Though Michel had probably never considered who would inherit Anatole’s share of the land, Anatole himself had. With the aid of Father Nicolas, he had made a simple will, leaving all he possessed to his brother. When Maman herself died, her own share of their land would automatically be divided between her remaining three children.
She glanced over at Anatole. He was sleeping peacefully. The doctor had called that day and had increased slightly the sedative he was free to take as needed.
Monsieur le Docteur had been most kind; in fact, he had sounded too kind – she was very apprehensive about it.
As she showed him out into the stairwell, he had taken Madame Benion’s hand, and said, ‘If he has difficulty in swallowing his pills, call me immediately and I’ll come and give him a shot.’
She had wanted to cry, first at the merciful kindness of the busy physician, but also because it sounded as if the boy’s time was near; if he expected that Anatole might not be able to swallow, it would be the end. And how I am going to face it, I don’t know, she thought. There is no more strength in me.
Now, however, she rose to greet her baby with a cheerful smile on her worn face. Was there not a whole pot of chicken and vegetables with a full ration of bread awaiting him?
As usual, he opened the door quietly and glanced first at the bed by the window. Then he came to his mother, put his arms round her and kissed her on both cheeks.
‘A good day?’ she whispered.
He made a face. ‘No tips. It was a good day, though. After supper, I’ll tell you and Anatole all about it.’
‘Yes, do.’ Then she announced with pride, ‘I promised chicken, and chicken it is. Do you want to wash first?’
‘No. I washed in the hotel.’ He did not mention that the hot water in the hotel lavatory had been a real luxury, even if there was no soap.
He paused uncertainly in the middle of the room. ‘Would you like to wait for supper until Anatole wakes up?’ he asked. ‘Monsieur le Colonel stood me a good lunch, so it will be easy for me to wait.’
His mother looked doubtfully across at her elder son. ‘I think that, if we’re quiet, he’ll sleep for a couple of hours yet. While he was here, the doctor gave him a slightly higher dose. Anatole was complaining of pain in his left side.’
Michel turned uneasy eyes upon his mother. ‘It’s usually his right side which bothers him. What are we to do if he wakes and he’s still in pain?’
‘As long as he can swallow it, he can have another pill.’ Maman wrapped her hands tightly in her apron. ‘I’m to send for the doctor immediately if he can’t swallow.’
Michel wanted to ask if, in such circumstances, they should also send for Father Nicolas. He did not wish, however, to frighten his mother unnecessarily, so he nodded his head, and said, ‘Then, I’ll go down to the kitchen and get the soup pot for you.’
His mother agreed, and went to the little cupboard to get out bowls, spoons, and a loaf of bread. She had wrapped the bread in a damp cloth to keep it from drying out, and she now carefully unwound it and laid it, together with a knife, on a bread board. She then put everything down on the floor beside the mattress on which she slept.
Most of the inhabitants of the rooming house ate their main meal at midday, so, when Michel entered it, the stone-floored kitchen was empty and the fire was low. At the side of the stove, the soup cauldron seemed comfortably hot when he picked it up.
As he slowly climbed the stairs again, their landlady came out of her living room and peeped down at him over the banisters.
‘Ah, Michel. How goes it? Are you feeling all right now?’
He stopped and looked up at her. ‘Yes, Madame. I am sorry that I caused such a disturbance. Thank you for allowing Father and me to use your sitting room.’
‘It was nothing.’ She waited hopefully for a further explanation. Holding the soup pot carefully by its hooped handle, he told her frankly that he had lost his best friend in the war – tortured by the bloody Boches – and he had suddenly remembered it in all its detail at a time when he was very weary.
Her eyes were full of pity, as she replied, ‘You poor man.’ Her huge bosom heaved, as she added, ‘We all have such memories, Monsieur, either of the Germans or the Allies and their invasion. It’s a cross which we must bear for the rest of our lives.’ She leaned more comfortably upon the banister, and then said, ‘I’m relieved that Father Nicolas was able to comfort you.’
‘He was very good, Madame. He understood – better than a doctor.’ He did not tell her that Father Nicolas had warned him that a lesser outburst could occur again, and that he should let himself cry freely – and, perhaps, find a friend with whom to talk it out.
She smiled, heaved herself upright, and let him pass on up the stairs with his burden. Madame Benion was fortunate in having still one son who was fit and well. She sighed lustily again. Her own son was in gaol, doing time for looting – so stupid to get caught.
While his mother was dishing out the chicken stew, Michel went quietly to his brother’s bedside. He was so thin that old friends would not have recognised him as the big silent man who could shift a henhouse to a new position without even taking an extra breath. Now each breath, though shallow, seemed an immense effort. A day’s beard showed very black against a skin like ivory; even the lips lacked colour and the girlish rose on each cheek, which was a symptom of his disease, had vanished.
‘Come and have your supper,’ hissed Maman, careful not to raise her voice.
With a heavy heart, Michel sat down cross-legged on the mattress to eat.
The chicken was delicious. Although he had enjoyed one good meal that day, he was quite ready to eat again. ‘Maman, you’re a wonderful cook,’ he told her. And for a few special moments she was happy.
As he wiped a last piece of bread round his dish, he asked, ‘Maman, do you think it’s time for Anne-Marie and Claudette to be told to come to see Anatole? They’ve been good about sending stuff for him, though they’ve never been near us since la tuberculose was diagnosed.’
His question cut like a tiny knife into his mother’s heart. Ever since the doctor’s visit that morning, she had been worrying over the same question.
She understood perfectly her daughters’ fear of the deadly disease and of carrying it to their children. It had not stopped her, however, from occasionally feeling a dull resentment that they lacked the courage to come to see her.
After all, she was their mother, wasn’t she – and it was Anatole, their own brother, who was dying? Did they never think how much both of them would have enjoyed a visit from them? And if Michel could, fearlessly, day in and day out, wash and shave his brother and could, as necessary, empty the bloody contents of his bowl for him, surely they could come and stand by his bedside for a few minutes, to ask him how he was.
Madame Benion admitted cautiously to Michel, ‘Perhaps they should.’ Then she burst out, ‘I know it’s been difficult to get here from Rouen, but now they could come by train – or perhaps Guy could give them a lift in his lorry.’
Though he agreed that Claudette and Anne-Marie had not made much effort, he did not wish to damn them any further in his mother’s eyes.
He replied cautiously, ‘We could ask Guy next time he comes – he could bring one at a time, perhaps.’
‘I’ll write to them tomorrow, and suggest it.’ His mother dipped another piece of bread into her stew, and chewed it while she reflected. Her face was carefully expressionless, as she finally said, ‘I think they should come soon.’
Suddenly the joy of eating two good meals in one day vanished. Michel said dully, ‘Yes, Maman.’ It was difficult to swallow his last piece of bread.
Since his return home, Anatole had been a heavy and frustrating load to carry. But he had been a steady moral support to his younger brother, someone to talk to, someone to crack a joke with; someone who had, for months, read the newspapers and had, in spite of his weakness, retained a lively interest in matters political where farmers were involv
ed. Pressed by the need to earn every penny he could, Michel had little time to read the papers; he would have been sadly ignorant of what was going on if Anatole had not told him. His radio, which he had clung to all through the occupation, had been lost in his ruined home.
There was something deeper, too, between the brothers. Nursing the dying is not a one-way street; at no other time does the communion of two persons become so intense. Michel’s ideas of what was important in life had shifted completely, as he and Anatole faced the finality of death together.
Michel slowly put down his empty bowl.
‘You must accept,’ Father Nicolas had said. ‘God does not give you a burden greater than you can bear; suffering brings understanding – and wisdom. Be patient, my son; this too will pass. And life has a way of bringing compensations, not necessarily in money, but in human regard and in understanding of God’s Will.’
Good advice, no doubt. But hard to accept, when you wanted to scream to high heaven, because you are going to be so terribly alone.
His mother was putting the lid back onto her big black soup pot, as he said carefully, ‘Do you think we should send for Father Nicolas – for Anatole?’
Chapter Twenty-nine
The next morning, his mind still engrossed by thoughts of his struggling brother, mixed incoherently with how he should deal with Barbara that evening, Michel filled up the taxi from Monsieur Duval’s pump.
The Americans were dependent, to a degree, on the honesty of the Frenchman regarding the use of the fuel. The colonel was supposed to keep a note of his group’s mileage in the vehicle; but he never did. Routinely, therefore, Michel entered against the Americans’ account more petrol than he had put into the cab. This small swindle did not bother his conscience; he owed Duval something for getting him the job.
As to most Europeans at the time, the Americans seemed so immensely rich to him that he believed that they would never even notice such a small peccadillo. If they wanted to protect themselves, Michel would have argued, Elmer or Wayne could have come each morning and checked on him.
It was not as if they were using the taxi to help forward the repair of desperate, ruined Normandy, Michel always felt a little resentfully; they were simply taking their own dead home, a luxury that only the richest country in the world could afford. How much did they care about French dead packed into every churchyard in Calvados?
While fraught with great anxiety about what might be happening at home, he absently dusted the seats and wiped over the bonnet and windscreens. And then there was Barbara; it was only a few days since she, too, had wept her heart out for someone dead, he reminded himself. What was going on in her mind?
He himself was very sleepy. Anatole had woken in the small hours of the morning. Michel had managed to warm a few tablespoonsful of soup for him on the kitchen’s banked-up fire. The invalid had drunk them sip by sip, but had refused little bits of bread dipped into the liquid. Then his mother had crushed a pill and mixed it with water. He took it eagerly. It made him cough when he swallowed it, but, with the aid of a little more water, most of it seemed to go down. Then, Michel held his hand until he eventually slept again.
He had been still asleep when Michel left for work.
Filled with silent dread, Michel had loathed leaving his mother. But what he earned from his taxi driving made all the difference in their lives; and Anatole had to have a decent burial when he finally left them. That hardly bearable thought would take every centime they had – and they would probably still be in debt. And what would he do if Barbara also left him? It was too painful to contemplate.
He greeted his Americans with his usual friendly grin, duly deposited them at the cemetery, and was back at the hotel in time to collect the Canadian visitor.
While he waited for the man to be called, he looked around for Barbara, but could not see her. He hoped she had received his note of the previous evening. Though he yearned intensely to take her to a quiet place and really talk with her, he did not feel inclined, for the moment, to spend much time away from home. Warned by instinct, he knew that it was paramount that he should go home as soon as he could.
The burly Canadian, his huge hooded jacket flapping open, wore boots of a quality even greater than those of the Americans, Michel noted enviously. Under his big jacket he sported a checked flannel shirt, unlike anything Michel had seen before. A camera was hung round his neck.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Know where this place is, eh?’ He thrust a card under Michel’s nose.
‘Sure,’ replied Michel in English, and named his price.
The man nodded. ‘OK.’ Then, as he climbed into the taxi, he asked, ‘You speak English?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
‘Jeeze! You come from Quebec, maybe?’
‘No, Monsieur, I was born here in Calvados.’
‘Humph, my grandfather spoke French, but I never learned it.’
Michel nodded politely, and then asked, ‘Monsieur has, perhaps, a brother in the cemetery?’
The man grunted. ‘No. My boy cheated on his age and joined the Army. Wanted to see Europe, I guess. Silly bugger. He was only seventeen.’
‘My sympathy, Monsieur.’
To Michel, the Canadian was a curiosity, and when the man began to take an interest in the country through which they passed, he answered him at length, and pointed out where the Canadians had made their breakthrough towards Caen. Michel stopped the taxi, at this point, while Cardinal got out to take some photos.
‘Were you in the Army?’ he asked Michel, as he put his camera back in its case.
‘No, Monsieur. I was exempt. One shoulder is damage.’ Then he felt a little annoyed, and, in defence of his apparent lack of valour, he said, ‘I help the Resistance. Resistance blow up railways, bridges, roads, telegraph poles. Make life hard for the sales Boches. Hide British airmen and spies.’
Because the Canadian wanted to know everything: about the shortage of transport; the story of the antique taxi; life under the Germans; what might have happened to his son; what the invasion was like, Michel’s troubles at home were relegated to the back of his mind. His English was stretched to its limit while he tried to cope with this inquisitive Canadian – so very unlike the Americans.
While a cemetery gardener led the Canadian to his son’s grave, Michel, with time on his hands, discreetly did his kick-boxing exercises, poised on one leg, turning on his heel, particularly to practise to keep his balance perfect – he did not want to be in another fight where he stumbled as he had done on the previous day.
To the returning Canadian, he looked like a ballet dancer.
The Canadian paused by the cab, to take several views of the cemetery, and then took a picture of the taxi.
‘Like to do that high kick again? I’d like a photo of it – you must be a dancer.’ He sniggered; to his way of thinking, a male ballet dancer was almost certainly a homosexual and therefore to be despised.
Michel’s lips tightened. He said primly, ‘I’m a kick-boxer.’
‘A what?’
‘A kick-boxer. I fight. It hurt terrific.’
The Canadian became a little more circumspect. ‘Never heard of it,’ he said, and sighed.
His mind was really on his stupid imp of a son; if he had no kid to leave it to, what was the use of an excellent business as a hunting guide, with a fishing lodge, to boot, to which he had clung through the worst recession in history. He was an ass to have come on this trip. It had just made him feel bad.
Michel had sensed the slur in the man’s earlier remarks, and would have dearly loved to kick him. The sigh, however, reminded him that this peculiar person, who at this moment looked like a ferocious bear on a bad day, was presumably mourning, just as his previous passengers had been. So he swallowed his anger and enquired if Monsieur wished to return to the hotel.
‘Yeah, I suppose. You stop when I tell you. I wanna take some more photos.’
‘Of course, Monsieur.’
Michel began to wonde
r if he would get back in time to collect his Americans.
‘I want a picture of some ruins.’
‘Yes, Monsieur. Ruins from the war?’
‘Yeah, what else?’
‘We have ruins that are very ancient, even Roman ones.’
‘Humph.’
So they stopped at several villages that were little else but heaps of stone and slate.
Where the outer walls of a farmhouse still stood, the Canadian had to be restrained from plunging into it.
‘Monsieur, it may be mined,’ Michel yelled at him.
The man laughed. ‘You’re kidding? The war’s bin over three years now.’
‘No, Monsieur. I insist. You must not go in.’
‘Gonna kick me, if I do?’
Michel wondered if he should. He said diffidently, ‘If Monsieur insists on killing himself, who am I to stop him? Madame, your wife, however, lose a husband and a son.’
The man laughed as he absently lifted his camera and snapped a broken tree. ‘Her? She left Gary and me years ago. Don’t even know where she is.’
Michel was shocked. At least with Suzanne he knew where she was.
He said in conciliatory tones, ‘Life is precious, Monsieur. You are not old yet. You live in a fine country. You have much to live for. The future – it still wait for you.’
The Canadian lost his sardonic expression. He was suddenly all attention. ‘The future’s still waiting for me?’ He was quiet for a minute, and then he said in a puzzled way, ‘Nobody ever said that to me before.’
Michel, anxious to get the man safely back into the taxi, simply changed the subject by suggesting briskly that he must be in need of lunch and that the hotel was the best place in Calvados to get it. And, incidentally, had he tried a glass of Calvados yet? ‘It is an excellent drink.’
‘No,’ said his passenger, his bumptiousness drained from him. ‘But I sure need a glass of something.’
Madame Barbara Page 27