When I Was Young

by Mary Fitzgerald

  “The police are down by the river,” Étienne muttered. “The two local men and another one not in uniform. I don’t know him.”

  I poured him some coffee and he drank it gratefully. “What are they looking for?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “They didn’t tell me.” I could see his leg jerking up and down under the table and I knew he was nervous. When I looked up I saw Luc was looking at it too and he caught my eye and frowned.

  “I’ve come to see if I can help, M. Martin. My father said I must make myself useful.”

  Étienne shook his head. “There’s nothing, boy. The men are in the yard and I’ll go up to the vines when the police go. They’ve told me to hang around the house for now. Thank you, though and thank your father.”

  The atmosphere in the kitchen was strained and Luc got up. “I’ll go then,” he said and left Étienne and me alone in the kitchen.

  “You should leave, Eleanor.” The words suddenly blurted out came as an unwelcome surprise. “This…” he waved his hand in a gesture of disgust, “is not for you.”

  “It was an accident, surely,” I said, “and I’m not really upset except…” I wondered how to say it because it wasn’t for me to interfere but I was sorry for him. “I feel embarrassed for you. None of this is your fault.”

  “You should go home,” he repeated, not looking at me. “It will get worse.”

  I longed to ask, ‘what will get worse?’ but he got up then and went out and I went to Grandmère to see if I could get some sense from her.

  She looked better, not so pale and had dressed. I told her about Edith d’Amboise’s stew, expecting her to make a fuss, but she was quite calm about it. “It will be edible,” was her verdict, “and I’m late getting to the kitchen today. We’ll probably need a good meal this evening.”

  “I’ve started the soup,” I said, shyly. “I thought omelettes for lunch. I can do those.”

  “Good girl.” She sat back in her chair. “How’s Étienne?”

  “He’s …very nervous, I think. The police are here. He says I must go home.”

  “Do you want to?”

  For a moment I was going to say, ‘yes.’ I thought of my conversation with M. Castres yesterday and me saying that I wanted him to arrange my departure. There could be no doubt that my parents needed me and that I was indulging myself staying on in this lovely place. But, if I was honest, despite the police hanging around the farm, now that Mathilde and Jean Paul had gone I was happier here in France than I’d ever been in my life.

  “No.” My word sounded loud in Grandmère’s parlour but I repeated it. “No. I want to stay.”

  “And you shall.” Grandmère reached out and took my hand. “Forever, if I have my way.”

  I found Lisette on the bridge. She was leaning over the rail watching the water drift underneath her and as I approached I could see her throwing something into the river and hear her calling, ‘goodbye.’ At last, I thought, hurrying towards her, she’s saying farewell to her mother. It must be the flowers she said she was going to pick for Grandmère that she’s throwing in the river. How could I have imagined she didn’t care? She cared too deeply to say anything. Oh, I wanted desperately to comfort her.

  “Hello, darling,” I said, reaching her and putting my arm around her little waist. “What are you doing?”

  “Look,” she piped and I followed her gaze to the river expecting to see the flowers but all I saw were her six dolls floating slowly down stream towards the place where Mathilde had been caught in the undergrowth.

  “Oh, Lisette.” I was shocked. “Your dollies. You’ve thrown them in the river.”

  “I don’t want them anymore. They were naughty.” We watched as they swirled around the little isthmus where we’d seen Mathilde and then followed them as they travelled further down the river.

  “Have you kept any of them?”

  “No.” Her face was set and I could feel through my arm the rigidity of her slight body.

  The two local policemen were on the opposite bank watching the dolls float by. A man in a city suit whom I hadn’t seen before was grounding his cigarette out on a tree stump beside them while keeping his eyes on Lisette and me. I felt quite uneasy about him.

  “Come on,” I said to Lisette. “We’d better go inside and leave these men to do what they have to do.”

  “You are, Miss Gill?” The city suit man came into the kitchen while I was beating eggs in Grandmère’s white bowl.

  “Yes.”

  “I am M. Hubert, a police detective. I need to ask you some questions.”

  Lisette, who was sitting at the table, stared at him. “The button on your shirt is undone,” she said. “I can see your belly. I can see your nombril.”

  I hadn’t known the word for belly button before but I guessed that was what she’d said because M. Hubert reddened and hastily buttoned his shirt over his navel. All the buttons on his shirt were under strain and it wouldn’t be long before they gave way again. I was about to reprove Lisette for her rudeness but she caught my eye and parted her lips in a little grin and I had to grin with her. My earlier unease about him vanished.

  I think my grin rather disconcerted M. Hubert because he hesitated before speaking again. “Miss Gill,” he started. “I believe you are a guest in this house.”

  “Yes,” I said, putting down the bowl of eggs and sitting at the table next to Lisette.

  M. Hubert sat too, opposite us and studied our faces. He took out a notebook and pencil. “You are a relative of the family here, perhaps?”

  “No. I’m on a school exchange holiday. I’ll be going home to England soon.”

  “And this little girl?”

  “I’m Lisette Martin.” She didn’t appear to be at all concerned about talking to this stranger. “My mother is dead but I’m not an orphan for I have my Papa and Grandmère.”

  “And do you know how your mother died?” M. Hubert’s pencil hovered over his notebook.

  I was angry and scowled. This fat buffoon was asking an impossible thing for a child to answer and I was about to say something to him but Lisette said, “she fell in the river. I saw her.”

  “You saw her fall?” M. Hubert sounded quite excited.

  There was a slight pause while Lisette fiddled with the egg shells I’d left on the table. “No,” she said eventually. “Maman was in the river.”

  “Was anyone else …” I’d had enough.

  “Lisette,” I said. “Go and ask Grandmère if she wants a drink. But first,” I grabbed her hand. “Did you pick flowers?”

  “No. I forgot.”

  “Well, I think she would like some, so off you go.”

  M. Hubert was not pleased and tapped deep pencil marks into his notebook. “I need to ask the child what she knows, Miss Gill. It’s important that we get to the bottom of Madame Martin’s accident. After all, she was the one who found the body, so I’m told.”

  “She did and…” I was surprised at my own boldness, “I think you should remember that she’s only a little girl. Madame Martin was her mother, you know.”

  “But no love is lost in this family, they tell me.” He flipped over a page in his notebook and wrote my surname then underlined it several times. It was as if he wasn’t certain about what he had to write. I relaxed in my seat. I knew that I’d have very little to tell him and my thoughts drifted away to thinking about the omelettes and whether I should get some herbs from the garden to flavour them. Would thyme and oregano grow at home? What if I made a little herb bed in the shelter of the big barn?

  “When did you last see Madame Martin?” The question, rapped out, invaded my thoughts of thyme and oregano.

  “What?” I mentally shook myself and gazed at M. Hubert’s face, ready to form the answer. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember. The events were all running together and I was scared that I might say the wrong thing. When did I see her? In the night, peeping around my doorway? At the grape barn? Later?

  “At lunch, yesterday.” I gabbl
ed the words out. “That’s when I saw her.”

  M. Hubert pursed his lips and flipped back several pages of his notebook. I noticed that his button had come undone again and a triangle of hairy belly was protruding over his grey trousers. “Be aware, Miss Gill. I have been talking to other people.”

  I shrugged. “Of course.”

  “Would you say that you and Madame Martin were friends?”

  I stared at him. What sort of question was that? How could it possibly matter that Mathilde and I were friends? His eyes, dark and hooded in his plump cheeks, were drilling into mine and I realised that I’d misjudged him. He wasn’t simply a fat man who happened also to be a police detective. He was a lot cleverer than that. I dragged my eyes from him and looked at the table, at the scars in the wood and the chips missing from the edges and wondered what would happen if I told the truth.

  “Er…no. Not particularly.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She just didn’t like me.”

  “And so you didn’t like her.”

  I could see Lisette by the kitchen door, a few wild flowers in her hand and wondered how long she’d been standing there. She was singing a little song when she came in and skipped past M. Hubert’s chair into the corridor to where Grandmère’s rooms were. I followed her with my eyes, wishing I too could leave the kitchen and go to the safety of Grandmère’s parlour. At the doorway Lisette turned and gave me a reassuring little nod. And that brought a new thought. Why did I feel unsafe?

  “You wanted to get back at her for not liking you.”

  M. Hubert’s words immediately confirmed my anxieties. Was he suggesting that I’d pushed Mathilde into the river? Suddenly I was very frightened. I was a foreigner and it would be convenient to put the blame, if there were any blame to be put, on me.

  “No.” I said, louder than I’d intended. “Not at all. She was the one who said she’d kill me!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew I’d made a mistake. The detective’s reptilian eyes gleamed with pleasure and he stood up.

  “Miss Gill,” he started but the noise of Grandmère’s door opening and the sight of her bustling in her old style down the corridor stopped him in mid-voice.

  “Eleanor.” Grandmère went to the stove and stirred the soup. “Lettuce please, from the garden and take Lisette with you.” She turned from the stove and fixed the detective with a thunderous glare. As Lisette and I went out I heard her say, “a child and a young visitor? How dare you question them without M. Martin or myself present.”

  On our way back from the vegetable garden I saw M. Hubert marching out of the yard and getting into his Citroen. Good, I thought, we’ve seen the last of him. Of course, I was wrong.

  He came back at supper time.

  The four of us were eating Madame d’Amboise’s stew, all enjoying it, I think because it had been quite a fraught afternoon. The priest had arrived after lunch, apologising that he hadn’t been earlier but he had been in Angers over night and only just heard. His condolences were perfunctory. He blessed us all, particularly Lisette who thoroughly enjoyed the experience and genuflected extravagantly until Grandmère grabbed hold of her in mid gesture and told her to behave herself. He told Étienne that he would visit Mathilde in the mortuary and say the necessary prayers. I went outside because it was really none of my business and besides I needed time to think.

  After a while, Lisette came out to sit on the river bank with me and we chewed stalks of grass and basked in the healing sun. I looked up to the vineyard and noticed that the fire outside the grape barn had gone out. I wondered if Étienne was still talking to the priest and what they were saying, maybe the priest was offering comfort but I didn’t really think so, he would know as well as anyone that Étienne didn’t need comforting. Not in a priestly way.

  I remembered the night we were fishing and him kissing me. That seemed to give him comfort and just thinking about it I felt a flush rising though my body.

  “Do you like my Papa?” asked Lisette, rolling on her back and flinging her arms up so that she could touch the bottommost leaves of the willow tree above us.

  “Yes, I do,” I answered, wondering how she knew I was thinking about him.

  “The policeman said he was a good man.”

  I was surprised. “Do you mean M. Hubert?”

  “No, silly, not him. The other one. The one who lives in the village. I heard him say that Étienne Martin was a good man and a hero.” She thought for a moment and then asked, “what’s a hero?”

  “It’s someone who does something brave. Maybe a man who does something that other people wouldn’t do. I think your father did very brave things during the war. When you were a baby.”

  “Is your father a hero?”

  Dada. I hadn’t thought about him all day, nor my mother. Oh, God, what sort of a daughter was I? “Yes, he is,” I said, hoping she didn’t hear the choke in my voice. “In a different way.”

  We were still lying there when Grandmère came to find us. She looked so much better than she had earlier, it seems she’d been right about her fever only lasting a day. She handed me a brown envelope. It was another telegram.

  “Oh,” I said, looking at her worried face and turning the envelope round and round in my hands.

  “Open it,” piped Lisette and Grandmère nodded.

  It was from M. Castres. ‘Unable to contact Mr Franklin. Will try again tomorrow. No word from hospital. Best wishes. Castres.’

  Two pairs of eyes studied me anxiously. “It’s from M. Castres. He says there is no more news about my parents and he’s been trying to contact my friend’s family…”

  “Why?” asked Grandmère.”

  “Because, well they might be able to let me stay if my mother and father are still in hospital when I go home.”

  “Didn’t you tell him you could stay here?”

  I couldn’t meet her eye, remembering how I’d instigated M. Castres efforts to contact the Franklins. “Yes,” I muttered, “but I’ll have to go back sometime. There’s school and…”

  Lisette leant against me. “I don’t want you to leave. You make me happy.”

  I put an arm around her and dropped a kiss on her head. “You make me happy too but now I think you should be tickled.”

  Her squeals of delight echoed joyfully along the river, causing small birds to fly startled out of the trees and the water rats to scurry into their nests. As I rolled her over and wriggled my fingers about her thin little shape I wondered if she’d ever been tickled before. I remember being tickled by a friend in junior school and being shocked. It was something that my parents had never done to me.

  “Enough,” said Grandmère after a while. “Laughter isn’t seemly today.”

  So that evening we sat at the table eating our supper, quiet but contented with no malevolent presence to make conversation uncomfortable. We talked about the farm and the continuing hot weather and how it was becoming necessary to water the vines more frequently. Neither Mathilde nor Jean Paul was mentioned so it came as a terrible shock when M. Hubert walked, unannounced, into the dining room.

  “Mathilde Martin did not drown,” he said, looking at our stunned faces one by one. “She was already dead when she went into the water. Someone murdered her.”

  Chapter 18

  “What’s murdered?” Lisette’s little voice pierced the silence which followed M. Hubert’s terrible statement.

  “Shush,” Grandmère demanded and Lisette dropped her eyes from the detective’s flushed face and popped a spoonful of stew in her mouth. The rest of us ignored our meal. Étienne reached out his hand for the carafe and poured a large glassful of his favourite red wine. He looked at me and offered the carafe but I shook my head. I was feeling a bit sick.

  I glanced back at M. Hubert. He was excited, anyone could see that; he had enjoyed imparting the shocking news and was looking forward to the next part.

  “You’ll all have to be questioned again but this time at the st
ation. So,” he took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his fleshy jowls, “so, M. Martin, you must come with me and you as well, Miss…er…” He’d forgotten my name but was unmistakably pointing at me.

  “Miss Gill has nothing to do with this business,” snapped Étienne. He swigged down the wine and stood up. I held my breath as he walked around the table until he was in front of M. Hubert. He was taller than the detective and although he wasn’t as fat, indeed, Étienne never had an ounce of extra fat on him, he was broader and presented a formidable opponent. M. Hubert took an involuntary step backwards.

  “Leave the girl alone.” Étienne’s voice was quiet but full of menace and he seemed dangerously close to grabbing the policeman by the jacket and doing something awful which would get him into more trouble. I was shocked because this was an Étienne I’d never seen. Gone was the angry, frustrated man who seemed always on the point of exploding into impotent rage or despairing of the way his life had turned out. I couldn’t see the other Étienne either. The laughing, relaxed, happy go lucky man who’d held me in his arms and kissed me so hard that my whole body had melted.

  Now I was seeing someone entirely different. This was a man totally in control of himself, a man, I supposed, who had fought a dirty underground war and killed with impunity. And even as I thought those words another thread of understanding was trailing through my brain. He had killed with impunity once, was it possible that…”

  “I don’t mind going with you.” I heard my voice, girlish in the heavy atmosphere that pervaded the dining room. “I can answer any questions.”

  Étienne looked at me over his shoulder. “Keep out of this, Eleanor. You don’t understand how things work here.”

  It was true, I didn’t understand how things worked here or anywhere really but I was terrified for Étienne. If I thought that he could be a cold blooded killer then M. Hubert would too. The local police would know all about Étienne’s exploits with the Resistance; I imagined how they had spoken admiringly about him and how M. Hubert had listened and come to his conclusion. Why I thought it was up to me to help him I had no idea but I do remember how desperate I felt. Was it because I was in love? In love with a man more than twice my age, whom I’d known for only a month? No, not then, I don’t think so because I barely knew the meaning of the word. In my mind love was something nobler, more dramatic and conducted between romantic characters like the ones in the books I read. My feeling for Étienne was something I couldn’t put into words. It was as if I’d found the person I’d been longing for all my life and I had to keep him safe.