From secret observation, I knew something about her, but I longed to know her better. I reasoned that knowing her routine, it would not be too difficult to engineer a ‘chance’ meeting. The opportunity arose sooner than I expected and without my assistance.
On the last Friday in August, I was moving through the maquis, digging an occasional exploratory trench, when I decided to take a shortcut through the square to the priest’s house. Father Andrews had loaned me space in his garden shed to store my equipment. Passing near the Roccas’ house, I came across Sybilia in a rural scene of domesticity and paused to make notes.
Overlooking the rush and pebble-strewn river on a natural terrace below the house stood the four posts and tiled roof of the Roccas’ baking oven. Beside the open door, Sybilia and her daughter, Ursuline, identically dressed in black calico, were shovelling long slivers of chestnut dough into the old stone oven. Charcoal embers leaped out at them in whirls and puffs. The gusty wind kept catching at the long, flat-ended pole with which the dough and then the crisp loaves were handled, and the girl struggled to hold it straight.
Above them, weird cliffs clawed the crimson sky. The few villagers who had been harvesting were toiling home, pulling their heavily laden donkeys up the winding track to Taita. Flashes of late-summer colour could be seen in the maquis. Beyond, the cool lake glittered invitingly.
When I emerged so unexpectedly from the bushes, I startled them, and a loaf fell onto the ground. Ursuline dropped the pole with a cry.
I apologized and explained why I was trespassing on their land. I hoped my real reason was not too obvious: the truth was, I’d been passing this way for days hoping for a chance to talk to this beautiful Corsican woman. She was polite, but not talkative. She seemed uneasy as she introduced herself. I tried not to show that I knew both her name and her reputation. When I mentioned that I was on my way to the priest’s house because I was thirsty, she remembered her manners sufficiently to produce a stone jug of lemonade. She asked me to sit down formally, as if we were sitting in her home. I squatted on a handy boulder. Ursuline, meanwhile, was dusting off the loaf with her hand.
‘No one will know,’ she said, grinning mischievously. ‘I’ll give it to Grandpa for his supper.’
Sybilia’s eyes glowed with affection. She had to control her smile. ‘Ursuline, that’s a very mean thing to say.’ Her voice sounded stem, but her expression gave her away.
‘I hate Grandpa,’ the child muttered, ‘and he will eat it for his supper, I promise you.’
Sybilia sighed and took the pole from her daughter.
‘Let me do it, Mama,’ Ursuline said, watching her anxiously.
‘No, Ursuline. No, no, listen to me,’ she said as Ursuline grabbed for the shovel. ‘I only let you have one try because you wouldn’t give in, but it’s too heavy for you. Let go, I tell you.’
She struggled to wrench it away, but her daughter was as strong as she was obstinate.
‘Do as you’re told, Ursuline, or I’ll smack you.’
‘I’m too old to be smacked,’ Ursuline grumbled. She walked off sulkily toward the stream.
Sybilia turned back to the oven.
‘Can I give you a hand?’ I suggested.
‘No. Well, maybe you could. If you could hold the oven door open. This wind keeps slamming it just when I’m pushing the loaves in. Normally men don’t help with this type of work.’ She smiled mysteriously to herself. ‘At the same time, they don’t hide in the bushes making notes about women’s chores. You might as well get some first hand experience, since you’re obviously so interested.’
I was shocked. For a confusing moment I thought she was referring to the afternoon I had spied on her swimming naked in the lake. My embarrassment must have shown, for she burst into peals of laughter.
‘Your English is remarkable,’ I said huffily.
Noticing my flushed cheeks, she began talking confidentially, probably to help me regain my composure.
‘You mustn’t judge Ursuline by her bad behaviour just now,’ she said. ‘She has a hard life. She’s learned to stand up for herself. She’s very loyal, and she doesn’t like to see me working so hard Sybilia broke off in midsentence when she heard footsteps on the path above. For a moment she looked apprehensive.
Father Andrews pushed his way through the bushes. He hurried toward us, his head stuck out like a tortoise. It hadn’t taken me long to discover that when the priest walked with that tread, it meant trouble for someone. He was covered in dust, and he looked tired.
‘What a pleasure to see you, Father Andrews,’ Sybilia said, wiping her damp hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. She plied the priest with a loaf and some chestnut pastries. He accepted the gifts absentmindedly and sat on a stone by the oven. He seemed to have difficulty knowing how to begin, for he commented on the heat wave and the quality of the crops this year.
Eventually he said softly in English. ‘Could you not go on up to the house, Jock? I’ll be there to split a bottle with you in next to no time.’
That was that. My longing had finally come to fruition, only to be foiled by Father Andrews. Had he known I was there? I wondered. Was he going to warn her off me? I lingered behind a thick bush, eavesdropping and feeling guilty about it.
‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘You know why I’ve come. I’ve been nagging you these past few years, but you’ve been turning a deaf ear to my pleas. Ursuline must go to school.’
‘Never.’ That was Sybilia’s voice. I could not see them through the thicket. ‘Don’t ask again. It’s no.’
‘I’m not asking you,’ Father Andrews said. ‘I’m merely telling you the law. Ursuline must go to school. If you persist in this silly attitude, they could compel you to send her — d’you really want that to happen?’
‘The police?’ She gave a small, low moan.
Oh, God. Why don’t I get the hell out of here?
The priest seemed to me to be pursuing too hard a line. ‘The school inspector will be round soon enough. I hardly managed to put him off the scent last year. Now she’s recently turned thirteen. I know you’ve done your best. Let’s hope it was good enough for primary school. Now it’s time for the higher classes. She’ll probably be behind the other girls.’
‘Not so,’ Sybilia argued. ‘She can read in English, French and Italian. Her geography and history are superb. What can she learn at school that I can’t teach her?’
‘Mathematics?’ Father Andrews suggested.
‘She’ll learn all about… Oh, God! You know what they’ll tell her.’ She sounded agonized.
‘Sybilia, you can’t keep the truth from her forever. Next month the new school year starts. Ursuline must be there. But listen, Sybilia. I’ve been thinking…‘
They had been walking slowly away from me, along the terrace. Now their voices had faded completely. I sat tight. So Ursuline was thirteen. I’d guessed right. It was a wartime liaison.
‘… so to France. I can find the cash to start you off,’ I heard as they walked back.
There was no answer from Sybilia.
‘Robin will never come, Sybilia. I’ve been telling you that for years.’
‘Imagine hoping for fourteen years. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Well, you were right,’ she said, sounding desolate. ‘He hasn’t come. Does that make you feel good?’
‘Now, now, child,’ he said reprovingly. ‘You know how I feel for you. I only want what’s best. Take my advice — pick up the pieces of your life and start again.’
‘Hope is all I have. Can’t you understand? I won’t let go of it. But even if I did…’ Her voice faltered. Then she said more firmly: ‘I have to stay here. I can’t earn enough money to support two children. Who would look after them while I was working? As for leaving them here, I couldn’t bear to be parted from them. Besides, this is Jules’s home. He has his grandfather. One day all this land will be his. Something will turn up for Ursuline. I don’t care about myself. I just want to bring up my children properly.
Things will change eventually.’
‘Then Ursuline must attend the village school.’
I heard a muffled sob behind me. That was when I discovered I wasn’t the only one eavesdropping.’ My shame turned to concern. Ursuline looked so very sad. I didn’t know much about children. What was I to do? Fumbling in my rucksack, I found a bar of chocolate and handed to her.
She gazed at me scornfully. She was a lovely child. There was a good deal of Sybilia in her features. Her red hair sparkled in the sun, her blue eyes shone with tears, and there were muddy streaks down her freckled skin. Silently I handed her a handkerchief, which she grabbed to dry her tears. Leaving her there, I scrambled backwards out of the thicket and took the path up to the village. Suddenly I heard footsteps behind me.
‘Here’s your handkerchief,’ she called out.
I took it and thanked her.
‘You’re American?’ she persisted in a tearful voice.
‘Yes.’
‘My father’s American.’
Her English was wonderful. I told her so, and she glowed with pride.
‘I can sing several songs from The Wizard of Oz,’ she added.
‘One of these days perhaps you’ll sing them to me.’
‘I might. Do you know my father?’ she blurted out.
‘No. America’s a very big place with millions of people. I only know a very few of them. It’s not like Taita, where everyone knows everyone.’
‘Mama’s upset,’ she went on. ‘All the girls in the village go to school. Why shouldn’t I go, too?’
‘I don’t know why, Ursuline,’ I said. ‘Perhaps because you're different from the other girls,’ I added.
‘How could that be?’
‘Well, you’re half American. They’re not.’
She seemed pleased with that idea. She said: ‘Well, you’re American… does that make us buddies?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She looked up at me and smiled. ‘You’re my first friend,’ she said shyly.
She wanted me to tell her about America, so I talked to her for a while, then she scampered away.
Her friend! As I walked back I couldn’t help wondering if I had agreed too lightly. Was I really her only friend? I felt saddened by her plight and burdened by the weight of my responsibility in light of her disclosure.
Chapter 55
It was half an hour before Father Andrews returned to his house. I was expecting some sort of protest about my embryonic relationship with Sybilia. It was not long in coming.
Tell me,’ he said, ‘are you a Catholic or Protestant?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It might. That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether or not I have to bury you.’
I felt shocked. ‘I get the point,’ I said. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him. Instead I stood up to leave, but the priest pressed me to stay and share a bottle of wine with him. We had discovered three common interests: the English language, good wine, and sociological research. It was enough.
That night we sat for hours on his balcony, which looked up to the mountains. The moon was huge and lustrous, the air moist and heady with the scent of the maquis. We talked about Ireland and Corsica and the similarity of their problems; we discussed the island’s wine industry and the sad lack of farming in the mountain villages, and how the shepherds were setting light to the forests to increase their grazing, and other inconsequential things.
It took me most of the evening to get around to something that had been bothering me. ‘Tell me about Ursuline,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she have any friends?’
‘She’s never had a chance to make friends. She’s a sweet, spoiled, overprotected child who lives in her mother’s shadow. Sybilia is worried about the inevitable victimization Ursuline will come up against if she mixes with village children. She’s kept her out of school, so far. But the girl needs proper teaching.’
is she the only child in the family?’
‘There’s a half-brother. Rocca’s grandson. The old man dotes on him. It’s probably because of Rocca’s influence that Jules will have nothing to do with his half-sister. Rocca has never even acknowledged Ursuline’s existence. The poor child is known in the village as the bastard. Jules has listened to the gossip, of course. The Rocca children don’t even eat together.’
What an absurd situation. I’d hoped her plight was better than that. I was still resenting the burden Ursuline had unknowingly placed on my shoulders. Her only friend, she had said.
‘Of course Maria is good to the child,’ the priest was saying. ‘But she grows crazier daily. Don’t worry,’ he added, noticing my expression. ‘Ursuline’s a tough girl. No one’s managed to break her spirit yet. She has her father’s character, that’s obvious. And why not? She’s a miniature replica of him, from her unruly red curls to her freckled face.’
Father Andrews seemed to think that he’d said too much. He clammed up and pushed away his glass.
‘There’s so much unhappiness in Taita nowadays. Most of it’s caused by the war,’ he rambled on, as he often did.
‘At first it seemed that the occupation hadn’t touched Taita, but of course it had. The scars were there. You could not see them because they were inside the hearts of men — and their womenfolk.
‘The men who returned from the Resistance were not the same boys who had joined up with so much idealism, and fought so bravely. Somewhere, among the killing and the tension, they became toughened and brutalized. I know of five cases of child battering in the village. Even making love can be an act of war if it’s done with hatred and humiliation.
‘Sybilia is one of the war casualties,’ he went on, surprising me. ‘What a strange, determined, introverted girl she’s become. She’s bitter, too. At night she cries herself to sleep. I know because Maria told me. Of course I shouldn’t tell you this. I just want you to know that a second unfortunate liaison would probably destroy her.’
Another subtle lecture. The priest was an expert.
‘But why do they call her the putana,’ I pressed him. ‘And who was Ursuline’s father?’ I had to know, and I sensed this was the right time to ask.
Father Andrews sighed: ‘She was the widow of an ex-Resistance fighter, who, as you probably know, was Rocca’s son. She became involved with a young American intelligence agent: Captain Robin Moore. He left when the war ended, but she was already pregnant. She has waited for him ever since.
‘The poor child. In Corsica you have the worst sexual repression I’ve ever encountered,’ he went on. ‘For a woman, sex outside marriage means irreversible social ostracism.’
I couldn’t prise another fact out of him. I left shortly afterwards, but my curiosity was far from satisfied.
The next morning I wrote to the secretary of my faculty at Boston University, asking her to engage the Veteran’s Administration to check through wartime army records and find the whereabouts of Captain Moore. I intended to tell him about his illegitimate daughter and force him to do something… anything.
The reply came a month later. No such person as Captain Robin Moore had ever existed in the US army. Yet I knew, without doubt, an American agent had been parachuted into Corsica to organize the various Resistance groups.
One morning I spoke to the shepherd Antoine Romanetti. He told me that Captain Moore was a very cautious man, thoroughly drilled in clandestine work. He’d carried his cautiousness into all his discussions. For instance, negotiations with the different leaders on various subjects had been kept strictly separate. No one knew more than they needed to know.
It seems that poor Sybilia had never even discovered his real identity. Of course, I wouldn’t tell her this. It would be too cruel.
How refreshing Moore (for want of a better name) must have appeared to Sybilia, with his sympathetic manner, his frank and friendly ways, and the fact that he’d made her his close assistant; or so Romanetti told me.
All this must have impressed her
deeply. Among Corsican men there has always been a deep, instinctive distrust of women. To a Corsican, a woman is dangerous and unfathomable. So then this smooth talking agent dropped in and treated her as if she were his best friend.
So she fell for his line. Who could blame her? I could forgive her for imagining herself in love. But to ruin her life waiting for him? Well, that’s another thing.
She erred once. So why not twice? It would be tempting to try.
Chapter 56
It was a beautiful morning. As the sun rose the maquis throbbed into technicolour with patches of gold, orange, and red. Flocks of migrating woodcock and wood pigeons chased the morning midges. Blackbirds were rifling among the myrtle berries and stealing olives. A hare streaked across the terraces, startling a flock of partridges.
I was enjoying the view while I dug along the perimeter of the mountain slope overlooking the school. Although this particular stretch was on my schedule, it was not entirely coincidental that I was there on this particular day.
Below me, gaunt and old, stood the school of St Augustine. It was state-financed but run by the church. It served two villages. In a small stone classroom, Sister Monica taught children of all ages, assisted by a young novice. Father Andrews gave weekly scripture lessons. Today was to be Ursuline’s first day at school.
Jules Rocca was the first to arrive, I noticed. There was no sign of Ursuline, and I suspected that Sybilia had kept her daughter at home, but five minutes later she emerged from the forest. She was walking stiffly upright, in a clean, starched dress, with a look of dread on her face. Her hair was tightly braided and wound around her head, her fists were clenched.
I called to her and hurried down to the path to give her the geometry set I had bought on my last trip to the coast. She seemed extraordinarily pleased with it, although it was only a small thing.
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