Children of the Siege

by Diney Costeloe

  ‘Who knows?’ said the priest. ‘But it brings us back to the child. What are we going to do with her? We can’t take her back to her family because they aren’t there, and she can’t stay here.’ He said this last with such finality that Agathe knew he would not change his mind. ‘She must go to the sisters at St Luke’s. When things have calmed down a bit, no doubt her family will return from the country and we can reunite them, but in the meantime, she must go to St Luke’s… You can take her there in the morning.’

  19

  Alphonse Berger climbed the steps from the two-room basement he and his wife Edith called home. He was finding the steps increasingly difficult to manage, and he was looking old age squarely in the face. I’m not old, he told himself as he grasped the handrail, taking the steps slowly. Only about fifty. But that was old these days, especially if you’d lived through the siege. It was early evening on a grey day in March and he was on his way to the market to see if there was any discarded food to be had at the end of the day. Breathing heavily, Alphonse struggled up the steps, cursing the day the boy had disappeared, deserting them once the siege was over. They had given him shelter, after all, and he, the youngster, had been the one who went foraging for all three of them. But when the siege was lifted, he’d vanished, ungrateful little tyke! Still, that was boys for you.

  Edith had become fond of the lad, too fond, Alphonse thought, sharing her own food with him to ensure that he had enough. But, Alphonse had to agree when he tried to take her to task for this, it was the boy who took all the risks to keep them fed.

  As he emerged out into the narrow alleyway, Alphonse paused, wheezing, his breathing ragged from the effort of the steps. He peered short-sightedly in both directions to be sure there was no danger lurking in the gloom. Edith had said she’d heard voices shouting earlier and urged him to stay indoors, but as Alphonse pointed out to her, if he didn’t go scrounging in the market, they would go hungry to bed.

  He could see no sign of anyone and was about to set off towards the main road when something caught his eye. A heap of something, perhaps a sack, or a pile of old clothes, discarded by the wall. He scanned the alley again, but seeing no movement, he edged his way towards the heap. If it was a bag it was probably empty, but you never knew, it just might contain something worth having. Such things could be the difference between life and starvation.

  As Alphonse reached down to investigate, he saw with a jolt that it wasn’t a bag. It was a body. A small body, the body of a boy, face down in the mud, blood pooled about his head. He jerked his hand away and took a step back. Surely there was nothing for him there. What could a young boy have of value? He considered the small corpse for a moment and then bent down and peered closer. There was something familiar about him, but then, Alphonse decided all street boys looked the same, skinny, grubby and pale. Then he realised it was the jacket. The boy was wearing an old jacket, patched and worn and extremely dirty, but it was the jacket that Alphonse had recognised. He knew that jacket. He’d watched Edith often enough, patching it, mending it. As he bent down for a closer look he realised it was indeed Jeannot lying on the ground. He reached down a hand and touched the boy’s face. It was still warm. This must have happened to him very recently. Perhaps his had been one of the voices Edith had heard earlier, shouting.

  So, Alphonse thought, the boy had come to a sticky end. He wasn’t surprised, Jeannot had always been one for trouble, but he found he was sorry it had ended this way for the lad, beaten and discarded like so much garbage at the end of an alleyway.

  Alphonse wondered what to do. If it had just been any boy, he’d have walked away. There were plenty of bodies to be found in the back alleys these days. Sometimes they lay there, rotting in the heat, filling the air with an ever-increasing stench until, when the nearby neighbours made enough fuss, it was carted away and buried or burned to prevent the spread of infection. Looking down at the now familiar face, Alphonse didn’t know what to do. Slowly he turned away but instead of going out to the market, he went back slowly down the steps to his basement.

  Edith was sitting in an old armchair by the tiny fire, wrapped in a blanket for extra warmth. She looked at Alphonse in surprise as he came in.

  ‘You’re back,’ she cried in alarm. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The boy,’ puffed Alphonse, out of breath.

  ‘The boy? What boy?’

  ‘Jeannot.’

  ‘Jeannot? What about him?’

  ‘Dead in the street.’

  Edith stared at him for a moment and then said, ‘Our Jeannot?’

  ‘Outside, by the warehouse wall.’

  ‘And he’s dead?’

  ‘Looks it.’

  Edith got up and hurried to the door. Grabbing her shawl she went quickly up the steps. Despite the gloom she could see a shape curled at the foot of the wall, and after a cautious look up and down the alley, she crossed over to the small body lying on the ground.

  Definitely their Jeannot. She knelt down beside him and carefully lifted his head, pulling him gently into her arms. Though she was considerably younger than Alphonse they had not been blessed with children, and to begin with she’d been glad. The city they lived in was no place for slum children and without doubt theirs would have been a slum child, but once they had given shelter to Jeannot during the siege, she had come to realise what she had missed. When the siege was raised and he had suddenly disappeared, she had been heartbroken, and now here he was again, dead in her arms, breaking her heart all over again. As she cradled him to her, she felt his warmth and was surprised. It was not that long since she’d heard the altercation in the alley, a matter of an hour or so, but surely he should have been colder than this by now. She pressed her face against his chest and held her breath. Was that the faintest flutter of a heartbeat?

  She looked back along the alley. Alphonse had just made it to the top of the steps again. She waved at him frantically and he made his way slowly towards her.

  ‘He’s alive,’ she whispered, not daring to say it aloud in case the heartbeat suddenly failed. ‘Alphonse, he’s alive. We have to get him home and get him warm. Then we can look at his injuries.’

  ‘I can’t carry him,’ objected Alphonse.

  ‘No, all right, but I can. If I lift him and carry him, can you take hold of his head and keep it steady?’

  Edith managed to get to her feet, still clutching the boy against her. Alphonse steadied her and took the weight of Jeannot’s head as it lolled onto her shoulder. Slowly they edged their way back along the alley to their basement’s steps.

  ‘I can manage him now,’ Edith said, ‘if you just ease him up over my shoulder.’

  Alphonse helped her move Jeannot across her body so that she could hold him with one arm, leaving her other hand free to grip the handrail. Holding him as tightly as she dare, she turned and clinging to the rail, backed slowly down the steps.

  ‘Go inside,’ Edith said. ‘Find a blanket and poke the fire a bit, we need some warmth. Put on another piece of wood.’

  Alphonse preceded her into the house and having tossed a broken piece of packing case onto the fire, closed the door behind her. Edith carried Jeannot into the inner room and together they laid the boy down on the mattress on which they both slept. He lay there as still as the corpse they had thought him, and for a moment Edith thought she must have been mistaken, but when she rested her head against his chest, she could still feel the heartbeat, faint and weak as it struggled to pump blood round the boy’s body.

  Carefully Edith cut away his jacket and shirt and examined his battered body. There were two dark bruises on his torso, and a deep cut on his shoulder now crusted with blood, but from which there was still a trickle of red. One side of his face was swollen, so that the eye was closed, and he was still out cold.

  ‘Fetch me some water and a towel,’ she instructed Alphonse, ‘and I’ll try and patch him up.’ She sat back on her heels and considered him. The bruises on his chest and side would heal in time, she
knew. It was the slash on his shoulder and the head wound that worried her more.

  Alphonse brought the water and the cloth and very gently she began to clean the wounds, wiping away the mud and the blood to enable her to see the damage properly. The shoulder was not as deep as she’d originally thought. Bad enough, it needed stitching, but as the older sister of four brothers, that was something Edith had long ago learned how to do. She turned her attention to his head. The skin was grazed, the face swollen and the eye socket blackening, but again when she had gently cleaned it, she could see that this was damage which would, in time, heal itself. Her fingers explored the back of his head, finding a large lump behind one ear, accounting, she decided, for his unconsciousness.

  She placed a blanket over him to keep him warm and fetched her sewing bag.

  ‘I’m going to stitch his shoulder while he’s still unconscious,’ she told Alphonse. ‘Put some more wood on the fire, we need to get him warm.’

  Alphonse did as he was asked, grumbling as he did so that he hoped she realised the wood in the basket by the fire was all the fuel they had left.

  Edith ignored his grumbles as she often did these days. They would get more firewood somewhere, but it was now they needed the heat.

  Half an hour later, Jeannot lay on the mattress, his shoulder stitched and bandaged, his face cleaned, his body washed from top to toe. Swamped in a shirt of Alphonse’s and covered with a blanket, he was still unconscious, but his pulse was stronger and occasionally his eyelids flickered.

  The thin soup Edith had made with the last of their vegetables was shared three ways, Jeannot’s share set aside for when he finally woke up.

  When she and Alphonse had drunk their soup, Edith picked up Jeannot’s jacket, wondering if there was any way she could mend it to make it wearable again. It was muddy and bloodstained, as were his trousers, but that could be remedied. She would fetch more water from the pump in the morning and scrub them clean. It was as she laid the jacket out on the floor, smoothing the cloth with her fingers, matching the tears and cuts for patching, that she felt something hard. Quickly she searched the pockets, but they were empty. Then she remembered his secret pocket. She had sewn it into his coat during the siege, a secret place to hide his pickings. She ran her thumb along the seam and found its hidden edge. It was the work of a moment to retrieve what it contained: a watch. A gentleman’s pocket watch, gold, its case gleaming in the firelight. She held it up for Alphonse to see.

  ‘Is this what they attacked him for, do you think?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ His face broke into the first smile of the day. ‘No problem about firewood now!’ he said.

  ‘It’s Jeannot’s watch.’

  ‘And Jeannot will get the warmth and the food it will buy,’ Alphonse replied. ‘I’ll take it tomorrow.’

  Edith couldn’t fault this logic, so she nodded and said, ‘Fine, but just make sure you get a decent price for it.’

  Gently, she moved Jeannot to one side of the mattress and Alphonse lay down to sleep beside him. She hoped that he wouldn’t disturb the boy, but there was nowhere else Alphonse could sleep.

  She wrapped herself in her shawl and settled back in the armchair beside the dying fire, but despite her determination to keep watch, alert for any change in her patient, she drifted off into fitful sleep, to awaken early next morning, cold and stiff, with a crick in her neck. She hauled herself out of the chair and poking the embers of the fire, she put on the last few splinters of wood and began to heat water for coffee.

  As soon as he’d drunk his coffee, Alphonse set out to sell the watch. Though it wouldn’t fetch anything like what it was worth, it would, with care, keep them in food and firewood for the next few weeks.

  Edith fetched water from the pump at the head of the alley, refilling their water buckets, and set to work on Jeannot’s filthy clothes, pummelling out the dirt and the dried blood before hanging them in front of the fire to dry.

  Jeannot awoke slowly, surfacing as if from deep water. He tried to move, but regretted it at once. Cautiously he opened his eyes, and quickly closed them again. One hardly opened at all and his whole face hurt. His head throbbed, there was pain in his shoulder and his ribs ached like fury. He lay completely still, wondering where he was. He remembered running away, dragging Hélène along behind him, he remembered Gaston coming at him with a knife, but then… nothing. Hélène! Where was she? Gingerly he opened his eyes again, turning his head a little to see his surroundings. They were familiar, but where?

  ‘Jeannot, are you awake?’ The voice was familiar, too. He tried to concentrate.

  ‘Jeannot? It’s me, Tante Edith.’

  ‘Tante Edith?’ He managed to speak her name, though his voice was reedy and thin.

  ‘Yes, Tante Edith. You’ve been in a fight, but you’re all right now.’

  ‘My head aches,’ Jeannot said plaintively, ‘and my shoulder. I hurt all over.’

  Edith smiled. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘You took a dreadful beating, you’re lucky to be alive. If Alphonse hadn’t found you lying in the alley, you would be dead by now.’

  She sat down beside him on the mattress and gave him a cup of water. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘drink this, and if you can keep it down, you can try a little soup.’

  Jeannot drank the water and then the soup and though he still ached all over, his spirits rose a little. ‘Was there anyone else there when Oncle Alphonse found me?’

  ‘No,’ replied Edith. ‘You’d been dumped, but don’t worry, Jeannot, they didn’t get it.’

  ‘Didn’t get what?’

  ‘Your watch. That’s what they were after, wasn’t it?’

  For a moment Jeannot wondered what she was talking about, and then he remembered the watch he’d stolen as a bribe for Francine. It was all he had in the world.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Alphonse has taken it to sell,’ Edith said. And seeing Jeannot’s stricken reaction, went on firmly, ‘We need money for food and fuel, Jeannot. And you won’t be able to look after yourself for a while yet. Not until those injuries heal. You’ll have to stay here with us until you’re better, until you can fend for yourself again.’

  Jeannot, about to protest, thought better of it, and relaxed back onto the mattress. Tante Edith was right, he needed to get better before he could roam the streets again; before he could go out and look for Hélène.

  20

  Hélène had spent her second night in the Clergy House, and when she awoke in the morning her heart lifted. Today she was going home. Madame Sauze had said that when her clothes were dry and mended, she could go home. Well, she knew they were dry as she had helped bring them down from the airer yesterday afternoon, and she hoped that Madame had mended the tears as she had promised.

  As the day before, Hélène waited for Madame Sauze to come and fetch her for breakfast, and when she heard her footsteps on the stairs, she jumped up and was waiting expectantly when the housekeeper opened the door.

  ‘Have you got my clothes, madame?’ she asked. ‘Can I have them back now they’re clean and dry?’

  ‘Here they are,’ said Madame Sauze, handing over a neatly laundered pile. ‘I’ll wait while you get dressed and then we’ll go down and find some breakfast.’

  Hélène scrambled hurriedly into her clothes, and feeling the clean fabric against her skin, felt instantly more like herself.

  ‘When can I go home?’ she asked as they settled themselves at the breakfast table. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Eat your breakfast, my dear, and then we can make plans for the day.’

  Agathe Sauze had lain awake much of the night wondering how she was going to tell this brave child who had come to trust her, that she wasn’t going home after all, but into an orphanage. How was she going to explain that her family had left Paris… without her?

  ‘Hélène,’ she said as the girl drank the last of her hot chocolate, scraping the bowl with her spoon. ‘We have to talk.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, madame?’ Hélène laid aside the spoon and looked expectantly at the housekeeper. She saw the seriousness on her face and the smile on her own faded.

  ‘I have something to explain to you,’ began Agathe and then paused to select her words.

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Hélène.

  ‘Am I right in thinking you and your family live in the Avenue Ste Anne, in Passy?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Hélène, wondering how she knew. She had been careful not to answer most of their questions, remembering what had followed those Gaston had asked her. Before she could ask, Agathe went on, ‘Well, I went to see them last night, and…’

  ‘You went to see them? Why didn’t you take me?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure I had the right street,’ said Agathe.

  ‘And did you?’ Hélène’s eyes were alight with hope. ‘Were they there?’

  ‘It was the right street, my dear, but I’m afraid the house was shut up. There was nobody there.’

  ‘But what about Berthe and Arlette? And Pierre? Where’s Pierre?’

  ‘Who’s Pierre?’

  ‘He’s our coachman and he looks after Papa if he needs him.’

  ‘I think Pierre must have gone to the country,’ said Agathe. ‘Perhaps driving your parents somewhere?’ She remembered the chaise that had swept past her as she had arrived in the avenue, certain in her own mind now that it had been the St Clairs leaving. If only… But it was no time for if onlys, they had gone and she didn’t know where. ‘Where would they go if they left Paris?’

  ‘To St Etienne,’ came the immediate reply.

  ‘Where is St Etienne?’ asked Agathe. There were so many villages with St Etienne in their names.

  ‘In the country,’ Hélène said. ‘It’s in the country. That’s where they’ll be.’ But then her face fell. ‘But why did they go without me? Why didn’t they wait till I got home again?’