The Child Left Behind

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Destroying the evidence,’ James said. ‘The Allies must be drawing close now. There’s Charles, look.’

  Bridgette nodded. ‘I was talking to him,’ she said. ‘He thinks the Gestapo will pull out next. That’s what he is waiting for. Loads of people want to storm the building when they’re gone and check the place is really empty.’

  ‘Well, I would imagine many went in there and never came out,’ James said. ‘I doubt they’ll find any live prisoners, though there maybe some dead ones.’

  ‘It was a terrible building,’ Bridgette said. ‘I hated even passing it. Won’t it be wonderful if they all leave?’

  And it was wonderful when, just an hour or so later, the hated Gestapo piled into their military vehicles and sped away. The waiting crowds on the pavements watched them go silently. Later, however, when the soldiers marched down the streets, many booed or spat or shouted after them. And while Bridgette was watching this marvellous spectacle, and explaining to her mother what was happening, James disappeared.

  Seeing her preoccupation, he knew it was his chance to speak to Charles and see if there was any chance of meeting up, if not with his own unit, then some other British one. He slipped quietly from the room and down the stairs. Here he was cautious, because even now he didn’t want Bridgette involved, but he heard the voices of Legrand and Georges in the bakery, where they had returned to after their afternoon nap, and so he went out the back door that opened onto the yard and into the street that way.

  Georges and Legrand were unaware of the exodus happening in their small town at first, though they knew the Germans were worried and had been for days. They had both been nervous when they had heard about the invasion, but certain that the Allies would be repulsed by the Germans, as they had been before.

  However, as the days passed, and they heard of the scale of the whole operation it did concern them, as did the attitude of the German officers, who seemed to forget the help that Legrand had been to them over the years. Suddenly, they wanted little to do with him and the steady supply of food and coal dried up.

  However, they had given him no hint that they were pulling out of the town. Even the girl in the shop was not aware of it straightaway, though she did think there were more people on the streets than normal, and in the end she stopped a man who was hurrying past.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s over, that’s what it is,’ said the man. ‘The Gestapo have gone already, and now the soldiers are following.’

  The girl could scarcely believe it, though she didn’t doubt the man, and she went into the bakery, a thing she very seldom did, to tell them all about it.

  Bridgette, still at the window, was relating all that was happening outside to her mother, and when she noticed James’s absence she’d assumed he had gone to the bathroom. But suddenly there he was in the street below, gesticulating to Charles, who was on the other side of the road. Charles spotted him almost immediately and crossed over to him, and they were soon lost to view. Bridgette guessed that Charles would have taken James to some alleyway for discretion.

  Barely had they disappeared than she saw her father and Georges and the girl from the shop emerge from a side street, looking totally bemused at what was happening. No one took any notice of them. The mind of most of the townsfolk, and certainly those on the streets, was set on one thing. Barely had the last soldier left before the people set off for the Gestapo headquarters, the building that had been such an object of terror to so many.

  Bridgette knew the Allies would soon be in her town. That was a heady thought and one she had waited long years for, but then James would be able to leave. She had no right even to try to stop him, although she knew that when he was gone, he would leave a gaping hole in her heart. That hole would widen when eventually her mother lost her tenuous grip on life. She would be totally alone, and she felt desolation fold around her like a cloak,

  When James returned, Bridgette knew by his face that something had been decided. She heard her father and Georges come into the house, complaining and grumbling about what they had witnessed, and James had to stay hidden. She did what she could with the meagre fare that was left in the cupboard and set it before the two of them.

  Legrand seldom spoke to her but that day he said, ‘Did you see what those louts have done to the Gestapo headquarters?’

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ Bridgette said. ‘But I heard it.’

  ‘Wanton vandalism that’s all it was,’ Legrand said angrily. ‘In the end someone set fire to it. I just hope that the police get the people responsible.’

  Bridgette laughed. ‘I doubt they will. They’ll have to arrest more than half of the town, and you might find the police reluctant even to try. They might think the place is best razed to the ground in memory of the people who died there.’

  ‘They should have no opinion about it,’ Legrand said. ‘They are there to uphold the law.’

  ‘Are they?’ Bridgette said sarcastically. ‘Well, there hasn’t been much law the last few years, just violence and brutality, and I’m glad that’s over at last. And here’s another problem for you. The girl in the shop won’t be working here any more. Her brother came to fetch her before you came in and said her family don’t want her working for people like us any more, and I had to close up early.

  ‘What did he mean, “people like us”?’ Legrand asked.

  ‘Oh, Papa work it out,’ Bridgette said impatiently. ‘It’s not hard. With the mood the townspeople are in, now is not a good time to associate in any way with people who counted the Germans as friends. This used to be the best bakers in the town and now people are no longer beating a path to our door, are they? You might find after today even more people will be buying their bread elsewhere.’

  Legrand leaped to his feet and made a grab for Bridgette, but she twisted from his grasp. As he raised his hand as if to strike her, she grabbed a pan from the stove. ‘You lay a hand on me, either of you,’ she yelled, ‘and you will get the same back. I’m warning you.’

  Legrand was astounded, but he lowered his arm as he ground out, ‘One of these days, my girl—’

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ Bridgette said. ‘Just you get about your business and let me get about mine.’

  Legrand glared at her but she met his eyes, and he was the one who turned away first.

  That night Bridgette thought it took an age for her father and Georges to go out because she was in an agony of suspense to know what had been decided between James and Charles. She busied herself getting her mother settled for the night, and as soon as she could, she grabbed James’s hand and took him into her room. Then with the door closed and bolted she said, ‘All right, now tell me everything.’

  ‘Charles has it all worked out,’ James told Bridgette. ‘He says the American troops are in front of the British, but we can reach the British lines virtually unmolested if we go through the Eperlecques Forest.’

  ‘But that’s where that Blockhaus place was that the Allies have tried to bomb,’ Bridgette cried. ‘The forest will be crawling with Germans.’

  ‘Charles says it isn’t,’ James said. ‘It used to be heavily guarded, but much of it is abandoned now. The forest is where the Resistance have been working for some time. That’s how they were able to let the Allies know where the mobile launch pads were hidden. Charles knows the forest like the back of his hand, he says, and all the safest routes through it.’

  ‘And he will go with you?’

  ‘All the way,’ James said.

  Bridgette felt fear for James running through her, but she knew the die was cast now.

  ‘I love you very much, Bridgette,’ James said. ‘Please believe that. But this is something I must do. I owe it to my comrades and I would feel less of a man if I didn’t at least try to rejoin some army unit to continue the fight to liberate Europe. Can you understand a little of that?’

  Bridgette nodded. ‘I understand all of it,’ she said. ‘But that will not ease the heartache.’ Her eyes were sh
iny with unshed tears, but her voice was steady as she said, ‘When do you intend to go?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning early.’

  Bridgette gave a small gasp. ‘So soon?’

  ‘There is surely no point in putting off the inevitable.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Bridgette conceded. ‘This then will be our last night together.’

  ‘Till we meet again at the other side of this damned war.’

  Bridgette said nothing. She knew when James walked out of her life the following day she would never see him again. Maybe he felt the same because that last night their passion rose higher and higher, until Bridgette was breathless with longing. And this time, when Bridgette threw the covers back, James didn’t hesitate, and he slipped in beside her. Bridgette had not lain with a man since Xavier had walked away to war and yet she knew that she was more than ready.

  But James seemed in no hurry as he stroked, caressed and kissed her to bring her to the peak of arousal. Then suddenly he broke off from a kiss that Bridgette was almost drowning in.

  ‘What is it?’ Bridgette cried. ‘You cannot stop now. You leave tomorrow and this is perhaps all that either of us will ever have, one night together. You cannot deny me that, James.’

  No, he couldn’t. He was so aroused himself that he ached with longing for Bridgette, who lay so sensuously on the bed with her lips slightly open and her body so ripe and ready that she trembled all over. He couldn’t wait any longer and with a sigh he entered Bridgette and heard her groan in pleasure and satisfaction.

  She had half expected to feel ashamed of herself the next day, but she didn’t. She woke very early, still enfolded in her lover’s arms. She tried to ease herself gently from his embrace to lean across him to turn off the alarm but as she did so, suddenly James’s eyes opened, his arms tightened around her and he nuzzied at her neck, saying as he did so, ‘Don’t get up yet.’

  ‘I must, James,’ Bridgette said firmly. ‘Anyway, won’t Charles be waiting for you?’

  James sighed as he checked the time. ‘Yes,’ he said resignedly as he swung his legs out of bed and began to dress. ‘I’d best get packed up and ready to go.’

  ‘Take those spare clothes I washed for you,’ Bridgette said. ‘You don’t know how long it will be until you reach the British Forces. I have some bread for you already wrapped in muslin. There is nothing else now the parcels of food from the German officers have stopped.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take it off you anyway,’ James said. ‘I’m just grateful for the bread. D’you think that Gabrielle will be awake yet? I would like to say goodbye before I leave.’

  ‘Probably. She sleeps fitfully at the moment,’ Bridgette said. ‘I’ll check she is all right and that the coast is clear, and you can bid her farewell while the other two are eating breakfast, such as it is.’

  Gabrielle was awake and James sat carefully on her bed and told her he was leaving that morning.

  ‘I will miss you,’ she said. ‘But that is nothing to the way that Bridgette will feel. I remember feeling such helplessness when Finn marched away.’

  ‘Finn? Was that the name of Bridgette’s father?’

  Gabrielle nodded. ‘He was so young, and so full of life,—as they all were, of course. War to end all wars, that was supposed to be, so when Bridgette married Xavier I thought the future was set for the pair of them. I never dreamed that another war would take him away. But it did. She suffered that anguish once and now she must go through it again. I wish I could spare her that.’

  James shook his head. ‘There is nothing you can do about that, but one thing you can and must do is tell her about her real father before it is too late.’

  ‘You are right, James,’ Gabrielle said. ‘She has a right to know and I promise you that I will do that as soon as you are gone.’

  With the imminent departure of James, and her mother getting worse daily, Bridgette was in no mood for truculent Georges, who moved the bread disparagingly around his plate as he and his father sat at the table later.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I think it’s quite apparent what it is,’ Bridgette said. ‘Most people call it bread.’

  ‘Is that all we’re having?’

  ‘That’s all there was in the cupboard,’ Bridgette said. ‘And I was given no money to buy anything else.’

  She was suddenly irritated, because most of France had got used to going without sometimes even basic necessities. Her father and Georges, however, had never had to stint themselves until now, and they didn’t like it.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she snapped. ‘Magic food to put on the table?’ She turned to look straight at her father and said, ‘Give me a decent amount of money today and I will see what I can find.’

  ‘I’m not made of money, you know,’ Legrand growled. ‘You said yourself the shop isn’t doing so well these days.’

  And set to do worse, Bridgette might have said, and yet you still have money for drink each night. She didn’t say this however, because she didn’t want to start an argument. She wanted them both out of the way as quickly as possible, so that she could say a proper farewell to James. So instead she said emphatically, ‘Then you’ll have to make do with bread, like most people in France have been doing for over four years.’

  It was hard to linger too long over a cup of coffee and dry bread, and soon Legrand returned to the bakery and Georges to open the shop a little later. Bridgette took James into her room, where she shut the door firmly and shot the bolt before going onto his open arms with a sigh of contentment.

  ‘I will get word to you as soon as I can,’ James promised after kissing her long and hard.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you must contact your aunt now.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Bridgette said. ‘The BBC say that the Free French and the Americans are advancing on Paris.’

  ‘She still needs to know how ill Gabrielle is,’ James insisted. ‘You can’t leave it until she is no more to tell her.’

  Bridgette knew she couldn’t, but she knew how upset and shocked her aunt would be, because in her letters she had given no indication that her mother was so ill in case her aunt should take it into her head and come to see for herself.

  ‘I will send a telegram,’ Bridgette promised James. ‘But I will say that I fully understand if she is unable to come.’

  ‘If things had gone to plan, Yvette could have come sooner,’ James said.

  ‘And I might never have realised that I love you,’ Bridgette said. ‘Whatever happens to us in the future, I couldn’t ever regret that.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said James. ‘Though I wish that we had met in peacetime.’

  ‘We probably never would have met at all in peacetime.’

  ‘That’s true,’ James said. ‘And people have to deal with circumstances they have no control over the best way they can.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bridgette said sadly. ‘And I know you must go. Charles will be waiting. Will you kiss me once more?’

  ‘Gladly, my darling,’ James said, and he gathered her into his arms.

  She kissed him with all the passion in her, for she knew it would have to last her a long, long time, possibly her lifetime. She wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t kissing James goodbye for ever.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bridget sent the telegram to her aunt as she had promised James she would. When she returned Gabrielle said, ‘Well, at least she knows now, even if she can’t get to see me. It would be madness to put her life in danger for a woman who is dying anyway. And now sit down, my dear child, for I have something to tell you.’

  ‘Are you not tired, Maman?’ Bridgette asked, sitting on the chair beside the bed.

  ‘A little,’ Gabrielle admitted. ‘But soon I shall have all the rest I need and meanwhile there are things I should have told you years ago, but Robert forbade me to, and in those days I did what he said.’

  ‘I know you did, and with reason,’ Bridgette said.

  ‘In this I should hav
e defied him,’ Gabrielle maintained. ‘You needed to know that he is not your father.’

  Bridgette jumped on the bed. ‘What did you say?’

  Gabrielle smiled gently, ‘You heard me the first time. Robert Legrand is not your father. You have none of that man’s blood running through your veins.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Bridgette said fervently. ‘Thank God.’ She turned to her mother, her eyes shining. ‘You couldn’t have told me anything that would please me more. But who is my real father?’

  In answer, Gabrielle said, ‘Bridgette, will you go across to my wardrobe? It has an artificial floor and under it you will see a box. Can you lift it up and bring it to me?’

  Bridgette had not known of the wardrobe’s artificial floor, or the box beneath it, and so she was greatly intrigued.

  ‘Your father was an Irishman called Finn Sullivan, a soldier in the British Army,’ Gabrielle told her, when she had the box beside her. ‘He was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.’

  ‘So I am illegitimate?’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Finn and I were married at the camp. They were moving out when it was discovered I was expecting you.’ She rooted around in the box and handed Bridgette a ring. ‘That is the ring my mother gave me to use as a wedding ring until we could get a proper one. It’s yours now. And here is something else that you can have, my only present from Finn,’ and she gave Bridgette a package.

  Inside it, wrapped in tissue paper, was a silver locket with a curl of hair inside, and the locket was inscribed: ‘F loves G, Christmas 1915’.

  ‘Maman, it’s beautiful,’ Bridgette said.

  ‘Yes,’ Gabrielle sighed wistfully. ‘I promised him that I would wear it always near my heart and I did until I married Robert. Then I hid it away. That false floor in the wardrobe, which my mother showed me when I was a girl, was very useful to hide things from Robert. These, for example,’ and she withdrew a bundle of letters tied with a pink ribbon. ‘This is every letter Finn sent me. When you read them you will see the type of man he was. I loved him so very much and that is why just the once we forgot ourselves. You’re not ashamed of me for that, are you?’