Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

  “You have your own families and lives to consider,” Meyraux told them. “I believe the long-term future of this industry lies in bringing all processes together and in having one body to represent all workers. But for the moment we must deal with things as they are. This is not a time for vain gestures, not when we are under such a threat from foreign competitors.”

  Meyraux’s speech was typically cautious. He distrusted the hotheaded leaders of the strike as much as he did the proprietors. Before he could bring his remarks to a reasoned conclusion, there was a disturbance near the door to the street. It burst open and several young men tumbled in carrying banners and chanting slogans. Meyraux called for calm from the platform as half a dozen police officers, some with dishevelled uniforms that suggested they had already been in a struggle, tried to evict the demonstrators. Many of the female workers nearest the door backed away in alarm as blows began to be exchanged.

  Lucien Lebrun, who had been among the first to force his way in, now took the platform next to the reluctant Meyraux. His candid blue eyes and wavy brown hair made him an attractive figure and compensated to some extent for the suspicion many of the workers felt of his youth. He asked Meyraux with tactful appeals to their fraternity whether he could address the workers, and Meyraux finally conceded his place.

  Lucien gave a compassionate description of the hardships endured by the strikers’ families and of the working conditions that had driven them to their extreme action. He spoke of the poverty and exploitation throughout the plain of Picardy which was causing a large migration of people from the valley of the Somme to the towns of Amiens and Lille in the false hope of finding work.

  “I beseech you to support my people,” he said. “We must stand together in this matter or we will all fall. We must think of our children and wives. I ask you at least to sign this declaration of support for your fellow-workers.”

  He produced a piece of paper which already carried a hundred or more signatures.

  “Talking of wives,” called out a deep voice from the middle of the room, “we all know what they say about you, young man!”

  There was a roar of ribald agreement. Stephen felt his nerves stiffen as his heartbeat filled his chest.

  Lucien shouted, “What was that you said?”

  “I’ll not repeat it in front of the law, but I think you know what I mean.”

  Lucien jumped down from the platform to try to find his tormentor. He shouldered his way frantically through the press.

  “And another thing,” the same man called out, “we shouldn’t be having a spy from England eating with us and coming to our meetings.”

  A few voices called out their agreement. The majority had obviously not been aware of Stephen’s presence.

  Stephen was not listening. “What do they say about Lucien?” he asked the man standing next to him. “What did they mean about wives?”

  “They say little Lucien and the boss’s wife are very good friends.” The man gave a throaty laugh.

  Azaire’s work force had been good-natured up to this point. They had been lectured at length by Meyraux on the need for patience and they had submitted to his advice; they had seen their meeting disrupted by workers from other factories and they had kept their patience; they had been harangued by a young man who did not even come from the town and they had endured it.

  When Lucien lost his self-control and began to fight his way through them, however, a shared sense of grievance overtook them, and they set about ejecting him, the whole group of them reacting spontaneously as though to rid itself of a foreign body.

  Stephen found himself jostled by people, some of them responding to the hostility toward him, but most of them anxious to turn Lucien and the other dyers out of their factory.

  The worker who had called out the comment about Madame Azaire was surrounded by pushing bodies as some of Lucien’s friends came to his assistance. He was a tall, red-faced man whose job was to transport bolts of cloth on one of the rubber-wheeled wagons. His placid expression was turning to one of alarm as the struggle approached him. Lucien was shouting and thrashing wildly with his arms in his attempt to push through the crowd, but a wall of Azaire’s men had closed his path in silent complicity.

  At the edge of the skirmish the police officers began to swing their batons in a threatening way as they moved into the crowd. Meyraux climbed up on to the platform and shouted for calm. At this point one of Lucien’s wilder movements with his arm caught a female worker across the face, causing her to scream. Lucien went down on the floor under a swift blow from the woman’s husband. As he lay gasping, various well-aimed boots relieved the frustrations of Azaire’s workers. They were not crazed blows, but Lucien cried out as they found his legs and shoulders. Stephen tried to push back some of his assailants to give him time to stand up. He received an open-handed blow on the nose from one of the men who resented being interrupted. Three or four dyers had now reached Lucien and had joined the fight to protect him. Stephen, his eyes smarting, hit out in front of him in fury. He had lost sight of his initial aim, which was to restore peace, and now wanted only to damage the man who had enraged him. He found himself pushed to one side by the tall, red-faced worker whose comment had started the commotion and he responded with a short-armed punch to the man’s face. There was no room for him to make a proper swing, but the blow was well enough timed for him to feel some dim sense of retribution. There was blood on his hand.

  A combination of determined women workers and police batons ended the skirmish. Lucien was taken out, bruised and breathless, but not badly hurt. The dyers were escorted out by the police, who randomly arrested two of the most disreputable-looking. Stephen’s victim dabbed his bleeding mouth with a handkerchief but seemed unaware of who had hit him. Meyraux told the workers to disperse.

  Stephen left the factory by the side door, wondering how affairs had moved so quickly that he could find himself on the same side as Lucien Lebrun when, like the others, he wanted never to see his bright-eyed face again.

  He walked toward the cathedral and then on into the town. He felt ashamed of the way he had behaved. Years ago he had promised his guardian that he would never again lose control of his feelings but would always pause and be calm. He had abjectly failed this trial, and the memory of the startled expression on the face of the man who had slandered Madame Azaire as Stephen’s closed fist found his mouth was only a small compensation for this failure.

  ———

  The blow must have been harder than he had thought at the time, because his hand became quite swollen in the course of the afternoon. He returned early to the Azaires’ house and went up to bathe it. He held it under cold water and wound a handkerchief tightly round the knuckles.

  He felt as though his existence in the boulevard du Cange, and perhaps his life in its longer perspective also, were coming to a crisis he could not control. Perhaps it would be better to do as his employer asked. He could conclude his work within a week, then return to London in the knowledge that he had done nothing to shame his company or Mr. Vaughan, the guardian who had worked so hard to help him. First, he thought, he had better write to him.

  Miserably, he took a piece of paper from the desk and began.

  Dear Mr. Vaughan,

  This is not the first time I have been late in writing to you, but I will try to make up for it by telling you in detail what has happened.

  He stopped. He wanted to find dignified words for the rage of desire and confusion he felt.

  I think I have fallen in love and I believe the woman in question, though she has not said so, returns my feelings. How can I be sure when she has said nothing? Is this youthful vanity? I wish in some ways that it were. But I am so convinced that I barely need question myself. This conviction brings me no joy.

  By this time he had already gone too far; he could not, of course, send this letter. He wrote one more paragraph for his own sake, to see what he had to say.

  I am driven by a greater force than I can
resist. I believe that force has its own reason and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.

  He tore the paper into small pieces and dropped them in the basket.

  He took the handkerchief off his hand and managed to conceal it behind his back when he talked to Monsieur and Madame Azaire in the sitting room before dinner. Azaire was too concerned with events at the factory to be looking at his houseguest’s hand, and when Madame Azaire allowed herself a glance at Stephen it was to his face that her eyes turned.

  “I understand there was some comment about your presence at the factory,” said Azaire.

  “Yes. I wasn’t sure if I should have been at the meeting. Perhaps I should keep away for a day or two.”

  Lisette came in through the door to the garden.

  “Good idea,” said Azaire. “Allow the men time to cool off. I don’t think there’s going to be a problem, but perhaps you’d better lie low until things are sorted out. I can get one of my staff to bring you some paperwork. There are plenty of ways you can make yourself useful.”

  “Look!” said Lisette. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I caught it in one of the spinning machines when I was being shown how to work it this morning.”

  “It’s all swollen and red.”

  Madame Azaire let out a little cry as Lisette held up Stephen’s damaged hand for her inspection. He thought he saw a flicker of concern in her face before she managed to resume her usual detachment.

  “Dinner is served,” said Marguérite at the door.

  “Thank you,” said Madame Azaire. “After dinner, Marguérite, will you please find a dressing for Monsieur Wraysford’s hand?” She led the way into the dining room.

  ———

  The next day, when Azaire left to go to work, Stephen stayed in the house like a sick child who has been excused school. A messenger arrived from the factory with some papers which Stephen put to one side in the sitting room. He took up a book and settled himself in a corner by the doors to the garden. He could hear the sounds of the house in its morning routine, and he felt like an eavesdropper on this female life. Marguérite came in with a feather duster, which she plied with exemplary lightness over the china ornaments and polished table tops, displacing eddies of dust that rose in tiny spirals in the clear morning sunshine before settling elsewhere on the chairs or the polished wooden floor. Grégoire’s footsteps came pounding down the stairs and through the hallway until his progress was checked by an audible tussle with the locks and chains of the front door. A cry of “Shut the front door after you” was not answered by any sound of compliance, and Stephen pictured the rectangular glimpse of the garden, the paved path, and the solid iron railings giving on to the boulevard, that would have become visible in the space left by the unclosed door.

  There was a sound of crockery as Marguérite carried out a tray full of breakfast cups and plates from the dining room to the kitchen and the soft bump of her hip against the door as she pushed it open. In the moment before it swung shut came the louder, more purposeful clanking of pans being scoured or set on the stove filled with stock that would simmer through the morning.

  Madame Azaire’s voice was audible from her place in the dining room, where she remained until eleven o’clock, either talking to Lisette or giving instructions to the various people who called on her. Among these was Madame Bonnet, wife of the elderly man in the factory, who came each day to do the cleaning Marguérite considered too menial or too strenuous. Madame Azaire would tell her which rooms were to be done and if there were special preparations to be made for guests. The old woman’s heavy, rolling step could be heard as she trundled to her prescribed task. Lisette sat in the sunlight that splashed into the room beneath the spokes of clematis at the window, watching the shadows on the polished table, listening to the way her stepmother ran the household. She enjoyed this shared morning routine; it made her feel trusted and important, and it had the further advantage of excluding Grégoire, with his uncouth behaviour and his childish remarks that, even at their most despicable and banal, sometimes threatened her precarious adult poise.

  There were further, smaller parts to be played in the gently rolling drama of the morning. There was a second maid, though, unlike Marguérite, she did not live in the house; there was a cook, who had a room somewhere on the first floor; and there was a boy from the butcher’s, who came to take an order and one from the grocer’s, who delivered two heavy boxes to the back door.

  Shortly after midday Madame Azaire asked Stephen if he would be taking lunch with her and Lisette. Grégoire would still be at school, she said. Stephen accepted and spent the next hour working through the papers that had been sent from Azaire’s office.

  Madame Azaire returned a little after one o’clock to tell him lunch was ready. Three places had been set at the end of the table, by the window. The room looked quite different from the place of formal shadows with stiff-collared guests in the lowered evening lights that Stephen had seen at dinner. Lisette wore the little white dress her stepmother had forbidden on their visit to the water gardens. Her dark brown hair was tied back with a blue ribbon and her legs were bare. She was a good-looking girl, Stephen thought, as she looked up at him from under thick lashes; but he registered her looks quite dispassionately because his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Madame Azaire wore a cream skirt with a dark red patterned waistcoat over a white blouse with an open neck.

  “You can take off your jacket if you like, Monsieur,” she said. “Lisette and I don’t consider lunch to be a formal occasion, do we?”

  Lisette laughed. Stephen said, “Thank you.” He could see that Madame Azaire felt protected and emboldened by Lisette’s presence.

  Marguérite brought in a dish of artichokes. “Perhaps we’ll have some wine,” said Madame Azaire. “We don’t normally drink wine, do we, Lisette? But perhaps today. Marguérite, bring a bottle of white wine, will you? Not one my husband is saving.”

  After the artichokes there was a small dish of mushrooms and then some sole. Stephen poured the wine for Madame Azaire and, at her insistence, for Lisette. For want of something to say, Stephen asked how they came to know Monsieur and Madame Bérard.

  Lisette began to giggle at the name and Madame Azaire told her to be quiet, though she herself was smiling. “I’m afraid Lisette is very impolite about Monsieur Bérard,” she said.

  “It’s so unfair,” said Lisette. “Did your parents always make you be polite about all their silly friends?”

  “I didn’t have parents,” said Stephen. “At least not ones that I knew. I was brought up by my grandparents, then in an institution until I was taken away from it by a man I’d never met before.”

  Lisette blushed and swallowed hard; Madame Azaire’s face showed a momentary concern as she said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur. Lisette is always asking questions.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.” He smiled at Lisette. “Nothing at all. I’m not ashamed.”

  Marguérite brought some fillet of beef on a blue-patterned dish which she set down in front of Madame Azaire. “Should I bring some red wine?” she said. “There’s some from last night.”

  “All right.” Madame Azaire put a slice of the bloody meat on each of three plates. Stephen refilled their glasses. In his mind he was remembering the press of Madame Azaire’s leg against his own in the water gardens. The skin on her bare arms was a light brown; her mannish waistcoat and open neck made her look even more feminine than usual.

  “I shall be returning to England soon,” he said. “I had a telegram telling me I was wanted back in London.”

  Neither of the others spoke. The atmosphere had thickened. He thought of the sound of her pain from the bedroom.

  “I shall be sorry to leave,” he said.

  “You can always come back and visit us another day,” said Madame Azaire.

  “Yes, I could come back another day.”

  Marguérite brought in a dish of potatoes. Lisett
e stretched and smiled. “Oh, I feel sleepy,” she said happily.

  “That’s because of all the wine you’ve been drinking.” Madame Azaire also smiled and the air seemed to lighten again. They finished lunch with some fruit, and Marguérite took coffee to the sitting room. They sat around the card table where Stephen had played on his first night in the house.

  “I’m going to go out for a walk in the garden,” said Lisette. “Then I might go to my room for a little sleep.”

  “All right,” said Madame Azaire.

  Lisette’s light step crossed the room and disappeared.

  At once the atmosphere changed, and this time it was beyond recall. Madame Azaire could not meet Stephen’s eye. She looked down at the card table and played with the silver spoon in the thin china saucer. Stephen could feel his chest contract. He was finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Have some more coff—”

  “No.”

  The silence returned.

  “Look at me.”

  She would not raise her head. She stood up and said, “I’m going to do some sewing in my room, so—”

  “Isabelle.” He had grasped her arm.

  “No. Please no.”

  He pulled her to him and wrapped both arms around her so she could not escape. Her eyes were closed and he kissed her mouth, which opened. He felt her tongue flicker and her hands press his back, then she pulled herself away from his tight grip, tearing the white blouse as she did so, revealing a thin satin strap beneath. Stephen’s body convulsed with desire.

  “You must. For God’s sake, you must.” He raged at her.

  Madame Azaire was crying, though her eyes were closed. “No, I cannot, I hardly … I hardly think it would be right.”