Then, much to their consternation, they realized there was no more bread! The one-pound loaf had all been eaten and there was none left for the cheese. There were shouts and laughter as they ransacked the room and eventually found a stale crust at the back of Madame Victoire’s sideboard. Although the window had been left open, the room was still very stuffy. Séverine, sitting with her back to the stove, was getting hotter and hotter; the unexpected lunch and trying to talk and eat at the same time had brought the colour to her cheeks. Being together in Madame Victoire’s room reminded Roubaud of Grandmorin again. She’s another one who’s got a lot to thank him for, he thought.

Madame Victoire had been violated when she was very young. She had lost her baby, nursed Séverine when her mother had died in childbirth, married a fireman in the railway company and had then tried to eke out a living in Paris by taking in a bit of dressmaking, while her husband squandered every penny they earned. Fortunately, quite by chance, she had happened to bump into her foster child, which enabled her to renew her old contact with the President; Madame Victoire was another whom Grandmorin had taken under his wing. It was he who had arranged her present job with the Department of Health as a lavatory attendant at the first-class ladies’ toilets; and a very good job it was, too. The Company only paid her a hundred francs a year, but she received nearly fourteen hundred in tips. She was provided with free accommodation, the room that they were in now, and even had heating included. All in all, she was doing quite well for herself. Her husband, Pecqueux, was earning two thousand eight hundred francs, including bonuses, as a fireman, and Roubaud calculated that if he had actually brought the money home rather than spending it on binges in nearly every tavern along the line, they would have been making more than four thousand francs between them, which was twice as much as he was earning as an assistant stationmaster at Le Havre.15

‘I don’t suppose working in a public convenience is to every woman’s taste,’ said Roubaud. ‘But a job’s a job!’

Their hunger had by now subsided, and they ate more slowly, cutting little slices of cheese to make the meal last longer. Their conversation, too, had become more relaxed.

‘Oh yes,’ said Roubaud, ‘I forgot ... Why didn’t you accept Grandmorin’s invitation to stay with him at Doinville?’

He was beginning to feel the pleasant effects of the meal and was thinking of their visit earlier that morning to the house in the Rue du Rocher, near the station. He was back in the President’s large, plainly furnished study. Grandmorin was telling them that he proposed to go to Doinville the following day. Then, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he suggested he might travel with them that evening, on the 6.30 express. He could take his goddaughter on to his sister’s; she had been saying she wanted to see her for ages. But Séverine had come up with all manner of excuses, which, she said, ‘prevented’ her.

‘I couldn’t see any problem about going to Doinville,’ said Roubaud. ‘You could have stayed there till Thursday. I’d have managed all right on my own. It was silly. People like us can’t afford to refuse invitations from people in his position; it’s our only chance of getting on. He wasn’t pleased; you could tell. I kept trying to get you to agree; and then you started tugging on my coat. So in the end I said the same as you, but I really didn’t know why. Why didn’t you want to go? Come on, tell me!’

Séverine looked away and shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

‘I couldn’t just leave you on your own,’ she said.

‘That’s not the reason,’ said Roubaud. ‘In the three years we’ve been married, you’ve been to Doinville twice already, and stayed there a week.