Read Online Cloudless May by Storm Jameson - Free Book Online Page A

clouds. When in other rooms she woke facing a wall, or trees not able to touch a river with their farthest root, she felt cheated.
    Tonight she went to bed early, after a disappointment. When she came home from seeing Mme Vayrac, Bergeot telephoned to say he would come to dinner. He did not come. Lucien Sugny rang up and said that the Prefect had been summoned by General Piriac and would come when he could. Vexed, she lay in bed waiting for him. At one moment she fell asleep, and saw him looking down at her with a contorted face, swollen and wavering. She sat up in terror, pushing the sheet from her so that it was heaped up like the Loire running against a sand-bank. If he left me, I should have no one, she thought. She felt stupid with dismay. She thought of her husband: his habit of rubbing his nails together had been born in him with his sense of his duty as a landowner: he was stiff and conscientious, and she disliked him more than if he had injured her. I couldn’t go back to him, she thought; I should be alone.
    Insensibly, the thought of Émile dying became the fear that he would tire of her: she would see him trying, out of pity, to hide his boredom; it would break out in criticisms of her, shewould resent them, there would be tears, anger, reconciliation, pity, hate, boredom. . . . She looked at her arms, as firm as a girl’s, and pressed her hands on her body. Even while she was thinking, I’m not young, she felt certain that he was bound to her by ties as strong, as mysteriously carnal and immaterial, as those binding some children—not all—to their mother. He depended on her. From the pressure of her fingers on her arm sprang the familiar and hated thought that she herself would die. It faded quickly, drowned by the louder fear of losing her money.
    â€œThis war,” she said, with despair.
    Poverty had its clear image in her mind: the bed with tumbled sheets pushed against a wall, the noises of the street splitting her skull as though her skull were the walls of the room, the print on the soles of her feet of the stringy carpet. To be tumbled back to it, she thought: at my age. She knew she had lost the resilience and greedy strength of her body.
    She tried to lose herself in an image of the Loire, flowing in darkness at the other side of the shutters, in the night of France, offering—to the Atlantic on one side, on the other to the enemy—its valleys and high pastures, its cathedrals, old and new houses, vines, olives, walnuts, its Maginot line of thrift and freedom, and the bodies of its men and children. But her nerves were on edge. She began to be angry with Émile. . . . It was after midnight when she heard him coming along the corridor, and at once forgot her annoyance in the urgency of what she had to say to him.
    He was tired. He seated himself on the side of the bed and said vehemently,
    â€œThat old fool Piriac. What d’you think he wanted?”
    â€œFlattery.”
    â€œOf course. He read me his speech to the League of Frenchwomen next Tuesday. About Joan of Arc, of course, and terribly muddled. I think he believes sometimes that he’s fighting the English. I tried to talk to him about the war, but it was useless. After two minutes he was hearing voices. . . . Rest me.”
    He leaned back, with his head on her shoulder. Putting her hand on his forehead, she felt the blood beating in his temples. “You do far too much. When is this war going to end?”
    â€œI don’t know. Not for years.”
    â€œWe ought to think about our future,” she said calmly. “Thiviers thinks we ought to put some of our money in America, so that we’re not ruined at the end of the war. Or if we’re defeated. He can arrange it for us. I told him to send as much of mine away as he can, at once.”
    Bergeot frowned and sat up. “Do you know what you’re doing? It will be a frightful scandal if you’re found out. I couldn’t