Mr Hire's Engagement Read online

  Though he was only wearing his overcoat, with upturned collar, over his nightshirt, he still looked over-dressed for the time of day, almost ceremonious. He waited patiently, with dignity, for his turn, then pointed to the things he wanted.

  'A dozen . . . Half a pound . . . How much is that?'

  The people in the place had known him for a long time, and yet they looked at him with embarrassment and curiosity. He wanted kindling for his fire, cheese, butter and cooked vegetables. At the delicatessen shop he bought a cold cutlet and some pickled gherkins. His arms were full of little white packages and he had to stick out his stomach to hold them up.

  In the middle of the cross-roads the inspector, standing beside the uniformed policeman, watched his comings and goings in the way a schoolmaster, in the playground, might keep an eye on his charges while chatting with the headmaster.

  Not more than a couple of hundred yards away, a group of people had collected in front of a hoarding from which glared a red and yellow poster advertising polish. This was in the street across the way, a street that began with houses, like any other, but trailed off, after a short distance, into building-lots and patches of waste ground.

  If you went down there after dark, some woman would invariably touch you on the arm and point to the empty building-lots, those where, two Sundays ago, the mutilated body of one such woman had been found.

  Even now, people were still taking advantage of Sunday to come and stare at the exact spot and the brown stains that remained on a block of stone.

  Loaded with his parcels, Mr. Hire went past the dairy just as the assistant was coming out with bottles of milk. She stopped in the doorway and smiled, while he rushed into the porch, where he bumped against the concierge, who was standing with her back to him and who turned round with a terrified start.

  He went on faster and faster, stumbled over the bottom step of the stairs and one of the little parcels fell, he did not know which. He did not stop to pick it up, but merely clutched the other packets more closely, and by the time he arrived, breathless, on the fourth floor, he was almost running.

  He did not stop even then, did not look at his reflection in the mirror. Kneeling down, he began by lighting the stove, which at once gave out a lively purring sound. Then he took off his overcoat, tied a towel round his waist by way of an apron, and set about cleaning the room.

  The house was full of noises, many more men's voices than on weekdays, and the murmur of running water, the yells of children who were being thrashed. The wireless babbled ceaselessly, perhaps in the fifth- floor room where a workman lived, or perhaps on the third floor; the sound was so evenly diffused that one couldn't tell.

  At half-past ten Mr. Hire looked round the room, now clean, the bed made, the stove burning and black-leaded, the gas-ring with the kettle singing.

  He shaved and dressed, except for his collar and tie, which he would not put on till the last moment.

  And that was all. Now he could just sit down and think. From time to time he glanced at the window opposite, through which he could vaguely make out a basinful of soapy water. When he opened his newspaper he knew at once how the girl would be spending the afternoon, for there was a big football match. At half-past one she would be waiting at the second stopping-place of the special Sunday bus, and a little later her boy-friend would turn up.

  If there had been no interesting match, they would have gone to Paris, to the Splendid Cinema. It was always the one or the other.

  An ambulance went by, its bell ringing all the time. That happened every Sunday. At the same moment the little boy's violin joined in with the wireless.

  Mr. Hire wound his alarm-clock, re-polished his shoes, which he had already cleaned, arranged his provisions on the table and sat down to lunch. That whiled away a good hour. He would fill his mouth with food and chew for a long time, gazing at the window opposite him, his thoughts so far away that five minutes went by before he remembered to take another mouthful. He made himself some coffee, and the baby overhead had an interminable fit of despair, howling away until silenced, probably, by its mother's breast.

  It was only twelve o'clock. And by a quarter-past twelve the table had been cleared, the oilcloth sponged with fresh water, the remains of the food put away in the cupboard.

  The girl from the dairy came up to her room at one o'clock, but by daylight she could only be dimly seen as she flung her workday shoes, her overall and her skirt across the room, and stood in front of the looking-glass in her vest and panties.

  Mr. Hire did not go over to the window. He watched from a distance, while putting on his tie and his button-shoes. He knew that when she was ready he would hear a crash, as she opened the window to air the room.

  Anyway, he did not wait. He went out and passed the lodge at such a speed that the concierge had to dash into the passage to make sure it was he. On the pavement, some people were still on their way to the cemetery: this was the outgoing tide, arriving from Paris and moving towards the open.

  But the incoming tide was stronger, as the inhabitants of Juvisy, Corbeil and still more distant places, flowed towards Paris in vans, in special buses, on bicycles, on foot.

  The inspector was there, not ten yards away from the house, and Mr. Hire walked right past him, waddling, bouncing with his chest pushed forward, in his usual gait. He didn't walk like that on purpose. It was the way he was built. His plump body skipped of its own accord as his short legs twinkled along.

  The crowd waiting between the chains at the tram-stop was a hundred yards long, and Mr. Hire crossed the road, stopped twice because of cars, and got himself pushed forward by the policeman.

  'Come along . . . Hurry up, there . . .'

  He was breathing with difficulty. His nerves were tense. He deliberately refrained from stepping onto the pavement on this side. He was listening to the different noises, and could sense that the plain-clothes inspector was about thirty feet away.

  At last there came the roar of an engine, and a bell jangling frantically; this was the special bus from Juvisy, which was full and not going to stop.

  Mr. Hire's teeth were clenched. He half-turned his head, saw the front part of the bus, and flung himself forward with all his strength, groping with his right hand, which at last caught the rail of the bus, while two arms were stretched to haul him onto the step.

  He couldn't stop himself smiling, in a kind of excitement that made him seem touching and absurd. The conductor, at the far end of the bus, had not seen him. The people on the platform, already close-packed, squeezed together more tightly, but looked at him with silent disapproval. As for the inspector, he was left far behind at the crossroads, standing on his two useless legs, almost lost in the crowd.

  A woman with somebody's elbow jammed into her ribs grumbled, and Mr. Hire stammered hastily:

  'I'm getting off at once . . .'

  The bus ran past another stop, and Mr. Hire edged onto the step, faced forwards, and let go. From the platform a dozen faces watched him curiously, as, alone on the road and drawn along by the impetus of the bus, he trotted behind it for a dozen short steps.

  It was a quarter-past one. He walked quickly, not along the main street of Villejuif, but along a parallel street which led back towards the cross-roads, though he did not venture as far as that.

  He stopped at a street corner, flattening himself against the wall, as grave and forbidding as a policeman on the watch.

  The dairy girl came along first, the collar of her tight-fitting green coat turned up, her cheeks chapped with the cold. Almost at once she was joined by a young man in a grey felt hat, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, as she took his arm.

  They were talking, but their words could not be heard. The Colombes bus pulled up, and Mr. Hire noticed that the girl glanced round before getting in, as though she were looking for someone.

  Then he, too, got in. There was not a scrap of room left, but nobody was turned away. One couldn't move an arm or a leg. The passengers' heads we
re swaying, at more or less the same level, to the jolting of the bus, and inside they formed an indistinguishable mass.

  The couple stood about two yards away from Mr. Hire. Now and then their eyes met, as the eyes of all the passengers did, expressionless, blank, indifferent. The bus bounced over the cobbles and through the Porte d'Italie, where more people got on.

  The boy friend was thin and sickly. His expression, when he caught Mr. Hire's eye, was always ironical, but he was always the first to look away, because Mr. Hire had a capacity for staring at people for a very long time, without intention, curiosity or any other feeling, simply as though staring at a wall or at the sky.

  Then the young man would jog the girl with his elbow, whisper in her ear and pretend to laugh, and Mr. Hire would blush a little.

  But this didn't often happen. There were too many heads separating them. The conductor elbowed his way through the crowd, demanding the exact fare.

  They went through empty streets and squares, with only a few passers-by to be seen on the pavements, white with frost, where dust swirled along on the north wind.

  And, suddenly, here was the crowd, with shouts and sounds of music, a violent pushing and shoving which carried Mr. Hire along and thrust him out of the bus. He just managed to slow down and look around, to make sure the couple were among the mob.

  There were anything from ten to twenty ticket-offices. In the thick of the crowd, tickets of various colours were held out to him by men who shouted in his ear:

  'Reserved stands . . . Twenty-five francs . . .'

  A look of childish distress came over his face when he lost the couple, and he spun round and round like a top, gaped for joy on catching sight of the girl's green hat in the distance. 'Sorry . . . Sorry . . '

  He reached the ticket-office almost at the same time as she did, and took a ten-franc seat. She bought two oranges, which her companion paid for with a disdainful air. People were going about in all directions, calling out different things, while from the far side of the hoardings came the sound of stamping, impatient feet in the stands.

  A ray of sun was shining, sour yellow like the oranges, but once through the gates, the wind, blowing across the frozen ground, lifted people's hats and tightened the skin on their faces.

  The young man had his hands in his pockets, his overcoat unbuttoned. And the girl was clinging to his arm like a child afraid of getting lost. One behind the other, they edged their way between the packed rows of benches, followed by Mr. Hire in his bowler hat and velvet-collared black coat.

  'Sorry . . . Sorry . . .'

  Most of the spectators were men in caps, and nearly all of them were eating something, peanuts, oranges, or roasted chestnuts. They hailed one another from afar. Mr. Hire made his way through all this, with his apologetic, smiling manner:

  'Sorry . . .'

  He found a seat in the row right behind the couple, and as there were no backs to the seats, his knees were pressed against the girl's spine.

  The spectators were all rhythmically stamping their feet, while a band struggled vainly against the north wind, which carried the music the other way from the stands.

  At last, on the vast ground, some tiny figures ran out, one group striped in yellow and blue, the other dressed in red and green. They stood palavering in the very middle, then a whistle was blown and the crowd yelled in chorus.

  Mr. Hire drew in his shoulders, to leave a smaller surface for the cold, and he was particularly careful not to move his knees a fraction of an inch, for the girl was leaning on them, pressing hard as though against a chair-back, while her kid-gloved hand still clung to her companion's arm.

  The striped mannikins were chasing about the field, halted now and then by the whistle, and Mr. Hire was watching the expressive back of a neck, covered with light golden fluff, fifteen inches away from his nose. The girl never looked round, but she must have felt his eyes fixed on her, for sometimes, after the whistle had sounded, she seemed impelled to ask, by way of diversion:

  'What was that for?'

  She was watching the game without understanding it. Her companion shrugged his shoulders. The stands vibrated like drums, they shook, they even swayed, when thousands of people rose like one man and yelled.

  Mr. Hire kept his seat. At half-time he looked round, as though awakened with a start, at the crowd which, suddenly reduced to a quiet rippling mass, had begun chewing again. The girl was eating, too, an ice-cold orange, of which she tore the peel away with her nails. The juice spurted out, bitterly sharp. Her little pointed teeth nibbled at the pulp, her stiffened tongue pushed its way in, her lips sucked at it, and the smell of the fruit spread around for yards.

  'It's sour…' the dairy-maid remarked with satisfaction. 'Give me a cigarette now.'

  She smoked with her lips puckered into an O round the cigarette, as people do who smoke for the pleasure of the performance and not for the taste of the tobacco. The two smells mingled. They were sour and stale together, seeming to emanate from the back of her auburn- fluffed neck which was as straight and round as a pillar.

  'Who's winning?'

  The young man went on reading a sporting paper, ignoring the little hand that still lay on his wrist. Half-time came to an end. The players swarmed over the ground again. The blasts of the whistle variously stopped or started the scrimmage again.

  It was almost dark by the end, and the spectators were stamping their feet to warm themselves. A few snowflakes were floating in the grey air, and one of them, drifting in under the roof of the stand, fell on the green hat and melted there.

  Getting out was a struggle, and Mr. Hire would probably have lost the couple, if the young man had not met some friends.

  They had gathered in a bunch near one of the gates, and nobody was taking any notice of the girl, who was standing a little apart.

  She saw Mr. Hire come out, and gave him a long look, her eyes unusually serious. The young men were talking loudly. Her boy friend turned to her, made some brief remark, took a five-franc note out of his pocket and, giving it to her, kissed her on the forehead.

  The men packed themselves into a taxi, which made off towards Paris. As for her, she walked slowly away, as though bewildered at finding herself alone. Mr. Hire stood still, to give her a start. She did not go towards the tram, nor towards the bus-stop. She went in the same direction as the taxi, without haste and without a backward glance. She knew Mr. Hire was there. She could hear his footsteps, recognizable because of their jerkiness, and because the very thin soles of his boots touched the ground so lightly.

  It was dark now. The shutters of the shops were closed. Only the cafés were lit, and families in their Sunday best were going home, the children walking in front.

  Ten yards separated Mr. Hire from the girl. Then it was only five. Then he made three rapid strides, but stopped to let her get ahead again.

  They went on like this for a quarter of an hour, and from time to time she half-turned her head, not enough to see him clearly, but enough to make sure he was still there.

  At last she went into a little bar, where there was only a clear space of three feet along the horseshoe-shaped counter. 'A diabolo.'

  Elbows propped on the zinc bar-top, she gazed at Mr. Hire, who had taken his stand on the opposite side of the curve and now muttered, shamefaced: 'A diabolo.'

  Two men at the far end stared at them, and even broke off their conversation, till the proprietor joined them to resume an interrupted game of dice.

  The girl was bringing coins out of her handbag. Her cheeks were glowing, her eyes very bright, from the fresh air, and her parted lips looked as though they were bleeding.

  'How much?'

  Disappointed, she was avoiding Mr. Hire's eye.

  'Seventy centimes.'

  And Mr. Hire laid a one-franc piece on the bar, without waiting for his change, went out at the same moment as the girl, stood back to let her pass first through the door.

  She thought he was going to speak to her. She smiled, her ha
nd ready to take his, her lips to murmur:

  'Good evening . . .'

  But he said nothing, and she went on along the pavement, with a more pronounced swaying of her plump hips, over which her skirt stretched tight at every step.

  As they drew closer to Paris, there were more lights and more people. The girl went on and on, a little tired, but at an obstinate steady pace. Coming to a square, she got into a tram without even turning round to see if she were still being followed. Perhaps she didn't care now?

  Mr. Hire sat down three places away from her. The tram went along some crowded main streets, with numerous cafés, little booths where oddments were on sale, and couples with arms round each other's waists. Mr. Hire was pale, probably from fatigue. His complexion had turned leaden, as it sometimes did, with dark circles round his eyes, and he seemed to have been deflated. He looked less childish, less plump, less odd. His eyes were no longer expressionless, and, like a dog's eyes, which they resembled in colour, they seemed to be appealing for help.

  The girl was sitting opposite him. She was playing her part. She was pretending not to see him, to be at her ease, indifferent. Twice, she touched up her powder and rouge. Twice, too, she tugged at her skirt, as though she had caught Mr. Hire staring at her knees.

  The scenery was growing familiar. Without even looking at the windows one recognized the neon lights of the Place d'Italie, then the cafés of the Avenue, then the Porte.

  'Terminus! All change.'

  She got out first and paused for a second on the edge of the pavement.

  Twenty yards further on, other trams were waiting to start for Villejuif. The road was dark all the way, and passers-by few and far between.

  However, she started off. She had first bought a franc's worth of chestnuts, and she ate them as she went along, slowing down when she had difficulty in shelling one of them. She had walked five hundred yards when she jumped, as though missing something. She turned round and found no one behind her.