The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  “I will, if you don’t mind.”

  “You will – and I don’t.” He closed the door.

  She heard him pick up the plate and wash it in the bucket, cross the room and then she saw his head descend the steps outside her window. And she was alone. The mother. The little fat Mayor had said, but tomorrow would do. The light halved. He’d closed one volet. His face appeared.

  “Sleep.”

  He closed the other and the light cut to two white streaks of sunlight through old knot holes in the pine. One touched the end of the bed. Her bed.

  She sat on its edge and scraped the boots off her filthy feet. They stank. Poured a little water into the bowl and sank the black toes. Ancient hay drifted free. She sat. She just sat.

  She dried her feet white. Laid her jacket over the bed end, a decrepit sleeve catching a stripe of light, unbuttoned her dress, laid that rag down too, her vest she left and now, listening to the precious sounds she made, pulled back the covers. She slid one leg in and then both and down oh down into the cold deepness and her back and her shoulders just kissing the peace and now the pillow folding around her head and she lay. She just lay. The ceiling, broad oak beams, cobwebbed nails, hooks, a shelf over the door, a rosary. Floorboards above, solid as the century, and her bottom spread, her arms spread, her thighs and ankles crossed each other in hugs and her body believed – at least for now.

  Her mind asked what and why and what next and who and she shut it off, selfish sleep consumed the woman and laid her to rest like a child.

  He milked, took it to the caves, came out and stretched high in his garden and wanted to shout and didn’t know what. He strode to the compost and opened his trousers, and loosed himself hot, clear, long and strong. A grinning pleasure.

  He went to make the evening meal.

  He woke his mother gently and ate with her. The mother arched an eyebrow.

  “She’s asleep,” he said. They ate.

  “She’ll sleep till morning.”

  “Will she?”

  “Yes.”

  Finished, he quietly put things away and came back to sit on her bed as evening walked by.

  “She’s young.”

  “Oh.”

  “Simone.”

  “Simone...?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Where is she from?”

  “I didn’t ask. The North, Chibret said.”

  His mother nodded, tired, and then said, “She’s been a long time coming.”

  “Eh?”

  “Two years.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Well – she’s here.”

  They sat a while longer. Then he rose, closed the volets, took her pot and emptied and cleaned it. Returned.

  “Goodnight, Mamman.”

  “Goodnight, Jacques.”

  “Call. I’ll be upstairs.”

  “I will.”

  He shut her door. Kicked the fire into the smallest space and sat to look at Simone’s door. What a last cigarette!

  Everything beat faster. A grin had taken root. He smoked round it. Why had this happened? There was no answer. It was just simply Wonderful.

  He lit a candle, closed the kitchen volets and padded upstairs to the grenier. The dog looked at him, looked at his bedroom door, and followed.

  Sacks of flour, sacks of last year’s nuts, a pile of spare tiles his grandfather had left lest his roofing prove inadequate. It hadn’t. Stooping to avoid the two A shaped oak beams, he moved his pile of blankets to the far corner. Above her.

  He stood out of his trousers and lay between his blankets and pecked out his candle. The room shrank to black and he just lay. He imagined everything, just everything, for one mad second. Love, marriage, children and unending joy. He rolled onto his stomach to press his glee-kiss into the floorboards.

  Next morning early he milked and hurried them to their field, dawn just breaking as he got three eggs, three, and scuttled inside to breakfast his women.

  The tiny fire had died and he lifted the ash with his hands, not wanting the scrape of a shovel to spoil sleep. He fetched kindling and bigger pieces, lit it, poured fresh well-water into the pot and waited, watching her door. Don’t wake yet. The water moved, the bubbles rising to boil. Fed it the eggs, rolled his cigarette, lit it, cut bread, got both plates – I need to buy another – prepared coffee and when his smoke finished he spooned out the eggs and cooled them in hands warm as his grin. He poured coffee and everything was so.

  He pushed at his mother’s door. Placed her food on the bed, opened the window and the volets and the day slid in.

  “Sleep well?”

  The light was low and thin by her routine. “Did you? This is early.”

  “Yes, I must have.”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “Out there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Eat, mamman.”

  And he left her and went back to taste the thrill he’d imagined himself to sleep with. The tray laid, he pushed open her door and her eyes met him.

  “Breakfast.”

  “In bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “This once. Thank you.”

  “You’ve slept.”

  “I have.”

  “Good.”

  “Thank you.”

  The mother listened through the thin wall. Then saw her son appear and sit at the table to eat where he could see both his women. Like a man, thought the mother. Sweet like a boy, thought the girl.

  He gave her one of his shirts and a pair of trousers in return for the dress and her socks and the ragged wool cardigan he took to the wash-pond. He was half-way down the lane when he stopped. He hadn’t introduced them.

  “Come here,” the mother called.

  Simone stood in the doorway, his shirt falling huge. “Sit.”

  She looked and sat in the only place, the bed. “My son is naive.”

  Simone waited. The woman almost smiled.

  “Find a dress.” She nodded towards the wardrobe. Simone waited a second, unwilling.

  “You choose, please.”

  “Well. One of mine, not his.”

  Simone opened the wardrobe. One black, one cotton with pastel flowers; one obviously for best.

  She said, “It’s pretty.”

  “Mm. Later, perhaps.”

  Simone took out the flowered one, stood out of Jacques’ clothes and buttoned the dress.

  “It fits.”

  “Good.”

  Pockets on the thigh, there was a piece of paper in the left one. Simone sat. “This invasion, I’m sorry— “

  But the woman shook her head and dismissed the apology. “War.” A minute passed.

  “Where are you from?”

  The mother watched Simone’s eyes scour the room for a security. “Later... tell me later.”

  Simone, grateful, nodded.

  A bird called, two notes, endless.

  A fly burst in, ransacked the air and fled. The dog came in, slouched in the doorway.

  Across the lane activity. Curiosity either hadn’t time, desire nor need enough to show its face.

  Simone searched for conversation, for a starting point. Then saw the woman didn’t need talk.

  She simply sat, propped, her mouth almost smiling, taking in the two years that had stripped the bloom off this child and replaced it with defences. Like an armoured calf.

  Outside an old woman’s voice screeched. A weary young man replied. The bird still called.

  “Your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  The women sat sad. “Your – his father?”

  “Gone. Dead.”

  How old was she? The boy was twenty, maybe a little more. Why was this woman in bed? She belonged there. She looked weak and worn but not ill. Later...

  He barrowed back up the lane and the dog stirred. “He’s back,” the smile feebled around her mouth.

  He beamed stupid at them, his tired mother and this girl.

  “The washing.”

&n
bsp; He strode out to the garden, hung it, trowelled a salad, pulled a bucket of water and came back to feed them.

  He ate off the wooden board.

  He ate exactly as he always ate, at the same speed, the same pauses, the same as ever, except when he looked up Simone was there.

  And now he heard the silence he always sat in. I must talk...

  “It’s warm,” he said. The women waited.

  Simone looked toward the mother’s door. Silence. So Simone said, “Mm,” and waited.

  Silence. “Cheese?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Mother?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  When he went in she was asleep.

  Will this make her live? Will this change save her? She hadn’t eaten much. He put her tray on the floor and rubbed the cobwebs off her crucifix and rosary. Please, God. The dog sniffed past the lettuce and looked huge cow eyes from him to the ham. Jacques flicked his head, and draping it over his teeth, the dog took it to the garden to savour.

  He washed away. Simone sat at the table. “She’s sleeping.”

  “She’s tired.”

  He nodded, agreeing.

  He sat and smoked. The dog returned, circled and slumped in shade.

  A bird sang. He finished the smoke and could sit here for all eternity with her, silent.

  He rose, stooped in the fireplace. “I must work.”

  “What can I do?”

  He looked. Looked at her shoulders, tight. “Rest. It’s warm outside.”

  And he was gone, the dog following. Simone sat on the steps.

  Looked at this new Life.

  Wild flowers, crocuses, a burst of parched daffodils. A bush, something she didn’t know, was it elderflower, married with the hawthorn draped around the well. Behind that the orderly vegetable plot, flourishing. And hollyhocks, tall and swaying, as full of life as the swallows. The sun was sweet. Flies zipped close. Stukas. Two, three, four separate bird calls, another. The dog lay in the shade, nose rising with the feeble breeze and watched her and dozed.

  What was Peronne now? A German town.

  When he came back with the herd she had been there one day.

  The girl sat and watched Jacques move ordered and unflurried through the preparation of their meal. For the time it took to prepare the mother’s tray and their table, she didn’t exist. He was working and that was all he was doing. Neither hardship nor effort, as natural to him as it had been to her mother, only he did it without distraction. Once he had the soup simmering he relaxed with a cigarette and came back to the room, the house, his dog, and her.

  The mother ate slowly and listened and they sat at the table, silent like a married couple, until she complimented his cooking and he looked up at her, this magical marionette, eating his soup at his table in his house.

  Time, freeze, please.

  She watched the routine of the well-water, the vegetable peelings to the fire, the bed-pots and the volets, the candle and then heard the mother and son and heard it as it was, a ritual. When he sat to smoke again she felt intrusive to his rhythm and wished him goodnight and went to her room. His room. She took the paper from the pocket of the dress. A photograph, a young man, in First War Uniform. She placed it carefully at the bottom of the drawer and took the dress off. A day.

  Jacques smoked. Tomorrow Saturday. Plough. Sunday. Mass. Outside a three-quarter moon cast his shadow sharp as he pissed against the barn. The dog sniffed it, covered it, and they went back inside. Candle lit, up to the warm smell of grain and to lie in sleep again, above her. He rolled onto his back, to imagine Sunday and what would be said and thought. And what he would feel.

  But in the silence he thought about rain for the vegetables, or he would have to carry well-water. A douche, Lord. And he’d missed the cow’s time, would have to wait three weeks now.

  In the morning Simone watched.

  Whilst he milked, his routine with the beasts, the chickens, the wood, the fire, watched him prepare and make the breakfast, take it and wake the mother and then return to eat with her. They sat and ate and the mother through her door watched them both and her coffee cooled and the dog ate her bread and egg.

  “I’m not hungry,” she told it, and smiled.

  Simone watched him wash and tidy the few things and he felt her eyes and wondered how long this would last. Being watched. Nobody had watched him, as though either he or his labour were interesting, not since childhood. His mother had been patient and practical, and Allibert, with the faint smell of his lunchtime pastis, strict and rigid. Her watching wasn’t either of those. Why is she watching? What does it matter why? Because it makes goose-flesh, it makes me want to shout, like everything about her. He looked round.

  “I was thinking...” he began.

  “I could tell.”

  Could she tell what I was thinking? “Could you tell what I was thinking?”

  “No.” A breath of a laugh.

  “Oh. Good.” Then he smiled, young and scared. “Do you want to know?”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Well.”

  Her mouth twitched to a smile. He went to plough manure into the fallow field.

  Was that a conversation?

  My God! We can talk. To each other. About Things. What things?

  He ploughed.

  Nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing could return to normal.

  The only normal there can be now is normal with her. And how long will it take to become normal? This isn’t normal. This is ‘if ’ come alive. This is wonder. How long does wonder last? And is there long enough to reach normal before the war comes over the mountains? And will it? And what then? He bent his back and ploughed. Just work and let it be. There’s nothing to be done but by letting it be. You plough and sow and let it be and if you’re lucky, you reap.

  Washing his hands at the well he heard footsteps. In the house. In their house. She stood at the door and called him. Called his name.

  “Jacques. Food?”

  That mad grin charged round his face again.

  Her soup was thin and spicy with more pepper than his and more delicious for his having neither thought of it nor made it. He complimented the cook and she thanked him. In her room the mother sneezed at the pepper and drank a little.

  The afternoon he saw Ardelle appear briefly in her doorway across the field and they waved but too far and too busy to stop to discuss the girl. She would know everything Chibret could tell by now. So would they all. And he knew nothing more. He hadn’t asked anything.

  As the sun blushed toward evening he brought the cows in, tethered them, forked their hay and fetched his stool and bucket and felt Simone in the doorway as he sat to milk. He smiled and turned, but he was wrong, she wasn’t there. He milked. He heard his mother saying, “Iffing is close to sin.” And he turned again and she was there, small and hard, hands on her hips, watching again. “I thought you were here. Before...”

  “I was. Au toilette.”

  “Ohh.”

  The image of her squatting to shit momentarily demolished Romance.

  “Supper soon,” she said and went.

  He was alone again – but oh so different from a whole minute before. From the day before, from all the days, all the weeks, all the years of his life before. Suddenly he wanted this war to last forever. To stay lingering on behind the hills, to become a part of his life. He closed up the barn, took the milk to the caves, came out into the evening silence of crickets and Arbel’s meagre herd echoing in their too-big barn, some electrical machine at Duthileul’s and he was glad he’d missed the cow’s season. The bastard’ll think I’m a fool. And he’ll charge more. Don’t care. I’m glad. Why? Why be glad about that? Because I had something better to think about! He pulled a bucket from the well, and washed, wanting to be clean for her supper, walked up the stone steps, left his clogs outside and there she sat by the fire on Arbel’s bench, the food cooking, her knees together, his mother’s dr
ess falling round her.

  This grin began at his toes. He pulled a chair from the table and sat. She looked up.

  “Pass me my tobacco, please.”

  “I’m in your place.”

  He shrugged and she reached his papers and the leather pouch from the tiny shelf hacked into the fire-wall, watched him roll a perfect cigarette, and then watched his back hit the chair and the smoke wrap around his thoughts. She stirred the food.

  The fire, this soft-eyed man, his frozen mother, their blessed uninquisitiveness, the distance from the village, the scarcity even, the silence of oblivious nature, this would do. No threat, yet, in these hills. Only, in this first breathing, an active Christianity. A place to be, a place to breathe, a place to believe. Her mother’s face suddenly came to her and she blinked it away, and when it rushed to return Simone hastened to distract herself.

  “Good day?”

  He shrugged as he did when his mother asked that question, but this was different. This was her, sitting in his space, leaning forward, asking. Asking him. This was Talk.

  “You look better,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “Good.”

  A squall darted down the chimney and the smoke and stew-smell mingled.

  “You don’t mind that I cook?”

  “No.” He smiled.

  “No.”

  The cigarette lit up his face; the roman nose, the wide mouth, work-thick fingers closed around the fag and taking it to rest on his knee. Her eyes stayed on his face and how long had this boy been the man?

  Jacques felt her eyes and his gaze rose to meet hers. There she was. “We stare at each other,” he said.

  “We do.”

  And he felt that she had lived so much more than him. And she could feel his excitement.

  The eyes were hot but he would not burn. Not her.

  Their eyes broke contact and that moment passed, but was accepted in the way she stretched her legs forward and in the flick of his finger at the ash-end of his cigarette.

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Tomorrow. They’ll all be waiting for you in church. If you didn’t come...”

  She nodded.