Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  It is not long, not as long as he wants to hold back, before Thomas steals a fresh glance at the girl across the aisle. She and her slender neck and wisps of hair through the Brussels cap are still there.

  To make time pass until the service is over, Thomas comes up with something new. He concentrates on his breathing, exhaling as much as he can before he slowly brings in the air that is new. His mother hears the long and loud ins and outs. She shakes her head but leaves him be. Her son’s huffing is better than his staring at a girl and his bulging buttons. Marie Pichon closes her eyes in prayer.

  It’s only when there’s a complete halt in the priest’s words, when the cleric is climbing the steps up to the pulpit, that Thomas allows himself a stretch of the arms and gives his upper body just the slight turn it needs to take a fresh look in the girl’s direction. Yes, she’s still there, with her face uplifted in some sort of wondrous reverie.

  “Thomas,” comes a fierce whisper, followed by a sharp elbow to his ribs.

  Thomas snaps his attention back to the front of the church, where the priest is now atop the pulpit, gazing wordlessly out to the congregation as a prelude to what he is about to say. The sermon begins, something about sheep that are lost and the shepherd who must go and save them from themselves. It is not long before Thomas sends his eyes down to his shoes and then lower still to the great slab of scuffed stone beneath his feet. Marie lets him be but wonders if this service will ever end.

  Thomas, keeping his head bent low staring at the floor, goes over what little he knows about the girl a few body lengths away. He’s seen her three times in church, yet nowhere else in town. He’s learned that her Christian name is Angélique and the family name Tyrell, or maybe it’s Tirell. He’s not seen it written. But it sounds English either way, and that makes him smile. In Vire, of any name that’s not been there for two hundred years or more people say the bearers have come from away. And away, with few exceptions, means England. The cursed godless land. For little Vire, the hilltop town of Thomas’s birth, was once under the not-so-distant enemy’s sway. English dogs, English pigs, English everything else. Well, who cares, thinks Thomas. He’s feeling the pressure re-emerge in his breeches. He darts another look at the girl. She is dark and slender and holds herself erect. By the way she dresses and carries herself he guesses that she comes from a family background much better than his own, regardless of any English roots the family might have. Thomas goes back to staring at his shoes as they scuff the floor.

  An audible sigh escapes Thomas’s lips, which draws a curled-lip stare from Mother and a turnaround scowl from the woman two rows ahead. Thomas lifts his shoulders as his apology. He sees their heads shake left then right. He lifts a hand to hide the smile. Too late he hears a rustle, the sound of moving fabric. A moving shape, a darkening blur, passes on his left. Thomas twists to see. A bewildered look takes over his face. The pious Angélique Tyrell has up and gone, left the church before even the sermon or the service has come to an end. Thomas finds his feet and lifts his body to follow after.

  “Sit. Sit down,” fills his ears. The embarrassed mother’s hand is pinching like a dog just above his knee.

  Thomas sags. He does as he is bid. The opportunity is lost. He was going to give chase. Outside the church, his hand upon Angélique Tyrell’s outstretched arm, gazing into her eyes, he was going speak to the girl. Instead, he kicks the floor. And kicks it again. Down the day. Down the mother and down the church as well. The opportunity, the day and maybe Thomas’s entire life are ruined.

  —

  The cumulus clouds hurtle cross the sky, headlong into evening. One after another, each large and puffy, they follow a course to the west, over the bocage and on into what lies beyond. On the earth below, in grey and ancient cobbled Vire, the winds on high have little effect. In the walled town there is but the appearance of a breeze. Few leaves stir. The afternoon air does not move so much as it clings. The time is heavy, breathing golden warmth.

  Thomas and Jean-Chrysostome lead each other out through the gate on the west side of town and along a trail that takes them to the crest of a hill, a dominant hill that overlooks the river. It’s a redoubtable rise, steep and narrow. Thomas twists to face the trees ahead: chestnuts planted in parallel rows back when he was a little boy. He tries to follow the intersecting lines of their branches as the young trees angle upward. He pauses to study the clusters; tiny and tender green pods stand erect on stems. Jean-Chrysostome, known to Thomas as Jean-Chrys, follows the line of his friend’s glance.

  “Let’s not be late, all right? It’s surely getting on for four. We don’t have time to linger.”

  “Suppose not. Yet it is full, is it not?” Thomas stretches the one word so that it lingers in his mouth. “The day, I mean.”

  “Yeah, come on. We’ll be late.” Jean-Chrys tugs on his friend’s shoulder.

  The two boys have come to the hill at the edge of their town for a reason. They’re to meet a tall thin lad, an apprentice to the apothecary, who says he knows a way into the underground. The underground is a word and a place that makes the boys’ hearts race. Thomas and Jean-Chrys have been hearing about Vire’s subterranean passages as long as they can remember.

  “The tunnels,” an older boy once said to Thomas, “they’re like heaven and hell.” Thomas felt his neck spring back at such words. “Yeah,” the fellow continued, unafraid of what lightning might next strike him dead, “because no one knows if they really exist.” He winked at Thomas and chuckled like he’d made a clever joke. Thomas said nothing, but he stepped back from the blasphemous boy, just in case. Thinking about it later, Thomas agreed that heaven had to be questionable. It really did. How could any place have everything for everyone who ended up there? It was too good to be true. But hell on the other hand, well there was no doubt in his heart that it was real. Because there was so much wrong that people did that they deserved to answer for. Be punished for. Yes, hell was real, and it was hot, hotter than any day he’d ever sweated through. The devil’s agents were going to give sharp pricks and pains to all the sinners, especially on their things. Thomas knew that because his thing did what it wanted, no matter how much he ignored it or tried to make it settle down. Even praying at night, kneeling on the floor by his bed, the disobedient thing wouldn’t rest. Well, Thomas didn’t want to go to hell. He wouldn’t be able to stand the inferno. Or the pricking of his thing. He could not imagine how much that would hurt.

  Thomas blinks away the troubling thoughts and reaches out to give a gentle shove to his friend Jean-Chrys. On this August afternoon, striding under the chestnut trees on their way to meet the apprentice to the apothecary, Thomas has no reason to think of hell. Instead, he shifts his focus to meeting this fellow who will be their guide to a half-whispered other world. That the apprentice is a stranger and tall, an older boy to boot, means that maybe just maybe he knows what he says he does.

  According to the story repeated to Thomas, the apprentice told Jean-Chrys that he’s already been underneath, down where the air is cold and damp. He says there are dark passages that twist and turn beneath Vire’s green hill. He wouldn’t tell Jean-Chrys where the entrance is, only that it was shrouded in thick cover. He’d gone inside but only about ten paces. He said he was barely able to squeeze through the outer rubble, and he tore his breeches pushing past. After that the passage opens up, but he could go no farther without a lantern. What he could tell was that the passage was tall enough, at least in the early part, to stand upright. Oh, and that the walls on either side were fieldstone, rough and wet. The floor was packed earth; it stuck to his shoes. All he could do in the blackness was listen to the sound of trickling water somewhere farther on.

  Jean-Chrys relayed these bits to Thomas. Ever since, the idea of going inside the earth, down into the subterranes, has coiled through Thomas’s mind. It’s been a long wait, seven days, but this Sunday afternoon he finally gets to see for himself. He�
�s guessing that the opening is going to be up on the ridge, hidden somewhere in the tumbled jumble of ruins of the ancient château, ordered destroyed by Cardinal Richelieu a hundred years before.

  “He’d better still be there,” says Jean-Chrys, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “He said he wouldn’t wait past four. And it’s almost four.”

  “Relax, will you? He’ll be there. Unless…” Thomas picks up his pace with the introduction of doubt.

  “Unless what?” Jean-Chrys halts their advance with a hand to Thomas’s chest. “Unless I fell for a story? Is that it?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “Didn’t have to.”

  The boys begin their march once more, even faster than before. Each feels trickles of sweat on the lower back and under the arms. It was a quarter of four on the clock-tower gate as they passed under it and that was a good ways back.

  “Where do you think they’ll lead?” Jean-Chrysostome nearly pants the words.

  Thomas steals a breath before he replies. He has been thinking about this the entire week of wait. “A bishop, can’t remember which one, is said to have erected them.”

  Jean-Chrys shakes his head.

  “What?”

  “You don’t erect tunnels. You dig them.”

  Thomas grimaces at the correction. Yes, he chose the wrong word. He reaches round to rub his chemise hard against his lower back to absorb some of the sweat. “All right, a bishop built the tunnels so he could get away if Protestants ever besieged Vire.”

  “Who told you that?” says Jean-Chrysostome. “Father Alexis? ‘Oh, Thomas, your eyes are so brown. You’ll be with us one day. You’ll be a wonderful priest’.”

  Thomas gives his friend a jab in the ribs with his elbow. He hates it when Jean-Chrys teases him about becoming a priest and being a favourite of Father Alexis. “He didn’t say any such thing,” begins Thomas, but he is right away cut off.

  “There, he’s there!” Jean-Chrys shouts. Then he catches himself and tries to remove some of the excitement from his voice. “The apprentice,” he continues in a more controlled manner. He is pointing up ahead. “He’s there. By the donjon.”

  Thomas sees what his friend has spotted first. A tall, thin lad, the apothecary’s apprentice apparently, standing in front of the dense thicket that covers the donjon. Well, by what local people call the donjon. In truth, it’s a heap of stones, ruins masked by bush and weed. Some dim memory of the long-ago fortification lives on in Vire so everyone still calls what is really rubble “the donjon.”

  The apprentice is not by himself. Two other boys are sitting nearby, atop the rubble, the boredom of their waiting evident in their poses. They straighten when they spot Thomas and Jean-Chrys coming out of the shadows of the trees. The smile of anticipation on Thomas’s face disappears when he recognizes one of the two boys waiting with the apprentice. It’s Vinaigre.

  “Shit,” mutters Thomas, breaking stride and slowing down.

  “Hey,” yells Vinaigre, recognizing Thomas. His eyes spin with delight. “It’s the children’s crusade.”

  Hoots greet the joke like a door slamming in Thomas’s face. There is nothing worse than laughter at his expense.

  Somewhere overhead a cloud covers the sun, dimming the colours of the day. Halftones replace sharp shadows. A flutter of starlings comes to ground behind the two boys. The birds sound their cry as they twist and angle their heads at Thomas and Jean-Chrys. Then they reclaim the air, the dismissing skirr of their wings filling the boys’ ears.

  Thomas has lost his mood. For a week he pictured this adventure and it was not like this. There was not to be so many, there was no Vinaigre. Thomas’s legs have weights tied to them as he forces himself to close the distance with the others. The five boys exchange handshakes all round, though in truth it is really an exchange of nasty grips with each lad trying to impress and maybe hurt another.

  “So,” says Vinaigre, his grin resembling a weapon. The weapon is aimed at Thomas.

  “So,” says Thomas, resigned to take whatever is to come.

  “So,” says the apprentice to the apothecary, frowning at Vinaigre and Thomas, who clearly have some kind of bad history between them. “So,” the apprentice continues, drawing up to his full height, “we … we’re … we’re all here.”

  The apprentice’s stuttering brings raised eyebrows and exchanged looks. This is their leader? This is the one to get us underground? Thomas glares at Jean-Chrys. The eyes ask: why didn’t you tell me the apprentice can hardly talk?

  The apprentice sets off quickly to the left, and Vinaigre steps in right behind him. He raises his elbows to protect what is now his, second in command. He is followed in turn by his friend, Pierre, who is as large an oaf in Thomas’s mind, since any friend of Vinaigre’s is no friend of his. Thomas notices that Pierre has a large mole on his cheek near his left ear. That entitles him to a different name. He becomes the lout with the mole. Jean-Chrys and Thomas follow in fourth and fifth positions of what is a column. In the silence of the next half-minute, the apprentice leads the boys through the shadows of overhanging trees to the far end of the ridge. They stop where there’s a small clearing near a thicket. Suddenly, as if corks have been removed, there is an outburst of mutter and mumble. Not a word of the talk, however, is about the underground. Vinaigre’s friend, the lout with the mole, leans forward to tell the others about the time he was in a wooded spot much like where they are right now. He was with a cracker girl. She let him put his hand under her skirt.

  “Right up. Touched her seat and the scratch itself.”

  Thomas’s and Jean-Chrys’s heads snap back.

  Vinaigre jumps in with a tale. He says he once got down on his knees and put his head up under a skirt. She said it would be all right so long as he didn’t touch the cunny. So she held on to his two hands outside of her skirt to make sure. Vinaigre says he put his nose against the bristles. He raises his right hand, as if he were swearing an oath.

  “What was it like?” asks Jean-Chrys.

  “Roquefort,” says Vinaigre. Everyone laughs in relief.

  The leader, the apothecary’s apprentice, is next. Thomas leans in to hear what he’s going to say. When he leans closer he picks up a sharp odour of urine off Vinaigre, which makes him pull back. Thomas leans instead toward Jean-Chysostome. Jean-Chrys’s smell is better, merely a hint of fresh sweat.

  The apprentice knows he has to hurry with his story. His leadership of the group is on the line. So he goes as quickly as he can, jumping from words he can’t handle to ones he can.

  “One day … be-behind … the fo-fo-forge … demi-loaf … fresh it was … g-g-g-girl … wa … wa … wanted … a bite … … ca-came here, right here … she-she … ru-rubbed … my-my thing.”

  Four faces are trying to follow. No one is really sure what the fellow is saying.

  “Sp- sp- spilled it.” He is pointing to a spot to everyone’s left. Four heads turn to follow the finger’s lead. “Sh-she sp-spilled me there.”

  There is no comment, no talk, no laughter either. Everyone has understood. There is only silence and lowered eyes. And a subtle shift of five bodies away from the spot where the apprentice says he or the girl spilled his thing.

  Whether or not the apprentice’s story is true, or for that matter the tales from the lout and Vinaigre that preceded it, no one knows or cares. It’s the idea that counts, for these are lads whose loins often rule their heads. Thomas and Jean-Chrys dart looks at each other. Their own little soldiers grew in warmth and size as they listened to the others talk, yet now that it’s their turn to talk they can feel them shrinking back. The two boys exchange a second, worried look. Neither has a story about girls they’ve seen or known and no inventions come to mind. Thomas thinks of Servanne and Angélique Tyrell, but what kind of stories are they? So he fakes a yawn and looks
up to the trees. Jean-Chrys’s escape is to make as if he has to walk around for a minute, tugging at breeches that are now a bit too tight.

  “We going underground or not?” Vinaigre raises both arms in impatience.

  The gesture and the look on Vinaigre’s face are a challenge. The apprentice recognizes that right away. Either he makes good on his promise to lead them into the subterranes or else Vinai-gre is in charge.

  “Ri- right.” The apprentice’s voice rises to meet Vinaigre’s assumption of the lead. “Le- let’s go.”

  —

  “Phew,” says one of the boys. The others follow with their own muttered sounds, all meaning the same thing.

  The air inside is foul. Damp and heavy it pushes up their noses, the darkness making it stronger than it ever would be in light. It’s not possible to put a name on it except to say that it stinks. Not of sweat or shit or animals, the way a street or yard can stink, but of some much oozier scent of the earth and ground itself. It’s as if the mud and leaves and who knows what else have all merged in the underground and come to form a single smell. Yet bad as it is, it is not a smell that makes the boys reconsider what they are about. Hands across mouths and noses, they advance into the dark unknown that lies ahead. Thomas keeps his right arm and hand extended as he goes forward. He caresses the stones of the wall with every second step.

  All Thomas can see in front of him are the back of Jean-Chrys’s head and his shoulders, and not much of either. The only light source is the candle lantern held waist high by the leader at the front of the trudging procession. By the time its dim light makes it back to Thomas it is merely a faint amber glow. It is as if everyone is lit by an orange melon, if melons could illuminate.

  The five boys are in the same positions they were in when they took turns squeezing through the narrow opening. Thomas is still in last. And with the flickering glow of the candle being the only light there is, everyone stays in place. No one wants to push and scramble. If the light were to go out, they’d … well, no one wants that.