I was a little afraid for Helene all of a sudden, though I could not find a specific reason for this at the time. While Edgar wasn’t around, I asked Helene if she intended on marrying him.
“No, of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have a birth date or even a last name. And you need them both.”
I grabbed her arm and dragged her outside to Jerome, who was fixing a wheel on the trap. I explained the situation to him and asked him what we could do about it.
“Has he asked you to marry him?” he said.
“No,” Helene said, embarrassed.
“No one will marry them because she does not exist,” I said to Jerome.
“Stop talking about marriage!” Helene said, turning red in the face.
Jerome, ignoring her, said that he had already applied to adopt us but couldn’t because the birth mother and father were probably alive. And it was also very complicated because legally we were adults, and he talked then of going to Paris and seeing what else he could do.
“Stop it!” said Helene, suddenly flustered by this talk. “There is no marriage.”
No more discussions came of it, because Edgar was going back to battle the following afternoon. The pair stayed inside the back room that night and all the following morning. I kept going out to see if there was any movement, but the curtains were always still. They weren’t eating or drinking, and it was just Jerome and I for lunch, and I asked if I should take them food.
“No,” said Jerome calmly, drawing back on his pipe. And I could tell he was worried about a lot of things, but he didn’t say. Grown-up things that made life more complicated. I’d heard stories of fathers chasing soldiers out of their daughters’ bedrooms and wondered if Jerome was going to do the same, but he didn’t. I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what he thought.
“I thought you might chase Edgar off with a saucepan. Lucie’s papa did that when she brought a soldier home.”
“I guess I’m too old for chasing,” he said, and I thought he would leave it there, but he continued in earnest, and I could tell he had done a lot of thinking about it. I knew he wasn’t sleeping, and then I saw that his eyes were watery.
“Sometimes you only get a brief moment of love in war, and there’s no telling where this will lead. I do know that if your sister, Helene, is sweet on a boy, it is the real thing. I thought that she would likely be a spinster since she never even turned her head toward one.” I had to agree. Love had gone looking for Helene, not the other way around. “And there is another thing that I know. Edgar is a good man, a soldier, a loving man, I can tell. He has his heart in the right place, and who am I to stop her. She is a grown woman.”
“So what then if I’m sweet on a boy?”
His eyes crinkled as he laughed softly.
“You on the other hand, I would chase the boy out with a saucepan.”
We laughed at the picture this drew, but it was sort of sad, happy laughing because we knew there was pain to come, and Helene would be without her lover soon, and there was, as Jerome said, no way of knowing what was to come.
They came out an hour before Edgar was due to leave, and he was polite and kind to Jerome, and Helene was red in the face like she had been crying.
“Are you in love, the pair of you?” said Jerome.
“Papa!” she said.
“Yes, sir,” said Edgar. “I love your daughter. And it is my intention to marry her when this war is done.”
Jerome nodded, then asked if his family would approve. Edgar said yes. Helene looked embarrassed and surprised at the same time. Jerome explained that there were some legal issues to be done in the meantime, and Edgar said he knew of those and appreciated what Jerome was planning to do. Edgar said that he would not let his family know until he was back from battle and the paperwork was settled.
We said goodbye. I hugged Edgar tightly because I believed he was family now, and I cried into his shoulder until Helene gently pulled me away. I saw the tears on his face and could tell he loved Helene but that he would also miss us all. Edgar shook hands with Jerome, who wished him well, and Helene took him on the trap to the town.
I felt my heart miss a beat because the thought of Helene married terrified me. Would she move to England? Would they move away, and would that mean I would have to live in England? She had promised we would be together, but I could not think of either of us leaving Jerome.
I asked Jerome if he thought they would move to England and, if they did, would he move, too.
“You don’t need to worry about me. Young ones often move on. The old ones stay. That’s just what happens.”
I told him that I would never move while we had the orchard, and suddenly my fantasies about marriage and wealth and moving to England disappeared because my heart was still with Jerome. I would stay there till I died, and I would find my own soldier who would choose to live in France, which seemed easier said than done. It also seemed unlikely that love would happen soon. And I knew that when it did, it would be sudden. I just never figured it would be that way for Helene. I thought she would be there beside me till the end of time.
I had found no fault in Edgar, no annoying habit, no false words, no shiftiness. If he stood in the rain, I imagined water would bounce off his shoulders. All I could see was a man who was chivalrous, loving, kind, and brave. I was both envious and proud of Helene.
Jerome in the meantime had written to the civil administration in Paris to request that we be given his name, but he was yet to hear back. And if a reply did come some months ahead, we would never know about it.
What I had learned about lovers up till then was that love eventually dies and in most cases without reasons that make any sense. Love can leave suddenly, and you are left broken from the shock. Or it can just slowly edge away and leave you hanging and confused. Regardless of when it does leave, sadness always follows. Helene’s case was sudden. In the first two months, with only miles between them, Edgar wrote often from the front line, and with words of love. Then one day all letters from him ceased, and she received no further replies.
Helene would go into Bailleul to inquire of the returned soldiers, but he wasn’t amongst them. We continued to seek information from the mayor’s office until one day we learned that Edgar was in a hospital in Saint Omer, recuperating from an injury. Jerome took Helene to see him, but with work to do, I stayed behind unwillingly. When they returned from their long trip they were both downhearted. There seemed no rational answer to my many questions, and Helene disappeared to the back room, where she didn’t have to speak.
“What is so bad? Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because it is difficult to explain.”
“Is he wounded badly?”
“Nothing visible. Only that the doctor says he may have a bad concussion. He is unsure at this stage. They might have to send him elsewhere for treatment.”
Helene traveled far to the hospital on her own early the next day but was turned away by nursing staff who had strict orders not to let in visitors. She was told to leave her address and they would send her a note if he expressed a desire or was well enough to see her.
Helene grew numb from the silence and then became silent herself. She appeared dazed, haunted, and hopeless, and I became frightened for her. When Jerome and I tried to talk to her about it, she chose not to speak.
She continued to send letters until one day when several were returned unopened. She withdrew completely and struggled to get out of bed. When Jerome and I returned from deliveries in the afternoon, she would often still be there. Then she became unwell and stopped eating. The trays of food I left beside her bed would be untouched when I came back for them later.
It soon became obvious why she was sick. It was the “woman’s punishment,” which is what some of the camp women used to say. Though from my early experiences, I had learned that there were other reasons than just sickness and painful births. Children sometimes drove the men away and le
ft the women alone to find them food. Relationships were complicated, and babies made them more so.
Helene wept on me, and I wept for her. It was important that I spoke to Edgar now because he had to marry her with or without a record of her birth. Of all the people that this was to happen to, it must not be Helene, I thought. She had never done harm to anyone.
Jerome was very quiet when she announced to him that she was pregnant. Helene had finally come out of her room to sit with us at the dining table. She looked pale and fearful while Jerome took in her words with a draw back of his pipe.
“Are you angry with me, Papa?”
“I’m angry at the situation but not with you. Just disappointed for you.”
She looked tragic. I could see her heart breaking before me.
One day on my own, very early in the morning, the frost crackling on the grass under my feet, I rode Hester to Saint Omer to visit Edgar.
Inside the building, I told an English nurse that I was the cousin of Edgar Watts and I’d been sent by family to inquire of his health. I told her that I must see him and report back his condition.
I watched her walk away to speak to one of the other nurses, who checked a clipboard with names that she carried, and then the second English nurse promptly returned to tell me in French that any visits weren’t possible at that time due to certain restrictions she didn’t elaborate on. She said that if there was anything further to report, family would be notified. I was angry that I was not allowed in, but I didn’t show it. I pretended to leave, then sneaked back through the doorway to search through the wards. The nurses I passed viewed me curiously. I knew I had only a limited time to find him.
There were men bandaged, missing limbs and eyes, some in obvious pain, from their sounds. It was terrifying to see so much injury in one place. I entered a section where the men looked mostly whole but with gaunt, expressionless faces. Here I found Edgar sitting in his hospital gown on the edge of his bed near a window. He was staring not out through the window at the pretty trees but at the floor beside his bed.
I moved to sit by his bedside, aware that there were suspicious looks from the nurses now, as well as from the sick. There were no other visitors.
“Edgar,” I said. He looked up at me, and it seemed to take him some time to gather his thoughts before he turned away to look out the window this time.
“You should not be here,” he said.
“I’m sorry you are so unwell,” I said. I could not see any damage apart from a bandage around his wrist, and his trembling hands. “Were you hurt badly?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I have news of Helene.”
“I do not want to hear anything of her,” he said, and I felt such coldness from him, as if the man in front of me were not the man I had met before. “You must leave.”
“Edgar, do you know who I am?” I was shocked at the response.
He dropped his head and drew a deep breath.
“Yes, I know who you are, Mariette,” he said, looking directly at me this time. “I want you to go home and tell Helene that I can’t come back there.”
“But she is carrying your child.”
He stared at me with glazed eyes before calling out suddenly for the nurse, who came over to tell me to leave. She ushered me out the ward door, and I looked back to see that Edgar was turned from me, staring once more at the floor, as if he’d already forgotten about me.
“Edgar!” I shouted. “What is wrong with you?”
He seemed not to hear me. With hindsight I might have done things differently, spoken with more care, if only I’d known. But all I could think about was Helene carrying his child and desperate for news.
“What is wrong with him?” I asked the nurse.
One of the nurses spoke in English that I did not understand. I shouted at her in frustration, shrugging away her hand at my wrist.
“You are a coward!” I shouted back to Edgar in French, before two orderlies appeared at my side to take each of my arms. I tried to shrug away from them also, but they held too tightly as they led me away.
The French-speaking nurse told me that I should not call him that; Edgar was unfit to receive any visitors; he was suffering from a nervous condition, after continued exposure to shellfire. Though such a diagnosis meant nothing to me then. We had all been suffering from that. I thought that Edgar was simply using perhaps any excuse not to return to Helene.
I cursed at the orderlies as they released me at the front door, and the nurse, only later I would recall, seemed genuinely concerned about me.
“Take care, my dear,” she said, but I spat in her direction. It was spiteful, but I was too distraught to act rationally, feeling everyone there was against us, including Edgar. I had no idea what to feel about him and his dismissal of me, and as I neared the orchard, I wondered what I should tell Helene. She knew where I had been and had been watching for my return. She came to meet me behind the house as I dismounted to walk Hester to the stable.
“Did you see him?”
“No,” I lied to spare her, then babbled. “But I have such news! Apparently he was moved elsewhere recently, which is why there was confusion about the letters. Which is why they sent them back to you. He has been unwell, the nurse told me, and they sent him to a resort for soldiers in the south until he is better. But the nurse remembered him well and said that he spoke of his beautiful Helene all the time. And that as soon as he is well enough he will write. Though the nurse told me also that it could be a while because he is planning first to go back to the battles.”
She nodded her head as if it was the response she was expecting. I lied to protect her, but I also felt I had done something very wrong. To give her hope that might not come.
It was agreed that we would tell people she was now married, that she had married Edgar on a trip to Paris and he had left to fight again, since no one had seen her in the town for many months. Jerome, I discovered, was very good at lying, too, and one day he brought home several little marriage gifts for Helene, from people in Bailleul. Even Gerard offered Jerome a drink when he was passing one day, though Jerome declined.
With her growing belly Helene continued working until Jerome told her to stop. But it seemed the larger she grew, the more determined she was to keep busy, to keep her mind on her times ahead with Edgar.
She had moved back into the room with me to make space for more men to billet there. But she also did not want to be alone, either. She was growing fearful of the future, afraid of the world she was bringing the child into.
I sewed lots of baby clothes, and I fussed about Helene. I made her eat more even when she said she was too tired for food. Sometimes at night I would rub her back when she couldn’t sleep, and sometimes I would hold her, like she had held me, when she grew sad with thoughts of Edgar. She no longer queried about where he might be but still waited with hope he would return.
Jerome would come home from the town with news of war. Sometimes there was good news, and sometimes there was not, and still we witnessed the distant sounds of gunfire and flashes on the horizon.
One night there was a loud explosion and the smell of fire. Outside, the separate room where Helene used to sleep was destroyed, smashed and smoldering. And part of the stable was also damaged.
I ran out to the stable and found that Carmello had been hit on his back, and he was on his side shrieking. Jerome told me to move out of the way. I wailed like a child when he shot him, even though there was nothing else we could have done.
Our lives had changed again, and for days the shelling continued. The church was bombed, and the town clock lay in ruins. Several houses and businesses in the town had also been bombed. The British were evacuating Bailleul, and military trucks left with refugees, while most townspeople packed the roads west in their carts and others left on foot with their belongings strapped to their backs. Some soldiers came to ask if we wanted help, but Jerome said we would make our own way. There were also many townspeople who refus
ed to leave, and others who remained in their houses in town and on farms on the outskirts, choosing to believe the north would not fall into enemy hands. Jerome and I began packing to move south to Rouen to join Lenore, but Helene experienced severe pains in the belly that left her doubled over, and this convinced us to delay our travel. We believed we still had days. Then, by the time she’d improved, we no longer had the choice to leave. The Germans arrived quickly this time, and they were battle worn and raging.
CHAPTER 25
The first thing the Germans did was to search the houses and farms for Allied soldiers and weapons, and the second thing was to take our food. They had expected the front line to be pushed well back into France by now, so their patience had run thin, and they were hungry, weary, and brash. They made their headquarters in a hotel near the town square, and the rest of the administration was installed at the damaged town hall. Bailleul residents and those on farms and villages nearby were ordered to remain, and would now be required to work for them. Any who protested were immediately killed, and some were taken to prisons in Germany. With so many Germans patrolling the roads, any evacuation at that point seemed impossible. We hoped that since we were some distance from the town, they would leave us alone. We were wrong.
Jerome was kind and courteous toward the group that searched our house on the first day, offering the fruit he had stored in the cellar. He did not want to give them any reason to harm us. We had only two horses left now, Hester and Mira, the cart horse. There were more whites in Jerome’s hair, more yellow to his skin, and his stoop was more noticeable.
Some of the orchard had been wiped out in the shelling, and the earth that had been scorched was turned to mush from the rain. Helene had in previous weeks prepared fruit pies to store, jars full of fruit, and drying meat to put in casseroles. We had a sack of potatoes and wheat, which would last several weeks. We had hidden some of our stores, but they had taken most. However, it was the next visit that we were unprepared for.
“Ausweise!” said a soldier, who looked too old for warfare.
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