by A L Berridge
Georges went for more medicine from Mme Hébert, Dom rigged a screen of sacking over our corner to give the boy privacy, then I washed and bandaged him, and at last the poppy medicine made him sleep. I lay beside him and listened to his shallow breathing, and he looked young again, like he did in the beginning, before all these other people came along, when it was just him and me.
I knew he wouldn’t die. There were so many things we were going to do together when the Occupation was over, there was his whole life to come. I found my mind stewing away all the same, and deep inside was a kind of anger that the boy could just get broken and maybe not put right, and all because someone had been showing off and talked somewhere and the Spaniards had heard. I wondered if I’d ever find out who it was, and what I’d say and do to them if I did.
I must have slept in the end, because I know I dreamed. I dreamed of being back at the gorge, and this time Stefan didn’t move so André didn’t go back, he just looked round once, sad and regretful, but he didn’t go back, he came swinging across on that rope, and I stood to catch him, alive and strong and laughing, his skin warm and whole, unbroken.
When I woke, the sun was oozing between the slats, and there was the boy lying beside me, his eyes awake and red with pain, his face yellow-grey, a kind of blueness round his mouth, and his fists clenched tight by his sides. He wouldn’t move, he whispered ‘I’m all right now, I’ve found a position it’s not so bad, if I just lie like this and don’t move it’s not so bad.’ I ran for Stefan.
Stefan Ravel
Nothing to be done, Abbé. I’d have bled him if I could, but he was losing too much as it was, he hadn’t a dropful to spare for a leech. I tried cupping, but I’d had to widen the wound too much for that, and couldn’t do much more than tackle the edges, bring up some strong, good blood to drive out the shit. It wasn’t enough, nothing was, the dressing was getting yellower every time I looked.
Georges reported back from his witch, and by that stage I was prepared to try anything. I’m not sentimental, Abbé, but I don’t like losing men at the best of times, and it wasn’t going to do a damn thing for morale if we lost this one. Besides, some of these old women know a thing or two. Oh, you wouldn’t believe the superstitious crap they’ll sometimes try and hand you out, but Dom and Georges swore by this one and we’d got bugger all left to lose.
She’d sent us more of the poppy tincture, but she also gave us some vile-looking physic she claimed was made from spiders, and I’m not ashamed to say we gave him that too. Her suggestion for the wound itself was probably the stupidest I’d ever heard, mind you, but it wasn’t for me to protest, so off they went hunting round the outhouses for cobwebs and mould, and when they brought back an old saddle sprouting Christ knows what, I did my best to scrape off the blue mould and spread it on the dressing.
It didn’t look good. The kid was starting to writhe by now, complaining of itching. I said ‘Hardly surprising, little general, you should see what I’m putting on your back,’ but he shook his head vaguely and said the prickling was deep inside and he needed to dig it out. I laid my fingers gently on his skin and took them off again fast. He was burning up with fever.
By noon he was tossing and turning, and muttering fitfully. Dom said we should send for a priest, but Jacques was having none of it. He said ‘If André sees a priest, he’ll give up, if we bring him a priest he’ll think he’s dying.’
Dom was a gentle, rather fey sort of lad, but he was braver in his way than we were. He said ‘Yes, little Brother. Yes.’
Jean-Marie Mercier
I walked slowly to the Hermitage that evening, I think I was afraid of being told André had died. Only I had to go, because I’d brought food and some linen Jeanette had sent, which looked beautifully clean and fresh and had been given her by the hostages themselves. I’d have hesitated about taking it once, because of having to tell André where it came from, but nothing like that seemed to matter any more, it was hard to believe it ever had.
I heard raised voices as soon as I opened the door, but the only people I could see were Bettremieu, who hadn’t been well enough to go home last night, and Dom, who was changing his dressing. The others were behind the sacking screen, and I’m afraid we could hear them. There was something thrashing about in the straw, and Marcel saying ‘I can’t hold him,’ and Stefan swearing as I’d never heard him, a great upheaval of rustling and a sound like a muffled slap, then nothing but this one little whimper, and then silence.
I looked away quickly and just for a moment I caught Dom’s eye. He was talking quietly to Bettremieu, but his face was tense and his eyes white and scared. Bettremieu seemed little better. He had a great bandage round his chest and another round his arm, but the misery on his broad face had nothing to do with either of them. He whispered to me ‘M. André is very sick, and it is all my fault.’
I said ‘You were wounded, Bettremieu.’
He looked at his bandages as if surprised to see them, then waved them away. ‘He ordered me, but I should not have left him. If I were stronger, I should have just held him, so.’ He placed his two great hands a slim distance apart and I could almost see André standing between them. ‘I should not have left him,’ he said.
Stefan came out from the screen and honestly seemed pleased with the linen, he said it was the best they’d had. He tore up the first sheet at once, and took me with him behind the sacking to help redress the wound. André lay on his side, his eyes closed, and his head resting on Jacques’ lap. He seemed to be asleep, but his breathing was rattling and shallow, and the hand that lay limply beside him in the straw was curled like a dead leaf.
Jacques tried to smile at me as Stefan applied the dressing. ‘He’s better now,’ he whispered. ‘He’s had his medicine and he’s better now. Look, he’s asleep.’
Stefan finished bandaging, sat quite still a moment, then lifted his head to look at Jacques. ‘Listen, lad, you have to understand I can’t save him. The witch’s stuff is helping, but while there’s crap still inside the wound, it’s just going to go on churning out muck till it rots the spine, and then it’s over.’
‘Then we’ve got to get the bits out,’ said Jacques.
‘The spine’s too close,’ said Stefan. ‘I’d cripple him.’
‘Better than being dead,’ said Jacques.
‘Is it?’ said Stefan. ‘André de Roland? Are you sure?’
Jacques was silent, and I think we all felt the horror of his decision. He said ‘Isn’t there anyone could do it? M. Pollet –’
‘Is a barber,’ said Stefan. ‘The surgeon in Lucheux’s no better, nor the one in Abbeville, they’re neither of them experienced with gunshot wounds. Our only chance is a proper military surgeon, and anyone like that’s already with the army.’
‘What about Doullens?’ said Jacques. ‘The citadel, they’re bound to have someone there.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Marcel, ‘but they won’t deprive a whole garrison of a surgeon for one sick boy.’
‘He’s André de Roland.’
‘He’s no one,’ said Stefan roughly. ‘Not outside Dax. He’s not powerful enough for the army to care about.’
None of us said anything for a long while.
Jacques sat looking down at André’s face as if he wanted to memorize every tiny detail. Then he ran his hand down his own fingers and held something out to Marcel.
‘Give them this,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’ll care enough if we give them this.’
It was his diamond ring.
Marcel stared at it, then up at Jacques. ‘You can’t. If André dies, you’ll have nothing else.’
Jacques said ‘If he dies, I don’t want it.’
Stefan made an oddly abrupt noise and turned away. But Marcel leant forward, kissed the top of Jacques’ head, and took the ring. He said ‘I’ll go myself.’
Jacques looked up at him with sudden hope. ‘Take Tempête,’ he said. ‘He’s fastest, he’s … Take Tempête.’
Marcel smiled. He
backed away through the sacking, and a moment later I heard the door of the Hermitage close.
I stayed with them all night. Marcel couldn’t possibly be back in less than a day, and Stefan and Jacques couldn’t manage André alone. It was quite all right while the poppy medicine made him sleep, but we couldn’t give it to him all the time, Dom said that was dangerous, and when he was awake I’m afraid it was really quite dreadful. He kept trying to rip off his dressing, you see, he was writhing and thrashing about, tearing at his own body.
It was taking a terrible toll on Jacques. He desperately needed rest, but absolutely refused to leave André. I sent a little message to Colin’s sister, Simone, because I knew she and Jacques were courting and thought perhaps she might help, but Colin said she was busy and wouldn’t quite meet my eyes when he said it.
‘What did you expect?’ said Stefan to me afterwards. ‘Jacques isn’t the catch he used to be, not now. You’ll find you’re the same.’
I already had. People like Jeanette honestly couldn’t do enough for us, but there were others definitely less friendly now I was no longer in a position to obtain favours from André. I think what depressed me most was their assumption he was already dead. The soldiers certainly thought so. I’d heard them singing a song of their own, set to the tune of ‘Le Petit Oiseau’, about a little bird who tried to fly over a gorge but was shot in mid-air and ended on a soldier’s gibbet. It was quite beastly.
It was Margot who helped in the end. She wasn’t on duty, she just came and shoved straight past the sacking, said ‘Bugger off, Jacques, it needs a woman here,’ then took André’s head on her lap, and soothed him back into sleep. There was something very calming about Margot. She stroked André’s forehead and said ‘Poor little bugger, it doesn’t seem right at his age. Never even been kissed, I’d guess, not so much as one little kiss.’
Jacques made a choking sound, and I think Margot understood, because she laid André gently back down then went and put a firm arm round Jacques instead. She said ‘As for you, young man, he’s going to need you in the morning so you’d better be ready, hadn’t you?’ She led him out of the enclosure and made him lie down, and he did it because Margot told him. She even made Stefan rest.
She left at first light to work at the bakery, but I didn’t want to wake the others just yet, not after so little sleep. I sat alone and watched André as the dawn pink began to glimmer through the slats and make patterns on the inside of the sacking. I knew he would die today. His skin had that extraordinary translucent quality, and every feature was standing out as if someone had painted him for posterity. His lips were cut in that delicate sculpture you never see after twenty. The scrollwork of his ears was like the inside of seashells, fragile and perfect. Every single eyelash was a fine, black curve. His eyes were open, and he was looking at me.
He whispered ‘Where’s Jacques?’
I hesitated.
‘My father will know,’ he said confidentially. ‘He says you can always tell where Jacques is.’
I was beginning to be frightened. I said ‘How?’
‘Because Jacques is always where he’s meant to be.’
I wondered if I ought to fetch someone, but he seemed quite calm.
He said ‘I wasn’t, was I? My father says so. He says Pierre Gilbert was lucky to have a son like Jacques, someone he could always rely on. He says I could learn from Jacques.’
He sounded quite natural, only very, very quiet. His eyes were wide and dark, and I thought I’d never seen pupils so large.
I said ‘Your father loved you, André, I know he did.’
His lips smiled. ‘You talk as if he’s dead.’
‘André,’ I said.
His eyes creased in confusion, and he tried to speak. I bent forward to catch what he was saying and his eyes looked directly into mine.
‘Where’s Jacques?’
I stumbled out through the sacking to fetch him. He was up in a second, and Stefan behind him. In the moment I’d been gone André had deteriorated, and he was writhing again, only his movements were brittler and feebler than they’d been before and he was making a kind of clicking noise with his tongue.
‘That’s it,’ said Stefan, looking down at him. ‘This is it. Dom, get me the coldest water you can get from that stream. Keep it coming.’
Dom was behind us, his usual serenity quite shattered. ‘A priest, I’ll send Georges …’
‘Too late,’ said Stefan. ‘Just the water, nothing else.’
I half thought Jacques would protest, but he didn’t. He sat down by André’s side, quiet but determined, and I knew the time for arguing was over.
Everything happened very fast. Dom brought water, and Stefan threw it over André, dousing him over and over again. André was shivering and trying to shrink away, but Jacques wouldn’t let him, he pinned his wrists down in the straw. Stefan worked like a demon, throwing the water, checking his palm against André’s skin, yelling ‘Come on, come on!’, calling for more water, taking André’s face in his hands, turning him, talking to him, sometimes shouting, once slapping his cheek and shouting ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ Once André managed to look at him and say weakly ‘Stop it, you bastard,’ and Stefan was elated, he hissed ‘Good, good, fight it, go on and fight it,’ and for a moment Jacques’ eyes fixed on him in fearful hope.
I honestly don’t know how long it went on. There were just the four of us trapped in that little corner, all of us soaked, but Stefan’s face dripping with sweat and his eyes red and savage, his naked chest glistening damp, the scarlet gash down the side of his head shining like an open mouth, his hands working endlessly, lifting André’s arms and legs, swearing, swearing, awful words that after a while lost any kind of meaning and began to sound like a familiar prayer.
Dom brought more water, but Stefan didn’t throw it, he asked for a cup instead. I filled it myself, and Stefan poured it into André’s mouth, holding his jaw to make him drink. André spluttered and dribbled, but some of it stayed in and after a moment Stefan released him. At once André shuddered and tried to curl into a ball, and Stefan took him by the shoulders and almost shook him. André’s head lolled weakly but he stayed conscious, and after a while he managed to hold his head up and turn in desperate appeal to Jacques. Stefan gave an exclamation, said urgently ‘Take him, for God’s sake,’ and Jacques opened his arms and rested André’s head on his chest. For a moment everything was still.
‘His skin’s cooling,’ said Jacques, stroking André’s forehead.
Stefan sat back on his heels and breathed out heavily. ‘Talk to him.’
And Jacques did. No, I’m really sorry, it wouldn’t be right for me to tell you, I think that’s rather private. He talked, that’s all. Stefan and I went in and out, fetching linen, removing the wet blanket, bringing brandy, and still Jacques talked, gently and evenly on and on, until at last André’s head drooped again. Stefan laid his fingers against the side of his neck and gave a little nod.
‘Steady enough,’ he said. ‘Move fast now.’
We laid André back down on a dry blanket, and Stefan removed the sodden dressing. I brought more of the Château linen, but he didn’t reach out to take it, he seemed quite transfixed by the sight of the wound. I looked myself, and saw to my astonishment the edges were pinker and cleaner, and although there was still a very nasty area where the skin looked yellow and swollen like an overripe pear, it seemed definitely smaller than it had been.
‘More mould,’ said Stefan suddenly. ‘More of that mould. Cobwebs, anything, whatever the old bag said. It’s fucking working. Whatever it was, get me more of it’
The saddle was nearly finished, but I found more blue mould under some old leather bandoliers and a great swathe of cobwebs from the stables outhouse. Stefan took it all without comment, spread it on the Château linen and laid it gently over the great hole in André’s back.
André spoke quite distinctly. ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘Cool.’
A moment later he wa
s fast asleep.
Jacques Gilbert
He slept most of the day, and in the evening Marcel arrived back with a wrinkly little man he said was the chief military surgeon from Doullens. The surgeon seemed quite grand for someone who was only a jumped-up version of M. Pollet, and came in all grumpy like he was already convinced we were wasting his time. When we told him André was alive and seemed better, he just raised his eyebrows, exchanged a funny look with his miserable assistant, and said ‘Well then, let’s get on with it, shall we?’
The boy had just had another belt of his poppy medicine and was deep asleep, so the surgeon rolled up his sleeves, drank off a huge mug of cider, sat down in the straw and got started right away. He had big fat candles that gave him loads of light, and he got us to stick them in shallow pans of water, which made the light reflect even further. He peeled off the dressing, made a face at it, and chucked it to his assistant, saying ‘Filthy, of course,’ like we were all deaf and couldn’t hear, then looked more closely at the wound and said ‘Hmm.’ He sat back on his heels a moment, looked round suspiciously, and said ‘Hmm’ again. We all looked at him blankly, and I noticed Jean-Marie had casually sat himself down in front of the mouldy saddle to hide it from view.
‘Nice job,’ said the surgeon at last. ‘There’s a chance here.’ He attached a strange pair of eyeglasses to his nose to make everything look bigger, then started picking in the boy’s back with long tweezers, like a chicken finding grain in a heap of sand. He got a shred of cloth and some little black specks of powder out of the wound, swabbed it clean, then stitched the whole thing up again. It only took about ten minutes. Then he stood up and held out his mug for more cider.
‘Remarkable,’ he said, sounding almost human for the first time. ‘Anything can happen, of course, you’ll need to take care with the dressing, but he’s a good, strong boy, no reason why he shouldn’t make a complete recovery.’
