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By Root 1373 0

were stories of her pulling a farm wagon single-handed from the path of an oncoming train and stopping a runaway goods wagon as it careered out of control down the Barentin incline towards an approaching express. These astonishing feats of strength made her much sought after by the young men in the neighbourhood, all the more so because they thought at first she would be an easy catch, always wandering off into the fields as soon as she had finished work and finding some hidden spot where she could just lie on the ground gazing quietly into the sky undisturbed. But the first who were rash enough to approach her never wished to repeat the experience. She used to spend hours bathing in a nearby stream, naked. A group of lads, the same age as her, got together to go to watch her. Without even bothering to get dressed, she had grabbed hold of one of them and knocked him nearly senseless. No one tried to spy on her again. There was an even stranger story about her treatment of a signalman at the junction for Dieppe at the other end of the tunnel, a man called Ozil, a perfectly ordinary sort of chap, about thirty years old, whom she seemed to fancy, or so it was said. One night, thinking she wanted to make love, he had put his hands on her, and she had nearly beaten him to death with a stick. She held men in utter contempt, like an Amazon. Most people took this as proof that she was a bit wrong in the head.

Jacques listened with amusement to her protestations that she had no time for lovers.

‘What about Ozil?’ he asked. ‘Is the wedding off? I heard you used to run through the tunnel every day to see him.’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Wedding, my foot!’ she said. ‘I run through the tunnel because I like it! Two and a half kilometres in the dark! If you didn’t watch out you’d get cut to pieces by a train! You should hear the noise they make inside! Ozil was starting to get on my nerves. He’s not the man for me.’

‘Are you looking for somebody else, then?’ Jacques ventured.

She hesitated.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Certainly not.’

She started to laugh. She had become suddenly embarrassed and started untying a particularly awkward knot.

‘What about you?’ she asked without looking up, as if absorbed in her task, ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

Jacques became more serious. He looked away, staring unsteadily into the night.

‘No,’ he said tersely.

‘So it’s true what they say, then,’ she continued. ‘That you can’t stand women. Come on, Jacques, I’ve known you long enough; you haven’t got a kind word to say for us. What have we done to upset you?’

He made no answer. She pondered a moment, put down the knot that she was trying to untie and looked at him.

‘Is it true that the only thing you’re in love with is your locomotive?’ she asked him. ‘Everybody makes jokes about it. They say you’re always polishing it and making it look shiny. They say it’s the only thing you really care about. I’m only telling you, Jacques, because I’m your friend.’

He looked at her as she sat in front of him, in the pale, misty light from the moon. He remembered when she was a little girl, boisterous and headstrong even then, flinging her arms round his neck the minute he came home and clinging to him in childish glee. Later they had gone their separate ways. Each time he met her again he noticed how much she had grown. Yet she would still fling her arms round him as before and gaze at him lovingly with her big bright eyes. Jacques found it more and more embarrassing. And now, she was a fully grown woman, handsome, desirable. She had loved him, he imagined, from the earliest days of her childhood. His heart began to beat quickly. He suddenly felt that he was the one she had been waiting for. The blood rushed to his head; he felt that it would burst. In the confusion that came over him, his first impulse was to flee. Desire had always driven him mad. He saw red.

‘Sit beside me, Jacques,’ she said.

He remained standing where he was, not knowing what to do. Suddenly his legs felt very tired. Then, yielding to the insistent call of his desire, he dropped to the ground