The Widow Read Free

a great many trees have been planted. Quite a lot have been broken, but a good deal remain. They are still immature: trees, alas, are slower than concrete.
    Arlette could put a name to the first link because of a large notice over an arcade saying ‘Shopping Centre Maille Cathérine’. The housing blocks were not bad at all, cheerfully irregular, not more than six or seven stories; plenty of the small balconies were gay with geraniums. One could do a lot worse, she thought. The interior of the hexagon was landscaped too with hillocks of soil, little paths winding about, large lumps of stone, a playground for little ones with logs to climb on and a sandpit. A cluster of rather shoddy huts was plainly kindergarten and bits of primary school.
    Not many people about. Men would all be at work of course but she would have expected more women doing their shopping.
    â€˜Whereabouts is Eléonore?’
    â€˜No idea,’ said a man in a hurry, curt.
    â€˜Sorry,’ said a woman. ‘This is Cathérine’s all I know.’ A more leisurely woman, with a basket on wheels.
    â€˜Through that way. No, wait now, that’s Jacqueline, or is it? I’m a bit vague.’ Arlette walked on; she’d plenty of time.
    â€˜Over there,’ said an elderly man with a dog. ‘Just keep on straight.’
    The buildings were different in character. One judges, in France, not so much by the exteriors as the entrances. A few green plants grouped around an artistic arrangement of large smooth pebbles set in roughcast – ‘standing’. This last replaced by a small fountain in a goldfish pond – ‘grandstanding’. The letterboxes are great giveaways too. Some blocks here had a surprising amount of standing, others none at all: grim traps of yellowish tiles with the foot of the fire stairs sticking out, like landings in a prison. She understood: in order not to create ghettos the municipal planners had mingled ‘HLM’, that coy acronym for Moderate-Rent-Habitation which means a council house, with private-sector blocks that can be bought and sold, and owned.
    Arlette, who had lost her way already despite a usually good bump of location, came out in an angle where trees had been grouped round a sort of courtyard, half asphalted and half just ground stamped hard. Dusty in dry weather and undrained puddles after rain. She thought she understood. The municipal architect, worthy man, had done his best. The idea of little villages had been all right as far as it went. But there was no centre to them. No corner grocery or even a pub. No joyfully tatty dirty-shop selling sweets and newspapers and all the gossip. The big money had taken over. An entire ‘link’ separate from the others to allow cars to come, and park, had been built around a gigantic supermarket, with a covered gallery of speciality shops all around. Here was the warmth and the light, the animation and the colour. Here, and nowhere else. Apart from the little arcade in ‘Cathérine’ where the mums went if they had forgotten something or were in a tearing hurry, there was no activity. The huge Pedestrian Precinct thing was a cancer, sucking all life from the other links, through the fine grey threads of path and underpass and little footbridge. The insides of all the other hexagons were drained and languid, joyous only when the voices of the children at recreation times echoed shrilly between the blocks.
    Three small boys were languidly trapping, kicking, heading a football on the dim play space. Why weren’t they at school?
    â€˜Hoy,’ she called to the nearest, a lanky overgrown child with a mop of fair hair. He stopped and turned politely after executing a ‘corner’. A sudden grin of unexpected vivacity.
    â€˜No speak the language, Missis,’ the child said in English.Norma’s child! Well, she’d found her way. But she hadn’t been ready to talk English yet; had to