by Hilton, Lisa
Since the morning in the freezing goat house, Laurent had been for Jean-Claude because that was what made sense. JC refused to talk about the past, he said it was only the future that mattered now, but Laurent knew he had not forgotten, and that was the thing. He had insisted Laurent accompany him back to Cahors, where they shared a room in the old customs house on the river behind the cathedral. Laurent was left alone in the days as Jean-Claude bustled about with the comrades, but in the evenings they drank and drank, and Jean-Claude talked about how there would be big changes in the Midi now, that the worker would finally have his day. He talked of his days organizing in Paris, and described his months in Spain. Laurent swallowed and listened, and one night told JC the truth. ‘Well, we’ll fix her, mate,’ JC said, ‘we’ll fix that bitch for you.’
Laurent had wept then, saying not to call her that, but JC had an answer. ‘It’s simple,’ he always said, ‘what you do is what you are. If what you do is right, you win. Action is morality.’
And Jean-Claude had been proved right. Laurent concentrated on what Oriane had done, on what she was, drinking his wine, conjuring hate. Hate was his pal, it had kept him strong in the weeks he had been away from the village, hate persuaded him he was alive and explained it wasn’t his fault, so he sought it and drank it and listened. When he could bear no more, he gave the signal without waiting for Jean-Claude.
‘Attaboy, Laurent. Sit tight and I’ll fetch out the girls.’
AUGUST 1944
Waiting, Oriane tried to find herself, walking along the road to meet her mother in the twilight, and recalled nothing but the sometime scent of cherry blossom, and the blood that came in her cheeks in winter as she looked down through the mist for the figure moving slowly up the hill. William had been with her, eagerly clutching her hand. William would have heard them, above the wind in the poplars. And what if the moon shone, so they saw her, or if they came without light so that she would not see them? It was futile, was it not, this game of hide and seek? They would have Jacky for William and the others. She should go, go now, take the child and start walking. But Oriane stayed there, looking down over the valley, staring dully at the flat grey sky. In a while, she carried Jacky upstairs and fed him. His hand patted at her breast as he sucked, contented as William beating with his spoon. Oriane’s throat contracted, she gulped for air, breathing raggedly and trying to hold his body steady against her own until the heaving calmed. She lay down with him in the circle of her arms, watching the pallid light grow blue.
The church bell chimed a quarter. Oriane knew when she awoke that the last she had heard was half past eleven. She did not know if she had slept an hour, or if it was nearly morning. Magalie Contier stood in the doorway holding a candle. She had last come up to Aucordier’s when Jacky was born. Magalie moved towards the bed. Oriane said ‘Here?’, but Magalie set her candle down, keeping her eyes to the side, and held out her arms. Gently, so as not to wake him, Oriane sat up, lifted Jacky from the bed clothes and passed him to Magalie. He snuffled and beat the air with his fists. ‘Wait please,’ she said, her voice low, and went to the chest. The drawer stuck, her hands sliding on the cold china knob. She turned back to the bed and shook the bolster from its case, collapsing it on the sheet. She passed the tube of fabric to Magalie, who gathered it efficiently around Jacky’s back, then stepped back to allow Oriane to pass first down the stairs. Six women stood just inside the door, they shuffled a little to let Magalie pass out with the child. The air stirred the smell of ashes from the fireplace.
Amélie was there, and Betty, and Andrée, and Cathérine Nadl. Oriane knew them in one sweep of her eyes. They had men’s greatcoats over their skirts, but their shapes were as familiar as the hills around the valley. Two more shapes had their faces bundled in shawls. Oriane felt her fear contract slightly, since they needed this ritual of disguise. Amélie was holding her scissors, solemnly as though she were to lay them on a grave like flowers at Toussaint. Oriane sought for something to say, something dignified that they could repeat to one another afterwards, but she knew they would never speak of the still moments here, so she sat in silence on the wooden chair they had placed in the middle of the room. She closed her eyes, felt them gather. The warmth retained by the half-charred firewood relaxed the fibres in their coats and Oriane smelt acrid male sweat, grass, autumn dampness. She felt a hand on her head, a plume of hair lifted from her neck. She screwed up her eyes, knowing she must not see, must not let them know that she distinguished them, the order of it coming to her easily, as though she had learned it alongside them around the stove in the schoolhouse. The oldest game of all, if I close my eyes you cannot see me, and they all needed the sense of it. As the hand tightened, Oriane’s head jerked at the wrench and she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, lips tight, seeking her courage in her mother’s face when her arm reached out irresistibly, irremediably, for her William’s body. She made no sound, contracting her breath inside her abdomen, forcing it slow through her nose. Her head lolled doll-like, pulled back and forth as the hand worked quickly, joined by another hand and then another, though they did not strike her. Quickly, her head felt light and cool.
Two fingers on either side of her jaw, firmly pressing on the skin against her back teeth. The heel of a hand under her chin, pushing her head back, unresisting. Her throat felt long. When she heard the snap of the razor opening, Oriane started, tried to struggle, but her shoulders were gripped from behind, the wrists squeezed together, her legs forced apart and held around the knees so that her wrestling was reduced to a helpless, obscene bucking of her pelvis. ‘We won’t,’ one of them gasped, Oriane too confused now to recognize the voice. She collapsed back against the seat and felt the sweat that had started out all over her skin run cool down her ribs. They would not cut her throat, and so great was her relief that she barely felt the scratch of the blade on her scalp, or the cut that must have released the blood she could feel running hot and thin down her forehead. When they moved away from her, Oriane did not look up. She heard their feet pat to the door. It was done.
Then the door opened once more, so Oriane knew it was not finished. She opened her eyes. Four of them. She watched them stupidly, her hand passing over the bristle on her head, finding the raw welt that bled there. Blood gathered like ink in the runnel of her palm. Their faces were covered, bound about anyhow with scarves wrapped and tied behind so that only their eyes showed, scarecrow men. Nearest the door, pathetically concealing himself, was Laurent. She knew him from the uneven line of his shoulders, the give that he made in his weight for his lost leg. Oriane understood. She rose from the chair, holding the hem of her nightdress and stepped towards him. His quick lurching flinch and the smell of his breath, ripe with drink, confirmed it. Her arms felt compact now, strong as she reached for the knot of cloth strained tight against his hair. It was a moment, a flirtation of a movement, to unravel it and hold it up in her hand, swiftly stepping back like a matador with the dull blue wool dangling before her.
‘I know him,’ Oriane said in French, ‘but I won’t know you.’
She knelt on the hearthrug, arranged Jacky’s cushion as a pillow, closed her eyes, and tied the scarf around them, then lay back. It was not a shock when the first blow came, but the pain of the cuff was surprising. Laurent had struck her that once, for shame, but in the hot burst of this was the knowledge that she had invited it, had shamed them. They were weak because they needed her pain. A boot found the softness above her hip bone, probed the flesh, then kicked, knocking a sound from her, but she closed her mouth, folding her lips inside against her teeth to keep silence. Her breast took the next, a leaden pain dropping over her heart, then another strike across her face. This time she screamed.
A hand fumbled at her collar then, her nightdress was torn, order restored. Their relief was in the changed quality of their silence, a gathering, a thickening of their focus and she cried out, struggled to cover her breasts, feigning fear to overlay what terror was left. This she could endu
re.
One. Her thighs pushed apart. She heard him spit on his hand, and swallowed hard as he rubbed the mucus against her. He pushed it in, and she barely felt the chafing. He bucked a little, gasped and was gone. She did not move, lay there, gaping.
Two. Much bigger, he passed an arm beneath her waist and tilted her backwards, ramming hard until he really did hurt her, this one, and she cried out again, ‘Stop, please stop,’ knowing as the tears came that this was her punishment and she could not trick them from it. Her body must accept, that was all, and then it would be over. He pulled back, she breathed, he shoved with all his weight, all the way up inside her and she howled, trying to get away but he struck her so hard across the face that she was dizzy, her cry abbreviated into a gulp, and then she was sobbing, as he went on and on, grinding into her, pulling at her shoulders to drive her weight down on to him, and the pain came and went, came and went, twisting like scorching wire through her womb to a rhythm that stung in her ears, and there still even she was safe until stupid, stupid, she remembered Jacky, and that Magalie had taken him away, and she let her head fall back to the stone floor.
Roused with a crack against her cheekbone. There was milk trickling from her breasts, cooling on her skin and soaking the rug beneath her. This was shame. She felt stubble on her tender skin as one of them bent to feed on her, his teeth tugging at her nipple as her flesh softened, as she retched at the comfort of the release and struggled to breathe through her sobs. Behind the scarf, her eyelids struggled to open, to show that she was willing to remain conscious, craven now.
Three. She was a raw hole. Three was Laurent, she smelt him under the high reek of their sweat. His skin always smelt of new wood. He lay down on top of her, his chin pressing on her collarbone, the folds of his coat falling around them. It was a moment before she knew there was nothing inside her, that the movement of his hips against hers was a feint. She cried out again, ‘No, please, please, no.’ It was all she could do for him, now, there was even a conceit in it, at her own nobility. Yet when he lay still against her, she felt his mouth against her skin, and his lips felt as disgusting as a slug, and she hated him. She brought her shoulder up hard, knocking his head back, and spat at him, a dry hiss of contempt.
Four. The bone at the base of her spine burned as it grated against the sodden rug. She felt dizzy again, almost sleepy. It stopped, and she thought it was over, then fingers closed over her nose, he shuffled forward, she stretched and gagged for air and then her mouth was full of it, hitting the back of her throat and running down her chin, then she screamed, screamed, for her mouth was full of burning ash, live and searing, choking her and scorching down her blocked throat, snorting up her nose full of the slime of him, she retched and vomited, spitting and sucking at the same time, her tongue a white coal, her chest stabbed with tiny filaments of white hot agony, writhing and swallowing the vomit over and over until she turned, released, and with her head dropping between her arms began to heave acid, iron blood over her hands.
The men passed quickly from the house and set off down the hill. They did not look at the women, or speak to them. Magalie waited until their shapes became one hump against the moonlight. Jacky was screaming. She laid him on the bed, wedging the bolster against him so that he should not fall. The thing on the floor raised an arm, pointing upwards. Magalie nodded, ‘He’s all right, you know,’ stern, as one who had washed and fed and cradled many children to a fussy first-timer who ought to know better than to take fright at a cry. Magalie pulled Oriane on to her knees. The head looked horribly large, hideously tufted like a nestling pigeon. One eye was closed, the other peered through a crust of blood. A foul pool of blood and vomit, stinking of ash, had collected on the dripping breasts, and it began to slide down the naked belly, still soft and puffy from the baby, so white. Oriane’s nightgown was gathered about her waist, there was a long smear of blood inside her thigh, and trails of something else too. Oriane made a little gasping sound, and the rug darkened between her spread legs. ‘That’s disgusting,’ said Magalie, ‘making it worse, aren’t you?’
She pumped water and carried it back in the bucket. Oriane had passed her hands across her face. Her lip was cut, but the mouth was invisible beneath a swift foam of blisters. Magalie scooped water into a bowl, held it to the burned hole. Oriane sucked, inhaled a shrill cry, spat, swallowed. The water was leaden, but Magalie could not make a fire to heat it. She reached down a cloth and rubbed Oriane all over, even between her legs. No one was there to watch, so she did not purse her mouth in disgust, just washed firmly, as women do the stinking old, the dead. The drawer in the bedroom did not stick under her cool hands. She grabbed Oriane’s blue print dress and dragged it over the head, then stooped her own head under the armpit and strained, pulling Oriane to her feet. She wavered, turned, and dumped her back on the chair. When the rug was folded over the mess and carried outside, she went behind for a broom and swept the floor. Now the room looked just the same.
‘Come on, then,’ said Magalie. She pulled Oriane to her feet and got her to the bed, whimpering and reaching for Jacky.
‘It’s more than you deserved, you know.’ Magalie spoke loudly, hopefully even, but there was no response.
On the way home, Magalie stopped on the bridge. She hitched up her skirt awkwardly, twisting against the little parapet, and turned out her pocket. Oriane Aucordier’s beautiful dark hair mingled noiselessly with the moon-blue water.
When it was done, Laurent walked down the hill with the others in the darkness. Jean-Claude tried to speak to him, put an arm on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off in disgust and turned into the Murblanc lane without speaking. He did not go along to the house, just waited until they were gone, then began to drag himself along the road, moving like the cripple he was, bent and painful, a mauled creature whose only will for life is concentrated in the need to die. Oriane had forgiven him, he had understood that. She had pretended that he was capable of hurting her like the others. It was too late to stop then.
He wished that he had done this when he came home, all that time ago, but he knew that it had been his punishment to live, and he had served it out. They would understand, Jean-Marc and Bernard and Yves, it had been wrong to push them away for so long. He wanted to whistle to them, one of the old songs to let them know he was coming, but he found it made him cry, and that would never do.
The barn smelt like cows and like Papie. Laurent worked so swiftly, so purposefully that he did not even register surprise when he felt his leg return to him, steady, where he had always known it would come. The byre was low, but if he knelt he could manage it.
He closed his eyes and saw himself walking the road up to the plain with a basket of apricots, her sitting there on a stool in the yard with her hands all over bean skins and her black hair blowing in the ever present wind.
PART THREE
SUMMER HOLIDAYS
Aisling had cooked little escalopes of veal in a sauce of cream, sage and white wine, with some wilted lemony sorrel. Alex rubbed his hands as she set the platter on the table.
‘Luvverly jubberly,’ he said in what he obviously thought was a Cockney accent. ‘Nice bit o’ grub.’
Aisling looked at him in irritation. Why was he talking in that stupid voice?
‘Jamie Oliver,’ he said, ‘you know, bit o’ this, bit o’ that.’
‘No,’ said Aisling, ‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s all the rage in England,’ said Claudia, cringing for Alex, ‘he’s a sort of wide-boy chef. It’s the latest thing in gastroporn.’
‘Gastroporn?’ asked Jonathan hopefully. ‘We must keep up more, darling.’
Now that his joke had fallen flat, Alex didn’t bother to disguise his boredom at dinner.
Aisling served cheeses and salad, then a peach semifreddo with tiny almond meringues. She thought Alex very pompous. He knew nothing about food really, for all his talk of the grand restaurants he went to with City clients. They probably went to strip clubs too, thought Aislin
g, though you didn’t catch him showing off about that. His air of patronage towards Jonathan was becoming irritating, and he had made several remarks questioning the financial viability of the PGs. Aisling liked to think that her business was profitable, though Alex had pointed out that she didn’t include many of the extras in the books, and did she price the food she served them? If she was honest with herself, the profit from the PGs wasn’t that big, but it was something, and though the Harveys were by no means badly off, certainly compared to people like the Glovers, the boys’ school fees were a bit of a struggle. Jonathan was fond of telling her that he had sold his computer business at just the right time, though it was hard not to be wistful when all that dot com stuff really exploded a few years later.
Jonathan seemed reluctant to talk business with his brother, at least in front of her, as though he had not once been possessed of a similar brashness. Perhaps that was her fault, a bit. She had been so passionate about Murblanc, so keen for him to retire, that maybe she had forced this role on him, of not appearing to care any more about making money. His fiddling in the study certainly didn’t amount to much, but they had enough. It seemed small of Alex, in Aisling’s opinion, not to help Jonathan improve their investments, though it did not occur to her that if she wanted his help she would be better off humouring his conceit.
Everyone was rather silent over coffee. The Sternbachs’ car was gone, they were obviously dining out. Claudia yawned ostentatiously, she and Aisling began to gather the plates and glasses.