Madame Barbara

by Helen Forrester

  Maman herself was growing old. The long years of work during the German occupation – when they had had to produce a fixed schedule of eggs and chickens for export to Germany, leaving very little for themselves – had left her thin and very weary. And those years had been filled with frightening uncertainty, an uncertainty even more acute than that of the harsh life they normally endured.

  Like other families, they had never known from day to day what next the German Kommandantur would impose on them.

  In addition to the ruthless requisitioning of the Benions’ produce, a small encampment of troops had been bivouacked on their little pasture, with a stinking latrine and constant, unofficial demands for eggs or vegetables, or to get their clothes washed. If one refused what was asked the soldiers would take it anyway. Better to give, and then hide every egg one could.

  The soldiers had ruined this scrap of pasture land for a whole year. Consequently, Michel had had difficulty in producing sufficient feed for the horse that pulled the cart they used to carry the rapaciously extracted quota of eggs and chickens to the depot established for their collection and transhipment to Germany.

  Remembering, Michel’s smile was grim. He would have, long since, had the horse and cart taken from him by the occupying troops, except that he had argued with them that there was no way the farm could function without it; eggs had to be moved with care; otherwise they broke.

  He had been told by the little runt who ran the Kommandant’s office, that it was Germany’s intention that France should become a solely agricultural country to feed Germany after the Germans won the war. They wanted the farmers alive and functioning – just.

  Michel had longed to spit in his face.

  Now, as he drove through the outskirts of Bayeux, he was filled with pity for his mother. She had been widowed in the second year of the war; now she was about to lose her elder son, and the site of her home continued to be forbidden territory until some oaf in Paris had decided what should be done about it, or at least ordered it to be cleared of explosives.

  And, today, he berated himself, he had put in jeopardy even the poorly paid job he had, because he wanted to take a young English widow to see Caen. He must be mad.

  Perhaps it was as well that he had never heard of a nervous breakdown, because he had been through so much that he was getting dangerously close to one.

  The young widow sat in the back of his taxi and quietly watched the countryside pass by. It was, she noticed, being farmed in patches, presumably where the worst of the fighting had bypassed it. Already, there were one or two fields green with young cabbages and other crops. Little orchards of still small apple trees had shed their blossoms, and in the ditches, flowering weeds were emerging in profusion. She caught a glimpse of a herd of brown and white cows grazing, and smiled to herself; they were presumably the source of the excellent cheese she had enjoyed in the hotel.

  She thought of England, her own green and pleasant land, and the melancholy which had overwhelmed her yesterday came creeping slowly back.

  She was worried that the driver had perhaps risked his job by taking her to see the city for which George had given his life: dear simple George, whose modest desire in life had been to continue cutting and carving sandstone for Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. He had said once that he hoped he would live long enough to see it completed.

  Well, he hadn’t, Barbara thought with a pang of pain. Instead, its fine stained-glass windows had been blown out and a lot of the interior stonework damaged, as if the Germans were bent on abolishing his life’s work as well as its creator.

  Today, she did not cry. After last night, she told herself she had finished weeping.

  Liverpool women always said, in bad times, ‘A good cry will set you up. You’ll feel better.’ They had, during the war, cried enough to make the Mersey overflow, as seamen in their thousands, sailing out of Liverpool, lost their lives in the Battle of the Atlantic. The dead like George had become treasured pictures, icons, on mothers’ and wives’ mantelpieces. George’s image was on Barbara’s bedside table, looking very solemn in his battledress.

  No wonder we all look so old and tired, she thought. The French she had seen had the same drawn, exhausted look – like this man who was driving her. How old was he? In his forties? She suspected that he had lost more than just his farm. Had he perhaps lost a wife and children? Not the fiancée he had mentioned?

  She sensed that he had, in a way, the same simplicity as George – though he had a more expressive face; it mirrored everything: compassion, rage, pleasure, cunning, pride. He’s as proud as a peacock, she decided with quiet amusement, though he says he’s only a peasant. There’s nothing cloddish about him, though. He was so quick this afternoon, when he saw trouble coming in Caen.

  What she did not know was that behind him lay a thousand years’ history of survival. His forebears had remained wedded to the land through other invasions; through famine and pestilence; through heedless, arrogant governments in Paris, and iron discipline from a Church determined to keep its power; through ruthless rebellions and revolutions. They had been exploited, looked down upon, regarded as infinitely expendable; yet he and his kind had survived.

  Though she did not know the history of France from the French point of view, Barbara had begun to realise that men like the taxi driver probably had difficulty in visualising life without land. She had no inkling that French peasantry, at last weary of back-breaking work without much recompense, had, for sometime before the war, been voting with their feet for a better life; they were moving to industrial jobs in the cities. Michel’s two brothers-in-law and his seaman uncle were good examples.

  The taxi driver had, she knew, been dislodged by the war. She assumed that he would finally go back to his patch of land.

  She would have been surprised to learn that only during the last twenty-four hours had Michel decided that his dislodgement was permanent. He had waited long enough, and now that his work with the Americans was coming to an end, he had to plan, long term, what he was going to do. He would not wait for the return of his land. Like his brothers-in-law, he would try for something better.

  Though it was his own decision, he had not yet managed to resolve the problem of what kind of employment he should aim for.

  In the ruined cities, as they were being rebuilt, there was plenty of work of a labouring kind or for skilled craftsmen. But labouring would mean for him further years of pain in his shoulder. He had had enough of that.

  For the moment, he could not move elsewhere because of Anatole. Everybody would be afraid of coming into contact with tuberculosis; his current landlady had been unusually kind and tolerant in accepting Anatole’s unexpected return.

  Michael had given anxious thought to trying for work in Caen after his taxi job ended. If he had a bicycle he could cycle the distance from Bayeux each day. There were small signs there of money being invested in rebuilding hotels and restaurants; soon they would need staff. Such was the lack of public transport, however, that without a bike he was marooned in Bayeux.

  He had recently found, in a ditch, the frame of an old bike and was hunting now for other parts. To buy new was impossible; to find used ones for sale or discarded almost as difficult; he had not seen a new bicycle for years.

  He could not bring himself to admit that, without a bicycle, he must wait for Anatole to die before he could think constructively about his own and Maman’s future …

  The taxi stopping at the door of her hotel wakened Barbara from her reverie.

  Michel opened the door for her and helped her down.

  ‘Thank you, Mr …’ she said to him in English, and then she said, ‘I don’t know your name, do I?’

  He smiled. ‘It does not matter, Madame. But I am Michel Benion. I tell you once before.’

  ‘So you did.’ Her eyes twinkled. She said again, ‘Thank you, Mr Benion.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame, for the cigarettes. I am sorry that the day is not so good as I hope.’ He opened his
lips, as if he hesitated but wanted to say something more. He still held her hand. Then, his English stumbling a little, he asked if she would like to see the Bayeux Tapestry. ‘It is again shown here in Bayeux. There is a little fee to see it. I take you tomorrow afternoon? Yes?’

  ‘We wouldn’t need the taxi?’

  ‘Non. It is near.’

  She said slowly, as she saw a flicker of nervous doubt on his face, ‘You know, I would like to see it. I had forgotten all about its being here.’

  He had begun to close the taxi door. He did not want to linger outside the hotel. As he earnestly examined the taxi door handle, he thought: I am crazy to do this. I have no money to waste on women, no home except a lousy attic. I am a nobody. Then: Come on, he told himself. She’s not going to shoot you.

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was waiting politely for him to speak. He said softly, as if the whole of Bayeux were listening, ‘I not come here. I see you outside the flower shop in the side street over there, yes? Two o’clock?’

  She nodded agreement, said goodbye and ran up the hotel steps.

  It was only when she entered her room and flung her handbag onto the bed that she realised that she had, in fact, just accepted a date.

  It’s not a real one, she uneasily told the ghost of George and her own conscience. He’s just a taxi driver, trying to be kind.

  Not really, she hedged. He’s a chicken farmer, a skilled man – like George himself. He owns a little farm, even if it’s infested with mines. And he’s sweet.

  She had not previously associated sweetness with men, and she smiled to herself, as if she were being a little absurd at such an idea.

  Then, as if to beg forgiveness of her beloved ghost, she muttered, ‘I’d never have gone to see it if he hadn’t mentioned it. It was his idea – to make up for cutting short the trip to Caen. The tapestry is famous. In all my life, I may never get another chance to see it.’

  Having put the blame for what seemed to be a dereliction of a grieving widow’s duty firmly on to Michel, she felt better about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Michel took the taxi back to the old stable which was its garage, drew a bucket of water from a pump and dutifully washed down its exterior. Then he wiped its battered upholstery. The interior still smelled slightly of some kind of perfume. He smiled. The sweet odour moved him sexually. Reluctantly, he left the doors open in order to air it.

  Barbara had left the carefully wrapped apples on the seat, whether through forgetfulness or deliberately he did not know. He gratefully took them home.

  The American morticians always teased him when their taxi had an odour of women’s perfume in it; an odour of apples mixed with the faint perfume might confound them, thought Michel with a wry grin. He found their rough humour about sexually hungry widows offensive.

  He was quite prim about sex. There was the kind you bought and the kind you expected when you married, and both were private, each sanctioned by long custom. The Americans’ easy picking up of girls – any girls – reminded him of the Germans, and he did not want any such reminder. He’d suffered enough anguish over Suzanne.

  He felt that he did not want anything salacious said about Madame Barbara Bishop. She was a very nice woman, nicer than any of the other foreign widows he had ferried to cemeteries. Few of them had been as polite to him as she. She had added a modest tip to his fare to her husband’s grave, and then she had given him the cigarettes – a gift which one might, nowadays, give to a friend after a difficult search to find them. To him, it was much more dignified than a tip, though, God knew, he needed money.

  Although he could not afford to spend money on her, he would try to give her a pleasant afternoon tomorrow. With regard to that, he would have to let her pay the fee to the caretaker of the tapestry if he were to stand her a coffee afterwards. It bothered him, but he hoped she would not be offended. He knew a little café, recently reopened, where he could take her afterwards – and he would, somehow, find money for that. He rarely spent anything on himself, except for a few Gauloises to smoke, when they were available.

  He paused, dirty rag halfway across the step of the cab. Tomorrow would be a special treat, coffee with a woman with whom it was easy to talk – despite the problem of language being added to a certain amount of shyness. While driving her, he had not hesitated to give her an outline of his family’s situation, because it illustrated only too well what had happened to many of his neighbours. And he felt that any interested foreigner should learn what Normandy had endured.

  But tomorrow would be different. To her he would no longer be simply the taxi driver. He would be a new friend who had invited her out. And what they would find to talk about, where the invitation would lead him, he was not too sure. At least, he thought with pride, I can make her understand.

  When he was a boy, he had become good friends with the English lady who had, from boredom, taught this bright little peasant lad her own language. He had confided to her that sometimes he dreamed of getting good work in a hotel, as a concierge or a receptionist, or even a manager, which was why he was so keen to learn. He had stated firmly, ‘Not to leave the farm, you understand. Earn more money, buy out my brother’s and my sisters’ shares. Then farm it.’

  Now, while he wrung out his cloth, a mad longing struck him. As he thought about Barbara she became so desirable to him that he ached with longing. And yet, he told himself, to think like that about an Englishwoman was stupid. Nothing could come of it. You couldn’t casually bed a respectable woman like her. It would put him on a level with the Boches – or the Americans.

  What about as a wife? For a moment, he imagined her lying, looking up at him from a linen-covered pillow in the cosiness of his bed in his old home on the farm, her hair loose about her shoulders; and he was drunk with desire.

  He dropped the cloth into the bucket. The resulting splash soaked his trouser leg, and the illusion receded. He stood shaking as common sense took over. To aspire to marriage with her would cause innumerable difficulties. She wouldn’t know anything about dowries, for example. She said she and her mother had a business in England; presumably, she would want to go back to it, even if he could offer her some hope and security in France.

  If only he owned the taxi and could get enough petrol to run it, he would have a small, but firm basis on which to build a livelihood, and, with luck, maintain both his mother and Barbara.

  Despite his effort to disillusion himself, he continued to dream as he sloshed water over the wheels of the old machine. They were dreams that had been put aside since the loss of Suzanne and the chaos to which his life had been reduced by the Allied invasion. He dreamed of a home and a wife like Barbara – and enough money to keep her in talcum powder and nylons.

  He wondered if, perchance, a surgeon could fix his shoulder. No doctor had ever looked at it. When, in childhood, he had fallen out of an apple tree his mother had underestimated the injury. In her opinion, time was precious, not to be wasted by an unnecessary walk of several miles to see the local doctor. She assured Michel that the pain would ease in a little while, handed him an egg basket and told him to go to help Anatole.

  He learned to live with the pain, which did lessen, except when he was doing heavy manual work; when he grew older, he did not consult even an ordinary physician about the injury for fear treatment might mean he could not work for a time. Latterly, he had always to remember that there was Maman and poor old Anatole; as the franc continued to fall in value, if he took time off work it meant less for them.

  Up to now, the three of them had grudged every centime spent, as they tried, franc by franc, to put enough money together to buy, the minute their land was cleared, new breeding stock and laying hens, wood for hen coops, brooders, a barn, electric wiring and new fencing – their needs would be endless.

  It was only very recently that Anatole himself had ceased to talk about what they would do on their return to their precious hectares, and Michel knew that it was the silen
ce of resignation.

  His face was suddenly grim. He slammed the door of the taxi angrily. Poor Anatole, he must be certain now in his own mind that he would never ever wash another egg.

  Michel was filled with anguish. He could not imagine life without his stolid elder brother, nor yet a normal life while he still lived.

  He unlocked the petrol pump. He was the only person who had a key to it, except the American petrol tanker driver who refilled the holding tank – Colonel Buck had seen to that. He slowly filled up the taxi.

  He wiped down the bonnet of the vehicle with sudden furious energy. When its rusted exterior seemed as clean as possible, he paused to lean against it, tired. Then he roused himself and patted it as if it were a dog.

  ‘If only I owned you, Monsieur le Taxi, I would at least have a start. I can manage you without my shoulder acting up. And if I owned you, let’s be honest, I would never let little Madame Barbara slip away.

  ‘And, now, Monsieur,’ he said to the taxi, as he closed the garage door and locked it, ‘I must go to do some weeding or Monsieur Duval won’t be the only employer liable to fire me.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Towards nine o’clock that evening, a very weary Michel climbed the stairs to his attic home. During his patient weeding of a large strawberry bed following the garaging of the taxi, his worries had continued to close in upon him. Most pressing was the departure of his American employers, together with their boundless supply of petrol.

  Old Duval, blacksmith and motor mechanic, had repaired the antiquated vehicle and then leased it for four months to the morticians, with a driver who spoke English and knew the district, as Colonel Buck had stipulated. He had been thankful to find lessees who had petrol to run it. He had not worried too much about the amount of mileage they might run up.