“No,” Momo said, “he don’t have a girl-friend, but he has Marguerite.”
“And who’s she?”
Marguerite Grosjean shouted goodbye to her mother and eased her bulk into her tiny 2-CV. As usual her mother didn’t reply. Marguerite lit her fifth Gauloise of the day. She sat for a moment in her car. It was only half past five and Villers-Bocage was just ten minutes away through early morning mist. She puffed on her cigarette and scratched her thigh. Her mother leaned out of the upstairs window and shouted at her. It was just a noise. Her mother ran out to the car screaming abuse. Marguerite flipped down the window. Arcs of spittle from her mother’s mouth spattered on the glass. Marguerite let it go on a few seconds. It was like this every morning. Then she started the engine and drove off, leaving the small dishevelled figure, still shaking with rage, alone in the yard.
She arrived at the abattoir a little early so she went to the nearby bar and ordered a café-calva. The waiter brought her the drink. He was new to the café. He smiled and said good morning but Marguerite appeared not to notice him. He found this somewhat unusual, as he had taken her against the wall at the back of the café only three nights ago when she came off night shift. He said good morning again but she didn’t reply. He shrugged his shoulders and walked off, but he kept the tab. It wasn’t much but it was something. One of the butchers who worked in the abattoir had told him about Marguerite and all the butchers, farm-hands, meat packers and lorry drivers. You just need to ask, the man had said, that’s all, a simple request, and he had tapped his temple with a forefinger. The waiter had met her on her way back from the toilet. The butcher had been right.
He thought of asking her again, just now, to see if it was really true, but the clear morning light was unkind to the fat woman so he went on wiping the tables.
Eric, Pierre-Etienne and Momo stood at the back of the abattoir looking over a wall at the stream of departing workers from the morning shift.
“Which one is she?” Eric asked.
“That one there, the big one, going in the car.”
Eric saw lots of cars and quite a few large women.
“Which car?” he asked.
“That one,” Momo said, pointing to an old 2-CV being driven away. Eric couldn’t really see the driver, just a white face and black hair.
He felt a thump of excited pressure in his chest. “What do I have to do?” he asked.
“You just go and tell her what you want,” Pierre-Etienne said.
“Is that all? Just ask?”
“Yes, it’s all.”
“But why does she do it? Do … do I have to pay her or anything?”
The two French boys laughed delightedly. “No, no,” Momo said. “She do it for nothing. She likes it.”
“Oh,” said Eric knowledgeably, “a nympho. But are you sure? You’re not lying? She does it just like that?”
“Everybody is going to Marguerite,” Momo said with emphasis. “We have gone.”
“Bloody hell. Did you?” Eric asked Pierre-Etienne.
“Of course,” he replied. “I have been three times. It is easy.”
“God,” said Eric quietly. The ease of the whole venture astonished him. It really was going to happen. “But I still don’t understand why. What for? Why does she do it?”
Marguerite parked her car at the back of the abattoir near the packed cattle pens full of grunting and shifting beasts. As she walked into the room where she worked the familiar pungent ammoniacal smell of guts and excrement tickled her nostrils. She took her plastic overall off the peg and buttoned it tightly across her massive chest. She stepped into her gumboots and pulled the white cap over her wiry black hair, just beginning to be streaked with grey.
She heard the men arrive, the jokes and the early morning banter. A few stepped in for a moment and said hello. She stood looking at the huge stainless-steel basins. She leant back against the mangle. She wasn’t thinking about anything, just waiting for Marcel to wheel in the first tub of shivering, gelid, brown and purple guts.
Then she heard the familiar sound of the slaughter begin. The compressed-air phut of the humane killer as the retractable six-inch spike was driven into the animal’s skull. The clang as the side of the pen fell away to let the beast tumble down the concrete incline, the rattle of its hooves on the cement. Then there was the whirr of the hoist as the carcass was lifted up by a rear leg and almost simultaneously the splash as the blood poured from twin slits made in the throat. It took barely a minute for the skin to be removed before the buzzing circular saw carved down the length of the suspended body, opening it wide. The first today was a cow; she recognised the second splash — this time of milk — as the udder was halved by the whining blade. Then there was the slithering, slopping waterfall as the insides fell out. The moan of the overhead rails — as the carcass was swung down the line to the butchers and the cavernous refrigerating plant — was punctuated by the thumps and splashings of the second animal being killed.
Eight cows later, Marcel wheeled in the first of the buckets. He was simple and had a harelip. He never spoke much. He turned on the hoses and water sprays and plunged his bare hands into the gelatinous mass of entrails and heaved great piles into the brimming sinks. There were arm-length rubber gloves for this purpose but Marcel maintained that they only made his job harder.
Marguerite stood above the overflowing steaming basins and quickly sorted the larger pieces of offal from the long strings of intestines. She flung the stomachs onto a recessed tray which Marcel later took through to the tripe room. Her overalls were soon covered by a green slime of blood and feculence. She took a bucket of the washed viscera over to the mangle and forced an end of gut between the rollers. She grunted slightly as she turned the handle to run them through. Green and purple efflux plopped and spouted from the other end, splashing onto her boots and the floor, where it was hosed into the drains by Marcel.
Pale emptied ropes of intestine were collected in a zinc bucket on the other side of the mangle. Marguerite gave them a final wash-through with a high-pressure hose to remove all remaining particles before Marcel took them to be prepared for tripe. She worked on this way until lunchtime, pausing occasionally to smoke a cigarette or take a drink from a bottle of Calvados she kept on a window ledge.
That night Eric lay in bed thinking about the next day. It was all arranged for lunchtime. Apparently Marguerite always ate lunch in her car. Momo was going to write a note for him to give to her. That was all he had to do.
Eric wondered what it would be like. What it would feel like. He wondered what Morton and Haines would say when he told them back at school. Was it going to be any different from when he did it himself? He slipped his hand into his pyjama trousers and touched himself, ran his fingers over his neat bush of pubic hair. He couldn’t imagine it at all. It seemed so easy. What if something went wrong?
The three boys were waiting at the back of the abattoir by eleven o’clock. Eric kept clearing his throat, and his palms were wet with perspiration even though it was a cool morning. Momo had written out the brief note; he was being especially nice that day.
“What is it I have to say?” Eric asked for the tenth time.
“Just say, ‘Vous êtes Madame Marguerite?’ and give her the note.”
“Vous êtes Madame Marguerite?”
“Good,” Momo said. “Très bien,” and handed him the piece of paper. Eric unfolded it. Momo had printed in block letters “JE VOUDRAIS TE SAUTER GROSSE TRUIE.”