by Cesca Major
‘So pleased, so pleased.’
I run a hand over the notebook’s surface and start to think of what I might write. A book specifically for my thoughts, not the rushed notes I leave on scraps. A memory nudges.
We are at the annual village fair. Paul is eight and Isabelle still has that gap where her front tooth should be. She is on Vincent’s shoulders, holding on to his neck, his big hands trapping her legs and making her squeal when he lifts her to put her down. It is summer, below us little sections of the river sparkle in the sunshine, trickling over stones and pebbles, making a steady course downstream. Everywhere we look people are descending on the chateau: on foot, on the back of carts. There is little Claudette Dubois, all teeth and solemn eyes, hanging off her mother’s hand.
Madame Thomas greets the villagers outside the chateau. One hand holding her cigarette, the other playing with a long string of pearls that drip from her neck. Isabelle stops to stare at her, chin raised, eyes wide.
Madame Thomas ruffles her hair, mumbles something, a puff of smoke tickles my throat. Isabelle’s laugh, quick, light.
Colourful tents, the tinny noise of a slow-moving carousel, the painted horses moving up and down in time, merge with the chattering laughter of the village. There is a man selling crêpes, the smell mingling with the scent of freshly mown grass and rain. Isabelle pulls on my arm, desperate to explore. I watch as Paul and she are swept up in a cloud of other children.
I move between crowds of familiar faces – many farmers from the fields have taken a rare day out of their work to throw their children up into the air and onto their shoulders, instead of hay bales. Monsieur Renard is surrounded by a dozen nieces and nephews, all clamouring for his attention, the chance to go on another ride, a chance to show him what they have spotted in the corner: a colourful float, flowers hanging off every surface; the strongman, his muscles glistening as he preens and poses; some men wearing large papier-mâché heads, parading about as caricatures.
Madame Garande waves me over to a corner of the sloping field, away from the commotion. She stands by an old-fashioned tent, swathes of velvet over the flaps to enter, tassels in rich oranges and reds hanging from the top, flapping at her ample bosom with a fan. An old woman stands in the shadows of the entrance and Madame Garande bustles towards me. ‘Go on, Adeline, I insist – this woman here can tell your fortune.’ She passes a handful of coins to the woman. ‘Your turn, truly she seems to know everything. I’ve paid for you.’ Before I can protest she has pushed me inside. ‘Go on.’
The sunlight is obliterated as I move to follow the old woman, the canvas giving off a smell I can’t place, a musty stench of straw, people and damp. A pot of incense fails to cover the stink. The flaps close behind me and the only light comes from a lantern on a table at the back of the tent. The woman points to a chair covered in brightly embroidered cushions, tiny mirrors sewn into their surface, and sits on a stool opposite. The gloom weighs on me, the distant noises of people moving around outside, the whistle of the breeze, all muted by the tent.
The woman smiles at me, wide enough to reveal black fillings, and tells me her name is Madame Mystique. Her skin falls from her face like ripples on the river, her hands wrinkled and covered in liver spots. She observes me for a while and I shift under her gaze. She seems ancient in many ways and yet she gives off a youthful energy and vigour.
‘Hold out your hand.’
Her voice is strong and her eyes are wide and alert. I slowly hold out my arm, palm upturned, and shiver as she touches my fingers with hers, tracing a finger with a yellowed nail across my palm, following a line.
‘Strange,’ she says.
I retract my arm, hold my right palm in my left, bringing it to my chest protectively. ‘Strange?’
She points to the ring finger of my left hand. ‘You’re married,’ she comments.
I nod, not impressed with her grasp of the unknown quite yet.
‘You are religious.’ It is a statement not a question. The cross around my neck another giveaway. I nod. I am a Catholic. I believe in God. Doesn’t everyone?
‘There is a church. It’s …’ Silence. The air is thick with heat and incense and I strain to focus. I lean forward a fraction. A look passes across the old woman’s face. My eyes flit to the entrance of the tent.
Madame Mystique appears to be talking to herself. ‘So many.’
The dusty heat of the canvas, the stale smell and the urge to get back out into the open air with my family grips me. The chair topples over in my haste to leave.
The old woman doesn’t respond, staring at something I cannot see. She is mad, or this is part of her act. I want nothing to do with it any more. I reach the entrance to the tent and pull back the velvet.
‘Wait, my dear madame, please …’ She is walking towards me, skirting the fallen chair and, with no warning, embraces me.
She is shaking. I push her off and back out of the tent, turning towards the familiar shouts and sounds of the village at play, the sun beaming at me from overhead, the breeze lifting my hair. Tripping on the uneven ground I set off back up the field. I imagine her watching from the entrance of the tent; my neck burns.
When I reach Vincent he picks me up by my waist and kisses me on the cheek. I feel foolish for my reaction to an old woman’s tricks. The sun plunges behind the only cloud in the sky. I can’t see my children.
PAUL
Dear Isabelle,
It is much better out on the farm. The work is hard but it’s good to feel the limbs burning, feel my muscles screaming when I haul things up. The guards here are more relaxed, willing to share a cigarette and turning a blind eye to our ball games. It’s outdoor work unless we are working in the kitchen, the stoves operate about six hours a day and we go in groups to prepare potatoes, boil cabbage. Potatoes for 150 men. Rémi and I found a pigeon newly dead, plucked it and cooked it. The smell took me straight back to our kitchen and Maman standing over the gas, burning off the last, small feathers from a chicken. We dined well that day and then Rémi went and threw it all back up in the field that afternoon.
The air raids happen in the daytime sometimes but they are heading to the city – the poor lads back in the factories. You can look up and make out the bombs dropping like pebbles, glinting in the sunshine as they fall. Then you hear the bangs, a curl of smoke in the distance and the imagination does the rest. They are worse at night, humming overhead, making your toes curl in, your back stiffen. It’s a hopeless feeling and sometimes I want to sit up and roar through the building, hammering on my chest and feeling like a man in charge of his own destiny. Instead, I make my way to the shelter where we are told to sit up not lie down, and the next day I’m resting on my spade, exhausted.
The guards let us near the fences and the German boys come near and stare in at us as if we are zoo exhibits. We ask them their names. They smile shyly and run away. They don’t look any different to French boys, really.
Perhaps I can bear it, if I can stay here, if this can last, perhaps I can survive it all. A man escaped from the farm last week. I’ve heard they are still searching for him. He slept in one of the outbuildings, they found a bed of straw in amongst all the machinery. They haven’t found anything else.
The sky and fields here look less than at home but I am safe, which I know will please Maman. I think of you all often,
Paul
SEBASTIEN
She is early.
Descending the stairs as the bell to the flat rings I find my parents milling around the archway to the living room. My mother gives me a warm smile. She is wearing a green patterned cotton dress that Father bought her for a birthday years ago. She is wringing her hands as we hear their footsteps approaching the apartment and when the doorbell rings again she hurries out to go and receive them. Father gives me a grim smile and readies himself.
I take a deep breath, plastering a welcoming expression o
n my face whilst trying to steady the nerves that are biting at me. Father pats me on the back once. ‘Let’s not jump on them as they arrive,’ he suggests, pointing to the living room. I nod and follow him in.
Isabelle arrives in a whirlwind, the energy in the room instantly responding to her presence, whipped up, electric, all eyes focused on her as she shakes hands with my parents, comments on the scent of the flowers to my mother and smiles at my father as if she has known him for years.
Her father, Vincent, seems automatically relieved to see a small library of books in the room, and the chance to engage Father on the tome he can see lying on the little table by the armchair. They fall into an easy conversation about literature as my mother quietly gets on with pouring our drinks. Isabelle’s mother has not come and Vincent makes her excuses: no one could cover the shop. This is entirely plausible, but a look passes between our two guests and Father.
As Mother pours and Father talks, I am left to face Isabelle. She is dressed in a cornflower-blue dress, her cheeks a little flushed. My breath leaves my body in a rush; it hits me that she is here because I am going to ask her to marry me. Once this meeting is over and done with and we have gone through the formalities, I can ask.
Mother thrusts a cup at me. It feels impossibly small in my hands. Isabelle nods towards our fathers, her eyes mischievous. I can’t help but grin at her. The liquid slops over the edge.
We spend the next half an hour skirting around some mundane subjects: the tram ride to Limoges, the on-off weather we’ve been having, the effect on the harvest and the shortage of workers. Isabelle chips in, laughing easily with her father, seeming so confident and bright.
How am I ever going to get this woman to agree to marry me?
Isabelle looks up at my mother and says, ‘Sebastien tells me you are an excellent pianist, and I imagine he is, too.’
‘I am a plonking amateur, but my mother is wonderful.’
‘Wonderful,’ agrees Father, his eyes warming as they turn to pay her the compliment.
My mother is blushing now. ‘They exaggerate,’ she mumbles, looking at the table, trying to find something to do that might require her attention.
‘Perhaps,’ Isabelle ventures, ‘you might play us something at a later date.’
A pause, as if the whole room has breathed in and is waiting for the response. Isabelle’s daring has stunned everybody into silence.
Mother tries to recover quickly. ‘I’d love to,’ she states and gets up quickly. ‘I must boil more water.’
I watch her leave the room, then glance at Father, who doesn’t meet my eye. Isabelle shrinks a little into herself, the earlier bravado forgotten as she sips her tea.
Mother returns and we talk about music a little more: the opera that my parents love, while Isabelle talks about the new jazz phenomenon sweeping America. I glance again at my father worrying that he might disapprove. His expression is unfathomable as he listens, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
A little while later, as they get ready to leave, I catch Isabelle’s hand in the hallway as my parents fuss over Vincent’s coat and she meets my eye.
Hearing the street door to the flats closing downstairs, I flop onto the sofa and wait for the barrage of talk in the aftermath of the meeting. Instead, there is silence. My mother begins to load the tray with the paraphernalia from the table, scraping the crumbs from one plate onto another in careful movements, catching the eye of Father as she does so.
I await Father’s verdict. He likes her: I saw the appraising look when she talked, and I want him to say it out loud so that I can revel in the sound. Instead, he opens his paper and my mother leaves the room, a backwards glance at the doorway, and then gone.
‘Father?’ He continues to read, his eyes frozen in one place. ‘You didn’t like her?’
More silence and then he sighs and closes the paper, folding it in half as I continue to look at him. With a snap of his wrist he flicks imaginary dirt from his shoulder.
‘She is very pleasant.’
My shoulders relax and I am keen to start a list of the many reasons why Isabelle Rochard is frankly perfect. Father is staring at his hands and I nod at his statement eagerly, trying to rouse a few more words on the subject from him.
‘She is good company, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, good company.’
‘She is amusing.’
‘Yes.’
‘But not silly,’ I qualify.
‘No, I think not.’
‘She is well read, too,’ I tack on, knowing this might help him expand further. ‘Her father is friendly, is he not?’
‘Very.’
I pat the top of the sofa, smoothing the delicate wool rug that hangs from the back of it, worn away in places by numerous heads that have rested on it.
‘But …’ Father starts.
I suck in my breath.
‘You see we …’
My grip tears a tiny hole in the rug.
‘Sebastien, it is impossible.’
‘What is impossible?’
‘All of it,’ he cries, his arms wide. ‘Life has changed, your life has changed.’
‘Not this again.’
‘“Not this, not this. ”What do you know of “this” – you are like a small child with both hands to the side of his face and his eyes closed! It would be unfair to bring her into all this!’
A surge of anger, that I would put Isabelle at any risk, makes my words harsher than I intend. ‘What do you know of it all? Really, Father? What do you really know?’
‘You cannot ignore the current situation, Sebastien. You cannot bury your head in the sand.’
‘Things haven’t changed that much,’ I continue.
‘You’re a fool if you think that. Everything has changed. Whose name is the bank in now, you think they’d let me keep it? What are the stars we’re meant to wear on our clothing? Changes are happening every day and we can’t just carry on as usual and pretend that we don’t have to make plans.’
‘I am making plans.’
‘No.’ Father shakes his head. ‘As a family – we have to make plans together. Isabelle cannot be part of this.’
‘Part of what?’
‘Your mother and I have discussed this and we are leaving, Sebastien – we are making arrangements to go to England, to stay with the Macharts, who have established themselves there. We can’t leave you here, we won’t leave you here. And you can’t ask her to come. It wouldn’t be fair. Perhaps when this is over we can see, but for now, I’m sorry my boy, it isn’t going to happen.’
We’re leaving? I drop my head into my hands as his words sink in. ‘England,’ I repeat.
‘England.’
I look at his face, search his eyes for the lie in his words, but can find nothing.
‘What do we know about England?’ I ask.
‘We know that they’re not being over-run by Nazis, and,’ he adds, ‘we know we have friends there.’
‘We have friends here.’
Father sighs.
‘I won’t come,’ I say. ‘We’re not even in the occupied zone.’
‘Which is why we need to leave now,’ he urges, ‘while we still can.’
‘We could go later, once we know how this all works out. We don’t know what might happen. We don’t know this won’t all end tomorrow.’ Father sits in silence as I continue. ‘We could work somewhere else, we could set up another business, or work through somebody or …’ I run out of steam entirely.
‘I’m sorry Sebastien, but it is settled. We should have told you sooner. We have just received a letter from the Macharts in England.’
‘Father, I can’t! I can’t leave.’
‘You must.’
‘I love her,’ I announce, too wound up to worry that I sound melodramatic.
He gets up from his seat and comes over to sit next to me on the sofa. ‘If you love her, then you can wait for her.’
I change tack. ‘We don’t need to go to England. We could move further south – a quiet village perhaps, sit it out. Or we could …’
‘Enough.’A gentle voice but enough to make me fall silent. ‘It will be the same everywhere.’ He sighs. ‘We can’t stay here any more.’
Mother appears in the little archway. A look passes between them. I know then that they are serious, and I don’t want to stay and listen to any more. Seizing my coat, I push past my mother and slam the apartment door behind me so that I block out her voice pleading with me to stay.
I run down the stairs to the street, not knowing where I am headed but knowing I have to get out. Two men, a little way off in the street, talk to a stranger, pointing towards our apartment. Even in the dark I can just make out a thin moustache on the taller man. The little group don’t see me leaving.
A brief thought flickers and is gone.
TRISTAN
The Villiers stayed last night. The table was all covered in wine bottles this morning and Claudette kept sucking on her teeth when she tidied them away for breakfast. The air smelt like the window needed opening and my baguette tasted funny.
It is sunny today and I want to play boules. Monsieur Villiers lent us an old set when he arrived last night. He said they belonged to his son. He said this in a sad voice, like when Papa talks about his brother who died in the First War, so I think that his son is away fighting somewhere, or is dead, but I didn’t dare ask, we just promised to take very good care of the boules.
This morning, though, Maman announces that we will all be going on an outing and Papa says he is coming too. Apparently there is a man who has a goat farm nearby and we are going to visit him. The farmer has a goat who is as big as him and Papa says that apparently he can make the goat look like he is dancing with him as he can stand on two feet. I practically fall off my stool to run upstairs and get ready.
