The Wretches Page 2

I knew I had to get my ideas in order, explain myself… But it wasn’t easy.

  “I’m not happy!”

  Hearing myself say that, I blushed in confusion.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen and a half.”

  “And you’re unhappy! I know people in my country who’d give four hundred million dollars to be your age.”

  I felt a surge of boldness:

  “Introduce them to me, then. I’m ready to discuss the matter!”

  I’ve never seen a man laugh so hard. He was in tears, slapping his thighs. Then suddenly he stopped and asked:

  “Why do you want to be a maid here?”

  “Because I like this place,” I mumbled, looking around me.

  The woman said something in her language. Judging by her tone, it wasn’t positive…

  “Doesn’t Madame Rooland like the idea?” I blurted.

  “She says she doesn’t need anyone… She’s already a little bored in this country…”

  “A lot!” corrected Madame Rooland.

  “…and if she didn’t have to look after the house any more she’d be bored to death,” her husband finished, ignoring her interruption.

  “If I worked with her it’d be less boring. It’s different when there’s two of you,” I replied.

  I imagine when you’re in the dock, in court, you must feel like I did then: desperate to justify yourself, to say anything at all just to prove you’re good at heart.

  I looked through one of the open windows. The house was in a state. If that was what Madame Rooland called doing the housework then I hadn’t arrived a second too soon! I could hardly say that, though. She wouldn’t have been best pleased. When I’d passed by the house on the pavement and looked at them both in the shade of their swing, she’d seemed gentle to me, somehow. Strangely gentle in a way that I’d put down to her “Indian blood” at the time. But by now I could tell she wasn’t as easy-going as all that.

  She’d started eating again, her left arm still resting on her knees.

  “All right,” I sighed, “I’m sorry…”

  I couldn’t keep on at them. I gave them the least sad smile that I could, and left. The sand squeaked quietly beneath my feet. And you will never know how big that green car seemed, or how deliciously it smelt of America.

  THREE

  I cried my eyes out that evening in my shabby little bedroom. It had been decided, apparently: I would always be a prisoner in Léopoldville. The factory, men groggy from wine and fatigue, the bitter stench of cabbages and a television screen with me, Mum and Arthur forever lined up in front of it on our rickety chairs—that was all the future held for me.

  The next day, at Ridel’s factory I did my work in a daze, automatically. It wasn’t anything complicated. I was on the assembly line: car seats. My job was “trimmings”, stitching plastic rims onto the edges. At six o’clock I felt the urge to go home via the Roolands’, but I resisted. From now on, my route would be that of the level crossing and the crowd of factory workers, their mopeds spewing bluish clouds of exhaust smoke, the sound of their backfiring engines drilling through my skull.

  I got home earlier than usual. And then, would you believe, my heart near enough leapt out of my chest.

  Monsieur Rooland’s car was parked in front of our house. It took up practically the whole street. As I passed I gave a clip round the ear to one of the Coindets’ kids, who was trying to write “shit” in the dust on the beautiful bodywork.

  I burst into our place like a lunatic. Monsieur Rooland was there, sat on the best chair (an old one with turned legs that we got from Granny), his hat on the back of his head. Mum was standing in front of him, looking awkward as anything. She takes good care of herself normally, but it was a Friday, washing day, so she was wearing a scruffy old shirt, an old rag tied round her waist like an apron. Classy! I was ashamed of the bubbling washing pot, slopping all over the stove top, ashamed of the poxy furniture, of our fly-shit-covered lampshade with its pearl tassels and—I admit it—ashamed of Mum’s harelip.

  “Look, here she is!” she said.

  And straight off, her voice trembling with indignation, she asked:

  “What’s all this I hear, Louise? Did you go offering your services to these people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged. Monsieur Rooland gave an embarrassed smile. I took it out on him to hide my shame.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “The man in the tobacconist’s opposite my place told me who you were…”

  “Why did you come?”

  “Because we’ve thought it over, my wife and I. We’d like to take you on.”

  And then it was as if nothing else mattered. I don’t know if you know how it feels, you lot, to be really, properly happy, happy all over. It was like I was sinking into an ocean of warmth and light…

  “You’re taking me on?”

  “If you’re still interested, yes.”

  His accent was like music. Or at least, like the kind of music he played on his wireless with the big aerial.

  “Louise, you’re crazy! You’ve got a good position at Ridel’s. They like you there.”

  She wasn’t going to let herself be dazzled by the beautiful car or the black straw hat. She had her feet on the ground, as she said. It was no glamorous job being a maid, and where would it get me, working for Americans? They’d go back home sooner or later and I’d be out on the street.

  Only I didn’t see it that way. Quite the opposite: I could already see myself leaving with them, on board the Liberty, going to shine their shoes in America.

  “I want to go, Mum!”

  I’d never spoken to her in that tone before. She twisted the cloth of her makeshift apron, her hand raw and wrinkled from the washing. She wanted to slap me, I could tell. How she managed to keep control of herself I still wonder. Now, after everything that’s happened, I reckon if she’d given me the back of her hand at that moment it would have been the best thing she’d ever done.

  I turned to Monsieur Rooland. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his sports jacket, as if it were just a shirt. He had a fat gold watch on his wrist, but it shone less brightly than his patches of freckles.

  “Say something, Monsieur Rooland!” I begged.

  He was American, so he said just what an American would say in a situation like that:

  “How much do you earn at the factory?”

  Mum got in first.

  “Thirty thousand francs.”

  It wasn’t true. At least, not entirely. I got thirty thousand during the motor show when we were working flat out and there was overtime to burn, but normally I’d only bring home twenty-two to twenty-five thousand a month.

  He took a cigarette from his pocket. I think it was the way he lit it, more than anything else, that won Mum over. He struck the match on the heel of his shoe. Just a little scrape and it blazed into life. You could try all your life and you’d never manage it.

  “I’ll give her thirty thousand and her meals. OK?”

  Mum didn’t know what else to say.

  “You know,” I ventured, “I could always go back to the factory if things didn’t work out…”

  And that’s how it came about. Mum shrugged in agreement, and sighed:

  “What’ll Arthur say, I wonder.”

  She was right—it was a bit harder with him.

  As I said, he’s a bit of a Communist, Arthur. On the leaflets he used to bring home there were always big headlines ranting about Americans lynching blacks and exploiting workers and calling them warmongers. I never really knew what a “monger” was, and I don’t think Arthur did either, but he’d shout it at the top of his voice as if he’d invented the word.

  When we told him the news he hit the roof, saying if I was going to go to the Yanks’ I’d never set foot in his house again, and much worse besides, but he was sober, and a weak bloke like him was never going to be a match for two deter
mined women without a glass of wine or two inside him. He gave in in the end because there was a wrestling match on the telly (the Béthune Bruiser versus Doctor Kaiser) and he couldn’t bear to miss it.

  The next day, I went and picked up my final pay packet from Ridel’s. Monsieur Rooland had told me his wife would wait for me all day. I just stopped by to drop off my pay at home, and get a smile from Mum in return, and then I went straight over to the Americans’. I felt like I was on my way to New York! And when I saw Madame Rooland standing on her front step I almost wondered whether it was the Statue of Liberty.

  FOUR

  I still ask myself, whose role is more embarrassing in a situation like that—the servant who’s never been a servant before or the mistress who’s never been a mistress?

  Madame Rooland looked me up and down for a good long moment—not so much with a critical eye, more like she was trying to think of what she should say. Eventually, she nodded:

  “Come and see the house.”

  I went to the palace at Versailles with school once. We had a one-armed tour guide who reeked of cheap wine, like Arthur after one of his merrier piss-ups. His heels rang out on the kings’ polished wood floors as he proclaimed:

  “This is the Queen’s room. It is here that she gave birth to…”

  And I imagined the queens all giving birth to little princes. It made me come over all strange. Well, when Madame Rooland announced: “This is our bedchamber” (she spoke French like that: I always had to keep myself from laughing at her funny little turns of phrase) it made me imagine her with her husband, in all sorts of poses that a young girl shouldn’t know about. You wouldn’t believe the shapes they twisted themselves into.

  The headboard was padded, as were the wardrobe doors. There were chairs, and rugs scattered all over the floor, but nothing on the walls: no paintings, no ornaments… Dirty laundry was piling up in the corners. She was a slattern, Madame Rooland: always spick and span herself, in her green blouse, her orange lipstick and her classy hairdo, but lazy like you wouldn’t believe when it came to the housework.

  She showed me all the rooms. There were nine in all, five of which were unused. As we looked around, a question occurred to me, but I didn’t dare ask. When we’d finished, it came out all of its own:

  “And my bedroom?” I murmured.

  She stared at me, shocked. She looked almost like a little girl.

  “Your bedroom?”

  “Yes! A maid should sleep in the house, they have to… I’ve got to make breakfast in the morning, haven’t I?”

  “But… But you don’t live far away.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Suppose you need something in the night?”

  A scene from an American movie came helpfully to mind.

  “Look, suppose you want a glass of milk, for example. You just call me and I go and get it for you.”

  “Oh, I see! Very well, choose whichever room you want.”

  “Any of them?”

  “Of course, it is not importance.”

  I felt as if a good fairy had taken me by the hand and led me into a fantastical toy shop. Choose! It was too tempting. Cheekily, I chose the best room there was. It was near theirs. Only the bathroom was in between. He’d rented the house furnished, Monsieur Rooland, and only bought furniture for their bedroom and the garden. There was no padded headboard in my room—just a normal bed with marquetry inlay and a red eiderdown, a mahogany dresser, a round table covered with a lace cloth. A pair of wicker chairs and a leather armchair completed the set-up. You get the idea.

  “I’ll go and get my things this afternoon if that’s all right?”

  “OK!”

  We went back downstairs. What a place to live! It felt as if I’d left Léopoldville and been transported to some faraway country.

  “What’s your name?” asked Madame Rooland.

  “Louise Lacroix, Madame.”

  “Don’t call me Madame—call me Thelma.”

  “What?”

  In a flash I saw my old boss, Ridel. His first name was Lucien. He was a big deal and not half self-important with it. I think he’d have liked us all to believe the good Lord called him up every morning to ask his permission to let the Earth go round the sun. I imagined his face if I’d had the nerve to call him Lucien!

  “Why are you laughing, Louise? Isn’t it a nice name, Thelma?”

  “Oh, yes, Madame, it’s just that maids don’t call their employers by their first names.”

  “Well what do they call them?”

  “Madame!”

  “Just ‘Madame’?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK.”

  With that she lit a cigarette, and offered me her packet of Camels.

  “No, thank you, I don’t smoke… Where would you like me to start, Madame?”

  She answered in her own language by mistake. Seeing that I didn’t understand, she translated for me:

  “It is not importance.”

  She seemed somehow sad all of a sudden. I could tell I was in the way a bit. She was going to have to get used to having me around, and that small effort annoyed her. I was going to have to pull out all the stops to win her over.

  “It’s almost eleven. Does Monsieur Rooland come home for lunch?”

  “No.”

  “And you, do you have a big meal at lunchtime?”

  “No… I am just drink a tea with toast.”

  Was she watching her figure or was that just how they did things here? Lunch at ours was more like a plate of lentils and sausages, or a mutton stew. I’ve never been mad about tea.

  “Me too, Madame, if that’s all right.”

  I took a plastic apron from the kitchen and got to work. It was just laziness on her part, all that mess. There was everything you needed to clean a house there: vacuum cleaner, floor polisher, washing machine and a load of other gadgets that I didn’t really understand the point of.

  I started by washing the pile of dirty dishes, then by cleaning the top of the electric cooker, which was filthy with stains from pots that had boiled over. Then I went over the tiled floor with a broom. When my kitchen was clean, I started on the bathroom. Talk about a bomb site! A cat could have lost her kittens in there. Dirty laundry, lipstick crushed on the floor, hairs in the bath, combs sticking out of the soap, towels hanging off the shower head and the bath taps. You could tell the furnishings weren’t hers! She was letting everything go to pot.

  I worked for hours. From time to time Madame Rooland came and watched, looking at me like I wasn’t all there. Always with a cigarette in her gob and an American paperback in her hand with some awful picture on the cover (a horror story, I reckoned).

  By four, everything was finished, shining, neat and orderly… It was a different sort of house altogether.

  “May I go and get my suitcase, Madame?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since I’m going out, perhaps I could do the shopping for this evening?”

  “There’s no need, we’ve plenty of food in the kitchen.”

  I’d seen. Tins! Tins, of all colours, shapes and sizes. The Roolands ate nothing else, it seemed—perhaps just buying enough fruit and salad to keep the scurvy away. But my afternoon’s work had pepped me up.

  “In France we save tins for picnics, Madame… Or we eat them when there’s no time to cook from scratch.”

  “What is it signify, ‘cook from scratch’?”

  “To prepare a meal. Since I have time, I’ll cook for you, if you don’t mind?”

  You’d have to hear it to believe it, the way she used to say “OK!” As if she was holding her nose.

  “Do you have any preferences?”

  “No!”

  I was expecting her to give me some money for the shopping, but she was so taken aback that it didn’t occur to her, so I set off, telling myself that Mum had left me a couple of thousand francs from my last pay packet, and it wouldn’t hurt to give a little loan to my new employers.

  *

  When I
got home Mum was sitting next to the window, darning a pair of Arthur’s boxers. The blood drained from her face when she saw me.

  “I knew it! You’re not up to it, you little idiot.”

  She really thought I’d got myself sacked by the Roolands already.

  “Not at all, Mum, it’s all going like a dream. I do just as I like…”

  I told her about my day. She sighed.

  “They’re a funny old couple all right. And they let you come and go like this?”

  “I’ve come to get my things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think? Maids live in.”

  “But there was no mention of that…”

  “Not the other day, no. But this morning there was! Madame Rooland even wants me to sleep in a room near hers. She has medication she needs to take at night.”

  When I was little, my mum convinced me that my nose twitched whenever I lied. That it was a dead giveaway. From then on, if I was telling her porkies, she only had to glance at the end of my nose and, without thinking, I’d move my hand to cover it, giving myself away. This time I restrained myself.

  “So, you’re leaving us completely.”

  “Don’t be daft, Mum—I’ll be five minutes away!”

  “Well, I haven’t heard the last of Arthur’s grumbling, then.”

  “He’s not my dad, Mum…”

  The smell of cabbages had never been so strong. Mum went back to her darning.

  In a quarter of an hour, my packing was done. As wardrobes go, mine wasn’t huge, and I didn’t want to take everything in case it gave Mum the impression I was leaving for good. Back in the kitchen, I asked:

  “Mum, do you reckon I could pick some flowers from the garden for the boss?”

  “Go on, then.”

  The soil in our garden’s black. It doesn’t stick together in great clods like it would in the real countryside. Instead, it crumbles into a fine dust under your spade. Everything that grows in it has the same look: somehow shrivelled and stunted, withered before it even has a chance to bloom. Or maybe I’m imagining it—people round here seem to think it’s normal enough, the way things are.

  Picking some of Arthur’s marigolds and dahlias, I heard the pigeons cooing in the loft he’d built next to the toilet. Pigeons, telly and booze—they’re his vices. He’s got four pairs, each pair in their own little box house. White, they are, with sort of curly wing tips.