by Clare Clark
‘Not difficult,’ he said at last. ‘I do not belong here.’
‘It would be fine to have you in Mobile,’ Babelon said. ‘The winters are long there and decent companionship rarer than wax candles.’
‘You have your wife.’
‘Yes. I have my wife.’
They were both silent, staring into the fire.
‘I should like to meet your wife. If you do not object.’
‘Why on earth should I object? You shall like one another.’
There was another silence. Then Babelon began to laugh.
‘What is so funny?’
Babelon shook his head, convulsed with merriment.
‘Your face. How could I not have seen it before? The two people in the world of whom I am fondest and both of you have that exact same way of looking at me, the way you look at me at this very moment, Auguste, if you could only see yourself.’
‘What way?’
‘As if you do not trust me further than you could throw me.’ He laughed harder, his arms pressed against his belly. ‘Oh, yes. You and Elisabeth shall like one another exceedingly.’
ELISABETH CROUCHED BEFORE the fire, blowing on the damp tinder. Even when the wood caught, and the flames licked up towards the blackened kettle, she remained where she was, her arms around her shins. The pains in her belly eased a little when she squatted.
Jean-Claude leaned against the jamb of the door, his head tipped back and his arms crossed over his chest. He might have passed for a man ten years younger, Elisabeth thought, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Most of his fellows in the garrison had begun to sag, their bellies pouching over their breeches, their turkey jowls slack above the knots of their neckcloths. Their faces, besieged for years by a strong sun and stronger liquor, were blotchy and scribbled with red. It shocked Elisabeth to see the indefatigable Jean Alexandre limp down the rue d’Iberville with his stiff-legged old man’s gait, or Jeanne Deshays’ husband, who always smiled at her as though the effort might undo him, his yellowy eyes like battered coins in their little purses of flesh. It shocked her more to see Jeanne’s daughter, a poised and pretty child of almost six. When she looked at Jean-Claude, it was possible to pretend that no time had passed at all.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that they possessed no looking glass. Elisabeth knew that she was hardly the smooth-faced young girl who had first come to Louisiana. Though she had not spread and slackened like the other wives, grey streaked her hair and the skin around her eyes was worn and creased. The old strength was lacking in her. The second infusion of belladonna had taxed her gravely and months later she continued to be crippled by violent cramps. It had been another long winter, not cold so much as relentlessly wet, the low sky bulging and dripping in wet pillows, and several times she had succumbed to fever and to chills upon the stomach. The boy Auguste had brought savage remedies, offering them to her uncomfortably, without looking at her, and she had thanked him, and when he was gone she had poured them away. She had had quite enough of medicine.
She no longer assisted Guillemette le Bras. She had told the midwife that her husband objected to the work and Guillemette had only nodded, jutting her sharp chin. She had not attempted to change Elisabeth’s mind. Some time later Elisabeth learned that the midwife had asked Marie Nevette to take her place. The news had come as little surprise and yet it had pained her. The wife of the gunsmith was well liked among the women of the settlement. Besides, she had a child of her own.
Elisabeth stirred the sagamity so that it would not stick to the bottom of the kettle and burn. Beneath the table she could see her trunk, its lock rusted, and the mark on the floor where Guillemette’s basket had once been. When she had returned the basket to the midwife, it had contained everything that might be required for a lying-in. Everything, that was, but the tincture of belladonna. Months before, when at last she had been able to rise from her bed unassisted, she had wrapped it in a cloth and taken it outside. The very thought of it in the basket had become unbearable to her.
She had thought she would hurl the jar into the trees. She had imagined it, the dark impact of it in the shadows, the furious cawing and crashing as the birds took flight. But as she stood on the porch, she thought of the jar smashing, the fugitive liquid leaping up to splatter her hands. She thought of its vile fumes rising like wood-smoke, twisting in the air to insinuate themselves into her mouth, her nose, through the jelly of her eyes and the cracks in her coarsened hands, and the agitation had caused her stomach to turn over so sharply she had thought she might vomit. Half bent with the effort of it, she staggered across the yard to the wood store and, reaching behind the woodpile, she thrust the jar deep into the barrel where once they had hidden meat. Clattering back the lid, she had tumbled logs over the barrel until it was quite sealed up.
Elisabeth turned back to the pot, forcing the spoon through the thickening mixture. Usually it was her favourite time of day, before breakfast, when the light in the cabin was grey and soft as though filtered through dust and the ease of sleep still hung about them. When the porridge was ready, she lifted it from the fire and carried it to the table. She gripped the handle of the kettle tightly, so that she might not think of the cramps. All those months ago, when at last she had ceased to bleed, she had thought herself drained of it, like a calf hung upside down. She had imagined the tubes of her veins round and empty, like little mouths. Now when her monthlies came, the violence of them shocked and distressed her.
Her husband held his plate out.
‘I still cannot judge which catches the truth of him better, a pale-faced redskin or a red-skinned paleface,’ Jean-Claude mused, resuming their conversation as she spooned out a steaming helping. ‘It seems that he possesses too much of both to be easy with either.’
‘He is easy with you.’
‘No. He is devoted to me. That is something different.’
‘Must he really come tonight? You shall suffer no lack of him after tomorrow.’
‘I have already asked him. You shall not mind it when he is here.’
Elisabeth sighed and set down her spoon. The cramps were growing more severe. She longed for her husband to leave so that she might huddle alone beneath the sea-green quilt.
‘Admit it,’ he said. ‘You are fond of the boy.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘And he is perfectly smitten with you. A love-struck swain.’
‘Goodness, what nonsense you do talk!’
Standing up, Elisabeth touched her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and drew in a cautious breath. She took her husband’s empty bowl and set her full one inside it.
‘But of course he is,’ Jean-Claude insisted. ‘Do you not see the way he looks at you?’
He fluttered his eyelashes at his wife and she smiled in spite of herself, shaking her head.
‘He is only a boy.’
She turned away from him, but he caught her by the waist, pressing his lips to the nape of her neck. She leaned back against him, the bowls held tight against the pain. They had been married many years and it was no longer his habit to kiss her at breakfast. Even in her distress, there was solace in it.
‘Of course he is frightened of you too,’ Jean-Claude murmured into her hair. ‘He is not stupid. But he worships you. He dreams of doing this to you. And this too.’
‘No–’
‘But of course. He is – what? Fifteen years old? Sixteen? It is likely all he thinks of. As for this,’ he murmured, his hands more insistent, ‘oh, he would surely die for the chance–’
Elisabeth’s stomach cramped and she hunched over, almost dropping the bowls to the floor. Soon the bleeding would start. She forced a smile, twisting out of his embrace, and set the bowls down with a clatter upon the table.
‘You should go.’ The words stuck to the roof of her mouth. ‘It would not do to keep the commandant waiting.’
As if he had not heard her, Jean-Claude lifted Elisabeth into his arms, his mouth hard against hers. The sweat was co
ld on her brow and at the nape of her neck and little silverfishes darted through the darkness of her closed lids. She thought she might faint. Setting her down on the tumbled quilt, he pushed up her skirts with one hand, fumbling with the other at the buttons of his breeches. When he lay upon her, his weight on her distended belly caused her to whimper.
‘As for this,’ he murmured, his breath hot against her neck, ‘if I ever catch him dreaming of this, I’m going to break his bloody head.’
By nightfall Elisabeth had begun to bleed. She moved slowly, uncertain of her limbs, and when she stirred the stew the smell of it caught in her throat and made her gag. Her forehead was hot but she shivered. She was starting a fever. She poured water into three cups and set three wooden plates upon the table.
Over the winter Jean-Claude had fallen into the habit of bringing Auguste back for supper four or five nights each week. In the early days, Elisabeth had endeavoured to plead against such regularity, but she had had little success. Auguste was lodged with the locksmith, Le Caën, whose wife had died of yellow fever two years previously. The housekeeping was left to his daughter, a girl of perhaps nine years old, who stared at Auguste as he ate his solitary meal, her mouth blooming buds of blood as she picked the skin from her chapped lips. It was, Jean-Claude insisted, uncongenial and, desirous to please him, Elisabeth had relented. To her considerable surprise, she had grown not only accustomed to the boy but fond of him.
It was not just Auguste’s manifest devotion to her husband that softened her towards him, nor was it the comical little woodrat he called Ponola, the savage word for cotton fluff, that he sometimes brought with him to amuse her. It was the quiet intensity of him. He put her in mind of the savage women who came to trade with the French women on market day. He had the savage’s way of listening with his body as well as his ears, the savage’s habits of stillness and moderation. He did not swallow all the air in the room or set himself between them as the other men did, demanding the wholesale transfer of Elisabeth’s consideration to their own petty complaints and preoccupations. It was not that he was silent, though he spoke as he ate, frugally and with care, but that, unlike the rest of them, he did not wish to silence them. They were not required to act out an approved style of marriage before Auguste.
Elisabeth wondered if he had had a mother among the Ouma. He did not say so, though he told her that his own father had died when Auguste was no more than an infant. His mother had married again, a porter at the shipyard. He had been a rough man and quick to anger. His mother had been frightened of him. She had not been a fierce woman like Elisabeth, he had said once, and Elisabeth had laughed, startled by the remark. He wished she had been, he added awkwardly. Perhaps if she had been fierce they might have been happy. As Elisabeth and Jean-Claude were happy.
Elisabeth had thanked him then and turned away, covering her face with her hands. For, if it was true that they were happy, it was true too that they were at their happiest when Auguste was with them. He was the looking glass in which they could admire themselves. When Auguste was there, Jean-Claude was at his most charming and affectionate, alternately teasing her and declaring her perfections, and she in her turn was blithe and wry as he liked her, rolling her eyes at Auguste in rueful disbelief. After supper they would sit before the fire, Elisabeth with her mending on her lap, and sometimes the men would talk and sometimes they would sit in easy silence, Auguste watching them covertly, from his place by the door, as Jean-Claude reached out and quietly covered her hand with his.
It was not so always when they were alone. Then the spitting fire and the silence had a way of drying out the air between them, until it cracked and split and Jean-Claude uncrossed his restless legs to pace around the cabin. She had to force her attention then to her work so that she might not be tempted to beg of him what it was that vexed him so. The question only ever served to vex him further.
It still stirred her, the click of the door latch lifting, the murmur of his voice beyond the wooden door. There was desire in it, even after all this time there was desire, mixed in with anxiety and a straining kind of hope that all would be well. On evenings like this one, when she was sick and brittle and her need for him was stronger than her resolve, it took considerable effort to remain where she was and greet him with the dry amusement he loved in her.
‘So, what news today?’ Elisabeth asked with a smile as the two men came into the cabin. ‘Who accuses whom of what?’
The effort of speaking made her giddy. She bent over the stew kettle, gripping the spoon so tightly that her knuckles showed white. Dropping his boots, Jean-Claude padded across the room in his darned stockings, sliding his hands around her waist. Auguste looked away.
‘That looks good,’ Jean-Claude murmured.
He was in a good temper. Dizzily she closed her eyes and leaned against him.
‘The stew or the wife?’
‘Sweet flesh both.’
‘If you were fool enough to attempt a stew with meat as old as mine you would be chewing it till morning.’
‘That seems hardly a matter for complaint.’
Elisabeth laughed shakily and pushed him away.
‘Auguste, please forgive my husband’s nonsense. I am glad you could come.’
‘I fear I come too often, Madame.’
Elisabeth had given up protesting that he address her by her name. Her insistence discomfited him and did nothing to change his habits.
‘Your last decent meal for some weeks,’ she said instead, spooning out stew and sagamity. The smell of it sickened her. ‘Come. You should make the most of it.’
Auguste took the plate she held out to him. His fingers grazed hers and he took an abrupt step backwards, spilling a little gravy on the floor.
‘I – I am sorry. How clumsy I am.’
‘We are all clumsy around Elisabeth,’ Jean-Claude said.
Rolling her eyes at Auguste, Elisabeth handed a heaped plate to her husband and smeared some gravy over another for herself.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ she said. ‘Let us eat.’
They sat at the table, Jean-Claude at the head with Elisabeth and Auguste on either side of him, as was their habit. Elisabeth watched her husband as he spooned up the food, his legs braced and his eyes on his plate. Tomorrow he would be gone again.
‘You are not hungry?’ Auguste asked Elisabeth. ‘You look pale.’
‘I tasted the stew too much while I was cooking,’ Elisabeth lied. ‘It has spoiled my appetite.’
She sipped a little water to steady her stomach, cradling the cup in both hands. She could feel the heat of Auguste’s gaze on her hot face.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What news from town?’
‘I thought that was a wife’s duty,’ Jean-Claude replied, his mouth full. ‘To expose the confidential business of others.’
‘You forget that nobody tells me anything.’
‘True. And you forget that you have never been the least interested in anything that they had to say.’
Auguste smiled. He waited as Jean-Claude lifted his spoon again and began once more to eat.
‘I have news,’ he said then. ‘I have acquired a cabin.’
‘But that is wonderful, Auguste,’ Elisabeth replied, touching her tongue to her lips. She had the drifting sense that she might faint. ‘Where?’
‘Rue Condé Dugné is the second cabin in New Mobile, at the corner of rue de Pontchartrain. It is not large but it has a fine garden. You would like it, Madame.’
‘I’m sure I would.’
‘Until it’s infested with all your various grotesqueries,’ Jean-Claude observed, his mouth full. ‘Fortunately for me, Elisabeth prefers her vegetables edible. Perhaps your wife will too. A man with a house must find himself a wife.’
Auguste smiled.
‘Thank you, but I shall settle for a housekeeper.’
‘Ah, so like our friend the merchant you favour le marriage naturel? How long I wonder before she is keeping house for a litter of little mestifs
?’
Mestif was the settler word for children of mixed blood. Elisabeth shook her head at her husband.
‘Leave the boy be,’ she said gently. ‘You embarrass him.’
‘Nonsense. Auguste is a man of the world. He knows better than to hold out for a wife when the French girls that fetch up here are unfailingly both plain and disagreeable. Do not make that face at me. You know it as well as I.’
Elisabeth closed her eyes, pressing her hands down on the table as a wave of nausea rolled through her.
‘Madame?’ Auguste’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.
‘She sulks because she knows I am right. If you are finished, Auguste, we should be going. They will be expecting us.’
‘Perhaps you should stay here with your wife,’ Auguste murmured. ‘See how white she is.’
‘You spend too much time with savages. French women are all this colour.’
Auguste did not laugh. He waited, his hands upon the back of his chair. Under the table Elisabeth could see one of his big toes poking through a hole in his stocking. The suck of her sickness was powerful inside her. She raised her head a little, setting her stomach to pitching.
‘Go,’ she urged. ‘Please. I am a little tired, that is all.’
Auguste hesitated. Then he walked away. She heard the creak of leather as he slid his feet into his boots, felt the flare of sharp night air against her neck as they opened the door and slammed it shut behind them. Dragging herself to standing, she pressed her nose against the platille that covered the window, steadied a little by the chill on her hot face.
It must have been the breeze that made the men’s voices sound so close.
‘It’s true. But I see Alexandre with his boy, who is the very spit of him and so strong and vital, and of course I envy him. Who would not? Without sons to bear him forward, a man’s life is so fragile somehow. So fleeting.’
‘It is not too late. Perhaps this time–?’