Jeanne Maurel was tall, almost as tall as Stephen. An elegant person wearing pearls round her throat above a low cut white satin waistcoat. She was faultlessly tailored and faultlessly barbered; her dark, severe Eton crop fitted neatly. Her profile was Greek, her eyes a bright blue—altogether a very arresting young woman. So far she had had quite a busy life doing nothing in particular and everything in general. But now she was Valérie Seymour’s lover, attaining at last to a certain distinction.
And Valérie was sitting there calm and aloof, her glance roving casually round the café, not too critically, yet as though she would say: ‘Enfin, the whole world has grown very ugly, but no doubt to some people this represents pleasure.’
From the stained bar counter at the end of the room came the sound of Monsieur Pujol’s loud laughter. Monsieur Pujol was affable to his clients, oh, but very, indeed he was almost paternal. Yet nothing escaped his cold, black eyes—a great expert he was in his way, Monsieur Pujol. There are many collections that a man may indulge in; old china, glass, pictures, watches and bibelots; rare editions, tapestries, priceless jewels. Monsieur Pujol snapped his fingers at such things, they lacked life—Monsieur Pujol collected inverts. Amazingly morbid of Monsieur Pujol, and he with the face of an ageing dragoon, and he just married en secondes noces, and already with six legitimate children. A fine, purposeful sire he had been and still was, with his young wife shortly expecting a baby. Oh, yes, the most aggressively normal of men, as none knew better than the poor Madame Pujol. Yet behind the bar was a small, stuffy sanctum in which this strange man catalogued his collection. The walls of the sanctum were thickly hung with signed photographs, and a good few sketches. At the back of each frame was a neat little number corresponding to that in a locked leather notebook—it had long been his custom to write up his notes before going home with the milk in the morning. People saw their own faces but not their numbers—no client suspected that locked leather notebook.
To this room would come Monsieur Pujol’s old cronies for a bock or a petit verre before business; and sometimes, like many another collector, Monsieur Pujol would permit himself to grow prosy. His friends knew most of the pictures by heart; knew their histories too, almost as well as he did; but in spite of this fact he would weary his guests by repeating many a threadbare story.
‘A fine lot, n’est-ce pas?’ he would say with a grin, ‘See that man? Ah, yes—a really great poet. He drank himself to death. In those days it was absinthe—they liked it because it gave them such courage. That one would come here like a scared white rat, but Crénom! when he left he would bellow like a bull—the absinthe, of course—it gave them great courage.’ Or: ‘That woman over there, what a curious head! I remember her very well, she was German. Else Weining, her name was—before the war she would come with a girl she’d picked up here in Paris, just a common whore, a most curious business. They were deeply in love. They would sit at a table in the corner—I can show you their actual table. They never talked much and they drank very little; as far as the drink went those two were bad clients, but so interesting that I did not much mind—I grew almost attached to Else Weining. Sometimes she would come all alone, come early. “Pu,” she would say in her hideous French; “Pu, she must never go back to that hell.” Hell! Sacrénom—she to call it hell! Amazing they are, I tell you, these people. Well, the girl went back, naturally she went back, and Else drowned herself in the Seine. Amazing they are—ces invertis, I tell you!’
But not all the histories were so tragic as this one; Monsieur Pujol found some of them quite amusing. Quarrels galore he was able to relate, and light infidelities by the dozen. He would mimic a manner of speech, a gesture, a walk—he was really quite a good mimic—and when he did this his friends were not bored; they would sit there and split their sides with amusement.
And now Monsieur Pujol was laughing himself, cracking jokes as he covertly watched his clients. From where she and Mary sat near the door, Stephen could hear his loud, jovial laughter.
‘Lord,’ sighed Pat, unenlivened as yet by the beer; ‘some people do seem to feel real good this evening.’
Wanda, who disliked the ingratiating Pujol, and whose nerves were on edge, had begun to grow angry. She had caught a particularly gross blasphemy, gross even for this age of stupid blaspheming. ‘Le salaud!’ she shouted, then, inflamed by drink, an epithet even less complimentary.
‘Hush up, do!’ exclaimed the scandalized Pat, hastily gripping Wanda’s shoulder.