Madame Barbara

by Helen Forrester

  Now, iron still hissing in her hand, she paused to greet Barbara and Michel. She decided that they certainly looked less miserable than when they had left.

  ‘Had a good time?’ she asked, smiling brightly.

  As they took off their outer clothes and said they certainly had, Barbara noted her mother’s professional smile, and that she looked tired. Mam was troubled and trying to hide it.

  She looked at the sheets still awaiting the iron’s caress, and said, ‘Leave them, Mam. I’ll finish them in the morning. Look, I’ll make a cup of tea, and you come and sit down, and Michel will tell you all about the party. Is there anybody in the lounge? We could sit in there for a change.’

  ‘That’s a kind girl. I’m a bit tired. There’s nobody in the lounge, luv. The two chaps from the Government, as we was expecting, has checked in. They went out to get something to eat, and they haven’t come back. They’re probably having a drink somewhere.’

  ‘Good.’ Barbara seized a kettle and filled it. After she had lit the gas under it, she turned to Michel, and tossed the box of matches over to him, which he caught. ‘Would you go and light the gas fire in the lounge, luv?’

  Michel froze. He did not know how a gas fire worked.

  Phyllis sensed his predicament, turned off her iron and put it down. ‘Maybe you don’t use gas in France,’ she suggested. ‘Barbie’ll make the tea, so I’ll show you.’ She laughed good-naturedly as she preceded him through the hall to a big front room.

  As he followed close behind her, he answered apologetically, ‘In my village we have only electricity for the hens – and coal or wood for cooking.’

  The lounge was very large, and crowded with easy chairs and a scattering of little tables. On either side of the gas fire were shelves holding a tattered collection of paperback books, and what looked like boxes of board games. In the centre of the mantelpiece stood a large black marble clock ornamented on its top by a bronze of a mounted Roman soldier. The clock was flanked on either side by bronze statues of Roman foot soldiers. It was a set picked up by Phyllis at a jumble sale, and she was quite proud of it.

  She now kneeled down on the faded red Belgian hearth rug and showed Michel where to turn on the gas, while at the same time holding a lighted match to the fire itself.

  The gas fire gave an unnerving pop and blazed merrily.

  ‘It’s a proper help, havin’ gas in here,’ Phyllis remarked, as she heaved herself to her feet. ‘Saves forever havin’ to make a coal fire and watch it don’t go out – and coal’s rationed.’

  She turned to Michel, and pointed to a chair close by. ‘Sit down, lad, and get yourself warm. I bin wantin’ to talk to you by yourself, like, for a while, and now’s me chance for a few minutes.’

  Michel sat down warily. Now what?

  ‘While Barbie’s bin planning your marriage – and we’ll talk about that later – I bin thinkin’ what’d make you feel most comfortable with us.’

  Michel replied cautiously, ‘You are very kind, Madame.’

  She ignored the Madame, and went straight on. ‘This B-and-B is a family thing, as you’ll know. Barbie and I share the work, and what I do, these days, is pay her a small amount for her pocket money and clothes. At the end of the year, we add up what we’ve made and I try to put a bit by for things we’ll need in the house and to save a bit, if possible. What’s left, I share with her – and since the war, frankly, that’s not been much.’

  Though her accent was not easy for him, Michel understood her explanation. He nodded, and waited for her to continue.

  ‘Now, you come along. And you haven’t got a job, but we can use help.’ She swallowed. ‘What to do? The best at present is to do for you what I do for Barbie: give you a bit of cigarette money – pocket money – and help you out with clothes. And, of course, you’d have food and bed same as us.’ She fidgeted uneasily for a minute, and then said, ‘You’ll understand that I’ll have to think some more about what we do at the end of the year. If you was happy here and the B-and-B was doing all right, we could ask Mr Jones, the solicitor in the village, about making an agreement between us?’

  She left the question open. From her point of view the offer was a generous one.

  Michel did not answer immediately. He had honestly not considered any monetary reward for work he would, as Barbara’s husband, contribute to their business; until the doubts aroused in him as a result of his long and hard bicycle ride, he had assumed that he would get an outside job and be financially independent; that he would, as a matter of course, maintain Barbara, and do anything he could to develop their large garden.

  Barbara had told him of their adventures during the war and how, during the last three years, they had struggled to re-establish their business connections. To take on the maintenance of a third person must mean considerable sacrifice on their part.

  He did not want to say to her that he did not wish to settle in England; that was an affair between Barbara and himself that had yet to be fought out.

  ‘You give me work to do?’ he enquired.

  ‘What I need is what Barbie and me has talked about, and that is someone to do the garden, if you’d do it. To begin with, dig a good vegetable patch to help out our rations. Barbie says you know how to raise hens – there’s piles of space for hens here, eggs and hens’d be real food – and rabbits, if you know about them. It could make a big difference …’ She trailed off.

  He saw the wisdom of her idea. In a tightly rationed world, a personal source of food – in a garden protected by high stone walls – had a lot to commend it. He began to be interested. Even if he were to return to Normandy at the end of his six weeks’ holiday visa, he could, in the meantime, repay her hospitality by digging and preparing a bed for vegetables, which they could sow after he had gone. He ignored the pain this would cause his shoulder; he genuinely wanted to repay her kindness to him.

  ‘Have you tools?’ he asked.

  ‘We got some – and neighbours’d lend us.’ She looked at him hopefully. ‘For one, Mr Baines, across the road, has got a cultivator.’ She looked at him a little wistfully. For the moment, this was all she could do for her Barbie.

  ‘OK. I do that. Bill is doctor. He tell me to rest my ankle for some days. After that, I start on big dig.’ He grinned and leaned back in his chair, as if relieved. He hoped his shoulder would not fail him before he had completed this act of friendship.

  She smiled as a little of her worry was assuaged.

  Further conversation was precluded, as Barbara came hurrying in with a tray of tea things and some homemade scones with jam on them.

  ‘The fire feels nice, doesn’t it?’ she said as she put down the tray. ‘The wind’s chilly tonight. The days are drawin’ in.’ She wrapped her cardigan round herself as she sat down by Michel. ‘Will you pour, Mam?’

  Mam poured.

  Worried about a more immediate matter, which rested upon Barbara’s coming to a decision to return with him to Normandy, Michel tentatively enquired, ‘Barbara, who have you asked to the wedding, besides Bill and Daphne?’

  She had not expected him to speak out as if anything in their future, even their wedding, could at present be certain.

  In some alarm she wondered if, tugged by a desire which equalled his, she married him, and he still insisted on going back to Normandy, what she could do. Let him go by himself?

  Not likely, she determined. If she married him she would stay with him, not let him run loose to be picked up by some French widow or other. She heaved a sigh. First, she desperately wanted him to decide to stay.

  ‘We haven’t asked nobody, have we, Mam. It’s like a wartime weddin’. Quick, like. There’s bin lots of them in the last years.’

  Mam said, more to Michel than to Barbara, ‘I’ve asked friends of ours, Mr and Mrs Baines, from across the road, if they’d like to be witnesses for you and then come home here for a little wedding breakfast. Since they lost their boy in Malaya and then their Miranda married that Texan and went to Ameri
ca, they’ve bin proper lonely.’

  ‘We need witness,’ Michel agreed, not knowing what else to say.

  She looked across at her daughter. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to ask any of your friends in the village?’

  ‘Quite sure, Mam. If I ask one I got to ask the lot and the same with me cousins in Liverpool – and we don’t have the money,’ she replied flatly. She didn’t know how to say that many of them had come to her first marriage, and she didn’t want to be reminded of it. It would bring back memories of George, and, though he had been a great lad, she wanted a fresh start with the man sitting beside her, a man who made her ache with longing – which George never had.

  ‘OK, dear. Ada, bless her heart, says she’ll stay here in the house and answer the phone. Or deal with anyone wanting a bed, while we’re at the church.’

  ‘Who is Madame Ada?’ asked Michel.

  There was a pause, while the women looked at each other. Then Phyllis said reluctantly, ‘She’s Barbie’s mother-in-law, and, because it would be too painful to her, she wouldn’t come to the wedding, though she’s an old friend of both of us.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Michel. He must remember that, if he stayed in England, he would be in her first husband’s territory; it was a strange, slightly threatening idea. Mon Dieu! Life was so complicated.

  Phyllis was continuing, ‘So to help me out, she’s said she’ll come to the house. You’d be surprised, though. She’s proper happy that Barbie’s going to have you to comfort her.’

  Michel glanced at Barbara. He hoped he had already comforted her – and he longed to continue doing so. He said, ‘Madame Ada is most generous spirit.’

  Barbara smiled at him. ‘She’s a lovely woman.’ Then she asked, ‘Will your mother come? She’d be very welcome.’

  He grinned back at her. ‘Thank you. Mais non. It is too expensive. She cannot bicycle far like me. The distance is very far.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll come and stay later on,’ suggested Phyllis hospitably.

  ‘Possibly.’ Although his evening at Bill’s had been splendid, Michel felt lost, very alone. He appreciated Phyllis’s offer, but he was nervous of being dependent upon her. Further, although he was much in love with Barbara, the insults he had received from English people during his journey still rankled.

  As he gazed at Phyllis over his teacup, her kind suggestion about his mother reminded him sharply of her. Poor Maman. She had wept at his departure, but had, like Uncle Léon, foretold his rapid return.

  Nevertheless, as he glanced away to stare at the hot blue flames of the gas fire flickering like little blue butterflies, he began to weigh up which country would give him the most personal freedom, because, he was also reminded, Uncle Léon and Maman could be formidably domineering, despite spates of tears and kindly meant warnings.

  He tested himself. If he could find work here, work amongst people who regarded him as one of themselves, as the members of the dinner party had obviously done, how would he feel then?

  Could he live with these two fairly strong-minded women, now warming themselves before the fire in their easy chairs and talking about how they could provide a decent meal for the wedding, without denuding the rations allowed for their B-and-B?

  And if, after marrying Barbara, she still refused to return to Normandy, and he could not bear the domestic situation, what could he do to alleviate it? Barbara could be a problem – her mother could be another. Together they could make his life a misery.

  The obvious answer struck him in the cold dawn of the following day.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  About eleven o’clock, as the little party in the lounge finished their tea, the two civil servants, feeling quite merry, returned from the Ring o’ Bells pub.

  Phyllis locked up for the night and went soberly to bed, followed immediately by Michel and Barbara.

  Phyllis was sure she had done her best to help the youngsters; though they were far from youthful, they both seemed very young to her. When absently saying her prayers, she remembered to add a few urgent words for their happiness, their safety.

  When the house had settled down and the only sound was the wuthering of the sea wind in the chimneys, Barbara put on her dressing gown and crept carefully downstairs to Michel.

  She was so quiet that he did not hear her coming. Curled up in his cold bed, he was concentrating on ways and means to have Barbara and, at the same time, live a peaceful life, preferably in Normandy.

  He jumped in surprise, as she pulled back his bedclothes and slid, naked, in beside him. He had taken it for granted that the division between them, as to where they would live, would cause her to hold back until, at least, she was married to him and had some hold over him.

  She was warm and urgent, her soft skin smooth as silk against him, and he was aroused immediately. Sanity was abandoned, until exhausted, they slept.

  He was awakened by the sound of the first train of the morning leaving the nearby station. Barbara was inured to the noise and slept on. Very gently, he lifted the bedclothes to look at her in the morning light. Mon Dieu, she was pretty, plumper and more curvaceous than she had been when in Normandy. And – Ciel! – she was witty. He remembered how she had made him laugh, as they had rolled happily in a bed grown suddenly more friendly.

  He knew that his first observations in the cemetery had been right. He wanted to love her, protect her from sorrow or harm, to be a safe wall for her against the world’s horrors. And, as the fresh sea breeze blew through the open window and made him shiver, he vowed, like some long-ago knight in armour, that he would do it. He carefully covered her again, and she stirred and turned towards him, but slept on.

  He lay quietly by her and cogitated over steps by which he could solve the conundrum of managing two tough, little businesswomen, who undoubtedly knew their own minds.

  The practical mind of a Frenchman planning a marriage began to take over, as if it were an arranged one.

  First, he must be financially independent of his mother-in-law. He needed decently paid work, say, within a bicycle ride, somewhere in the countryside which he had observed the previous day between here and Liverpool.

  Then, if the domestic arrangements did not work out, Barbara and he could have a home of their own in the village. Why not? The place had not been bombed; there must be living space somewhere. Barbara could come over daily to help her mother, and he would garden for her in his spare time. That would take some of the pressure off him.

  Divide and rule. In his own home with his own income, he would have more say. All he needed was work.

  And if he could not endure the racial prejudice which he believed existed, with the American help which the cities were getting, Normandy would be rebuilt within a few years. He might be able to persuade them to sell this B-and-B at that time and buy a similar house on the coast of Calvados. Why should not Phyllis run a B-and-B there? She could specialise in British cooking, British guests. It had a warmer climate, and lots of English women had lived there before the war. Or she might be glad to retire.

  It was all possible.

  Armed with ideas of compromise or of escape, Michel agreed to stay and he joyfully married Barbara on the following Thursday.

  After phoning every egg company and poulterer in the telephone books of the area, Bill got Michel an introduction to a big poulterer, further inland, on the following Saturday. The poulterer wanted to institute a way of raising laying hens by the new battery system and needed a reliable and experienced foreman, who had no objection to keeping hens permanently in their nests. The idea was similar to the one Michel had, in despair, instituted amongst his own poultry in order to meet German demands for eggs. Unlike many Englishmen, he had no objection to confining the birds.

  His reserve defences in place, and, after a long telephone conversation with Bill, Michel decided that the Wirral peninsula might be as good a place as any in which to live.

  He went for the interview and got the job at a reasonable salary, with the
promise of an improvement in pay if the new venture proved to be a success. The employer, thankful to have found a man who understood what he wanted, promised every help to get a work permit.

  After the interview, he sped home on his bicycle, intent on breaking the good news to Barbara. He was overwhelmed by the civility with which he had been treated by his new employer; it had been two experts, equals, discussing the same interest – poultry. No hint of condescension, no rudeness of any kind – simply a long talk about new techniques in raising hens. And, finally, he had actually got the kind of position he had always dreamed of.

  He could barely believe his luck. For the first time in his life he was going to do what he wanted to do, instead of what fate had imposed upon him.

  ‘Chère Barbara, here I come,’ he almost shouted as, macintosh flapping in the wind, he flew down the hill and into West Kirby.

  Chapter Fifty

  Summer 1997

  ‘You know, Colette, every time I sit on this balcony and watch the tide come in, I marvel at what your Uncle Michel’s done,’ Barbara remarked in credible French to her favourite niece.

  ‘When he first came to me, he didn’t even have a toothbrush! And no undies, not even a vest!

  ‘It took me nearly a week to persuade him that, round here, people wouldn’t eat him and he should keep his promise to marry me – and live here.’

  Colette chuckled. A pretty, plump fifty-two-year-old, she reminded Barbara of her mother, Claudette, Michel’s sister.

  Barbara continued, this time in English. ‘Nevertheless, I’ve never seen anybody, English or French, who worked like he has. He used his brains to make so much out of very little; it always astonished me how handy he was – he can still surprise me sometimes, bless his darlin’ heart.’

  She glanced down at the large walled flower garden below, at a more distant huge kitchen garden, the rabbit hutches and hen coops with a number of thoroughbred hens stalking round them, and then went on, ‘And he still works. You can see him down there, by the side wall; he’s trimming the rambler roses himself. Makes me feel sick every time I see him climb a ladder – and Dr Maxwell tellin’ him he should take things easy.’