The Catalans. Patrick O’Brian

Jaume Camairerrou’s Francisco.’

      ‘I never heard of him.’

      ‘Yes, you have. He is En Cisoul’s cousin: your own godchild’s cousin-german.’

      ‘Which En Cisoul?’

      ‘The faubourg En Cisoul, of course,’ adding in a louder voice, ‘En Jourda’s son, your own godchild.’

      ‘Oh? Well, I don’t mind him.’

      ‘I say it will be all right when he has gone for his military service.’

      ‘I dare say: but it was five francs a kilo in the war.’

      It was from that time on that Madeleine began to feel that her family did not like Francisco. It was not that they forbade her to play with him – nothing so hard or definite – but there was an air of disapproval, and a determination not to be pleased with Francisco that survived even the nine days’ wonder of his name being in the paper: he was first in a drawing competition for all the primary schools of the department. Jean Fajal, a remote and silent man, usually benign, though wordless, stared at the paper for a long while and said, ‘He will grow proud, no doubt: too proud for his trade.’

      They had every worldly reason for discouraging the association. Francisco came from the most savage part of the faubourg, el Cagareill, the quarter in front of the sea, and his father, Jaume Cortade, called Camairerrou, was as poor as he was savage. He was very savage. Francisco himself was the product of a freakish passion for a Genoese woman, a strange waif who came in with one of the Corsican fishing boats: Camairerrou installed her in his uncouth hovel, where she died among the nets and lobster pots within the year.

      But it went on, in spite of their disapproval: it went on, but of necessity they saw less of one another once school was over and done with. Francisco went first, being the older: the schoolmaster wanted him to stay and go on to the school at Argelès, said it was a waste to leave now, and even called on old Camairerrou; but it was no good, Francisco wanted to be out, and the old man could see no reason why a boy who could pull on a rope should stay penned in a school. So he left, and at once he was a man. On the last day of his last term he was a boy, playing quite childishly with the other boys in the street as they went home; and on the first day of the new term he passed them as they straggled by the fish-market, he passed them with his sea-boots on, carrying a basket with En Cisoul, a hundredweight of sardines, for the boats had been out all night. He nodded to them as he went by, but it was a man nodding to boys of his acquaintance, not a boy grinning at his equals.

      This change impressed Madeleine beyond words: she had always thought him wonderful, but this new fine creature in tall sea-boots and a scarlet handkerchief struck her dumb: she felt that she had been far too familiar, far too presuming, and for a while she fell back into her position of an unarmed, suppliant admirer.

      But she too was changing. She was not yet the equal of her lovely cousin, Mimi’s daughter Carmen, but her childish plainness had quite gone. She was growing into her features, and she was shooting up like a young willow; already she had that supple, upright, thoroughbred carriage that is supposed to come from carrying burdens on one’s head. Her nose was still unformed, and a great deal of the child lingered about her face, but her fantastic bloom of complexion had begun, and it was obvious, even to her family, that she was growing into a very handsome young woman.

      It was at this time that she attracted the attention of Mme. Roig. Mme. Roig had known her before – she knew everybody – but she had not taken any particular notice of the girl until one day Madeleine and her Aunt Mimi decorated the chapel of the Curé d’Ars, acting as substitutes for three women who had all eaten the same poisoned dish of mussels. Mme. Roig was a widow, the widow of Gaston Roig, of the rich family of Saint-Féliu: she was a great power in the parish church, a childless woman, respected, but rather feared than liked in the village. She invited Madeleine to her house, interested herself in her, and interfered with her natural development.

      It appeared at first that Mme. Roig had probably taken her up with a view to converting her, for Madeleine was a Protestant – a Protestant at least in the mild and unemphatic manner of the Protestants of Saint-Féliu. So was her family, except for Mimi l’Empereur, but there was no sectarian fire in their religion, none in Saint-Féliu at all, where every day, from ten o’clock to half past ten, the curé and the pasteur walked together on the beach. This was a strange anomaly in such a vivid place, with violence and passion overflowing for the smallest disagreeing word: but there it was, a settled and acknowledged fact. Perhaps the explanation was that the people had almost no religious sense at all, were almost wholly pagan in their lives: but whatever was the underlying cause, they seemed as happy in the temple as the church, and practically indifferent to both.

      But if it was conversion, Mme. Roig did not persist: she was content to have the child, the young woman one might almost say, as a very pretty and submissive friend, overflowing with vitality and cheerfulness, a companion for odd afternoons. Presently Mme. Roig found that Madeleine had grown quite indispensable to her: she had a great deal to do, looking after her own big house and her nephew’s too, as well as keeping a strict eye on the curé’s housekeeper. She had a great deal to do, being a thorough, active-minded woman: there were her orphans, her charities, the decoration and the cleaning of the church, the dressing of the saints, and she found a younger pair of legs very useful. It was not only this severely practical view, however, that made Mme. Roig feel that it would be impossible to do without her: when the worst of Madeleine’s shyness had worn off – those early visits had been hours of torment for her, torment in anticipation chiefly, for she always enjoyed it when she had been there a little while – when she became more confident with Mme. Roig, she entered wonderfully into the old lady’s somewhat dried affections.

      In the end Mme. Roig justified herself by giving Madeleine presents from time to time, suitable presents like woolen stockings and calico drawers, and sometimes lace and handkerchiefs; by a private determination to do something handsome when Madeleine should marry; and by teaching her to sew, to keep accounts, and type. Mme. Roig could sew and sum admirably well herself; she had learned the first in a convent that was as famous for its sewing, its embroidery and lace as for its piety – a convent in the north of France – and the second while she looked after her brother’s house, he being vicaire général at Perpignan. But the typewriter, as she admitted, was beyond her competence; however, she did not condemn it for that reason or its novelty. She thought it a more useful accomplishment than the piano, and she bought a M. Boileau’s system of typewriting and taught Madeleine from it on the machine in her nephew’s office – taught her much as a man who cannot swim instructs his pupils from the edge of the swimming-bath.

      Madeleine and Francisco, then, were very much more apart than they had been for years; but still it was rare that a day went by without their meeting. All through the long summer the boats were out almost every night, and Madeleine, hitherto a slugabed, would be up and waiting at the crack of dawn, standing at the edge of the sea, watching for the boats to come round the point. They would come in, nearly always from the north, round the short breakwater on the left-hand horn of the little bay’s crescent, and if the tramontane was blowing, as it was so often, the first would come in fast, heeling from the wind and shaving the steep-to foot of the jetty, and the crew would all cheer as they came round it. There would be a man standing in the bows, leaning up along the tall prow-piece and outlined black against the dun sail, and the moment he saw the beach he would utter the long, wavering hail of the first boat in, the ritual cry of Blue Fish. Then the buyers on the shingle would shriek back in their strange trade jargon, and before the long boat crunched up against the shore the sardines would be sold.

      Sometimes it was Francisco’s boat that was first, but not often, for it was not a lucky boat: if any of the boats of Saint-Féliu caught a dolphin or a shark or a moonfish or any of those unwanted captures that rip the sardine and anchovy nets to fragments, it was the Amphitrite: sometimes, and not rarely, the Amphitrite would be the last of the boats to come in, to reach a shore deserted by the buyers, nobody on it at all but the remaining fishermen of the more fortunate crews and Madeleine.

      But whether it came early or late it looked beautiful to Madeleine, the long, low boat like a grayhound, with its queer, squat, forward-raked