The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  Severine Vigne heard them, again.

  A week ago she’d been mortified. Horrified, shamed, disgusted. And had thought of complaining. Of denouncing. This abomination.

  She wasn’t altogether sure to whom. The Mayor? The Curé?

  But a fascination had overtaken her as the sheer constancy of the sounds beyond the wall became a ritual and now, her secret.

  And in her worst moments, like this Sabbath evening, she felt almost complicit. And envious. And, didn’t they say men who drank a lot – couldn’t? This one could. Did. Endlessly.

  Then, finally, over some Sunday dinner somewhere, some husband mentioned Lacaze had said he’d take their shopping ‘home’...

  Sara reasoned with Zoe that Papa must be poorly to miss his Sunday walk.

  She was not prepared to walk down to Madame Lacaze’s house – she had her pride yet.

  On Monday there were no other children at the school gates. Sara stiffened. As did Madame Valet. The two women looked at each other and their separate blood ran cold.

  Sara left Zoe with her mother and went straight to the other children’s houses, hoping there’d be talk of a bug or head-lice or similar. And, yes indeed a disease had taken root, but not physical. And not curable.

  Dominique sat with Severine. “You knew?”

  “I hear them. Every night. All night. All week. It’s – incredible...” Dominique Duthileul needed to think.

  “And disgusting,” Severine added.

  I need a drink, he thought.

  “I thought you should know.”

  I need a walk. “Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

  “Madame Cantagrel is coming back this afternoon.”

  “Coming back?”

  “She was here, she went to collect signatures.”

  “She doesn’t need signatures.”

  “She’s gone to get them anyway.”

  “I need to think, Severine. I’ll be back in an hour.” He left.

  Madame Valet locked the school, went home, sat on the bed, woke him, and told him.

  He sat up. She smelt the booze waking in his body.

  “Well…” he said, “O.K. What is this? What are we?”

  “Need?”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Aren’t you afraid? Of what will happen?”

  Something to oppose!

  “Not a bit.”

  He opened the buttons of her blouse. “To us? To the village?” she urged.

  Through the cotton he urged her big nipple upright and the conversation went on hold.

  Dominique walked quickly away from the village, taking the road to the Roc D’ Etang, the cold wrapping itself around him.

  Think!

  Obviously, she can’t teach. They can’t stay in the village.

  They can’t – carry on. It’s an obscenity. Why aren’t I going to talk with my father?

  Oh Jesus – what did I even agree to all this for? I don’t want any of this.

  This – this is him. Father.

  No, this is me! I did want this.

  Fucking Lacaze. And her?! Is he mad? Is he certifiable..? He looked up and there was Lacaze’s house.

  O Christ! I’ve come to see her.

  Well, someone must. This is Responsibility. What are you going to do?

  First things first. She’s a councillor and you need her counsel.

  They sat around her stove.

  “I’ll come directly to the point Madame, if I may...”

  Madame Lacaze nodded.

  “Your son...”

  Madame Lacaze admitted Dread. Again. It was part of her motherhood.

  “...is living – in sin. With Madame Valet.”

  A silence.

  “So.”

  Another quiet.

  “I think I came to ask your counsel, Madame.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve been denying something of this kind, you must give me time to consider, Monsieur Le Mayor. Though I wonder how much time there can be.”

  “Quite. Madame Cantagrel is collecting signatures.”

  “Signatures on what?”

  “A Condemnation. I imagine. A Denouncement.”

  “She’ll get them all.” She said, then added, “And mine.”

  Dominique nodded. That was most of what he’d come for, he realised. He even relaxed a millimetre.

  Madame Lacaze looked at her Mayor. “How old are you, Dominique?”

  The Mayor looked at Madame Lacaze.

  “A year older than your son, Madame. Why?”

  She hesitated, and then chose to tell the truth. “Because your fear touches me.”

  Something in him moved, which she saw, and it warmed the coldest part of her. They both managed a certain smile.

  On an instinct she asked, “What does your father say?”

  “I haven’t told him, yet.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t know...” she said.

  The son agreed silently, ruefully and then tried to cover the inherent betrayal. Madame Lacaze was too quick for him.

  “I’m flattered,” she said.

  Oh, but she Loved this seedling wedge sliding between him and his father.

  “I’m very flattered.”

  Dominique was distracted by alien movement through his veins. Attraction.

  He stood.

  “I’ll be very grateful for your counsel, Madame – and I apologise for bringing such news...”

  “Rather you than anyone else, Monsieur Le Mayor,” she said, standing.

  They walked to the door.

  “It will end very badly,” she said.

  “I fear so. I’m sorry, Madame.”

  There was a tiny silence in which he wanted to say more. She opened her door and said, “Perhaps not. God willing.”

  God might be willing to allow Jerome Lacaze and Valet’s widow to fornicate in his sight but Mayor Duthileul doubted his commune would.

  He walked back.

  And what was that?

  With her?

  Madame Lacaze poked at her stove, poured a nipper of brandy.

  You two duped my son.

  Yes, he is a bloody fool. So I shall have to take his revenge for him. The brandy ran clear and hot down through her chest.

  At Puech the silent subject that had divided Arbel and Ardelle was dropped. They might still trip on it – it hadn’t gone, just been dropped.

  Their child was coming. A healing thing. They began to speak. Immediately she wanted to tell him she’d been raped but she daren’t do it to that fragile wafer of peace. So now they came hand in hand to Sunday church and stayed for one drink inside the café. No Sara. No Jerome. They declined Duthileul’s offer of a lift home to walk the spring lane together, up past Jacques’ bache, his north wall down to the ceiling floorboards.

  Arbel made a mental note to help with the window lintels.

  He bustled at their garden and sold his thin cash-crops on a Wednesday. They got along. To the point where Arbel forgot.

  When he remembered he was silent again.

  Ardelle waited. He came back, slowly forgetting again, to this new marriage.

  The bache withstood a fearsome storm, the worst of the winter, and he lay in his grit and lime studded bed, listening.

  Next morning, after Renée Lacroix had taken what had once been his herd to what had once been his pasture Jacques Vermande helped himself to four bales of what had once been his hay. Lay them at the bottom corners of his house, went upstairs and one by one pushed down his huge corner stones. Arbel watched. When all of them were down he came across and said, “Let’s do the lintels, eh?”

  By the time Ardelle called Arbel for lunch the bache rested flat on his oak ceiling and all the huge stones were on the cart. Arbel asked would Jacques care to come and eat and Jacques said he thought not but thanks and they shook fingers and parted.

  “I’ve moved. In. With Celine.”

  Silence.

  “Valet...” he added.

  “I
know her name,” Sara managed.

  Silence.

  “I’m not sorry, Sara. I’ve done enough apologising for one life.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t. Ever. Take Zoe there.”

  He stood, desperate to go. Home.

  “Don’t ever take her there...”

  A righteousness rose in him. “I should be ashamed?” Sara looked at him. Shoulders moving. Foot tapping. “If you could be – yes.”

  Silence.

  “There’s nothing left of you,” she blurted, “what are you doing?” His head fell on his chest and an arm flung itself around it. As abruptly he straightened. “We’ve had our lives, now we have to exist. You know?”

  “Yes, I do, Jerome. Don’t take my daughter there.”

  “Might take mine...”

  “No. You’ve shamed her family enough.” He couldn’t meet her eyes so he left.

  Madame Cantagrel rode her bicycle down to St. Hilaire and rapped hard at the Curé’s door.

  Righteous bile poured out of her and she showed him the signatures.

  “But what do you suggest?” he wondered.

  “They must be moved.”

  “Banished? St. Cirgues is hardly Eden, Madame...”

  Madame Cantagrel nearly slapped him.

  “They flout God’s Laws, sir! In plain sight!”

  “True.”

  “You’re useless. I’ll see the Mayor.”

  The Mayor had gone to see his father. Who knew.

  “Prefect doesn’t anticipate problems with a replacement teacher,” offered Jean-Louis.

  “You called him?”

  Dominique wondered if his father even registered the outrage in his voice.

  “He’s a friend.” Duthileul shrugged.

  “She’ll get a month’s wages,” his father snorted. “And her pension!”

  Dominique’s grandmother muttered into her crochet work in the gloom of her fireplace armchair.

  “Is she dying?” Dominique said softly.

  “Her brain, yes. Her body, no. She’s peasant stock,” his father almost snarled.

  Silence.

  “Councillor Madame Lacaze?” Jean-Louis enquired.

  “She’ll vote for whatever’s worst for her son.”

  Duthileul nodded. “Good, my boy.”

  There was a fresh quiet. Another silence.

  “Well?” Duthileul finally said, “Do you want my advice?”

  “I’ll take your counsel, father.”

  Duthileul absorbed the rebuff. “When you need it, then...”

  The room chilled and Dominique left, tipped his hat to Renée and went back to the village where Madame Cantagrel seethed in his waiting room.

  “It could be arranged,” The Mayor said, “that she be given an alternative posting...”

  “Teach more children! Are you mad?”

  “You suggest eviction. On what grounds, Madame?”

  “Moral!” Madame Cantagrel shook.

  “There’s no law. No moral law.”

  “You’re as bad as that water-lily priest.”

  Dominique eased his chair back a millimetre.

  “Madame Cantagrel, I agree with you. Their behaviour is – beyond description. It disgusts me.”

  “Does it really? How much?”

  “But what can I do – within my powers?”

  “Tell them to go! Tell them their shame is our shame – the disgrace...”

  She was too full to complete the sentence. She stamped her foot once and began afresh.

  “Tell them they’re not wanted. Because they’re not.” She shook her sheath of signatures. “It is a stain before God.”

  “You could tell them that.”

  “I will! But you, Monsieur Duthileul, are our Mayor. Our servant. I have a hundred signatures – and you agree! God! Go and DO something.”

  He stood.

  “Leave this with me. And thank you, Madame Cantagrel. For your vigour. And your faith in us all. Sincerely.”

  Madame Cantagrel went home to her sickly husband. “He’s got a problem.”

  “Who?” he asked, wearily.

  “Never mind.”

  He didn’t.

  Jerome was trying to shave. With the early morning shakes. Celine took the razor from him, lathered the brush and shaved all of him, his head, eyebrows, chest hairs, armpits, every o so very carefully pubic hair; until he, bald and hard as bone took the razor and shaved off her clothes and they ran a bath and nearly drowned fucking in it.

  Curé Phillipe sat in his cold house and considered his duty. To God. To his flock. To his commune. He would have to talk to the Mayor? In his panic he never once considered asking The Almighty’s advice.

  She read the letter.

  “They’ve sacked me.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Morally unfit...”

  “Fuck all self-appointed arbiters of morality."

  A beat.

  “They’ll send my pension book.”

  “D’you need a drink?”

  He was smoking on his front door-step. Sara noted the corner – stone laden cart and sat with him. They looked out at a dust-grey cold spring garden, bleak as a picture of my heart, she thought. Piles of stones everywhere. Wreckage – things in bits and pieces.

  “Jerome’s moved in – with Celine Valet.”

  Silence.

  A one-story house with a chimney stack and a tarpaulin roof behind them. Late February sky above them.

  “He’s gone. This time.”

  She wished she smoked.

  He was so tired of the madness involved in thinking. He scraped together, “How is Zoe?”

  Sara heard the effort, smiled gratefully for it and said, “Bad. She thought she’d be teacher’s pet. Now no-one speaks to her.”

  He nodded, smoked.

  “She’s been sacked. Best thing for Zoe. New start. I—“ She gulped for some air to speak with.

  “I can’t show my face, Jacques. I never knew I needed to before this. My mother can’t go out. Zoe doesn’t understand. We haven’t seen him since he told me. I want to leave. Like you. Can I come with you?”

  She felt him stiffen and added in a rush, “I wasn’t serious, Jacques. Well, I am, but you know what I mean.”

  He said, “Bring Zoe here.”

  She said, “To bake some bread?”

  “Could do.”

  They sat there. Time crawled by.

  Sara took pity on the dog hopelessly trying to groom even an inch of it’s wretched matted coat. She laid and lit a fire, warmed some water, found a chunk of grimy soap and broke a comb and bent a fork untangling the months of dried slime on the beast. A part of her wanted to do the same for the bearded, hairy man but the thought didn’t last.

  The whole garden was grey with dust, the trees prematurely aged. We all are, she thought. God, what’s it like in Germany if we’re winning the damned war?

  When she left Jacques borrowed a beast from Arbel, yoked it, set his blinkers and he and the dog walked the evening through St. Cirgues to Janatou, unloaded the cart, and slept under his other bache till the morning frost woke him and he walked, blinkered through the village, home. To half a home. Half his home here. Half there. Now, prop the bache and take out the floorboards. Then the beams, then the ground floor stone work. Move my bed to the caves? Yes. Work.

  Mayor Dominique watched his grandmother talking to herself of 1914 and Vermande’s grandfather, and saw his father struggling with food preparation and moved out of the Mairie and came home. He gave Renée the option of his own home every night but the fool only grinned and ate at their table and went to the spare room his Mayor had furnished for him. Across the road, the other fool walked his cart of rubble blinkered through the village twice a week now and Lacaze’s wife, if she could still be called that, came to see him once a week. Arbel and he nodded when they saw each other. And the rank, rising pus of the village boil waited to be lanced.

  “Come to Mass with me? Please?
”

  “Celine...” the bald man laughed, “Please.”

  “Weak as piss,” she said and went to dare to take The Holy Sacrament.

  Jacques heard the Sunday bell calling the commune to celebration as he levered up his ceiling’s oak floorboards.

  It was brisk but not overly cold and Ardelle and Arbel walked, nodding to Duthileul and his mother and son as they slowed to over-take them on the lane. Ardelle was not yet showing but they had decided this was the day to share their news – to re-join their community. To announce their child. They held hands as they came late up the slope into the Church Square.

  The people were gathered in the sight of the Lord and no-one spoke. There was only one topic of conversation, and it was fast moving beyond words.

  As CelineValet came in and took a pew the congregation took one collective intake of breath and held it for the next hour. Arbel and Ardelle, ignorant, only sensed the palpable chill. They looked round. Neither Sara nor her mother would make eye-contact. Zoe looked fearful. The Mayor and his father stared straight ahead. Madame Cantagrel’s jaw ground outrage. Madame Lacaze, Jauliac and his wife, Chibret and his wife, the whole commune seemed charged with something...

  When the Curé gave Madame Valet Christ’s body and blood Arbel thought he heard a gasp, two, or was it tears? He looked round but no-one looked at him. They’d ask Sara.

  But at the “Go in Peace,” Sara, her daughter and mother bolted from the place. Arbel frowned. He and his new-found wife had good, happy news to spread. In the church square, two yards from the big door, they watched Madame Cantagrel spit in the schoolteacher’s face. No-one moved to censure her, no-one moved to comfort Madame Valet.

  The teacher moved away through the crowd.

  When the Curé appeared Madame Cantagrel raged in his face about ex-communication, fired a fearsome volley about spineless ineptitude at The Mayor and had to be dragged away by her husband. Arbel took Ardelle’s arm and they left the coven buzzing. The Curé and The Mayor looked at each other.