They spread a tablecloth and brought chairs outside.
‘She’s killed a rabbit,’ said Tati now, not taking her eyes off them.
And the family, as they ate their rabbit, affected to be otherwise occupied but could not help their eyes turning towards the farm window. Eugène used his pocket knife to eat with. Amélie had brought a huge cream cake.
It was at the very moment she was cutting it, with some pride, that the first ripple spread across the water, and almost at once the foliage began to shiver, making leaves fall from the trees. The tablecloth whipped up. Drops of rain started to fall.
Jean laughed out loud. It was funny to watch them rush to get up, Amélie saving her cake, Désiré at a loss and searching for his jacket, which he had left in the house.
A fine rain fell all afternoon, and the family had to stay in the kitchen, in a semi-circle round the door. At five, Amélie, her husband and son set off home. They had been lent an old umbrella, under which the three of them huddled together, walking into the wind.
Would Félicie come, all the same?
They heard the sound of firecrackers in the distance, then a few explosions, and snatches of music from a barrel organ reached them on the breeze.
‘I’d forgotten it’s fair day today,’ Tati murmured, glancing across at Jean. ‘There’ll be a shooting range, a roundabout with wooden horses and a dance band.’
Was that the reason Félicie stayed so long in the doorway staring across at their house? In the end, she pulled on an old oilskin with a hood and headed towards the village. She was going to the dance. Perhaps she was hoping Jean would follow her?
Instead of that, he had to wade through the heavy mud in the yard, where everything was waterlogged. He had hardly finished feeding the poultry and animals, and was looking at the place where Félicie should have come to find him, when Tati began calling, as she now did obsessively:
‘Jean! Jean! What are you doing?’
More firecrackers went off in the wet evening. He could hear them from his bed. He could even see the glare from what must have been a modest firework display, and he thought he could hear the unaccustomed strains of a cornet, a fiddle and a piano.
From that day on, scarcely forty-eight hours went by without a thunderstorm. At first, the weather took a while to improve. The sky remained dull, the water in the canal was murky. The leaves were drying up. In the mornings, the air was clearer. It seemed as if the summer was going to return, and then suddenly at about midday or three o’clock, the rumble of thunder could be heard far away.
Félicie came on the Monday. The rain had stopped, but it had been falling all day. The hay gave off a strong smell. And Jean was in a bad mood.
‘You went dancing?’ he asked, as he felt for her in the darkness. ‘What time did you get back?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. After midnight.’
‘Who did you dance with?’
‘All the boys.’
‘And you didn’t do anything else?’
She laughed without replying. He was unhappy. She didn’t realize the price he was paying to be with her.
‘You’re jealous? You needn’t be.’
She approached him with her moist lips.
Since he had possessed her in his dream, he could never recapture the simple ecstasy of their first lovemaking. It had happened so naturally. Now they were searching for a place to lie down. Félicie settled herself.
‘Wait a minute … There … All right, now you can come. Don’t hold me so tight.’
One day, Zézette had sighed as she said to him:
‘Just my luck. I wanted a sugar daddy, and with you I’ve got a cheapskate who pretends he isn’t.’
Because he was jealous! Because he didn’t let her pay when they went out together! Because he tried stubbornly to pay for her, whereas he didn’t have the means!
‘And you didn’t do anything with anyone?’ he whispered to Félicie.
‘Of course not! Why?’
Was she already tired of coming over to him at eight o’clock every night? The next day, she asked him:
‘Do you really mean to stay here for a long time?’
‘Why?’ he asked in turn.
They exchanged so few words, and yet that was too many, since when they did talk, their words were at cross purposes.
‘I don’t know. What I’d like would be to live in town, or perhaps in a Paris suburb. A nice little place, three rooms, where we could be cosy. A job that paid a wage every Saturday.’
Was that an invitation? He did not reply. Everything irritated him and upset him, even unexpected little details.
‘No. Leave me alone. I can’t today.’
So wasn’t it just the moment for her to lie in his arms, to be cheek to cheek in the darkness, whispering to each other?
‘I’ve got to go home. If you don’t see me tomorrow, it will be because my father …’
The doctor came to see Tati and looked at Jean, seeming astonished to find him still there.
