The Child Left Behind

by Anne Bennett

  Legrand, rested from his nap, would go out to the bars of St-Omer while Gabrielle would fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. She knew that when her husband came in, however late it was, he would demand his conjugal rights.

  One night, a fortnight or so after her aunt and uncle had returned to Paris, she felt that she had scarcely laid down before she felt the weight of Legrand on top of her. Suddenly, she was angry. There was no consideration or tenderness in the man at all. He worked her half to death through the day, and then expected sex every night. And that’s all it was: sex for his own gratification.

  For a fleeting moment she remembered the exquisite joy she had experienced with Finn when they made love together, and then she was grappling with Legrand, trying to shift the weight of him and crying, ‘Leave me alone, can’t you, for pity’s sake?’

  Legrand was so surprised that he stopped trying to lift her nightgown over her head. She gave an almighty push and he fell out of bed and onto the floor. She was out the other side in seconds.

  Legrand got to his feet and stood swaying slightly and staring at her. ‘What are you on about?’ he growled angrily.

  Gabrielle was afraid of the temper smouldering in Robert’s eyes. But she still said pleadingly, ‘Please leave me tonight, Robert. I am so very tired and hadn’t been long in bed when you arrived home.’

  ‘Is that my fault?’ Legrand demanded. He caught her by the neck of her nightgown. ‘Do I have to remind you that you are my wife?’

  Gabrielle had been half expecting the punch that landed between her eyes and knocked her to the ground because she had long sensed the aggression running through Legrand. She lay stunned by the blow, blood streaming from her nose with a pain that made her groan.

  ‘You asked for that,’ Legrand said, lying on top of her on the floor. ‘You are my wife and as such you cannot refuse me, though some wife you are. I made a bad bargain with you because you turned out to be a barren bitch in the end.’

  Gabrielle was too frightened to protest any more. She didn’t even flinch when he ripped her nightgown right down the front, though she couldn’t help the cry of pain that escaped her as he entered her roughly. She heard his guttural grunts as he jabbed into her again and again, and she bit on her lip as tears seeped from beneath her throbbing eyes, which she kept closed.

  When it was over, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes had swollen but she opened them as far as she could. Legrand shook his head from side to side before he climbed off her, got to his feet with difficulty, staggered to the bed and almost fell into it. Then Gabrielle made for the bathroom. Her eyes were bloated, bruised and tender, and she knew that they were probably going to be black in the morning, and there was dried blood from her nose smeared all over her face.

  Hatred for Legrand rose in her as she began to bathe her face gently. He had said she was a barren bitch. She hadn’t been barren when she had lain with Finn and she had Bridgette to prove it, but she was glad that he’d not been able to give her a child. She was sure any child of his would be corrupt and tainted, like Georges.

  But however she felt, she was chained to him for life. It was a depressing thought because although that night was the first time Legrand had hit her, she knew with dreadful certainty that it wouldn’t be the last.

  THIRTEEN

  Bridgette was preparing breakfast when her mother came up from the bakery. When she saw the graze on her cheek that she had tried to cover with powder the girl knew that her father had hit her mother again. Maman would say she bumped into something, because that was what she always said. When Bridgette had been a child she had believed her.

  She was a child no longer however. It was October 1932, and she had just passed her sixteenth birthday. She knew the truth now. Over the years she had even heard her mother cry out in pain, and her stomach would be tied into knots and her toes would curl in the bed in anticipation of what that brute was doing to her. Many times she had wanted to go in and try to put a stop to it, and had even got out of bed to do just that on more than one occasion. It was only the thought that her mother would hate her to see her in that state, added to the fact that she might make things worse for her later, that had made her stay put.

  Her father was cruel in other ways too. He had not allowed her mother’s aunt and uncle and her sister to visit, though Maman loved them dearly and missed them very much. She had not even been allowed to travel to Paris to her sister’s wedding—to Henri Dellatre in 1921—nor to attend her uncle Raoul’s funeral three months later. In May 1923 Yvette gave birth to a baby boy, whom she called Raoul after her uncle, but Legrand said that Gabrielle could not be spared from the bakery to go to the christening, and he said the same when Raoul’s brother, Gerard, was born in April 1925.

  But Yvette did not forget her niece growing up in a household where she was denied a secondary education. Every so often she would send Bridgette books from the bookshops in Paris. There were a variety, and Bridgette devoured them all. When Bridgette had written to tell Yvette she was trying to master English, some were in that language, which by now she could speak so well.

  Robert never knew about this because the post was all delivered to the shop, and Bridgette always made sure the books were hidden away in her mother’s room because Georges seemed to like nothing better than foraging amongst her things. He was a thorn in her side all right, and one that she detested with all her heart and soul. She was afraid of him no longer, though, and she remembered well the day that she had lost her fear two years before.

  She had entered the living room to find Georges had been into her bedroom and he was holding her doll, dangling it by its feet and he waved it tantalisingly in front of her. She loved that doll. It was the finest thing she had ever owned. Her auntie Yvette had sent it from Paris for her thirteenth birthday the previous year. ‘To celebrate you reaching your teens. A pretty lady to adorn your dressing table,’ she had written on the accompanying card.

  She wasn’t the sort of doll to give a young child to play with. She had the prettiest china face and a wig of natural hair the colour of chestnuts, which hung in curls past the shoulders. Her body was soft, but firm enough for her to stand, and she was dressed like a Victorian lady. She had proper clothes, from the finest lawn underwear to the ball gown topped by a fur-trimmed coat, and the muff around her neck matched the leather boots on her feet. To see that wonderful doll in Georges’s big bearlike hands enraged Bridgette.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she’d cried. ‘Give that back to me.’

  ‘You are far too old to play with dolls,’ Georges said.

  ‘That isn’t a doll to play with,’ Bridgette said disparagingly. ‘Anyway, it’s mine. Give it to me.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I will,’ said Georges. ‘You don’t need things like this any more.’

  Bridgette thought of trying to snatch the doll from Georges, but she knew she would be no match for him, so instead she said, ‘Come on, Georges, I don’t go rummaging around in your things. That’s a special doll because Aunt Yvette sent it to me from Paris.’

  Georges knew that, of course, but Yvette never sent him anything half as good as the things she sent Bridgette. Thinking this, he suddenly hurled the doll across the room towards the fireplace. Bridgette heard the crack as the doll’s head hit the hearth and saw it smash into pieces before she opened her mouth and screamed, darting to the fireplace as she did. Her screams were so loud that they brought her father from the bakery and her mother from the shop to see what had happened.

  Bridgette, ferreting about in the grate with the poker, didn’t need to speak. Gabrielle could plainly see the doll’s china head smashed to bits in the hearth while the flames licked and consumed the rest of it. ‘Georges,’ she cried, ‘what have you done?’

  Bridgette flew at Georges and pummelled his chest with her fists but Robert strode across, pulled her away and slapped her hard across the face. ‘Stop that hysterical nonsense.’

  Bridgette was shocked into silence and the
n her mother’s arms were around her. ‘There was absolutely no need for that,’ she said grimly, through tightened lips.

  ‘There was every need. The girl was hysterical,’ Robert countered.

  ‘And can you wonder?’ Gabrielle said. ‘Your son threw her doll into the fire. Have you never one word of censure for him?’

  Robert ignored this and said, ‘Bridgette’s far too old to play with dolls, and I was surprised at Yvette sending it to her in the first place.’

  Bridgette had known that was how it would be. For as long as she could recall she had been subjected to punches, pinches, slaps and shoves from Georges, who also delighted in stealing and often breaking her toys. If she told her mother, things just got worse, and she would lie on her bed and tremble in fear at the anger she had unleashed. Then the next morning she would see fresh marks on her mother’s face so she soon learned to keep her mouth shut.

  But this time Bridgette felt rage fill her body, so powerful it replaced all fear of Georges, which had dogged her childhood, and she sprang out of her mother’s arms and hit Georges full in the face with her fist. The attack was so unexpected that Georges hadn’t time to protect himself, and he staggered under the blow as his nose spurted blood.

  Robert reached for her but Gabrielle pulled her into the shelter of her arms. ‘You shall not lay one finger on her ever again,’ she said to Robert. ‘You will have to kill me before I would let that happen.’

  Bridgette hadn’t finished, however, and she sprang in front of her stepbrother. ‘Listen to me, Georges Legrand,’ she spat out. ‘You lay one hand on me again and you will get the same back, even if I have to wait until you’re asleep to do it. You would never again be able to sleep easy in your bed.’

  Both Georges and his father were surprised by Bridgette’s defiance, although Georges wasn’t letting her see that. He looked at her scornfully before saying, ‘Oh, yes?’

  But Bridgette was not the slightest put off by either Georges’s attitude or his words. ‘You have had it all your own way for too long because you have bullied me all my life,’ she said. ‘But now you have gone too far. Leave me alone, or suffer the consequences.’

  Legrand took a step forward and raised his fist but Gabrielle pushed Bridgette behind her. ‘Don’t you dare! What Bridgette did to Georges was perfectly justified. You have raised a monster, Robert.’

  Legrand lowered his arm. ‘If you have finished your hysterics now, you have a shop to run,’ he said.

  ‘No I haven’t, because I’m closing early tonight,’ Gabrielle replied. ‘The townsfolk can go elsewhere for their bread and cakes, and I am taking Bridgette with me to close up.’

  In the refuge of the shop she had told Bridgette of the terms of her grandfather’s will. Bridgette had been stunned that her grandfather had disinherited her. It was bad enough that Robert was to be in charge of everything, but to think that after his death Georges would inherit it all was monstrous.

  ‘Georges!’ she cried, unaware that her lips had curled back in disgust. ‘He isn’t even a blood relative.’

  ‘My father was trying to punish me,’ Gabrielle said, ‘because I hadn’t given him a grandson.’

  Bridgette was silent for a few moments, thinking about this. She was remarkably naïve about how babies were conceived. She had an idea that it was something parents did in the bedroom, though she wasn’t sure what. But she was certain that it took two people, so she said, ‘Well, that wasn’t all your fault, was it?’

  ‘No,’ Gabrielle said. ‘But that wasn’t how he saw it.’

  Bridgette shook her head in puzzlement. ‘But to just give away the bakery like that…Hasn’t it been in our family for generations?’

  ‘Yes, but we no longer own it You will have to make your own way in the world. I want you to leave the bakery and find work that pays a wage. If you don’t, should you annoy Robert in some way, or certainly when Georges inherits, he would take pleasure in getting rid of you and you won’t have any money to fall back on. And,’ she added, ‘I even know of a place that might suit: the Laurents’ milliner’s shop.’

  Bridgette had known Marie Laurent’s daughter, Lisette, well at one time. When she first went to school, she had sat beside the little girl with black curls that bounced on her shoulders and dark dancing eyes, and they had become friends. Sometimes Bridgette had gone home for tea with Lisette after school and so she had met her parents, Marie and Maurice. She envied Lisette her big brother, Xavier, who was invariably kind to both of them and only teased in a gentle way that was never cruel.

  Bridgette had loved the time she’d spent in that friendly house, so unlike her own where violence always seemed to bubble just under the surface, to be unleashed by the slightest remark.

  Legrand had soon put a stop to her going to the Laurents and demanded that Gabrielle find her something useful to occupy her. Of course, Bridgette was never allowed a friend round to play—not that she would have liked to take anyone into her home—and so their friendship had petered out a little.

  Then when Bridgette left school at twelve, Lisette had stayed on. Now she saw Lisette only fleetingly at Mass, or if she came into the shop for bread or cakes.

  ‘Marie has had an extension built onto the shop and she is opening up as ladies’ outfitters,’ Gabrielle said, breaking in on Bridgette’s thoughts. ‘She is looking for a smart girl to train up and she thought of you.’

  ‘What about Lisette?’

  ‘Well, she is at school at least until the summer,’ Gabrielle said. ‘And when she does leave it seems she has a flair for the hats and will be working with her father at that side of the business. Would you like to work with the Laurents?’

  Bridgette felt excitement fizz inside her. She would just love to work with such nice, kind people. But then a shutter came down over her thoughts and she stated flatly, ‘Papa will never allow it.’

  ‘Leave your papa to me,’ Gabrielle said, and Bridgette noted the steely glint in her eyes. ‘I will fight to give you a future, and it is a fight that I am determined to win.’

  She did win the fight, though she carried the marks on her for weeks afterwards. Bridgette had been so concerned for her mother’s safety that in the end she had threatened her father with the poker if he didn’t leave her alone. She knew by the look he threw her that he believed her, and not even Georges would tackle her with the poker held tight in her hands and the murderous look on her face.

  Bridgette soon found that working at the Laurents’ dress shop was even better than she had thought it would be and, anxious to please, she picked up the business very quickly. She thought the customers were lovely. Most of them she had met at Mass, and many had been to the bakery. Some expressed surprise that she wasn’t still working there. She just told any who asked that she fancied a change, for very few were aware of the details of her grandfather’s will, and she had no desire to tell everyone else and show them how little the man had thought of her.

  Each day, at lunchtime, the shop was closed and they all sat down to a meal that Marie Laurent cooked. Xavier came home most days because the tile factory, where he worked, was not far away. There was usually lively banter around the table and often a great deal of laughter. It was all so different from Bridgette’s home, but she soaked it all up eagerly.

  In such an atmosphere she blossomed. Most people would have agreed that, at sixteen, she was as pretty as a picture. She was slight, like her mother, and also took after her in looks in the main, though she had inherited her father’s dark amber eyes, ringed by long black lashes. Although her mouth wasn’t as large as her father’s, it turned up at the corners, as his had done. She had the same flawless skin her mother had had at the same age, with just a dusting of crimson on her cheekbones and her long dark brown hair had natural waves.

  She received many a lustful look at Mass, but she never encouraged any of her admirers in the slightest way. Marie guessed that was because she loved Xavier, and though Bridgette had never said a word about it, it would be ha
rd not to know how she felt about the young man. And yet Marie didn’t know if Bridgette loved him as a woman truly loves a man, or loved him in an almost brotherly way, and she didn’t know how Xavier felt about the girl.

  She knew he liked her—a person would be hard to please if they didn’t like Bridgette—but liking wasn’t enough for marriage, which had to last a lifetime. Nothing would please Marie more than if he were to marry the girl, for she was more than fond of her, but she refused to scheme and plan. Xavier would choose his bride without any interference from her and marry for love, as she had.

  In early November, Bridgette woke late one night to find Georges sitting on the bed and stroking her arm. She was instantly wide awake.

  ‘Get off!’ she cried, shaking his hand away. ‘What are you doing?’

  Georges didn’t answer. He lit the lamp before turning to her and saying, ‘I like it when you’re angry. Your eyes flash.’

  Bridgette sighed. He was very drunk and she knew there was no reasoning with him when he was in that state. ‘Georges,’ she said as forcibly as she could, ‘get out of my room!’

  ‘Actually,’ Georges said in a drunken slur, ‘it’s my father’s room because he owns all this. So I have a right to be here.’

  ‘Not while I’m in the room you haven’t,’ Bridgette said. ‘So you’d better go before I call him.’

  Georges sniggered. ‘As if he’d care about you.’

  Bridgette knew that indeed he would care very little, and she gave a little shiver of apprehension. Georges was over twenty now, a very large man, like Legrand, and if he took it into his head to rape her, or hurt her in some other way, what could she do about it? No one would come to her aid but her mother, and if she tried to intervene she would likely be subjected to the same abuse.

  ‘Come on, be nice to me,’ Georges urged, throwing back the covers as he spoke. ‘You know what I want.’

  As he slid into the bed, Bridgette was out the other side of it in seconds. ‘What you doing over there?’ George protested, climbing out after her.