Madame Barbara

by Helen Forrester

  Then she said slowly, ‘You mean the Seashore bed-and-breakfast?’

  ‘Yes. Mrs Barbara Bishop.’

  ‘I think it belongs to a Mrs Williams,’ responded the dog-walker doubtfully. Who was this foreigner who did not appear to have any luggage other than a rather dilapidated suitcase on his carrier? You never knew nowadays; there was a surprising number of no-goods in the country – been here since the war.

  The suspicious-looking no-good bowed, and said, ‘Thank you, Madame.’ He replaced his trilby and remounted. He smiled at the lady, as he skidded slightly to avoid the ugly little dog, and went on his way.

  At the end of a long road, he found the bed-and-breakfast, its sign prominently displayed on the gate. It stood alone within a very large patch of rough land on which grazed several black and white cows.

  It seemed a big house to Michel. It had a fairly neat front garden, shaded by a tree which had been bent nearly double by the force of the wind from the sea. Under it was a children’s swing on a rusty metal stand. A barbed-wire fence defended the garden from the cows.

  The road itself appeared to end at an iron railing. Though tired, Michel was curious. So, before he entered Barbara’s gate, he wheeled his bike down the road to the railing.

  Leaning on the bike, he stood looking out at a great stretch of wet sand, on which lay a number of small sailing boats, their masts aslant, as they waited for the tide to come in and float them. To his right, a stone sea wall apparently marked the end of the bed-and-breakfast’s land, and the beginning of the public shore. He turned to look back up the road. Facing Barbara’s house, on the other side, was a line of small red-brick houses, presumably the end of the village.

  It was just as Barbara had described it. Near a railway station, and a perfect place for family holidays or for men who had business in Liverpool and wanted a quiet night’s sleep.

  Full of trepidation, however, Michel turned back up the road, opened the gate and wheeled his bicycle in. He had written a letter to Barbara from Portsmouth, which Uncle Léon had promised to post for him, to say he expected to be with her in three days’ time. But because he had been lost so often, and had encountered more hills than he could have ever imagined, the trip had taken a week.

  Despite his unhappiness, he had been reminded again and again of his beloved Calvados before it had been so torn by the invasion; even the buildings, the churches and the houses in some of the villages looked similar. He wished the people had been similar, too.

  Now he must tell Barbara that he could not face living amongst them. Acutely aware that he had not seen her for three months, he pushed his bike through the open gateway and propped it against a railing. How should he greet her?

  After some hesitation, he rang the doorbell, and, immediately, somewhere at the back of the house, a dog barked.

  Suppose her mother answered.

  He heard a rush of feet downstairs, the door was flung open, and there she was, prettier than he had remembered, a small, vigorous woman in a faded flowered apron.

  He shyly took off his hat. How was he going to tell her? They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he opened his arms and she flung herself into them.

  ‘Michel, luvvie,’ she whispered huskily. ‘I’ve been worried to death. I was afraid you’d never come.’

  As often during his ride, he feared he might burst into tears, collapse as he had done in Bayeux; yet the chemistry between them was immediate and he instinctively responded to her embrace. He said nothing.

  ‘Who’s there, Barbie? Shut the door, there’s a draught.’

  Barbara giggled, and drew away from him. ‘Come in, my love.’ She gestured towards the inner part of the house, as she whispered, ‘It’s Mam. She’s scared stiff of what you’ll be like!’

  ‘Me?’ he shrugged, and smiled slightly. ‘I am me. I am not, how you say, a fright,’ he tried to tease. He was deathly tired, and he did not know how to behave towards her or what to say.

  She closed the front door, and said, ‘I’ll get your case off the bike in a minute. Here, let me take your coat.’ As she hung up his coat and hat in the hall cupboard, she raised her voice, and shouted, ‘It’s Michel, Mam.’ Then she added to Michel, ‘There’s a washroom here. Would you like to use it?’

  ‘Merci, Madame Barbara,’ he said, and she laughed at the title.

  He blessed her thoughtfulness, and thankfully went into the toilet. He washed the dust off his hands and face. Then he carefully combed his hair, which, he noted from his reflection in the mirror, was sorely in need of a cut.

  After that, he braced himself to go out and face the dragon in the kitchen. He supposed he would have to talk to her too. But he could not simply blurt out, at the moment of arrival, that he had no intention of staying.

  Barbara was hanging around in the hall, waiting for him. She said, ‘I’ve taken your case upstairs.’ She took his arm and urged hospitably, ‘Come in and meet Mother.’

  With oven gloves covering her hands, a stout woman with carefully curled black hair was lifting a cake out of the oven. She slowly put it down on a kitchen counter, and turned to meet the man who had mesmerised her daughter.

  They stared at each other, she obviously a little resentful. Feeling that he would have to talk seriously to them both later on and really hurt his darling Barbara, he thought it best to establish at least a friendly atmosphere immediately. He went forward shyly, embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks, in French style. ‘So you are Maman,’ he said simply.

  As he released her, he smiled at her and went on quickly to pay a compliment. He turned to Barbara. ‘You tease me. She is too young to be your mama? Your sister?’

  For such a compliment, Phyllis felt it had been worthwhile having her hair done that morning. And he was a lovely-looking man, though, in a shabby world, he was quite the shabbiest person she had seen for some time. But she could certainly see the attraction of him. Jaysus! No wonder Barbie had fallen for him.

  She laughed and exposed a perfect set of excellent false teeth, and Michel remembered suddenly and sadly his mother’s toothless mouth and thin white hair; yet she must be of the same generation.

  She said cryptically to her daughter, ‘Now I know just what you was talkin’ about when you come ’ome.’

  She was professionally hospitable, and this came out as she made Michel welcome, and tried to gain time to weigh him up more fully.

  Nodding wisely to herself, she told him to sit down and she’d make a lovely cuppa tea and cut the cake specially for him.

  He sat down on the nearest wooden chair, and Barbara brought another chair close to him, and sat down too. As yet unaware of the bombshell he was about to unload on her, in the shadow of the table she put a hand on his thigh. Though he was tired beyond endurance and very hungry, his senses swam.

  Would she, perhaps, come to Calvados? He knew he could earn enough to keep her from starvation if he returned to the big poultryman who had engaged him as foreman since Barbara’s return to England. His land had not been destroyed, and he was glad to employ Michel while he rebuilt his flocks.

  He thought it unlikely that she would be willing to move; she knew what a mess the country was in and, moreover, she did not speak French. Meanwhile, with passion surging, he fought, in view of her mother’s presence, to keep his face straight.

  After Michel had eaten two pieces of hot cake and bravely drunk two cups of tea – he would never get used to tea, he decided – Phyllis suggested that Barbara should show him round while she prepared high tea.

  When Barbara saw Michel’s bewildered expression at this announcement, she laughed and explained, ‘It’s a real solid meal – usually cold meat, if you can get it, and stewed fruit, bread and butter and cake. Tonight we’ve got sausages and tomatoes.’

  Her mother smiled. ‘I got six guests tonight,’ she told Michel. ‘It’s the school holidays, so I got two mums and dads and two kids, and then I got you, of course. Hope you can eat our food.’

  M
ichel assured her gracefully that the meal sounded wonderful; in his state of hunger, anything would have seemed good.

  Barbara swept him up a narrow oak staircase. The stair carpet was worn and faded, but, with its highly polished brass stair rods and with a big plant cascading out of a brass pot at the turn in the stairs, it looked incredibly rich to him. On the landing, she opened a white door with an old-fashioned, shiny brass knob and ushered him in. His suitcase was waiting for him.

  The room was sparsely furnished with a big double bed, a white-enamelled dressing table and two matching bedside tables, all showing signs of wear. In one corner was a sink with two taps; towels hung at the side of it. Flowered linoleum covered the floor, its pattern of pink flowers nearly obliterated. Rag rugs were laid on either side of the bed. Though everything was spotlessly clean, Michel was reminded of Barbara’s remark, when in France, that she badly needed to find paint for her rooms. The whole house looked uncannily like the house of the English lady in Normandy who had taught him English.

  He glanced at the windows. They were hung with white curtains and framed a wonderful view of the incoming tide.

  ‘For me?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. I bagged a double room – being the weekend, we’ve no reps coming in. They’ll turn up on Monday, I expect, and, anyway, they prefer singles.’ She swung the door closed. Then she turned to him.

  ‘Michel, luvvie, I thought you’d never come.’

  He could not help himself. He opened his arms wide, and said ruefully, ‘It was a long wait for me, chère Madame Barbara,’ and closed his arms round her.

  ‘Not Madame,’ she said, as he bent to kiss her.

  He was silent as he held her. Filled with an almost unbearable pain at impending loss, he was still swept by desire. He explored her with his tongue, licking, kissing round her neck, lifting her breasts.

  Finally Barbara said desperately, ‘Luvvie! Remember Mam. She expects us to explore the place – not each other. Hold on till tonight, aye?’ Her eyes were full of promise.

  Despite his fears, his fervour was genuine. I mustn’t lead her on like this, he thought with consuming sorrow, as he let her go.

  To gain time, he said, ‘Go and help Mama. I can walk round alone.’

  Mama would be the main objection to Barbara’s coming to him in France, he thought. This is too big a house for one woman to run alone.

  Barbara began to detect his reserve, and was hurt. She put it down to fatigue, however, and agreed.

  ‘Just make yourself at home and go wherever you feel like. But don’t go into the rooms directly below – they’re full.’ Then she turned to the washbasin, and said very practically, ‘Hotels and places like this don’t provide soap and towels these days. I’ve put you a bar from our ration, though. And Mam’s put family towels in. There’s a lavatory down the hall.’

  Soap had been a luxury ever since the Germans had marched into Normandy; the Benions had reserved any that they could find for Anatole. And to have a proper indoor lavatory was something only richer peasants could hope for.

  When she had gone, it seemed incredibly quiet. Michel wandered round the room. Then he switched the electric light on and off; there was a light in the centre of the ceiling and another on the bedside table; he opened and shut the dressing-table drawers, and glanced into a big wall cupboard, which had a rail in it with one or two hangers, waiting for him to unpack. One wall boasted a fireplace with an electrical outlet, but no electric fire; the space was filled by a bowl of artificial flowers, looking very faded.

  Over the mantelpiece was a print of the Liverpool waterfront, which he had once seen when sailing up the Mersey river with his uncle; its frame was screwed firmly to the wall. On the mantelpiece was a china ashtray. He idly picked it up. It had a picture of a tower on it, and said on its rim, ‘A Present from Blackpool’.

  He lit his last cigarette and then opened the dormer window and looked out. The sound of waves from a fast tide rushing in towards the shore was wonderfully peaceful, and in the further distance, he heard a train entering the station.

  He thought of Barbara with longing. His welcome told him that he had not been wrong about her. And yet he couldn’t face her country, he knew it.

  These first minutes in her home told him clearly that she and her calm, young-looking mama knew what they were about; everything was as trim as the interior of a battleship.

  For the first time in several days, Michel thought about Bill Spellersby, waiting to welcome him to Manchester. Should he even go to see him? Then, almost immediately, he decided that he must, which meant automatically that he was going to be some days more in West Kirby.

  The Wing Commander, who was simply Bill to Michel, had promised that he and his father would find an immigration lawyer for him. He himself would sponsor his old friend.

  What was Michel going to say to such a friend? ‘No, thank you very much’?

  As he thought about Bill, he realised that the man had, of course, seen his tiny Normandy farm before the invasion ruined it, and so understood something of Michel’s capabilities as a poulterer; one night, he had even been introduced to Chanticleer and his harem, just before they became dinner for the Germans encamped on his land. Bill had seen also, in the barn, his new experiment – an attempt at raising more eggs for the Germans in less space. Each hen was confined in her own small nest, where all they did was to sit on wire-netting and eat, sleep – and lay eggs. When they laid an egg it rolled gently down a small incline to a tilted shelf, where it awaited collection. The birds’ ordure fell through the netting to an empty shelf below them.

  He had inadvertently stumbled on the battery system, soon to be accepted as the usual way of keeping laying hens.

  At seeing them, Bill had winced. ‘Isn’t it cruel?’ he had asked.

  The severely practical peasant with him had replied, ‘How to produce more eggs? Big problem.’ His query was dismissed. ‘Biggest problem is to keep them very clean, so they not die of disease.’

  If he stayed in Britain, Bill would not be sponsoring him blindly for immigration, Michel considered. And he was aware of what his family had gone through under German occupation. In spite of his despair, it was a comforting thought that Bill was very different from some of the people he had met during his long bicycle ride.

  He must see him before he returned to France; it might be the only chance of a meeting that he would have in his life.

  His holiday visa to Britain allowed him six weeks, a week of which he had already used up in getting to West Kirby. Barbara had insisted in one of her letters to France that, during that period, they must hustle – to use her own expression – to get married by special licence; and, equally important, she had joked, also persuade her mother that having a hard-working French son-in-law would be a great asset. The reality now burst upon Michel that if he undertook to farm her land and was unable to get other work in addition, he would be totally dependent upon his mother-in-law; working with members of his French family was different. This financial fact was new to him and it shocked him. It confirmed his decision to return to Calvados.

  He felt sickened. Very soon, now, he would have to tell both of them that it was impossible for him to stay this side of the English Channel.

  In a way, Barbara had prepared him for rejection by English people. She had, in one letter, advised him not to wear a beret. ‘There’s louts as used to collect the red pompoms off the caps of French sailors,’ she had written. ‘Of course, it always caused a fight – and a beret might give them ideas.’

  Michel had laughed. He’d kick the hell out of them, he had thought cheerfully. But he was not so young, and he had understood, after dealing with the Germans for years, that it was wise to be discreet. With that fact in view, he had bought the trilby hat, now lying on the bed. His beret was still stuffed in his suitcase.

  During his long cycle ride, though much tempted, he had also avoided public houses.

  She must have known the problems he would be confr
onted with, he thought disconsolately, how deeply suspicious English people were of foreigners?

  With elbows on the windowsill, he smoked, as he looked out at the stretch of rough land between him and the seawall. It needed some protection from the wind, he thought idly, as a breeze made the bleached curtains billow. But there was plenty of space to raise a lot of hens if one could get a permit.

  Barbara had also emphasised the endless difficulty of getting any permit to increase a business; she had stated baldly that, with a Socialist government – they called it Labour here – you got free health care under a new scheme that had just come in; but, according to her, it was about the only thing which was freely given. Wanting to start a business or extend one was something else, she had assured him.

  His bad shoulder ached abominably. All he wanted to do, at present, was to rest for a while to ease his physical exhaustion, and then think how he was to get himself out of the tangle he was in, without offending Bill or breaking dearest Barbara’s heart.

  Disconsolately, he sat down on the bed and unlaced the new shoes that he was wearing for the first time. He placed them neatly under the side table.

  When Barbara came to call him for high tea, he was sound asleep on the bed, still dressed in his old pullover, and a pair of old black trousers. His socks, she noted, badly needed darning. His shoes lay discarded by the bed. On the end of the bed hung a decent dark suit, sorely in need of pressing. Beside it was a white shirt and a nondescript tie. On one bed knob hung a very battered beret; on another sat a neat trilby hat.

  The suitcase, empty except for a pair of old boots, two empty bottles and what looked like a pile of crumbs, lay open on the floor.

  Barbara stared at the case for a moment, and understood the poverty its emptiness inferred. Poor darling. Her minefield – waiting to be cautiously explored.