by JH Fletcher
He stared. ‘Bayard? The fish man?’
Sanette was willing to be brisk with a son who was in danger of forgetting his place. ‘Of course the fish man! Who else?’
‘What’s he coming here for?’
‘Because I invited him.’ From her tone she clearly wanted no discussion on the subject.
Charlie shut his mouth on his astonishment: no one had ever come to the house for a meal before, and his mother’s announcement sent waves of shock and — yes — alarm through his life. It was like watching a tidal wave advancing up the beach to swallow them all.
For someone who dealt in fish, Gaston Bayard was extraordinarily dry. His voice rustled like a parched leaf; his hand, when Charlie shook it, was as dry as sand; even his eyes, flat as sun-baked pebbles behind the gold pince-nez perched just so on his long nose, seemed devoid of moisture. His speech, apparently even his thoughts, were as dry as the rest of him; when Sanette introduced him to her son, he stared at Charlie as at one more rock, indistinguishable from the rest, in the desert making up his life.
A sane man does not talk to rocks and Gaston Bayard did not. Throughout the meal he spoke only to Sanette. No pleasantries or small talk; Charlie, watching from the citadel of his own silence, saw that everything in this man’s life had to be precise and to the point. He did not laugh; no doubt laughter was irrelevant. What was relevant was fish, and how to make from fish the fortune he was determined would be his.
Monsieur Bayard’s teeth were sharp and pointed and protruded from his thin lips. They made him look like a dried-up mouse and it was like a mouse that he nibbled on the slice of turbot Sanette had placed before him. Turbot, Charlie thought, that was a plus: they never ate like this when they were alone. It might have been seaweed for all the notice Monsieur Bayard took of it. From time to time he dabbed his lips with his napkin, without commenting or even seeming to be aware what he was eating. His interest might be in fish, but only in certain kinds of fish.
Between nibbles, his mouse voice rustled on about the wisdom and far-sightedness of his plans; about the fishermen and their folly in not at once leaping to accept the proposal that in his considered view would not only offer them the prospect of a worthwhile living once more, to say nothing of hope for their families, but would bring renewed life to the town …
Like a dry wind blowing endlessly over sand dunes, the man went on, while Charlie wriggled his bottom on his chair, ignoring the dagger looks with which his mother sought to impale him, and, bored to despair, entertained rosy dreams of death.
At the same time he was not so bored that he failed to notice how much his mother was making up to this vain and monumentally tedious man. The turbot had been only the start of it; all through the evening she hung, very obviously, on Monsieur Bayard’s every word. Her eyes were round, she spoke only to agree, when Monsieur Bayard graciously permitted her space to do so.
‘So wise …’
‘So true …’
This from a woman who, in the whole of Charlie’s life, had shown no interest or enthusiasm in anything. He hated it but thought he knew why she was doing it, because she had been giving him hints of their situation for some time.
When they had first settled in the town, Sanette had been lucky to get a job in the cashier’s department of the local store, where the change ran on wires. Despite the Depression, she had managed to hang on to it ever since.
Every day she got up and tidied the house, gave Charlie and herself coffee and a slice of bread for breakfast before packing him off to school, then dressed herself in her grey and unnoticeable clothes and went out to the job that was all that kept them going. It was a grey and faceless existence; the only time Charlie could remember her having involved herself in anything out of the ordinary was over the business of Babette Fantine. The way that had worked out, he doubted she would ever do so again.
It seemed to Sanette that all the patient years had been a rehearsal for the moment that was now upon her: the opportunity to entertain at her table, not simply a man whose greyness rivalled her own yet who expected as a matter of course the subservience proper between a woman such as Sanette Mandale and himself, but someone much more important than that. Because Gaston Bayard had, or might have, money.
Even Monsieur Bayard’s monologue ran dry, eventually, like a stream vanishing into sand. He dabbed his lips one last time and buttoned himself meticulously into his dark overcoat. He shook Charlie’s hand without looking at him, bent mouse lips to Sanette’s fingers, coughed in a dry way and walked out into the night.
The essence of the man, dusty yet strangely menacing, remained. Neither Sanette nor Charlie spoke of it, but both knew that the balance of their lives had changed. Even if their visitor vanished tonight, the crack his coming had opened in the previously unbroken shell of their lives would not be repaired. For the first time since Colin Mandale had died under the gas, Sanette had looked out through the shutters of her solitude at another man. After that, things could not possibly go back to the way they had been before. Yet the future depended, at least in part, on the success or failure of Monsieur Bayard’s proposal to the fishermen: I am willing to be patient but not forever, as he had put it to Sanette over the supper table.
If his plans failed, he would move on. Of course: for a dry man, there was no logical alternative.
A month passed while everything hung in the balance. Still nothing had been resolved. Then came a week of storms. Fishing was impossible and the news from Dunkerque was that second-grade fish was no longer being bought at all, while prime mackerel and even sole were fetching no more than a few sous a kilo. At last Pierre Gros, no longer confident of the better times he had always proclaimed, gave way.
‘It had better work out, that’s all,’ he said in his surly way. ‘I’ll have a few things to say to you lot if it doesn’t.’
8
Gaston Bayard went away: rumour said to Paris or Cherbourg, where he was thought to have interests. Within a week he was back with the finance he needed to build the refrigeration sheds and get the cooperative up and running. Word was that he was busy with builders, electrical engineers from down the coast, experts of all kinds. Sanette did not see him and each day passed like every other day: up early, tidy the house, wake Charlie, prepare their breakfast, go to work …
I am sick of it, she thought. Sick of it.
Late at night, she studied Colin’s features in the portrait on the parlour wall, her finger tracing the line of his mouth, his eyes.
You should not have died. You should have lived to be with me. To help me, hug me, bring meaning to my life. I cannot go on as I am.
Who knew what would happen to her if she lost her job? It had happened to so many. She had no money, no prospects. Charlie was growing up; one day he would be gone and she would be alone.
What else can I do? she cried out to the man she still loved. If only you had not gone away from me. If only you had not been killed …
She took her way, grey and slow, to bed. When she woke, her pillow was wet with the tears she had shed in her sleep.
Charlie knew none of these things.
9
One evening, ten days after Gaston Bayard’s return, Sanette was in the kitchen, skinning a piece of fish she had picked up cheap from one of the boats, when there was a knock on the door.
Sanette stood at the sink, knife poised motionless in her hand. No one ever visited, and Charles, she knew, was in his room. Her heart thudded in her chest. She put down the knife, wiped her hands on her apron and went to the door. As she reached for the catch she saw how red her hands were, but she was beyond caring about that.
Red hands or not, she thought, I am as I am.
She opened the door. Again her heart thumped. Monsieur Bayard stood there, round hat in his hand. She looked at him silently.
‘May I come in?’
No change: the little cough with sand in it, the voice dry as desert dust.
‘Of course.’
She stood ba
ck and opened the door wide.
She led the way into the parlour. Saw from the corner of her eye Colin’s portrait; saw, or at least sensed, that Gaston Bayard was aware of it, too.
‘One moment,’ she said.
She went to Charlie’s room. ‘Monsieur Bayard is here,’ she said.
‘What does he want?’
He spoke rudely. He was probably finding it hard to come to terms with the uncertainty Monsieur Bayard had introduced into their lives. She could understand that but would tolerate no rudeness.
‘No doubt he will tell me when he wishes to do so,’ she told him tartly. ‘For the moment, I know no more than you. While he is here, I do not wish to be disturbed. Is that clear?’
And closed the door. She was as she was, but nevertheless found a minute to take off her apron and tidy her hair before going back to the parlour.
‘I am sorry to have kept you.’ She smiled and closed that door, too, behind her.
10
Charlie told himself he knew very well why Gaston Bayard had come. He thought his mother knew, too, whether she was prepared to say so or not. The businessman was rumoured to be looking for a wife.
He tried to visualise his mother in that role but it was no good, the images would not fit. He had never had to share her with anyone and was not sure how he would feel if he had to do so now. Gaston Bayard, of all people, he thought. That boring man.
He decided he’d go out, then decided he wouldn’t. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, or should do, and had the uneasy feeling that from now on this could be his life: a constant and corrosive uncertainty of where, and who, he was.
He tried to imagine his mother downstairs, now, in the parlour. He sneaked open his door and listened, but could hear nothing. The house creaked, the wind rattled a windowpane. All else was still. Like Charlie and the house itself, the closed door to the parlour, which he could see from where he stood, held its breath.
He remembered the episode with La Belle Babette. She had never come back to the cruel town and her ruined house, but he had not forgotten her. He thought of the bare flesh rosy in the lamplight, the shock of discovery and new awareness, disbelief and awe at what was there in front of him.
He could not imagine his mother — his mother? — in such a situation. Yet had the feeling that what had happened that evening with Babette could be in the process of being re-enacted downstairs now. His mind would not accept it; even to think such things was wrong. Yet the images remained. The lamplight. The rosy, complacent, scented flesh. His mother.
It was unbearable. He clattered down the stairs, making all the noise he could, and was gone, slamming the front door behind him.
He strode through the town, head up, the wind in his face. Beyond the harbour and clustered houses, he came out into open country. On his right were low sand dunes where the marram grass whistled in the sharp-bladed wind. To his left tumbled the grey sea, with gulls crying above the broken water. He knew exactly where he was; he had been here a thousand times. He had never been here; he did not know where he was at all.
On and on he walked, as fast as he could go, using movement to drive out thought. He slowed at last, feeling the sand crunch beneath his feet, thinking of his father’s portrait watching … whatever there was to watch.
No! No!
Wally spoke in his ear. It was like listening to his own father’s voice.
A place he discovered on top of some mountain, up there in the north. He called it the Cloud Forest …
Beyond the wildly breaking seas, the mountain of his imagining stood tall against the sky. It was green and very beautiful, with plants he did not recognise, creatures out of storybooks. He knew it was a place he could go, if things got too much for him. From what Wally had said, his dad had felt much the same about it. The magic place. The only difference was, he’d been there and Charlie hadn’t.
He thought, one of these days …
And walked on, at peace now, the knife-blade wind in his hair.
TEN
1
The evening was closing in by the time Charlie got home. His feet slowed; he looked at the house as though expecting it to leap out at him, but nothing moved. Of course; what had he expected?
He had taken the spare key with him; he opened the door softly, hoping to reach the sanctuary of his room before anyone saw him, but his mother had obviously heard him. The parlour door opened and she stood looking at him, something in the air of the silent house telling him that she was not alone.
‘Charles …’ Smiling and smiling, yet with strain about her mouth and eyes. ‘There you are.’
Her nervousness reflected his own and he did not answer her. ‘Come into the parlour, dear. There’s something I want to tell you. Something we want to tell you.’
Behind her, hidden behind the half-open door, a dry cough dusted the silence.
Charlie went in, not looking at the figure of the man but sensing the pince-nez’s glitter. He stared at his mother, his face as stiff as new boots, defences raised in futile defiance of what he was certain was coming.
Again his mother beamed the effusive, brittle smile. ‘Charles, dear …’
He stood, roots going deep into the earth to secure him to the spot. He was determined neither to move nor smile nor do anything, wishing only that this pointless and agonising ordeal could be over and done with.
‘Monsieur Bayard —’ and paused, to give him the chance to look at the man now, but Charlie, oak-stubborn, did not. ‘Monsieur Bayard has done me the honour, the very great honour,’ she amended, flustered, ‘of asking me to be his wife.’
Again a pause while her eyes besought Charlie, seeking the mercy he had no intention of giving.
‘I have said yes.’
Her voice was faint; he could barely hear the words, yet their meaning clanged like a monstrous bell in his head.
‘That’s all right, then.’ As though saying: what’s it got to do with me?
The sandpaper voice abraded the silence, and Charlie’s nerve ends. ‘We had hoped you would give us your congratulations, Charles. And your blessing.’
For the first time Charlie looked at him. And looked at him. ‘Right. Congratulations.’
More than anything, he wanted to turn and walk away from them, from this drawn-out moment of pain and deprivation, but he did not. He sensed that, by remaining, he would embarrass them more than by leaving. So he stood, and said no more.
Shortly afterwards, Monsieur Bayard himself left, to return, he promised, the next evening. To Charlie it sounded like a threat.
His mother would not let well, or even reasonably well, alone. ‘I am surprised. And disappointed. That a son of mine … In a moment that should have been my greatest happiness …’
The dam of Charlie’s stoic stubbornness burst. ‘Happiness? With a man like that?’
Fire and fury then. Rage watered and not extinguished by tears. ‘How can you say such a thing? To me, your mother? Who has sacrificed herself all these years. For you. Only for you. Now she sees a chance of happiness and you … You abuse the man who is willing to be a father to you. A kind man. A man who will bring prosperity to this town …’
Charlie escaped at length, running up the stairs to his own room, slamming the door behind him, seeking refuge from her anger and the guilt that he soon found had come with him into the room, that sat on his pillow that night while he tried to sleep.
He told himself he would stay awake, to spite his mother, the man she had chosen over him, the whole world. And fell asleep as he was saying it.
In the morning, a day of cold skies and wincing wind, the sense of hurt and betrayal was still there. He had felt guilty about what had happened and willing to make amends, then he went downstairs to a starched and reproachful silence and at once was as antagonistic as ever. He slurped the coffee she put before him but was out of the house almost before he’d drunk it, chucking rocks at a sullen and defiant sea.
It was there his mother found him. She
was dressed in her work dress, of a respectability as grey as the wind that pressed her long skirts about her legs: the garish Parisian fashions, the cult of semi-nudity, had most emphatically not caught on along the Channel coast.
He saw her coming but pretended he did not. He bent, lifted a stone, threw. And again, his face turned to the waves that raced in, jeering at them both.
‘This must stop,’ Sanette said.
He looked at her, holding another pebble, smooth and hard, in his hand. ‘I didn’t start it.’
For a moment she closed her eyes. ‘It is not easy for you. I understand that. You have never had a father …’
He would give nothing. ‘I have.’
‘Not to talk to. A boy needs a man. I have tried, but —’
‘There’s Wally.’
She dismissed Wally. ‘A good friend. But not your blood. It is not the same.’
‘Monsieur Bayard is not my blood, either.’ And chucked his stone, which vanished without sound into the maw of the grey breakers.
‘And I?’ Sanette demanded passionately. ‘Am I to have nothing, too?’
Again Charlie felt the knife-point of self-reproach, because he saw that a grown woman — this woman, at least — also needed a man. In a world where so many had died, a man might be hard to find.
‘Do you love him?’ It felt strange to be asking his own mother such a question. It might have embarrassed him, like catching a glimpse of her in the bath, had it not made him feel grown up and responsible at the same time. He had to take care of her, even if only for today and in this. The thought surprised him: suddenly, out of nowhere, he had become the man of the family.
‘It has been hard,’ she said. ‘I have tried to keep it from you, but you are old enough, now, to be told. Your father and I would have married but he was killed before it was possible. I am not proud of it but it was the war, you understand, and such things happened. So there has been no pension, nothing. We had the house, and my job. That was all. Somehow we have managed, but it has been impossible to save anything. Always I have been frightened of what would happen to us if I lost my job. And now, with so many people out of work … Madame Dupont called me in three months ago. She told me the shop was making no money. I would have to take a cut in wages or she would not be able to keep me on at all.’
