He stood watching her devoutly.
“It’s so good that sometimes I am afraid.”
“What is there to fear in Beaucourt?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
When the meal was over they walked out into the garden and looked at the green crops, those rows of beans and peas and lettuces paraded so exactly on the clean brown soil. The holes in the wall had been filled in; the fruit bushes were covered with a film of green, and the pollarded limes showed a thousand emerald tips. From the garden they passed to the orchard, and Brent stood a moment by Beckett’s grave. He had put a white wooden cross there, but he had never been able to persuade himself to paint up the lie of his own name.
Manon drew him away.
“Now we will look at the house.”
They went over it as though they had not seen the Café de la Victoire for three months. It still remained a perennial wonder to them, something of a miracle, a thing that grew and fed upon the labour of their hands. Already it had an atmosphere, the human friendliness of a place that is lived in. It was ready to be the secret home of their love and their memories.
Brent had put up a simple staircase to the upper rooms. They were still open to the bare rafters of the roof, but Harlech Dump had provided canvas for the ceilings, and all the floors were complete, save the floor of the back room on the right. Brent had used up all the wood that he had salved from the army huts.
Manon was dreaming the dreams of a housewife. She stood in the middle of the room that was to be hers and Brent’s, her back to the window, her thoughts busy with furniture, curtains, linen. In a week or two she would be able to go to Amiens and buy furniture for the new home. She looked at Paul.