What Was Rescued

by Jane Bailey

  ‘Nothing. Just the usual. Sylvain is telling him to stop being a pompous . . . arse, and Ralph is telling him that when the revolution comes he won’t talk to him like that, and Sylvain says when the revolution comes Ralph will be put on a bonfire, and Ralph says Sylvain is only good for chopping wood, and Sylvain says he only says that because he can’t hold an axe and because he has a tiny, tiny’ – she held her forefinger and thumb up to signify the smallest measure – ‘dick.’

  Patsy, who was always busy cooking and cleaning, was delighted to have me around. I enjoyed helping her, not just because I learnt so many new things to cook but also because her company was a tonic. She was calm and playful whenever she spoke to me or Claudine, but when she spoke French to the men she would become a harridan. Her voice would be raised and a flood of words would come speeding out of her mouth, peppered with insults.

  One day, as I sat shelling peas with the women, Claudine mentioned the grape harvest. ‘It’s lovely here in October. Everywhere smells sweet. There are great big vats of crushed grapes, and cartloads of grapes in every village, and they drop all over the road and get crushed and look like blood! And everywhere is warm and not too hot. Of course it gets really cold in November, but we have great big log fires to keep us warm and it always snows on the mountains and we buy wool from the market and make huge jumpers. You’ll love it!’

  I looked at Patsy, but she was smiling at the thought of it all, looking down at her peas. ‘It does sound lovely,’ I said, ‘but I won’t be here in the autumn.’

  They both looked up at me, astonished. Claudine was appalled. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I have to get back to my studies.’

  Patsy put her hands on her aproned knees. ‘Ralph told us you’d finished with your studies. He said you were staying with us permanently.’ She sounded indignant, and I wasn’t sure if it was with me or with him.

  ‘I’m training to be a teacher. I have another year to do.’ In those days the course lasted only two years.

  ‘But we need you here!’ Claudine protested. ‘Maman, tell her! She can’t go! I don’t want her to go!’ Her faced collapsed, and her bottom lip began to tremble.

  ‘Are you sure you have to go?’ Patsy asked almost tenderly. ‘We’d love you to stay.’

  I couldn’t find any words. Claudine had rushed over to me and was buried in my armpit, and Patsy was looking at me anxiously, as if her daughter’s happiness – and her own – depended upon my reply. My chest was tight. My fingers were clenched around the pea pods. It was hard to take in what Ralph had done. I stroked Claudine’s head, but I could barely contain my fury.

  ‘Where have you put my ticket?’

  ‘What ticket?’

  ‘My return ticket.’

  ‘We didn’t get returns.’

  ‘Why not? You knew I had to go back!’

  Ralph closed his eyes as if he were dealing with a difficult child. He stood at the window of what had become ‘our’ bedroom, and I stood squarely in front of the closed door.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I felt certain you would want to stay once you’d been here a bit. And you seem so happy.’

  ‘That’s not your decision to make! I have a course to finish!’

  ‘But what’s the point? You can live here. You’ve seen what it’s like now. This is communal life. This is the future. Don’t tell me you haven’t enjoyed it, Dora, because I know you have.’

  He approached me and put his hands on my hips. I shrugged him off.

  ‘I’m not your puppet. I do love it here, but I want to finish my course before I make any permanent decisions. You have no right to make that decision for me. You knew I intended to return in September!’

  ‘Okay, okay! Return you shall, if you must.’ He shrugged, as though defeated. Then, seeing my determined face, he smiled. ‘You little goose. I’m only thinking of you. You don’t know the sort of people who can give you good advice about your future.’

  ‘My parents, you mean. There’s nothing wrong with my parents!’

  He put his hands up defensively. ‘Of course not. They’re salt of the earth, I don’t doubt, but you come from the sort of background where teaching is seen as the only escape. It’s teaching or teaching. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Well that’s my choice, not yours.’

  ‘Come on, Dora. I’m giving you a real alternative. You’re not cut out to be a crusty old schoolmarm.’ He pushed his hands up the side of my torso and pulled me towards him. ‘You’re too sensuous.’ He ran his palms over my breasts. ‘You belong here with me, making love and salade niçoise.’

  I stood there, wanting a man who made me feel that he had me in the palm of his hand. I stood there in that bedroom, knowing I should storm out of the door but unable to do so. I thought about Arthur, but that didn’t help. He only increased my desire. I thought about seeing Arthur one more time. If I could just see him one more time, maybe . . .

  I had no money for the return ticket. Ralph had promised it was an ‘all-expenses-paid’ trip. I reminded him of this, and he went out of the room coldly. I sat down on the bed and felt too trapped to cry. I trembled.

  He returned fifteen minutes later with a bunch of notes. ‘Patsy can take you to Montélimar station next week.’

  I began to gather my things in my suitcase as surreptitiously as possible. He must have noticed the clothes disappearing from the wardrobe, and all he would have had to do was to lift the lid of the case to see them folded neatly. Ralph’s idea had only been that I should buy the ticket next week, not that I should leave, but it was already the last week in August, and I had to be in England for September. My plan was to catch the train from Montélimar the day I bought the ticket. It would be a shock, and Ralph might be angry, but if I had my case and my passport already in the boot, he could hardly stop me.

  The only hitch was that I did not have my passport. I thought I had left it in my suitcase inside a little pocket, but now it was clear that it wasn’t there, and I remembered that Ralph had taken mine for safekeeping after going through customs in Calais. I started to look through his things while he wasn’t there. I went into his old room, now inhabited by a friend of Tighe’s, and rooted about inside the wardrobe. I pulled out drawers furtively and stood on a chair to check the top of the wardrobe. As the search remained fruitless, I began to open books and instrument boxes. I went to the kitchen and looked inside tins and cupboards. I peeled back rugs; I emptied linen cupboards; I lifted flowerpots; I trawled his study; I rifled through his pockets. I was not proud of myself, but my rising panic made me desperate.

  Eventually, with forty-eight hours to go, I asked Ralph if he had my passport. I asked him at the dinner table, in front of everyone. He hesitated.

  ‘You took it for safekeeping, remember?’

  ‘Ah . . . yes. Yes, it’s with mine.’

  After dinner we went to the sitting room. He opened a drawer in a little bureau and took out his passport. ‘That’s strange. I had it with mine. I saw it yesterday.’ I knew this wasn’t true, for I’d opened this drawer two days before and found only his passport. A chill went through me. I would never get home.

  27

  ARTHUR

  At the beginning of September, something arrived in the post that disturbed me. It posed so many difficult questions and brought back such troubling memories that I put it in the letter rack and tried to forget about it. But a day or so later, a similar envelope arrived for Pippa, forwarded by her mother in a batch of letters inside a brown envelope. Feigning interest in my newspaper, I watched as Pippa read her letters and cast them aside. When she came to the little cream envelope, she opened it dismissively, as she had all the others, then I watched as her lashes swept back and forth over the handwriting. She swallowed hard, then placed the little card back in its envelope and looked across at me.

  ‘Daphne seems to want us all to celebrate her wedding in a pub – at the Wayfarer’s.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked casually, taking a sip of
tea.

  ‘I think, we didn’t invite the world and his dog to our wedding.’

  ‘Well, it was a little rushed.’

  ‘Perhaps we should take this opportunity to tell everyone.’

  I put down my tea, feeling suddenly nauseous. I couldn’t bear the thought of announcing my marriage in front of Dora, but I was pretty certain Dora wouldn’t be there. But then again, if she was there, I could see her. I could explain. The questions I thought I’d put aside in the letter rack began to leap out and demand to be answered.

  ‘Well, that’s a good idea,’ I said, because I knew she thought I would object. I knew she would think I would be ashamed in front of Dora and that the possibility of Dora being there – seeing her face – was what attracted Pippa to the idea. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go.’

  She was immediately contrary. ‘Oh Lord! Do you really think I’d want to be seen like this?’

  ‘But you look blooming.’

  ‘I look like a boulder.’ There was a strange panic in her eyes. She began to gather the breakfast things in an unusual frenzy of domesticity. ‘It would have been a nice idea, had you not got me in this condition.’

  ‘But people will understand—’

  ‘I’m not going like this, and there’s an end to it.’

  I wondered if there was any way I could go on my own – engineer a trip to London on that day, perhaps. Even as I thought it, I knew I didn’t want to lie to Pippa.

  ‘You go, if you want,’ she said suddenly. ‘I know you want to see Dora.’

  ‘I doubt very much she’d be there if she thought we were going.’ I let this idea sink in for a moment. ‘I suppose I could go – and announce our news. At least that way, everyone would know. I suppose it would rather steal Daphne’s thunder if we both went.’

  ‘God, you just can’t wait to see her, can you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Dora. You just can’t wait to get her alone. Well, let me tell you something, Arthur. If that woman’s going, you aren’t.’

  I got up and went out into the hallway. I put my coat on for work without looking at her. She came after me, seeking the goodbye kiss she normally begrudged. There was something pathetic about her terror, because that’s what it was: she was terrified about my meeting Dora, and I hadn’t realized until then just how afraid she was. I cupped her jaw in my hand with a sudden tenderness. ‘Find out if she’s going if you like. I’ll only go if she isn’t.’

  She kissed me. ‘Thank you.’

  The wedding party was to be held on Saturday the 21st of September, the first Saturday after the date we all remembered, the sinking of The City of India. It would have felt wrong to go to London without visiting my parents, but somehow I wanted to keep the whole day free, just in case. In case of what, you might ask. I still hadn’t steeled myself to ask Daphne if Dora would be there, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to. It’s true that all sorts of scenarios were running through my mind, and it was hard to disentangle real possibilities from fantasy. In my fantasies I was suddenly and unaccountably available to Dora again, so there was no guilt involved when we slipped off to a hotel together and renewed our loving properly. In my dreams I would introduce her to lovemaking, and she would be a coy but fast learner. She would be like tinder waiting to be lit, and I would light her touchpaper with the gentlest of strokes. Soon we would be making love fiercely and tenderly all night through, unable to get enough of each other. And there would be no end to this daydream . . . except the realization that I was married and expecting a child, and that Dora would probably never speak to me again. Nonetheless, out of a curious respect for this self-delusion, I wanted to keep the day free. Perhaps I imagined that a stolen moment with Dora in a bar after the wedding was a remote possibility.

  So I arranged to visit my parents the weekend before Daphne’s wedding and asked Pippa if she would like a stay in London. Of course I knew she wouldn’t want to see them, and it was because of her rudeness towards them that I wanted to smooth things over with them, but to my surprise she was enthusiastic. Not until we were due to set off did she announce that she would be staying with ‘friends’ in Kensington.

  Despite my annoyance that she so consistently made changes at the last minute, I have to confess I felt relieved. However, I was determined to nail down these ‘friends’ she so often referred to and to whom she had never introduced her husband, so I waited until she did her predictable ‘Bye, darling!’ at Paddington, before letting her know that I would be accompanying her to her friends’ house, since I was not comfortable with her taking the tube on her own at the moment.

  ‘Oh, no, darling! I shan’t be taking the tube in this condition. Lord, no!’

  I felt foolish. ‘Well, in that case, let me at least walk with you and carry your bag.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Arthur. I’m taking a taxi. I don’t need you to carry my bag.’

  We hailed a taxi and I got in too. She looked at me in horror. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Are you checking up on me?’

  ‘Can’t a man make sure that his pregnant wife arrives safely at her destination?’ She rolled her eyes. I added lamely, ‘What if they’re not in?’

  They were in. ‘They’ appeared to be two other young women and a young man, not that I would have known any of this if Pippa had had her way and shooed me off in the taxi. Instead, I went up the grand steps to the front door, carrying her small suitcase like a butler. A red-haired woman in her twenties opened the door and squealed in delight. A further young woman came up behind her and squealed also. Pippa apologized for my presence and said I wasn’t staying.

  ‘Oh, come in! Let’s have a look at you! We’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘Oh, Pippa, he’s gorgeous! Where have you been hiding him?’

  In the vast, high-ceilinged living room – or drawing room, or whatever they called it – there sat a young man smoking a pipe. He stood up when he saw me and shook my hand. ‘Ah! We encounter the husband at last. Pleased to meet you. I’m Miles. We were beginning to think she’d made you up!’

  ‘Yes, well he can’t stay. He has to go and see his parents, and they live in Chiswick.’

  ‘Chiswick?’

  ‘Off you go!’ Pippa ushered me away with a wave of her hand, as if I were an over-enthusiastic dog.

  I went. I have no idea to this day who these people were – not one of them – but they were responsible for delivering some terrible news, news that in one way or another changed the course of a life. Dora’s, actually.

  28

  DORA

  Claudine stayed very close to me after the news that I had to return to England, and I found her company comforting. We sat in a little sewing room near the kitchen and made clothes for her doll. There were lots of scraps of material, ribbons, old zips and buttons that Patsy had accumulated, and I spotted one of the bedspreads that had been discarded after moths had nibbled great holes in it, too numerous to patch up. It had the same beautiful lozenge pattern in rainbow colours as my coverlet, and I asked Claudine which were her favourite colours. She liked the blue, where it turned into violet and indigo, so I snipped out a rectangle, selected an old trouser zip and set to work on the sewing machine in the corner.

  ‘What is it going to be?’

  ‘Wait and see!’

  I had looked everywhere I could think of for my passport, and I felt certain that Ralph knew exactly where it was. I’d been very attracted to Ralph, there’s no doubt about it: attracted by his confidence and his certainty at a time when I was devoid of both. But the appeal of someone who was in control of things changed dramatically when I suspected that he wanted to be in control of me. I turned the handle of the machine aggressively, enjoying the loud growl that it made as I sped along the cloth. Claudine observed me carefully, watching for clues.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked at last.

  I laughed and handed her the pencil case I had made for her. She came and hugged me and marvelled at it. She
ran off and came back with a fistful of crayons and pencils and zipped them inside. Her thrill gave me a moment of peace. Then she stood beside me and stroked my hair tenderly. ‘Is it him? Has he upset you?’

  I looked her in the eye and wondered what she knew. Her pale gaze fixed intelligently on mine, and I could see she was deadly serious. ‘I can sort him out for you if you like!’

  I smiled. ‘There’s no need.’ She looked relieved that she had restored the status quo, and I suggested we make some lavender bags. ‘Does Ralph usually spend a lot of time here?’

  ‘Off and on. It’s his Aunty Bee’s place, but he always pretends to be in charge. The men don’t take him very seriously.’

  Claudine was already laying out a piece of muslin on the floor and brandishing some scissors. ‘Would you like me to bandage your arm?’ I let her practise bandaging with old strips of cloth while she carried on about Ralph and how much she would miss me when I went. My right arm was so tightly bound in a sling that Claudine had to cut out the squares of muslin on her own.

  Later on, with all the squares cut out and ribbon cut into equal lengths, we went out to one of the outhouses where great bunches of lavender hung from all the walls.

  I looked at the task ahead and then at my arm. ‘You do a very firm bandage, nurse. I think you may have stopped my circulation.’ Claudine laughed and released me from my sling. I began to push the dry florets off the stems into a bucket, but my fingers were soon sore and burning with the threat of blisters. Claudine climbed on to a wooden crate. ‘There should be some gloves here somewhere.’ She was rifling through boxes on a shelf. ‘There – catch!’ She threw me a battered old leather glove. ‘You have that one, I’ll have the other.’ She rifled a bit more and found its partner.

  ‘Good. Now we’ll make quick work of this lot.’ Suddenly it was simple. The lavender fell away into the bucket with swift, easy strokes. I collected quite a pile of brushy stalks, but Claudine was still on the crate, glove shoved under her armpit.

  ‘There’s a picture of you here!’