Jean Valjean rarely bites his nails. That is one of his redeeming features, his sister thinks grimly.
"Mama?"
Her youngest is tugging at her skirt, and she sighs and lifts him up. He is so thin- too thin. Jeanette is momentarily angry with Jean- while she is slaving away, her children are starving, and what does he do? He lazes around, idle, relishing in his laziness.
"What is it, mon cher?"
"I'm cold, Mama," he says. "Can we have a fire?"
She laughs sadly and presses a small kiss to his forehead. "Non, I am sorry, we cannot light the fire tonight," she tells him.
"Tomorrow?" he says, his weak frame shivering.
"I will make my brother cut up wood and work for us," she promises him. "Tomorrow we will have a fire."
He smiles tiredly and lays his head against her shoulder. She carries him to his small bed- it is hardly a bed- and lets him rest.
There is the bang of a door.
Casting a short, hurried look at her son, Jeanette hurries to the front of their shelter. It isn't a very long distance, she thinks, pitifully.
A man throws himself onto a rickety chair.
"Jean?" she says, and her voice takes on a steely tone.
He shivers, and begins to bite his fingernails.
Jeanette seizes. He never bites his fingernails! Or rarely, at any rate! How dare he bite his fingernails and laze around while her children- his family- starves? How dare he?
"Jean!"
He looks up at her, his face haggard.
"Did you find any work today?"
He shrugs and begins to trace on his lap.
Such behaviour is despicable in a twenty-six year old, she thinks, furiously. In a four year old, it is forgivable. But when one is more than six times that age-
"How dare you?"
She almost shocks herself when she begins screaming.
"We starve and we freeze, and what do you do? You go off and enjoy yourself! Have you no thought for your family? Why, Jean, you are the most self-centred man God gave breath to!"
Now he stands up from the chair, his face blazing. "Enjoying myself! Do you think I enjoy living like this?"
Vous. He called her vous!
"Why don't you do anything about it?" she screams. The blood is gushing to her head.
"Mama?"
The voice is small, fearful.
A stab of guilt gushes through to her heart. Her children should not have to see this.
"Yes?" she says, and lets her daughter stumble across to hold her skirt.
"Mama, I can't sleep."
"Try to," she says brusquely, but her daughter only tugs her skirt even more.
"Pierre says he is cold," she says, her voice small and high.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jeanette thinks she sees something of guilt flash by Jean's face, but she is sure it is merely her imagination.
"I will come," she says, and sweeps out of the room without looking back once.
-
The next morning, Jean is out- but there's nothing different about that.
With a sigh, Jeanette takes herself out of the house. Her children are freezing; she cannot let them suffer so. Not even if her brother is so self centred. No, if she must do something, she will do it.
Then she stops and simply stares.
Sitting neatly outside the door is a pile of neatly chopped wood.
---
My thanks go to Tierney Beckett for beta-reading this, even with her limited knowledge of "Les Mis".
I'm sorry if this is very anachronistic or out of character- just drop a review and say why. God bless!