Madame Barbara

by Helen Forrester

  ‘And you must accept that He knows best, child,’ she had admonished.

  It had been a dreadfully hard lesson to learn.

  In the cool, incense-perfumed air of a sacred building which had survived for centuries, with a medieval, stone Madonna looking calmly at them, they sat down in the shadow of a huge pillar.

  Michel slipped his arm round Barbara’s waist. He touched her chin and turned her face to his. She was so white that her makeup looked tawdry.

  Did she fear him? he wondered. Or was she finding it shocking to be held by another man so soon after she had seen her husband’s grave?

  But we have so little time, he thought. She will go home, and I will be left with just a memory. He stroked her cheek.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.

  She smiled again. ‘Oh, I’m not afraid of you, exactly. It’s strange, that’s all.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said in French.

  It was the avowal of a mature man, who until yesterday had almost forgotten that there were humble joys in life which did not altogether depend upon finding something to eat. Slowly and carefully, he kissed her.

  The response was more than he had hoped for. She slipped her hand round his neck and pressed him to her. It seemed absurd that he should be surprised that she opened her mouth to him, but he was. This woman was not a virgin, he remembered, and the freedom with which she responded to him spoke of a growing passion. Her dark blue eyes twinkled suddenly at his consequent discomfiture.

  When she reluctantly drew away from him, he laughed quite joyously, showing for once the light-hearted character which lay beneath his present misery.

  The laugh echoed through the little chapel, and Barbara, afraid that they might draw unwelcome attention to themselves, hastily put her fingers over his mouth. ‘Michel! Hush!’

  He kissed her fingers and then straightened himself a little. In a city still packed with refugees, where he did not have even a bed, never mind a room of his own, where did a couple go to make love?

  Even a secluded piece of grass outside the city itself was a potential death threat, and, anyway, who wanted a first encounter under dripping bocage? He knew that there were shops, such as dressmakers’ tiny stores, where the rich could make a rendezvous and utilise a room behind the business – but he had no money for such a luxury.

  ‘We talk, chérie.’ He rubbed his lips with the back of his hand, and looked slyly at her.

  Ruefully she assented. ‘We’re not being very wise, are we?’ Her voice was unsteady; she was still a little shaky. She bit her lower lip and then glanced sideways at him, a hint of a smile creasing her thin cheeks. ‘The truth is, you know, we’re both suffering from night starvation!’

  He did not fully appreciate her remark, because he did not know the old joke about Ovaltine, a popular British milk drink often taken at bedtime – to avoid night starvation, as the firm’s advertisement stated. But her remark still struck him as funny, because it was, indeed, so true. He laughed and kissed her on the lips, lightly this time.

  Was this real love? She did not know. It was certainly different; she was riding a rollercoaster of feelings. And, Jaysus, he was handsome in a dark saturnine way, the lines in his face deep, as if carved out of rock, the cheeks a little reddened by exposure – and a body the same – hard and weathered by work, judging by the feel of him. And yet so dreadfully thin.

  It was she who began the serious conversation by enquiring gently if he had a wife or children. ‘I seem to remember that you mentioned your fiancée.’

  ‘Mon Dieu! Non! My fiancée is lost to me. You believe I sit with you now if I have wife or anybody? Non! I want to marry you, but I have nothing to offer except problems – big problems.’ He blew out a great breath. ‘Have you childs?’

  ‘Children? No. Only a mother. We work together, as I told you – though Mam would like to retire. She’s in her fifties.’

  ‘As I told you, I have Maman – and Anatole. And Uncle Léon who goes to sea; he sail out of Port-au-Bessin. And two married sisters in Rouen; they have childs – children – one each, little Colette and Annette.’

  He stirred uneasily, and she cuddled in closer. He heaved a great sigh. ‘Anatole die soon, I fear.’ He dragged this admission out with difficulty, but he was anxious that she should know exactly how matters stood.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. It must be hard for all of you,’ she responded with genuine concern. It was her turn to sigh. Then she added, ‘TB is very common in Liverpool.’ She understood the possible complexities of his life.

  ‘Yes?’ He was absently stroking her cheek again with one hand. Instinctively she caught it, opened it and planted a kiss on his palm. He closed it sharply. ‘No,’ he said a little desperately. ‘We talk.’

  Her spirits had risen a little, and she looked at him wickedly through half-closed eyes, ‘Yes, sir.’ She decided that she must be truly insane.

  ‘I must help to provide for Maman and for Anatole – and, most important, help Maman to nurse Anatole. You understand? Maman cannot do it alone. So I am not free. I tell you how we cannot work on our land, nor can we sell it – it’s thick with mines. Our home is ruin, our birds, animals dead.’ He threw up his free hand in a passionate gesture, to indicate the totality of his ruination.

  She had seen, after air raids, this same despair in the shattered streets of Liverpool, and she nodded.

  He went on angrily, ‘When he come to Bayeux, General de Gaulle make promises. Communist Party – they are big part of Resistance – they make promises. Everybody make promises. General de Gaulle is big man, so I believe him. I work at anything – immediate, fast – to feed us, while I wait for Government to clear the mines. But what Government? As always, a herd of imbeciles; they don’t care about peasant. Now I know de Gaulle lie. He is like Hitler, but without real power. He makes Americans quiver like rabbits with nerves over our socialism.’

  Once again, he surprised Barbara with his intensity. She understood exactly what he meant and reminded him cautiously that the Americans had just agreed to give Marshall Aid to France.

  ‘True. Very late!’ His face was set in grim straight lines, as he went on, ‘Now, I think very much what I do for me – and you. But I cannot move Anatole – he is too sick. Otherwise, I go to Le Havre or Rouen. Look for work.’ He was desperately anxious that Barbara should understand his situation clearly.

  She nodded acceptance of his explanations.

  He continued, ‘Also, Maman want to stay close to our land. She fear someone take it – say we are dead and steal it once it is clear, you understand? I get chance with taxi. I learn to drive. I make a little saving, to buy things for Anatole.’ He sighed. ‘Try to buy a front wheel and tyres for a bike I build, so I can do work at a distance. No wheel, no tyres, up to now.’

  He turned to her and caressed her neck lightly. ‘I see you and I know immediately what I want.’ His expression changed, he smiled down at her, and she felt weak and very vulnerable. She let him talk on, however.

  ‘Now I have ambition. I cannot wait for Government. I can only try to prepare for better times. I cannot do everything.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Marry you,’ he replied promptly.

  She felt like a drunk, as she plunged. ‘That’s probably a very good idea.’

  He laughed, and kissed her. Then he loosened his grip a little, and went on relentlessly, ‘Another problem. I am peasant farmer. You’re bourgeoise, a townswoman, I believe? Big difference in France.’

  ‘Tush! I’m a working-class woman – my dad went to sea. What exactly do you mean by bourgeoise? I’m not rich. I work hard.’

  ‘Much difference here. You do not know how hard is a peasant’s life when he has so little land – a small piece owned jointly by family members.’

  He paused and took in a deep breath. ‘I want to work in a town with a decent house and a decent wage. I have problem with my shoulder – you must notice. There is much construction work in Rouen, but
I cannot do very, very heavy labour every day. The pain is much.’

  ‘I do understand about heavy work, indeed I do,’ she replied with vehemence. ‘How did you manage on your farm?’

  His smile was suddenly grim. ‘Much pain. I want to scream – like pig on killing day. Mon père say I’m lazy boy – a coward. Life is hard for a peasant. His earnings are so small that his children also, must work if they are to be fed.’

  ‘Poor Michel.’ She considered for a moment what he had told her, and then added, ‘Poor Papa,’ as she saw how a parent could be caught in such a situation.

  She had once again surprised him. ‘You understand?’ he exclaimed. ‘It is not simple, is it, when you must feed a family?’

  ‘So what plans have you?’

  He tightened his grip round her, and was silent. Then he said reluctantly, ‘First, you must understand, we have to wait for Anatole.’

  ‘Are you sure he is going to die?’ The question was brutal, but she felt she must know.

  ‘Certain, except a miracle happen. Doctor say nothing can help him. Anatole suffer very much in Germany – overwork, starvation. It is much sadness for Maman and me.’ He sighed heavily. ‘We love him, we take care of him. We say no to hospital – he stay with us. Even if I have good job, nobody want to rent house or rooms to a family with la tuberculose. Anyway, house to buy or rent very hard to find anywhere in Normandy – so much ruin. So we wait – until now.’

  ‘You poor souls. Then after Anatole passes away, what next?’

  ‘I think Maman live with my sister in Rouen. Claudette still have home over shop – Bertrand and Claudette is bakers. Maman be big help for them. My other sister, Anne-Marie, lose her home and her younger child, little Philippe – bomb – so she have problems. Most sad. Her husband very kind – he drive a big lorry. He bring things to help Anatole – sometimes milk.’

  ‘What will Madame Benion live on?’

  ‘You mean money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She have small pension from Government, though each day it is worth less. But I send her money. My sister feed her, give her bed. There is talk of regular, new pension for old people – if she get that, she enjoy life, help to care for little Colette. Claudette is much kind.’

  As far as she could judge, he was trying to be absolutely truthful with her. Yet, she had heard that the French were very reticent! Perhaps he regarded her already as an instant addition to the family.

  She smiled at the latter thought; you don’t simply marry a man, she told herself. You must remember, old girl, that you also marry a family. And that could certainly complicate life.

  Though she already knew George’s widowed mother, she had not even considered the rest of George’s family when she had said yes to him. But then, the war was on and one did not look ahead very much.

  Now, who could say what would come out of a France that, she had been warned by the Thomas Cook’s agent, did not yet have a stable government; or, come to that, out of a bankrupt, dreary Britain with a Labour government bent on changing everything in sight? How long would American bankers put up with the latter, she wondered.

  ‘How did you learn so much English?’ she asked inconsequentially.

  He grinned. ‘I speak terrible.’

  ‘No. You know a lot of words.’

  ‘I learn when I am a young boy,’ he said, and explained about the old English retirees to whom he had delivered eggs and roasting chickens. ‘I buy little book for traveller, and I ask them, “How you say this, how you say that?” They laugh – they tell me. I learn.’

  The ladies, he told her with a chuckle, had certainly been tickled at his clumsy attempts at English. Then some of them had become interested in his struggle to learn and had been very helpful. One of them had been kind enough to give him a big French/English dictionary and, later on, a short lesson at her kitchen table each week when he came to her house. She had made him pronounce the strange English words again and again until, with the exception of the letter H which constantly eluded him, he had, he hoped, almost the same clarity of pronunciation that she had herself. He came to the conclusion, he declared with a grin, that he had become her hobby, a luxury limited to the English retirees; no one like himself had time for such things.

  Confidences poured out of him, some of which he had previously alluded to more casually.

  He reminded her of the English pilots they had hidden, and how he had talked with them every night. ‘Also, German officer speak English, not French. I talk to them in English about food for Germany, which I must send them.’

  ‘Why did you want to learn?’

  ‘I think I get job in hotel – easy job, like Reservations – not like farm. Now I teach you French, eh?’ He grinned mischievously.

  She straightened herself in the hard wooden pew. Now she understood his predicament, and she smiled a little sadly, as she responded doubtfully, ‘Perhaps, my Michel. Perhaps.’

  In a world in such a mess as theirs was, she considered, you could not foretell the future; she, like other English people, had tended to assume that daily life would return eventually to what it had been before the war began. But it certainly showed little sign of doing so.

  In her heart she had realised, on seeing George’s grave, that all the safe, mundane assumptions of peacetime life – that your home would still be there in the morning, that governments knew what they were doing, that your men would probably come home, even if they were seamen – were by no means certain.

  Worst of all and most terrifying, nobody knew when or where the third atomic bomb would be dropped, but everybody was sure that it would be dropped; the authorities were, in anticipation, already digging deep shelters; and training school children, poor little lambs, to take refuge under their desks the moment the air-raid siren sounded.

  All that was unequivocal to Barbara was the ardent man beside her, though she feared that even he might fail her because of the difficulty of getting out of the morass he was in.

  She leaned forward to kiss her newly acquired Michel on the cheek as if saying a sad, gentle farewell.

  Chapter Nineteen

  They stayed in the cathedral until the sun’s rays faded and the gorgeous colours of the glass of the western windows began to darken. They had not talked much more, simply sat, warm body to warm body, both drained by the continuous effort demanded of them by years of war and a bleak and empty peace.

  It was as if the little candle of hope in each of them burned low. Occasionally, as if to reassure themselves, they would turn to kiss each other, long and softly, the torrent of passion, for the moment, held back.

  Yet, even if neither of them had much hope of a future together, they drew consolation from each other’s closeness and a deep sense of the shared experience of hardship and deprivation.

  As they reluctantly left the cathedral and proceeded down a side street, Michel pointed out to Barbara a lovely front garden lit up by a streetlamp. It was full of rose bushes beginning to bud.

  ‘I return you to the flower shop, and then I do an hour’s weeding in there – a job of sharp prickles, especially when it’s a bit dark!’

  She laughed, and said, ‘It must look magnificent when all the flowers are out.’

  ‘It does,’ replied Michel with a grin. ‘I do not bleed for nothing! Madame Dubois love roses – very kind lady. Monsieur Dubois give her a front garden full.’

  ‘Do you do a lot of gardening?’

  ‘Non. I do tidying up, mowing, weeding – in the evening, when the Americans are finished early and the taxi is safe, locked up in the garage.’

  Barbara was impressed. His day must be as long as mine is when I’m at home, she decided.

  In front of the flower shop where they had met on Sunday, they parted rather formally, shyly, reluctant to unclasp their hands, both doubtful of what the future held for them.

  Michel said with determined assurance, ‘I take Colonel Buck to Caen tomorrow, and the other two to a new cemetery. Then I com
e for you about eleven in the morning, yes? Monsieur le Colonel return by train. His ’elpers I collect at four p.m.’

  Barbara agreed.

  ‘I’ll bring some lunch,’ she promised. She hoped that the hotel would have sufficient rations to provide her again with a packed lunch.

  Though she was enchanted at the thought of spending time with Michel, she was vaguely disturbed that he took it for granted. Admittedly, she had said that it was a good idea that he should marry her, but she had meant it more as a sly teasing aside, a piece of Liverpool repartee.

  He seemed to her a sensible man, a fine, straightforward person; yet, he was in a most unpromising situation, and she continued to be afraid to let her hopes rise.

  As she washed herself, in preparation for dinner in the hotel dining room, her despondency grew. How could she possibly hope for anything between them, except for a casual, holiday love affair? She felt foolish to look for anything more.

  Grow up, woman, she ordered her image in the mirror quite angrily, as she applied fresh makeup.

  I want him permanently, she insisted. Casual affairs? I could find them, two for a penny, in Liverpool.

  ‘I wish to stay with you,’ he had told her regretfully. Then he had shrugged. ‘Maman is all day indoors with Anatole, and she visit her friend for a little while this evening. So I must stay at home. First, though, I go to Dubois’s to weed and water his roses.’

  ‘Of course. Could I meet your mother?’

  To meet his mother would be a good way of opening things up, she had considered; of testing how serious he was in his intentions. In Liverpool, if a man were courting a girl seriously, he always took her home to meet his mam; it committed him. She smiled at the memory. She could, however, perhaps learn more of Michel from another woman, particularly his mother – if she were friendly – though Michel would have to translate for them. Just looking at the woman would tell her a little.

  He was startled. He had not thought of such an encounter as an immediate possibility, and he had the instinctive reaction of a French person to any invasion of his private space, particularly his home – if his could be called a home.