The Silent Hours

by Cesca Major

  This isn’t an ordinary explanation of the day, I realize. This is the reason for her daily visits.

  ‘I couldn’t understand what could drive someone to give up all hope. I couldn’t begin to fathom what you might have been through to look like that. For the first time in this nunnery it made me … it made me question whether there was a god.’ She takes a step closer. ‘To allow that much misery in one person.’

  This pity, this open, unabashed pity for me, makes me start to shake. Why is she saying these things? She must stop.

  ‘Sometimes you have that look again, I can’t reach you, I can’t …’

  A scratchy sound, a gurgle rises up in my throat.

  Sister Marguerite stops, strides over, puts both hands on my shoulders, forces me to look at her. ‘Please.’

  My eyes meet hers.

  ‘Please … please, talk to me …’

  I try. The gurgling sound again. I can’t and before I can write her a note, scratch something as I sometimes do, broken sentences to reflect the gaps in my own mind, I am pulled away.

  It is that day – I know it is: I’m aware of the same strange pull on my insides, the feeling that I might expel the contents of my stomach if I stay too long in this memory. It is so clear, often repeated, when other things are barely there or stubbornly refuse to reveal themselves, when my own surname eludes me.

  I am walking with Isabelle to the green. We pass Monsieur Lefèvre – I remember I need to talk to him about ordering a joint of lamb. Not now. He is hurrying too, sweating as he looks around him, I don’t stop. I see Madame Garande carrying bags of food, shouting after some local child for stepping on her skirt. She shakes it out, brushing at the mark. The child’s hair is blonde, ringlets under a hat. Where is Vincent? I look for them and see my own confusion etched on the faces of others.

  The number of soldiers is overwhelming and my heart vibrates in my chest. The whole village is moving towards the green, clusters of children excited to be out in the sunshine. A couple of boys conjure up a yo-yo and take it in turns to practise tricks. Twins, faces covered in freckles brought on by the early summer’s sunshine, long plaits down their backs; one of the girl’s ribbons is loose. It trails onto her shoulder and the pale pink satin strip glimmers. They giggle together, swapping a note, a drawing of some sort.

  They’re oblivious to the men dressed in that dull grey uniform herding them efficiently to be registered. But a few of the boys are looking, unable to drag their eyes away from the sleek rifles slung casually over their shoulders, some with ribbons pinned to their top pockets. Soldiers are rare in the village and to see one so close up must be a treat for them.

  The adults scowl, muttering in French about the Hun swine, some loud enough to tempt the soldiers to turn their heads and find the source. My clammy hands grip the bag I am holding, our papers inside. I will it all to be over quickly. I see Isabelle looking warily around her, attempting to smile at a couple of the boys in one of the classes she teaches. A wash of relief that we are together at least. One of the younger soldiers admires her, his gaze appraising. The sun beats down on her hatless head and her ringlets are a riot of yellows. She looks so slender and fragile in her short tea dress, as she clutches her bundle to her chest.

  If I had stayed with them, refused to let go of Vincent’s hand, would it have turned out differently?

  He was there too, his solid mass, his low voice, his hand enormous as it enclosed mine. He turned. It was a profile I knew without needing to see it. He looked across at the mayor, seemed to relax, shoulders dropping a fraction, his jaw unclenching as he watched the men talking in a tight circle.

  I didn’t stay – my hand left his before I had stopped to think about it. I would have kept clinging to it if I had the moment again. He’d stepped back, was talking to Paul, gesturing across the green to something out of my eye line. There had been no words as we parted, a look back, another and he’d gone; they had both gone, and I could still feel the warmth from his hand, wanted to seize it back and make sure we never let go.

  I look into Sister Marguerite’s face as she searches mine for clues: a moment of frustration glimpsed briefly, and then gone. The drab greys of the room, and Sister Marguerite’s uniform of black and white, are a gloomy haze. The colour from that day, the village in full bloom in the heat of summer, her face and the faces of the children, are all blurring into nothing, fading into the recesses of my memory once more.

  She pulls the stool over to the bed and picks up my left hand. She holds it to her lips and gives it a simple kiss, then bows her head so that she is almost doubled over my bedclothes. ‘You must keep trying. Please. Try to talk. You must. They will send you away but I know you are in there. Please, have faith …’

  We breathe in and out. The room grows even darker, the sky fat with clouds. I can do nothing but sit there. I cannot force the words out. She leaves shortly after. Her tired footsteps fade on the stone flagstones and I feel a surge of guilt that I had a part in slowing them.

  SEBASTIEN

  We step into the library, the air filled with the smell of books and furniture polish. It tickles the back of my throat. There is a long table in the corner under high latticed windows, with reading lamps down the middle and empty, scuffed leather chairs around it.

  Isabelle cocks her head towards it and moves through the turnstile, giving a small sideways look at the librarian behind the desk as she passes. I tip my hat and am rewarded with a pink close-lipped smile. I follow her across the room in silence feeling lighter already, the stillness of the place blocking out the noises and rush of the high street outside. I pull out a chair for Isabelle and settle opposite her. There is a lone, light cough and the sound of pages being turned, of delicate movements, quiet industry.

  Isabelle removes her gloves, producing a book from her bag, some notes in untidy blue ink. I let my breath out slowly and ease back into the leather. She leans over her desk, her blonde hair falling over the book she is engrossed in.

  My chin is resting in one hand, the other wavering over the page of the journal I had been reading. I can’t look away. The light from the high, thin windows casts long beams onto the scratched wood of the desk, slicing across her, highlighting strips of skin of softest gold in the late afternoon light. I love the silent way in which we are working. She often comes here to plan her lessons, researching the books she is going to teach the children, recounting what she has learnt in whispered snatches, or during breaks on the bench in the alcove in the corridor outside.

  I plan to tell my parents about us but more weeks and months pass and I don’t find the words, know that I need to somehow. This is wartime and we are Jewish. For now, though, I don’t want it spelt out, I don’t want father thinking of a dozen reasons why I should call it off. So there is next week. In this moment I am certain – I don’t want anything to change. Someone sneezes and the noise brings me back and she looks up, catches my eye and gives me a slow smile.

  Beyond her, the librarian moves past, pushing a wooden trolley in front of her, her pursed painted lips the only colour to her face, her thin frame obscured by piles of books in different colours, some with spines coming away, nondescript titles etched in gilt. I get up to search for a book, one hand massaging my leg as it sears with pain from resting so long in the same position. Isabelle doesn’t look up and I move away, wanting something to lose myself in before I fall asleep reading about banking. I head to the Classics section and wander aimlessly down the aisle, skimming over the titles.

  I can see the back of her head over the tops of the books on the middle shelf and feel my mouth lifting at the sight. Her shoulders are hunched, one hand resting on her cheek, her elbow on the desk. Her pale blue summer coat hangs from the back of her chair. I think back to how my life had been before Isabelle. My mind is filled with her and, despite everything happening in Limoges – father’s worry, the mutterings dripping down from the occupied
zone, life there so different to ours, everything scrutinized by Germans – there she is at the centre of my thoughts, vibrant and alive: she seems to personify hope, the future. Her light laughter, her kind exchanges with strangers, the way she can raise a smile from the surliest person – this energy that she exudes seems to block everything else out: all my worries, made worse when I see Father’s greying hair, the slight stoop in his shoulders like the world is weighing on him and he is waiting for it all to collapse; Mother, her knitted brow, the new lines in her face as she looks across at Father, tries to intercept the paper, prepare him … all of it is forgotten in the moment when Isabelle rests a hand lightly on my arm.

  Isabelle is living only a few kilometres away in Oradour, and yet it is another world, a world seemingly unaffected by the changes. She tells me there is rationing, refugees, farmers who have lost sons and whose elderly mothers are bringing in the crops, but she speaks more often of lazy days wandering through the meadows, the old men playing pétanque by the green, the woman gossiping over the clothes lines, the oblivious carefree screams of children racing around the school playground. I want to be part of that world, I want to stroll through the streets, sit and smoke with Father outside a nice hotel, hear Mother’s carefree laughter tripping over our conversation, have Isabelle by my side, her hand resting in mine.

  My whole body aches for that moment, the impossible moment, when two worlds collide.

  And suddenly she is in front of me, standing at the end of the aisle, one hand loosely on her hip, her pleated cotton skirt thin in the light, the faint silhouette of her thighs through the material. Her face is quizzical, one eyebrow slightly lifted. She places a finger on a shelf, begins the pretence of searching the books as the librarian, her pale face all eyes, wheels past once more as if waiting to pounce. I turn a laugh into a light cough as Isabelle looks at the librarian and then up to the ceiling, feigning exasperation.

  Trying to focus on the titles in front of me, I realize I am unable to make out the lettering: the authors’ names a mix of consonants and vowels as I feel her presence, watchful, playful, as she moves slowly towards me, eyes still on the shelves, head held to the side so that she can read the spines more easily. A quick glance to me as she approaches and one side of her mouth lifts. She is now an arm’s length away, so close I can make out the small, neat mole on the nape of her neck where she has swept her hair aside, the stiff white collar of her shirt in stark contrast to the peachy softness of her skin, the pale pink of her cheek. In the shafts of dusty half-light she looks like she has emerged from the pages of a romance novel. An arm’s length and yet a world away … could I pull her towards me?

  Catching me staring, she points a finger at the shelf and asks, ‘Anything good?’ in a half-whisper.

  I shrug quickly, heat surging to the ends of my fingers, pulling out a book at random; it slips in my hands so I have to save it, then turn it the right way up.

  She appears over my shoulder as I read the first page. Her breath is on my neck and her body is centimetres from mine. I freeze, muscles tense, not wanting this moment to end. She smells of soap and roses. My eyes remain still, the first line repeated again and again until I hear her say quietly, ‘Sounds far too depressing.’And she has broken the spell, sidled away from me, still looking at the books in regimented lines. I breathe out in a rush, roll my eyes at myself and seize two more of the nearest books, hastening back to the table to trawl through them.

  TRISTAN

  The rough fabric of my grey shorts itches and Luc runs ahead of me as I stop to adjust them for the fourth time that morning. I call to him but he says he can’t stop because he is being the wind. If Maman was here she’d tell me off for dawdling. She often joins us in the morning but today she is looking after Dimitri who has been in bed with the flu for forever, so it is just us and I am in charge because I am the oldest. I think that means I have to hold his hand when we cross roads and things but there is only one road between our new house and the school so I’m not sure it is entirely necessary here.

  Luc’s favourite part of the walk is around the next bend – a field on our left of brown cows, today all lying down in the shade of the trees. He tells me to hurry up. I think I’m still waiting for a cyclist to race around the bend, or to hear the sound of crowds walking to work, or a lot of cars beeping as I cross the road, but there is nothing. The long grass on the side of the road is curling into itself it’s so hot, and there is no breeze so the trees are all still.

  It feels good to be out of the house. We lived at the Villiers’ home forever but last month we moved into the nearby village, called Oradour. Our new house still smells like the cellar did in Paris. Apparently the couple who lived there won’t be needing it for the time being; they have gone abroad somewhere as they don’t like the ‘political climate’, which is different from not liking the weather (I knew that but still Eléonore had to point it out to me). Anyway, clearly no one had lived in it for a while as we had to take lots of sheets off the furniture and all the dust in the air made us cough and cough and blink it all out of our eyes. Maman set us all to work scrubbing every surface like Clarisse used to do. I see now why she used to complain about her back hurting as Dimitri and I were set to work cleaning the bathroom and after an hour or so of trying to get orangey streaks off the bath we had to sit down for a rest. It’s like the workhouse. Maman says not to complain and that we’re lucky we have a house at all but I think she is being silly because everyone has a house.

  Father goes into Limoges a lot as he has banking business there and Maman says he is talking to Monsieur Villiers about new opportunities. Maman isn’t alone though – a girl from the village has come to help her. She is called Claudette and she has two very big front teeth and sometimes when she speaks a little whistle comes out. She talks to Maman a lot which I think Maman likes as in Paris she had lots of ladies to talk to but here she is often by herself.

  Luc is mooing at the cows now. I let out a great whoop and go chasing after him. Luc looks about, startled, but then joins in and we go racing down the street. I feel like I’ve been let out into the wild after years of being a pet. Maman would never have allowed us to walk to school in Paris – too many motorcars, too many dangers.

  We get to the school gate and split up. Luc gives me a wave. I hope he doesn’t come up to me at break time again, as last time a couple of the other boys laughed.

  We started the new term a few weeks ago. Eléonore’s school is further down the high street, along from ours, but she likes to leave earlier than us to be on time. Papa announced we would all be spending the ‘foreseeable future’ at our schools and that we were to work hard until we could go back to Paris after the war. It seems to have gone on practically for ever already and Paris has become all faded in my head like that picture in the nursery where the colours went all pale.

  School is nothing like my last school in Paris, which was built with heavy stone walls which made it cold in both the winter and the summer, and had huge echoey rooms and stained-glass windows everywhere. This one is smaller and sits between the other shops and houses on the high street. It has flowers in little boxes on the windows and it has been whitewashed on the outside. Quite nice. For a school.

  The teachers put football goal-posts up on a grassy bit at the back last week and the master in charge, who looks a bit like the Villiers’ dog (a sort of flattish face and a look that says: ‘My bite will hurt’), has organized shooting practice later today. I will probably make the team but first I have to get through a whole day of lessons.

  It seems silly to be inside in a classroom learning algebra and reciting Latin. There is a war on. When a German soldier is running at you there’s no point quoting Virgil at him, better to kick a football at his face. We sit in three rows of four desks in a room with wooden beams and a massive map of Europe on the walls. Monsieur Pincet, who teaches us Geography and Science, has drawn a line all through it in red pen, showing w
here the occupied zone is. You don’t have to go very far north to get over the line. He got cross when Michel said it seemed a little strange – why would the Germans only want part of France?

  Our form teacher is Mademoiselle Rochard and she isn’t like any of the teachers in Paris. She looks so small and delicate seated behind the huge desk at the front. I didn’t know teachers came like her at all: she’s softly spoken and her hair smells lovely, like honey. I once asked her to check a piece of my work just so I could catch the smell again. She has the sweetest voice which rises above all of us when we all sing in the mornings under the photograph of the old man whose name begins with a P. I had to punch Dimitri on the arm last week when he teased me about her. He claimed I loved her but that is stupid. I don’t love her, she is a grown-up. The punch left a good purpling bruise.

  The good news is that Mademoiselle Rochard thinks I’m wonderful. She told me that I am very clever. This is not a view shared by my old teachers from Paris, where Monsieur Hébert was quick to get his cane and punish me for any small thing. He definitely didn’t think I was ‘très intelligent’. My heart skips a beat at the thought that I will not be seeing him at all this year. No more Paris is quite sad, but no more Monsieur Hébert – my backside rejoices.