The Pitards, page 8
There were other women, from Hungary, to take care of him and pour him a drink, as they stammered out a few words of French …
Didn’t he have to leave by the back door after he’d spent a long while in a room with one of the girls?
And in Iceland, he’d …
That memory was sharper, with a stronger contrast between light and dark. In the middle of the picture was a factory chimney, then …
He pricked up his ears. The tick-tock of his watch and the rumble of the engine were still there with him, but he suddenly became aware of a strange rhythm. He furrowed his brow, still without opening his eyes. He wasn’t asleep. He was drowsing, he was sweating under the sheets, and his limbs were like jelly.
The noise wasn’t in his cabin. It wasn’t coming from the deck, either.
It took him a while to realize that there was whispering going on in the mess room next door. Or rather, people talking in half-tones. They were talking non-stop. Someone was making an interminably long speech.
It was Mathilde! She was spoiling everything yet again! He forgot Honningsvåg. He strained to hear. He even raised his head from the pillow in the hope of making out what was being said.
Who could she be talking to? And what was she talking about? Her mother was capable of complaining for hours on end without getting tired. If she had to, she would go back to her marriage, her first confinements, her husband’s death and all the disasters her tenants had inflicted on her …
Lannec turned over in bed in the hope of sinking back into numbness. But the voice pursued him, a voice as monotonous as those you hear at vespers when you pass by a convent …
Moinard was on watch. Lenglois must be at his switchboard with his headphones on. Mathilde didn’t deign to confide in the steward.
Lannec turned over again, opened his eyes, stirred and propped himself on his elbow. At times he thought he could distinguish the words being spoken, for the sound was sharp enough, but the toneless rigmarole made no sense.
It was getting even darker. The black dots in the foggy air now outnumbered the light ones. Suddenly Lannec got up, pulled up his trousers over his hips and found his carpet slippers on the rug with his feet.
He was really tired. His eyes were puffy, and the first draw on his pipe seemed less appealing than it usually did. He leaned towards the bulkhead as he put on his jacket, but to no avail, for though the voice sounded louder there, the words were still a jumble.
He opened the door abruptly. The lights in the mess room weren’t on, which made it seem closeted and intimate. Mathilde was sitting on a corner of the bench seat with her elbows on the table, and the bos’n was standing by the bulkhead and leaning on it with his shoulders.
‘Get out!’ Lannec ordered.
He even gave the man a push because he wasn’t moving fast enough. He shut the door to the gangway and then, seeing his wife make a move that suggested she meant to go back to her cabin, he went over to the other door, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket.
He hadn’t spoken a word to Mathilde for five days and now he felt like doing so. He sat down opposite her and without thinking went straight to the point.
‘What were you telling him?’ he grunted.
As he hadn’t had his habitual milky coffee, his stomach was uneasy, and his mouth tasted stale. He stood up to turn the switch so as to see his wife in the light.
‘I’m waiting! What were you telling the bos’n?’
He’d had enough! The radio operator, then Moinard, now the bos’n … everybody was in on it!
‘You were whining, weren’t you? You were complaining about having married a brute …’
His narrow eyes had already noticed signs of seasickness on Mathilde’s face. She was pale, and there were two yellowish creases on each side of her nose.
But she did not avert her eyes. She waited with calm self-confidence, and her steadiness made her look like the accuser, not the accused.
‘Whatever you may think, I am the master on board, do you understand that? I do not like you telling stories to the men under my command!’
He sat down again. Images of Honningsvåg still flitted across his mind, but they dissipated as quickly as a morning mist.
‘Will you answer me?’
‘I have nothing to say.’
She had said something! It was the first time in a long while. Lannec had almost forgotten the sound of her voice.
‘Really! You have nothing to say! And I suppose you think you are a victim?’
She looked at the locked door and sighed.
‘That’s right! You are a prisoner! And let me tell you right away that you have to give an explanation. I’ve had enough! I’ve had it up to the back teeth!’
He’d coped for a long time, but he’d been driven out of his mind by the last straw, that droning voice on the other side of the bulkhead while he lay idly dreaming …
One thing disturbed him, however, and that was the way his wife was staring at him. She was calm, to be sure. But she was posing like a person who had nothing to hide.
Yet there was something pained in her eyes – but it was the trace of a physical pain. As if she was scared of being hit again. She followed every one of her husband’s gesticulations. When he made to stand up, she raised her hands as if to ward off a blow.
‘It won’t take long!’ Lannec muttered as he turned away. ‘Doesn’t stop it being time for an explanation. Will you tell me the reason why you have insisted on staying on board?’
She didn’t budge an inch and kept her mouth shut.
‘In Rouen, I didn’t think anything of it. Like the good-hearted fool that I am, I thought it was a token of your affection. Mind you, I knew that life on board was not possible for a woman, but I expected you to see that yourself after a few days.’
She kept her eyes on him, while he sought in vain to see in Mathilde’s figure and tense expression the girl he’d fallen in love with and taken in his arms so many times of an evening in the empty streets of Caen, in doorways and in the shadows of the harbour buildings.
‘Answer!’
‘I have nothing to answer for.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You know that very well.’
‘Eh?’
He stood up again and paced up and down the mess room with his hands behind his back.
‘Will you please explain yourself?’
‘Don’t play the fool.’
Now that was her mother’s voice, the voice of the whole Pitard clan looking down on the world from their two blocks of flats with imperturbable self-satisfaction.
‘Do you mean you had had enough of your Marcel?’
She didn’t bat an eyelid. She sat on in the corner, where her woollen bodice made a red splash.
‘Marcel never beat me up.’
‘Tonnerre de Dieu, he never married you either!’
‘Because Mother didn’t want him to.’
‘Well, well! Now you’re getting talkative all of a sudden. Maybe you’ll soon tell me just what you’re doing here.’
‘It’s not worth the breath.’
At times like that Lannec could be oddly self-controlled. He could feel anger rising in him and he knew it would explode, but only when he wanted it to. He held himself back, clenched his fists behind his back and cast a sideways glance at his wife.
‘Look, Mathilde, I’m still keeping calm …’
‘I’m becoming accustomed to getting hit.’
He took a deep breath and came to a halt in the middle of the room.
‘I am asking you why you are here. For the love of God, listen to me and don’t make me do something terrible …’
He was almost beside himself. Mathilde was scared and shrank into her corner. She said again:
‘You know full well.’
‘What do I know? If one of us two is going crazy, it’s time to know which it is!’
‘Not I.’
‘Answer the question!’
‘Do you really want me to?’
‘Do I have to go down on bended knee? Then I will! I can’t stand this a minute longer!’
‘What were you planning to do with the Tonnerre-de-Dieu?’
Then all of a sudden his anger subsided, as did his fever, and everything else. He was like a punctured balloon, with a look of astonishment in his child-like, innocent eyes.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You would say that!’
He went up to her slowly.
‘Explain yourself! Tell me what’s in your mind …’
She recoiled. He grabbed one of her wrists and clutched it violently.
‘Confess, Émile!’
She smiled maliciously. She was putting on a show of condescension.
‘Confess, now I know everything!’
‘Confess what?’
He was looking her straight in the eye, with his face almost touching hers.
‘You found a shipment for Iceland at the drop of a hat, didn’t you? Was that a coincidence? Weren’t you expecting it?’
She was taunting him, the hussy! She was putting on airs and graces!
‘I found a shipment. So what?’
‘You are telling me that it wasn’t prearranged?’
‘No, it was not!’
‘That’s a lie!’
He shook her and then let go.
‘Look, just because we are the Pitards, and my father ran a shoe shop doesn’t mean you can take us for idiots. We were tipped off! I knew what you planned to do with your boat …’
‘And what was that?’
‘To sell it in America or some other place and then run off with one of your lady friends! Iceland is halfway there …’
Lannec sat down and rubbed his brow vigorously. There was a long pause as the captain tried to sort things out in his mind.
‘One moment …’ he said as his wife made to stand up. ‘You were Marcel’s lover … Do you still admit that?’
‘I do!’
‘OK! So you were told or you imagined that I wanted to sell the boat and live overseas … On the strength of that, you drop your lover and set sail with me …’
‘So?’
‘So nothing. It’s consistent. You are my natural heiress. What’s more, your mother guaranteed bank loans to the tune of two hundred thousand francs.’
He was frighteningly calm, and Mathilde was scared.
‘I said, don’t move! We haven’t finished. Don’t be afraid. I’m not even going to hit you.’
His eyes were as narrow as slits and very still.
‘I just want to know who told you all this nonsense.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You’ve no option but to tell me. Maybe I’ve looked like a puppet on strings up to now, but I would like you to know that …’
‘Will you give me back my cabin key?’
‘Who told you that story? Admit it, it was your mother …’
‘My mother’s as good as yours, and we don’t have to slip her six hundred francs a month either …’
He didn’t flinch. He got up slowly, went to the cabin door and opened it.
Now it was her turn not to want to end the conversation. She stayed in the mess room as if she’d not understood what her husband had done. He didn’t even hate her! She was a Pitard, that was all! He’d been wrong!
‘Go to bed.’
There was a knock at the door and a voice from the gangway called out:
‘Captain!’
‘What is it?’
Lenglois mumbled uncertainly:
‘There’s a message …’
Lannec unlocked the door, saw the radio operator looking upset, took the transcript he’d brought down and read it:
SOS In distress latitude 60º 42′ longitude …
He suddenly relaxed, with instant relief. Lannec had no eyes for his wife. In a blink she had ceased to exist, and he looked at the compass on the mess-room ceiling that allowed him to keep track of the ship’s course from below deck.
He read the rest of the telegram.
‘Who is the Françoise?’
‘A trawler out of Fécamp. Twenty-eight hands on board …’
‘Any more information?’
‘They hit something. They think it was a derelict …’
Lannec spelled it out:
Longitude 5º 30′ 15″ west of Greenwich meridian.
‘Get back to your headphones!’ he ordered Lenglois.
‘Excuse me! What’s happening?’ Mathilde interrupted.
Lenglois hovered in anguish, uncertain whether to stay to answer the question or to obey the captain’s command.
‘Move a leg!’ the skipper bawled. Then he turned to his wife, whose face was hard but firm, almost serene.
‘What’s happening? Twenty-eight men who have nothing to do with the Pitard clan and who are going to go down!’
Upon which, he too went out, grabbing his oilskins and his sou’wester on the way. He pulled them on as he rushed across the dark and slippery deck. He had to walk sideways because of the roll. By the time he got to the bridge his hands and face were drenched.
He couldn’t see Moinard at first in the dark, but he could make out the face of the steersman by the feeble light of the compass lamp. He was staring straight ahead, and his mouth was taut. There was nothing to be seen at sea apart from wind-driven waves breaking into white horses as far as the horizon.
A shape emerged from the dark, and Moinard’s voice could be heard:
‘Well?’
‘We’ll go.’
‘She’s thirty-two miles away … Maybe other steamers have managed …’
The rule is that the ship nearest an accident has to provide assistance.
‘Isn’t the Françoise Jallu’s boat?’
‘Yes! He’s skippering her himself …’
Lannec went into the chart house and began by downing a large glass of spirits. Then he leaned over the map with protractor and pencil in hand and drew a line across it to where the sinking trawler was.
‘Three points west!’ he shouted through the door.
What had his wife meant? What was this story about selling the boat in America?
He went back to the steersman with an appearance of calm and came across Moinard. The mate was grave and hesitated before saying in a low voice:
‘We only have four days left …’
It was true. It was what the charter party said. The Tonnerre-de-Dieu had just four days to reach Reykjavik, failing which they would have to pay a penalty for each day’s delay to the company that had chartered them.
‘I knew Jallu when he captained ships in the Bordes line,’ Lannec replied. ‘I even served as his first mate.’
They were young, then! Neither of them had a boat or a wife!
Lannec tottered down to the radio room, and he was soaking wet by the time he got there.
‘Any news?’
Lenglois gestured at him to keep quiet. He was wearing headphones, taking notes, turning dials and sending out a message of his own.
‘What exactly happened to them? How are they faring?’
Another pause. Then, not ceasing to listen in to the radio signals, Lenglois wrote on a scrap of paper:
The Françoise has lost her rudder. She’s reporting waves eight metres high and nil visibility. We are the first to answer her call …
Lannec bounded back up to the bridge.
‘Full steam ahead!’ he commanded.
It would take four hours for them to reach the lost trawler. It was not a good course. The beam wind and the swell hit the Tonnerre-de-Dieu from the side and made her pitch.
Lannec was already back down with Lenglois, who was transcribing messages one after another.
The ship has lost its steering and is drifting … The bos’n has vanished, probably knocked over the side by a wave.
The Tonnerre-de-Dieu’s hull rattled with the throb of the engines on full power.
‘Did you tell them we’re coming?’
Lenglois nodded, frowned and twiddled the dials.
‘Well?’
Silence. Both men stayed still. Only Lenglois’ finger moved as he tapped the Morse button.
‘Nothing?’
The radio operator didn’t say anything. Blue sparks came from the transmitter.
‘I keep on calling,’ Paul mumbled. ‘And I’m sure I’m on the right wavelength.’
‘No response?’
‘Hang on …’
He started writing. But it was a message from another ship much further away from the disaster than the Tonnerre-de-Dieu, saying it was not going to change course.
‘Are they still off air?’
Lenglois didn’t take off his headphones but spoke very loud so as to be able to hear his own words.
‘You know what must have happened?’ he shouted. ‘I can guess, because I know those kinds of boat. The radio room, which is just behind the funnel, must have been washed away …’
Through the porthole there was nothing but dark to be seen, and the sky was even blacker than the sea.
‘Keep listening. Carry on telling them we’re on our way.’
Lannec went back to his command post. As he went out he was blinded by the darkness, which hit him like a wall.
‘They’ve gone quiet,’ he said to Moinard.
Then he turned his head, because he thought he saw a lighter shape. It was his wife, wedged upright in a corner of the bridge to keep her from being pushed about by the ship’s roll.
8
Lannec stood stock still for a quarter of an hour, staring at a sea which was getting heavier by the minute. The bridge was dark save for the faint light from the compass, which barely illuminated the steersman’s hand. All sounds were drowned out by the roaring of the waves, and only a sixth sense told you if anyone else was nearby.
The closest was the bos’n, whose pipe sent out puffs of smoke that sometimes got as far as Lannec; further on was the long, thin silhouette of Monsieur Gilles.
Moinard was in the chart house, calculating the tightest course to get to the Françoise.
The ship was rolling from side to side, and spray sometimes spattered the window of the bridge. At one point Lannec thought he heard a call and pricked up his ears, but it took a few seconds before he saw the radio operator appear.
