The Silent Hours

by Cesca Major

  Feeling my way along the wall of the shop, I make my way down the alley, pausing before I reach their gate, realizing its creak might alert neighbours to an intruder. But there is no turning back. There is nowhere else to go.

  I can’t wake her now. She pointed to her window once before, but in the darkness I can’t be confident of the right one. I’m convinced that if I wake her parents I’ll be drummed from the village before I can explain.

  Crouching low in the garden bushes, I hear a rustle as one of the hens re-adjusts her spot in the coop. I too feel like an animal: dirty, tired, bedraggled. Like a rat. The sun will be up in a couple of hours, the hopeful disc will surely lighten my mood.

  I stare at each window of the house, imagining Isabelle lying beyond in a dreamless sleep. Wrapping myself into a ball, a familiar pose from childhood, I try to get comfortable, try not to imagine the insects crawling nearby, every tickle of grass or hedge a possible bug. The night air makes me shiver as my body begins to feel the cold. I don’t quite sleep and, in my waking dreams, I see only Mother and Father, their faces grim, in a long line of other faces I don’t know. Hundreds of them, all appealing to me for help.

  It is still night. Unsure of how much time has passed I sit up and brush myself down, feeling itchy and uncomfortable. My mouth is dry and stale. I will Isabelle to wake up, to come to her window, to lean out and breathe in the air, to see me below, that she will come to the window and find a way of bringing them back, of making all this stop.

  The panes of glass are totally black, the curtains drawn hours ago. The sky stretches for miles, no hint of dawn on the horizon; the whole world seems to be sleeping with her and, somewhere out there, I wonder if my parents are sleeping too.

  I must have slept a little. I am woken by the urgent morning cry of a cockerel who has spotted me and with a wary eye seems to be alerting the village to my presence. I slink back a little further into the bush and watch for the opening of her window, not knowing what else to do. Finally, the curtains are pulled back and the window is half opened.

  I dart out before I can think and call up to her at the window: ‘Isabelle.’

  No response.

  ‘Isabelle,’ I venture again, panicking that it isn’t her window at all.

  A startled head pokes out. Her hair is loose, falling around her shoulders. She’s wearing a nightdress.

  ‘Shhh,’ she hisses, urging me back to my hiding place. ‘I’ll come down,’ she promises, turning back to the room and closing the curtains on me again.

  I do as I’m told and hunch low, feeling a brief rumble of hunger gnaw at my stomach, worry eating it up.

  ‘Sebastien, what are you doing here?’ she whispers when at last she appears, glancing back towards the house. ‘If they see us they will …’

  Of course she could not be found in the bushes with a stranger, a stranger with twigs in his hair and dirt on his cheek, a morning shadow grazing his chin. She takes my hand and asks me what is wrong. She sits, listening wordlessly, as I tell her what I found the night before.

  ‘We must talk,’ she states. ‘Properly. Go down to the river. I’ll meet you on the other side of the bridge, on the right – there are bluebells out now, you’ll see them, I’ll meet you,’ she says, pushing at me urgently.

  With a glance back, I see her. Staring at me, biting her bottom lip.

  Does she now see what everyone else seems to see?

  ISABELLE

  Darling Paul, .

  He is a Jew. And this means something in this horrible new world. Such an absurd thing, I have seen things with my own eyes that make me shiver. I’ve hidden so much from Maman.

  She’s terrified of doing anything that will jeopardize you out there and please, don’t think I would want that either. But I’m scared of people’s fear, what it makes them do, and I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to live in fear. But I have jeopardized things, and maybe I have done things that will endanger you.

  I’d do anything to keep you safe – don’t think that I wouldn’t.

  There is a place out in the forest, it’s the worst-kept secret in Vichy. Paul, a Jewish family are living there, having moved south to be safe. Their boy attends the school. He’s a tiny thing and so quiet, seems much older than his eleven years. My heart breaks when I look at him, his shirt dirty at the collar. His mother comes quickly at the end of the day, then they go, Monsieur Garande muttering at his back. A man like Monsieur Garande, soft as anything under all the bluster, looking like that at him. Imagine – a little boy. I worry for them, hear things. They say there are others there now too.

  I haven’t heard from you in weeks, are you still at the factory? Are you getting my letters? I can’t send this, filled with secrets, everything seems to be a secret now.

  Come home to me, come home and remind me that people are good.

  Isabelle

  PAUL

  Four of us will be going: Rémi has come round to the idea, and two brothers, farmhands in their life before the war, have joined. They’re all thick shoulders and arms, big guts. The older, Maurice, a dimple in his chin, reminds me of Father. He has the same slow rumble of a laugh. The younger, Laurent, skinnier and darker, would follow him anywhere.

  Rémi has approached the task in typically fastidious fashion, dismantling his chair to make a sledge for our belongings and bartering with prisoners for the things we might need. I think I thought I could just punch my way out, but then what? Rémi has planned it, an earnest look, one finger on the dusty floor as he charts our moves. The brothers have arranged to pay the guard on the gate, a man with a weakness for beer and a certain brothel in the town, who can be trusted to be asleep, or on patrol elsewhere: we have the timings. It feels real and, as the day approaches, my whole body fizzes with anticipation.

  We are getting out, returning home, rejoining the war.

  The evening has been spent in twitchy silence, barely daring to look at each other, as if the guards might be able to translate the slight widening of our eyes, the knowing nod, the small raise of an eyebrow. We are heading to a nearby farm building and from there south as quickly as we can.

  The night is thick with expectation, muggy and close. I lie on top of my bedclothes staring at the uneven lumps of the ceiling, one hand resting under my head. Rémi sits on his cot, foot tapping, eyes now flicking to the door as if he expects a guard to appear as a black silhouette, light behind him, hands on hips and discover us. Footsteps on the wooden floorboards, a distant sound of keys, has his eyes darting to the door, him starting to his feet.

  When the whole bunk-room is breathing evenly, the only sounds outside the odd hoot, a rustle, it is time. I get up, stripping the sheet from my bed in one slick movement. Rémi’s has caught and he tugs at it, his thin arms pale in the darkness. I touch his arm and take the sheet from him; he gives me a weak smile, fear shining in the whites of his eyes.

  Silently pushing the bed against the wall to get to the window, I barely need to touch the rotten window lock before it disintegrates in my hand. The brothers have joined us in silence, rising from their beds without a noise, their faces set, identical expressions on their faces. Standing on the bed, we place the makeshift sledge on the ledge, a knotted bed sheet acting as a rope, and gradually lower it inch by inch, listening for sounds outside, feeling the slow bump, bump of the sledge against the stone outside. Pausing to peek out over the edge I am shocked by the blackness of the night, barely making out the white of the sheet only a couple of metres below.

  I help hoist Rémi up to the ledge. He balances, my hand on the small of his back, his legs dangling down as he looks at the ground below, then back at me. I nod at him. His Adam’s apple bobs once, twice, before he makes the leap. My stomach plummets with him as his close-cropped auburn head disappears. A small cry as both feet hit the dirt, followed by a whispered ça va.

  The youngest brother goes next: we
haul him up and watch him disappear too. I don’t need to help Maurice: he lifts his body onto the ledge in one fluid movement, hunching to get out of the window that now seems so tiny against his bulk.

  Palms sweaty, I follow them, hauling myself up onto the ledge, my arms noticeably weaker – how easy I would have found the same move a couple of years before.

  Rémi has skirted the side of the building and is now moving out into the courtyard, a scuff of stones as he gingerly makes his way across. Lifting my leg onto the ledge, pausing to strain and listen, I make out his figure in the patchy dark, his outline barely there, one skinny arm pulling the sledge to the gate beyond, a thin segment of moon not enough to give him away. The night air is still and rain falls like a gentle mist.

  Turning back I pick up my bag and look over the room: our beds, hastily stripped of the sheets, now just ghostly lumps; the door, an uneven crack showing the faintest light beyond which a guard might be sitting, slumped, head in hand on the night shift. Can it really be over?

  I go to jump, Rémi now a hundred yards away. As I do, a light suddenly fires up from the fence to my right. Then another. And Rémi is lit up in the middle of the courtyard holding the knotted sheet of the sledge in one slack hand as a third torch finds him. Frozen, I can only watch as whistles blow and he looks left and right as the guards descend on him in a rush of frenzied shouts. They knew, they knew we were going!

  As the brothers make a dash for it across the courtyard shots ring out; I hear shouts – Rémi’s voice – and as I look over the ledge again I see two bodies, half in light, half in shadow, legs crooked, heads bent, dark stains collecting around them.

  I feel all the air leave my lungs as I duck back down. A torch sweeps towards me, a foot above and below me, the moving light flashing past the square of window and highlighting the long cracks in the plaster of the ceiling, scars in a bluish light. I lean my forehead against the wall, waiting for a moment, and then look over again. Rémi is being taken away by a guard, the cone of light from the torch on the ground in front of them. The guards have brought stretchers for the other two, so still.

  I persuaded him, this boy who wanted to go back to work, make paper, who played women in plays and laughed like a twelve-year-old with no cares in the world; this boy, who hadn’t wanted to leave; this boy, who in this moment is so much braver than I. He is marched away, not even throwing a look over his shoulder at me, his chair sledge a grey silhouette left out in the dark.

  TRISTAN

  ‘Do you think we’ll have to fight in the war?’ Dimitri asks.

  ‘We’re too young,’ I say.

  ‘Not now, silly. I mean when we’re older.’

  I shrug, not really sure.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ states Dimitri glumly.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’d show those Germans a thing or two,’ I say confidently.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d be very good in a war,’ Dimitri says quietly.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t – you’d always be stopping to read your book.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t!’

  ‘Or looking for your glasses.’ I giggle.

  ‘Eléonore can’t fight. She’s a girl.’

  ‘She’d still be more useful than you.’

  Dimitri looks solemn again. ‘She would, wouldn’t she?’

  I pat him on the back. ‘That’s not your fault, D. She’d be better than most people in the war – probably bore the enemy to death by showing them her dolls.’ I roll my eyes. ‘I’m starving, come on.’

  Papa has been on the telephone nearly all morning to a man who works for him back in Paris. I can see the top of his head if I lean over the banisters. He is speaking in a low, serious voice, like the voice he used when he told us all the war had come to France, and the voice he used when he told us we would have to leave Paris. We move down the stairs as quietly as we can so as not to disturb him. He can be angry when we get in the way of work. We can hear Luc in his bedroom making aeroplane noises and bangs when he crashes them on the floor.

  Papa is finally off the phone and I signal to Dimitri to follow me. I want to hear the news. I wonder if we will return to Paris. It seems like another world ago that we were there. We live here now.

  We creep as silently as we can down the stairs, both trying to place our feet in places that might not give us away. We freeze when Eléonore walks right past us on the landing above – she is bound to give us away, but fortunately she’s too busy hurrying to check her hair in the little mirror in the corridor, so she doesn’t see us.

  I can hear the voices of all the adults in the kitchen. Madame Villiers is round here gossiping and slurping her favourite peppermint tea. I can picture her nodding furiously as they all swap news. There are gasps at something Papa has said which only makes Dimitri and me more determined to find a suitable spot for listening.

  We move to either side of the kitchen door. I bend a knee to the floor and try and peer through the keyhole. All I can make out is the dusty black inside the lock and a tiny light beyond, but the voices are clearer and I remain still and listen. Dimitri is sitting cross-legged, his back to the door, one ear up against the wood.

  ‘He says people are eating their pets,’ Papa says. ‘Dogs are just roaming the city as no one can feed them. The prefect of Paris has had to issue health warnings against eating stewed cat.’

  ‘Dreadful.’

  Dimitri’s eyes are out on stalks; I poke my tongue out in disgust.

  ‘Hours apparently, just for bread, or milk, or whatever the women can get their hands on,’ Papa continues.

  ‘Terrible,’ Maman says. ‘A friend wrote and told me that she had heard that someone had actually died in one of the queues.’

  ‘You can’t consider returning yet,’ said Monsieur Villiers.

  Dimitri and I look at each other.

  ‘But the bank, the business …’

  ‘David, there is no business in these times,’ Monsieur Villiers says. ‘It’s enough that we all just keep our heads down. It will get better.’

  ‘I blame the bloody Maquis, Communists and Jews bleeding us from the inside, slowing things up, making it impossible for a quick resolution.’

  ‘I won’t disagree with you there, my friend,’ came Monsieur Villiers’ voice.

  ‘They’re too soft – we need to pull together in these times. These people aren’t with us, we need to act.’

  ‘Enough talk of politics,’ says Maman, her light, nervous laugh seeping under the door.

  Madame Villiers doesn’t sound like she is laughing. ‘I agree. Enough.’

  There is a long silence and I start to feel uncomfortable from the cold of the stones underneath me. I gesture to Dimitri with my head and he nods.

  ‘Well, things can’t carry on too long in this way, that’s all I’ll say.’

  ‘We’re some of the lucky ones, David,’ says Maman.

  That is the last thing I hear her say before Dimitri and I turn to go back upstairs.

  I explode into our bedroom. ‘We’ve got to find a way.’

  Dimitri has followed me in. ‘What’s a Communist?’

  I don’t know the answer so I ignore him.

  ‘We’ve got to find a way to end the war,’ I repeat.

  Dimitri is nodding.

  ‘But how?’

  I walk back and forward in front of the window, my hands behind my back so that I look like Papa does when he is thinking in his study.

  I stop, making Dimitri jump. ‘The spies,’ I say. ‘We know where they are and if Papa knew, they’d be found out and then they’d stop telling the Germans everything and we’d win the war.’

  It is decided. Tonight, after dinner, we will tell Papa about the house in the forest. He probably doesn’t realize that’s where they are hiding but we co
uld lead him there, or he could call the police and then everything could go back to normal again and no one in Paris would have to eat their cat and Dimitri won’t have to be a soldier because all the naughty people will be found out and the war will end.

  I make Dimitri knock on the door and stand just behind him. He rubs his hands on his trousers before he does it and I nudge him in the back.

  ‘Stop it,’ he whispers quickly.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Now.’

  He reaches out, hand in a tight fist, and knocks quickly on the door.

  I hear Papa’s voice inside saying, ‘Come in.’

  I nudge Dimitri again.

  He turns the brass doorknob and pushes the door open. It’s heavy and sticks a bit so he has to do it with two hands.

  We shuffle inside the room.

  Papa is sitting at the big desk that he had in Paris. It turned up on one of the carts a few weeks ago, after he told us that this was going to be our new home. It took four men to lift it. His study looks almost the same as in Paris: a lot of his books are here and he has the same armchair, which has leather arm rests and a back that comes up to over his head, with the same cushions too. The only real difference is there is no big mirror over the fireplace; instead, a painting of lots of swirls and drops of pinkish paint. Eléonore thinks it’s very good but I think it wouldn’t be hard to do, lots of twirling about with the paintbrush.

  He’s turned in his chair. ‘What is it, boys?’

  I think he’s working as he has lots of papers out on his desk and even some in a semi-circle on the rug. He’s wearing his glasses that look like they have been cut in half too, so I know he is busy.

  I nudge Dimitri in the back again.

  ‘We needed to talk to you,’ he says.

  I nod behind him.

  ‘Well, then.’ He doesn’t get up.

  I rub the back of my ankle with my shoe, focus on Dimitri’s hair.

  ‘We needed to tell you about the spies,’ Dimitri says.