Germinal - Emile Zola [71]
‘Anyway, here’s what I wanted to tell you,’ she continued. ‘Apparently La Pierronne was seen out and about last night near the First Estate. The gentleman in question – and you know who I mean! – was waiting for her behind Rasseneur’s, and off they went together along the canal…How about that, eh? And her a married woman!’
‘Heavens!’ said La Maheude. ‘Pierron used to give the overman rabbits before he was married, but now it’s obviously cheaper to lend him his wife.’
Bouteloup guffawed loudly and tossed a crumb of gravy-soaked bread into Achille’s mouth. The two neighbours continued to vent their feelings about La Pierronne: a flirt, they said, no prettier than the next woman, always inspecting her various orifices, and forever washing and anointing herself with creams. Still, it was her husband’s business. If that’s how he wanted things. Some men were so ambitious they’d wipe their boss’s backside just to hear him say ‘thank you’. And so they would have continued had they not been interrupted by the arrival of a neighbour who was returning a nine-month-old baby. This was Désirée, Philoméne’s second. Philoméne herself, who ate her lunch at the screening-shed, had arranged for the woman to bring the little girl to her there so that she could suckle it while she sat down for a moment on a pile of coal.
‘I can’t leave my one for a single minute or she howls the place down,’ La Maheude said, looking at Estelle, who had gone to sleep in her arms.
But there was no escaping the moment of reckoning which she had seen looming in La Levaque’s eyes for a while now.
‘Look here, it’s time we did something.’
At the beginning, without a word being said, the two mothers had agreed not to have a marriage. Just as Zacharie’s mother wanted to have his fortnight’s wages coming in for as long as possible, so Philoméne’s mother was equally incensed at the idea of giving up her daughter’s. There was no hurry. La Levaque had even preferred to look after the baby herself, while there was only one of them; but as soon as he started getting older and eating proper food, and then another one had arrived, she found herself getting the worst of the bargain, and she was pushing for the marriage with the urgency of a woman who has no intention of remaining out of pocket.
‘Zacharie has avoided being called up for military service,’ she continued, ‘so there’s nothing left to stop them…When shall we say?’
‘Let’s wait for the better weather,’ La Maheude replied awkwardly. ‘This whole business is a nuisance! If only they could have waited till they were married before going together like that…! You know, honestly, I think I’d strangle Catherine if I found out she’d done anything silly.’
La Levaque shrugged.
‘Oh, don’t you worry. She’ll go the same way as all the others.’
Bouteloup, with the calm air of one who is free to do as he pleases in his own house, rummaged in the dresser in search of bread. Vegetables for Levaque’s soup were lying on the corner of the table, half-peeled leeks and potatoes which had been picked up and put down a dozen times or more in the course of this ceaseless chatter. Having just set to once more, La Levaque now proceeded to abandon them yet again and posted herself at the window.
‘And what have we here?…My goodness, it’s Mme Hennebeau with some people or other. They’re just going into La Pierronne’s.’
At once the pair of them started in again on La Pierronne. Oh, but of course, wouldn’t you know! The minute the Company wanted to show people round the village, they took them straight to her house because it was so spick and span. No doubt they weren’t told about all the goings-on with the overman. Anyone can be spick and span if they’ve got lovers who earn three thousand francs and get their accommodation and heating free, not to mention all the other perks. Spick and span on the surface maybe, but underneath…And all the time the visitors were in there, the two women rattled on about La Pierronne.
‘They’re coming out now,’ La Levaque said eventually. ‘They must be doing the rounds