by Ann Bridge
‘At breakfast—I haven’t felt hungry since. But there are things on the stove and in the frig’ Julia said—she couldn’t remember what they were. ‘Do have something,’ she added. Bonnecourt looked into the saucepans on the stove, glanced into the frig, and took some eggs and milk out of it. ‘Madame has some cognac?’
‘I think so—it should be on the big table.’
Bonnecourt found the brandy—deftly he broke three eggs into a bowl, and set a pan of milk on the gas; while it warmed he beat up the eggs with a fork, and poured the warmed milk onto them, adding brandy and sugar; he strained the mixture into a jug, found a glass, and gave a tumbler-ful to Julia.
‘Now drink this’ he said.
Julia obeyed, again immensely comforted. How clever he was!—the egg-flip was something she really could take. ‘This is delicious’ she said. ‘But do please eat yourself—I am so sorry I can’t get it for you.’
‘Ne vous inquietez pas, Madame—I will eat, with remerciments.’ He got out the veal and salad (prepared in vain for Colin’s lunch) from the frig, and ate them at the partly-laid table; he found the bread and wine without being told where to look for them, from time to time refilling Julia’s tumbler—‘You should finish this, Madame.’ Julia did finish it; she still felt the dull pains, and the curious clouded dimness of everything, but with Bonnecourt there she was no longer so frightened or anxious. The hunter however was anxious; while he rinsed out the percolator and prepared fresh coffee he glanced at his watch. This woman was in a grave condition; ce maudit Fourget!—why didn’t he come?
In fact it was after 9.30 when Fourget turned up; Bonnecourt heard his car, and went out to meet him. The Doctor came in, washed his hands at the sink, took vaseline out of his little bag, and made a cursory examination; after washing his hands again he asked Julia how long the pains had been going on?
‘Oh—well for some time; I’m not really sure when they began—it was after I fell.’
Fourget asked about the fall, but briefly; then he led Bonnecourt outside.
‘It is a labour, but it is a false presentation’ he said worriedly. ‘The child cannot be born naturally; it will mean an operation. She must go to Professor Martin at once; his clinic is at Pau. He is a great expert—but there is no time to lose. Who will take her? And it would be wise to advise the Clinic that she comes.’
‘I take her’ Bonnecourt said. ‘Do you inform the Clinic, please.’
‘I do this—and I will come myself, naturally, after I have telephoned. You know where it is? On the Route de Toulouse—No. 300. Now I will tell Madame.’
‘I tell her,’ Bonnecourt said. ‘You go and telephone.’ He knew how slow Fourget’s car was.
‘Why is her friend not here, the beautiful foreign demoiselle? Someone should put Madame’s effets together for her—she is not fit to do it herself.’
‘This shall be seen to’ Bonnecourt said, and hustled the Doctor off.
He too wondered why la belle Portugaise was not there. He had only returned from a climbing trip with some Frenchmen away to the East that afternoon, after an absence of several days—on his way out with them he had killed an isard, cached it, and retrieved it on the way home; remembering Colin’s parting request to him, at his house he had cut off and skinned a leg to take to Julia. While he was doing this his wife stood by, anxiously informing him that she had been visited in his absence by plain-clothes police—‘The Sureté; I am sure of it. They wished to ask you where this young man is, who crossed the frontier with le vieux who fell, and whom you took away in the night. I told them I knew nothing.’ Bonnecourt, busily skinning the gigôt, had found this news disconcerting—the last thing he wanted was to have the Special Police, the ‘Sureté’, on his track. How had they connected him with de Lassalle? Monnro had allowed the young fool to go free, and had told him, Bonnecourt, that old Maupassant had died ‘without speaking’. Could young Monnro have given him away after all? He had decided to ask Mme. Jimmison when he called if she, too, had been visited by the Sureté—but finding her in such straits he let it alone.
Now, when Fourget had gone off in his old car, he returned to the big room, and reported to Julia, very cautiously and gently, what Fourget had said. ‘Professor Martin is excellent—he has an international reputation, and a very pleasant clinique, with a good nursing staff. But this cannot be an easy birth; for the sake of the child you must let me take you there at once, where you will have the most expert care.’
Julia was slightly aghast at this. But she was beginning to feel so desperate that the idea of ‘expert care’ was infinitely consoling. Even now, however, she was practical.
‘It’s a bit late—after ten’ she said. ‘Will they take anyone in at this time of night?’
‘Dr. Fourget has gone to telephone to warn the Professor of your arrival. Now, if Madame will tell me which her room is, and where I can find a suit-case in which to pack her things, and what she most requires, I will do the emballage.’
Fortified by the egg-flip, and still more by this thoughtfulness, Julia managed to tell Bonnecourt where her room was, with her suit-cases under the bed, and what she most needed: several chemises de nuit, her dressing-gown, and a light bed-jacket.
‘Slippers?’ Bonnecourt asked—he was showing himself in his best colours, moved by Julia’s courage and common-sense.
‘Oh yes, of course; thank you. And my brush and comb and powders and things are all on the dressing-table. But perhaps I had better come up’—she half-rose, and sank back again.
‘Leave it to me, chère Madame.’ He went upstairs, and very soon returned with a suit-case which he set on the table beside the sofa, and opened to show her the contents. As he checked them over—‘You ought to be a lady’s-maid!’ Julia said smiling. ‘You have thought of everything.’
‘Madame, I am a married man.’
While Bonnecourt was taking the case out to the car Julia remembered Colin, and scribbled a note—again in Spanish—to tell him where she had gone, and why; when Bonnecourt came back she asked for, and added, the address of the clinic.
‘Leave that in the key-hole when we go’ she said. ‘Lock the door and put the key under the tile—I’ll show you.’ She got up, put some packets of ‘Week-End’ cigarettes out of the cupboard into her handbag, and tried to reach down a light coat from some hooks by the door; but raising her arms again seemed to cause that dull pain—Bonnecourt sprang forward, unhooked the coat, and helped her into it. He was even more impressed by her calmness, and practical attention to details like leaving the note for Colin in such a situation, than he had always been by her beauty. As he helped her up the steps and along to the car he asked—‘Why is Madame alone? Where is Monsieur her brother?’
‘Oh, he had to go over to Spain’ Julia said—‘I expected him back yesterday, but he must have been held up.’
‘And the Portuguese demoiselle?’
‘She’s gone to a ball in Pau’ Julia said, laughing a little—it suddenly struck her as funny that Luzia should be at a ball while all this was going on.
It was exactly 10.30 when they started down, and a bright moonlight night; the neighbour, whose child had caused the lamentable delay in despatching Julia’s telegram to Fourget, had heard and seen the coming and going of cars, the Doctor’s and Bonnecourt’s, and was on the watch—she came out and spoke to Julia.
‘Madame goes to the hospital?’
‘No, to a clinique—thank you for all your help, Madame’ Julia said politely.
‘This is well’ the woman said; she stood watching as the car, an immensely antique Bugatti, drove off. How came M. Bonnecourt to be taking Madame to Pau? It was all most interesting, she told her husband when she went indoors.
* * *
Just an hour earlier Colin reached the frontier at the Grandpont Pass. He had had one day’s unexpected delay, and then two punctures on his drive from Pamplona; he was worried at being so late, and the meticulous checking of his passport, papers, and car-number at the F
rench frontier-post fretted him. In fact the Sureté, on the hunt for de Lassalle, had called on Julia as well as on Mme. Bonnecourt three days before; they were much less easy to foil than the Gendarmerie, and Julia had been driven into giving them her ‘brother’s’ name, and the make and number of his car. Yes, she believed he had gone to Spain.
The French police are very thorough. De Maupassant’s name had told them quite a lot, and Colin himself had unwittingly given them a vital clue when he mentioned to the agent, at Maupassant’s bedside in the hospital, that he had left ce jueune homme to meet friends at an inn in Labielle. They wasted 24 hours combing the numerous auberges in Labielle itself; drawing a blank everywhere, it occurred to some bright spirit to try, next day, the small inn on the main road. There the landlord recollected perfectly the arrival of Bonnecourt, whom he knew by sight, in his familiar old car, and his waiting for over three hours until a Monsieur had driven up in a voiture de sport Anglais, bringing a young man. The Englishman had gone on alone in the direction of Pau; M. Bonnecourt and the young man had returned up the valley. This sufficed to send the Special Police to interview both Julia and Mme. Bonnecourt; finding neither of the two men they wanted, they had alerted all the frontier-posts with Colin’s car-number; his name had been recorded when he last crossed the Grandpont into Spain. They also deployed extra men on foot to patrol the frontier to keep a look-out for Bonnecourt. The latter they missed, since his climbing expedition had been entirely inside France; but the moment Colin drove off the frontier-post was on the telephone to Pau, to report that ce M. Monnro was on his way to Larége; a sergeant on a motor-cycle was despatched from Pau to find him there.
The sergeant missed him too. Driving fast, in the brilliant September moonlight, Colin reached Larége at a quarter to eleven; as always he turned his car before hurrying to the house; he found it dark and empty. There was no answer to his agitated knocking. He put on his torch to look for the key in the familiar hiding-place—by its light he caught sight of the note stuck in the big key-hole; he pulled it out, and sitting on the stone bench outside the door he read it hastily. Oh God!—a miscarriage. Poor Julia! He hurried back to the car, and drove off to the clinic in Pau—but not unnoticed by the neighbour, who also observed the G.B. plate. Ah—Monsieur le frère! What an eventful evening! Colin, recklessly negotiating the hairpin bends down to the main road, was irritated and blinded by the headlight of a motor-cycle coming up towards him—in fact that of the Sergent de Police; having at last passed his light he shot on towards Pau.
The Sergeant, a few minutes later, also found Julia’s house dark and empty; getting no reply to his vigorous knocks he started to enquire on the spot, and banged at the door of the nearest house. Here he struck oil with a vengeance. The neighbour poured out her exciting story: the English Madame appeared to be having a fausse couche, and the neighbour’s own child had taken a telephone message to the Bureau de Poste for Madame, asking Dr. Fourget to come. He came, and presently drove away again; a little later M. Bonnecourt had driven Madame off to Pau in his car. Then Madame’s brother had arrived, and had also driven off, presumably to Pau.
The Sergent pricked up his ears at the mention of Bonnecourt. Where, in Pau, were they going?—to the hospital?
Non, the neighbour said, proud of her knowledge: she asked Madame this, and Madame had said to a Clinique.
‘What address?’
‘Voyons, Monsieur, when a woman in labour is being taken to the doctor in the middle of the night, one does not ask her for addresses!’ the neighbour retorted vigorously. ‘I am not the police! I have given Monsieur all the indications I can—let him use them.’
The sergeant climbed down; Madame’s information had been of great value, he said. He took her name, and turning his machine he also shot off to Pau. The head-quarters of the Gendarmerie would know all the cliniques of accoucheurs—with good fortune they would succeed in pouncing on Bonnecourt, and he, the sergeant, would be congratulated. He drove down the bends and along the main road, very satisfied with his evening’s work.
* * *
Julia and Bonnecourt arrived at Professor Martin’s clinic, on the further outskirts of Pau, about half an hour after midnight; there was a gravelled drive in which the hunter parked his car. They were expected; a nurse opened the door at once and took Julia’s suit-case; then a senior nurse—in fact the principal sage-femme—led Julia into a room where Martin made his examination; Bonnecourt sat in a sort of waiting-room, where he was presently joined by Fourget. ‘No, he has not yet finished, Monsieur le médecin,’ a nurse told Fourget. They waited—the minutes seemed long. At last the Professor—a tall, lean, grey-haired man, with an impressively intelligent face—appeared, and greeted Fourget, who introduced Bonnecourt; a few moments later Julia was brought in by the matron, and placed in a chair.
‘Now, Madame’ the specialist began, ‘it is my duty to put the situation clearly, so that Madame can make her choice. The child is wrongly presented: the legs, not the head, are towards the mouth of the womb, so a natural birth is not possible—it is only the head which can emerge naturally through the cervix. I can do one of two things—either attempt, with instruments, to change the position of the child in the womb, so that the head can emerge, or deliver it by a Caesarian section, through the wall of the abdomen.’
This was a pleasant problem to be faced with at one o’clock in the morning, after being in pain and fruitless labour for well over twelve hours—Julia considered it as best she could. She was taken aback by the idea of a Caesarian section; she was newly-married, she had a beautiful body, and did not like the idea of a great scar down the front of it. But Philip’s baby was the all-important thing, and she asked the Professor—‘For the child, which course is the safest?’
His reply horrified not only Julia, but Bonnecourt as well.
‘I cannot advise Madame—the decision is hers. She is adulte et consciente, and must make her own choice.’
‘But how can I? I am not a specialist, like Monsieur le Professeur’ Julia protested. ‘Why can you not advise me?’
‘C’est la loi de France, Madame’ Martin replied, relentlessly.
At this point Colin hurried in—Julia got up, and clung to him. ‘Oh Colin, what am I to do?’ She began to explain the position to him in English; Martin interrupted her in furious French—‘Madame, I forbid you to speak in a language that I cannot understand!’
Julia, wretchedly, put her halting explanation to Colin in French; Colin in his turn asked Martin which course he would advise? The Professor repeated his tiresome phrase about Madame being ‘adult and conscious’.
‘But this is monstrous!’ Colin exclaimed in French. ‘Madame is not a specialist in these matters, like M. le Professeur.’
‘C’est la loi de France’ Martin repeated inexorably.
Julia, despairingly, turned to old Fourget, and asked for his opinion? Benignly, sadly, the country Doctor put on a complete po-face, and said that Madame alone could decide—it was the law of France.
‘But no help, no advice, from those who know, as I do not?’
‘Unhappily no, Madame.’
Julia looked questioningly at the Matron, and at the two or three nurses who stood by—all returned her glance with a blank, expressionless stare. ‘Bloody loi de France!’ she exclaimed.
Colin went over and took her hand. ‘Take your time’ he said in English—‘just think quietly.’ He turned to Martin, who again looked angry at the sound of a foreign tongue. ‘I merely counsel Madame to reflect for a petit moment’ he said.
Martin still looked angry.
‘In any case, the child is dead!’ he said irritably. ‘I cannot hear its heart beating.’ He stumped out of the room.
Julia was completely stricken by this pronouncement; the tension and anguish of the moment, already over-sufficient, were given a fresh twist. As she turned to Fourget, saying—‘You didn’t tell me that!’ the old head sage-femme, a small mouselike creature, came over and took her hand. ‘Let
Madame come to the couch.’ She led her into the adjoining room, where Martin had made his examination, and laid her on the hard bed. There, saying gently ‘Madame le permet?,’ she again loosened her clothes, and placed a small wooden stethoscope—shaped like a mushroom, and in fact familiarly called le champignon—against the protuberance on Julia’s abdomen, and listened. ‘Ah’ she said happily—and added confidentially—‘Monsieur le Professeur does not realise that we notice it, but he had grown very deaf this last year. I can hear the baby’s heart beating perfectly.’
Colin, Bonnecourt, and Dr. Fourget had all come, anxiously, to the door of the examination-room, and stood there looking on, half-horrified, half-hopeful; at the little old sage-femme’s clear declaration both the Frenchmen, quite unembarrassed, went over and listened to the champignon themselves, and stated roundly that they could hear the baby’s heart beating like a drum!—Colin, with British hesitation at this strangely public performance, nevertheless followed them, and listened too. Certainly there was a firm rhythmic sound coming through the ear-pieces of the champignon.
‘Well now you’ll have to settle’ he said to Julia.
They went back to the other room, and the tiny sage-femme summoned the Professor.
Oddly enough at the moment when Colin had taken her hand Julia had suddenly begun to pray, something she had not thought of doing before; she had put up a brief petition for the unborn child, and for wisdom to make a right decision. Short as it was, the prayer had calmed her distress a little. And even with all those blank, unhelpful faces watching her, there had suddenly flashed into her mind the recollection of a lovely pedigree cow at Glentoran, greatly beloved by Philip Reeder, which had had a calf wrongly presented: a first-class vet had come post-haste from Glasgow and tried to turn the calf round, but he failed—the little creature was removed piecemeal, and a week later the cow also died. No!—she didn’t want to die, and she urgently wished Philip to have the child on which his heart was set; her decision was clear. When Martin came back—