by Rumer Godden
The Doctor did not answer.
‘In any case, the Homes are packed – all those war orphans,’ said a lady, and then, suddenly, Monsieur Grebel said, ‘I will take her.’
They were so surprised there was a silence and I could feel my heart beating. Then Monsieur l’Abbé spoke. ‘It would be a work of great charity.’
‘Not at all. I want her,’ said Monsieur Grebel – dear Monsieur Grebel.
‘But – would Madame Grebel …?’
‘A woman without children has empty arms. I can vouch for my wife,’ said Monsieur Grebel.
He came up to the attic that evening with Mamaine. ‘Would you like to come and live with me, Vivi?’
‘Would I be a proper girl and go to school?’
‘I think you would.’
‘Would you buy me dresses and a coat with fur on it?’
‘Vivi, Vivi. You think too much about these things,’ said Mamaine.
‘But would you? I should need three or four dresses to be a proper girl.’
‘We’ll ask Madame Grebel to help you choose them. I’m bringing her to see you in the morning.’
I was taken to the grande salle to meet Madame Grebel. I had been so excited I had had no sleep, but I didn’t forget what Mamaine had taught me and I curtseyed to Madame Grebel but she didn’t hold out the arms Monsieur had said were empty; she didn’t even hold out her hand. She looked at me for a long time, then over my head to Monsieur Grebel and she was angry. Why was she angry?
‘Alfred, you didn’t tell me.’
‘Tell you what?’
Her voice was high, as angry people’s are, and she had red patches on her cheeks. She got up from her chair. ‘Now I understand! You didn’t tell me she was beautiful. Too beautiful, Alfred!’ and she turned to go.
I asked in a whisper, ‘Madame Grebel has said “No”?’
Monsieur Grebel nodded, then he went quickly away, and I, Vivi, was left alone in the grande salle.
‘Asleep! Drunk!’ The police van had reached the Place and, as Lise came up, a sergeant lifted the girl’s head and tilted it back; the eyes opened stupefied, dazed, the mouth lolled. ‘Drunk. Put her in.’
‘No.’ The authority in Lise’s voice surprised even her. ‘I was comparatively new to this then,’ and, before the gendarmes could touch the girl, ‘You can’t take her,’ said Lise. ‘She’s one of mine.’
‘Yours? Never.’ Morel, the sergeant, knew Lise well, as did most of the flics. ‘Mère Maquerelle,’ they whispered among themselves.
‘One of yours? Never.’
‘She is.’
‘Then what’s she doing here?’
‘She – ran away. I have been looking for her.’
‘Ran – why?’
Lise shrugged – an acted shrug. ‘Frightened.’
‘She can’t be one of yours. She’s …’ He bent over her and drew back. ‘Whew! She’s filthy.’
‘I told you – she ran away. She has been out two nights …’ but the sergeant was astute.
‘Besides, she’s too young.’
‘The little sister of one of our girls,’ Lise lied glibly. ‘Pauvre p’tite. Of course, we haven’t used her yet.’
‘She has used herself, Madame Lise.’ To Lise’s face they wouldn’t call her La Balafrée. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Why else do you think I’m out this time of the morning?’ That was a point: Lise had always taken care to be invisible on her walks. ‘Why else?’ demanded Lise and, ‘Get me a taxi,’ she ordered. ‘Lift her in. I’ll take her home.’
‘I took Vivi home.’ Why? Lise had asked herself a thousand times. ‘There’s a little church in England,’ she told Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘at Southleigh in Oxfordshire, which has an old old mural painting showing a winged Saint Michael holding the scales of justice. The poor soul awaiting judgement is quailing because the right-hand scale is coming heavily down with its load of sins: but on the left Our Lady is quietly putting her rosary beads in the other scale to make them even. I saw it long ago, but in a way I suppose something like that happened to me.’
‘It happened to me,’ and Lise started to tremble. ‘How did Vivi come to have those beads?’ Lise asked that for the thousandth time. ‘She wouldn’t say. She never said …’
Now, in the café, Lise seemed to hear Soeur Marie Alcide’s firm voice. ‘Put it behind you. That is one of our first rules. You will probably never see Vivi again,’ and, ‘It’s time you caught your train,’ Lise told Lise.
Lise had been taking her ticket when she looked behind her down the line of passengers and, ‘Oh no!’ she could not help saying; there was Lucette struggling with the size of her suitcase, Lucette with her draggled green skirt, thin jacket and tangled hair. ‘Oh no!’ But there was no need to panic. Lucette was too far down the line to hear the name of the town for which Lise asked, And, if I hurry, thought Lise, she won’t know which platform is mine.
Platform Number 9. As she reached the train Lise looked back. A small figure was running, dodging, banging into people with the case, stopping to scan each barrier, but getting nearer. In the press of passengers waiting to pass through the barrier, Lise tried to hide herself behind a large man with a duffle bag on his shoulder. She was safe, hidden, and then the man stepped aside and Lucette saw her. Still, perhaps she hasn’t the right ticket, hoped Lise; perhaps she won’t be allowed through.
Resolute, Lise showed her own ticket, then almost ran herself down the length of the train; at the end she found a corner seat by the far window; she swung her case up on the rack and opened a newspaper she had snatched from a kiosk. There were already three people in the compartment; the other seats were quickly filled and, Lucette would hardly have had time to come as far down the platform as this, thought Lise as the train began to move.
Another anxiety came up: would there be a mention of Vesoul? Of her, La Balafrée? Hastily she scanned the paper. It was a late edition: LES TROIS FRERES CESARO RELACHES PAR LES FELLAGAH – the Cesaro brothers released … held prisoner for forty-seven days … Forty-seven days! Lise almost laughed. TUMULTUOUS WELCOME FOR GENERAL DE GAULLE … SENSATIONAL FLIGHT OF THE CARAVELLE … forty-six minutes from Paris to Dijon …
Nowhere was there a mention – and it would have been a headline: LA BALAFREE RELEASED … LA BALAFREE … MADAME LISE IS OUT …’ The secret seemed to have been well kept. If the guard at Vesoul had looked at her more closely, he might have been tempted to give the news – no one knew from whom, in prison, news could leak – as a precaution, Madame Chef herself had come out to see if any pressmen were on the pavement or hidden in a café before she would let Lise cross the courtyard. TROIS ENFANTS … PERISSENT ASPHYXIES. Three little children dead in a farm fire …
No Balafrée. Lise could sit back, let Patrice’s scarf slip down – she had bound it round her head, hiding the scar. When the news did break, perhaps tomorrow, she would be … Where they’ll never dream, thought Lise.
Lucette came along the corridor. At every compartment, Lise guessed, she had pressed her face against the glass with the same wistful appeal of the café, but Lise had seen the glimmer of green and shrank back behind her neighbour, holding the newspaper high; the brown eyes, though, were thorough and Lise guessed she had been seen but, She won’t dare to come in here, thought Lise.
She had meant at lunchtime to go to the buffet car for a sandwich, one of those crusty French sandwiches with ham, and perhaps a glass of wine. Though it’s so long since I have had one it will probably go to my head – but wine! thought Lise. Now, it was too risky to leave the compartment. What would Lucette do? wondered Lise. Stand in the corridor and wait? What ticket had she taken? Where would she have to get off?
Naissances. Fiançailles. Manages. Deuils – ‘Hatches, Matches, Dispatches,’ Lise could hear Aunt Millicent’s voice. EISENHOWER TELEPHONES TO J. F. DULLES – but Lucette’s face kept coming between Lise and the newspaper.
Unfortunately Lise’s station was also the terminus. All the doors op
ened but there was such a flood of passengers, so many trucks and trolleys, such meetings with hugs and kisses, luggage, mail-bags, freight thrown out, that Lise was able to slip through the crowd. She ran down the subway, up the other side, reached the barrier, gave up her ticket and, breathless, stopped on the station forecourt to search the line of cars. There, thankfully, was the blue Citroën she had been told to look for, the familiar white habit, black veil of a Sister of Béthanie. Lise ran across the forecourt.
‘Soeur Justine?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am Lise,’ and the names Elizabeth Fanshawe, Liz, Madame Ambard, above all, La Balafrée, dropped away into an abyss of forgetting. Please God, I shall never hear them again – as, ‘Welcome,’ said the young nun with a smile as she leaned across to open the door which Lise had already wrenched open; she threw her case into the back, got in and slammed the door.
There was that perspicacious Dominican look. ‘Is somebody chasing you?’ but Soeur Justine did not say it, only started the car. ‘You are in a hurry,’ she said instead.
‘I couldn’t wait to get here.’ Lise almost said it but she could not enter Béthanie on even the smallest lie and, ‘It’s only that I so badly need to get to Saint Etienne,’ she said.
Soeur Justine did not waste time; she was already feeling her way through the jumble of taxis and cars and people. Lise, crouching low, looked back; as she thought, or dreaded, Lucette had emerged past the barrier on to the forecourt where she was standing, obviously bewildered, the suitcase at her feet. Lise knew her eyes were scanning, searching, but, I won’t, thought Lise. I won’t. I have done it before, idiot that I was …
‘Bring that guttersnipe in here, cette gamine …? Never.’ Lise had thought that was what Patrice would say when he saw Vivi, but he had asked in strange excitement, ‘Have you looked at her? Looked at her face?’
‘No, I suppose I haven’t looked at her,’ said Lise.
‘That face! Those legs! That whole body!’
‘I wasn’t thinking of her as meat – to be fed to your lions.’
Patrice was too excited to listen. ‘Chérie, when she’s cleaned and fed, dressed and trained … My God!’ said Patrice and added, ‘Do your very best with her.’
Lise’s ‘best’ was quite different from Patrice’s, ‘or was meant to be,’ said Lise.
When Vivi was sober, cleaned and disinfected, dressed and fed, Lise tried to coax her into confidence.
‘Surely you have another name?’ Lise asked Vivi. ‘Viviane perhaps?’
‘No, just Vivi.’
‘Vivi what?’
‘Vivi.’
‘What was your father called?’ A visible recoil. ‘Your family – when you were a little girl.’
‘Don’t, don’t.’ It was almost a scream. ‘If you go on, I’ll run away,’ and, ‘Leave her be,’ said Patrice.
We had run away, Suzanne and me, though there was no need to run because no one was going to come after us. ‘Don’t giggle, Vivi, or somebody will suspect,’ said Suzanne, but no one bothered to suspect.
Suzanne was almost the same as me, but older; she might have been Claudine, my sister, only she wasn’t. No one but me knows there was ever a Claudine – it’s one of the things I don’t tell. Suzanne had had a Papa who had chased her, too, and she had been taken away and put into a school. I think she had been to even more schools than I had. They had told us Monsieur Ralph was our last hope. They might have saved their breath. Monsieur Ralph was Superintendent of Le Manoir d’Espérance, though it wasn’t a manor – it was a foyer. Still, he was kind, poor man. ‘If these girls can get back to nature,’ he used to say, ‘they might be cured.’ I think he did not know nature, certainly not Suzanne’s or mine. Poor Monsieur Ralph. He was the first person who had been kind to me since the days of the Maison Dieu.
I often think of the Maison Dieu and the attics where we were kept – hunchback Renée and Rico, Pom-Pom and I – with Mamaine to look after us, and Madame Lachaume and Monsieur Grebel and Stefan. When I ran away with Stefan they came after us and it was a long time till they trusted me enough to let me come to the Manoir d’Espérance and Monsieur Ralph. He was easy to get round; it was hay-making time on the farm; we were all helping with the hay and he gave permission for Suzanne and me to ride back from the far fields on the hay-floats behind the tractors when they went back to the farm. I loved the sweet smell of the hay and the way Suzanne tumbled about in it.
The men were pleased to have two girls with them but they didn’t try any games – they had too much respect for Monsieur Ralph; nor did they know that we had taken their money, poor boys, notes out of their wallets when they left their coats hanging on the fence posts while they pitched up the bales. We, Suzanne and I, got down from the tractor in the farmyard, but not to go back to Monsieur Ralph. We crept out down the lane to the road and hitched a ride to Paris and we were very polite. ‘Giggling is bad policy,’ said Suzanne.
Suzanne knew Paris. She had been born and brought up in the alleys there and she found us a room; it was high up, on the fifth floor of an old house. The landlady, Madame Picou, let us stay even when she found out how young we were, because we did her errands and could be trusted to get her pension for her at the post office when she was too drunk to go herself. We never stole any of that – ‘It would be bad policy,’ Suzanne used to say. Everything with her was ‘bad policy’, ‘good policy’, depending how the wind blew.
Suzanne could sing; she had a voice, sweet, like a little canary in its cage. She sang and I collected the money, because I was pretty. ‘And don’t you ever let them off,’ she told me. ‘Pester them … you can.’ When we had enough, we went to a stall or boîte to eat, then came back and Suzanne sang some more. We worked different districts but always we used to go first and find out where the police station was, then keep as far away from it as we could. We were never picked up. Perhaps Monsieur Ralph was glad to get rid of us.
Sometimes we could buy a dress or some shoes and Suzanne knew a great many Stefans – not wrong in the head as he was, poor Stefan – but soldiers, sailors, anyone. We had a good time and we were together, Suzanne and I. Then, one afternoon, when we were asleep – we had been out all night – Madame Picou shouted up the stairs at us. We had forgotten to buy her bread. It was Suzanne who went for the baguette; she was still half asleep, and she was run over.
Madame Picou was taken to the morgue to look at Suzanne. They couldn’t find me – I had hidden under the cistern in the roof – but I knew Madame Picou had told the police about me and sooner or later they would find me, so I left.
I left just as I was and stayed out in the streets. I don’t remember any more.
‘Let her be Vivi Ambard,’ said Patrice and he teased Lise, ‘All our strays come to be that.’
It was true. Vivi Ambard. Lise Ambard. If only she were my daughter, thought Lise, but I’m still too young for that. If she were my little sister – and she pleaded, ‘Patrice, she’s not for us. I’m going to send her to school.’
Patrice began to laugh. ‘Send her to school. Try, that’s all. Yes, try. She’s been on the streets for two years.’ Then he was serious. ‘You’ll have to get rid of that roughness, teach her some manners – and pride. It’s a miracle she has escaped V.D.’
‘You have found that out already?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Yes, naturally.’ Lise was suddenly bitter – she who was never bitter. ‘I should have known.’
‘Isn’t it my business?’ He came and sat close beside her. ‘Chérie, I think you have brought us a gold mine.’
‘Patrice, she’s only fourteen.’
‘Jail-bait! A good many have a yen for that.’
‘What if I inform?’ Lise had been cold.
‘You won’t,’ said Patrice and Lise knew he was right.
The convent car had left the town and was driving beside a wide river flowing quietly behind its trees; big houses stood in gardens and then gave way to vineyards, little ‘doma
ines’, the vines carefully espaliered around low thick-walled houses with roofs of rounded tiles. ‘It’s beautiful, our Gironde,’ said Soeur Justine.
‘It is beautiful,’ said Lise, as if she hoped that would distract her.
Soeur Justine glanced at her; the eyes, behind the cheap steel-rimmed spectacles, Lise knew, were taking in the tenseness of the way Lise sat, the way her hands clutched her handbag. ‘I won’t. I will not,’ but soon Lise knew it was no good. ‘Soeur Justine, would you turn round. I didn’t want … but there’s a girl – not a girl though she seems one – a young – woman left at the station. I don’t think she has much money, or anywhere to go,’ said Lise. ‘Could you take her in, just for tonight?’
3
The holy-water stoup was one of the few relics left.
It was shaped like an open shell; the upper half, carved and roughly fluted, protected the lower which was deeper and meant to be filled with water, holy water that brought blessing. Water washes, purifies, as do tears, thought Marc. There must have been enough tears here to make an ocean – when, at last, breaking down the defiance, the bitterness, tears came: there used to be a prayer in our missals for the ‘gift of tears’, thought Marc; I suppose it has been done away with now; he must ask Father Louis for it – but, in any case, the stoup was empty; most of the tourists had not even noticed it.
‘Go to the Château of Cadillac and see for yourself,’ Louis had said when Marc had declared, ‘I cannot believe it,’ after his first morning at Belle Source.
‘Nor can most people,’ said Louis. ‘I can remember a Minister of Justice, a kind experienced man, saying just that. He knew many prisoners do come out, transformed as it were, and make a fresh start: he admitted that an exceptional one, here and there, could be drawn to the religious life, not as a refuge, but with a true vocation …’
‘But that there could be enough for a convent!’ said Marc. Yes, that the Minister could not believe, ‘and yet here are the convents. There are Béthanies in France and Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, America – and they are spreading. Of course, all the nuns are not what we call in private “rehabilitées”; at least half are sisters who come in the natural way – if you can call it natural – And, remember, because nobody knows which are which, they need to have an uncommon call and a special charity.’