Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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“I have no choice,” I told him. “Those people, they could come back any time.”

“We’ll share watches,” said Paul simply, and that was that.

I let him have the guest room now that Pistache and the children were gone. He was no trouble, keeping to himself, making his own bed and keeping things tidy. A lot of the time you’d hardly have noticed him, and yet he was there, calm and unobtrusive. I felt guilty that I had ever thought him slow. In fact he was quicker than I was in some ways; certainly it was he who finally made the connection between the Snack-Wagon and Cassis’s son.

We spent two nights watching for trespassers – aul from ten till two, and I from two till six – and already I was beginning to feel more rested and more able to cope. Just sharing the problem was enough for me just then; just knowing there was someone else… Of course, the neighbors began to talk almost at once. You can’t really keep a secret in a place like Les Laveuses, and too many people knew that old Paul Hourias had left his shack by the river to move in with the widow. People fell silent as I came into shops. The postman winked at me as he delivered letters. Some disapproving glances came my way, mostly from the curé and his Sunday-school cronies, but for the most part there was little but quiet, indulgent laughter. Louis Ramondin was heard to say that the widow had been behaving strangely in recent weeks, and now he knew why. Ironically, many of my customers came back for a while, if only to see for themselves whether the rumors were true.