The Healing Knife

by S. L. Russell

  The service was not long – less than an hour – but for me it seemed interminable. I had a hymn book, but the hymn numbers were announced so quickly that I couldn’t understand them. Another small woman, this time in a blue cardigan with flowery embroidery, took pity on me and leaned over from the pew behind, pointing to the right page. I smiled weakly, muttering “Merci, Madame.” She asked me a question I didn’t catch, and waited for an answer with raised eyebrows. I swallowed hard and whispered, “Anglaise”, a response that forced her back with an expression of horror on her face, as if I had told her I had plague. After that I had no more help, but I heard her muttering darkly to her friend all through the sermon. Her apparent antipathy to the British was not general, however: many of the women in my pew smiled encouragingly, as if they thought I was a bit simple.

  I understood the odd phrase or two of the sermon, but for the most part it was all lost on me. The singing was a hearty drone, led by someone at the front. Seeing who this was brought a fine sweat to my face: it was the woman I had seen come in with flowers on market day. I should have been relieved that I was too far away for her to recognize me. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she had marched down the aisle and revealed me to all as a hypocritical impostor, as I’d clearly broken some protocol on my last visit, if not an actual thief.

  Finally, after a great deal of sitting, standing, and kneeling, came the mass for which the assembled worshippers were waiting. Several of the congregation, once they had received the wafer, to my surprise simply left; they’d had what they’d come for. One last hymn was announced, full of references to the Virgin Mary. Some sang, others shuffled, preparing to depart, and it was then that I saw the distinctive head of Gérard Boutin on the other side of the church towards the front. Beside him, round and diminutive, stood Marie-Claude. They must have come in by a side door. I cursed myself for not thinking that they might be here. How was I ever going to preserve any kind of anonymity now? As the blessing was pronounced and the congregation began to leave, chatting all the while, I waited for my pew to empty so that I could scuttle out. But then Gérard raised his massive head and a huge smile broke out under his signature moustache. “Rachelle!” he boomed, and several heads turned. If ever I had wished to be a church mouse racing unobserved for her hole, this was that moment.

  Embarrassed though I was, I decided to behave as if all was normal. Grinning like a demented monkey, I waved to Gérard and forced my way up the aisle against the flow: several others were doing just this and nobody took any notice. Gérard clasped me to his chest in a rib-cracking hug, kissing me on both cheeks at least four times, and Marie-Claude followed suit, clucking and trilling incomprehensibly. Gérard took me by the elbow, bellowing over the noise of the crowd something about having refreshments at the local bar, and I was propelled out of the building and diagonally across the road to where several tables had been set out on the pavement. I was pressed into a chair, several people shook my hand, and I began to feel that my smile was cemented on. A tiny espresso appeared at my elbow, then a glass of brandy. I drank both down, grateful for the instant relief they offered. I had no idea who was buying, but a few minutes later another brandy appeared. At this point I thought I had better be careful; I didn’t want to make a complete drunken spectacle of myself.

  Eventually, after a great deal of talking, shouting, hand-shaking, kissing, and laughter, the party broke up. Gérard discovered I had walked to church and insisted on driving me home. It was only a five-minute drive, but it took fifteen: he drove slowly, meandering across the central line, and singing in a fruity baritone. Happily we encountered no tractors – of course not: it was Sunday. The local farmers were indoors, well scrubbed, knocking back their Sunday lunch of half a dozen courses and enough wine to sink the entire British Navy.

  I thanked my kind neighbours and got over my embarrassment. After all, nobody else seemed to think anything was out of the ordinary. Very carefully, I asked the Boutins if they would like to come round for aperitifs the following evening. I felt quite humbled by the enthusiasm of their acceptance. What had Michael told them? It was as if they had me down as some celestial visiting dignitary, rather than an inept foreigner getting everything wrong.

  When Michael rang that evening he’d obviously already heard the story of my visit to St Nicolas, Roqueville. I hadn’t realized till now that he and the Boutins were also regularly in touch. From the bubble of merriment in his voice I concluded that he was making an almighty effort not to laugh.

  “Go ahead, laugh,” I said bitterly. “I’m glad I’m such a hilarious spectacle. I dare say the whole of northern France is in on the joke. Perhaps it’ll be in tomorrow’s Gazette.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel,” Michael said, obviously not sorry at all. “I’ve only heard what Gérard told me, and there was nothing funny about that. It’s what my imagination has added – you trying to be anonymous, stuck up against the church wall by a bunch of French ladies.”

  “Well, I suppose you’ve got to laugh,” I said grudgingly. “And to be fair I think I was the only person who felt uncomfortable. Nobody else thought anything of it.”

  “People round here are used to odd Britons,” Michael said. “Mostly they regard us as harmless eccentrics, so you’ve probably confirmed them in that view. But Rachel, if you have a yen to go to church, there’s no need to attend the Catholic one and struggle with the language. When Jasper and I are in France we go to an Anglican church called St Luke’s. It’s about a forty-five minute drive, but you’ll be welcome, and you could take Dulcie – they like dogs there. Also,” he added slyly, “they often have lunch after the service. If you’re interested they have a website, with directions.”

  I took note of the address.

  “I’ll tell them to look out for you,” Michael added.

  “No, please don’t,” I said hastily. “Because I may not go. Anyway…”

  “Anyway what?”

  “No, it doesn’t matter.” I had been about to say, “I don’t want anyone to notice me.” But even if I did go, it wasn’t any kind of commitment, was it?

  The evening with the Boutins went off reasonably well. I’d gone out and bought an array of what were whimsically called “gâteaux aperitifs” – the English equivalent of “nibbles”. I’d inspected the cupboard in which Michael kept his stock of drinks and realized I didn’t have to buy any more. Gérard had smoothed down his unruly thatch with water; during the course of the evening tufts of it sprang to life as they dried. Despite the heat he’d put on a tie, and was far too hot as a result. As each glass emptied his face grew more and more flushed, and I began to be anxious for his health. Marie-Claude had taken off her apron and put on a dress that was pretty but rather too long for her height. Clearly they felt it was an occasion of some significance, demanding a certain formality. Between Gérard’s interesting English and my inadequate French we managed somehow to talk to one another, but it was a struggle on both sides, and Marie-Claude simply twittered, talked to her husband, and smiled at me.

  There was something I’d been thinking about, and I felt she was the person to help me, so I addressed her directly rather than through Gérard, which made her flustered and nervous. “Marie-Claude,” I said, “Peut-être vous pouvez m’aider?”

  “Bien sur,” she squeaked, her voice disappearing into a distant upper register.

  “Pouvez-vous me conseiller? Mes cheveux sont trop longs; j’ai besoin d’une coiffeuse. Vous pouvez recommander quelqu’un?”

  She looked at me blankly; I hadn’t thought my accent quite so difficult to understand. Gérard interpreted, and a heated interchange took place between them, as I looked from one to the other like a spectator at a tennis match. I caught one or two words of the stream, including a name: Nathalie.

  At last Gérard turned to me. “You wish to cut your ’air? My wife –” he gestured to Marie-Claude as if I didn’t know who she was “– she like to go to a, what do you say? Hair-cutter?”

  “Hairdres
ser,” I murmured.

  “Yes, young lady in Roqueville, Nathalie. Good cutter, cheap. Vous voulez faire un rendezvous?”

  “Oui, yes, um, I think so.”

  “OK, demain, tomorrow, yes? Marie-Claude telephone for a rendezvous.”

  Marie-Claude said something to her husband and he turned back to me. “She sayed, you want her to come with you? Help you talk French?”

  “Oh, yes, please! Oui, merci!”

  Marie-Claude turned to me, her dimpled cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling. “I ’elp you,” she said simply. “I telephone, demain.” She seemed energized by her task: this was something she knew about, her field of expertise.

  Nathalie was a petite blonde in her mid-twenties. Her salon, in a side street off the market square, was tiny: obviously just a front room in her house, but neat and well-equipped. I was grateful that I’d taken up Gérard’s offer of a lift, as I’m not sure I would have found the place on my own. She had one other customer when we arrived, an elderly lady under a drier, who looked at me suspiciously but then saw Marie-Claude and smiled, revealing an almost complete lack of teeth. Marie-Claude greeted her and explained who I was – so I gathered from the glances in my direction. There was a great deal of sage nodding. In the corner stood a pram, with Nathalie’s sleeping baby in it. Nathalie gestured to me, inviting me to sit, and gave me a pile of magazines devoted entirely to hairstyles. I obediently turned a few pages but found nothing sufficiently simple. All I wanted was a short, neat cut.

  I called over to Marie-Claude, and tried to explain. Unfortunately, although I’d looked up the appropriate vocabulary before coming out, Marie-Claude found my French accent incomprehensible, and we had to call in the cavalry: Gérard, who arrived in response to his wife’s call and pushed open the door almost furtively. Clearly this was not a place where a man, and an ex-policeman into the bargain, felt comfortable. After checking with me a rapid discussion followed, and eventually Nathalie seemed to understand what was required and Gérard was able to retire to his seat in the bar opposite and bury himself in the Gazette.

  Half an hour later the job was done, and Nathalie showed me the back of my head in her hand-mirror. She’d done a neat job. My unruly, wiry hair was tamed, for now, trimmed into tidy layers and shaped into my neck. I looked different: younger, perhaps.

  It was only after Gérard dropped me off at home that I remembered what day it was. I was aghast – had my haircut stopped them from visiting their daughter? I couldn’t have protested, even if I had remembered; as far as they were aware I didn’t know about their Tuesday visits. I could only hope they’d be able to go and see her, and their grandson, another day.

  I wanted to ask Michael about it, but when the phone rang that evening it was Jasper on the line. “Dad’s gone to some function at the hospital,” he told me. “You’ll have to make do with me.” We chatted inconsequentially about what I’d been doing and how he was practising for the swimming event. He wanted to know how Dulcie’s training was going, and I told him about her progress. “Can’t wait to get down to France,” he said. “I hope it stays sunny for when we get there. It’ll be good to see you, Rachel.”

  After he’d rung off the house felt empty and echoing. Cheerful and charming as Jasper was, I found I missed my nightly talk with Michael. I thought I would go to St Luke’s on Sunday – not, I told myself, because I really had much interest in church, but I was beginning to feel lonely and adrift. It would be good to be with people, and talk in my native tongue. I opened up my laptop and found the church website. It had a paragraph or two about the church’s history, and I read that it had been founded some twenty years before by a couple of expat Britons and had grown. One of them had been a doctor, hence St Luke’s. They’d had a priest but he’d retired and now the congregation kept it going by themselves, just calling in retired clergymen to deliver communion. I looked at a map which showed the area that the church covered: it was vast.

  I started to prepare for Michael and Jasper’s arrival, laying in food for the fridge and freezer, finishing the mowing and the weeding, making up Jasper’s bed. Michael had told me not to bother with his, as he’d only used it for a few days on his last visit. I was looking forward to seeing them, and wondered if they’d notice any change in me. I was eating well and sleeping longer, working outside in the sunshine or sitting at the patio table, reading, relaxing. In the mirror I saw a different Rachel: skinniness filled out a little, skin tanned from being outside, hair short – but also a different look, something quieter and calmer. I looked down at my hands, black in places from ingrained soil. Michael would want to know how they were coping with the garden jobs I was doing. In anyone else’s eyes they were perfectly adequate; whether or not they could wield surgical instruments with any speed, dexterity or accuracy none of us knew.

  On Sunday morning I started early. I took Dulcie for a walk up the lane, giving her a chance to explore new smells, but also to put some of her training into practice. For a few moments I let her look at some black-faced sheep in a field, and she stood, stiff and keen, her ears twitching. “No, pal. Not for you,” I told her sternly.

  Back at the house I took a cup of coffee into the garden and surveyed my work. The grass was short and neat, the vegetable patch was flourishing, and the weeds were in retreat. I decided to leave it till later to clean the house so that it would be at its best when Michael and Jasper arrived. I felt I had gone some little way to say thank you.

  I put Dulcie in the car and started the forty-five minute journey to church. The D514, while a main road, was almost empty, and I bowled along with the radio on. It was a French programme and I understood little of the patter but the music was familiar and at one point I began to sing along – something I hardly ever did. It made me think of my father, who was always singing – at his work, when we were out in the car, camping, or simply fooling around in the garden – and I realized that this was something else I had lost. What else would be on that list, if I were really to think about it? I put the thought firmly aside; many things perhaps had been sacrificed, but in an honourable cause: the saving of life. I clung on to that, not wishing to dim this cloudless day.

  We arrived without getting lost and with time to spare. The church was situated in a tiny hamlet of half a dozen houses. No longer needed by the local community, so the website had told me, it had been given over to the Anglicans by the local bishop. It was a typical, modest stone building with a long nave and a short tower, and in a niche above the main door stood a small statue of the Virgin, weathered by the elements. The churchyard was beautifully kept with gravelled walkways between the ornate headstones, the graves decorated with pots of artificial flowers and metal plaques – some with hands folded in prayer, others with an inscription: “Nos regrets”; “A mon oncle”. The headstones themselves bore the names of families, and just a brief glance told how interconnected the local families were.

  Dulcie and I had a look at the churchyard, then I took her for a brief stroll round the hamlet before putting her back in the car. She was having a drink when another car rolled into the car park. A woman got out, smiled at me, and took a wheelchair from the boot. She opened the passenger door and helped another woman, younger, out of the car and into the wheelchair. At once the woman in the wheelchair bowled over to where I stood guard over Dulcie.

  “Hello!” she said. I suppose she was about twenty-five; her brown hair was held back with a clip; her round face was freckly. “Haven’t seen you before.” She held out her hand and I shook it. “I’m Letty Wetherly.”

  I smiled back. “Rachel Keyte.”

  Dulcie was wagging her tail – she obviously knew Letty.

  “Your dog looks just like Dulcie,” Letty said. “Doesn’t she, Mum?” She called to the older woman, who came over and joined us.

  “It is Dulcie,” I said.

  Letty looked up at me, her brown eyes wide. “So where’s Michael? And Jasper?”

  “Letty, don’t be so nosy,” her mother said gently. />
  “It’s OK,” I said. I smiled down at Letty. “They’re not here yet. They’re coming tomorrow. I’m staying at their house and looking after Dulcie. Or possibly she’s looking after me.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Mrs Wetherly said. “Welcome to St Luke’s.”

  That hour, I felt welcome. Nobody bothered me; nobody, thankfully, asked me if I was saved. But people smiled and said hello, and the service was an eye-opener. Maybe it was ordinary enough if you were used to such things, but my experience was limited, and not at all inspiring. It was a relief to listen and respond and understand every word, and though I didn’t remember everything, bits of it came back to me later. The sermon was preached by a woman – she was robed, so not, I supposed, just a member of the congregation. She spoke of God being love itself, how his love radiated out into every part of creation, how it was love that underpinned everything: every leaf on every tree, every note of every hymn, every unconscious breath we breathed. All we had to do was hold out our hands. It was simple, perhaps even simplistic. Once I would have sneered and countered, “So why murder? Why destruction? Why infants blown apart by random bombs? Why cancer? Why abuse, greed, hunger?” And so on, and on. But now I wondered if it was our corrupt and damaged race that was responsible for so much that was evil. Maybe God had made the world good.