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appeasement of her senses.
    It was very late; the dawn light was already shining when Marie fell asleep. With her strong face, and her big body moulded by the sheets, she did not look like a woman who’d just been left by a man. She looked more like an ancient, masculine form, a young creature who had gone to sleep, body appeased, and whose sleep had been inhabited by big, warlike dreams.

CHAPTER SIX
    T HE GARE DU NORD is dark, dirty, in a state of decay, and new arrivals bring back memories of the depressing landscapes they’ve just passed through. In the third-class trains, the journey from the frontier is unbearable. From time to time a sports team or a group of Catholics will alight from those trains with a flourish – they’ll cross the station with flags unfolded and greet Paris with a tired, noisy rendering of the Belgian national anthem. On the platforms, people waiting for arrivals or departures speak in the heavy tones of Flanders or with a Walloon drawl.
    The Maubeuge train was late; Marie was sitting in the station buffet watching the platform. She saw some red lights but no, it wasn’t the train. She got up to look at the board announcing delays – the number of minutes had increased by fifteen. She continued to wait until she saw a crowd of people pressing through the barrier. She went up to him immediately.
    ‘You’re not too tired, Jean? Here, give me your case.’
    She walked very close to him, slipping an arm through his. How pleased she was that he was back, but how tired he looked, and how lined his brow … She thought his face was dirty but it was stubble darkening his chin and his cheeks. Even though he shaved every day, he always had a dark shadow.
    Marie stood opposite Jean in the bus.
    ‘What did you do in the evenings, darling?’
    She replied, off the top of her head: ‘Oh, I read, I prepared my teaching. What was the weather like up there?’
    ‘Rain as usual. There haven’t been any important letters, then?’
    ‘No, you’ll see. Do you think your trip went well? Are sales good?’
    ‘Hardly – the recession goes on and on. At the moment it’s best if I’m on the spot.’
    In the early days of their marriage Jean had accepted a job as an engineer with a firm in Maubeuge, his home town, and he feared that they would have to leave the Paris that Marie loved so much, and where he had just spent five years of student life. But the firm had opened an office in Paris, which meant that Jean could live there; he only had to spend short periods in Maubeuge in order to deal with the technical side of his work.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Marie said. ‘If sales are down, why does your presence become more and more necessary?’
    ‘They’re talking about closing the Paris office,’ he replied softly.
    Marie said nothing. In her mind’s eye she remembered the few days they had spent at Maubeuge a month after their marriage: the narrow, colourless town, the family circle, the big dark house behind the factory. That would be terrible, she thought. Suddenly, too, she saw the number of kilometres increasing again, changing from five to seven hundred. ‘That would be terrible!’ she said out loud.
    ‘If it came to that, it would probably only last a few months. And anyway, if it would be too painful for you, I could live there alone and you could stay here.’
    ‘Oh no,’ she replied without hesitation.
    ‘Let’s not think about it,’ he said. ‘Nothing is definite yet.’
    They went home and sat down to eat. She had prepared a soup that she’d left to cook on the side of the stove, and served it up piping hot. She felt happy to be serving it up to Jean piping hot, happy too that he was sitting at table, in his place, next to her.
    ‘I am very happy,’ she said, ‘now that you are here with me.’
    She looked at him and saw again the beard, the lines on his brow and other lighter ones around his eyes.
    ‘Have you been working too hard? You look so tired.’
    ‘I look