by Cesca Major
My palms are damp – perhaps it isn’t him, perhaps he won’t come? It sounds like one person, it must be him, it is time. They will direct him here; the sisters know where I am waiting. Perhaps they will offer him a drink. Perhaps I should greet him inside?
And then like a visitor from another life, another world, he appears beneath the crumbling stone arch. He is looking around and then, as his eyes focus on the figure underneath the apple tree, he freezes, just for an instant. Our eyes meet and, after a little hesitation, he makes his way across the lawn towards me.
I go to stand, pause in mid-air, bottom only centimetres from the bench, waver, sit back down and start pleating and smoothing my skirt once more. I look anywhere but at his face. I can’t help it, though; I’m drawn to it, want to see if I recognize the boy he was.
His hair is shorter than I remember, he has a slight limp, was that from the war? Had he always walked in that way? I don’t know, have never known.
He gives me a sort of smile as he approaches, as if we are meeting by accident, two near-strangers in a park, and then he points awkwardly to the other side of the bench and I nod as he goes to sit.
A man. Tall, well-dressed, dark hair, the ends slightly curling. A stranger in a park.
The bench creaks, gives in to the new weight as he sits. I swivel my body round to face him. Neither of us speak, and my head fills with shadowy faces.
‘Thank you for meeting me,’ he says.
He has thanked me.
I half open my mouth to respond in some way. Thank you. I blink, feeling hot tears building at the back of my eyes. Thank you.
I wave my hand towards the trees behind me and say, ‘Paul used to love orchards, the mottled shadows on the grass, the fallen fruit – and the promise of apple pie for dinner, no doubt.’The smallest laugh. Someone else. I hear my words, said in a voice that still sounds too scratchy to be mine, and wonder at the memory. Paul crouching low over a half-chewed apple, staring in childlike wonder at the maggoty inside.
‘My boy has to be force-fed any fruit,’ Sebastien replies, with a small, proud chuckle.
‘Your son,’ I repeat quietly.
‘I have a son,’ he says, looking at me. ‘And a wife, and a baby daughter,’ he states, searching my face. In a whisper: ‘We called her Isabelle.’
‘That is, that … wonderful, I think, I, perhaps … where are they now?’ I ask, needlessly looking around, feeling my chest tighten.
‘They’re in England. At home.’
I nod.
He has the faintest hint of an English accent.
Home.
A silence descends. There is movement outside the abbey: a nun holding a pair of secateurs, rhythmic clicks as she moves around the building. Perhaps it is the presence of another being, perhaps he realizes we can’t skirt around the issue forever, but Sebastien asks, ‘Can you talk about it?’
I know to what he is referring. For months, years, people have asked me to talk, have asked me to tell them my story, and I haven’t.
Perhaps the right people never asked because, as I take a deep breath, I am convinced I need to speak. This is what I have been waiting for.
He listens without interrupting as I tell him about that day. I do not spare him the details.
I fall silent after I recount the noise of the black box going off, the shattering of glass and the sudden feeling of being outside, not in … outside, not with them … outside.
He clears his throat. ‘What happened to Isabelle?’
I look up at him. ‘She was there, inside, we were together but the noise and the smoke and …’ My confession now. He understands. I look away as I continue. ‘I was by the window.’ I close my eyes, replaying those moments. ‘I didn’t wait, or think, or … I didn’t know, it was so hot and I didn’t stop to think and …’ I have to stop – I am gulping, forcing out the words and I am back in the darkness, fumbling to get out, without my daughter, without my grandson.
Guilt threatens to choke me as I try to carry on.
‘I escaped,’ I state, looking down at my hands – those of an old lady now. ‘I got out.’
‘And the baby,’ he asks, so quietly. ‘Edward told me there was a baby. What happened to him?’
My words are so soft they might have been lost to a stronger wind, but he hears every syllable as I say, ‘They were both in there.’
The weight of my words has forced us inside ourselves and it is a while before I hear his next question. His voice is shakier, slower. He loved her.
‘What did she call him?’ he asks.
I look at his face fully for the first time: kind eyes, grey flecks at the roots of his dark hair, a straight nose. Would my grandson have looked like this?
‘Sebastien.’
Tears edge at the rims of his eyes so that he has to look up to the heavens and blink them back.
‘Sebastien,’ he repeats, a flicker of a smile and then gone.
As he says his name, my grandson’s name, something cracks within me, and I huddle over myself – the story told but not answered – gripping my body, back outside the church, there again. ‘They burned the women and children. They burned them. I left them there. I covered myself in dirt and I hid, I hid. I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I am so sorry.’
He makes no move to comfort me.
We sit side by side on the bench as my breathing slows and I start to hear the subtle sounds of the garden alive around me once more. I look beyond Sebastien to the nunnery, see the outline of Marguerite inside. One hand rests on the glass as she watches us. What does she see from there? We are simply two figures beneath a tree in an orchard, surrounded by dappled shadows and juicy apples.
I look back at him. ‘I left them there …’ I say, pausing over every word. ‘I left them and I can see them always there, where I abandoned them and … I … I can’t …’
I am for ever outside, and they are inside, and I made my choice and I am living and they are not. I am in an orchard and the sun is shining and I am with him and they are not.
TRISTAN
There is something on top of me. It’s heavy and I take a breath.
There is only a tiny bit of air, like I’m buried underground, like in a shallow grave. Dimitri told me about a murderer who buried his victims – smashed them around the head and put them in a wooden box, and threw earth on the top until they were stuck with the ground on top of them, the holes leaking mud and dirt and their cries being lost in the wind.
I’m underground, in a shallow grave and it is hot and heavy and I can’t breathe and I’m going to die, and no one will hear me.
I gasp, eyes opening, but it is dark and smoky and my eyes sting. There are noises too, around me, groaning, murmuring: smells, smells so terrible that when they are in my nostrils I can’t get rid of them.
I try to move, it is so heavy; I push and I wiggle and I push and suddenly the weight is slipping away, he is falling to the side, he is off me. It is my brother. It is Dimitri. He isn’t looking at me, he isn’t looking anywhere any more. I tell him to come, I reach out to him. His glasses have fallen off. He doesn’t follow me.
There are so many bodies everywhere and they are all blurred and there is such heat, I can see barely centimetres in front of my face. I drag myself along the stone floor that seems warm, like the heat is coming from below, like hell is underneath the floor, warming it from the bottom. I’m dragging myself and I can see a patch, as if it is the outside and I try to crawl to it. I am tripping over things in the way and I feel a shoe with a foot in it but they don’t pull it back or tell me off for clambering over it. I don’t want to look at them but I can’t help it. The skirt has hitched up a little so below the knee I can make out a sliver of cotton shift like Maman wears.
That patch is still there, it is bigger and I can make out green. I have to get to it, I have to get to the patch of
green as I think if I don’t I will have to stay here in this, for ever. I am so close to it now, it’s so small, little stones are all crumbled up around it, I reach out a hand and as I do I can hear something, a wail. A baby’s cry.
I look to my side, the smoke is still thick, swirling just above the floor like fog on the fields in winter that you can’t see beyond. But then there is the wail again and I have to move towards it. I can hear my name now, whispered – is Maman calling me? Am I going to find her through the patch? Is she there?
There are more people here, lying down, curled into balls and I stumble in a half-crawl, slipping as I put my hand down on someone’s hand. It’s still so hot and I don’t want to move away from the patch but it might be Maman calling me.
‘Tristan.’ It isn’t her voice. I think my arm hurts but it could be my head; I hear the wail again.
I cough and, I can see an outline. Mademoiselle Rochard is slumped in the corner, her head funny, resting on the wall. She is calling my name, quietly though, so quietly, and in her arms is her baby. He is the one wailing at me and as I approach her she is holding him out to me, this bundle who has gone quiet now. Her eyes are half-closed and she is mumbling, ‘Tristan, please, please, I can’t. Please.’
She is repeating that and I know what she means, that she can see the tiny patch, a sliver from here, where the stones have come away, so small, and then she coughs and I have the baby and it is so hot I sink my face into the bundle and the air is closing in on both of us but when I look up again I don’t find it any easier to breathe. I can’t see in front of me and for a moment I have no idea where I am, where is the patch? The green?
I crawl to the left, feel with one hand for the wall. The heat drives me on so that I start to feel my skin blistering as if I have suddenly come out in terrible sunburn, like when Luc had a patch on his back that went red raw and then all the skin fell off a few days later. I haven’t seen Luc. Where is he?
I have to get out and the patch is so close now I can see the hint of green beyond and know it will be cooler there, anything to get out. I’m hurting now, I can smell so many things like rubber and smells when the saucepan catches. I’m at the hole and I can just reach and so I push the bundle through.
He is out there on the green, in the safe patch, and then I wiggle and I squirm and the heat is roasting behind me and I think I won’t make it out of there, that I’ll be stuck half in hell and half out and I don’t know whether I want to leave. Isn’t Maman in there? Dimitri, Eléonore, Luc – I can’t see them in this new green world, I can’t leave. I shouldn’t leave them. But it’s so hot and I have to take the baby and then I am free and I’m crawling along grass, knowing I have to stay out of sight in case they are still there, and I can see a shed and I try and get to my feet.
If we can just get there. I take the baby, he’s making noise again, little noises, and I say ‘Ssh’ to him.
A girl is lying nearby, there is blood and some of her insides are beside her. I am sick. I keep moving. There are noises and shouts in the village, vehicles moving, we have to get there, we have to get to the shed. The baby is still now. I don’t want to be in the shed by myself but I can’t go back and I can’t get help.
Pushing open the doors I climb behind a barrel full of filthy water, moss growing on the side as I squeeze us down into a gap and wait. The baby is calmer, his heart beating a rhythm next to mine. It is quiet, and there is dark all around me.
ADELINE
1953, France
My legs feel shaky as I lower myself onto the smooth leather: there is no way back. Sebastien closes the door behind me, revs the engine and I try to nod, to convince, as he swivels slightly in his seat to look at me.
In a too-bright voice, he asks, ‘Ready?’
We are not.
It is the anniversary of the day it happened and there is to be a service in the village. He wants me to go with him. I can’t believe I am going back there.
The day is clear and the fields around the nunnery are a patchwork of yellows, browns and greens. Cows stand in the shade of the trees as we pass, a flock of startled birds soars quickly up ahead. We speak little over the rattle of the engine. Villages turn into towns and I stare in disbelief at the people walking by on their daily business. A woman, skirt skimming her knees, reaches down to talk to her daughter who has stopped to stare into the window of a bakery crammed full of pastries. An elderly couple sit and drink coffee on the edge of the pavement, both chairs turned towards the street so that they can observe the comings and goings.
It seems that the world has kept on turning: there were days when I felt it was just me in my room, in the stone corridors of the nunnery, as if France stopped at the edges of the garden.
I look over at Sebastien, at his profile. A straight nose, his hair even darker in the car, curling up over his shirt collar. Hands, resting on the steering wheel, clipped nails. I see a small scar on his left hand and comment on it.
‘First time my father allowed me out on a bicycle by myself. I had cuts all over both hands,’ he explains.
‘Where do your parents live?’ I ask.
He glances over at me. ‘They died during the war.’
I hadn’t expected it. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Belsen. 1943. Within weeks of each other.’
I haven’t heard of Belsen.
He explains. I hear the details of the couple I will never meet, an ordinary couple who were going about their lives in Limoges, a few kilometres away: another world.
The scenery grows familiar and I shift in my seat, clasp both hands together, twist my ring around and around. We are turning off the road and the sign points us to Oradour – a different direction, a newly built village of Oradour. It’s further up the hill.
Sebastien parks facing away from the village and I want to urge him to keep driving.
He sits there, turns the engine off and then gets out of the front seat and helps me out. He offers me his arm. I take it, breathing slowly, not able to look up yet.
‘We’ve arrived,’ he says softly.
We turn towards the old village and start walking. As we walk down the slope, my head is spinning with flurries of memories: the tram as it approached the arch; the signs to Limoges, Saint-Junien; the first building, low stone wall intact, grass mown neatly. For a moment nothing has altered. Then my head turns to gaze across the road at the shells of former buildings: the old town, the real town. We enter the high street, down past familiar buildings, their inhabitants all gone, their walls crumbling, weeds creeping unchecked through cracks in brickwork, through broken flagstones.
Sebastien has told me the details. The truth is everywhere. We move wordlessly past the tram stop, the post office, the old schoolyard. Its roof is coming away. As we walk towards the green my feet slip on the cobbles. I hear the rusty sign of Monsieur Renard’s garage as it swings lightly in the breeze, the owner dead, the bodies of his two sons never identified – shot in their garage with nine others, the place torched.
I have to stop in the road. Catch my breath. Up ahead of us, people are clustered on the green. More are arriving.
I stand looking at the façade of the shop. The walls have crumbled in, the back part of the shop is totally exposed, you can see past our old yard to the view of the hills beyond. It is as if there was never a second storey. It is as if no one ever lived there.
Everything I owned, loved, everything I held, sold, sat on, slept in, everything. It has disappeared; there is no evidence it ever existed, as if I am mistaken.
Sebastien takes hold of my arm and I am grateful as he urges me to keep moving. With one last look I allow myself to be led past the house.
There are more than a hundred people meeting by a simple stone memorial to the village. The mood is sombre and from my vantage point I can just make out the space where the spire of the church used to be. There is a flat line now, wher
e it collapsed from the fire; it is no longer a sentry to the village, but another empty ruin.
I step a little closer to Sebastien.
The service passes quietly. Boys and men are holding their hats in front of them in respect, a couple of younger girls, faces I don’t recognize, are holding hands side by side. I see one blonde boy, in his late teens, standing in front of me, earnestly mouthing the Lord’s Prayer, his hand resting protectively on the shoulder of his younger sibling. The younger brother, with brown hair curling up at the ends, reaches to tug distractedly on the lapel of his coat.
Paul always resented dressing up in fusty attire for formal occasions, too.
The sun peeks from behind the cloud, and as its rays light up the group I can hear the voices of my own family. I close my eyes. They are saying goodbye to me, they are moving through the village and beyond to the hills and the forest and the Glane as it makes its steady path below us all; unstoppable, always forging a course through the landscape. I remember Vincent telling me once that water will always find a way through. I feel him by my side now, repeating this simple fact, my mouth lifting at his memory.
We lay flowers at the foot of the memorial and I move away to a shady corner of the green. Sebastien falls into step beside me. A younger woman holding a handkerchief to her face is comforted quietly, and a large group of women pass us with gentle nods.
As we turn to leave, the two brothers walk past us, the younger one turning to take his brother’s hand: ‘Tristan, wait …’
Something nudges at me. A faint laugh, tripping past us in the high street.
She is here.
THE END
HISTORICAL NOTE
I teach History at a secondary school in Berkshire and was looking for something to teach Year 9. A colleague of mine told me about this tragedy and I started to do some research. On discovering that there had been one survivor from the church that day, I started to build a story around her. The book grew from there. All the characters are entirely fictional.
