The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  “I feel fear.”

  Jerome looked at the honesty and slid an arm round the hard shoulders.

  “Me too. I want to live to be a father.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well I was always faster than you.”

  “You were.”

  “Still am I bet.”

  “You drink too much.”

  “Top of the hill?”

  A hundred metres sharp rise to the crest. “Go!”

  Jacques lost a clog, then the other and the new hewn grass-clumps ripped into the soles of his feet as he pushed his weight through his knee-caps. His lungs turned to brandy, tearing air in and out and he won.

  “You’re right.” Jerome, hands on his knees, gasping, gasping. “I drink too much.”

  Jacques raised himself upright and there was his constant, eternal view, reaching forever to the blue.

  Simone. I love this and I love you. And this bastard Reléve must part us. Why, God?

  The fat mayor had lied, the Curé was there.

  And he’d been expecting her. A letter from Lyon, some months ago from his comrade Curé, dead now, God rest his soul. He had kept the faith that she would reach him.

  And the escape route was there, too. Faint. Feeble. Under threat from Vichy, the Germans, collaborators, and, shamefully, the neutral countries; that ageless rite of passage, greed. What had begun as evacuation of persecuted innocents had thickened into a grubby gravy train. North Africa or North America –if you could pay.

  It needed whatever her help could be. She had a barn? That would be a perfect last staging post before Sousceyrac. Ask. Ask and let me know.

  “Your Curé, Phillipe, has a bike. I’ll speak to him. Gently. He’s timid. I’m glad you’re not. I’m glad you came, very glad. Ask your friend, Jacques. And money. We need money. Charity and human fellowship don’t last long enough. We have to pay. And we must – these are the children of the world. Bless you, Simone.”

  Jacques walked the cow and the winter feed home.

  If I go.

  When I go.

  If I have to go.

  Wherever I’d go – she’d be left. Would she want that? And if she didn’t what about Mother?

  I can’t stay in the house if I desert or refuse this whatever-it’s-called.

  And now guns and barns...

  It’s harvest. Everything grown is cut.

  Oh, but I want her to stay.

  I want it all to stay.

  What can I do to keep her?

  He snorted, joke. What can I do to save her from war? Nothing! On earth.

  Tell her tonight, then?

  Tell Mother? No!

  Have this one last night of peace. One last evening by the fire. Oh, no. De Gaulle. Everything has changed. So quickly. Why? The summer has gone, today.

  Where did she go today?

  She walked home. It was home.

  Will he give the barn?

  And the mother? I’ll ask. What else can I do?

  The evening flickered through the woods, the red sky spreading deep and deeper over the land. Life was changing.

  She walked.

  Jacques and his mother sat at their table and he ate. When he avoided her waiting eyes she said, “Did you see Lacaze?”

  “Yes.” He looked up. “Did you?”

  “Came here. He went to Janatou?”

  “Yes.”

  Dread slid up his spine. “Why?”

  “News.”

  “Of?”

  “The baby.”

  A tiny silence.

  “No Mamman, that’s a lie. The War. The War.”

  “He walked two hours to say what, Jacques?”

  “I can’t lie, Mother.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s to be a Réleve...”

  She sat back, stone.

  “Both of you, both of you, both of you...”

  “No, Mamma, no.”

  “All my life. Stolen.”

  “Mamma, not Simone. Only men.”

  “What?”

  “Not both of us.”

  “You and your father.”

  He looked straight into despair.

  “I won’t go, Mother.”

  “You will.” She caved inwards. “You will, you will, you must you will...”

  “Mamma. Mamman! It’s voluntary. I don’t have to go. It’s not law.”

  “Yet.”

  “Mamma, that’s iffing.”

  “War is close to sin, boy. It’s as close as you and I can get.”

  “Which is better? To help the enemy, or kill him?”

  She laughed, cold. “Neither. They’re both final.”

  “Life’s final.”

  “Life’s a fraud.”

  Some flies walked undisturbed over the plates. “And where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “No.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have either.”

  “She’ll come back. Tell us.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  His mother went to her room and lay down.

  The September evening bathed St. Cirgues in ochre as she walked past the curtains and came up the lane to Puech, tired and strong, the dog leading her in. Jacques, alone. Good.

  “Food?”

  “Please.”

  She waited for his questions. None.

  She wanted his curiosity. If only to enjoy how much she trusted. “Your mother?”

  “She’s –asleep.”

  He made tisane to go with the salad and waited for her to talk. She waited for him to ask.

  Why didn’t he ask?

  “Simone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you come with me tonight. To the village. Meet Jerome.”

  “Why?”

  “To listen to De Gaulle.”

  His eyes met hers. He would give the barn, he would.

  “Yes.”

  At half-past eight there were two old ones and Valet, Grivault and Duthileul. Jacques and Simone took their drinks outside.

  Jerome walked past, mouthed “The Church,” and was gone.

  They finished their drinks and his cigarette and he took the glasses back.

  “Nearly nine,” said Valet, fat.

  “Need a lift home?” Duthileul growled and Valet smirked. Fat and cold.

  “No, thank you, we have friends to see.”

  “Friends? Ohh.”

  “Good night.”

  “Enjoy yourselves.” Laughter followed them, faded. Jerome stood in the arched doorway.

  “Feyt’s. You know it Jacques, I’ll take Simone. Go the back way, by the football pitch.”

  “Feyt?”

  “Feyt. Hurry.”

  “Good for their gossip,” laughed Jerome as he and Simone took the Figeac road. “I dare you to hold my hand.”

  “Is this all a game?”

  “No. Hasn’t Jacques told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Then he hasn’t.”

  He waited for her to ask what, and she didn’t.

  Feyt’s house stood back, detached, and Jerome walked her past it, then looked back to the silent village and took her hand as he turned smartly up a slope of grass and across Feyt’s vegetables to his door.

  Feyt. Small and stocky, his gait tired, a flat cap over no hair and sad eyes that crinkled a welcome into their corners as he shook her hand. Jerome walked past Jacques, to the window, moved the curtains and stood there. Watching. Checking. He looked insane. “No-one see you, Vermande?”

  “No.”

  A long padded table with a two metre metal rule embedded in one edge, scissors, chalks, needles, pins, cottons, rolls of strong cloth, tape measures and a sewing machine and its box. A canvas torso stood in a corner, naked. Nothing else, one chair. And Jerome twitching at the window.

  The little man made tea and gave them each a cup and Jacques stared. His only Jew. This made no sense. How did you know he was Jewish?
He didn’t speak Jewish. What was Jewish? His trade? His nose, like the poster? Jacques stifled a laugh.

  “What? What?” Jerome was stressed.

  “My nose…“ he stopped, reddening.

  “Yes?” Feyt asked.

  “…is bigger than yours!” And blushed.

  Feyt laughed.

  “I read a poem once, an Englishman. He said that to the blind all men are equal. Perhaps, since blind men can’t fight, it would be better if we were all blind instead of German or Jewish or French.”

  “There’d be no need for a tailor,” said Simone.

  “Good, I’m tired. But,” he raised a finger, “would we sacrifice our sight for peace? I fear we’d rather see the mess we make of existence.”

  The church bell sounded. Feyt lifted the sewing-machine box and revealed a radio. He switched it on, the valves warmed and the metal speaker crackled and he tuned it minutely, just as the Curé in Lyon had, and La Marseillaise could be heard. Jacques gawped. “They’re playing my song,” Jerome laughed from the window.

  “This is London. Ici Londres.”

  The four of them placed their cups down.

  De Gaulle, confidence in every enunciation, spoke.

  “I refuse. I refuse to accept the military verdict of 1940 as final, I refuse to accept the Armistice, I refuse the policy of collaboration, I refuse to accept Vichy as the legitimate voice of France.

  At this present hour, all France understands that the ordinary paths of power have disappeared. In the face of the confusion in French hearts, in the face of the liquefaction of a government that accepts servitude to the enemy, in the face of the inevitable incapacity of our institutions to function, I, General De Gaulle, am conscious of speaking in the name of France.

  Everyone has the sacred duty to do everything he can to help liberate the country by casting out the invader.

  There is no way out and no future without Victory. But this gigantic effort is already revealing that the danger menacing the country is not just from the outside. Victory will be no victory unless it brings courageous and profound re-birth from within.

  The French people are not only waiting for Victory – they are preparing for a revolution. Vive La France!”

  Some music began and Feyt switched it off, covered it with the box, gathered his scissors and no-one spoke. Jerome came away from the window, his fists clenched, his eyes red with tears. Jacques felt the vivid taste of an entirely new excitement. Simone shone.

  They shook Feyt’s hands, his warm eyes crinkled and they left him cutting Valet’s new jacket.

  “Not alone, Jacques,” said Jerome as they parted. “Not alone. We have a leader, eh?”

  “Uh-huh.” Jacques didn’t want talk.

  “Talk about things on Sunday?”

  Jerome searched his friend’s face for the barn. The barn.

  “Mm.” The guns.

  The danger.

  The sky was dark. No moon. Just stars.

  They walked, two young people. Nothing was said – there was too much to think – and then as the woods cut the night to black their pace slowed and he felt her nearer and for the first time, they touched. Simone placed a hand into the crook of his elbow. Jacques felt the exact detail of her skin and heat rushed around him, his breathing deepening, the grin exploding into his face and the urge to shout again. She stumbled on something and the fingers gripped tighter and he shook his arm free and took her hand and hoped the woods would stretch to Doomsday. His huge hard paw swallowed hers, the softness of the palm, the thin fingers gripping at him. He turned to look and saw nothing.

  “Are you looking at me?”

  “I am.”

  They walked.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Fine.”

  She squeezed his hand and the hairs under his balls uncurled and he squeezed back.

  “And how are you?” she asked.

  “Full. This has been – a full day.”

  “Mm. It has.”

  The road turned to meet Duthileul’s pasture and there was starlight enough not to hold hands. Fumbling, they parted.

  But they had touched and he had survived. He longed for his solitude now, to go through the day and think and then savour its greatest thrill last.

  Simone was baffled.

  She had no experience of gentleness in men. Some fumbling at school, an excursion or two into Love’s suburbs in her teens and then brutal necessity and soul-less degradation on her journey South. But everyone, all men, had wanted. Something. A touch, a kiss, a feel, to claim some moment of her life for theirs. Either that or nothing. Undesiring and therefore indifferent. And this man wanted something too, but it was so gentle, a butterfly’s wing. She felt unique in his sight.

  “Talk tomorrow?” she said as the dog came to meet them.

  “Yes.”

  When they came in, before he lit the candle, she rose on her tip-toes to kiss him, as she would her father, or any good friend, and feeling his utter unpreparedness for such a gesture she spun away to her room.

  They lay a floor apart.

  Jerome and his guns. Resist this Reléve? Suppose they called tomorrow? And De Gaulle and my mother – they oppose each other. How do I help him and protect her?

  The dog scratched and slumped against the chimney-breast.

  He will give the barn, she thought, hoped – but have I the right to ask, to expose him and his Mother to the danger?

  I won’t go and I won’t take Jerome’s guns. Not yet. She held my hand.

  And we’ll talk tomorrow.

  Arbel snored. Ardelle lay awake. She knew only that he had lied to her. Lacaze had come, they had talked and Arbel had come back and lied. Denied the lie and now there was nothing to say. She could ask Lacaze but did she want to know? It was The War, coming with the winter. France had no army, but somehow they would take him. Why else would he lie?

  Simone leaned into the mother’s room. Still in bed. Odd.

  “Shall I do lunch, or you?”

  “You.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “None.”

  She closed the door and sat on the bed. “What is it?”

  The mother faltered.

  “Where did you go last night, you two?”

  “To the village. A drink.”

  “Aha.” Her eyes lowered, sad.

  “It was my birthday,” Simone smiled.

  The mother took another breath. “I’m flattered you would lie to me, my dear.”

  “To listen to De Gaulle,” Simone said instead of blushing.

  “Oh no... oh no...”

  “It must come.”

  “I know that.”

  “And we must prepare.”

  “Order a coffin.”

  She walked out to where he was turning maize roots over.

  “Jacques.”

  “Simone.”

  He straightened. Saw purpose in her face.

  “Come to the copse.”

  He led her through the maize tares and into the shade of the beech. Quieter even than the faint buzz of the fields. Only Time, creaking.

  “Girolles soon. And ceps. Next rain. Tasted ceps?”

  “Yes, Jacques. I’m from the north, not another planet...”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  They sat.

  “What did Jerome mean when he said ‘had you told me’?”

  “We’re to be called. It’s coming, like you said. And I have my choice. Like you said.”

  “And you told your Mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. I understand.”

  “She never taught me to lie.”

  A half a minute passed, while he thought, ‘And will you stay – and will you stay?’

  “Yesterday, Jacques.”

  “Yes?”

  “The barn…” she began.

  “Yes?”

  “Yesterday I went to Souceyrac. There’s an escape route. For orphans. Jewish children, out through Spain to Portugal, and beyon
d, I think. Can they use the barn? As a resting place.”

  War. Nearly here. I have to face it. But it must mean she’ll stay!

  “Yes,” he said and her heart jumped once.

  “What about your mother?”

  “We’ll see.”

  And there they sat, Simone warming all over, looking at him. Rooted in his environment, rooted as his trees. The paysan. No pays sans paysans. And he wants nothing I do not care to give.

  “You’re a treasure.”

  “Am I?”

  “You are.”

  It’s a pity I don’t want you, she thought.

  They told the mother.

  She nodded, this was their life, she’d had hers. She was not afraid. “Tell no-one, Jacques.”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  They made a cot in the calves’ stall, a crib, and stood back, proud. Joseph and Mary.

  Hitler’s armies met their second Russian winter and froze outside Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe flattened Coventry, London, Portsmouth, raising an implacable hatred with the dust. The Japanese slaughtered young Americans as they sliced and swathed through South-East Asia. And the events that would govern the lives of Jacques, Simone, his mother, St.Cirgues and Free France gathered in Africa, as Rommel dug into the endless sand at El Alamein.

  The Sunday Morning air, clean and fresh, mocked Ardelle’s leaden and desperate heart. In the clamour of hope reaching for God’s attention she raked her fingernails into her flesh, believing her pain must command His attention, and in His Benevolence, He would relieve it.

  But as they sat outside the Tabac, Duthileul and the others glassed in behind them, she knew. Knew in her husband’s slumped and silent shoulders that this next conversation would feed her nightmares for the rest of the war. The wine dribbled from the corners of her mouth, swallowing beyond her.

  Jerome’s grin, irritating all of them, was the face he set against the fear that Jacques would withhold the barn, and Phillipe and the men would reject him again, and this time finally. And then what? Jacques felt Jerome reaching for him across the silence. As he also felt Simone’s new contentment at his side. Sara rested her hands over her widening Christmas-baby growing.

  Ardelle turned to Arbel. “Tell me. Now.”

  Silence.