Madame Barbara

by Helen Forrester

  And, without a single word, he ran.

  Father Nicolas was out, said his slatternly housekeeper.

  ‘Well, any priest. A man is dying,’ pleaded the panting messenger.

  So a young, newly ordained priest, fleeter than the messenger, grabbed the case containing the beautiful enamelled box which held the holy oil, a little bottle of holy water, a tiny pochette of wafers, and a small bottle of wine, kept ready for such emergencies, and ran down the narrow alley, and up the flights of stairs. At the top, he paused for a moment.

  Framed in the open doorway, he saw a woman on her knees beside a bed where a man lay very still.

  He thought he was too late.

  The panting musician caught up with him, and said, ‘In there, mon Père. Madame Benion and her son.’

  The youngster wanted to cry himself. He had seen much carnage in the years of his studies for the priesthood; yet he still found it difficult to look on death as the Will of God, and therefore to be accepted.

  Nevertheless, he went swiftly over to Madame Benion and spoke her name. She rose quickly to her feet. She was haggard but dry-eyed.

  She was startled at being faced with a stranger. But she said urgently, ‘He’s alive, mon Père. Be quick.’

  As he snapped open his little case, the priest was already saying carefully the blessed words, and he immediately performed his duties, his movements gentle and compassionate.

  Comforted and protected by Extreme Unction, a French peasant, after much suffering patiently borne, went to his Lord with a smile on his face, to join the thousands and thousands of his brethren who had died as a result of the war.

  The priest did not catch his last word, but his mother, bending to kiss him, heard it and was surprised.

  He said, ‘Henri!’ as if greeting someone in delighted surprise.

  The priest covered the dead man’s face with the grubby sheet, and eased the mother away from him. When she began to cry with deep agonised moans, he thought that Mary, the mother of Jesus, our Lady of Sorrows, must have wept exactly like that.

  He turned to sit her in a chair but there was no chair.

  He spotted the mattress on the floor, and asked if she would like to lie down. Obediently, she had fallen on her knees and then curled up in a foetal position. He gently covered her with a blanket. He then turned to the musician, who had stood silently in the doorway.

  The man’s eyes were closed, as he muttered a prayer. He crossed himself, and then opened his eyes.

  The priest asked if there were another woman in the house, and if so, would he go to fetch her?

  ‘Oui, mon Père.’ He patiently trotted down the stairs to the kitchen to find Madame Blanc.

  She was in the midst of washing the kitchen floor. She immediately left her bucket and floorcloth and ran upstairs. On the way, she stopped at her living room, to snatch up a bottle and a glass. Then she continued upwards.

  The young priest was standing nervously by the mattress, fiddling with his beads. Madame paused, and then went quietly to kneel down by her distraught friend. She quickly poured out a thimbleful of brandy and put the glass down on the floor.

  The bereaved woman was beating the mattress with one fist as she lay and wept.

  Once again, Madame set out to comfort a tenant who had, long since, become her friend.

  The young priest was thankful to have her there. He asked if there were any other members of the family – perhaps he could inform them?

  ‘Her other son will be at the American cemetery. He’s working with some Americans – American Army.’ She paused, to lift up Madame Benion’s head and put her arm under her. ‘It’s too far to send a messenger. He’ll be home in the afternoon.’

  She bent over to say softly to Maman, ‘Hush, hush, dear friend. He has no more pain now. He’s with God. There, there. Sip a little cognac – it will soothe you.’

  The priest fidgeted, and she said to him, ‘In a little while, I’ll take her downstairs, if she’ll come. I won’t leave her until Michel returns.’

  ‘Has she any other friends nearby?’

  ‘Indeed, she has. I’ll send a boy to ask Madame Bazaine. Then the word will go all round the neighbourhood. Together we’ll help her to wash the body and make it decent.’

  She looked up at the priest. So young, so helpless, she thought.

  ‘Don’t worry, mon Père. She’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘I have Mass in half an hour.’ He moved thankfully towards the door. ‘I’ll tell Father Nicolas when he returns.’

  By the time Michel loped down the street, there was a small gathering of elderly women, wrapped tightly in shawls, gossiping on the step of the lodging house.

  He slowed, as he came up to them. ‘It’s Anatole, isn’t it?’ he enquired, his face grim.

  They nodded solemnly like some Greek chorus, and made way for him to run up the stairs.

  He flew up to the top floor, and flung open the door, ‘Maman?’

  Madame Bazaine, seated on a chair kindly lent by the musician, turned towards him. Behind her lay Anatole, stiff and straight, arms crossed upon his breast. A lit candle glowed on a small shelf above his head.

  She said, ‘Madame Benion is downstairs, dear boy. Father Nicolas came half an hour ago to see her. He has just left.’ She rose so that Michel could come close to his brother.

  Michel stood silent for a moment. He felt overwhelmed by loss, like a child deserted by its parents. Dear Anatole! He bent over and put his hand over one of his brother’s cool ones.

  ‘Goodbye, my brother,’ he said huskily. Then, after staring down at him while he tried to control the raw pain of separation, he turned, stony-faced, to Madame Bazaine. ‘I must go down to Maman.’

  ‘Of course. I will sit all night, if necessary.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame.’

  And, now here he was, wallowing in self-condemnation, as he walked behind the coffin and held his mother firmly; he hoped she could bear the interment without collapsing.

  In his mind he was talking to his brother, begging him to forgive him for his sense of relief that he could now try to put his own life to rights: could, perhaps, by some miracle yet to be performed, marry his lovely Barbara and begin a life in England by tilling her two hectares for her, no matter how much it hurt his shoulder, while he perfected his English and looked for better work.

  She had said that it would make a good little market garden; it could provide vegetables and some fruit for themselves and their clients, and they could sell the balance locally. And she knew he could raise twenty laying hens without a special permit. It wasn’t a great deal, but if he could get a resident’s permit, it was a start. Just a few miracles will be needed, he thought ironically.

  Maman had told him of Anatole’s last word. ‘It was strange,’ she had said, ‘that at the end he remembered young Henri.’

  Michel eyebrows rose in surprise, but he replied carefully to her, ‘Well, you and I owe our lives to Henri. It was a tremendous sacrifice on Henri’s part – probably Anatole was thinking of the past – it would be natural – we were all three good friends.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. I suppose it’s quite possible.’

  Although he was no longer sure that there was a God, Michel hoped, for Anatole’s sake, that his brother was happily swinging on a cloud with Henri, under the benevolent care of an almighty understanding Being.

  Except for the grief she had to bear, he was not worried about his mother. Both her daughters would comfort her; and they had both assured him that they would be glad to have her to live with them, a patient pleasant woman to help them with their children. Her small government pension would give her a sense of independence, and he himself could probably add to it, once he got on his feet.

  As the coffin was slowly lowered into the ready-dug grave, he prayed to Anatole for forgiveness. ‘I love you, Anatole,’ he muttered to himself, as he dropped a symbolic handful of earth on the coffin. Then he turned to his whey-faced mother, and to his sisters
, who were holding her.

  ‘Let’s take Maman home,’ he said.

  But at home Madame Benion had to sit in Madame’s gloomy sitting room and receive formal condolences from the little group of mourners. Some of the menfolk had never actually seen Anatole, because it was their wives and mothers who were Madame Benion’s friends; Madame Benion was a part of their women’s world. Pressed by their womenfolk to attend the funeral, to provide bigger male support, the men had kindly done so.

  Now they came back to the house, to eat a little of the donated food and drink a glass of wine. Finally, after chatting awkwardly to each other, they took their leave. How could one make the usual little jokes or recite the usual funny anecdotes about a man you’d never seen? It was difficult, wasn’t it?

  Chapter Thirty-three

  About ten o’clock on the night of Anatole’s death, while Madame Bazaine sat by his bed, his mother was persuaded to come downstairs again to drink coffee with Madame Blanc and another neighbour. Round the landlady’s dying kitchen fire, they discussed at length the virtues of the deceased, and Maman was a little comforted.

  A haggard Michel, who feared he might collapse again, said he would go for a little walk to clear his head, and think about what must be arranged the next day. He would not be long.

  The ladies gently agreed; a death was a particularly heavy burden for the young to face, they told each other tearfully.

  Michel fled to the hotel. The concierge was sitting in for Reservations, who was off duty.

  The concierge was a little surprised at the taxi driver’s request that he ask Madame Bishop to step down to speak to him at such a late hour, and he hesitated.

  On his way over, Michel had tried to think of a reason to do this. He had finally decided that he could say that he had arranged to take her, once more, to her husband’s grave the following day. He could not, however, do this, because of his brother’s death that afternoon. But he could make some other arrangements for her, if she would like him to.

  ‘I must give tomorrow to arranging my brother’s funeral,’ he explained. ‘I won’t have time to come over and tell her then. And I must leave a note for Colonel Buck to say that I can’t drive him for a couple of days. I’ll leave the keys of the taxi and the garage with you to give to him. Probably Monsieur Wayne will drive.’

  The concierge, of course, knew Michel well, and he said, ‘I’ve just heard about your brother from one of the chambermaids. I’m sorry; it’s too bad.’ He uncertainly tapped the desk with his fingertips, and then said in warning, ‘Well, if Madame complains because you’re here so late, be it on your own head – not on mine. She may be in bed.’ He left the silent lobby to plod upstairs to tell Barbara that the taxi driver wished to speak with her.

  She guessed immediately what had happened, and when the concierge stepped on one side to give her precedence, she ran down the stairs. Michel seized her arm, and before the surprised concierge was halfway down the staircase, the pair of them were on their way out of the front door.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know earlier.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m so sorry for you – and your poor mother,’ she replied with compassion. She looked around the dark courtyard. ‘Will the cathedral be open?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Let’s go there.’

  And it was in the silent, dark cathedral, that Michel finally gave way and wept. She held him, his head on her shoulder, and let him cry, while she soothed him as if he were a child.

  ‘It’s goin’ to be all right, luvvie. You’ll feel better tomorrow. There now. I’m sure you and your mam did everything you could for him.’

  A vague figure in a long robe emerged from the gloom, and asked in whispered French, if she were all right.

  She guessed what the question was, and answered first in English. ‘He’s just been bereaved,’ she said quietly in English. Then added, ‘Son frère est mort.’

  She was a little surprised that the figure, whom she supposed was a verger, evidently understood her French, nodded his head and went away.

  A couple of hours later, they emerged, arms still around each other. In a niche made by a great buttress against the wall of the huge cathedral, in the silent darkness, they made love for the first time.

  It was not the most comfortable union, but it brought some sense of peace to Michel, a confirmation that Barbara meant what she had said, that life truly did still hold something for him.

  With Barbara’s arm around him, he walked with her back to the hotel. He even managed a rueful laugh, as he checked, before she entered the hotel courtyard, that her clothes looked undisturbed

  He promised to be with her in the cathedral at ten o’clock the next night, if he could possibly get away. ‘You’ll be safe in there, if I can’t come,’ he said, and then he went on, ‘I’m sorry to be a cry – what you say? – crybaby.’

  ‘Tush,’ she retorted, with a little grin, ‘troubles shared are troubles halved.’ She wiped his face with her handkerchief as if he were a child, kissed him, and said warmly, ‘I love you, Michel. I’m so thankful you’ve come into my life.’

  ‘I love you, too – and I work for you all my life,’ he promised her earnestly.

  He watched her, as she went into the courtyard and shut the gate behind her.

  Determined not to be embarrassed about the lateness of the hour, she walked smartly into the hotel, passed the concierge with a polite ‘Good night’, and went upstairs, followed by his questioning stare.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The day following the funeral, of necessity, Michel went back to work. In his absence, Wayne, the colonel’s assistant, had driven the taxi, with a solid flow of bad language at its awkward gears and its marked tendency to veer suddenly into the wrong lane on the potholed roads. The three morticians had, on one occasion, also managed to get lost in the wandering, bocage-lined lanes of the battered country; the colonel’s limited French had been misunderstood by a villager of whom they asked the way, so that they were misdirected and were hours late for dinner. They were very thankful to see Michel again.

  They were jubilant at the thought of going back to the States the following day. So, in order that they could buy gifts to take home, Michel spent the day taking them to see various craftsmen, who were trying to restart their businesses. To the joy of their creators, the Americans bought yards of fine lace, locally woven tapestry cushion covers, recorders for their children, old-fashioned, copper weighing scales, brass candlesticks, and bottles of Calvados.

  As he watched them, Michel clicked his tongue irritably. Why had he not thought of encouraging some of his cemetery visitors to take a little memento home? There was now a whole row of small stalls in Caen and one or two places in Bayeux where the struggling owners would have been thankful for the trade – and Michel himself would have been glad of a small commission from the stallholders. It would have helped to balance out the small gift he gave each week to Reservations for his co-operation.

  At the end of the day, Colonel Buck, with a grin as wide as his moustache, presented Michel with a folding bicycle.

  Jolted out of his grief, Michel stared at it with amazed delight. He recognised it as similar to the ones parachutists had carried on their backs when being dropped into Normandy. Some of the British Army had also carried bikes ashore with them on D-Day, whether folding or ordinary ones, he was not sure. This bike, so kindly found for him, was obviously not a new one, and, he decided, it must be a renovated British one. Someone had put considerable work into it because it had new tyres and chain, and a fresh coat of paint.

  The colonel wrung Michel’s hand. ‘Wayne and Elmer and me wanna thank you for making our time here so interesting. We had a lousy job to do, but you always seemed to have somethin’ interestin’ to show us or to joke about – and we sure appreciated it.’

  Michel grinned. ‘I enjoy I work for you,’ he assured them sincerely. ‘And the bike …’ He was
overwhelmed. He looked a little shyly at the colonel. ‘It is a big gift for me.’

  The colonel laughed. ‘I’m just sorry I couldn’t find a new one, but this’ll get you around until you can get a car.’

  One day, he would have a car? What a wild American idea! With luck, a horse and cart, perhaps, to carry to market the eggs and vegetables which he would raise for Barbara, if he could obtain no better employment. But a car? Ce n’est pas possible.

  To the Americans’ amusement, he rode the bike carefully round the hotel courtyard to try it, and found that the brakes worked perfectly. Colonel Buck was happy to see a face that had been woebegone, almost sullen all day, light up as his driver laughed like a young boy.

  As he dismounted, Elmer, the younger of the two assistants, produced a brown paper parcel and announced laconically, ‘Wayne and me got you a lock for it. I guess you’ll need one.’

  Michel was dumbfounded. He had thought he might get a small tip from them, but the bike was worth its weight in gold; and a decent lock would have been hard to find, and yet was so necessary to prevent immediate theft.

  The bike was carefully folded up again and secured with a piece of rope to the luggage platform of the taxi beside the driver. They parted with hearty handshakes and back slaps all round, and promises to write – and then forgot to exchange addresses.

  Michel drove the old taxi into the stable behind Monsieur Duval’s workshop, and wrote up his last report on the Americans for his employer. He would drive them and their luggage to their base the following morning, and then return to lock up the taxi and hand the key to Duval.

  Duval sighed at the ending of a very lucrative contract. He would now advertise that the taxi was generally available. He offered Michel part-time employment as driver; they would arrange the hours when he saw the result of his advertisement.

  Michel thankfully agreed to this. Meanwhile, he promised himself that, depressed as he was, he would hunt for a decent position. More than ever, he needed immediate money. It was the key to being permanently in Barbara’s arms.