by H. E. Bates
He pushed the revolver across the table to the girl, who smiled at him. He knew that he would never doubt them again. The power that is good enough for them, he thought, ought to be good enough for me.
‘You had better keep it, after all,’ he said. ‘Until I am stronger.’
‘I will clean it every day,’ she said, smiling again.
‘You have kept it beautifully,’ he said. ‘Very beautifully.’
‘It should be beautiful, too.’ The old woman lifted her head, looking up with slight irony from her plate. The way she cleans it every morning you might think it was the silver for the Holy Altar.’
He did not speak. Smiling a little, the girl still looked at him. He knew by that look, so steady and tender, why his revolver was to her like the silver of the Holy Altar and why he would never take it from her again.
The smile on her face vanished suddenly as he heard the barking of the dog outside. He saw her leap up, snatch the revolver, and put it in the drawer of the dresser by the wall. There was an astonishing light of decision on her face, heightened perhaps by alarm or fear. He had not time to think of it before she said, ‘You had better go upstairs,’ and he found himself shuffling unsteadily across the kitchen, his body stiff from lying in the boat, the girl going before him to open the door.
He was walking slowly upstairs almost before he realized it. ‘Don’t come down till I call,’ she said, and the light from the kitchen door suddenly went out, leaving the effect of the lamp-glare beating in his eyes.
He pulled himself slowly upstairs by one hand, and then, in the bedroom, lay down on the bed. The curtains of the window were not drawn and through the glass he could see, as his eyes got used to the darkness, more and more of the summer stars. He lay looking at them and listening for a sound from below. It was very quiet except for the deep soft roar of water in the mill-race and there was no longer any sound from the dog.
He lay there in the dark bedroom and waited. After about ten minutes he heard the sound of a door opening below, and then of someone coming upstairs. After a minute the door of his room opened and the girl said quietly: ‘Everything is all right. Are you there?’ And he said, ‘Yes. I am here. Come in.’
He saw her cross the square of starlight below the foot of the bed, and then a moment later she was standing by him.
‘It was my father,’ she said, ‘come back.’
‘Is it all right?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
’I am glad. What happened?’
‘They have taken a hundred people,’ she said. ‘They took some this morning and shot them this afternoon.’
Christ! he thought. He felt very sick and angry.
‘Your father is all right?’
‘Yes. He is tired. He is very tired. But all right.’
His anger and relief about the whole thing suddenly dissolved into pity and then from pity into tenderness for her. He reached up with his good arm and touched her.
‘Come close,’ he said. ‘I can’t reach you.’
‘I am very close,’ she said.
‘Lie on the bed with me.’ He found her arm and pulled her gently down.
‘No. I should go,’ she said.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘For a moment.’
‘I should go.’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Only for a moment. And then I will come down, too.’
Without speaking again she came to the bed and lay on it beside him. The strain of the day ebbed away from him in one final wave and left him quite calm. She lay on her back and he knew that she was very tired. His regard for this filled him with great gentleness. He put his hand on one of her breasts and smoothed it across the thin summer dress and then held it still. He could feel below the breast her heart beating with quiet regularity into the palm of his hand. She did not move except to turn her face, to kiss him of her own accord, her lips increasing very slightly their warm pressure as he pulled her body across to him. He remembered then how once, in the room above the mill, he had pained her because he had said, ‘This is serious’, and yet she had not been sure. He asked her in a whisper if she remembered it. and she said, ‘I remember it all. From the first moment I saw you that morning.’ She buried her head in the pillow, very close to his face. ‘And are you sure now? I want you to be sure about me. Because what I feel is sure.’
‘I am very sure.’ She pressed her body so close to him that for one second he felt pain flare from the edges of his amputated arm. ‘I am more sure than I ever was of anything in the world.’
He carried the unassailable completeness of this moment with him as he followed her downstairs. He walked a little unsteadily, the blood beating in his head, and at the foot of the stairs, before she opened the door and let in the light, he held her for one moment more, partly for love of her, partly to steady himself before going in.
When he finally entered the kitchen he saw the girl’s father at the table, in the lamplight. He was lying rather than sitting in a chair. His coat was unbuttoned, showing beneath it the white shirt and black tie he had put on, as if it were Sunday, for the visit to town. His right hand was fully outstretched and held in it, at an angle, a small glass of cognac like the one Franklin had been drinking. His body had an extraordinary flattened and battered appearance, as if someone had smashed him with violence against a wall.
Franklin went over and stood in front of him. ‘M’sieu,’ he said, ‘I am very glad you are back.’
The eyes looked slowly up at him. In the lamplight they were quite white, as if shock had drained them of power.
‘If I had a thousand shot-guns I would shoot every one of their guts out,’ Pierre said. He was still sitting at the table, where Franklin had left him. The old woman stood beyond, looking down.
‘No, no,’ the father said. ‘That does no good.’
‘Good?’ Pierre said. ‘Good? Who in the name of Christ Almighty wants to do good?’
‘Quiet!’ the old woman said. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that’
‘Then how should one talk?’
‘Talk how you like. But not with the name of Christ. I don’t like to hear the name of Christ like that.’
‘You should have been in the trenches in the last war!’ he said. ‘You would have heard the name of Christ very often then. You would have heard the suffering call Him down.’
‘I have seen enough of war,’ she said. ‘I haven’t yet seen enough of Christ. That’s all’
Pierre stood up, looking very wild. ‘When they shoot fifty people in an afternoon I begin to doubt if there is a Christ! ’ he said. ‘I tell you I would shoot out the guts of any bastard of them!’
Franklin stood still, looking at the father. The cognac glass was tilted so that the small drop of cognac had reached the edge.
‘I hope it was not because of me that you went?’ he said. ‘I have been too much trouble now.’
‘No,’ the father said. ‘No. I am only sorry there was trouble for you.’
‘It was no trouble,’ Franklin said. There was slight life now in the flat white eyes. ‘Is the situation bad?’
‘It is the worst yet’
‘I am sorry.’
Franklin looked up from the father to the three people standing now on the edge of the ring of lamplight, looking down at the flattened figure in the chair. It struck him that the girl was still the calmest of them all.
‘And the doctor?’ he said. ‘I hope the doctor is safe?’
The white exhausted eyes did not raise themselves this time. They looked down, almost closed, to where the cognac was trembling on the edge of the falling glass.
‘They have shot the doctor,’ he said. ‘They have shot the doctor.’
CHAPTER 14
EVERY Other morning, after the doctor had been shot, françoise and the old woman dressed his arm. the two doctors had left behind them a small attaché case of dressings; and there was also the first-aid box from the plane. At first he had a great fear of complications, but nothing happened
except that by the end of each day the arm ached with steady drawing pain, as if it were trying to grow again. At first he did not want to look at it and lay with his face half-turned on the pillow, staring at the wall. Then on the fourth morning he turned his face and made himself look at the short stump of flesh and was surprised to find that it looked extraordinarily like a pale brown sausage, with the skin lightly drawn into inflamed creases at one end. After the dressing, which took about an hour, the old woman brought a bowl of hot water, a mirror, and his shaving things. While the old woman tidied the bedroom the girl sat on the edge of the bed and held the mirror against his knees. He took great pride in shaving himself with O’connor’s razor, With one hand. She sat smiling at him while he shaved, and after he had finished shaving she held the bowl on the bed and he washed his face and his one hand with warm water. He felt always, every morning, a new joy at being able to do these things for himself, and saw this joy reflected in her face as she sat watching him on the bed.
When this was finished and he was alone again he got out of bed. They had given him back his socks, his shoes, his service shirt and trousers, and his collar and tie. Every morning he went through the same process of putting them on. He determined, however great the effort, to do everything for himself. From the first the trousers and shirt and socks were easy; it was some time before he mastered the collar and tie. Finally he held one end of the collar in his mouth while he fixed the stud in the other. Then he pulled the collar with his teeth, and, perhaps at the third or fourth attempt, fixed it on the stud. Then he drew the tie slowly through the collar and put the left-hand end in the top drawer of the chest-of-drawers, shutting it in. Finally be held it tight and made the knot, pulling it slowly up while the end was in the drawer. After this he walked about the room. He kept at first to his original idea of doubling, each day, the distance of the previous day, but after the fifth day he lost count and simply walked round the room and across it and back again twenty or thirty times. When he was tired he sat down by the window and looked out across the plain, still burning in the mid-September sun. The cornfields were like bare slabs of white rock in the heat, the distances shimmering above them and above the river, and all along the stream nothing moved except the strip of dry green reeds flapping slowly in the air between the water and the rainless brown path. When he had rested he got up and walked round the room again, forcing himself to walk round it five or six more times than previously. Towards midday it would be very hot, and after the second walk was finished he undressed again and got into bed. At noon the old woman came upstairs with the midday meal on a tray: bread and soup, with vegetables and sometimes an egg and generally an apple or two and always a little wine. The wine, drunk in the heat of the day, always made him sleepy, and after eating he would go to sleep for an hour and then in the middle afternoon get up again and go through all the process of dressing a second time. This time, having dressed, he tried to walk round the room several more times than in the morning, and, for variety, the opposite way. Then, as before, when he was tired, he sat down by the window and rested. And it was then, in the late afternoon, when the hot stillness had stifled the last movement out of the plain and the voices of the house were silent, that something about the smell of heat and the angle of golden light made him think of England. He felt very alone then, and in the sharp misery of a brief homesickness would walk round the room, rather savagely now, for the third time. By the time this third walk was over he was utterly tired of the heat and the day, the bedroom and the view of the plain, above all of himself and the arm.
Every evening the girl came upstairs to sit with him and talk, staying until the light across the plain was smoky mauve with the promise of another day of heat, and on the tenth day she came up, about six o’clock, and brought the second doctor. He looked to Franklin, seeing him for the first time since the confused hours before the operation, taller and thinner than his brother who had been shot. He had a certain sad formality of manner as he asked Franklin to take off his shirt. Franklin looked swiftly at the girl as if scared that she would try to help him, and then unknotted his tie and pulled the shirt over his head. When his head was free he saw that the girl had gone.
The doctor looked at the arm with what seemed to Franklin a kind of detached melancholy, not touching it.
‘You are very lucky,’ he said.
‘You think it’s all right?’
‘You are a very healthy person,’ the doctor said. ‘You heal up like a young tree.’ He stopped looking at the arm and looked at Franklin’s face. ‘How do you feel – yourself?’ he said.
‘I feel well. I get tired, that’s all.’ He looked at the grey, quiet face. He remembered, out of the split sections of a confused dream that would never be whole again, some similar moment, just before the operation, when he had looked up and seen the face, cool and tense but not then sad, in the light above him. He knew that he would never know anything of how difficult the operation had been, and that it would be better not to know. He felt only that it was a wonderful thing. ‘I would like to thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like to thank you very much.’
‘You have yourself to thank, too,’ the doctor said. He began to re-bandage the arm.
‘I am sorry, too, about your brother,’ Franklin said. ‘I had some fear it was because of me.’
‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘No, it was not because of you. It was because he was a citizen everybody knew. It is better to shoot men of prominence. It was also because he had no discretion. He said what he felt. And what he felt was very strong. He was a man of great courage.’
Franklin looked at him. He was extraordinarily like the brother, except for the beard. ‘You were both men of great courage,’ he said. For some reason it was easier to say in French. The word, in English, had a slightly artificial sound.
‘Thank you,’ the doctor said. He wound the last of the bandage over the arm, and fastened it. ‘Shall I help you on with your shirt?’
‘I like to do it myself,’ Franklin said.
He picked up the shirt and wriggled his arm through it, making an opening through which he pushed his head. In ten days he had become very deft at this, and the shirt came easily over his head, his right arm slipping through the sleeve at the same time.
‘You have progressed,’ the doctor said. He smiled.
‘That is something I want to talk to you about,’ Franklin said. ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t go from here?’
‘There is the reason of the extra restrictions. They are still in force. There are barriers at all the roads and it is necessary to have a permit to travel.’
‘Could one get through? ’ Franklin said.
‘A man with one arm is always conspicuous,’ the doctor said.
‘But it is not impossible to get through? ‘
‘Not impossible.’
‘Is there any danger of complication with the arm now?’ Franklin said.
‘No. Except that you probably could not travel and heal at the same time. You are not strong enough for that.’
‘I feel quite strong,’ Franklin said.
‘In the bedroom, yes,’ the doctor said. ‘But why do you want to go?’
‘Because of the people here.’ He wanted to go and yet he knew that the time of going, without the girl, could only be one of pain. The pain of leaving her would multiply and fester, until the loss of her would be more acute and terrible than the loss of the arm. Yet he felt also the pain of the doctor’s death in the house, and the fear and the bitterness spread by it, even though it was no longer discussed, into the lives of the people about him. Back in England, in the station, where bombers constantly did not return and the faces in the Mess were so often changing because of death, death itself was not discussed. Sometimes it seemed as if it did not matter. Death became a form of absence; it was the quiet removal of a face from the dinner-table and soon, however much you missed it, another younger, more eager and perhaps more likeable face replaced it, hiding its memory. But the
shooting of men, as ransom, by a wall, was very different. It left him with a memory of impotent savagery. Because of it he understood the violent feelings of Pierre better than the feelings of anyone else, and he knew that he could not bear the chance of it happening again.
‘I want to go solely because every moment I spend here is a complication for them,’ he said.
The doctor stood looking at Franklin tucking his shirt into the top of his trousers with his one hand. His expression of reflective sadness had in it a sharp touch of stoicism.
‘You do not seem to be aware that they know what they are doing,’ he said.
Was there an answer to that? Franklin fumbled blindly with his shirt. There was no answer. He was a fool who had not even the sense to hide behind his former humiliation. As if they did not know – as if they had not considered and dismissed, long ago, the consequences of this thing.
‘They will keep you here until they have made the arrangements and it seems safe for you to go.’
There was still no answer. He felt the smallness of himself shrivel into a kernel of impotent bitterness.
‘It is perhaps the only right and honourable thing France has done,’ the doctor said. ‘It is all we have been able to do. The rest of us is of no consequence. We have stopped counting.’
‘I would not say that.’
‘I say it,’ the doctor said. ‘I am a Frenchman and I say it.’
He walked across the room and stood by the window, slowly rolling the sleeves of his shirt down and even more slowly buttoning them at the wrist. He had previously taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. Now, carefully and rather reflectively, he put it on. Suddenly his hands dropped, the coat hung open and he spoke again.