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Authors: Georges Simenon
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coming from Fumay.
Trains were going through all the time, troop trains, munitions trains, refugee trains, and I still wonder how it was that there weren’t more accidents.
“Perhaps your wife has left a message for you?” Anna suggested.
“Where?”
“Why don’t you ask those ladies?”
She pointed to the nurses, the young women of the reception service.
“What name did you say?”
The oldest of the women took a note-pad out of her pocket on which I could see names written by different hands, often in a clumsy script.
“Feron? No. Is she a Belgian?”
“She comes from Fumay, and she’s traveling with a little girl of four who’s holding a doll dressed in blue in her arms.”
I was sure that Sophie hadn’t let go of her doll.
“She is seven and a half months pregnant,” I went on insistently.
“Then go to the sick room, in case she felt ill.”
It was an office which had been converted and which smelled of disinfectant. No. They had treated several pregnant women. One of them had had to be taken straight to the nearest maternity home to have her baby, but she wasn’t called Feron and her mother was with her.
“Are you worried?”
“Not really.”
I was sure that Jeanne would not leave any message for me. It wasn’t in her nature. The idea of bothering one of these distinguished ladies, of writing her name in a notebook, of drawing attention to herself, would never have occurred to her.
“Why do you keep touching your left-hand pocket?”
“Because of my spare pair of glasses. I’m afraid of losing them or breaking them.”
We were given some more sandwiches, one orange each, and coffee with as much sugar as we liked. Some people put a few lumps in their pockets.
Noticing a pile of pillows in a corner, I asked if it was possible to hire a couple. The person I asked didn’t know, and said that the woman in charge wasn’t there, that she wouldn’t be back for an hour.
Then, feeling a little awkward, I took two pillows, and when I got back into the car my companions rushed to get the others.
Now that I think of it, I am surprised that during that long day Anna and I should have said scarcely anything to each other. As if by common consent, we stayed together. Even when we separated, at Rheims, to go to the respective lavatories, I found her waiting for me outside the men’s.
“I’ve bought a bar of soap,” she announced with childish joy. She smelled of soap, and her hair, which she had moistened before arranging, was still wet.
I could count the number of times I had taken a train before that journey. The first time, at the age of fourteen, when I had to go to Saint-Gervais, I had been given a card with my name, my destination, and a note saying:
“In case of accident or difficulties, please inform Madame Jacques Delmotte, Fumay, Ardennes.”
Four years later, when I returned home, aged eighteen, I no longer needed a note of that sort.
After that I never went anywhere except to Mézières, periodically, to see the specialist and have an X-ray examination.
Madame Delmotte was my benefactress, as people called her, and I had ended up by adopting that word too. I can’t remember the circumstances in which she came to take an interest in me. It was soon after the First World War and I was not yet eleven.
She must have heard about my mother’s disappearance,my father’s behavior, my situation as a virtually abandoned child.
At that time I used to go to the church club, and one Sunday our curate, the Abbé Dubois, told me that a lady had invited me to her house for chocolate the following Thursday.
Like all in Fumay, I knew the name of Delmotte, since the family owns the main slate pits and consequently everybody in the town is more or less dependent on them. Those Delmottes, in my mind, were the employer Delmottes.
Madame Jacques Delmotte, who was then about fifty, was the charity Delmotte.
They were all brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, or cousins; their fortune had
Trains were going through all the time, troop trains, munitions trains, refugee trains, and I still wonder how it was that there weren’t more accidents.
“Perhaps your wife has left a message for you?” Anna suggested.
“Where?”
“Why don’t you ask those ladies?”
She pointed to the nurses, the young women of the reception service.
“What name did you say?”
The oldest of the women took a note-pad out of her pocket on which I could see names written by different hands, often in a clumsy script.
“Feron? No. Is she a Belgian?”
“She comes from Fumay, and she’s traveling with a little girl of four who’s holding a doll dressed in blue in her arms.”
I was sure that Sophie hadn’t let go of her doll.
“She is seven and a half months pregnant,” I went on insistently.
“Then go to the sick room, in case she felt ill.”
It was an office which had been converted and which smelled of disinfectant. No. They had treated several pregnant women. One of them had had to be taken straight to the nearest maternity home to have her baby, but she wasn’t called Feron and her mother was with her.
“Are you worried?”
“Not really.”
I was sure that Jeanne would not leave any message for me. It wasn’t in her nature. The idea of bothering one of these distinguished ladies, of writing her name in a notebook, of drawing attention to herself, would never have occurred to her.
“Why do you keep touching your left-hand pocket?”
“Because of my spare pair of glasses. I’m afraid of losing them or breaking them.”
We were given some more sandwiches, one orange each, and coffee with as much sugar as we liked. Some people put a few lumps in their pockets.
Noticing a pile of pillows in a corner, I asked if it was possible to hire a couple. The person I asked didn’t know, and said that the woman in charge wasn’t there, that she wouldn’t be back for an hour.
Then, feeling a little awkward, I took two pillows, and when I got back into the car my companions rushed to get the others.
Now that I think of it, I am surprised that during that long day Anna and I should have said scarcely anything to each other. As if by common consent, we stayed together. Even when we separated, at Rheims, to go to the respective lavatories, I found her waiting for me outside the men’s.
“I’ve bought a bar of soap,” she announced with childish joy. She smelled of soap, and her hair, which she had moistened before arranging, was still wet.
I could count the number of times I had taken a train before that journey. The first time, at the age of fourteen, when I had to go to Saint-Gervais, I had been given a card with my name, my destination, and a note saying:
“In case of accident or difficulties, please inform Madame Jacques Delmotte, Fumay, Ardennes.”
Four years later, when I returned home, aged eighteen, I no longer needed a note of that sort.
After that I never went anywhere except to Mézières, periodically, to see the specialist and have an X-ray examination.
Madame Delmotte was my benefactress, as people called her, and I had ended up by adopting that word too. I can’t remember the circumstances in which she came to take an interest in me. It was soon after the First World War and I was not yet eleven.
She must have heard about my mother’s disappearance,my father’s behavior, my situation as a virtually abandoned child.
At that time I used to go to the church club, and one Sunday our curate, the Abbé Dubois, told me that a lady had invited me to her house for chocolate the following Thursday.
Like all in Fumay, I knew the name of Delmotte, since the family owns the main slate pits and consequently everybody in the town is more or less dependent on them. Those Delmottes, in my mind, were the employer Delmottes.
Madame Jacques Delmotte, who was then about fifty, was the charity Delmotte.
They were all brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, or cousins; their fortune had
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