Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks Read Free Book Online Page B

laughed.
    ‘Oh, I’ve just remembered,’ said Hartmann. ‘Before you go. My wife wanted me to find out if you knew of anyone who would come in and do some extra cleaning for us. Just one day a week while the work’s going on.’
    ‘Yes, I understand, M. Hartmann. I’ll have a think about it. I can’t think of anyone at the moment, but I’ll let you know, shall I? Perhaps little Jacqueline, you know, the postman’s daughter, she might be interested.’
    ‘Yes, as long as she’s strong enough. Poor old Mme Monnier isn’t up to much more than dusting the ornaments these days.’
    ‘You’ll be wanting a sturdy woman, then. A young one. Always plenty of those in a town like Janvilliers.’ Roussel laughed. ‘Good night, gentlemen.’
    Anne moved out from behind the bar, clearing plates from the tables and taking further orders for coffee and more drinks. There were always centimes left in the saucers on the bar when people had paid for their drinks, and sometimes whole francs left on the tables for her. It was a rule that at closing time all such tips were pooled; half the total went straight to the hotel’s petty cash box, and of what remained Pierre and Bruno were entitled to a quarter each, while the rest was shared out between the barman and the waiters. ‘Monsieur the Patron is very strict on this point,’ Mme Bouin assured the truculent Roland, when he had once questioned the system. Diners who thought they were doing Anne a favour by leaving a larger tip than normal thus found their generosity registered only by the marbled ledger of Mme Bouin.
    Anne, however, was not thinking about centimes as she leaned across the tables to gather up the dirty plates. An idea had occurred to her; but before she could begin to form a plan the street door opened again, this time revealing the stocky figure of Jean-Philippe, the quieter of the Gilbert brothers. Hartmann bought more drinks and at once he and Jean-Philippe fell into agitated conversation with Mattlin.
    Like Roussel earlier in the evening, like most men in bars and cafés up and down France that night, they were concerned by news that two days earlier the German army had reoccupied the Rhineland, a zone demilitarised by treaty at the end of the war. All three had at some time been in the army, Jean-Philippe from the first battle of the Marne until the Armistice, during which time he had twice been wounded. Although they talked robustly, each man knew with a low certainty that such supreme effort of resistance could never be made again, and they looked to their political leaders to ensure that it should not be necessary. In this they were constantly let down and their sacrifice, as they saw it, betrayed.
    ‘But I suppose Mandel is at least aware of the threat,’ said Mattlin.
    ‘I agree,’ said Jean-Philippe, who was the most passionate of the three. ‘He is aware of the threat, but there is nothing he can do about it. Sarraut will do nothing. Did you hear him on the wireless last night? He will insist on doing nothing – that’s why he was chosen in the first place.’
    ‘And because he was not Laval,’ said Hartmann.
    It was not as if the three of them were arguing, Anne thought, as she passed by; it was more that each wanted to make the same point more loudly than the others.
    ‘But Flandin,’ said Jean-Philippe, ‘at least he’s an anglophile.’
    ‘The best thing you can say for Flandin,’ said Hartmann as he drained his glass, ‘is that he’s an extremely tall man.’
    Anne left them talking until a few minutes before closing time. It would have been better for her to wait until another day to propose her scheme, but by then it might have been too late.
    When she saw Jean-Philippe put his hand on Mattlin’s shoulder the better to emphasise a point, thus momentarily excluding Hartmann from the circle at the bar, she moved over with her tin tray full of empty beer glasses, touched the sleeve of Hartmann’s jacket and murmured,