‘Is she improving?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
And Jean dragged his feet around through the mud all day in Couderc’s clogs, which were too big for him. Everything was sodden and sticky. You got filthy just doing nothing. To move the cows, he put a sack over his head and shoulders, and only occasionally saw Félicie in the doorway, although Françoise was always standing there.
In her bed, Tati was getting anxious.
She couldn’t bear to be an hour without seeing him, and as soon as he came in she would gaze at him intensely, as if to read on his face some catastrophic news.
‘Are you getting fed up? You’re not cut out for farming, are you?’
‘On the contrary, I’ve never been so happy in my life.’
He said this in a gloomy voice, because already it was no longer true.
‘Know what I think sometimes? Now, don’t be cross. It would have been better for us both if you had really been a Yugo. Remember? I asked you if you were French. I thought you were a Yugo or something like that. And when you said who you were, I didn’t believe you.’
She harked back to her usual idea.
‘Funny your father hasn’t come.’
Then, suspiciously:
‘You’re sure he hasn’t? I’ve written to a solicitor in Vierzon, I found the address in the paper. To ask him how to set about dealing with the house.’
Exactly like Zézette, who had announced to him one evening:
‘I’ve found an apartment.’
And he had had to rent it! And that apartment had been the starting point for everything that happened, because he had had to borrow money from the very first day.
‘We’ll be in our own home; that’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. We’ll be in our home.’
And Félicie was dreaming of a three-room lodging in town!
While Tati, from morning to night, was hatching plans to get rid of Françoise and Félicie for ever!
As for Jean, he came and went, surrounded by things that already seemed to have value only in his memory: the calendar, the stove he lit every morning, the table with the light falling on it through the small window, the portraits of Couderc and his late wife.
It would have been so simple. They could have lived here, all three of them, or rather four because of the baby. The baby didn’t bother him. He had no curiosity about its father. The baby was part of the furniture, as he saw it. And old Couderc as well, if he had to. Why not?
They would live like that all together, tending the rabbits and chickens, hatching out eggs, cutting the grass, sowing vegetables.
Tati would call out as she usually did:
‘Jean, fetch in some coal!’
And he would go to fetch coal from the shed.
‘Jean, there are no more logs!’
And he would chop wood, with the axe which had scared him so much for the first few days.
He would watch Félicie playing in the grass with the baby, going on all fours:
‘Here comes the big bad wolf!’
The baby laughing. His mother laughing too, as she jumped up in the grass, with her blue smock, her tousled auburn hair and the freckles round her eyes.
‘Go ahead, love each other, my dears!’
Occasionally, Tati would go upstairs, for a nap in the humid afternoon, followed by old Couderc, to whom she would dole out a little happiness, like giving a sugar lump to a dog.
On the Thursday, Félicie didn’t come, and he stayed in the barn for a quarter of an hour or more. When he went upstairs, Tati sensed at once that he was not in his usual mood.
‘Where have you been, Jean?’
‘In the garden.’
‘What were you doing.’
‘I don’t know.’
He had a shifty expression, even though this was the very day he had nothing to feel guilty about! And this was the day she had to choose to be suspicious. The window was open.
The storm which was still rumbling had not cleared the air, but now and then a draught of wind would blow the curtains and make the lamp flicker.
