, Jean? They’re trying every trick in the book to get me out of this house. If I was to leave, just for an hour, they’d be in here when I got back and they’d lock me out. What are you staring at?’
‘Nothing.’
She looked out as well and saw Félicie standing on the doorstep of the other house. She realized that, a moment before, the girl’s eyes and Jean’s had met across the space.
‘Swear to me that there’s nothing going on between you two.’
‘I swear.’
‘Swear to me that you don’t love her.’
‘I don’t love her.’
Nevertheless, by nightfall, he was certain of the opposite. He could think of nothing else. Sometimes it was childish. Like a little boy looking for excuses to avoid school, he planned ways of meeting her without being seen by Tati.
It was while he was feeding the rabbits that he discovered the window in the wall of the barn that faced the canal. It wasn’t actually a window, since it had no glass. Just a hole in the wall with two metal bars. To reach it, he had to climb up on something, so he put two rabbit-hutches one on top of the other and checked that they were solid enough to take his weight.
That way, he was directly underneath Tati, and a little to the left. She could be watching the canal but would not be able to see him.
He stayed there about an hour at dusk. It was cool and Félicie was again wearing her red shawl, but in the blue of the evening its red colour glowed more richly than in the morning.
She was strolling about, perhaps on purpose to meet him. She did not have the baby with her. She knew that her aunt was at her window but did not yet know where Jean was.
So he stretched one hand out between the bars and waved, without thinking for a moment that this was ridiculous. She saw his hand. He was certain of that, since she came to a halt. He sensed that she was smiling, with a little smile both amused and pleased.
Then, almost immediately, she turned and went back home, slowly, swinging her hips, not forgetting to pick up a blade of grass and chew it.
‘Thank you, Jean. I don’t disgust you too much, do I? A woman like this, not a pretty sight, is it … Don’t you think it’s strange your father hasn’t been here yet?’
‘He won’t come.’
‘Oh, I think he will.’
Poor Tati! The house was becoming her fortress. The bedroom with the window ever open on to the canal was her lookout tower. Morning to night, she was on the quivive, listening out for any sounds, giving a jump if she heard a car on the main road, wondering if it was going to turn off and appear coming through the hazel bushes; then, when she didn’t know where Jean was for a moment, she listened to the silence in anguish, in case it was going to last uninterrupted.
‘Where were you?’
‘I was hoeing the potatoes. I saw the lock-keeper putting some stuff on to his this morning.’
‘Yes, you should spray them. Can do you that? Somebody arrived at Françoise’s just now. Somebody I don’t know. And Couderc, he almost crossed the bridge. Of course, it’s not that he doesn’t want to. Françoise came and fetched him just in time. Have you seen Félicie?’
‘No.’
‘She must have wandered over this way because she crossed the lock. Trouble is, I can’t lean out of the window. You weren’t talking to someone a quarter of an hour back?’
‘No.’
That was the truth. He had not spoken to anyone. But Félicie had been walking along the path, not on the other side of the water where Tati would be able to see her, but on the path right in front of the house. And Jean had been behind the barred window. He had held up both hands, showing eight fingers. Had she understood? He had also made energetic signs pointing to the gate on the left of the house, from which he had taken the chain and padlock.
Unfortunately, at eight that evening, Tati, who seemed mysteriously to have got wind of it, had called on him to change her dressings. He did not even know whether Félicie had come anywhere near the gate. And if she had, what had she thought?
He was living with her day and night. He carried her image, the thought of her, through the house, in the farmyard, the kitchen garden, the cowshed, near the chickens and the incubator. It was the curve of her full lip that haunted him and the way she flexed her body when she had the child in her arms.
‘What are you doing now, Jean?’
‘Nothing … Seeing to the rabbits.’
