Free Sunday by Georges Simenon Page B

set yourself up in London, in Soho, you would make a fortune in no time.'
    He didn't want to live in London, but to stay here. He had taken root. He felt at home. If only there hadn't been Berthe . . .
    She had come down in the end. He had called to her, from one room to the other:
    'Pascali's here and wants to speak to you . . .'
    She had shown the mason into the sitting-room and the girl had followed them in, walking in a way Emile only noticed now for the first time, the walk normally associated with Indians in Wild West novels, which is also found among gipsies who go about with bare feet. But she was wearing espadrilles and he noticed that her legs were dirty.
    Without paying any attention to it, he could hear a murmur of voices. Then he saw Pascali going past in the sunlight of the terrace.
    A moment later there were footsteps on the floor above, but half an hour elapsed before he found his wife by herself in the dining-room.
    'I didn't see Pascali's daughter leave.'
    'She's upstairs, arranging the attic which used to be a box-room. I have taken her on as housemaid and that is to be her room.'
    He had had nothing to do with it. At first he attached no importance to it. He was pleased on the whole to have an extra pair of hands in the house, for Madame Lavaud couldn't do everything and custom was expanding.
    'Has your husband seen a doctor?'
    Time was passing, and what marked the passage of the years most of all was still the presence of Madame Harnaud in the house for about a month during the slack season.
    She could not reconcile herself to the idea that her daughter had no children.
    'You ought both of you to go and see one.'
    During the time she was at La Bastide she never ceased to spy on them, without seeming to do so, for to all appearances she was as discreet, as self-effacing as possible.
    'Don't worry about me. You get on with what you have to do. I am quite used to being alone and I'm never bored.'
    She would knit for hours at a stretch, sometimes in one corner, sometimes in another, attentive to every sound, to voices, to the slightest whispers.
    'Is she a local girl? I seem to have see her somewhere before.'
    Ada, by now, wore a white apron over the shapeless black dress which she seemed to have adopted once and for all. For a certain time her hair had been the subject of almost daily dispute.
    'Go and brush your hair, Ada.'
    Ada never answered, which exasperated Berthe. One could not even tell if she had been listening.
    'Say: "Yes, madam!" '
    'Yes, madam.'
    'Well then, go and brush your hair.'
    She wore her hair falling over her neck, and it appeared never to have known the discipline of a comb. It was black, thick like the hair of Chinese women.
    'Have you washed your hair as I asked you? Don't lie to me. If you haven't washed it by tomorrow, I shall put your head under the tap and soap it myself.'
    Madame Harnaud would say of Ada:
    'Don't you think she's a bit mad?'
    'It's possible. I don't know. Her father is a bit queer as well and her mother passes for an idiot.'
    'Aren't you afraid?'
    'What of?'
    'Those sort of people give me the creeps. I knew one like that, a young man who worked for your father, and one fine morning he had an epileptic fit in the middle of the kitchen. The foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth . . .'
    'I asked the doctor . . .'
    'Which one?'
    'Chouard.'
    'He's a drunkard. I hope he isn't the one you call in when you are ill?'
    'No. We see Guerini. Dr. Chouard looks in from time to time to have a carafe of wine.'
    'A bottle or two, you mean! I remember him. What does he think of~ her?'
    'He says there's nothing wrong with her. Just that she is backward.''
    'Backward in what?'
    'Some people, it seems, never grow up mentally past a certain age.'
    'What age has she stopped at?'
    Berthe shrugged her shoulders. Ada had the advantage of not costing much. They did not give her money directly. They paid her wages to her father and he had asked that she should not be allowed any