The Rich Are with You Always

by Malcolm Macdonald

  After lunch each day, Madame and Nora would go out driving in the britzka if the weather was fine, usually going down to Trouville and then inland to the hilly country of the pays d'Auge. "It's not typical for Normandy, you know," she would assure Nora. "Not at all. It's very characteristic for itself. And these people—you will never, never, nevair know what they are thinking. Oh, they are so…" She clenched one fist around another.

  Once Nora admired a peasant girl as they passed, saying what lovely costumes they all wore. Immediately Madame Rodet stopped the carriage and beckoned the girl toward them. Then, to Nora's surprise, she used the girl as a sort of living, life-size fashion doll, making her turn up the hem of her apron, open out the pleats of her dress, show the tapering of the bodice into the small of her back, and many other details of her costume. Her tone was kindly, matter of fact, and not the least bit commanding. The girl, too, treated the whole event as if nothing could be more natural. It was Nora who was embarrassed—and the fact that she alone felt that way only intensified it.

  "You did not like it?" Madame Rodet asked when they were moving again.

  "Of course," Nora said. "It was beautiful. A lovely costume. I envy her. But…"

  "But? But what?"

  "Well. She was a person. Did she not mind being told 'turn round…show this…open that'?"

  Madame looked puzzled. It was plain that the very idea had not crossed her mind, and that even now it was proving hard to grasp. "She enjoyed it," she said, talking to herself from uncertainty into conviction. "She is a young woman, with beautiful cloths. And she meets two other young women in a carriage, who admire. And so, of course, she will display her cloths. It's very natural she will enjoy it."

  The difference in outlook was so basic that Nora, for a while, could only shake her head in amazement. "You simply couldn't do it in England," she said at last.

  Madame Rodet became very scornful at that. "In England, of course not. In England, that girl is in used cloths from an upper-class home, démodé, twenty years' old. But for her in France—it's impossible she should wear cloths from me from ten, twenty years old. She is too…" Madame sat upright. "Too…"

  "Too proud?" Nora prompted.

  She accepted the word grudgingly. "Proud," she sighed. "It's not at all the same. She is fière. More than proud. Fière!" She sat like a warrior queen, eyes aglow, and Nora understood that there was, indeed, a difference.

  She also began to understand how men could stand for hire among cattle in a market without feeling degraded. It was because they were not proud; they were fièrs, instead. She enjoyed the distinction; and there was satisfaction at having achieved the insight herself.

  It was also the first time in her life she accepted that the English custom, the English viewpoint, the English method, was not automatically the best.

  On another occasion, it must have been the first Saturday of the visit, Madame Rodet stopped the carriage at the gate of a church and took Nora inside to show her a new stained-glass window. As they went through the porch, Madame angrily snatched at her bonnet and, holding it in one hand, began to pluck small bits of straw, or something small—Nora could not actually see what—from it. The fact that she was now hatless did not stop her continuing into the church.

  At first Nora took this as an oversight. She herself, feeling that her little lace cap did not provide enough covering, raised her shawl over her head. She had not even settled it before Madame Rodet pulled it down again and said severely, "No, no. It's not necessary." And with her own hat still in her hand, she strode across the nave to the farther aisle without a glance at the altar.

  And it suddenly struck Nora that the Rodets were Protestant; she had always assumed that, being French, they were bound to be Catholic.

  Nora curtseyed to the altar as she crossed the nave. The new window was pretty but not especially remarkable.

  "You are Catholic?" Madame asked her, slightly shamefaced, when they were outside again; and she kept her hat off, establishing grounds of oversight rather than insult, until Nora laughed and said, "No. Of course not. You mean because I curtseyed? That is only politeness, surely."

  "Oh!" Madame Rodet thought it a great joke.

  "Do you hate the Catholics?" Nora asked her later.

  "Of course not; we must love our—everyone."

  And they hastened home so as not to be late for the "hour of the children." As they went through the gates of La Gracieuse, Madame Rodet turned to Nora and, picking up the thread again, added: "Their theology is contemptible, of course."

  Madame had given Rodet five children; Arsène, aged ten, François, César, Héraclide, and Gervaise, nearly four. "And it's enough," she said with sardonic determination. "The harvest is in." She played fiercely with her children, taking the most intense pleasure in their company. In ten minutes she heard from each boy what he had learned and said and done that day; and little Gervaise, ensconced firmly on her lap, sat as solemn as a judge and drank it all in too. Nora learned more French in those "hours of the children" than she would have in days with her lesson books and Miss Woods.

  Church was another good place to learn French—not the meanings but the sounds. The Protestant service lasted almost ninety minutes, and each half hour was taken up by a three-hour sermon, with a lot of praying and very little singing in between. One of the few words she understood was Amen, which was spoken with a grateful fervour that Nora found entirely comprehensible. After Evensong, she went early to bed and dreamed she had the gift of tongues. And all the tongues were French.

  Very soon she felt she had known Madame Rodet for months, if not years. And Madame must have felt the same too, for on the way back from a shopping visit to Rouen, she suggested that they stop all the Madame and Mrs. "You shall call me Rodie," she said. "And I make you Stevie. It's nice, yes? Rodie and Stevie."

  Nora was delighted—and half ashamed to admit to herself that she almost regretted Sam's impending arrival, so intriguing did she find her new friendship with Rodie.

  And Rodie, for her part, was intrigued at the daily flood of railway papers and accounts that came for Nora, just as they did when she was in Yorkshire. A good part of every morning, and one or two evening hours as well, went in keeping up with these arrivals.

  "You know all of Monsieur Jean's business?" she marvelled once as she watched Nora make notes on some estimates she was to return the following morning. By now she usually spoke in French and translated only the parts that Nora obviously failed to understand.

  "To the last sou," Nora said. "Better than Stevenson. He relies on it."

  Rodie shook her head and sucked her teeth in amazement. "Me, I have no idea what Rodet does. I am not extravagant, and he does not complain. But when I watch you, Stevie, I feel guilty."

  "Guilty! Why? Good heavens, why?"

  "For me"—she gave that wonderfully expressive shrug—"my house, children,

  friends, books, furniture…it's enough. Paris, l'opéra, dancing…it's enough. But for you—you have some…" She moved a pointing finger forward, like a slowmotion arrow, until her arm was fully extended. She dropped the arm with a sigh of exasperation. "It's marvellous."

  Nora did not share her smile.

  "Don't you think?" Rodie prompted.

  "Sometimes," Nora said, not really wanting to confess it, but thinking it too important for evasion. "Sometimes it frightens me."

  Rodie looked puzzled. Nora realized that she could never explain it without giving the background. "When we started, there was no one but me to do it. I've always been good with figures and calculation ever since I was a child. And when we began, Stevenson worked on the railroad eighteen hours a day and I kept the accounts. Then, because I am good at bargaining"—Rodie, who had seen Nora in action in the shops at Rouen, nodded fervent agreement—"I did all our purchasing too—iron, timber, stone, tools, powder, fuses—everything. Then I managed a foodshop too, for the workmen."

  "Because you had not enough to do," Rodie teased solemnly.


  Nora laughed. "No. For the money," she said. "We made fifteen hundred pounds—that's about three thousand seven fifty francs—in one year, the first year." Rodie whistled. "So, you see, I became—have become—a prisoner of these beginnings. Because, when we took on the next contracts, we had to go to a bank for capital. And, of course, the banker wants to talk about our accounts and our income and our prospects. Who can he talk with? Only me. And very soon, Stevenson discovers that I understand finance better than him."

  "And he's angry!" Rodie prompted eagerly, thinking of the fight she was about to hear confessed.

  "No! Delighted! Stevenson understands money, capital, finance, of course. But here"—she tapped her forehead—"it is intellectual work for him. But I live it." She pressed her breastbone, at its very foot. "Oh, Rodie, I have never confessed this to any living soul, not even to him. But when I am thinking about capital, about moving it, using it, making it work, then I am more truly alive than at any other time. Now Stevenson cannot feel any of that; he has to think it. It is a discipline for him. What he feels is people. He is most alive with his navvies and with engineers and iron masters. And with earth and rock and mud and water and stone…"

  "You are perfect then, together, Stevie. Left hand and right hand."

  "Perfect in prayer!" Nora laughed and put her hands together to show what she meant.

  "As long as you are seeking the same blessing," Rodie said.

  It sobered Nora. Rodie had put her finger right on the wart.

  "Marriage!" Rodie went on. "When I hear priests and great philosophes talking of la marriage, like one thing, I shall think of yours and I shall think of mine. And I shall smile. I give Rodet children, a home, a position. I manage the social life. He gives me security, money, independence from my parents. At weekends, we give each other respect, affection; and during the week…tolérance."

  Nora knew that the pause, and then the stress laid on the word, were deliberate cues; but it opened an area she was afraid to penetrate. "It sounds admirable," she said.

  "If I began to take an interest in the Rodet finances—hah!" She mimed an explosion and her own violent murder.

  "Do you want to know?" Nora asked—regretting at once the offer and the condescension it implied.

  "You know?" Rodie was delighted and incredulous. She had thought it a secret shared between Rodet and God.

  "We had to," Nora said. "When he became our chief supplier of metal here in France, we had to do…some researches."

  Please make her decline the offer, she prayed.

  Rodie looked at her a long time before she smiled again and said, "No, thank you, Stevie. It is better in my kind of marriage not to know."

  Nora smiled too. "I shouldn't have offered. It was foolish."

  "Not at all. I have learned something of myself that I would never have discovered. You see, if I had come across Rodet's accounts—left lying on his desk, by accident—could I resist looking at them? Before this day—no. Curiosity would overcome reasonableness. But now, after this day, I can." She smiled. "Vaccination."

  But later, as they parted on the stairs for the night, Rodie asked, "Is it much, Stevie?"

  Nora thought briefly. "What I have seen you spend," she said, "is a drop in the ocean."

  "Now I shall sleep content," Rodie said.

  Nora, alone in her room, wished her fears could be so easily lulled. But as she lay in the dark, seeking a tranquility that would not come, two figures tumbled and echoed in her mind: The number of projected railways had risen to 314, and the capital they sought now totalled £287,869,240. And each day more than two new companies announced themselves; each day the quantity of fresh capital sought was augmented by over £1,969,000.

  Why did no one in authority cry out that this was sheer madness? Why did even John smile when she had the temerity to say it aloud? He above all ought to be worried. If the railway companies fell all of a heap, Stevenson's too would very quickly go down with them.

  Rodet unwittingly harped on these fears the following morning after breakfast. She thought he had gone back to Rouen and so was surprised to be ambushed by him on a lower terrace, well away from the house. They exchanged a few pleasantries and then, apropos nothing in particular, he said, "Yes, it's funnay in England now."

  "In what way, m'sieu?"

  "Soon, no workers, no servants. All are rich by the railways." His smile was gently sardonic—but turned inward, as if the only important audience for his humour were himself.

  Nora laughed perfunctorily. "I hope we may still joke about it when the storm breaks," she said.

  He took the cue and became serious himself. "Alors! Some railroad building must come out of it. For you, it's not necessarily bad."

  "It will disarrange the City." She chose English words that were close to the French. "That will be bad for us."

  "But Monsieur Jean, he is 'appy?"

  "I believe so."

  "Oh yes. He is. I know it." He produced a silver manicure scissors and snipped a rose. Nora thought he was going to offer it to her, but he tugged it firmly through his own buttonhole. "Is it much building in the south of England?"

  Some slight alteration in his tone alerted Nora; this question was important to Rodet. "By the end of the year I would think Parliament might have sanctioned—might have permitted—three hundred or so miles."

  Rodet whistled, drawing breath, "Much rail!" he said.

  "It won't all get built. Probably only a third of it will actually get built."

  "Even so." He shrugged. "We are 'appy here for ten miles."

  "Then you should sell rails in England, Monsieur Rodet." She meant the remark lightly, but even as she spoke it, she realized that the idea made great sense. All the rails for southern England were made in the midlands and over in Wales. Rodet could probably ship from Havre to Southampton and still quote very keenly. She told him as much and saw again that reserved—or was it arrogant?—inward grin.

  "No, madame. You should," he said. "Stevenson's."

  "From Stockton?"

  "From Le Havre." He waited to see the effect. "I put your name, Stevenson, on the rails, and you sell them. Hein? We sell much more."

  "Have you made this suggestion to Stevenson?"

  "I think you, Madame Stevie, are more interested for the iron foundry in this moment than Monsieur Jean."

  "And that is why I am here at La Gracieuse, I suppose." By this bluntness she wanted him to understand that if they were to talk business, he could not rely on the social constraints.

  "Of course," he said, his twisted grin making a joking half-truth of it.

  She began to like Monsieur Rodet, and she knew he could sense it. "Good," she said. She took his arm, "Good," she said again, and she patted his arm.

  They walked in silence for so long that the conversation almost seemed to have foundered. But all the while her mind was racing. She paused near a rosebush festooned with large white blooms, each with a faint blush at its heart. "I would love one of these," she said.

  He snipped half a dozen, saying, "Its name is called Souvenir de la Malmaison. It's new." He handed them to her.

  Choosing this moment, when he would expect her thanks, she said, "We might do it for a fixed price."

  "Ah! You are interested."

  "For a fixed price. You leave us to find what profit we can—if any." He smiled patronizingly. "I can discuss this with Monsieur Jean."

  "Then be advised by me, Monsieur Rodet. Stevenson is the best railway contractor in the world for one reason. He understands absolutely the things that are permanent. From mountains and rivers to masonry and ironwork. He will like the fixed price."

  This time his smile carried no hint of patronage.

  Later she began to wonder whether she had done the right thing. Even more, she wondered whether John would agree that it was right.

  Chapter 15

  Sam's arrival helped put such fear temporarily to the back of her mind. He came early, left his bags at the inn, and walked up from
Trouville. It was a hot summer's day, with the afternoon breeze just beginning to move onshore. Nora was standing in the shade of the gateway, waiting for the britzka to be brought around, when she looked down the road and saw him—that unmistakable walk could only mean Sam.

  Wishing she could run, she stepped into the road and held her arms as high as her dress allowed, making a shallow V, and then, when he waved in response, she reached them toward him. He sauntered slightly faster; his jacket was hitched on one finger over his shoulder and he was fanning his head with his cap. He grinned and shook his head, meaning he could go no quicker.

  She dropped her aching arms and waited. Rodie came to her side with a parasol when Sam was still fifty yards away. "Un vrai Milor," she said. Nora felt very proud; sauntering at his ease, Sam indeed looked every stitch the young gentleman.