“What does it mean?” Eric asked Pierre-Etienne.
“It means: ‘I want to make love with you, you lovely woman.’ ”
Eric frowned. “Are you sure? I always thought sauter meant to jump.”
“Oh, it’s an expression you can use,” Pierre-Etienne said quickly, glancing at Momo, who added, “It’s a more agreeable way to say it.”
“Ah. I see. Okay.”
When Marguerite appeared, Eric was surprised at how big she was. When she climbed into her car it tossed on its springs like a boat in a storm. At once a blind funk seized him and he felt convinced that he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But Momo and Pierre-Etienne were urging him on relentlessly, as if they were aware of the weight of self-doubt building up in his mind. The consequences of backing out at this stage were too severe to be contemplated; the immense agonies of shame and abuse that would have to be endured. It was too late for second thoughts now. In any case he felt strangely cushioned from events and embarrassment by the barrier of language; it was like watching yourself on a home movie. Besides, if she swore at him or called the police he just wouldn’t understand, and anyway, he was going home tomorrow.
However, as he crunched across the gravel of the carpark he felt very lonely and exposed. He looked back at Pierre-Etienne and Momo, who eagerly waved him on. They had made it sound like the most natural thing in the world, something any youth in Villers-Bocage did as a matter of course — an easy initiation. There had been disparaging remarks about the effeminate, gelded sissies who balked at the opportunity. “Ils sont vraiment les gonzesses, les tantouzes.” Eric asked what they were. “Les pédés, homosexuels,” plump Momo said, his voice hoarse with disdain. Now as he walked across the car-park he felt the gaze of the two boys at his back like a goad.
Marguerite sat in the passenger seat of her small car, which listed heavily. She had finished her sandwich. Eric looked at her forearm, which rested on the sill. It was very white, white as a fridge, and large and soft. There was a dark shadow of hairs running down it. Her fingernails were rimmed with what looked like brown ink.
Eric cleared his throat. “Êtes-vous Madame Marguerite?” he asked, holding out the note.
“Êtes-vous Madame Marguerite?”
Marguerite looked round. The boy was standing against the light and at first she couldn’t really see him. She took the note he was holding but he didn’t go away. She opened it up and read the message. She felt her face grow hot with anger and her mouth tightened. To her surprise the boy remained standing; she had expected to see him scampering off, laughing delightedly at his filthy joke. But he was not even smiling; he seemed a little nervous.
Marguerite opened the door of the car and got out. She folded her arms across her bosom and glared at the boy. He was tall and slender with straight blond hair that fell across his forehead. His face was awkward and uneven with adolescence, as if he’d borrowed some features from a larger person. He had small pink spots at the corners of his mouth and on his chin.
“Ah, bon,” she said, her anger making her voice tremble. “Tu veux m’sauter”
“Um … ah, pardon?” the boy said.
She heard his accent. Her anger began to fade. It never lasted long anyway. The joke was on him. “Anglais?” she asked.
He nodded. Marguerite looked round for his friends, the ones who had played the joke, but she couldn’t see anyone. She flourished the note.
“C’est ordurier ça” But he didn’t understand her. His quick smile was nervous and uncertain and she suddenly felt sorry for him. She breathed out slowly and looked at him again. The anger had barely rippled the placid lake of her total indifference. She seldom let her mind contribute anything to the flow of experience. It had only brought her anguish and difficulty. So now she passively received the sensations it threw at her. She had no doubts and she had no complaints.
“Okay,” she said and beckoned him to follow. She led him out of the car-park and round a corner to a cluster of outbuildings, garages and store-rooms. She opened a wooden door at the back of a garage and showed him in. On the wall a shelf of sunlight from a high window illuminated some old packing-cases and cardboard boxes. In the corner was a bed of sorts: a mattress and a blanket. There were a grimy sink and a table and a chair. Some newspapers and magazines lay on the table. The room was used by the security guards; somewhere to go if the rain was heavy, a place for an undisturbed smoke and a chat, somewhere to take Marguerite.
She came up behind the boy, who was looking round him uncomfortably. She touched his hair; it was very clean and shiny. He was surprised and glanced round quickly, automatically raising a hand to the back of his head. Marguerite smiled at him, enjoying his youth and his reticence.
“Vas y,” she said, pointing to the mattress. The boy started to unbutton his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. He kicked off his shoes. Marguerite was surprised; no man had ever bothered to undress for her before — at the most, trousers were lowered to the knees — and she removed only what was essential.
The boy stood there in his underpants, uneasy in the intensity of her gaze. With a start she realised he was waiting for her to undress. She looked at his hairless body, the slim legs, the shadows of his ribs, the lean jut of his pelvis, and he seemed to her almost painfully beautiful. As she fumbled with the buttons on her dress she felt a strange thick sensation in her throat, and for a brief moment the utter grief of her life cut like a razor and her eyes spangled with tears.
Eric lay still in Marguerite’s arms. She was holding him tight, running her hands up and down his body, muttering soft phrases that he couldn’t understand. Eric was aware of an unfamiliar tiredness, and now that it was all over he longed to be away from this small room and this large white woman with her curious smell. At the beginning he had been numbed and filled with nervousness when she had taken off her clothes and lain down beside him on the mattress. What struck him was not the heavy flat breasts with their stark brown nipples, the bushy armpits or the overhanging belly, but the shocking nude whiteness of the woman. She was so white she was almost grey, as he remembered his arm had once been when it was removed from a plaster cast.
The brief, unsatisfactory coupling was completed within seconds, or so it seemed to Eric, who now ran through his past sensations like a clerk at a filing cabinet, seeking for something that was memorable, that retained traces of excitement. She had kissed his face and rolled him on top of her, manipulating and pushing him around like a worker he’d once seen operating a die stamper. But now it was over, she just seemed to want to hold him and Eric didn’t know what to do. And there was the smell. At first he thought it came from the mattress but then he realised it rose from her skin, a thin acidic smell, almost organic and living.
Eric was confused about his role; it had not been like the books he’d read or the stories he’d heard. He had been passive, merely fulfilling a function. He hadn’t felt anything. Once, when waiting for the school train, Haines had pointed to a group of women in black overalls who were carrying long brushes and heading up the platform towards the sidings. The women who cleaned the carriages, Haines said, were notorious. They’d do it for ten bob, anywhere, with anyone.
Tentatively Eric brought his hand up from the mattress and touched Marguerite’s breast. The nipple was coarse and thick like a small brown raspberry. His palm cautiously inched up the slack bulge of her breast. He gently touched the nipple and let his fingers trickle over it. As he touched it she said something and hugged him close to her with a strength he found surprising, so that he felt in a moment of panic that the viscid-white flesh might envelop him, lapping round his body like mud. She reached down for him, her other hand pressing his face into her neck, and he could smell her; he could feel it filling his lungs like water.