The Grand Banks Café by Georges Simenon Page A

trapped opposite him: he could see him sit there and sweat.
    It was fascinating, like being present
     at a dissection. Le Clinche did not move a muscle. He was not facing the woman, but
     he must surely have been able to see her, however vaguely, on his left, at the very
     least to make out the pink cloud of her blouse.
    His eyes, grey and lacklustre, were
     fixed and staring. One hand lay on the table and was closing slowly, as slowly as
     the tentacles of some undersea creature.
    There was no telling yet how it would
     all turn out. Would he get up and run away? Would he turn on the woman who talked
     and talked? Would he …?
    No. He did none of those things. What he
     did was quite different and a hundred times more unnerving. It was not just his hand
     that was closing, but his whole being. He was shrivelling, shrinking into his
     shell.
    His eyes steadily turned as grey as his
     face.
    He did not move. Was he still breathing?
     Not a tremor. Not a twitch. But his stillness, which grew more and more complete,
     was mesmerizing.
    â€˜â€¦ puts me in mind with another of my gentleman
     friends, married he was, with three kids …’
    Marie Léonnec, on the other hand, was
     breathing quickly. She gulped down her chocolate to hide her confusion.
    â€˜â€¦ now he was the most passionate
     man on the planet. Sometimes, I refused to let him in and he’d stop outside on
     the landing and sob, until the neighbours worked up a right old head of steam!
     “Adèle my sweety pie, my pet, my own …” All the usual lovey-dovey stuff.
     Anyway, one Sunday I met him out walking with his wife and kiddies. I heard his wife
     ask him:
    â€˜â€œWho’s that
     woman?”
    â€˜And all pompous, he says to
     her:
    â€˜â€œObviously a floozie. You
     can tell from the ridiculous way she’s dressed.”’
    And she laughed, playing to the crowd.
     She looked at the faces around her to see what effect her behaviour was having.
    â€˜Some people are that slow on the
     uptake you can’t get a rise out of them.’
    Again Gaston Buzier said something to
     her quietly in an attempt to shut her up.
    â€˜What’s the matter? Not
     turning chicken are you? I pay for my drinks, don’t I? I’m not doing
     anybody any harm! So nobody’s got any right to tell me what to do … Waiter,
     where are those peanuts? And bring another kümmel!’
    â€˜Maybe we should leave,’
     said Madame Maigret.
    It was too late. Adèle was on the
     rampage. It was clear
that if they tried
     to leave, she would do anything to cause a scene, whatever the cost.
    Marie Léonnec was staring at the table.
     Her ears were red, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her mouth hung open in
     distress.
    Le Clinche had shut his eyes. And he
     went on sitting there, unseeing, with a fixed expression on his face. His hand still
     lay lifelessly on the table.
    Maigret had never had an opportunity
     like this to scrutinize him. His face was both very young and very old, as is often
     the case with adolescents who have had difficult childhoods.
    Le Clinche was tall, taller than
     average, but his shoulders were not yet those of a man.
    His skin, which he had not looked after,
     was dotted with freckles. He had not shaved that morning, and there were faint blond
     shadows around his chin and on his cheeks.
    He was not handsome. He could not have
     laughed very often in his life. On the contrary, he had burned large quantities of
     midnight oil, reading too much, writing too much, in unheated rooms, in his
     ocean-tossed cabin, by the light of dim lamps.
    â€˜I’ll tell you what really
     makes me sick. It’s seeing people putting on airs who’re really no
     better than us.’
    Adèle was losing patience. She was ready
     to try anything to get what she wanted.
    â€˜All these proper young ladies,
     for instance. They pretend to be lily-white hens but they’ll run after a man