The Beast Within (51 page)

‘My poor Flore!’ he said, putting his whip down and taking her hands in his. ‘You said you’d been expecting it for some time. But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? If she’s in the house I’d like to see her. We could have been friends if it hadn’t been for what happened to Louisette.’

He slowly accompanied her towards the house. As he reached the door he turned to look at his horses. She quickly reassured him.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘They’re not going to move. The express is still a long way off.’

She was lying to him. Above the gentle whisperings of the countryside, her practised ear had heard the train leaving Barentin. In another five minutes it would be there, leaving the cutting, a hundred metres from the level crossing. As Cabuche stood in her mother’s bedroom, deep in thought and moved to tears as he remembered Louisette, Flore remained outside by the window, listening to the steady bark of the engine’s exhaust as the train drew nearer and nearer. Suddenly, she thought of Misard; he must have seen her and he would try to stop her. She turned to look. It was as if something had struck her in the chest; he was not at his post! She found him at the back of the house, digging up the earth round the well. Not for a minute could he give up his crazy search. He must have suddenly decided that that was where the money was. He was completely absorbed in his labours, totally unaware of anything else, digging and digging for all he was worth. Flore needed no further encouragement. Things were falling into place of their own accord. One of the horses started to neigh as the train approached the far end of the cutting, hissing and wheezing like someone running towards them in a hurry.

‘I’ll see to them,’ said Flore. ‘Leave it to me.’

She ran over to them, took the leading horse by the bit and pulled it forward with all the strength she could muster. The horses took the strain. The wagon with its enormous load rocked from side to side but remained where it was. Flore pulled on the harness herself, as if she were an extra horse. The wagon moved forward over the crossing. It was half-way across when the express emerged from the cutting one hundred metres away. In order to stop the wagon and prevent it from clearing the track, Flore seized hold of the harness and, with a superhuman effort that made her limbs crack, she held the horses back. She was an exceptionally strong woman; her feats of strength were legendary — stopping a wagon as it ran down an incline, pushing a cart from in front of an oncoming train. And now there she was, single-handed, holding back five horses in a grip of iron, as they reared and snorted in terror.

It all happened in less than ten seconds. But it seemed an eternity. The two great stones seemed to block out the horizon. The locomotive came gliding out of the beautiful, golden sunrise, moving smoothly forward at great speed, its gleaming brass and polished steel glinting in the sun. The crash was now inevitable; nothing on earth could prevent it. The moment seemed to last for ever.

Misard had run back to his position as fast as he could. He was screaming and waving his hands in the air, in a desperate attempt to warn the train and get it to stop. Cabuche had heard the wheels of the train hammering on the track and the horses neighing with fright and he too rushed out of the house, shouting at the top of his voice to get the animals to move forward. But Flore, who had by now jumped clear, held him back, which saved his life. Cabuche imagined that she hadn’t been able to control the horses, and that it was they who had dragged her forward on to the line. He thought that he was to blame and sobbed uncontrollably, choking with fear and desperation. Flore, however, remained motionless, standing upright, staring, her eyes ablaze, watching intently. Just as the front of the locomotive was about to hit the blocks of stone, when it was perhaps only a metre away, in one split second she clearly saw Jacques, with his hand on the reversing wheel. He turned round, and their eyes met in a look that seemed to Flore never-ending.

That morning Jacques had greeted Séverine with a smile as she came down to the platform at Le Havre to catch the express, which she did every week. Why let his troubles ruin his whole life? Why not enjoy the good days, when he had the chance? Perhaps everything would come right in the end. He was determined to enjoy today at least and had been thinking of how they might spend their time together; perhaps he could take her to lunch in a restaurant. So when she had pulled a long face because there wasn’t a first-class carriage at the front of the train and she would have to sit further back, away from him, he had tried to cheer her up by giving her a bright smile. They would still arrive together in Paris and could make up for being separated when they got there. He was in such good spirits, in fact, that, as he leaned out to watch her get into a compartment at the far end of the train, he even had a dig at Henri Dauvergne, the principal guard, who he knew had his eye on her. The previous week, Jacques had had the impression that Dauvergne was being more forward than usual and that Séverine, in need of some distraction that might take her mind off the wretched situation she found herself in, had begun to encourage him. Roubaud had already said that something like this would happen - that she would end up sleeping with Dauvergne, not because she was attracted to him but because she fancied doing something different. Jacques asked Dauvergne who he’d been blowing kisses to the night before from behind one of the elm trees in the station forecourt. Pecqueux, who was shovelling coal on to the fire and getting La Lison ready to leave, roared with laughter.

From Le Havre to Barentin the express had travelled at its usual speed, with no undue incident. It was Henri who first spotted the wagon across the line from his lookout post in the guard’s van as the train came out of the cutting. The guard’s van, at the front of the train, was full of luggage, for the train was carrying a shipload of passengers who had disembarked from a liner the night before. The guard was standing at his desk in what little space was left, sorting out his paperwork, surrounded by piles of trunks and suitcases that swayed backwards and forwards with the motion of the train. His little bottle of ink, suspended from a nail, swung constantly to and fro. Every time the train stopped and luggage was unloaded, the guard had to spend four or five minutes filling in forms. Two passengers had just got off at Barentin; he had finished putting his papers in order and had climbed up to sit at his lookout, glancing quickly along the line in both directions as he always did. When he wasn’t otherwise engaged, he always sat in his glass observation box, keeping an eye on the line ahead. He couldn’t see the driver because he was hidden from view by the tender, but because of his elevated position he could often see further ahead and spot things more quickly than the driver could. The train was still rounding the bend in the cutting when he saw the obstruction in front of them. It came as such a shock that at first he couldn’t believe his eyes and sat there motionless, petrified. A few valuable seconds were lost; the train was already out of the cutting and there were loud cries coming from the footplate when he finally managed to pull the cord of the alarm bell that dangled in front of him.

Jacques at that crucial moment was in a world of his own, standing with his hand on the reversing wheel, gazing into space and dreaming of vague, faraway things. He had even for a moment stopped thinking about Séverine. He was brought to his senses by the frantic ringing of the bell and a loud scream from Pecqueux just behind him. Pecqueux had raised the damper in the ash-box because he didn’t think the fire was drawing properly and had leaned out to check the speed. It was then that he had seen what lay ahead. And now Jacques saw too. He saw everything and knew what was about to happen. He went deathly pale. The wagon lay across the track. The train was hurtling towards it. There was going to be a terrible crash. He saw it clearly and sharply. He could even make out the grain on the two blocks of stone. Already in his bones he could feel the shock of the collision. It could not be avoided. He frantically turned the reversing wheel, shut off steam and applied the brakes.
⁵
He put the engine into reverse and leaned out of the cab, tugging desperately at the whistle in the frenzied and forlorn hope that the warning might be heard and the fearsome obstacle removed. The whistle gave out a long, agonized wail of distress that rent the air. But
La Lison
was not responding; she simply ran on ahead, hardly slowing down at all. She was no longer the willing creature she once had been. Since the blizzard, she hadn’t steamed as well and was not as quick off the mark; she had become temperamental and crotchety, like a woman who had caught a cold on her chest and had suddenly aged. She let out steam and shuddered as Jacques applied the brake. But there was no stopping her; she was carried forward under the powerful impetus of her own weight. Pecqueux, in sheer terror, leaped from the footplate. Jacques stood stiffly at the controls, his right hand on the reversing wheel and the other, without him realizing it, still pulling at the whistle, waiting for the worst.
La Lison,
in a cloud of steam and smoke, her whistle still screaming wildly, crashed into the wagon with the full weight of the thirteen carriages she drew behind her.
⁶

Twenty metres away, standing beside the track, transfixed with horror, Misard and Cabuche, their arms in the air, and Flore, her eyes starting from her head, watched the catastrophe unfold. They saw the train being flung upwards, seven carriages piling on top of each other and then, with a sickening crash, falling back into a twisted mass of wreckage. The three leading carriages were reduced to nothing. Four others lay in a tangled heap of torn-off roofs, broken wheels, carriage doors, couplings, buffers and pieces of broken glass. They had heard the locomotive crash into the stones, a dull crunching sound followed by a scream of agony.
La Lison
was completely crushed and had been thrown to the left on top of the wagon. The stones had been split apart and filled the air with a cloud of splinters as if they had been blasted from a quarry. Of the five horses, four had been knocked off their feet, dragged along the ground and killed outright. The rest of the train, a further six carriages, was still intact and had come to a stop without even leaving the rails.

People began to shout. There were calls for help, which tailed off into inarticulate cries of pain.

‘Help me! Save me! Oh God, I’m dying! Help! Help!’

There was a confusion of sounds and it was impossible to see.
La Lison
had fallen over on to her back, with her underside to the air. Steam came gushing from open valves and broken pipes with a fierce hiss, like the dying gasps of an angry giant. Dense clouds of white vapour swirled across the ground. Burning coal spilled from the firebox, like blood pouring from her belly, filling the air with a pall of black smoke. The force of the impact had buried her chimney in the ground; the chassis was broken where it had taken the shock, and both side frames were bent. She lay with her wheels in the air, like a monstrous steed that has been gored by some savage beast, displaying her twisted coupling-rods, her broken cylinders, and her shattered piston rods and valve gear to the sky, like a hideous gaping wound through which her life ebbed away with groans of anger and despair. Beside her lay the horse that had not been killed; its two front legs had been ripped off and, like her, its innards were spilling out through an open gash in its belly. It was straining its head forward, straight and rigid, in a hideous contortion of pain; they could see it gasping and screaming pitifully, but above the terrible noise that came from the dying locomotive, no sound reached their ears.

Strangled cries filled the air, but they went unheard and were carried away on the breeze.

‘Help me! Kill me! I can’t stand the pain! Kill me! Please kill me!’

Amid the deafening noise and blinding smoke, the doors of the undamaged carriages had begun to open, and crowds of passengers were leaping in panic from the train. They fell in a heap on to the railway line, got to their feet and started kicking and punching each other in order to disentangle themselves. As soon as they felt solid ground beneath their feet and saw open countryside in front of them, they made off as fast as their legs would carry them, leaping over the hedge and running across the fields, intent on one thing only — to get out of danger, to get as far away as possible. Women and men alike ran screaming into the woods.

Séverine, having been trodden underfoot, her hair undone and her dress torn to shreds, eventually managed to free herself. Without a thought for her own safety she ran along the train towards the hissing locomotive. Suddenly she came face to face with Pecqueux.

‘Jacques! Jacques!’ she cried. ‘Is he safe?’

The fireman had miraculously come to no harm; he hadn’t even sprained an ankle. He too was running towards the engine, feeling sick at the thought of his driver lying beneath the wreckage. The two men had worked on the footplate together for so long, driving their train through storm and tempest! And now their locomotive, their poor locomotive, the much-loved lady in their
menage à trois,
lay on her back, a complete wreck, breathing her last!

‘I jumped off,’ he stammered. ‘I don’t know anything! Come on, we must get there quick!’

As they ran forward they bumped into Flore. She had seen them coming. She was standing in the same place as before, astonished at what she had accomplished. This massacre was of her making! She had done it! And she had done it well! Her only feeling was of a need fulfilled. She felt no remorse for the suffering she had caused; it didn’t affect her. But when she recognized Séverine, her eyes opened wide, and an expression of intense pain darkened her face. How could it be that this woman was still alive when Jacques was certainly dead! She had murdered her love. She had driven a knife into her own heart. In her torment she suddenly realized the enormity of her crime. She had done this! She had killed Jacques! She had killed all these people! She let out a great scream and ran madly up and down, wringing her hands.