Germinal - Emile Zola [81]
Bébert had no answer and accepted the two sous. Lydie, who was trembling, had said nothing for, like the child equivalent of a battered wife, she felt afraid of Jeanlin and yet loved him too. As he offered her the two sous, she reached out her hand with a submissive smile. But he suddenly changed his mind.
‘No, wait. What bloody use is two sous to you?…Your mother’ll only pinch ’em off you. Bound to, unless you hide them. I’d better look after them. Whenever you need money, you can just ask me.’
And the nine sous vanished. To keep her quiet, he grabbed her and rolled her over on the spoil-heap. She was his little woman, and together in dark corners they would experiment at the love they heard and saw going on at home behind partition walls or through cracks in the door. They knew all about it but had scarcely the means; as yet too young, they spent hours groping each other and pretending to do it like two naughty young puppies. He called it ‘playing mums and dads’, and whenever he took her off somewhere, she eagerly followed. She trembled with the delicious instinctive thrill of it as she allowed herself to be taken; and though he often did things that made her cross, she always yielded in the hope of something which never came.
Since Bébert was not allowed to participate in these particular games and got thumped each time he tried to touch Lydie, he felt angry and put out and didn’t know where to look when the pair of them messed about like this together, which they did quite happily in his presence. Hence his one idea was to scare them and to interrupt them by shouting that someone was looking.
‘It’s no good. There’s a man watching.’
In this case it was true, for Étienne had decided to continue his walk. The children leaped up and ran away as he came past the corner of the spoil-heap and continued along the edge of the canal, amused to see the rascals get such a fright. No doubt it was too soon for them to be up to this kind of thing at their age; but, well, they saw such goings-on and heard such filthy stories, you’d have to have tied them up if you wanted to stop them. Nevertheless, deep down, he found it depressing.
A hundred paces further on he encountered more couples. He had reached Réquillart, and here at the old, ruined mine every girl in Montsou was to be found loitering with her man. It was where everybody met, a remote, deserted spot where the putters came and conceived their first babies when they didn’t want to risk it on the shed roof back at home. The broken fences meant that everyone could get into the old pit-yard, which was now a wasteland littered with the remains of two collapsed sheds and the still-standing supports of the overhead railway. Disused tubs lay strewn about, and half-rotten timbering stood stacked in piles, while lush vegetation was vigorously reclaiming the place in the form of thick grass and some young trees, which had sprouted and were already sturdy. Each girl felt at home here: there were secret places for all, and their lovers could have their wicked way with them on top of the beams, behind the woodpiles or inside the tubs. They made themselves as comfortable as they could, cheek by jowl and yet oblivious to their neighbours. And it was as though, all around the defunct headgear and this shaft that was weary of disgorging its coal, creation itself were taking its revenge, as though unfettered love, lashed by instinct, were busy planting babies in the wombs of these girls who were hardly yet women.
All the same a caretaker still lived there, old Mouque. The Company had let him have two rooms situated almost directly beneath the derelict headgear, whose last remaining beams threatened daily to come crashing down on top of them. He had even had to prop up part of his roof. But he and his family were comfortable living there, with himself and Mouquet in one room