Silent Parts

by John Charalambous

  He does not cross the broad Maromme road. Within fifty yards of the tracks he stops short, apprehensive at seeing the arcs of silver diminishing in either direction. No closer. There is a siren beauty in these simple lines, something smooth and decent. All across Europe they bring men to submission, men who travel willingly or complacently or with feigned good humour because they are cosy in their sealed carriages and think it’s too late to break out.

  It occurs to him that submission must begin somewhere. Is it inevitable? A matter of commonsense and self-interest? This was Lew Broughton’s forthright opinion. His editorials spoke of a covenant struck between free citizens. ‘If we enjoy a certain liberty, if we live in peace under the law, it is because together we are fused into one irresistible power or Commonwealth, which is like a great artificial man. His name is Leviathan, and without our proper and lawful submission to him, we are unprotected . . . ’

  In Australia there were people who resisted. He recalls an incident at Burrakee Hall in which the Patriotic Committee, and notably Uncle George, were pelted with rubbish. Gutless scum, Lew branded the culprits. A banner headline: burrakee shame! The gutless scum were a mixed lot – drunks and certain overly pious Christians. Within a family such as his it was impossible to feel an affinity with any of these. He recognises now that his resistance was more subtle, more cowardly. He exaggerated his awkwardness and was glad to be regarded as a bit of a goose. He’s not repentant. He’s alive. And while the sealed carriages rock through the world he stands upright in the open air – alive.

  He dares to think that he might be saner than those reliable men. Perhaps braver. He defies the great artificial man, because Leviathan is too large and conceptual for truth or feeling. His thoughts become grandiose. He’s the living Adam, small, mortal, instinctively resisting the great annihilation. Words such as pacifist and conscientious objector solidify in his mind, words that in insular Rushburn had the same pejorative weight as shirker but now seem to offer a way out. He could have said no.

  Trouble is, they know how to get the better of men who say no. A reluctance to kill is all very laudable, but a dutiful citizen can have no objection to being killed – unless it’s all a ruse, plain sophistry and cowardice. Then it’s off to the front, where stretcher-bearers die as indiscriminately as combatants. On balance it seemed better to play the goose. But he’s had it with balance. He’s alive. He has a woman. Unashamedly, he celebrates his pared-back conception of love, an austere and unquestioning concurrence of need. Isn’t that how everything begins? First comes need. Colombe the individual will emerge. In the meantime it’s a fine thing to set up a great artificial woman in opposition to Lew’s Leviathan. She contains no harm that he can see. He could lose himself in such a person.

  So he decides to marry Colombe Adele.

  Turning back, straining his eyes for the wheat field, he plans a future with her in Australia. He knows of several men who’ve taken French brides. If he was still with his unit, stationed in Rouen, it would be a simple matter of asking his lieutenant for permission. If he were to give himself up, serve his detention and be permitted to marry he might visit her on leave. He has visions of bringing her smuggled food, of her gratitude, of extended reunions in their noisy bed. But how can he be sure they’ll send him back to the bakery? Even if they recognise his uselessness for the front, they might post him to some far-away town. He would have to persuade someone to write his letters – a humiliating situation. Besides, she might not feel strongly enough to want to keep in touch. Alarmed, he decides he must burrow away here until the war is over.

  ‘When the war is over,’ he says aloud, and plunges into the wheat. He’s well aware he’s thinking like a civilian. Hoping. Asking for a catastrophe to fall on his head. But this is an advance on where he was. With hope comes stamina. And there is also his wobbly conception of fate. How has he survived so far? Not through courage or particular cunning or any admirable quality. Quite the opposite. He has survived because he went to the right house, wholly in ignorance and misapprehension, following a trivial interest in his father’s roses. Could anything be more ludicrous, more misguided and therefore fateful? It has to mean something, this impossible luck. And he’s ready to keep pushing it. He can wait as long as it takes, and with effort and care their common ground will certainly expand. He’ll begin by teaching her English.

  twenty-six

  Not until the following afternoon, a Saturday, can he make a start. And to complicate matters, she arrives home with resolutions of her own, having received her first pay since the robbery. She’s jovial, in a frivolous and teasing mood that makes him wonder where he stands. He helps her unpack a basket of groceries. Apart from a loaf of dark bread, it’s not their usual fare. The first surprise is a bag of last autumn’s pears. When he peeps inside he finds the fruit is individually wrapped in grease paper. Other luxuries include sugar, salt, macaroni, bacon and a box of maize flour. He doesn’t know the exact amount of her wage but guesses she’s splurged a good part of it. No more skimping. The future can look after itself.

  She removes a pear and partially uncovers the flesh, holds it to her nose and indulges in a long appreciative sniff. Grinning, she offers him the same pleasure. Because the fruit is old and soft, having been kept so long in storage, there isn’t that woody smell he associates with George’s orchard and the pears they picked green to mature in the loft. He peels away the paper and inspects the speckled skin, the flush of russet under the green, the brown bruises and small suppurating nicks. In other circumstances he might think the smell overly sweet, but deprived of fruit for so many weeks he finds it irresistible. He bites with his lips, teeth being unnecessary, and sucks the pulp and juice. His cheeks and chin are soon wet, his hands sticky, and Colombe laughs at the mess he’s making. He offers her the torn remains of his pear but she takes another from the bag, and for a while is content to inhale the sweetness. He wipes his face on his sleeve and draws himself up to a didactic height. ‘Pear,’ he says.

  She regards him with interest, yet is completely ignorant of what he’s referring to. He raises his fruit. ‘Pear!’

  Up goes her wild brow, mocking.

  ‘Pear,’ he repeats, too insistently.

  Now she has no mercy. If he wants to play games . . . ‘Une poire pour la soif,’ she says.

  He frowns. ‘This is a pear.’

  She continues to smile but won’t try his words. Stalemate. He can’t abide her childish wrestling matches. If only he could make her understand the consequences! She’s not stupid. Can’t she see what he’s offering?

  ‘La poire,’ she says. Tit for tat. The stuff of wars.

  Exasperated, he grasps the nape of his neck and appeals to the ceiling. He listens to her sucking on her pear, thinking that perhaps she’s sniggering – until he feels something small and wet strike him on the face. A pip! But before his anger can get too far he’s caught up in her laughter.

  ‘Une poire,’ she insists between breaths. ‘Une poire pour la soif.’

  He shakes his head, resisting, laughing. But he can’t continue. In the end he must try. With a magnanimity he knows is insincere she corrects his pronunciation, breaking down the chain of sounds into individual words. What does it mean? Something about a pear – a saying, a proverb, a joke, something to make him wiser. Only when he has it down pat will she agree to take her turn as pupil. ‘This is a pear,’ she says with almost perfect diction and a look that says, ‘Well, that’s an end to that!’ But he won’t let her be. He has submitted to her ridicule. She must pay in turn: this is my hand, this is a chair, this is a candle . . .

  As she speaks he tries to visualise her in the public places of Rushburn – High Street, church, serving behind the counter in his bakery. What he sees is his neighbours’ distain, Mrs Hanna and her kind – the innumerable Aunt Marys – treating her as an oddity and a poor thing. And she would be a poor thing, married to a man of his r
eputation. The truth is they will have to go somewhere else.

  In the night they are woken by a bang. Then there are several that seem very close. They stand at the window, he naked, she in her long nightdress, and peer out at the darkness. The flashes have faded but a speck of fire continues to the south-east, occasionally illuminating the angular lines of a building. Rouen. Or the camp complex. Even at this distance they can hear the burr of planes. He has endured similar raids, jumping into the dug-outs in the middle of the night. He has seen the results: a flattened store in the Canadian transport compound, fresh holes in the open fields, soon filled in by coloured labourers. Never any injuries or deaths, though this could be a lie put about to maintain morale. Fresh explosions leap up in other parts. The light seems to flutter then hang over the detonations. Colombe presses against him, almost wrestling him aside in her desire to get a better view. He grips her shoulder and tells her in English there is nothing to worry about. He imagines that she will respond to his authoritative tone, that of a man who has been a soldier, and that she can’t possibly unmask the deception. And in any case she must be able to see for herself that it’s only an air attack. Bombs from the sky. If the city was under ground attack there would be other kinds of fire. He would recognise the muffled thump of shells, the pock of rifles. No, this spectacle is down to bombs. Nuisance value. Yet the assault is more concerted than any he can remember. The planes drone on and on, even after the blasts grow less frequent. Then it’s clear the fireworks are over. With the exception of three little spot-fires the horizon is once more black and featureless. If anything the noise of aircraft is louder: British defenders up in pursuit. They swirl invisibly in the night, more of a danger to one another than to the raiders, who almost certainly have turned for home.

  So completely has Colombe monopolised the window, he’s forced to look over her shoulder. He cradles her breasts in his hands. ‘I am a pacifist,’ he announces to the night, more to give substance to the concept than with any expectation she will understand. But apparently pacifist is one of those words that gads about between languages.

  ‘Oui,’ she replies approvingly, ‘un pacifiste.’

  twenty-seven

  In the morning light, the sun twinkling at his window, he stretches out a hand to find her side of the bed vacant and cold. Hardly surprising. She’s not about to waste her one free day of the week. It occurs to him that in Australia he would be up early too – for church. As with most things it had little to do with individual taste or proclivity. It was what Lamberts did. He took his place in the choir at the age of eight and rarely missed a mid-week practice or a Sunday service until his mother began to falter. In her last years, as she became less preoccupied with being seen and holding her head up, she sang less and less. She preferred the early service, to get it out of the way perhaps. He followed along obligingly. The stone church was icy, even in summer. The congregation was small, a mixture of fanatics and habitual early risers, notably Chas Porter who collected the town’s nightsoil. The Pariah Service, Lew called it, and sometimes came along to stand beside her in the manner of a beau. Perfunctorily they knelt on the blue leather knee rests and touched their foreheads in attitudes of earnest prayer. In Harry’s case, and perhaps for his elders too, very few words ever came. Twenty seconds of silence, as was proper. Then back up on their feet to sing. At that hour, the choir stall empty, the organist still tucked up in bed, their voices were echoingly naked:

  There is a green hill far away,

  Outside a city wall . . .

  And now, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed, he finds that his voice is hoarse and uncertain. It takes time to bring it back, a creaking and groaning up and down the half-dozen notes of the droning melody. He’s not at first overly loud – or not that he’s aware. It is enough to feel the vibrations, to exercise control over the flow of sound. The effort is acutely physical. A healthy outlet, as Ma would say.

  He died that we might be forgiven,

  He died to make us good . . .

  Sung without the support of Chas Porter’s brute baritone or the distraction of his mother’s declining ability to hold a tune, the words seem infantile. He was never devout, perhaps not even a believer, but nor was he critical. After all, Lamberts didn’t come to church to worship. They came to sing.

  O dearly, dearly has he loved,

  And we must love him too . . .

  As he dresses he relishes the rebirth of his voice. Very quickly, despite misjudgment and mishap, it achieves its former range, becoming a steady and well-modulated tenor. And now that he has remembered how to sing he devours songs like food. Half-witted village ditties his father taught him. A Harry Lauder favourite all the girls loved. But mostly hymns, the lyrics absorbed in early childhood – hymns and psalms about Redeeming Blood.

  Until, lacing up his boots, he hears, over and above his own reborn voice, another from outside. No – voices. Mostly Colombe’s. She’s talking far too loudly, sometimes laughing above the honking of geese, to warn him they have visitors. Has he been so oblivious? They are down on the bricked yard in front of the barn. He is careful to stand back from the window to avoid being seen. He suspects it’s the widow again, but the view isn’t clear. Certainly a woman in black. And a boy, presumably her son. Harry edges a little closer to the glass. Colombe has two fat goslings suspended by their throats. Gently she swings them like flexible skittles. It seems a cavalier method of handling birds, a form of maltreatment, but from what he has seen they always come out of it unhurt. And they know not to struggle, having been taught to accept it as natural. What they don’t know is that the woman in black – yes, certainly the same one who came the other week – is being asked to compare their merits. Turn about, Colombe lifts them for examination; the widow squeezes a downy leg, extends a wing and ponders. The boy offers his opinion. The one on the left. Definitely the one on the left. The widow feels it once more then concurs. Colombe hesitates, urging them to be sure of their choice. Yes, the left it is. She swings the chosen one up horizontal to the ground and thrashes it like a whip. Wings and legs shoot out, and a squirt of shit. Wary of other body fluids, she hangs it at arm’s length. If not dead it’s very close, trembling and twisting in spasms. She releases the other bird to take the widow’s money, slips the coins into the pocket of her skirt and in turning to escort her visitors away, can’t resist a quick glance up at his window. Almost instantaneously the boy’s eyes follow hers. A familiar face, small boned and very white. For a moment Harry is confused, thinking it’s an Australian face, that of a child he’s seen in the shop. Then he notices the boy’s feet – his clogs. His impulse is to jump back from sight, but he holds firm, reasoning that at a distance of thirty yards and distorted by glass he can’t possibly present more than an indistinct image, a shadow that may or may not be a human being.

  Yet he knows he’s erred. He knows it long before Colombe has seen the visitors off; long before she storms inside and stomps up the stairs. It does cross his mind that he might shut his door as a first defence, but he remains still, waiting in the middle of his room. Surely her shouting is louder than any of his songs and hymns. Her abuse has a rhythmic force that punches more violently at his chest than ever her fists could. Her eyes stream and she sprays him with careless spit. Without comprehending a word he feels every nuance of contempt. Singing! Singing as if her position and well-being mattered nothing to him! Is he insane? She shakes him by his shirtfront. She pushes at his face. She snags his thin hair in her fingers and rocks his head from side to side as if testing to see whether it rattles. His limp acceptance only exacerbates her anger, until finally, he supposes, it is the sight of his slow tears that stops her.

  He is stunned that everything can break so suddenly, so disastrously. The reverberations of her anger remain behind after she has gone, shaking the silence. He must gather his things and go. Even if the intruders didn’t hear him singing, even if the boy didn’t see him,
he can’t stay. The uncertainty would be too terrible for Colombe. What would she say if he could tell her that this same boy brought him here? They cannot rely on his goodwill or indifference, or suppose that he is too stupid to understand their circumstances. Harry knows he must act, before he loses clarity. To stay another night would be to subject Colombe to torment.

  Yet minutes later he hears her once more down in the nursery yard talking to strangers. He marvels at her nerve and resilience. Wary of making the same mistake twice, he stands well back from the window. The figures below remain indistinct and faceless, but he guesses that they, too, have come for new-season’s goslings. He assumes she’s advertised somewhere or that this particular Sunday signals the beginning of the selling season. He waits for the disturbance to pass. But no sooner does one visitor leave than another arrives. It is exasperating, now that he feels the stab of urgency. They trap him indoors, denying him the opportunity to communicate with Colombe. Even if she has no wish to hear or see him he must try to explain his intentions. And he feels this need, this compulsion to explain, squeezed by shrinking time. Who knows how long they have? He worries about the widow. Perhaps she has harboured suspicions all these weeks; perhaps the rose she came to buy was merely a pretext to snoop. Likewise this morning’s gosling. And now she has heard him singing at the top of his lungs! Her son may have looked him in the face! How long before they go to the police?