Children of the Siege

by Diney Costeloe

  Jeannot had few scruples about robbing a dead body. The man didn’t need the money any more, but he, Jeannot, did. Those coins could be the difference between eating and going hungry. He slipped them into his own pocket and scurried hurriedly away. Others might not take such a pragmatic view of his actions, and though there was no one in sight, you never knew who might be watching.

  He risked two more such robberies and though they were not so lucrative, he added another franc and twenty sous to his cash. He might not have any food to take to Tante Edith, but at least he had something to offer her.

  The door to the basement was flung open even as he clattered down the steps and Tante Edith greeted him with a hug.

  ‘Jeannot,’ she cried, ‘thank God. We thought you were dead. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Had to take cover,’ replied Jeannot. ‘Things got really hot out there.’

  He followed Edith back inside and looked round the little apartment. The curtain that divided off the sleeping area was drawn back and he saw at once that Hélène was not there.

  ‘Where’s Hélène?’ he demanded.

  ‘Gone,’ sniffed Alphonse from his seat in the corner.

  ‘What d’you mean, gone?’ cried Jeannot. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Gone and good riddance!’ muttered Edith.

  ‘When you didn’t come back, boy,’ Alphonse said, making clear that he thought it was Jeannot’s fault, ‘Edith and the girl went out to try and buy some food. And she ran off.’

  ‘Ran off?’ echoed Jeannot, turning to Edith. ‘Ran off where?’

  ‘How do I know?’ said Edith. ‘I was in with old Felix Vellier. He had a hambone and it took me time to get it. When I came out of his shop, she’d gone.’ She patted Jeannot on the shoulder. ‘Forget her, Jeannot, she ain’t worth it. We gave her food and then she run off.’

  Jeannot forgot about the money in his pocket and turned to the door. ‘I must go and find her,’ he said.

  ‘Wait!’ Edith’s tone was peremptory. ‘What have you brought us? You promised to bring back food if we looked after that girl.’

  ‘Well, you ain’t,’ Jeannot snapped. ‘You ain’t looked after her, have you?’

  ‘Not our fault if she run off,’ muttered Alphonse.

  Jeannot paused in the doorway, and then putting his hand in his pocket pulled out one of the franc coins. ‘Here,’ he said, tossing it onto the floor. ‘You can have that.’ And by the time Edith had scrabbled for it he was out of the door and heading for the Avenue Ste Anne. He didn’t know if Hélène would go back there, but it seemed the obvious place to look.

  When he reached Passy he found there was a semblance of normality as a few people were out in the streets. He looked out of place in such a prosperous area and he received some suspicious glances, but no one actually challenged him and he ducked into the lane behind the house. He was relieved to find the back gate unlocked, that must mean someone was here, but when he reached the stable, it was empty.

  Hélène was not there and he had no way of knowing if she had been. Nor was she in the house. The back door was still unlocked but the house was empty. But someone had been there, he was sure. Marcel, perhaps? Or maybe Georges wasn’t as badly injured as they’d thought and he’d come back. But if so, where were they now?

  Jeannot wandered round the house. In the drawer of a desk in what must be Monsieur St Clair’s study, he found a small leather purse containing nearly twenty francs. He couldn’t believe that anyone would leave so much money lying in an unlocked drawer, but never one to turn down such largesse, the purse disappeared into his pocket. He was sure Monsieur St Clair wouldn’t miss it, and if he did, he’d think Gaston had taken it when he’d taken Hélène. Anyway, Jeannot reasoned, they owed him. He’d done his best to save Hélène and if she’d run off now when he’d got her to a safe place, there was nothing he could do about that. He was sorry, of course, he found he’d come to like the girl, admired her spunk, but he wasn’t her keeper. His job was what it had always been: to look after number one. With twenty francs in his pocket, he was king of the world!

  A quick search through the rest of the desk drawers revealed nothing else worth having, just papers and ledgers and such, all useless to Jeannot.

  Having found the money he decided that it was time to leave; he didn’t want to be caught there by any of the St Clairs now, not even Hélène. He closed both house and stable doors behind him, no need to advertise that someone had been there, then he was out through the gate and off down the street to his own part of the city. He’d share with the Monkey and Paul, but not equal shares. A man had to keep something for himself.

  29

  Hélène had followed the sun as she had before, but this time it was a far more hazardous journey. She could hear the thunder of the guns, inside the city now, the rumble of destruction as buildings were shelled to clear the advancing army’s way forward. She had learned something of a street child’s cautious movement from Jeannot, but she wasn’t prepared for the sights she saw on her way through those streets. The fighting had been fierce and the debris of buildings was strewn across the ground. Bodies lay unburied, as if tossed aside by the advancing soldiers, and the dust and the filth and the stink filled her nostrils, making her feel sick. On one corner, she found a small boy standing over the body of a young woman, pulling at her arm and weeping piteously as he cried, ‘Get up, Maman! Get up!’

  Hélène stopped and held out a hand to him, but he hit out at her, shouting, ‘Go away!’

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ Hélène said, looking round at the eerily deserted street and ruined building nearby.

  But the boy kept on screaming at her, ‘Go away! Go away! Go away!’ There was nothing she could do and Hélène walked on, leaving him crying for his dead mother.

  There were a few other people on the streets, going about their own business, and little attention was paid to her as she worked her way westward, away from the fighting that still continued at the eastern end of the city. Occasionally she heard the tramp of feet, and from the shelter of a doorway she watched a troop of soldiers go marching by, but she didn’t even know which side they were on, and stayed hidden until they were long gone.

  As before, it was the bell tower of Our Lady of Sorrows that finally led her home. Hélène almost cried with relief when she saw it, still standing tall and strong, its steeple pointing straight up to heaven. She was home. Despite everything, she was home.

  Afternoon was lengthening into evening as she opened the gate and let herself into the garden. She wondered if Marcel would be there, whether he’d have any news of Georges. She approached the stable, calling out as she opened the door, but the building was empty. She found some matches and lit the lamp. It was then, in its warm glow, that she saw it on a bale of straw: a folded sheet of paper with her name on it. She caught it up and held it to the lamp to read. She read it through twice, hardly able to believe what she read. Marcel had found Georges and he was now safe and cared for at Dr Simon’s house; but Marcel himself had gone – gone back to the fighting and the barricades. She clutched the letter in her hand, holding it tight… a talisman. Amazingly, one brother was safe, but the other? What would happen to him? She felt a lump in her throat at the thought of Marcel fighting for his life and ending up a body on a barricade, like the ones she’d seen just that day. ‘Oh please God,’ she prayed, ‘let him come home again safely. Don’t let him be killed.’

  As for Jeannot, she had no idea what had happened to him, he’d simply vanished. Perhaps he was dead too and she would never know; never discover what had happened to him that day after he’d left the basement apartment in search of food. Poor Jeannot.

  Well, Hélène thought with a sigh, Marcel said to go and find Georges, so that’s what I’d better do.

  She extinguished the lamp carefully and made her way out into the avenue. The sun was setting now and the sky was brilliant, a rich red streaked with orange and flashes of yellow. She looked at it as she walked along the st
reet to Dr Simon’s house. What a wonderful sunset! At least the war couldn’t destroy that. Reaching the doctor’s house, she knocked on the front door and waited. It seemed a long time before she heard footsteps approaching on the inside. She’d been about to knock again when a voice called, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Hélène St Clair,’ Hélène called back. ‘Madame Yvette, it’s me, Hélène St Clair.’

  She heard the bolts being drawn back and the front door was thrown open, and there she was, Madame Yvette, Dr Simon’s housekeeper, a woman whom Hélène had known all her life.

  Almost as if she’d been expecting her, she said, ‘Come in, Hélène, your brother’s in here.’

  Georges was sitting in an armchair, his bandaged leg raised and resting on a footstool. When he saw who his visitor was his whole face lit up.

  ‘Hélène!’ he cried. ‘Thank God you’re safe. Whatever happened to you? Where have you been? We’ve been so worried about you!’

  Hélène ran across the room to hug him. ‘Oh, Georges!’ she cried. ‘Your poor leg! Are you all right? Will it get better?’

  ‘Of course it will.’ Dr Simon’s voice came from the door. ‘Well, now, young lady,’ he went on. ‘You’re looking much better than when I saw you last. But where have you been? Your brothers have been worried sick.’

  Hélène sat down beside Georges and took his hand. ‘It’s a long story,’ she began. ‘When you sent us away the other night, Georges, Jeannot was afraid that the Avenue Ste Anne was right in the target area. He said both armies seemed to be bombing Passy and so he took us to the house of some friends of his. Tante Edith, he called her, and Oncle Alphonse. They looked after him during the siege. Anyway…’ Hélène explained that she hadn’t known where they were, except that it was near to where she’d managed to escape from the Gaston-man over the warehouse wall.

  ‘Jeannot went out to get some food,’ she explained. ‘He didn’t come back and I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘Typical,’ murmured Georges, who had always mistrusted Jeannot.

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ insisted Hélène. ‘You never believed me, but he’s always looked after me. He helped me escape from Gaston. He was almost killed by him. And he wouldn’t leave me with those people and not come back… not if he could help it.’ Her voice began to tremble as she said, ‘Do you think he’s been killed in the fighting?’

  ‘I don’t know, Hélène,’ Georges answered. ‘I suppose he might have been. But he’s a lad who’s used to looking after himself, you know.’ He tried to sound reassuring. ‘He’s probably had to lie low for a while, but I expect he’s hiding somewhere safe, and he’ll turn up again before too long.’ Though goodness only knows what we’re going to do with him if he does, thought Georges privately. Well, sufficient unto the day…

  At that moment Madame Yvette knocked and without waiting for an invitation burst into the room.

  ‘Oh, doctor,’ she cried, ‘you must come and look out of the window! All Paris is on fire!’

  Dr Simon went to the window and threw back the curtains. Outside, the sky was as Hélène had seen it earlier except that darkness was falling and still the sky blazed orange and red, shot with yellow, and above were dark roiling clouds lit from below.

  ‘It’s the sunset,’ cried Hélène. ‘I saw it as I was coming down the road.’

  Dr Simon shook his head. ‘No, Hélène, I don’t think so. It’s to the east.’ He walked away from the window and hurried out through the front door to stand in the street. Hélène followed and stood beside him as they both gazed up at the sky. Other people were coming out of their houses to stand and stare at the amazing night sky.

  ‘Paris is ablaze,’ murmured someone standing nearby. ‘The whole city is burning.’

  ‘I heard they blew up the Tuileries Palace today and the fire is sweeping through everywhere.’

  ‘Whole streets ablaze!’

  News of the fire spread as fast as the fire itself. Hélène stood listening as the news was passed from mouth to mouth.

  ‘The Palais-Royal!’

  ‘Part of the Louvre!’

  ‘The Hôtel de Ville!’

  Dr Simon led Hélène back indoors, leaving his neighbours staring up at the glowing sky.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Georges, frustrated at not being able to go out and see for himself.

  ‘Frenchman is killing Frenchman,’ replied Dr Simon gravely, ‘and the whole of Paris is destroyed.’ Hélène saw that the old man had tears in his eyes. She had never seen a man cry and she looked away, embarrassed. Was it true? Was Paris really burning out of control?

  Madame Yvette reappeared and took Hélène to a spare bedroom where a bed was already made up and a nightdress laid out. She showed her the new bathroom the doctor had had installed, where hot water flowed from the taps into a bath tub so long Hélène could lie down in it.

  ‘Now,’ said Madame Yvette, ‘you have a good bath and then I will come and help you wash your hair, hein?’

  She gave Hélène ten minutes and then returned with a huge towel that she wrapped round the girl. ‘Now we will wash your hair and you will feel better.’

  As she leaned over the edge of the bath and Madame Yvette rubbed soap into her hair, Hélène had a sudden recollection of how Marie-Jeanne used to do it, and the tears sprang unbidden to her eyes.

  Poor, dear Marie-Jeanne, lying dead at the top of the stairs. She hadn’t thought of her for several days. Hardly believing she had not, her tears ran down into the bath, mingling with the dirt from her hair.

  Later that night as she lay awake in bed, she remembered the little boy trying to wake his dead mother and her tears returned. What would happen to him? He couldn’t have been more than five years old. How would he live without his mother? Who would look after him?

  She thought of her own mother and felt such a longing for her that it was a physical ache.

  Unable to sleep, she got out of bed and went to the window. The sky in the east was still alight with flames. Dr Simon had said that the whole of Paris was destroyed, and watching from her window, Hélène thought he must be right. How could anything survive such an inferno?

  The inferno continued to burn throughout the night, the flames leaping from house to house, sweeping along streets, engulfing buildings, new and old, without discrimination. Government troops fought valiantly to stop the fire spreading further but there had been no rain for nearly a month and everything was tinder dry. Homes, shops and offices went up in flames. The medieval Hôtel de Ville had been deliberately torched and the fire blazed onward, consuming everything in its path.

  It was two days later that the rain finally came, helping to quench the last of the fires, but the killing did not stop. Bloody atrocities occurred on both sides. Hundreds of Communard prisoners were lined up and shot by government soldiers; over fifty hostages, including the Archbishop of Paris who had been held by the Communards, were dragged out of prison and shot out of hand.

  Dr Simon had been right. Frenchman was killing Frenchman and Paris was destroyed. Retribution was long and bloody but the life of the Commune was over.

  During the last few violent days, Hélène and Georges had remained in the doctor’s house, but all was not well there. Instead of getting better, Georges began to get worse. His temperature soared and his injured leg gave him tremendous pain. Dr Simon had to ease the bandages as it started swelling up and changing colour, from red to purple to marbled yellow. Something had gone wrong, and as the day progressed, he became delirious. Hélène watched him with frightened eyes as he raved about a battle, shouting warnings of attack one minute and begging for water the next.

  ‘Is he going to die?’ she asked Dr Simon.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ replied the doctor, ‘but his leg is infected and unless we remove it, the poison will kill him.’

  ‘Remove it?’ Hélène didn’t understand. ‘Remove the infection?’

  ‘No, my child,’ the doctor said gently. ‘Remove the leg.’


  Hélène’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Cut it off, you mean.’

  Dr Simon nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s just what I mean.’

  Georges continued to babble incoherently and Hélène continued to sit beside him, keeping watch.

  ‘I must operate at once,’ the doctor told her. ‘I have seen such things before, when I was a doctor with the army, and unless I take off his leg, he will die.’

  ‘But you said he was going to get better,’ cried Hélène. ‘You mended his leg.’

  ‘I mended the bone, but the wound isn’t healing as it should. I’m sorry, Hélène, but there is no alternative.’

  ‘Will he go to hospital?’ she asked, at last accepting what he said.

  ‘No. I will operate here.’ He looked at Hélène, and thinking what a lot she’d had to deal with over the last few weeks, he decided to treat her as an adult and tell her the truth. ‘If Georges goes to any of the hospitals here in Paris, it is unlikely he’ll come out alive. Here, we can look after him. He will have our whole attention and not simply be part of a busy hospital.’

  ‘Will you tell him what you’re going to do?’ asked Hélène. ‘What will you do if he says no?’

  ‘It will be impossible to make him understand in his present state,’ said Dr Simon, ‘but if I don’t operate he will assuredly die.’

  The doctor, assisted by a younger doctor and his nurse, operated that evening. Georges was anesthetised with chloroform and the operation performed in the surgery at the back of Dr Simon’s house.

  Hélène sat in the drawing room with Madame Yvette for company. Surely Georges wasn’t going to die now, after the war was over! It seemed an age before the doctor returned to them and told them that the operation was finished and Georges was now in bed upstairs.