The Silent Hours

by Cesca Major

  I breathe out like I have been holding all my breath in for ages.

  Papa’s face changes, he gets a couple of wrinkles between his eyebrows. He takes off his glasses and pushes himself up from his chair.

  We both take a step back automatically.

  ‘Don’t be worried, boys. Sit down, sit down. What do you mean, spies?’ he asks, pointing to the sofa. We edge towards it and perch half-on as he stands by his desk. I can’t make out his expression any more as the sun in the window behind him is shining all around him; he’s just a big, man-shaped shadow.

  ‘We know where they are,’ I pipe up. ‘They live in the forest. We’ve seen them,’ I say, only stretching the truth a little, as we definitely saw something in the forest.

  ‘Seen them?’ Papa says, his voice sounding serious.

  ‘Well, their house.’

  ‘Where in the forest?’

  ‘By the swing.’

  ‘The tree with the swing,’ Dimitri adds.

  I nod.

  Papa pauses and turns his back to us, shuffling papers on his desk before turning back around.

  ‘Just there?’ he asks.

  I think it is a funny question.

  We both nod.

  He looks at us both for a long time.

  ‘No other house?’

  We shake our heads.

  Papa puts two fingers to his lips, taps. ‘I know.’

  Dimitri and I look at each other.

  ‘You must promise me not to go there again,’ he says. ‘These people are not friends of ours.’

  We both nod at him, heads moving up and down at the same time.

  ‘Good. They will be dealt with – they all will be.’

  I wonder how many of them there are. I look at Dimitri.

  ‘Now if that is all, I have work to do,’ Papa says. He turns to sit back down.

  ‘They need to be caught,’ I blurt, sure that this is not how this should go. Papa doesn’t seem to be taking it that seriously, and we need to end the war.

  Papa looks at me. ‘I agree. It is in hand. We have started already. Thank you for telling me, boys. Keep it to yourselves now, please, and don’t go back there.’

  He sits back down at his desk and I think we are meant to go. I look at Dimitri, who pushes his glasses up his nose and then shrugs. We get off the sofa and move back to the door.

  It didn’t feel quite like I thought it would, but Father seems to know what to do.

  As I walk up the stairs I hear Father picking up the telephone to somebody. I think I hear him say, ‘We need to drive them out of the forest!’ but I can’t be sure and then Dimitri wants to be pirates and I forget everything else.

  SEBASTIEN

  Peering in the last segment of the mirror still secured to the frame, I rinse the razor in the tub of water in front of me. Turning my face a little so I can see the targeted area I place it on my cheek, flinching as the blunt blade drags across my chin. After a few more failed attempts my face is red and pimply, like a piece of used sandpaper. None of this is helped by the last of the day’s sun sinking with little warning from the sky, losing itself behind a layer of trees.

  I wonder for the tenth time that day what the point of it all is, anyway.

  I am living in a tumbledown building in the forest on the outskirts of the village. Isabelle told me that a local Jewish family have hidden in the forest safely for most of the war. They obviously don’t run a bank. The villagers know but do nothing she says. She teaches the little boy. She tells me that I will be safe here. She says there might be more, she doesn’t know – she doesn’t meet my eye when she talks about it, knots her hands in worry.

  It has taken no time at all to perfect the look of a man who might have been camping or held captive for a year or more: my clothes are filthy, streaked with grime, flecked with mud, my shirt collar has yellowed and I imagine the stench I give off, despite my pathetic attempts to stay clean. Even without the shadows of a night drawing in, the room is dark with dust.

  I’ve swept the mud and stones into one corner and tried to make sure the section of the room where I sit is relatively clean. There is an upturned bucket and a chair that has lost its seat. There are matches and scrunched-up newspapers and Isabelle has managed to get hold of an old stove her father uses for overnight fishing trips, to heat up the tins of food she brings. They appear, as if by magic, at unspecified times. I have missed her last two visits and I’m beginning to wonder whether these food parcels are from her at all. I am desperate to see her, but then I catch a glimpse of myself, flashes of my own bleak face in the corner of the mirror, and I am half-relieved. Restless in the day, alert at night, I cannot read when it is dark; mice scurry and I don’t sleep. I think of my parents.

  I have been back to Limoges on the tram to see Jean-Paul. He was at the bank, on the telephone trying to trace my parents. He has lost weight since we last met: no wobbling jowls, a strained look on his face as he tried to reassure me. He has heard rumours; there are some people in the area who are working with the gendarmerie. He didn’t want to alarm, nothing had been confirmed. He told me my note had not been touched, that my parents had not been back to the apartment. That other men had been.

  Burning my fingers on the end of the match I try to get as much life out of each flame as I can: I can’t waste anything, nervous now as to when the next package might arrive. I can’t rely on Isabelle. Apart from anything, it is humiliating having her wait on me in this way, forcing her to squirrel items from the shop. I pay her from father’s money, glad to do that small thing at least. The transaction is awkward, me holding tins to my chest as she silently takes the money, brushes my arm. I should be protecting her, looking after her.

  There are great holes in the thatched roof that allow dank puddles of rainwater to seep into the dust-lined boards. I can’t search for my parents here; I know that I am useless to them if I stay. I wonder again where they are. Are they safe? Are they together? I imagine Father’s soft expression when he turns to Mother, a hand automatically reaching out to hers, a soft chuckle of a laugh at something she says, now somewhere desperate to protect her, his delicate wife. A pianist. I picture her back in our apartment now, sitting on the leather stool, her hair twisted into a bun, her slender neck bent over the keys, a concentrated expression on her face as she follows the music, her feet pressing the pedals, playing softly in the corner of the living room as the sun pours through the windows. How can she not be there still, playing? Where has she gone?

  I remove the slip of paper, my father’s rushed handwriting scrawled across its surface, barely legible. The packet of money with my mother’s ring is safe inside my pocket still. I read his note again, my finger tracing the lettering, slowly, slowly, following the loops and careful dots, over and over.

  The logs scratch my forearms, tickling my flesh. Pushing open the door I move inside, depositing them down in the corner where they might dry out.

  I nearly step on it. I can barely make it out in this light, but as my eyes adjust all the broken, dusty forms take shape. I bend to pick it up. It’s lying on the floor like a tiny doormat, one sheet folded. It’s in an italic font, elegant, looping theatrically on thick, cream, embossed paper that seem at odds with the base words written there:

  Leave now. You are not welcome here. Leave now or we will make you.

  I release it so that it drifts down and rests on the wooden floorboards, the words still clear in the gloom, or perhaps burned into the insides of my eyes. My whole body slumps, beaten, as if the bearer of the note had come here and physically assaulted me. My head drops and I sink, back to the door, without knowing. In the semi-darkness, with the dank smell of soil and rain around me I hear a sob, and realize it is me. Reaching automatically for Father’s envelope I pull it out of my pocket, remove the piece of paper carefully, wanting to replace the words, the ugly words with the comfort o
f Father’s curved hand, as if he might be here to pull me back up to my feet.

  You are not welcome here.

  My whole body aches with the loss of them, with the loss of our life in France, with the realisation that it was never real, that they were all just waiting, that we are not welcome.

  Leave now.

  I reread Father’s instructions, his list of contacts, my lifeline, his hope, and make up my mind.

  ADELINE

  1952, St Cecilia nunnery, south-west France

  He is crying and I can’t get to him. My hands bang against the wall in frustration. His wails grow louder, more desperate. She should appear, to hold him in her arms, bundled in his blanket, so that his little face peers out from a cloud of cotton. He should quieten, safe, nestled to her breast, hearing her heart beat in rhythm with his own. But now he is alone and screaming. No one is coming. She is not able to reach him. I can’t reach him.

  I am awake and it is nearly morning. The dream melts away gradually. It is simply me alone in this room, clutching the top of the bedclothes, feeling the cold sweat on my upper lip. His screams fade. Slices of shadow cut through the white wall of the room, across the crucifix, shapes hanging there, shifting subtly as I lie here, as another memory returns.

  I am hanging out the washing to catch the afternoon sun. Isabelle silently helps me drape various items over the line, pegging towels and sheets, the effort turning her cheeks pink.

  She is beautiful, an elegance to her movements, her skin glowing. Crickets sing. Birds swoop overhead back to the nests of their young. Hands on my hips, I breathe out slowly, feeling lighter. Isabelle reaches up to extract another peg from the line, and I see it.

  So obvious. But how and when and … how … and who? I continue to stare, looking her up and down, needing to sit down.

  Isabelle turns to look at me. She sees the understanding, her brow furrows and then she drops the shirt she is holding.

  ‘I …’ I gesture pointlessly, repeating, ‘I … how … who have you … ?’ I can’t form the words.

  Isabelle walks towards me, arms outstretched, palms skyward. ‘Maman, I—’

  I stumble backwards, clinging to a sheet for support. ‘How could you?’ I whisper.

  Isabelle looks as if I have punched her in the stomach: she stops, bends over herself slightly as tears form. A sheet, whipped up by a sudden breeze, hides her from me for a moment. Then she is back, standing there wordlessly, pale, frozen, meeting my eye.

  And then she turns on her heel and flees.

  ISABELLE

  Darling Paul,

  I am shaking with the effort of writing these words to you, somehow it is worse than telling Father, not knowing what you will think of me, that I can’t explain it to you face to face –

  I am pregnant.

  I promise I never meant to do it this way. Maman and Father are so cross, I have never seen Father so angry and with me, his darling. Didn’t you always wonder whether he could ever be angry with me? Well, he can. Those permanently ruddy cheeks of his drained of colour when I told him. The napkin ring he’d been fiddling with moments before forgotten. Maman kept repeating that people would talk, that I’d be the gossip of the village and you, Paul, would not come home to us, that the authorities would somehow stop it, how our family would be tainted and I have made it worse for you.

  Have I? Is that possible? I never meant for that. Picture me here pleading with you to understand. You can’t be angry too. I can’t think of you somewhere loathing me. You are going to be an uncle to this child. He or she is going to be the most loved, cherished baby in the world. I can feel the little being moving around in my stomach, although I’m not sure if that is likely this early in the pregnancy. Mother refuses to talk to me about it. She is always buttoned up on such matters and refuses to be drawn.

  I haven’t told him about the baby – it’s not obvious yet, so I hide it under loose clothes. I know he has to leave France now, feel that I tie him here, and if he finds out he will stay and that cannot happen. Maman is so furious that I am unmarried and with no hope of a future now, but you know why this isn’t possible. None of us has a future any more, not a certain one anyway, and I know that this is right. God is watching over me, over us.

  Come home to us. I need you.

  Isabelle

  SEBASTIEN

  I left without a word to her.

  She’d known I’d had to leave, I knew it was right, knew I was useless to everybody here. Yet I found myself finding another excuse to stay one more day, another moment to see her.

  Sneaking about the countryside for days, my new life seems so far removed from what it was. Always moving at night, travelling to places I have only seen on a map before. I have become someone else. I pick up food where I can; I’m not proud of that, but I feel the dangers now snapping at my heels, and I can see Father and Mother somewhere out there urging me on, wanting me to get away.

  I will find them, will track them down. For now though, I have to go somewhere safe, buy myself time to do this. I am not abandoning them, though the gnawing in my chest seems to contradict that thought. Swallowing the lump in my throat and hardening myself to the facts, I know I would never have stayed trespassing on Isabelle. If she too had been caught up in all this I would never have forgiven myself.

  I said my own goodbye to her last night. She had wanted to hold me and I’d protested, embarrassed by my state. She’d taken my hand, looked to be on the edge of something, her mouth half-open, and then she had turned my hand over, stroked her thumb along the palm, pushing into my skin urgently, a film of tears across her eyes. We will be together again – that thought is a fierce little light burning in my chest, stubbornly refusing to go out, lighting my dreams with her face alone, and giving me hope to keep placing one foot in front of the other.

  I reach Saint-Mathieu and here I know I am going to have to find food and a way of getting out of the country. My father’s directions are clear but the journey seems an insurmountable task.

  As if someone has heard my silent despair there is a noise behind me, the rattling sound of a cart. A man of no mean frame sits atop, a dirty straw hat obscures most of his face. I step out onto the road, holding up a hand to the farmer, whose goods are jiggling around in his cart as he navigates his way over the loose stones and uneven surface.

  He eyes me warily as I move toward him. ‘Where are you headed?’ I ask.

  ‘Market.’ He nods his head south.

  ‘Need help when you get there?’

  ‘No.’

  My shoulders sag.

  ‘Get on,’ he calls out to me, shunting himself a little further along the bench he is sitting on. He moves the reins into his left hand and holds out his right. ‘Up.’

  I take his hand gratefully and haul myself up onto the seat beside him; my leg twists and I grasp it as I sit down.

  The farmer turns to look at me, then crinkles his nose a fraction. ‘We’ll try and find you a bath when we get there.’And with a roar of laugher he calls to the horse, and I bob along next to him, craning my neck only once to look around in what I think must be the direction of home. I send out a silent prayer that someone is watching over it and the people I love.

  We are climbing up a steep slope, the horse plodding so slowly we might be treading water, not moving forward. There is the sound of loose apples slipping and sliding to the back of the cart as we gradually wind our way higher. The road turns slowly on a curve, like an oversized helter-skelter, the chateau of the village at the peak looking out, surveying the hills for miles, its enormous turrets forming impressive silhouettes against the cloud-streaked sky. The road starts to level out and a cacophony of noise – the chatter of shop goers, calls and cries from market sellers, the honking of horns, the shrill trill of bicycle bells – rends the air.

  ‘Get yourself off and meet me back in the square in a bit.�
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  He tries to hand me some centimes, enough to get some breakfast, but I refuse to take them, touched by the gesture. I have my father’s money.

  ‘There’s a well down that street’ – he jerks his thumb over his shoulder – ‘where you can clean yourself up.’

  Shutters are being prised open to let in the daylight and someone has trained roses to climb the walls of their little terraced house. They snake round the window frames, the bold pink of their petals lifting the peeling paintwork and crumbling stone walls.

  Two women are filling up buckets by the well as I approach, their grumbling complaints running the same course as ever: the shortages, the high prices, the extra work – the same chatter by every well in every village in France, I imagine. One woman, her hair tied up in a knot on her head, the scarf only just able to hold back loose strands of hair, moves aside for me.

  Both fall silent as I join them, and I am well aware they will soon be grumbling about the smell of me. Strangely, the thought lifts my spirits as I haul up the bucket from the depths, gasping as I pour the whole lot over my head and bare arms, only just missing spattering the women. My skin bursts out into a thousand goosebumps as water streaks down my neck. The grime washes away in muddy rivulets towards the drain. I repeat the process, feeling better every time, flicking back my hair and rubbing my cheeks so that I feel as if I’ve dived head-first into a river.

  A few hours later, we are sitting on upturned crates as our dwindling load is carried off in hessian sacks and bags by the locals. The farmer seems pleased with the day’s work, and I have thrown myself into it with energy, bantering with the other sellers, charming the ladies who come to the stall, confident in my new guise. My suit and office patter are momentarily forgotten as I weigh out a load of onions, soil still clinging to their skins, hand over a bag and accept the money with a smile.

  ‘I’ll get you to Brantôme. You should be able to find some way of moving on from there,’ he says.