Mr Hire's Engagement (7 page)

Her hair was tousled. She began to walk about. She went from the bed to the dressing table, grabbed a comb, which she then hurled across the room, and twice she looked in Mr. Hire's direction.

He had picked up the second piece of brown paper and four more drawing-pins. Two of these were already in place. Alice hunted feverishly in her bag, afraid to lose a second, brought out a pencil, tore off a big piece of lace-edged paper from a shelf.

Mr. Hire retreated to the table, whence he could see nothing. But he was no sooner there than he came forward a step and bent his head to look through the third window-pane, the only one still uncovered.

She had already finished writing and, kneeling on her bed, was holding the paper close up to her own window, watching the room opposite with an anxious face.

She could see him trying to hide. She snapped her fingers like an impatient schoolboy.

It never entered her head that Mr. Hire could not read what she had written, because the light was behind the piece of paper and all he saw was a dark square.

Becoming more and more irritable, she gave several little taps on the glass, and he came another step forward, mistrustful, then stood motionless for quite a time. At last he made a negative gesture with his hand, took his piece of brown paper, stepped back, and held it up close to his own lamp.

She did not understand. She pointed to her own sheet of paper, and Mr. Hire indicated his lamp with a brief and still hesitant little gesture. As she was wiping her eyes with her free hand, he went close up to the window, held his paper as she was holding hers, then withdrew and raised it up to the lamp.

She had understood. She jumped off her bed and held out her paper with both hands.

After all this, Mr. Hire had beads of sweat on his forehead and more still on his upper lip, under the moustache. He puckered his heavy dark eyebrows and read: 'I absolutely must speak to you.'

She was still holding the paper high in the air, and this drew up her breasts, making them look still heavier, and revealed the reddish hair under her armpits.

As Mr. Hire drew back, she rushed forward again, pleading, nodding repeatedly as much as to say:

'Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .'

He had practically disappeared, for when he was at the far side of his room she could not see him any longer. He came back, then retreated again with a stern expression, pointing with one finger across to her room.

'No . . .' she shook her head.

And she pointed to Mr. Hire's room, and did not wait for a reply. Springing off the bed, she snatched up her blouse and wriggled into it as she made for the door. She came back, however, to look at herself in the glass, and after dabbing her face with a towel, she powdered it a little, pushed out her lips to make sure the lipstick had not smudged.

Mr. Hire, stiff with fright, pinned up the third sheet of paper with two drawing-pins, ran to his washstand, emptied the basin, shut the cupboard, rushed across the bed and smoothed the counterpane. There was still no sound on the stairs. He paused in front of his looking-glass, ran the comb through his hair, fingered his cut and straightened his moustache. He was about to put on his collar and tie when footsteps came to a halt on the landing.

He was breathing so hard that the wiry hairs of his moustache were visibly shivering. His eyes were blank. He had found it immeasurably difficult to say:

'Come in!'

And he could sniff close at hand the same smell that had been carried to him faintly on the north wind as he sat in the stand at Bois-Colombes.

It was a warm smell, in which he could distinguish the sickly sweetness of face-powder, the sharper note of some scent or other, but most of all the girl's own smell, the smell of her flesh, her hair, her sweat.

She, too, was breathing hard. She sniffed, glanced round the room, and finally discovered Mr. Hire, standing just inside the door he had now closed again.

She could no longer think of anything to say. First she tried to smile, even thought of holding out her hand, but it was impossible to stretch out one's hand to a man so motionless, so distant. 'It's hot in here.'

And she looked at the window, now covered by the sheets of brown paper. She walked over to it, lifted up one piece of paper, saw her own room, and more especially her bed, which looked almost near enough to touch. When she turned round again she at last caught Mr. Hire's eye, and she blushed scarlet, while he turned his head away.

A little earlier she had been pretending to cry, but now her eyelids were really pricking, her pupils misted over. He did nothing to help her, left her to fight it back alone in the emptiness of the room, where the slightest noise seemed to echo more loudly than anywhere else. He even went across to the stove and bent down to pick up the poker.

It was no use waiting any longer. Alice began to cry and, as the bed was close at hand, she first sat down on it, then slid down sideways and propped herself on the pillow.

'I'm so ashamed!' she stammered. 'If you only knew!' Bending forward, still grasping the poker, he looked at her, and the last traces of colour faded from his cheeks. She was still crying. Her face was hidden. She murmured between her sobs:

'You saw, didn't you? It's horrible! I didn't know. I was fast asleep.' Peeping between her fingers, she saw him put down the poker and straighten up, still hesitant. She was wet with perspiration. Sweat was soaking the silk of her blouse, under the arms.

'Everything can be seen from here! And there have I been every day, undressing and . . .'

She sobbed harder than ever, giving him a glimpse of her tear-stained face, her mouth distorted in the effort to bring out the words.

'I wouldn't care! I don't mind you looking at me. But it's that dreadful thing . . .'

Slowly, so slowly that the change was imperceptible, Mr. Hire's waxen features were beginning to come alive, his expression becoming human, anxious, pitiful. 'Do come nearer to me! I feel as though that would make it easier...' But he was standing bolt upright beside the bed, like a tailor's dummy. He couldn't pull his hand away in time. She caught hold of it.

'What can you have thought? You know better than anybody that it was the first time he'd come, don't you?'

She had no handkerchief, and wiped her tears on the counter-pane. Heat radiated from her plump, heavy body, and there it lay sprawling, in the room, on Mr. Hire's bed, a source of exuberant life. Mr. Hire stared up at the ceiling. It seemed to him that the whole house must be able to hear the echoes, feel the palpitations of so much life. Someone was walking to and fro, overhead, with regular, persistent steps, probably carrying the baby, to hush it to sleep.

'Come and sit down by me.'

It was too soon. He still resisted, trying to escape the attraction of the body that lay there, huddling up and stretching out, spasmodically, between the sobs.

Calming down, she said brokenly:

'He was only a friend, someone to go out with on Sundays . . .'

Mr. Hire was well aware of this, since he always followed them, to the football ground or the cycle-track on fine days, to the cinema in the Place d'Italie when it was wet. He used to see them meet at half-past one, always at the same bus-stop. Alice would cling to the young man's arm. Later, after dark, they would stop now and then in a doorway, and their faces formed a single pale patch.

'Now, I hate him!' she exclaimed.

Mr. Hire looked at his wash-stand, at the alarm-clock on the mantelpiece, at the little stove, all the things he handled by himself every day, as though appealing to them for help. He was melting. He could no longer hold back on the slope, and yet he still had a mental reservation, he could still look on at his own behaviour, and he was displeased with the Mr. Hire he was watching.

Alice, too, was peering slyly at him, her eyes suddenly cold and lucid, just for a second.

'You were there, weren't you? Own up!'

The window, with its sheets of brown paper, had a sullen air. The lamp was still burning in the room opposite, but only a faint glow could be seen through the paper.

'I often forget to bolt the door and put out the light before I go to sleep . . .'

Now he was no longer being asked to do so, Mr. Hire sat down on the very edge of the bed, while Alice still held his hand in hers. It was true: she had fallen asleep over her book that Saturday, and it had slipped to the floor. Mr. Hire had not been sleepy. The window-pane was cool against his forehead.

Then the man had come in, not well dressed as he was on Sundays, but wearing a dirty cap, a scarf round his neck instead of a collar. Alice had propped herself on her elbows. He had signed to her to keep quiet and begun to speak to her in a low voice, in short, dry phrases, while he first washed his hands in her basin and then looked himself slowly up and down, as though on the look-out for tell-tale marks.

He was feverish. His movements were jerky. When he came up to the bed he had pulled a woman's handbag from his pocket and pushed it under the mattress. The words he was saying could not be heard. Alice was frightened, but she had not called out or made a single gesture when, with a mocking grin, the man had suddenly twitched back the bedclothes, uncovering her warm, bare legs and thighs.

'It was frightful!' she said. 'And you were watching! You saw the whole thing!'

Yes, the whole thing! A savage attack by a man bent on relieving his nervous tension at all costs.

Mr. Hire stared at the flowers on the wallpaper. The little pink spots had reappeared on his cheeks. Alice felt his hand tremble in hers, and her own clutch had an unhealthy, equivocal languor.

'I thought of that at once,' she added. 'Yes, while it was going on! But I didn't dare move, I didn't dare say anything. I only looked round, and I could see you. He said he'd kill me if I told. He'd kill you, too. That's why I still go out with him.' Her voice was not so pathetic now.

I don't know why he did it. He works in a garage. He earns good money. Friends must have led him on. Now he daren't even touch the two thousand francs, because he's afraid the numbers of the notes may be known.'

Mr. Hire moved, as though to get up, but she held him back. 'Do you believe me when I swear it was the first time, and that I didn't even enjoy it?'

Her hip was pressed against him. She was shivering. Her whole body was shivering, every inch of her was warm and alive, and her face had more colour after the tears, her lips blood-red, her eyes moist. The baby overhead was crying. Someone was tapping a foot rhythmically on the floor-boards, to soothe it. For the first time, Mr. Hire had ceased to hear the hurried ticking of his alarm-clock. 'Do you hate me?'

She was becoming impatient. She was afraid of breaking the spell by some word or gesture.

'Come closer . . . closer . ..'

She drew him towards her. Mr. Hire's elbow weighed on her breast.

'I'm all alone!' she managed to sob.

And he stared at her, from close to, frowning. He could feel her breath on his face. He was almost lying on her, and she was moving all the time, as though trying to force him into physical awareness. 'I know Émile will do what he said!'

She was growing dispirited, finding it hard to conceal her impatience, which was turning to anger. 'Won't you help me?'

She grasped him by the shoulders. This was the only thing left to try. She slipped one arm round his neck and pressed her burning cheek against his.

'Say yes . . . say yes . . .'

She was really shuddering, but from strain. And all at once he whispered in her ear:

'I've been very unhappy!'

He took no advantage of their physical contact, he did not seem to notice her stomach was crushed under him, one of her legs twined round his. He closed his eyes. He was breathing her in.

'Don't move!' he implored.

This gave her a chance to relax, and for an instant her face showed boredom and fatigue. When he half opened his eyes, she murmured, smiling:

'This is a nice room.'

It was harsh, probably because the lamp was unshaded. The lines were sharp. The colours clashed with one another. The oilcloth made the rectangle of the table look as cold and hard as a tombstone. 'Are you always alone?'

He tried to get up, but she held him back, pressed close against him. 'No. Stay here. I'm so comfortable! I feel as though . . .' And suddenly she asked, saucily: 'Will you let me come and tidy up for you, sometimes?' She meant more than that. She tried hard to set up another bond between them, but he seemed not to understand, and she was afraid of frightening him by making things too clear. 'You will save me, won't you?'

She was changing her attitude according to the inspiration of the moment, and this last phrase, for example, was a pretext for holding up her moist lips to him. He only brushed them with his. He was stroking her hair, while he gazed into space. 'Are you a bachelor? Or a widower?'

'Yes.'

She didn't know whether the 'Yes' applied to bachelor or to widower. And she felt a need to talk. If silence were allowed to fall, their situation would become absurd, lying there in this uninviting room, near a window covered with brown paper. 'Do you work in an office?'

'Yes.'

She was so afraid he would get up and resume his distant manner, that she nestled still closer to him, with a movement whose precision might pass as accidental.

He said nothing. That encouraged her. Her whole body vibrated, as though trying to take possession of the man, while she pressed her mouth against his, under the wiry moustache.

Mr. Hire's eyelids fluttered. Gently, he freed himself. Gently, too, he laid his cheek against Alice's cheek, so that they both lay with faces turned towards the ceiling.

'Don't move.'

He begged her in a whisper, squeezing her hand and panting slightly. His lips parted, and suddenly he got up, just as his eyes were filming over.

'I won't say anything,' he stuttered.

His jacket was rumpled up on his fat thighs. He walked over to the stove, while Alice, regardless of her disordered dress, sat up on the edge of the bed.