The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  She milked, learning quick, and they took the herd. Coming back one morning Dominique Duthileul, the son and heir, paused to nod.

  “Salut.”

  “Salut.”

  They stood there, three humans, two dogs and his forty-odd meat, waiting. The dogs circling, as unneighbourly as their humans. “Eh beh,” he finally said and led his animals away. Simone watched him go. Jacques watched her.

  A week later there were ten. A Basque, Roger, who’d left Spain after fighting Franco, a bank-clerk, Henri, and Fred brought Jerome, whom he’d met at Feyt’s one night at nine o’clock. Jerome listened. Excited. Then, too anxious to be accepted, he promised some of his mother’s money and the men could plan to buy weapons and ammunition. From the corrupt clerk in Figeac who knew of the stockpile from the surrender. Hidden till now, when it could make him a profit. He would be assassinated less than a year later for the key.

  “What is this money for?” Madame Lacaze asked.

  “Guns.”

  “Thou shalt not kill.” And she walked out of the kitchen.

  “Sara is pregnant.”

  She turned at the door. Mother and son looked at each other, neither faltering.

  “Marry her. If you want money.”

  “I’ll spend it on guns.”

  “You? You won’t spend it.”

  “And you’ll come to my wedding?”

  “There’ll be no wedding. You can’t marry. You’re too proud. And what will your Maquisards say then, Jerome? Shall I tell you? ‘Get married.’” She laughed.

  “And will you come to my funeral?”

  “Of course.”

  “And weep.”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you ever want of me? Ever?”

  “That you might better this family.”

  “I have. I’ve introduced good peasant stock into our haughty blood.”

  “Poisoner.”

  And he drank for the rest of the day and walked the back fields to the camp with empty pockets and his talk was tolerated till one of the men pushed a pistol at him and told him to go and kill the village collaborator. Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth as he lost his feeble credibility.

  “I’ll do it.”

  The men laughed. “Who is it?”

  “Who is it?” Ugly mockery.

  “The bourgeois communist! Who is it? Marry the girl and bring us money. Know your place.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A knife appeared in Bernadie’s hand.

  “As long as you provide you’re worth a risk. Just. You’re a windbag. This isn’t talk, Lacaze – this is the time to die. And kill. For France.”

  “I know that.”

  “No,” said Phillipe. “You say that.”

  She cut back the hawthorn, dug out nettle roots, raked them into a pile, cleared the paths between the vegetable plots and she’d weed them tomorrow. Sweat. Salt. Nice.

  “Good day?” he asked, after food.

  “Lovely day.”

  He smiled and so did she. “Market tomorrow.”

  “Aha.”

  “Come?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Fine.” He nodded.

  Jerome spoke to Sara’s mother and she borrowed a bicycle and pedalled to St. Hilaire to see the Curé.

  Jacques bought one plate and Jean-Jacques gave him the cup and cutlery and winked. Jacques blushed. The women smirked and rubbed at their ration tickets, glad of the distraction, and the precious gossip.

  “She’s pretty, they say.”

  “Yes.”

  The two men nodded at each other, eyes elsewhere. “Lucky bastard.”

  “I am.”

  “Already?” Jacques frowned.

  “No.”

  “Tricky with Mother?”

  “Some candles, please.”

  “Uh.”

  The walk home had become blessed. Everything she had looked at he saw afresh, adazzle. The simple majesty in the spread of the hawk’s tail feathers as it rocked into the air, one huge beat to find a thermal and then soar slow over it’s table. And at home, mine will be laid. By Simone.

  “How was the village?”

  “Same. Less.”

  “The war.”

  “The black-market.”

  The mother listened and slowly, and against her will, she came back to life. To their life, yes, a borrowed life, but her son didn’t care as long as she knew some joy, for he had a harvest to spare. She set her emptiness aside, for the moment, for their sakes, and as the summer shone on, for the warmth outside her cell. She sat in the garden, walked a little and felt the heat.

  The two women cooked one night, the mother making a salad dressing with mustard and Simone dipped her finger in it to taste and the mother slapped at her hand and both froze and then all three laughed. Short but oh! a symphony to him. Simone was more than welcome, she was a blessing, and that night she lay in his bed and allowing herself one moment of immodesty, believed it.

  The commune assimilated Simone like a shared cold-sore. On Sundays they stared and nodded. Him they read, fallen like an axe-head, hard and deep. Her they simply wished away, break his fool heart, like his mother, and go. But when the Curé read Jerome and Sara’s marriage banns the congregation forgot Simone and watched Sara’s mother holding her head just straight. And Madame Lacaze, for whom this was news, clenched her jaw and focused hard on the bottom of one of the altar candle-sticks. Jerome had said nothing to her. She used the rest of the service to steel herself for the public kissing with that woman, pregnant with her grandchild, and her mother, before she could escape home.

  “July 14th, what is it?” Jerome was drinking already, and had a bottle and five glasses ready.

  “My mother’s birthday.” Arbel sat. “Cheers.” He raised his glass to Jerome.

  “And Bastille Day.” He looked round.

  Jacques wouldn’t meet his eye, but watched Herrisson and old George Gley, the mason, talking with Duthileul. Gley, whose family had got all the work of the commune when his grandfather sank into alcohol after the card-night. Ardelle looked at Jerome. “What about it? Is this a history lesson?”

  “What do we do, Ardelle? On that day?”

  “Who’s we? I work. You drink. He works – and then drinks. Men get drunk.”

  “We celebrate, exactly.”

  “Any excuse.”

  “Not this year.”

  “Why? No wine?”

  “Oh no. It is illegal. Unpatriotic. Forbotten.”

  “Shh,” said Sara.

  “No.”

  “I’d like another drink, then, husband.”

  “Banned. By the Germans? Oo no. By we French.”

  The men smoked and the women turned their glasses in their hands and waited.

  “Am I depressing you? Uplifted by Jehovah as you all are. And the glad tidings of my marriage. It’s just, you see, there’s a war going on,” he leaned forward, “and we’re losing it. Us. The French. Which we all are. We’re losing. Sorry.”

  “I thought we’d lost.” Jerome was getting on Arbel’s nerves.

  “So what are you going to do?” Ardelle asked.

  “Celebrate.”

  “And I’ll work. So it’ll be just like normal.” And she drank a little and flushed a little and Arbel was proud.

  “Will you celebrate?” Jerome turned to Simone.

  “I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m tired. And I’ve slept in cells.”

  “Tired? Oh dear.”

  “What will you do?” Jacques asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “No.”

  By the second week their evenings stretched to another cup of coffee, the end of the bottle of wine and the first time she read a book.

  “It’s Zola.”

  “Zola.”

  She looked up at him. Dumb. Might be talking to the cows.

  “Jacques – can you read?”

  “Yes.”


  “I’m – I apologise.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend.” He smiled.

  “You didn’t.”

  “Good. Would you like to read it? Or another?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  She smiled.

  “You like it,” he said. “It grips you. You disappear when you read.”

  “You do, too. When you smoke.”

  “Do I?” He smiled. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No.”

  “There we are then,” he said and she laughed. Bent her head and read.

  She and Jacques’ mother darned one rain-filled afternoon. Spoke not at all, but sat mending his socks, her cardigan. The mother silent in confusion at her pleasure, Simone silent because the mother’s pleasure was tangible.

  He made a stool and one evening within the first month the mother broke all the rules by coming to eat with them.

  She told the tale of his first loaves, how they’d been harder than the barn wall, and Simone smiled and Jacques watched his mother smile, the flush rising in her cheeks, the blush of the young woman she still was. He pushed his food past the knot of thankfulness at his throat.

  This was the wish. No. In truth, Simone was the wish, and this, this was both. Both. Why?

  The cow’s cycle came round again and he led it across the road and Dominique penned it with the thick male for an afternoon. Jacques stood there watching the bull take the air and his beast taste the new pasture. He went into the kitchen of the farmhouse and the old deaf mother looked up from her Bible.

  “Do I have to give you change?” she shouted at him.

  “No.”

  He left the money and her by the window. In the field the bull waited.

  June shone into July.

  The three of them evolved in a slow dance. The mother turned again toward her own death, thinking this is what the boy must want; if I’m gone he’ll be alone with her and I’ll be at my peace.

  But the summer birds she could name by their song. And she worried at the tomatoes, hauling an evening bucket from the well. And she made the butter, her muscles hurting, hurting, but she finished it. In the still evenings she watched the girl returning to her fuller bloom and her son’s love deepen with patience. “Mother...”

  “Jacques?”

  “You’re better.”

  “I’m stronger.”

  But out in his fields he did wonder what life would be if she died. If she had.

  He stood the plough slack and fell forward. “Almighty God – forgive me my sinful flesh weakness.”

  The dry earth bit his knees. He waited.

  “I meant it. But it’s weakness. Truth and strength want your will. Not mine.”

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  He rose and worked on, hurt.

  At supper Simone gave him silence till his eyes rose. “What?” she asked softly.

  “Shameful, Simone. Not for sharing.” She nodded, accepted.

  “What is it?” His mother asked. He looked at her. Thought, ‘I wished you dead.’

  “Iffing,” he said. “Close to sin.”

  “I know.”

  “What will be will be.”

  “I know.”

  “Goodnight, son. Goodnight, Simone.” She went to her room.

  “Goodnight Mother. Call.”

  “I will.”

  He watched Simone making their tisane, the hard thin body in his mother’s dress, the hair tied snap in a tail, the sun that had caught her legs and arms a little. No. He didn’t desire her, naked, no. He only wanted her here for ever.

  When she sat he was afraid she would ask his thoughts and he would tell her. But she looked at the flat chest and strong shoulders, black curls dusty with earth, big nose, big mouth, his cigarette, and thought, this is the brother I never had.

  Sundays passed.

  The staring diminished. They thanked God for his mother’s recovery and Simone dared pray the German Hell might pass these people by; though she remembered she’d prayed that before, with her own mother. Of all of them on their knees before their God she knew there was nothing that could not be swept away. People, towns, countries blown to dust. So what could they do? Pray. And hoard. Why hoard, she wondered. Because it was the only practical way to hope.

  On July 5th Jerome and Sara married.

  The ceremony was as bare as Jerome could have it. He asked Arbel and Ardelle and Jacques and Simone to stay away from the hypocrisy – which they did – but the rest of the commune poured into the church. Too good to miss, this. No best man, no bridesmaids, no flowers, her pregnant. What a feast! And Madame Lacaze! She must be humbled, ashamed, furious, but she’ll never show any of it – not her.

  Jerome looked round at the tight smug faces and knew now what he would do on the fourteenth. His mother fed Sara’s family and her son left her to live with them. She gave him no gun money. She had given it to Fred, demanding his utter secrecy.

  As his plough sliced and his earth parted so Jacques’ life filled. He would sit of an evening and smoke a little and talk a little and drink a little and taste each crumb of Time. He would have changed nothing and, to his ecstasy, nothing changed.

  The repetition of the days, the weeks, were all he wanted. To stop and sometimes see her, and more and more the two women, filled his cup. He thanked God with a true heart every day and Sundays were not special any more. God’s house was his.

  On July 14th Jerome went home, to the cellar, found his father’s sword and tricolour, marched back up to the square, and sang “La Marseillaise.”

  Silently the village gathered and Sara’s eyes filled, and he sang it again and again until Herrisson arrested him and he spent the night in the cold Gendarmerie. Some wanted to laugh but didn’t. Some wanted to sing and didn’t.

  When he next went into the hills the men had moved camp and he was rejected. Sara held him in the crook of her shoulder and bullied him to his tears. He kept them till he heard that one hundred thousand had marched through the streets of Lyon, seventy-five thousand in Clermont and he in St.Cirgues.

  St Cirgues’ War became the Requisition. Mignon’s orders lengthened and rumours and anger about the Black Market deepened and the women of the village acted. Seven walked in on Chibret in his office and demanded eggs and flour to feed their children and when he gave it he confirmed a Black Economy. Either he didn’t need all the Requisition or he could replace what he’d been forced to give. When more women went next day the cupboard, they were told, was bare. It was not, it was sealed with the gleaming padlock Chibret had driven to Aurillac for. The village shrugged, self-serving politicians were nothing new, and their reaction was to hoard more.

  Jacques too hid eggs and stored vegetables in the bread-oven and wondered about his maize.

  Mignon drove up to Puech one day with a truck and Regis Garceau, the village slaughter-man, and took one of Jacques’ nine beasts, one of Arbel’s dozen and one of Duthileul’s, and Arbel came round late that evening with two bottles. He poured them each a glass and drank the rest of the first bottle. He and Jacques sat on his bench, rolled cigarettes, smoked and stared at her.

  Arbel nudged Jacques, “Mother?”

  “She’s – better.” A grin warmed him.

  “I’ve seen her,” Arbel registered the miracle.

  “Yes, she is.”

  He tasted it. Tasted true. Arbel looked at Simone. “This is you.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Because he’s happy!” Arbel laughed at the obvious and then again as Jacques’ cheeks coloured.

  “Well,” she looked at them both, “that’s good.”

  “I like it,” said Jacques.

  Arbel started the second bottle.

  And he hunched forward a touch. “What if it comes, eh?”

  “What?”

  “The War.”

  “Oh. That. Yes.”

  “We’d be called.”

  “Maybe it wo
n’t come.”

  “It will,” said Simone, “and you’ll have a choice.”

  The boys looked at her certainty. Arbel stopped drinking. “What choice?”

  “Fight or refuse.”

  “Refuse the Government? Can’t be right.” Arbel shook his head.

  “Then your choice is theirs. Your choice is made.”

  A silence grew.

  “You’d resist?” Even here, Arbel lowered his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” said Simone. “I’d run. I want to live. I feel I’ve died once.”

  “Vermande?”

  “I’ll defend Mother. That’s all I know. And I’ll defend Simone and I’ll defend you. What else can I do? Nothing.”

  Arbel, reassured by Jacques’ confusion, sat a little further forward on the bench, emptied his glass, refilled all three.

  “No. But Duty,” he said, “is good.” And he drank. “To Duty.” Jacques raised his glass and the girl just smiled.

  “Jerome, eh?” sniggered Arbel.

  “I heard, yes.”

  “Lacaze the flag.”

  And they laughed, feebly.

  “At least he did something.” Simone said. The boys nodded, silenced.

  Then Arbel shifted and spat into the ash.

  “He’s got twice our cattle put together and Mignon only takes one!”

  “Jerome?”

  “Duthileul!” Arbel coloured.

  “Well he paid him off,” Jacques said, “I suppose.”

  “Bastard.” Arbel was cold.

  “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s cattle.”

  “No. I know.”

  A different silence.

  “But it’s not just,” said Jacques.

  “No. It is not.”

  Simone wished them good-night and went to her room. She heard one of them descend to the caves and return. She heard wine pouring and them talking. Then Arbel left. Then he came back.

  Jacques went to his mother’s room.

  “One of Arbel’s cows. Sick. Just going to look.”