Cross Channel (5 page)

The curé explained how those heresies most dangerous to Christian doctrine were the very ones which seem to propose themselves as an agreeable and seductive version of the true faith: such was the Devil’s way. The Comte de Saint-Simon, for instance, had affirmed, among other matters, that society must strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class. Such an idea was not
strange to those familiar with the teachings of Our Lord in his Sermon on the Mount. And yet what, upon closer examination, did the heretic actually intend? That the direction of society, of Christian society, be handed over to men of science and to the industrial chieftains! That the spiritual leadership of the world be taken from the Holy Father in Rome and transferred to the makers of machines!

And how, moreover, had the followers of this false prophet comported themselves when they banded together into a sinful community to pursue the iniquitous principles of their late leader? They had publicly espoused the community of goods, abolition of the right of inheritance, and the enfranchisement of women. All of which meant that unmarried people of opposite sex lived communally like the brute polygamists of the East; even as they proclaimed the equality of woman with man, they brazenly practised prostitution. The curé of Pavilly spared his listeners the theory of the rehabilitation of the flesh, which he himself knew without examination to be blasphemous, and warned them instead about the dangers attendant upon peculiar and eccentric dress. Those who set themselves up against the true authority of God’s word frequently chose to mark themselves out by adopting a uniform. Thus in the communistic society of Ménilmontant they had worn white trousers to symbolise love, a red waistcoat to symbolise work, and a blue tunic to symbolise faith. This last garment was tailored so that it buttoned at the back, a particular which the polygamists asserted as proof of their fraternity, since none could put on his tunic without the assistance of another. The curé at this point left a passage of holy silence, during which some of his congregation correctly guessed at what he felt unable to
express: that the polygamists were therefore also incapable of undressing themselves without assistance.

Adèle in the back pew was by now fully attentive, gazing at the buttons on the front of the priest’s cassock as if gazing at virtue itself; while at the same time remembering a scarlet plush waistcoat which she had set eyes upon only a few days previously. The curé announced his intention of returning to this same theme the following Sunday, and began the blessing.

The French party walked on as far as the cutting. Given the notorious godlessness of the English navvies, they had the vivid expectation of at least seeing a few men labouring blasphemously on the Sabbath; but all remained quiet. The slashed earth peacefully displayed its thick stripes of white chalk, yellow gravel and orange clay. Dr Achille admired the neatness of the incision these rough men had made in the planet’s skin.

Within the chalky ravine the barrow runs were deserted. Charles-André, who was an amateur of the excavations, tried to explain their manner of operation: the planking laid up the sharp slope, the pole at the top of the embankment, the pulley atop the pole, the horse attached to the rope to help the navvy propel his full barrow up the hillside. Charles-André had witnessed immense loads being raised by this method; he had also seen mud sluicing down wet planks, a panicky horse unable to keep its feet, and a navvy hurling himself aside to avoid being crushed by his own barrow. Only the strongest fellows, the giants of the enterprise, had the fortitude and the audacity to perform such labour.

‘Five kilos of beef,’ observed Dr Achille.

‘Even so,’ said Mme Julie, reflecting on the considerable dangers of the enterprise, ‘you would think, would you not, that with ingenuity, surely a machine might raise the earth instead?’

‘There was one invented, I understand. A moving platform. The navvies judged it a threat to their wages, and destroyed it.’

‘I am glad they are not saints,’ rejoined Achille.

As they strolled back towards the encampment, they heard a language not their own, yet not a foreign tongue either. Two men were repairing a shovel, whose shaft was loose on its blade. The larger fellow giving instruction was an English ganger, and the smaller one, owner of the shovel, a French peasant. Their patois, or
lingua franca
, was partly English, partly French, and the rest an
olla podrida
of other languages. Even those words familiar to the listeners, however, were forced into a distorted shape; while grammar was wrenched violently out of its true way. Yet the repairers of the shovel, fluent in this macaronic, understood one another perfectly.

‘That is how we shall talk in the future,’ claimed the student with sudden confidence. ‘No more misapprehensions. Nations shall mend their differences as these two fellows are mending their shovel.’

‘No more poetry,’ said Mme Julie with a sigh.

‘No more wars,’ countered Charles-André.

‘Nonsense,’ Dr Achille responded. ‘Merely different poetry, different wars.’

The curé of Pavilly returned to Chapter XL of the Book of Isaiah. Adèle stared at the priest’s virtuous buttons, but he
had no more to say about the significance of dress. Instead, he began to explain how the trial and condemnation of the polygamists at Ménilmontant for actions prejudicial to the social order had severed one head of the hydra, but how others had grown in its place. That which heretical doctrine had failed to achieve was to be attained instead by engineering. It was known that many members of the disbanded sect were now active as scientists and engineers, spreading like a canker through the body of France. Some of their number had for years proposed the building of a canal at the Isthmus of Suez. Then there was the Jew Pereire, who openly proclaimed the Railway an instrument of civilisation. Blasphemous comparisons had been made with those holy artisans who had constructed the great cathedrals. The curé protested: the truer analogy was with the heathen Pyramid-builders of ancient Egypt. The English engineers and their ungodly navvies came merely to erect the new follies of the modern age, to manifest once more the vanity of Man in his worship of false gods.

He did not mean that such road building was in itself contrary to the Christian faith. But if the valleys were to be exalted, the mountains and hills to be made low, if the crooked were to be made straight and the rough places plain as had been done with the crossing of the river Cailly near Malaunay and with the proposed viaduct at Barentin, then such deeds must occur, as Isaiah instructed, in order to prepare the way of the Lord, to make a highway in the desert for God. Unless Man’s purpose was guided by the greater purpose of God’s law, then Man remained a brute beast and his greatest labours amounted to no more than the sin of pride.

In the back row, Adèle dozed. The farmer who kept the
land at Les Pucelles, having profited well from the appropriation of land required by the Rouen and Le Havre Railway, and having also contributed publicly to the Diocesan Relief Fund for Orphans and Widows, complained in writing to the Bishop about the young priest’s tendency to theoretical fulmination. What the parish needed was straightforward moral instruction on matters of local interest and concern. The Bishop duly admonished the curé of Pavilly, while simultaneously congratulating himself on his astuteness in placing the young man at a safe distance from the city. Let him burn out his fire and his wrath among simple souls, where little harm would be done. The Church was a place for faith, not ideas.

The French party made their way back to the first huts of the shanty village.

‘So we have not been attacked by banditti?’ Achille observed.

‘Not yet,’ replied his wife.

‘Nor robbed by gypsies?’

‘No.’

‘Nor bitten by a plague of locusts?’

‘Not exactly’

‘Nor seen the Pyramid slaves whipped?’

She struck him skittishly on the arm, and he smiled.

The navvy who had been soaping his lurcher was gone. ‘Those dogs are trained to kill our game,’ complained Charles-André. ‘Two of them can take down a fully grown sheep, they say.’

But Dr Achille’s good humour could not be shifted.

‘There are enough rabbits in our country. I would exchange a railway for a few rabbits.’

Yorkey Tom was sitting on the same hard little chair as before, warming his newly shaven chin in the sun. The short pipe clamped in the corner of his mouth pointed nearly to the vertical, and his eyes appeared tight shut. Cautiously, the French party re-examined this ferocious consumer of beef, this lusty scavenger. The ganger had adopted nothing of the French way of dressing. He wore a velvet square-tailed coat, a scarlet plush waistcoat patterned with small black spots, and corduroy breeches held by a leather strap at the waist with further straps at the knee, below which swelling calves descended to a pair of thick high-low boots. Beside him, upon a stool, lay a white felt hat with the brim turned up. He appeared exotic yet sturdy, a strange but commonsensical beast. He was also quite content to be observed, for the eyelid he kept quarter-open to guard his hat also gave him a view of these gawping frog-eaters.

They were at least politely keeping their distance. He had been in France for the best part of five years, and during that time he had been poked and prodded, gazed at and spat upon; dogs had been set on him and local bullies had mistakenly shown a desire to try their strength. Against this, he had also been applauded, bussed, embraced, fed and fêted. In many parts the local Frenchies regarded the excavations as a kind of free entertainment, and the English navvies would sometimes respond by putting on a show of how hard they could work. Ginger Billy, who had taken a Frenchwoman to wife for a couple of years on the Paris and Rouen, would translate their varied expressions of amazement, which Yorkey Tom and his gang took pleasure in provoking. They were kings of their work, and they knew so. It took a year to
harden up a healthy English farm labourer into a navvy, and the transformation was even greater for a French spindle-shank who ate only bread, vegetables and fruit, who needed frequent rest and a supply of kerchiefs to mop his poor face.

Now the French party’s attention was distracted by an argument from the neighbouring shanty. The old witch was heaving at one of the thick strings which disappeared into the mire and filth of her stock-pot. Beside her stood a growling, bearded giant, suspiciously checking the hieroglyph on the end of the cable. Up came a joint of submerged meat, the string piercing its centre. The crone tossed it on to a plate and added a wedge of bread. The hairy navvy now transferred his suspicion from the label to the viand. In its few hours under the guardianship of the old woman, it seemed to have lost some of its shape, much of its colour, and all of its identity. The giant began to berate her, though whether for her cooking or for her lack of honesty it was impossible to tell; though both parties were English, their bellowing and screeching were conducted in the excluding
lingua franca
of the encampments.

Still smiling at this comedy, the French party returned to their carriage.