All Our Wordly Goods (7 page)

‘Papa, please reconsider …’

‘I’ll expect you back tomorrow.’

‘But it’s dangerous …’

‘I am staying here,’ he said, stamping his foot. There was no anger in his gesture; it looked more as if he were taking possession of the land. ‘I’ll expect you back tomorrow,’ he repeated and went back into the house. He closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.

Charles Hardelot helped Madame Florent, who was holding the sleeping baby, into the car, along with Agnès and his wife; they left. It was nearly dawn. The church of Saint-Elme chimed the half-hour and the familiar sound roused the Hardelot-Arques ladies, who looked at each other as if awaking from a nightmare into reality.

‘I think …’ the first one began.

‘Since Julien’s staying …’ said the other.

The third one was already pulling her black shawl more tightly round her chilly shoulders, ready to hurry home. Only the fourth one, the youngest, murmured fearfully, ‘It’s the cannon fire that frightens me …’

‘We’ll all stay in the drawing room,’ said her sister. ‘Everything’s so muffled in there that we won’t hear a thing.’

Heads bowed, pale, proud and frail, suddenly aware of how inappropriate it was to be standing there, alone, out in the street at such an hour, they all went back to their little house that sat in the shadow cast by the château.

Simone Renaudin and an elderly relative who was her chaperone passed the Hardelots on the road. From the windows of the two cars the ladies leaned out and nodded awkwardly to each other. The cars, spared from being requisitioned, were old and enormous. Each of them tried slyly to overtake and lose the other, but as soon as they were on the national highway they were forced into line, one behind the other, and had to wait their turn. It was the day after a battle had been lost. They could see the troops passing before them in chaos: ambulances, the wounded, cars, horses, cannons and, among them, the civilians who were fleeing — nuns from a convent in Flanders, farmers pulling along their cows, old people pulling carts on which were two chairs, a pine table and kitchen utensils held in place with planks of wood. All they could do was inch forward. Every now and again
they recognised someone from Saint-Elme in this confusing flow of people.

‘I thought I saw the notary and his wife,’ said Charles.

‘There are the little Dubecq children, in an English carriage, with their grandmother,’ replied Madame Florent.

But all these cars disappeared while, in a kind of malicious twist of fate, the Renaudins’ car continually pulled up alongside them. Marthe and Simone turned stiffly away from each other.

‘You might almost think she was doing it on purpose,’ murmured Marthe.

Then, remembering that Charles was going to leave her tomorrow, she returned to her private hell. And Pierre? Where was Pierre? She thought she saw him every time a soldier went by. She would touch her husband’s hand and say shyly, ‘You see that one, over there? The one who’s got his arm in a sling? He looks like Pierre.’

‘You see your son everywhere, my poor darling,’ Charles replied.

Not a cry, not a moan rose from the crowd. They weren’t even looking at the horrific, unforgettable spectacle, the scene that would one day be a page in the history of France: the first weeks of the 1914 war. Only the children stared wide-eyed at the soldiers. As for the others … they had left their hearts behind. They thought about their homes, their fields, the shops they had given up. Marthe could picture all her treasures: the big bed
where for twenty-nine years she had slept next to her husband, her linen cupboard, the fine sheets from Flanders, embroidered by nuns in Bruges, her kitchen-ware — copper pans, candlesticks, sparkling bowls — and the photos of Aunt Adèle at her First Communion, and Uncle Jules, ten months old, naked on a pillow. Everything was priceless. And it would all be destroyed, pillaged, looted, reduced to ashes that billowed up towards an indifferent sky.

‘But if the château and the house are bombed, where will you go?’ she asked her husband naïvely, for she still believed that though walls might crumble, people could survive beneath the shells; civilians had to be spared in war. How and why a bomb chose what to strike she did not know, but it seemed inconceivable that the flesh and bones of her husband, of her peace-loving Charles, could be torn apart or pulverised like the soldiers’.

‘Where will you go? What did your father say?’

‘That the cellars are solid, that the house could fall but we’d be safe in the cellars.’

‘But it will be so damp,’ cried Marthe. ‘Do you at least have your flannel jacket?’

Agnès picked up her child; he had woken up crying. She kissed his hair; it was as soft as feathers; she held him tightly, close to her heart, thinking, ‘I’m not going to let you see any more war.’

‘You’re young,’ her mother-in-law had said to her. ‘You have no memories.’ How wrong she was. Her memories weighed down on her insistently. Her memories
weren’t just objects that could be replaced by similar ones, they were part of the very place where she had lived, where she and Pierre first began to love each other when they were children. This road, for example, they had been along it so many times, on bicycles or in the car, when the Hardelots had organised picnics; the town with its cathedral in the distance, where Pierre had been at boarding school; the Coudre Woods, still visible on the horizon … all these things were sweet, dear to her, irreplaceable … She closed her eyes and thought passionately, ‘I’m dreaming … This is a horrible nightmare. I’m going to wake up in our apartment in Paris, where we lived three years ago … Oh, my God, give me back those winter days, when I’d come home from the shops, when it was raining and I’d hurry so I could arrange the flowers and light the fire in the dining room, in that old green marble fireplace we thought was so ugly … Then Pierre would come home and we’d have dinner. Is it possible that we’ll never do so again?’

Throughout the crowds, every single woman’s heart bled the same way, remembering those little moments of happiness now gone. And all the individual suffering merged into a single, immense sense of anguish for the fate of France. This anguish was so great that, little by little, it blocked out everything else. Everyone was prepared to accept bereavement, tears, suffering, if only the country could be saved; but everywhere they looked, all they could see were images of chaos and crushing defeat.

In the villages they passed through, people came out on to their doorsteps. ‘Are the Germans coming?’ they asked.

Yes, they were coming. The Hardelots had passed the train station quite a while ago; ordinarily, this was where you got the train to Paris, but already there were no trains running; they had to keep driving.

‘If the Germans take Saint-Elme,’ thought Charles, ‘will they let me go back tomorrow? Won’t they simply cut off the north from the rest of France?’ No, it was inconceivable. He was a civilian, a civilian. He could walk through armies, dodge bullets. Laws, agreements, traditions had always defended his person, his freedom and his possessions. He refused to believe that they had been abolished or were obsolete. Yet, nevertheless, they continued to move at a snail’s pace along the crowded roads.

Towards midday Simone Renaudin’s car tried to pass them, swerving in the process and pushing Charles Hardelot and his family into a ditch. Everyone emerged safe and sound from the wrecked bits of wood and shattered glass. Only Agnès had a cut on her forehead. The steering on Simone’s car had broken and it had crashed to a halt against a tree further down the road. No one in her car had been hurt either, but the vehicle was out of commission. They had to pull out all their packages and trunks, and wait at the roadside while the driver went to get some help.

‘Don’t worry, ladies,’ said Charles, ‘someone will give us a hand. Someone will help us.’

But the confusion was becoming ever more strange and frightening. All of Belgium and northern France seemed to be heading for Paris. From every direction a wave of people in cars, with horses or on foot closed in on the broken-down vehicles.

‘Let’s wait a bit longer,’ said Charles, refusing to give up hope. ‘Let’s just wait.’

The Hardelots and the Renaudins, enemies from Saint-Elme, sat at the side of the road like gypsies. Yet the habits of their good upbringing remained so strong within them that the elderly Renaudin woman and the Hardelot and Florent ladies exchanged compliments and ceremonious apologies.

‘I am truly sorry for this mishap, Madame … It’s our driver’s fault.’

‘Not at all. My husband is very careless. I’m always telling him …’

‘The important thing is that no one got badly hurt.’

Only Agnès and Simone said nothing. They looked furtively at each other.

‘She’s too fat,’ thought Agnès. ‘She looks hard and conceited.’

‘That boy looks rather scrawny,’ thought Simone. ‘
I
would have given Pierre beautiful children. What has
she
given him? He fought with his family. He’s been kicked out of the factory. And why? What does he see in her? She’s too thin; she’s got almost no hips or bust. I don’t like the kind of mouth she has.’

They had brought some provisions, which they
shared. Hours passed. The help they hoped for never came.

The child, who at first had roared with laughter, was getting irritable and wouldn’t stop crying. He needed a bath, a crib, some fresh milk so he could fall asleep.

‘We have to keep going,’ Agnès said finally, when it was late afternoon. ‘We have to forget about the road and follow the railway tracks until we get to a place where the trains are running again. If necessary we can spend the night at one of the level-crossing keepers’ houses because it’s certain there won’t be a single room available in any of the villages.’

‘My God, but what about the cars, the trunks?’ murmured Marthe.

But she did not protest for long. She had reached that state of nervous exhaustion when you feel indifferent to everything, apart from the most immediate, instinctive comforts: a meal, a bed, some sleep. She climbed to her feet.

‘Let’s start walking. I agree. Are you coming?’ she asked Simone.

But Simone wanted to stay and wait for the driver, who had been gone for five hours and still wasn’t back. She was clutching a suitcase and a hatbox. She had placed all her valuables, family papers and wads of money in the folds of her clothing; her mother’s jewellery was sewn into the lining of the hats.

‘You can go with them if you like,’ she said coldly to her cousin.

Agnès had pulled Guy’s pram from the wreckage of the car. Into it they wedged Charles’s little metal box and a few suitcases, and started walking. The wind brought the smell of distant smoke. Villages were burning. Saint-Elme, perhaps, was nothing more than ashes now. Ambulances passed by. It was dusk. Pierre might be in one of them.

They walked for a long time. The railway tracks glistened in the last rays of the setting sun. They kept walking. Agnès carried the sleeping child against her shoulder, pushed the pram, gritted her teeth and said nothing. Madame Florent put on a brave face, hopping and stumbling over every stone on the path in her high heels. For Marthe, who was fat and had heavy, sluggish legs and tiny feet, it was harder. She had to stop.

‘I’d rather die,’ she cried out, in tears. ‘I can’t walk another step. Leave me here, Charles. Leave me, my darlings. My legs simply can’t carry me any more.’

Charles took her arm and said softly, ‘Come now, Marthe, be strong, my poor dear. Think of what we must look like.’

He was right to appeal to her sense of bourgeois propriety. It was the only thing that could sustain her today. It was war, they had lost everything, they were dragging themselves along the road like vagabonds, but they owed it to themselves not to cry in public, not to look upset, in short, to get hold of themselves. In the same way that a good family, despite being in mourning,
stands upright in the cemetery and allows indifferent people to kiss their cheeks through their black veils.

‘Think of what we must look like,’ Marthe automatically repeated.

She adjusted her hat over her grey hair and, holding Charles’s hand, continued walking along the railway tracks that gleamed only faintly in the darkness; her brief moment of weakness overcome, she pursed her lips, forced herself not to think about Pierre, or Saint-Elme, or her house, or her varicose veins and just kept walking.

It was night. Simone hadn’t budged. Her cousin had left with the Hardelots. The driver hadn’t come back. She was alone; she was still waiting. Nothing could have made her leave. She was fiercely determined, as if she were defying Agnès, who had gone. She, Simone Renaudin, would not give in, would not allow destiny to get the better of her; she would rescue herself and her possessions from disaster. One day Pierre would regret not having married
her;
no one knew what she was capable of yet. She was young; she had always led a pampered existence, sheltered from any danger, but she felt within her all the strength and energy of her heritage. Oh, if only Pierre had married her … Old Hardelot would have been happy to have her as a daughter-in-law. She would have helped him run the factory while Pierre was away. She would have saved everything, protected everything, for Pierre. God, how she had loved him. No one
had suspected, fortunately. People saw nothing in their engagement but an arrangement between two families. But she had loved him fiercely, jealously, passionately, emotions she kept well hidden deep in her heart, beneath the heavy, impassionate façade of her plump flesh and pale complexion. She wouldn’t have been afraid to stay in Saint-Elme during the bombing. She would have stood up to the Germans.

Sitting on the bank at the side of the road, with strange bright lights piercing the darkness, she listened to the confusion of voices and footsteps, the sound of heavy tyres and galloping horses. One of them, with no rider, passed so close to her that she could feel its breath right on her face. More followed, carrying wounded soldiers who still had enough strength to sit up in a saddle and look for their comrades. Other soldiers were on foot. She saw one of them walk laboriously towards her; he was dragging his leg and spoke with a breathless, husky voice. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any water or wine, would you, Madame?’