I MEET THE FAMILY
This man, Paul, seemed to be Jean's younger brother. He was shorter and thinner than I--or Jean. He
looked tired, in bad health and unhappy.
"You might have telephoned," he said. "They delayed lunch for you. Francoise and Renee thought that
you must have had an accident. We telephoned the Hotel de Paris, but they hadn't seen you."
He looked at me and then laughed angrily.
"You look terrible!" he said.
I could see that he disliked me, and this made me angry, not for myself but for Jean de Gue. What
had Jean done to make this man hate him?
"Thank you," I said. "In fact I feel very well."
I followed Paul into the house. At the far end of the hall there was a half-open door and I could
hear voices. Paul called out, "Here's Jean, arrived at last." Then he turned to me, "I must go, I'm
late already ... I see that you're not in a fit state to tell me anything tonight. We'll talk about
it in the morning."
He turned and went out of the house.
Gaston was going up the stairs carrying the bags. I wondered if I should follow him. Then a woman's
voice called out from the room beyond, "Are you there, Jean?" It was a high complaining voice and
Gaston looked down at me as if he shared my troubles.
I entered the room. It was very large, with heavy curtains. There was one long window through which
one could see faintly in the evening light rough fields with black-and-white cows close below the
house.
Three women were sitting in the room. They looked up as I came in. One was tall--about the same
height as myself. She had a hard face and a narrow mouth, and hair drawn tightly back. A large cross
hung on her breast. She immediately stood up and left the room without saying a word to me.
As I learnt afterwards, she was Jean's sister, Blanche.
The second woman had dark hair and eyes. She was good-looking, almost beautiful, but she had a
colour-less face and a sad, rather angry mouth. She watched me without any expression from where she
sat with some sewing at her side.
As the first woman left the room she called out, "If you must go, Blanche, please shut the door."
Who was she? Her face was not at all like Pauls or Blanche's and she was a good deal younger than
either. Perhaps, I thought, she is Pauls' wife. In this I was correct.
The third woman had faded fair hair and blue eyes, and might have been pretty once, but her
expression was sad and hopeless. She did not smile but gave a little angry laugh. then she stood up
and came towards me."
"Well," she said, "aren't you going to kiss either of us?"
This was Jean's wife. I could see that she was expecting a baby. Her name, I learned later, was
Francoise.
Blanche, Jean's sister; Paul, his brother; Paul's wife, Renee; and Francoise, Jean's wife. So this
was his, and my family.