The Wretches Read online

  “Come to the station, right away. Something’s happened. It’s a bad business.”

  That was all he said. Not a word more. He didn’t even make sure that I’d heard him, just hung up the receiver. A bad business! My legs were trembling, a feeling of emptiness filled my chest and a chill ran through my teeth. Yes—my teeth. Odd, isn’t it? I thought about the noise I’d heard earlier—I felt sure that was the “bad business”.

  I set off at a run, splashing down flooded streets, stumbling, gasping, the rain drenching me, running into my nose and mouth—and at every step I was crying out inside: “Jess! Oh, Jess! Don’t let it be true. Jess, my love.”

  Arriving at the level crossing, I saw that it was more than a bad business: it was a disaster. The embankment was crowded with people. A train sat on the tracks, in a place where you’d never see one stopped usually. Its engine coughed great clouds of smoke and flashes of flame into the dark, rainy night.

  Mum had told me about the war. About how she’d been caught up in a bombing raid. Her stories had conjured up all sorts of images like the scene in front of me now.

  I pushed my way into the murmuring crowd. People moved aside to let me through. I didn’t have too much trouble getting to where it was—to where Monsieur Rooland’s beautiful green car, or at least what remained of it after it had been crushed and folded in two, was lying on its side. The bodywork wasn’t gleaming any more; it was crumpled up like a ball of paper. The rails and the embankment were strewn with metal debris: I recognized one of the bumpers, Madame Rooland’s beautiful crocodile-skin handbag, the windscreen, some scraps of white leather… The station staff were swarming round the wreck. I joined them. A big bloke, whose face I knew, asked me what I was playing at.

  “It’s Monsieur and Madame Rooland…”

  He was dripping wet, water streaming down either side of his black visor. A flicker of understanding showed on his ruddy, mustachioed face.

  “Oh! You’re the girl the man was talking about.”

  “What man?”

  “The one who was in there! The driver, I mean.”

  Since the telephone call my thoughts had all been in a muddle. I’d been swept up by some sort of awful merry-go-round, spinning in the pouring rain. Suddenly, hearing those words, I felt a surprising calm come over me.

  “He isn’t dead?”

  It was as if Jess was there in front of me: his polite, slightly sad smile, his freckles, his gentle eyes. I’d thought him swallowed up for ever by some kind of endless nothingness. That was the “bad business” for me. If he was still alive then there was no bad business.

  “He is, the lucky devil. Are you a relative?”

  “His maid.”

  The other rescuers paid us no attention. They were puffing and gasping, straining to tip the car off its side so they could open one of the doors. I saw then that there was still someone inside… I recognized Thelma’s mauve dress and her white fur stole. The red-faced railwayman stared at me grimly.

  He was holding a lantern in his hand, one of the two-coloured ones they have for signalling, lighting up the wreck for his mates while he talked. I’d only just noticed that detail. The world was coming into focus, but agonizingly slowly, like a jigsaw I was putting together bit by bit.

  “How did it happen?”

  “We don’t know much yet… The level-crossing barrier must have been up. What with all the rain, he must have missed the train pulling out of the station. It ran right into them. Luckily for him the door on his side flew open with the impact. He was thrown out.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  “Where is he?”

  “They took him to hospital. He didn’t want to go, with his wife still in there… But they made him, so he asked us to let you know.”

  I heard sobbing close by, in the darkness. A flash of red light from the lantern lit up La Magnin, the fat barrier operator, standing in the middle of a group of silent spectators.

  She had her dressing gown on, bare legs underneath; the rain had plastered her hair to her sickly-looking face. She was crying and moaning, shaking her head as if not wanting to accept what had happened.

  The other watchers were standing stock-still, looking on in solemn silence, oblivious to the raging storm, shocked and unsettled at the sight of the mangled car.

  “Is she dead?”

  “Probably. We’ll see soon…”

  I didn’t say anything else, just stayed next to the man with the lantern. It was an awfully sinister scene. Every now and then a shaft of light from the lamp, or a flash of flame from the locomotive farther up the track, would light up the wreck, and for a second I’d see Madame Rooland squashed up inside the mass of crumpled metal.

  I thought of her sprawled on the sofa, in her orange shorts and green blouse, listening to “Loving You” and drinking a glass of whisky. I thought of that time in the kitchen, her drying the plates while she told me that her marriage was like a walk in the woods in winter… Was it really over, all that? Did none of that mean anything any more? Had Time really snatched back all those moments, those words, those scenes? What would Jess’s life be like now?

  “Onetwothree, heave! Onetwothree, heave!” they chanted, like a gang of workmen. A couple of days earlier they’d replaced the wooden signpost on our road with a concrete one, and to keep in time the workers had repeated the same cry, over and over.

  They rolled the car back onto what was left of its wheels.

  A big bloke started whacking away at something with a hammer.

  “Easy there!”

  “Get her legs free first.”

  They were talking in hushed voices, but every now and then I could hear the odd word, forced out at a higher pitch by the effort they were making.

  “Whoa, whoa, go easy there now! She’s still breathing…”

  So that’s all it is, I said to myself. It’s just a crumpled-up car with Madame Rooland inside. They’ll get her out… Soon the trains will be running like normal again. Tomorrow Jess will buy another car. The next day maybe Thelma will be back on her feet, with the help of some crutches. Soon there’ll just be a bit of broken glass here at the side of the railway line to remind us of…

  Life goes on regardless—I knew that was true now. The earth’s wounds always heal. There’s no sickness the world can’t survive.

  They were moving away from the car now, like a funny little swarm of ants. I saw that they’d managed to get Thelma out. They didn’t lay her down on the ground, just kept on carrying her down the embankment, the bloke with the lantern lighting the way.

  The ambulance was waiting on the road running alongside the railway tracks.

  It was the lantern man again who gave me a hand climbing up into the back.

  “She’s the maid. The husband wanted her to go along with his wife,” he explained to the others.

  And then I was inside—an iron cage lit by the harsh light of a bare bulb. The doors closed behind me. I was alone in the back with Thelma, sitting next to the stretcher on a little fold-down leather seat. I hadn’t got a proper look at her until then.

  It was mostly her legs that were hurt. Below her ankles they were just a mangled mess. Her arms were badly cut up too. Ghastly streams of blood ran in rivulets over the rubber of the stretcher. She had a purple bruise the size of a fist over her right eye and an open wound on the top of her head, staining her hair a strange colour.

  Her face was pale, her nose wrinkled up. Her breathing seemed ragged and shallow. The ambulance must have been going flat out. We were taking the corners at speed, jolting me from one side to the other, with nothing but the cloth curtain separating me from the driver to hang on to. At one point I lost my balance and fell onto the stretcher. That was when she opened her eyes. They weren’t the dazed eyes of someone coming to and struggling to understand where they are and what has happened to them. Not a bit of it—her eyes were clear. She understood.

  “It’s me, Madame�
�”

  Thelma looked at me like she had that first day, when I went to offer my services to them. Oh God, what was she thinking? It felt like she wanted to tell me something important.

  “Are you in pain?”

  I was leaning over the stretcher. I put my body between her and the light, so her face stayed in the shadows. I didn’t have the guts to look into those piercing eyes. I felt like she could see right to the heart of me, like she could see that great truth I hadn’t even been aware of myself until an hour before.

  A walk in the woods in winter, she’d said…

  “Are you in pain?”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. But I didn’t just say it, I shouted it at the top of my lungs. I couldn’t help myself. I had to do something to break the evil spell she was casting.

  “Are you in pain?”

  She didn’t have the strength to keep her eyes open. They closed slowly, like flowers going to sleep with the setting of the sun. I stayed in the same position for a moment more, then a bend in the road threw me back to the other side of the ambulance. I sat back on the seat, but facing towards the doors this time—I didn’t dare look at her any more.

  ELEVEN

  I’d been to the hospital once before, when Arthur had his fistula, and I had awful memories of it. The one in our town’s like a prison—a horrid grey place with bars on the windows and a wall running around it that’s far too high for just a hospital. The second they opened the doors of the ambulance I threw myself outside. The breakneck ride had destroyed my nerves. The storm had blown itself out. There were still a few gusts of wind and rain, but the sky was clearing already and from time to time the moon showed itself through a rent in the clouds.

  Some male nurses slid the stretcher out of the ambulance. I stood back to give them room and watched the sad procession disappear into the building. I didn’t dare follow. I was terrified of the place. The ambulance driver took pity on me.

  “Oi, darling, don’t stay there. Get inside, you’re shivering.”

  He was right. Long shudders were shaking my shoulders and my teeth were chattering. I went up the concrete ramp to the entrance. The only light in the foyer came from two blue-tinted light bulbs. The walls were painted a muddy green. A withered plant sat in a gigantic flowerpot, probably a donation from some grateful patient. Wooden benches ran the length of the room, from one door to the other. I sat down to wait, and tried to get my thoughts in order, but I was on the merry-go-round again! A mad, muddled merry-go-round but, instead of wooden horses, all the actors in the drama of my life were there, fixed in terrifying poses: Mum with her purple harelip and Granddad’s old postman’s cape; Arthur in front of the telly, cheering on a wrestler; Madame Rooland, drunk on her sofa; and finally, Monsieur Rooland, holding a steering wheel—one without a car attached. In the background others were spinning: the white-haired general, the railway worker with the lantern… Not people I cared about particularly, but they had their place in my memories regardless.

  I must have been sitting there for quite a while. The hospital seemed deserted. Now and then a woman’s screams would ring out, but the second they stopped, a dead silence would fall in the building.

  Suddenly an old nun appeared from a corridor, the wings of her gigantic wimple beating the air like those of some great seabird trying to take flight. She wore iron-rimmed glasses and was clutching a ball of blue wool to her starched white dress. She seemed surprised to see me.

  “Are you waiting for someone, my child?”

  I wasn’t waiting for someone, I was waiting for something: an answer from Fate.

  “I’m a maid. I work for the couple they just brought in, Sister.”

  She nodded.

  “Were you in the car?”

  “No, Sister.”

  A silence. Again the invisible woman’s scream tore through the hospital’s suffocating calm. Without thinking, I asked:

  “Why is she screaming?”

  “She’s in labour.”

  I blushed, stupidly, to hear a nun use that word. But despite her clothes this old lady didn’t seem like a bride of Christ, really—more like one of those old nurses who bicycle all over the countryside giving injections. Everything about her gave off an air of firmness, goodness, activity. She must have a lot of authority in the hospital and know how to talk to the patients, I thought.

  “Do you have any news on my employers, Sister?”

  “The gentleman isn’t very seriously hurt. Just a gash on his shin and a dislocated shoulder…”

  She stopped and looked at me, asking herself if I could take what was to follow.

  “His wife is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  The merry-go-round came to a halt, like a spinning roulette wheel. There was no more Thelma. Her winter walk in the woods was over.

  I looked away and my eyes came to rest on the jagged-edged leaves of the pot plant. A philodendron! I’d always remembered that strange name. The leaves lower down were yellowing. The plant was going to die, just like Thelma Rooland. The air in the hospital didn’t suit it at all—it was a delicate plant, it needed to be fussed over…

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Come with me.”

  She led the way, up a wooden staircase carpeted in spongy rubber. I seemed to interest her. She examined me over the tops of her glasses as we walked.

  “Have you been with them for a long time?”

  “A few months… Eight, I think.”

  “Are they foreign?”

  We were still talking of “them” in the present tense. Thelma hadn’t been consigned to the past yet, probably because her body was still warm, and lying not far away—a human presence. Tomorrow, or the day after, we’d give her over to the earth, and to the past tense.

  “They’re Americans, Sister.”

  “A tragic accident.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  Jess was in a room on the first floor with one other patient: an old man, tall, thin and yellow with a white moustache. He was wide awake and watching Jess in silence. They’d put Mercurochrome on the grazes on Jess’s face, and it made him look quite different. His head was buried in a gigantic pillow, and it looked so fragile to me there, like a child’s.

  “Hello, Louise.”

  He still had the voice of a man—of a tough man, ashamed of his weaknesses and trying to stay in control.

  “Oh, Monsieur!”

  I’d stopped, unable to go any closer. Seeing him alive and well in that strange bed had brought on a wave of giddiness, like vertigo.

  “How is my wife? Do you have any news?”

  The old nun went to his side, her clothes giving off a waft of ether as she moved. She sat down by the bed and took Jess’s hand. He understood right away.

  “Oh! I see,” he stammered.

  I wondered whether he would cry. But, no—he didn’t break down, simply looked up at the ceiling. I was the one who burst into tears.

  *

  We stayed by his bedside for nearly an hour, without him speaking another word or even looking at us. From time to time his neighbour would cough—the only noise that disturbed the heavy silence in the room. It was as if we were hypnotized, the old nun and me—put in some agonizing trance by the sight of his silent suffering. What was going on behind the blank mask of Jess’s face? What memories were haunting him? What thoughts were tormenting him? It seemed to us like he was on some long mental journey, reliving his life with Thelma, trying to understand how it could be that she was gone. A change was taking place right under our eyes, although we couldn’t see it happening, and the consequences would be surprising.

  We waited respectfully. Eventually Monsieur Rooland let out a long sigh, like a mathematician who’d just solved a complex equation.

  “When can I get out of here?” he asked the nun.

  “In two or three days, maybe sooner. We’ll have to wait for the head doctor’s decision. He�
�ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  He gave a little nod of agreement.

  “Louise…”

  “Yes, Monsieur?”

  “You’ll be going back to your parents’, I suppose?”

  “No, Monsieur. If it’s all right with you I’ll stay at the house.”

  “All alone?”

  I shivered. The island was a very different place now. I thought of the shutter banging against the wall, the wind howling in the chimney… and then, even worse, Thelma’s bottles of Scotch, her glass, her terry-cloth dressing gown…

  “Yes, Monsieur. All alone.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll get everything ready for when you come home.”

  That seemed to calm him. He nodded.

  “Very well.”

  That was all. I wondered whether I should shake his hand, but he didn’t hold it out for me, so I left, turning back for a last look when I reached the doorway. Jess was staring up at the ceiling again. I found myself following his gaze. It was a very dull, white ceiling with a glass globe light in the middle of it.