Léon and Louise by Alex Capus, John Brownjohn Page A

said.
    â€˜Glad to hear it.’
    â€˜I don’t remember asking you to repair it.’
    â€˜Something had to be done,’ he said. ‘The local farmers were complaining.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜It was upsetting their cows.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Yes, turning their milk sour in the udder.’
    â€˜And that’s why the local farmers asked the assistant telegraphist at Saint-Luc station for help?’
    â€˜I couldn’t refuse.’
    â€˜The local farmers will be grateful.’
    â€˜I guess so.’
    â€˜What about me?’
    â€˜What about you?’
    â€˜Do I have to be grateful too?’
    â€˜No, why should you be?’
    â€˜I owe you, though, is that it?’
    â€˜Not for a little thing like that.’
    â€˜What do you want in exchange – to show me the stars at night?’
    â€˜I’m no astronomer.’
    â€˜To show me your stamp collection?’
    â€˜I don’t own a stamp collection.’
    â€˜What do you want, then?’
    â€˜All I did was bend the thing straight.’
    â€˜And for that you want to squeeze my bottom?’
    â€˜No, but I could always bend it out of shape again.’
    â€˜That would suit me fine.’
    â€˜You miss the squeak?’
    â€˜People will. They won’t be able to hear me coming any more. They’ll get a shock when I turn up without warning.’
    â€˜I’ll screw a bell to your handlebars, then they’ll be able to hear you. All right if I walk with you for a bit?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Which way are you going?’
    â€˜I know where you’re going: the Commerce. ’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜The way you do every evening.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    â€˜Every inch the stick-in-the-mud railwayman, aren’t you?’
    â€˜Where did you go in the train today?’
    â€˜None of your business. You’re going to the Commerce, anyway. I have to go that way too. Leave your bike here. I’ll walk with you for a bit.’

    Louise was waiting for Léon at the fifth plane tree the following evening, likewise the next evening and the one after that. They took over an hour to cover the few hundred metres into town because they walked so slowly and paused so often, crossing the road for no reason or even retracing their steps. They never stopped talking. They talked about everything and nothing: about the mayor’s cigars and the postman, who was reputed to be his bastard half-brother, about the station and Léon’s knowledge of modern telecommunications, about old Barthélemy and his infatuation with Madame Josianne, about the vicious watchdog outside the locksmith’s, which frightened passing schoolchildren, and about the delicious chocolate éclairs in the Catholic bakery. They talked about the widow Junot, whose visits to her sister in Compiègne always coincided exactly with the days on which the curé went on his pastoral missions to Compiègne. They talked about the quarry behind the station in which fossilized neolithic sharks’ teeth could be found, about the black Madonna in the church and the little wood beside the route nationale in which the cherries should soon be ripe, and about Colette’s novels, all of which Louise had read but Léon hadn’t.
    From the third evening onwards Louise described her work as an angel of death while Léon looked up at the treetops, listening in silence. Later he told her about Cherbourg, the Channel, the islands and his brightly painted sailing boat while Louise likewise listened in silence, gazing at his face intently.
    But once, when he tried to ask about her background, she cut him short. ‘No questions,’ she said. ‘I won’t ask you any and you won’t either.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Léon.
    While they were talking together like this, he would bury his hands in his trouser pockets and play football with some little pebbles. Louise,