The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (25 page)

‘Don’t they make you mad?’ Pauline said to her one morning. ‘I’d get my own back on them, if I was you! They’re having a good time, so I’d have a good time too! Come with us on Sunday; Baugé’s taking me to Joinville.’

‘No, thanks,’ replied Denise, with her calm obstinacy.

‘But why not? Are you still afraid someone will take you by force?’

Pauline laughed heartily, and Denise smiled. She knew how things happened: it was on an excursion that all the girls had met their first lovers, friends brought along as if by chance; and that was not what she wanted.

‘Come on,’ Pauline persisted, ‘I swear Baugé won’t bring anyone. There’ll just be the three of us … I certainly won’t marry you off if you don’t want me to.’

Denise hesitated, tortured by such desire that her cheeks were flushed. Since the other girls had started talking about the country pleasures they were going to have, she had felt stifled, overwhelmed by a longing for the open sky, dreaming of tall grass which would reach to her shoulders, of giant trees with shadows which would flow over her like fresh water. Her childhood, spent in the lush greenery of the Cotentin,
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was reawakening with a yearning for sun and air.

‘All right, I’ll come,’ she said finally.

Everything was arranged. Baugé was to come and fetch the girls at eight o’clock in the Place Gaillon; from there they would go by cab to the station at Vincennes. Denise, whose twenty-five francs a month were swallowed up by the children, had only been able to do up her old black woollen dress by trimming it
with check poplin strips; and she had made herself a bonnet-shaped hat, covered with silk and decorated with a blue ribbon. Dressed in this simple way, she looked very young, like a little girl who had grown too quickly; she had the neatness of the poor, and was a little ashamed and embarrassed by the luxuriance of her hair, bursting out from under her simple little hat. Pauline, on the contrary, was flaunting a silk spring dress with violet and white stripes, and a matching toque laden with feathers, and was wearing a necklace, and had rings on her fingers, which gave her the flashy appearance of a rich tradesman’s wife. The silk dress was like a Sunday revenge on the woollen dress she was obliged to wear all week in the shop, whereas Denise, who wore her silk uniform from Monday to Saturday, put on her thin, shabby woollen dress again on Sundays.

‘There’s Baugé,’ said Pauline, pointing out a tall young man standing near the fountain.

She introduced her lover, and Denise immediately felt at ease, for he seemed so nice. Baugé, enormous, with the slow strength of an ox at the plough, had a long, Flemish face, in which his vacant eyes laughed with childish puerility. Born in Dunkerque, the younger son of a grocer, he had come to Paris after being virtually turned out by his father and brother, who thought him terribly stupid. Nevertheless, at the Bon Marché he was making three thousand five hundred francs. He was stupid, but very clever when it came to linens. Women thought him nice.

‘What about the cab?’ asked Pauline.

They had to walk as far as the boulevard. It was already quite warm in the sun; the lovely May morning seemed to be laughing on the paving-stones. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the blue air, as clear as crystal, was full of gaiety.

An involuntary smile played on Denise’s half-open lips; she was breathing deeply, and she felt that her chest was emerging from six months’ suffocation. At last she no longer felt the stuffy air and the heavy stones of the Ladies’ Paradise weighing her down! She had a whole day in the country before her! It was like a new lease of life, infinite joy, into which she was entering with the fresh sensations of a child. However, in the cab she looked away, embarrassed, when Pauline planted a large kiss on her lover’s lips.

‘Oh, look!’ she said, still looking out of the window. ‘There’s Monsieur Lhomme over there … He’s walking really fast!’

‘He’s got his French horn with him,’ added Pauline, who had leaned over. ‘He’s crazy! It almost looks as if he’s running to meet some girl.’

Lhomme, his instrument case under his arm, was indeed rushing along past the Gymnase Theatre, his nose in the air, laughing to himself with pleasure at the thought of the treat in store for him. He was going to spend the day at a friend’s, a flautist in a small theatre where amateurs played chamber music from breakfast time onwards on Sundays.

‘At eight o’clock! He must be keen!’ Pauline went on. ‘And you know, Madame Aurélie and all her clique must have taken the six twenty-five train to Rambouillet… You can bet she and her husband won’t meet.’

The two girls talked about the trip to Rambouillet. They didn’t want it to rain on the others, because then they would suffer too; but if a cloud could burst over there without the splashes coming as far as Joinville, it would be funny all the same. Then they started on Clara, a hopeless case who didn’t know how to spend the money of the men who kept her: didn’t she buy three pairs of boots at a time, and throw them away the next day after cutting them with scissors because her feet were covered with lumps? In fact, the girls in the drapery business had no more sense than the men: they squandered everything, never saved a penny, wasting two or three hundred francs a month on clothes and sweets.

‘But he’s only got one arm!’ said Baugé suddenly. ‘How does he manage to play the horn?’

He had not taken his eyes off Lhomme. Then Pauline, who sometimes amused herself by playing on his innocence, told him that the cashier held the instrument against a wall; and he quite believed her, thinking it a very ingenious idea. And then when she, filled with remorse, explained to him how Lhomme had adapted a system of pincers to his stump which he then used like a hand, he shook his head, full of suspicion, declaring that they couldn’t make him swallow that.

‘You really are silly!’ she said laughing. ‘Never mind, I love you all the same.’

The cab sped on and they arrived at Vincennes station just in time for a train. Baugé paid, but Denise had already declared that she intended to pay her share of the expenses; they would settle up in the evening. They got into the second-class, and found the train full of a gay, noisy throng. At Nogent a wedding party got out amid laughter. Finally, they arrived at Joinville and went straight to the island to order lunch; and they stayed there, on the bank beneath the tall poplars which border the Marne. It was cold in the shade; a sharp breeze was blowing in the sunshine, extending far into the distance, on the other bank, the limpid purity of open country, with its endless folds of cultivated fields. Denise lingered behind Pauline and her lover, who were walking with their arms round each other’s waists; she had picked a handful of buttercups, and was watching the water flow past, happy, although her heart sank and she hung her head each time Baugé leaned over to kiss the nape of his sweetheart’s neck. Tears came to her eyes. And yet she was not suffering. What gave her this choking feeling, and why did the vast countryside, where she had looked forward to such carefree happiness, fill her with a vague regret she could not explain? Then, at lunch, Pauline’s noisy laughter made her feel quite dizzy. The latter, who adored the suburbs with the passion of an actress used to living in gaslight and the stuffy air of crowds, had wanted to lunch in an arbour, in spite of the sharp wind. She was amused by the sudden gusts which made the table-cloth flap; she thought the arbour, which was still bare, was fun, and the freshly painted trellis, with its lozenges silhouetted on the table-cloth. What’s more, she devoured her food with the hungry greed of a girl who, badly fed in the shop, gave herself indigestion outside with the things she liked. That was her vice; all her money went on cakes, on indigestible things, on little dishes she would keep on one side for her spare moments. As Denise seemed to have had enough eggs, fried fish, and sautéd chicken, she restrained herself, not daring to order any strawberries, which were still expensive, for fear of making the bill too big.

‘Now what are we going to do?’ asked Baugé when the coffee was served.

Usually, in the afternoon, he and Pauline went back to Paris for dinner and finished their day at the theatre. But, at Denise’s
request, they decided that they would stay at Joinville; it would be amusing, and they would have their fill of the country. All the afternoon they wandered about the fields. Once they spoke of a trip in a boat, but abandoned the idea since Baugé rowed too badly. But their wanderings, along paths taken at random, took them back to the banks of the Marne all the same, and they watched with interest the life of the river, the squadrons of skiffs and rowing-boats, and the teams of oarsmen who populated it. The sun was going down, and they were going back towards Joinville, when two skiffs going downstream and racing each other exchanged several volleys of insults, in which the repeated cries of ‘pub-crawlers’ and ‘counter-jumpers’ figured prominently.

‘I say!’ said Pauline, ‘it’s Monsieur Hutin!’

‘Yes,’ said Baugé, shading his face with his hand, ‘I recognize his mahogany skiff… The other one must be manned by a team of students.’

And he explained the old enmity which often set students and shopmen against each other. On hearing Hutin’s name, Denise had stopped, and was following the slender craft, looking for the young man among the rowers; but she could only make out the white dresses of two women, one of whom, sitting at the tiller, wore a red hat. Their voices were drowned by the noise of the river.

‘Into the water with the pub-crawlers!’

‘Into the water with them, into the water with the counter-jumpers!’

In the evening they went back to the restaurant on the island. But it had become too cold outside, and they had to eat in one of the two closed rooms, where the table-cloths were still soaking wet with the dampness of winter. From six o’clock all the tables were occupied, the hikers were hurrying, trying to find a place; and the waiters were bringing more and more chairs and benches, putting plates closer together, cramming people in. It was stifling now; they had to open the windows. Outside the light was fading, and a greenish dusk was falling from the poplars so quickly that the restaurant owner, ill-equipped for these meals under cover, and having no lamps, had to have a candle put on each table. The noise—laughs, calls, the clatter of plates
and dishes—was deafening; the candles were flaring and guttering in the draught from the windows, while moths were fluttering about in the air warmed by the smell of food and cut through by sudden gusts of icy wind.

‘They’re really having fun, aren’t they?’ said Pauline, deep in a fish stew which she declared quite superb.

She leaned over to add:

‘Haven’t you noticed Monsieur Albert, over there?’

It was indeed young Lhomme, surrounded by three dubious-looking women: an old lady in a yellow hat who had the vulgar appearance of a procuress, and two girls under age, little girls of about thirteen and fourteen, swaying their hips, and embarrassingly insolent. He was already very drunk, and was banging his glass on the table and talking of thrashing the waiter if he didn’t bring some liqueurs immediately.

‘Oh, well!’ Pauline went on, ‘what a fine family! The mother at Rambouillet, the father in Paris, and the son in Joinville … They won’t tread on each other’s toes!’

Denise, who detested noise, smiled none the less, tasting the joy of no longer thinking in the midst of all this noise. But suddenly, in the neighbouring room, there was a burst of voices which drowned all the others. There were yells, which must have been followed by blows, for scuffles and the crash of chairs were heard, a real struggle in which the river cries again rang out:

‘Into the water with them, the counter-jumpers!’

‘Into the water with them, into the water with them, the pub-crawlers!’

And when the innkeeper’s gruff voice had calmed the battle, Hutin suddenly appeared. Wearing a red jumper, and a cap reversed and pushed to the back of his head, he had on his arm the tall girl in white who had been at the tiller; she, in order to wear the skiff’s colours, had planted a tuft of poppies behind her ear. A burst of applause greeted their entrance; and he beamed with pride, throwing out his chest as he swaggered along with a nautical rolling gait, flaunting a bruise on his cheek caused by a blow, puffed up with pleasure at being the focus of attention. Behind them followed the team. They seized possession of one of the tables, and the din became tremendous.

‘It seems,’ Baugé explained, after listening to the conversations behind him, ‘it seems that the students recognized the
woman with Hutin; she used to live in the neighbourhood, and now sings in a music-hall in Montmartre. And then they came to blows over her … Those students never pay their women.’

‘In any case,’ said Pauline stiffly, ‘she’s terribly ugly, with her carroty hair … Honestly, I don’t know where Monsieur Hutin picks them up, but each one’s worse than the last.’

Denise had turned pale. She felt an icy cold, as if her heart’s blood had drained away drop by drop. Already, on the river bank, at the sight of the speeding skiff, she had felt the first shiver; and now she could no longer have any doubt, this girl was really with Hutin. She felt a lump in her throat; her hands were trembling, and she was no longer eating.

‘What’s the matter?’ her friend asked.

‘Nothing,’ she stammered, ‘it’s rather warm in here.’

But Hutin had sat down at a neighbouring table, and when he caught sight of Baugé, whom he knew, he started a conversation in a shrill voice in order to go on holding the attention of the room.

‘I say,’ he shouted, ‘are you still chaste at the Bon Marché?’

‘Not as much as all that,’ Baugé replied, turning very red.

‘Get away! You know they only take virgins, and they’ve got a confessional permanently attached to the shop for salesmen who look at them … A shop where they arrange marriages … No thanks!’

The others laughed. Liénard, who was a member of the team, added:

‘It isn’t like that at the Louvre … They’ve got a midwife attached to the ladieswear department there. It’s the truth!’

The gaiety increased. Pauline herself was bursting with laughter, the idea of the midwife seemed so funny. But Baugé was annoyed by the jokes about the innocence of his shop. Suddenly he blurted out: