Marcel Read Online Free PDF

for once. I slunk to the corner between the wardrobe and the wall, sank to my knees and vanished under the sewing table.
    “Do you still buy from Maurice?” Miss Veegaete asked.
    She bent down, undid the buckles of her shoes and pinched her stockings out from between her toes. “And how is Maurice these days?”
    “Ups and downs, you know how it is. Nothing much has changed. What do you expect?”
    “Poor Maurice,” Miss Veegaete said dreamily. “Such a flourishing business, and yet he still hasn’t got his licence back.”
    She drew herself up again.
    “It’s …” she tried to think of a suitable word while she unbuttoned her sleeves,
    “… odious, that’s what it is. Odious!”
    “It is indeed,” Stella echoed.
    “And you’re rather odious too, young man.”
    The grandmother lifted a corner of the tablecloth and gave me an icy stare.
    “Off you go and play in the garden, now. No need for menfolk here. Besides, you’re far too young to care about skirts.”
    “Heavens above,” Miss Veegaete cried. “I hadn’t even noticed he was there.”
    I sloped off, hanging my head.
    “You don’t mean to say you take an interest in ladies already? At your age!”
    She turned to the grandmother.
    “He’s very forward – and not only with his reading either, I see. The boy is a genius.”
    “When all is said and done,” the grandmother remarked, “they’re all geniuses.”
    “Polite boys leave the room without being told,” hissed Stella, shutting the door behind me with a bang.
    *
    I pressed my ear against the door to hear what they were saying, without much success. The doors in the house were solid, pre-war quality, and although Stella was quite thin her back almost completely blocked my view through the keyhole. All I could hear were whispers, the rustle of Miss Veegaete shedding her clothes, the swish of her satin slip, which would be white or
vieux rose
.
    “My brother was lucky,” I heard her say. “He was only seventeen at the time.”
    “There were plenty of others they didn’t let off so lightly,” the grandmother retorted. “They picked on Maurice just to make themselves look better. Every single textile firm made money off the Germans. Good money, too.”
    “All those little men in the camps on television,” Stella blurted, “where d’you suppose the material for all those striped pyjamas came from? Am I right, Andrea?”
    “Whenever I see those old films,” the grandmother said, “I think: there goes the Flanders rag trade. And who gets the blame? Maurice. Or me.”
    “They always blame the ordinary folk,” Miss Veegaete chimed in. “Nothing new there. Anyway, it’s not a question of blame, is it?”
    I didn’t catch what the grandmother said. Her voice was drowned in the clatter of buttons spilling from a box.
    “Stella! What a butterfingers you are! That’s the second time you’ve sent those buttons flying.”
    “I can’t think straight today,” Stella moaned. “It’s the heat. I’m sweating my heart out.”
    She bent down to collect the buttons off the floor.
    Miss Veegaete stood in front of the mirror, stroking her neck with both hands. Her bosom burgeoned inside her satin bodice. “Marcel was old enough to know what he was doing, Andrea. He was twenty-four. Not a youngster anymore.”
    “No indeed,” the grandmother said tartly. “But it didn’t do us Flemings any good, that’s all I can say.”
    “We’ll get there in the end,” Miss Veegaete said soothingly. “Of course we will. We do our best. Which of us knows French better than Flemish, anyway?”
    “Not me!” barked Stella.
    “You mind your own business,” hissed the grandmother.
    “There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Miss Veegaete went on. “I have always spoken my mind. Everywhere. Even in Brussels. Even in the classroom with my girls from good families. Fair and square, I always used to say.”
    She stepped into her shoes, dragging the heels over the tiled floor.
    “Now then,