The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  It was the first night they hadn’t made love. She sat on their bed as he lay there shaking and swearing and threatening to walk to Puech now, at three in the morning.

  She was awake before him and ready with coffee. He swore vilely at her and refused everything.

  That evening he threatened her with a punch if she tried to stop him going to the café.

  “They won’t serve you.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why go?”

  Jerome laughed. “You don’t know me at all do you woman?”

  “They’ll attack you, Jerome.”

  “Just don’t say I can’t go to a bar. Okay?”

  “I care about you.”

  “There’s the difference between us then.”

  The bar froze, again, as they walked in. They were refused any service.

  She sat them down. Jerome shook. Angry men watched, waiting. She pushed the paper with the headline “Huge Russian Advances In The East.” towards him. Hoping some spark might ignite anything left inside him.

  He glanced at it, looked at her, read her thought and rejected both with a smirk. She could have slapped his wastrel’s face and realised she was surely not the only woman to question whether he was worth the loving. She pushed her chair back and everyone but him watched her walk. To the bar. Their bar. Her.

  “Two coffees?”

  “No.”

  “Good, it’s piss anyway,” she said and sat back down with Jerome. His head swung up heavy to look at her, stared hard at her and then fell, heavy to the table.

  “Why are you here?” Galtier.

  George Gley said, “Why don’t you fuck off, properly?”

  Madame Valet fixed the mason with a look that had pinned generations of 8 year-olds. “You disgusting slug,” she pointed at the door and ordered, “Get out of this room.”

  Gley actually took a step. Jerome snotted a glob of laughter at him. Wet with instant shame Gley snarled, “Write out one hundred times ‘I must not fornicate with my husband’s murderer.’”

  “Or I’ll cane you,” said Galtier.

  “Pull you up by your ear-lobes, eh?” a voice from the bar said.

  “Enough.”

  Jean-Louis. Quiet.

  “Take that wreckage out of here, Madame, please.” He was icy polite.

  “I will leave,” she stated clearly, “when there is quiet.” Again, involuntary, there fell a moment’s silence.

  Then a vicious burst of movement. Galtier hauled Jerome to his feet and Gley and the man at the bar took a hunk each of her and they were both through the door and in the street very quickly indeed. Any resistance and they would both have been beaten. Certainly her.

  “I’ll be back with a Gendarme.”

  Deep laughter greeted that.

  Jacques stripped his bed, shook off the top layers of dust and grit, rolled the bedding and walked it down to the caves. The dog followed. He went back upstairs, wrestled his bed upright and step by step down the stairs and, like a one-stick marionette, corner on corner, walked it into the caves. Set it down, dragged it to the wall beneath his chimney, and threw the bedding on the frame.

  It was dank and grim in there and it would be worse tonight. Worse than what?

  Don’t think. Work.

  Work.

  The chimney. Tomorrow.

  Arbel watched him place his longest ladder against the chimney stack. Jesus, he thought, I hope it doesn’t give. Ardelle came out to their door and watched Jacques wrestle the cowl off the chimney and come back down the ladder with it. Place it in the cart.

  “He needs a hod.”

  Arbel laid a hand on her stomach, and went to his barn.

  Rhythm. Up the ladder, pick stones, down the ladder, stack the cart, up the ladder, pick stones...

  It was warm noon when he heard what he thought was Sara, without the child, come up the lane but when he came down the ladder it was some other woman. His momentum stopped for only that half-second. He loaded the cart and went back up the ladder. Madame Valet stood in the garden, watched him, raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sun and waited for him to stop.

  Pick stones, down the ladder, load the cart, up the ladder...

  When his foot touched the bottom rung again she said, “Vermande?”

  Jacques, grey, grimy, bearded, matted hair like plaster, paused a second, then – up the ladder...

  “Monsieur Vermande?”

  Who are you, he thought, I don’t know you.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  Jacques’ took the two steps back to earth, turned and settled his weight over his heels. Damn. Damn this. What?

  “I need your help,” the woman repeated.

  Other people, other people.

  “It’s Jerome.”

  Other people. Jerome?

  “I’m afraid.”

  Madame Valet was about to flood with tears and slapped hard at her hip. Jacques’ eyes followed the action, came back to her.

  “Please help.”

  Jacques thought. Of money. “I need it all. For them.”

  Madame Valet shook away her incomprehension. “He needs a friend. You’re his friend.”

  “I need all of it.” Jacques’ mouth hung stupidly loose. “Please, come and talk to him. Please.”

  Other people. “I don’t come.”

  “Vermande – he is killing himself. Help me to help him. He’s not very much now, I know, I know, but he’s all I have – and – he’s worth so…” sobs gathered behind her chattering teeth, “Don’t – want to – them – kill him.” Her left arm reached out and he took it. Stone hand holding fat flesh. A fat stranger puking. Crying. Sad for Jerome. Jerome.

  “I don’t. I won’t go there.” he gestured east. “I don’t.”

  Madame Valet brought her jaw bones together and ground her teeth. She leaned into the strength in his grip, straightened and released herself.

  “I don’t think he’d get here,” she said simply. Jacques thought.

  “I go to Janatou.” He looked at his cart and the sun. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Sometime.”

  Madame Valet saw that was all. “Thank you.”

  Jacques turned, up the ladder, pick stones...

  Celine considered Arbel but she dreaded his arrival with a bottle, so she turned to walk the lane back down through Duthileul’s woods and home.

  Arbel waited till Jacques was at the top of the ladder, occupied, to leave the hod. When the stone-man came down he thought he was hallucinating. The neat mortise and tenon joint told him its maker. Work. Up the ladder, with the gift, pick stones...

  Madame Valet saw Sara walking towards her. Impulse told her to scuttle into the brush and logic told her Sara had seen her.

  Her feet slowed.

  Sara didn’t want to believe what she saw – but it was. Her. What to say?

  What to think? What to do? Sara stopped.

  What do I think? What do I feel?

  She’s stopped. I’ll go back round the long way.

  This isn’t Life. This is something less. She walked. Forward.

  She didn’t steal him. She’s entitled to him. Sara walked.

  I know what it is to need him. And she knows what he is. Now. I can see.

  I won’t speak. We can’t speak.

  Has she been to see Jacques? Or Duthileul?

  She’s coming to see Vermande.

  Jesus but she looks awful.

  A nod. A nod.

  I survived.

  She didn’t attack me.

  Their breath rushed, cheeks flushed. They both felt stronger. Not much – but some.

  “You can’t sleep in there. You’ll get pneumonia.”

  He loaded the cart, picked up the gift, up the ladder, pick stones, load the gift, down the ladder...

  “You might as well sleep in the grass. It’d be warmer.” Up the ladder...

  Sara waited till he came down and had stacked the cart.

  “What did she want?” Up
the ladder... “Jacques!”

  Her tone registered distress. “Jacques...”

  Other people. He stopped.

  This wasn’t other people, this was Sara. “What did she want?”

  Jacques thought. “Simone?”

  “No, Jacques, Madame Valet. Was she just here?” Other people.

  “Who?”

  “Madame Valet!”

  Jacques put the gift down. The dog looked at both of them. Jacques straightened his back. He looked at Sara. Distressed. Distressed animal.

  “Food?”

  “What?”

  He looked at the sun. “Shall I make food?”

  He left her to fetch some kindling. Took an armful past her and up the stairs, pulled the propped bache aside, strode the rubble-strewn floor to the fire, kicked the dead ash to one side and laid the wood. Lit it and went out for a couple of bigger pieces. The smoke rose up the remains of the chimney and Sara still stood, still distressed.

  “Work helps,” he said and went past her into the caves. When he came out she was in the garden pulling up something that must have self-seeded.

  “I think I said I’d be at Janatou. Tomorrow. Will he come?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The soup was gritty. But warm.

  “This,” she almost laughed, “is like the last supper, isn’t it?” He didn’t understand. That last supper with Simone? “Well, you won’t be cooking here much more, will you?”

  She sat there in the fireplace, on Arbel’s bench, where she’d sat. When there was a ceiling. And a grenier. And a roof. And walls. When it was a home.

  “How’s Zoe?”

  Sara gulped back tears for his caring. “She’ll be fine. I swear it.”

  “You don’t need to,” he said.

  The smoky tent warmed.

  Jerome shook. The hatred had him now. It was so private, this sink of a bed, sweat and filth inside and out. No thought could enter the pit of his brain without it stabbed and scoured, scraped at what remained of his putrid and useless, vile, worn-out, proud conscience. He was all bad and desserts were to be paid. Good. Good. This was correct then – bring it on – come on, come on in you evil truths and realities. He shook, all of him.

  She watched.

  The Western and Eastern Allies raced for the new borders of what would become Churchill’s Iron Curtain. Hitler, as bunkered as Jacques Vermande and as raddled as Jerome Lacaze, shook too. Not long now.

  Dominique listened avidly to the radio and had Severine prepare to reprint a version of Chibret’s posters.

  The shakes throughout his body, inside his head, in his attempts at speech. The shame was a dark shake in itself. His head thrummed, he felt deeply sick and couldn’t and wouldn’t move from the reek of the bed. Every move, every thought brought waves and oceans of shame with it, threatening to drown him and the only thought was of a drink but that gave him the dry heaves and he wilted down into a no-mans-land of numbing pain and terror.

  She watched.

  Jacques had the whole chimney stack at Janatou. Jerome hadn’t come that day and Jacques had forgotten about him anyway. He set to work ripping out the floorboards. He’d never step inside that room, that house, again. Not till he’d re-built it. Oh, just work!

  Spiders crawled over his face, oblivious to his frantic hands. They were swarming the ceiling if he opened his eyes and on his chest if he closed them. He itched all over with the lice of imagination. She stared. Scared.

  Dominique, sure of the imminence of Peace, called his tiny council together to plan and distribute the labour. Galtier was to organise tables and benches; Severine to inform the village; Madame Lacaze, having a car, would drive to the outlying farms delivering the invitations when they had a date and he would organise food, wine and music.

  Duthileul sat with his gibbering Mother.

  It was days since he’d seen Madame Lacaze. Their proposed meeting with his son hadn’t materialised and when Dominique returned in the evening it was Jean-Louis’ turn to pump for information. He received the same stony, smug treatment he’d meted out, without recognizing the irony. When he dared ask what, if anything,

  Madame Lacaze had said on any subject, Dominique’s bland “Oh, nothing much,” followed by the blatantly disingenuous, “Why?” served only to rouse the old man’s suspicions further. And how Dominique enjoyed that.

  Jean-Louis hadn’t phoned her. He didn’t know how he’d phrase what he wasn’t sure how to say.

  And across the chess-board of their village, Madame Lacaze worried about the silence too. She considered going to see him but in the flurry at the Mairie her judgement was he could wait; it would do neither him, nor, more importantly her, any harm.

  The Mayor, on the other hand, had begun to creep under her guard. She still thought this meal was a potential disaster, but she couldn’t help but admire his determination and energy. She – rather liked him.

  Which was no bad thing. It could be used.

  Mussolini was captured and hung.

  Jerome reached the bottom of the darkness and from that deep despair some passing-out happened; something lessened, and in this new grey limbo a light insinuated itself into the farthest reaches of his consciousness. And he knew he had this one chance to follow it.

  Celine sat there.

  Hitler voided himself. It was done.

  The wounds would heal. The scab would form. The diseases interred, again. The infections would wait and one day break out again. History.

  28

  On momentous days it is possible to look at the sky, or at the common-place, just the people around you and seriously imagine a new tomorrow.

  A brighter future. Hope, the greatest human quality.

  Jacques Vermande struggled from the damp cellar beneath what was left of his home, stepped out into another morning. The last beams. Fifteen more of the fuckers.

  Those with radios knew. Those without would read the papers tomorrow, or be told today. Dominique and his council shook hands and settled to work.

  Saturday, announced the Mayor.

  Severine, hesitated, wrote it in her pad and then rattled her teeth with her pen. Dominique raised an eyebrow.

  “No. I was just thinking...”

  Madame Lacaze, her Mayor and Galtier turned to her.

  “If – ‘they’ come...” she tried not to catch Madame Lacaze’s eye.

  “Yes?” prompted Galtier.

  “Well, mightn’t it be better on Sunday? After a Mass? Just...”

  She left it for the Mayor to pick up.

  “Excellent, Severine. Sunday. Any objections?”

  Galtier had plenty – but as Lacaze’s mother pointedly waited for him to speak, and as this was a day of the greatest celebration, The War being over, he said, “None.”

  “Print Sunday 7.00 on the posters then.” Noted.

  That was the only reference to her son all day as, armed with the posters, she drove the canton to deliver the wonderful news and the invitations. Galtier hustled potential carpenters, driving up to Arbel to ask him to help, and was rewarded with the promise of a bench, or two. Galtier saw that Ardelle was well on the way, but when he nodded to her blossoming, she was cold with him.

  When he left Arbel said, “What?”

  “I don’t like him,” was all he got. Fair enough. He went to his tools.

  Galtier had a quick celebratory drink with Duthileul and blithely rattled on about not being able to stop, what with the preparations for Sunday. Assuming, quite naturally, that Jean-Louis knew all about it.

  Dominique phoned all morning before finding the music troupe in Gréze who would happily come and play for a meal, free drink and some cash. Other Mayors agreed to have meat, wine, vegetables delivered; anything to help. And bon chance.

  Dominique’s confidence grew with the rising freedom sun. Severine would deliver an invitation to them, and Jerome would come, his mother was sure. So, she had need to speak with her intended. To get their timing right.

 
At five o’clock the council reconvened.

  “And now, a drink, don’t you think? Or two?” The Mayor stood, beaming.

  Agreed.

  Dominique made one last round of phone-calls and by six the Café Tabac was as full as at the last village funeral. One person he didn’t call was his father and Madame Lacaze, waiting with her cognac for the toast, found herself both intrigued and grateful.

  Terses the Chef, Christoph the gendarme, Gley and his sisters, Chibret and his wife, Jauliac and his, a weeping-eyed Feyt, twenty others and the St. Cirgues council and its secretary all raised their glasses.

  “To Victory and to the memory of all who died for it,” said The Mayor.

  “Balloons for the children,” said Galtier.

  “I did that,” Severine repeated. Why do drunks go deaf?

  The bar had settled into groups, Janon and his wife bustled between the tables, serving.

  “To Peace and to Sunday,” said the Mayor, raising another. “You said that,” muttered Severine.

  “I know I said that and I shall doubtless say it again,” Dominique grinned lopsidedly, “every day till Monday.”

  At the bar someone began a slurred and sentimental singing of “La Marseillaise.” It was taken up. By “Aux Armes, mes citoyens!” where the tune married the surging melody with the driving lyric the rafters rang and the sound carried as far as Celine’s broken windows.

  “The last person to sing that in this village was you,” she rubbed his sweaty emaciated hand.

  “Why?”

  “Because you believed.”

  His head sank deeper into the mangy pillow. Scorn dribbled out of the side of his foul-smelling mouth.

  “In what?”

  “A future,” said the school-teacher. “And what do they believe in?”

  Celine imagined they were singing because The War was over. Hers wasn’t.