by JH Fletcher
The world pressed its hammer weight upon the boy who only minutes before had congratulated himself on becoming a man: a role that he was already realising was beyond him.
‘What did you tell her?’
Sanette looked at this boy who was still young and innocent enough to believe there might be choices in the world. ‘I accepted the cut. Of course. What else could I do? But I am so tired of worrying,’ she said. ‘Of not knowing what is best.’
The weight had indeed become too much. Charlie wished he could be rid of it, to return to that time, only minutes before, when he had understood none of this. A time that he saw had truly been one of innocence and now was lost forever.
What his mother had said horrified him. Part of him was proud that she had admitted him to her adult world of pain, but his immediate response was to escape from this new knowledge as quickly as he could, to turn his back and pretend that it didn’t exist at all.
There was only one way he could think to do that. ‘You believe marrying Monsieur Bayard will sort things out?’
She shrugged. ‘I hope so.’
‘Go ahead, then. If that’s how you feel.’
There was no more resentment, just eagerness to put the problem away from him. Now it was Sanette who was unwilling to let go. ‘You will always be my son,’ she offered.
Now it was Charlie’s turn to feel embarrassment. ‘Sure,’ he said.
2
The name on Sanette’s birth certificate might have read Lamartine but, as far as the town was concerned, it was as Sanette Mandale, widow, that she married Gaston Bayard, bachelor, in the church high on the sweep of hills upon which the town had been built. There were bells, for which Monsieur Bayard had paid: a rope of chimes drawing them up the steep cobbles as Sanette and Charlie and a scattering of supporters made their way on foot to the church. The sun flickered through cloud; an errant breeze lifted skirts, tantalisingly, sending balls of paper and other rubbish bowling up the street.
Within the church was incense and stillness amid the golden glow of lamps, an air of solemn expectation as though the building itself were holding its breath.
Charlie looked at his mother’s calm face. For the first time he saw around her eyes faint lines drawn across a skin the colour of marble. There was an air of purpose about the way she held her chin as she moved up the aisle to the altar where her future, and Monsieur Bayard, awaited her: stiff body, stiff suit dark against the wooden reredos shining golden in the lights.
Her serenity softened the blunt edge of purpose. Her expression, the very poise of her head, showed how she had taken herself, all her options, and placed them in the hands of this man who now awaited her. Or possibly in the hands of God, who might bless her, and them, through the office of the priest who also stood and waited. The man who had led the ferocious crusade against the wickedness of Babette now smiled, perhaps more agreeably because of the bridegroom’s status in the town. In the candlelight his teeth shone like gold.
Sanette Lamartine and Babette Fantine. One honoured, one reviled.
3
The storage sheds were built. The equipment — stacking bins and racks for the catch, generators and refrigeration chambers from Liàge — was trucked in and painstakingly installed. Power cables were run along conduits carved out of the stony ground. Connections were made and secured, checked and rechecked. A team of men slapped paint. An air of stillness, of great things about to materialise, fell upon the harbour. Even the fishing boats, snubbing their rubbing strakes against the weed-stained harbour walls, were captured by the moment of expectation, a stillness transcending the bobbing of the hulls, the varnished masts scratching their tops against the blue sky. Because the owners of the boats, and therefore the boats themselves, had been caught up, reluctantly or willingly, in the success of an operation that now depended upon the ceremonial turning of a switch. No one dared contemplate what might happen to them all if the venture failed.
‘It will not fail,’ Monsieur Bayard said briskly, dismissing the question that Charlie, doing his best to show an interest, asked him.
Charlie felt himself dismissed, along with the question. Monsieur Bayard — he had not managed to think of him in any other way — was not angry; indeed, he was for the moment prepared to be patient. Nevertheless, he made it plain that the views of a mere boy were of no account to a man who knew, always, what he was doing and saw no reason to discuss it with anyone, least of all with an appendage of his wife, a child whom he saw, and made plain that he saw, was not over-endowed with brains. But whom he would tolerate, for Sanette’s sake.
He would tolerate much for her sake, especially outside the house: it was seemly to do so. Inside the house was a different matter; a man had expectations, after all, which must be fulfilled. However, even here he was willing to be considerate. Sanette was his wife, with duties, but for whom he had a responsibility. She, in turn, had this son, unpromising, certainly, but no different in that from most of the population. In any case, it was not brains he was looking for but other qualities that he believed Charles might have and that had influenced his decision to marry Charles’s mother.
The boy had almost finished his schooling. Soon he would send him to work in one of the fishing boats. Let him learn the trade of the sea. That could be a useful skill.
That evening, sitting in state before a wall now devoid of photographs, Monsieur Bayard called Charlie into the parlour and informed him that, when he had finished school, he would go to sea as a deckhand. In the meantime, he expected obedience, courtesy and, importantly, silence.
‘Your mother and I need quietness,’ he said. ‘It encourages creativity and a tranquil mind. As long as you remain in this house, I shall expect you to remember that.’
And picked up his newspaper. In the world of silence, there was nothing more to be said.
4
‘How could you have married him?’ Charlie demanded. ‘How could you?’
Sanette would not shift from the loyalty that she had now transferred to her husband. ‘I shall not have you speak in such a way about him.’
‘Why not? He’s not my father!’
‘He is my husband and I expect you to respect him accordingly.’
‘He thinks I’m a fool’
‘That is nonsense.’
Sanette knew her husband seldom thought of her son at all. She would have wished it otherwise, but was willing to settle for what she could get.
She knew, of course, that Gaston Bayard did not love her: he was too ordered a man for the untidy frenzies of love. From the first, their relationship had been one of business rather than passion. Not that she was complaining. She needed security, and had it. For her husband’s part, she believed he had wanted a housekeeper and had decided she would make a good one. It wasn’t much, certainly not the red and golden beauties of her time with Colin, but Colin was dead, the world was as it was, and she was resolved she would be content. Love was for the young; what she had wanted was freedom from anxiety, and she had been willing to pay what she must in order to get it.
ELEVEN
1
As his stepfather had promised, on his fourteenth birthday Charlie Mandale went to sea on the deck of the fishing boat Heloise. It was gruelling work and no one bent over backwards to help the stepson of Gaston Bayard; circumstances might have forced the fishermen to climb into bed with the mean-eyed little bastard, as Pierre Gros called him, but that didn’t mean they liked him or were out to give any favours to his family. If Charlie wanted acceptance from the men of the fishing fleet, he’d have to earn it for himself.
At least they’d known the kid from birth, which helped. He was one of them in a way neither his mother nor stepfather would ever be, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to give him a hard time.
A hard time it certainly was. Battered by yells, Charlie was chased from one end of the boat to the other and back again. Greasing was the first job. Begin with the net capstans, each bigger than himself, then up to the
mast top, grease pot dangling from one hand, to ease the sheaves holding the sail halyards. That out of the way, he had to take a hand in sorting, shooting and retrieving the kilometres of net that Heloise carried. He had to swab the holds and deck and bring steaming mugs of what was supposed to be coffee to Philippe LeMaire, the skipper, and Marc and Jean-Jean, the two hands who had both been with Heloise for years. Haul the heavy nets, bulging with fish; pack the slimy, leaping catch into the hold; batten down the hatches in gales; learn to raise and lower the gaff-rigged sails.
Always running, with a clip around the ear if he slacked off, or even if he didn’t.
Come storm, come shine, out the boats went into the grey world of the Channel. A man’s world, although men had been known to die out there, too, for all their masculinity. Many men.
Charlie told himself he loved it. In some ways, he did. No one could love being booted around the way he was, but the life itself was one of toughness and a weird kind of freedom: a universe different entirely from that of schoolroom and house, of mother and friends and hot meals that was all he had known before. He learnt to swagger down the quayside when Heloise returned, to smile with hot and appraising eyes at the young women of the town. Some of whom smiled back.
It was a way of life. It put a few coppers in his pocket, enough to have a drink with the other men in the underground bar after they were back in port. It was a life that, by its very nature, had to offer satisfaction. There was precious little money and, if you didn’t enjoy the hard work, the comradeship, the exhilaration of the open sea, you’d be better off ashore. The life was its own reward or it was nothing.
For the moment, Charlie was willing to go along. At first, he was too tired to think straight in any case. It was enough to do what he was told, hang on, somehow learn the tricks of surviving the rough handling of the sea and men that made up his life. Hit the bunk and he was asleep; no thoughts, no dreams, gone into unconsciousness as deep as the sea itself.
In time, he got used to it. His mind hardened, as did his body. More and more, he felt himself a man.
Once a gale blew them clear across the Channel and into an English port. It was full of other boats seeking refuge. They got some looks, French fishermen not the most popular species in that part of the world.
‘Stick together,’ the skipper warned them as they went ashore. They went into a dockside pub, had intended to keep their heads down but Jean-Jean, with a couple of glasses inside him, was a roarer. Charlie tried to practise his English on a pair of local men, brawny and blue-jerseyed, with tattoos of anchors and mermaids on their muscled arms, but their accents were different from anything he’d heard from Wally Bart and he couldn’t understand a word.
Then Jean-Jean got into grief with someone he was arguing with; the Englishman tried to put him down and suddenly the whole room was at it, throwing punches, yelling, chairs and tables breaking as complete strangers squared off against each other.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the crew of the Heloise ran for it in a light mizzle of rain, boots skidding on the greasy cobbles, while the storm boomed like a battery of field guns beyond the harbour entrance and the fishing fleet swayed, rising and falling uneasily in the scend that came in from the open sea.
‘What do we do?’ Charlie wondered, puffing as he ran.
‘Get aboard and keep our heads down,’ grunted Marc at his side. ‘Should never’ve gone ashore at all with that Jean-Jean.’
But he spoke philosphically, resigned to the inevitable. He had known Jean-Jean all his life, and punch-ups were part of the deal.
Charlie thought of what had happened: the smoke-blue room, the sour smell of beer, the mass of faces and bodies jammed together under the lights in the bar, the sudden and meaningless violence. That was another thing he’d learnt: a man had to take care of himself. He must be able to use his fists; perhaps more than his fists. Another time, someone might pull a knife.
That was for the future; for the moment, they kept their heads down, as Marc had said. The storm continued for two more days but there was no more trouble. The wind died eventually and Heloise, with the rest of the fleet, put back to sea. As they passed the end of the jetty a larger English vessel drew level with them. Looking across the heaving waves, Charlie saw, standing at the rail, one of the two men he had tried to talk to in the pub.
The man recognised him and waved.
‘See you, Frog …’
Pleased, Charlie waved back. No ill feelings there.
2
Slowly, he got the hang of it. He was sixteen, then seventeen. He was one of the boys now. One of the men.
His life was going nowhere, but for the moment it was enough. What was life, after all? He had a bit of money coming in, not much, but enough for his needs. There was a girl, then another girl: he’d learnt his way around the inlets and promontories of the female body. He was strong, accepted by the others. He fitted comfortably inside his life, his skin.
Maybe there was more out there, but it could wait.
He even managed to be easier with his stepfather now. More sure of himself, he saw Gaston Bayard through new eyes and dismissed him as a nothing. Maybe he was on the way to owning the town, as everyone said, but as a man … Forget it.
Not that Charlie cared. It was his mother’s problem, not his, and they had grown far apart. He was no longer comfortable with her, or the tight house where nowadays he felt too big to pass through the neat and tidy rooms without knocking things off the shelves.
‘Dunno how you can breathe in this place,’ he told her. Even three years after the event, the removal of his father’s portrait continued to niggle. ‘As far as you’re concerned, he’s really dead now, isn’t he?’
Sanette looked at him sadly. ‘To me, he will never be dead.’
Charlie, knowing it all at seventeen, didn’t believe her. ‘Why did you take it down then?’
‘Because Monsieur Bayard told me to.’ She had long given up trying to persuade Charlie to call him father. ‘He felt it was not appropriate.’
‘Have you still got it?’
She looked at him steadily. ‘Monsieur Bayard also asked me to get rid of it.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘I have still got it. But I would not wish him to know —’
‘Can I see it?’
‘Of course. If you will promise —’
‘I never tell him anything.’
They went together to her bedroom where, as on every Tuesday and Friday, Sanette would be required, later, to be available to her husband. She retrieved the portrait from the bottom of the drawer where she kept her clothes. They sat side by side on the bed and looked at it.
It was a long time since Charlie had examined it properly.
‘He looks young.’
‘He was young. We were both young.’
‘Did you ever hear how he died?’ It was strange to think that he had never asked the question before.
‘Wally said he was gassed. I heard nothing officially, you understand. As you know, we were not married. As far as the military was concerned, I did not exist.’
‘That makes me a bastard,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He heard the defensive tone in her voice.
‘I can handle it. Lots of men are bastards, one way and another. It doesn’t bother me.’
She was staring down at the photograph; he wasn’t sure she had even heard him. Her two men, he thought bitterly. He would have liked to have been the third but there was little chance of that. Between the dead Colin and the ever-pervasive Gaston, he would never get a look-in.
‘I loved him,’ his mother said.
Which said it all, but also left a question. Probably he shouldn’t ask it, but he did so anyhow.
‘How can you bear it?’
She looked at him through eyes brimming with tears. ‘Because I must.’
3
Gaston Bayard had an office in the town where he wove his webs. Sanette had no idea wh
ere he kept his money or indeed whether he had any; they’d been married three years and she knew no more about his affairs than she had at the beginning. The closest she came was the padlocked wooden chest he kept in his room. She had never asked what it contained and he had never told her, but she had always assumed it had money in it. Why else should it be there? One of these days, she promised herself, I shall break it open and take off; but she knew she never would.
In the meantime, she had the security she had wanted so desperately; of a sort. At least she no longer had to worry about the bills; emotional security was another matter.
Then came the business of Marcel Chantemps, and once again the world changed.
From time to time Gaston Bayard received visitors from outside the town. Nobody knew who they were or why they came, and Gaston did not enlighten them.
Marcel Chantemps was one of them: a short, slender, middle-aged man, elegantly dressed, who brought to the rough sea port the elegance and odour of flowers. Despite his wincing ways, he was clearly important: Gaston, not the most hospitable of men, announced that he had invited him to dinner.
‘Everything must be the best,’ he instructed Sanette. ‘Not only the food; the best china and linen, too.’
As though the spartan house, so grudgingly funded, could offer a range of such things.
Sanette did the best she could. It seemed it was enough. Her husband said nothing but the visitor, fluting delightedly, heaped her, and the meal, with praise so extravagant that Sanette, unaccustomed to appreciation, flushed scarlet with pleasure. While Charlie, whom Gaston had ordered to attend, sat silently, not knowing what to do with himself or this man whose voice danced and squeaked over the table and, later, about the horrified walls of the parlour.