The Beast Within (39 page)

Jacques looked at her, horrified to see how she had declined. There was nothing left of the fine, healthy woman he had known before.

‘Poor Aunt Phasie!’ he said. ‘Are you still getting those cramps and dizzy spells?’

She squeezed his hand tight and lowered her voice further: ‘I caught him at it! I’d given up trying to find out what he was putting the poison in. I never drank or ate anything he touched. But it made no difference. Every night it still felt as if my tummy was on fire. Well, he was putting it in the salt. One night I saw him doing it. I put salt on everything, and a lot too, to make sure it’s healthy to eat!’

Jacques had felt that his own malady was cured from the moment he had become Séverine’s lover, and since then he had often thought about this tale of slow, deliberate poisoning as one thinks of a nightmare; he couldn’t believe it was real. He gently squeezed the poor woman’s hands in his, trying to calm her down.

‘Do you really think he’s been trying to poison you?’ he said. ‘You have to be really sure before you start saying things like that. It’s been going on too long. It’s more likely to be some illness the doctors don’t recognize.’

‘An illness!’ she exclaimed scornfully. ‘Yes, it’s an illness I’ve caught off him! As for the doctors, you’re right. Two of them came to see me and they couldn’t understand it. They couldn’t even agree between themselves. I never want to see a doctor here again. Can you believe it? He was sticking it in the salt! I swear I saw him doing it! He’s after my thousand francs. The thousand francs Dad left me. He thinks that once he’s got rid of me, he’ll find where I’ve hidden them. But he won’t! They’re somewhere where nobody will ever find them. Never! I can die in peace. No one will ever get my thousand francs!’

‘But Aunt Phasie, if I were you and I was as certain as that, I’d call the police.’

She was horrified at this suggestion.

‘Oh, no!’ she said, ‘I’m not having the police here! It’s got nothing to do with them. This is a matter between him and me. I know he wants to get rid of me, and I don’t want to be got rid of, as you can imagine! So I’ll just have to look after myself, won’t I? I’ll have to be a bit more careful! Putting it in the salt! Who’d have thought it? A little runt like him! A little squirt you could fit in your pocket, getting the better of a big, strong woman like me! Once he’s got his teeth into you there’s no stopping him!’

She shuddered and gasped for breath before continuing.

‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘it’s not going to work this time. I’m getting better. I’ll be back on my feet in a fortnight. And he’ll have to be really clever to catch me out again. I’m curious to see what he gets up to. If he finds some other way of poisoning me, it’ll be because he’s cleverer than me. If that happens, too bad! I’m done for! I don’t want anyone getting involved. It’s between him and me!’

Jacques thought it must be the illness that was putting such dark thoughts into her head and he tried to make a joke of it. But all of a sudden she began to shake under the bedclothes.

‘Here he is!’ she whispered. ‘I can sense when he’s coming.’

Sure enough, a second or two later, in walked Misard. Phasie had turned deathly pale. She was terrified, just as a colossus instinctively fears the tiny insect that pricks its flesh. Despite her determination to outwit Misard single-handed, she had developed a growing fear of him that she was not prepared to admit to. Misard on the other hand, who the minute he opened the door had clearly spotted Jacques and Phasie talking together, now appeared not even to have noticed them; he stood there with a vacant expression on his face, mincing his words and grovelling abjectly in front of Séverine.

‘I thought that madame might perhaps wish to take this opportunity of inspecting her property. I am at your service, madame. If madame would like me to accompany her ...’

Séverine once again declined. But his voice whined on and on.

‘I imagine madame was surprised about the fruit ... It really wasn’t worth the cost of sending it; it was all rotten ... And then there was a gale that did so much damage ... It is such a pity that madame cannot sell her house! There was one gentleman, but he wanted repairs carried out. Of course I am entirely at madame’s disposal; she may count on me to act in her best interests.’

He insisted on serving her some bread and pears - pears from his own garden, he said, which weren’t rotten. She accepted.

As he walked through the kitchen, Misard had told the other passengers that work on clearing the line was progressing but that it would still take another four or five hours. The clock had just chimed midday. Everyone groaned, for they were all getting very hungry. Flore told them that she didn’t have enough bread to feed everyone but that she did have some wine. She had just come from the cellar with ten litre-bottles, which she placed on the table in a row. Then, of course, there weren’t enough glasses, so people had to share - the Englishwoman and her two daughters, the elderly gentleman and his young wife. The young wife had acquired a new admirer in the person of the young man from Le Havre, who was waiting on her hand and foot and showing her the utmost solicitude and consideration. He went away and came back with some apples and a loaf of bread, which he had found in the woodshed. Flore was annoyed, saying that the bread was for her sick mother. But the young man had already cut it and was sharing it out among the ladies, beginning with the young wife, who smiled at him, obviously feeling highly honoured. Her husband had still not calmed down and was taking no notice of his wife, extolling the commercial achievements of New York to the American. Never had the two young English girls bitten into apples with such relish. Their mother was very tired and half asleep. Two women sat on the floor in front of the fire, exhausted by the long wait. A few of the men went outside for a smoke to help pass the time and came back in, frozen stiff and shivering. Everyone was becoming more and more disgruntled; they were still hungry and tired and they were growing restless and impatient. The scene in the kitchen resembled a party of survivors from a shipwreck, people from the modern world who had had the misfortune to be marooned on a desert island.

As Misard kept walking in and out of the room, leaving the door open behind him, Aunt Phasie was able to see everything from her sickbed. These were the people that she too had seen flashing past the window for almost a year, as she dragged herself backwards and forwards between her bed and her chair. It was only rarely now that she could get outside; her days and nights were spent alone, stuck in this room, looking out of the window, with no other company than the trains that came speeding past. She had always complained about living in such an outlandish place, where no one ever came to see her, and now a whole crowd of people had suddenly dropped out of the blue! To think that there in her own kitchen, amongst all those people rushing madly about their business, not one of them suspected a thing, not one of them knew about the poison being put in her salt! She couldn’t get over it. It was so ingenious! She wondered how God could allow anyone to perform such a crafty trick without it being spotted. Enough people went past their front door, thousands and thousands of them, but they were all in such a rush. Not one of them could have imagined that, here in this little house, someone was calmly and quietly killing her. Aunt Phasie looked at them one by one, all these people who had dropped from the skies, and reflected that when you were so busy it wasn’t surprising if you walked into some untoward situation without noticing it.

‘Are you coming back to the train?’ Misard asked Jacques.

‘Yes,’ said Jacques, ‘I’ll follow you.’

Misard went out, shutting the door behind him. Phasie held Jacques back and whispered into his ear: ‘If I peg it, you watch his face when he can’t find the money! It makes me laugh to think about it. So I shall die happy!’

‘But then, Aunt Phasie, no one would find it. Aren’t you going to leave it to your daughter?’

‘Leave it to Flore! So that he can take it off her! I should think not! I’m not even leaving it to you, dear, because you’re a bit soft too. He’d find a way of getting his hands on it. I’m leaving it to nobody ... except the earth! And when I die I’ll have it all to myself!’

She was now very weak. Jacques laid her back on the bed and calmed her down, giving her a kiss and promising to come and see her again soon. She appeared to drop off to sleep. Jacques walked over to Séverine, who was still sitting beside the stove. He smiled at her and raised a finger to warn her not to make a noise. He came up behind her. Without a sound, she threw her head back, offering him her lips. He leaned over her, quietly put his mouth to hers and kissed her passionately. As their lips came together, they closed their eyes. When they opened them again, they were horrified to see Flore, who had walked in through the door, standing in front of them, staring at them.

‘Has madame finished with the bread?’ she asked bluntly.

Séverine was annoyed and confused.

‘Yes. Thank you. Yes,’ she muttered vaguely.

Jacques glared at Flore angrily, not knowing quite what to do. His lips moved as if he were about to say something. Then with a furious wave of his hand he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Flore remained standing where she was, tall and proud like an Amazon, her thick blonde hair falling in long tresses about her face. So her suspicions about this lady whom she saw in Jacques’s train every Friday were right. She had been looking for some explanation all the time they had been there, and now she had it; everything had become clear. The man she loved would never love her. He had chosen this other woman, this thin slip of a girl sitting in front of her! Why had she refused herself that night when he had tried to take her by force? She now regretted it so bitterly she could have wept. To her simple way of thinking, it would be her he would be kissing now, if she had given herself to him before this other woman. But what chance did she have now of being alone with him, of flinging her arms round his neck and crying, ‘Take me, I was stupid, I didn’t know!’ She could do nothing about it; she felt herself growing angrier and angrier towards the frail little creature that sat there in front of her, muttering with embarrassment. She could have taken her in her big, brawny arms and crushed her to death like a tiny bird. Why didn’t she? Was it because she didn’t have the courage? She swore that one day she would be avenged. She knew things about her rival that could have landed her in prison. But they had let her go free, like all the other whores who have sold themselves to old men with money and influence. She was consumed with jealousy and could hardly contain her anger. She snatched away the rest of the bread and the remaining pears with neither a please nor a thank you.

‘If madame has finished with these, I’ll take them in to the others.’

It struck three, and then four. Time dragged on and on. Everyone was overcome with weariness and they were getting more and more frustrated. It was now beginning to grow dark again, and a general gloom settled over the snow-covered landscape. The men, who went out every ten minutes or so to see how the work was progressing, came back saying that the engine still seemed to be stuck in the snow. Even the two English girls were crying from tiredness. In a corner of the room, the pretty dark-haired woman had fallen asleep on the shoulder of the young man from Le Havre. Her husband hadn’t even noticed; things had reached such a pass that social conventions were forgotten. The room was getting colder, and people were shivering. Yet it never occurred to anyone to put more wood on the fire. It eventually became so cold that the American left, saying that he would be better off lying on a seat in one of the carriages. Everybody else was beginning to feel the same - they should have stayed on the train; that way at least they wouldn’t have been worried sick, not knowing what was going on. They had to restrain the Englishwoman, who said she was going back to sleep in the train as well. The room was getting darker and darker. Someone placed a candle on a corner of the table to give a little light, but it just seemed to make everyone even more depressed. The situation appeared hopeless.

Outside, however, the snow-clearing was almost finished. The team of soldiers who had freed the locomotive were sweeping the track clean ahead, while Jacques and Pecqueux once more took up their positions on the footplate.

Jacques observed that it had finally stopped snowing and began to feel more confident. Ozil the signalman had told him that on the Malaunay side of the tunnel the snow had not fallen so heavily. Jacques asked him about it again.

‘When you walked through the tunnel,’ he said, ‘did you have any difficulty getting in or out of it?’

‘No,’ said Ozil, ‘I told you. You’ll get through, don’t worry.’

Cabuche, who, with his enormous strength, had set to and done the work of ten men, was about to walk away. He had always been a shy, timid sort of man, and his latest brush with the law had made him even more so. Jacques called to him.

‘Cabuche!’ he said. ‘Do us a favour. Could you pass us our shovels? They’re there, on the bank. We might need them again if we have any more trouble.’

The quarryman handed him the shovels. Jacques shook his hand warmly to thank him for his help and to assure him that he still had the greatest respect for him.

‘You’re a good man!’ he said. ‘One of the best!’

Cabuche was so touched by this mark of friendship that he had to fight back his tears.

‘Thank you,’ he said simply.

Misard nodded his agreement, pursing his lips in a thin smile. He had accused Cabuche before the examining magistrate but had since made up his differences with him. For some time he had been walking around doing nothing, with his hands in his pockets, looking shiftily all around the train as if he were waiting to see if he might pick up a bit of lost property from underneath it.

At last, the principal guard and Jacques decided that they should try to get the train restarted. But Pecqueux, who had jumped down on to the track, called out to his driver.