Ardelle wiped at the child and mother with a fresh damp cloth and Sara said, “What will you call him?” and Simone said, “Jacques,” and Jacques Vermande’s heart burst light into every moment of his history.
The cord, the afterbirth, Chayriguet’s stitches, the weighing, the paper – it all passed in a golden blur and suddenly there was Sara kissing them, all three, and she and Ardelle would be back in the morning and Chayriguet drove home and Jacques and Simone breathed slower – and slower till they could believe the life mewling in her arms would survive if they tore their eyes away long enough to look at each other.
“What can I do for you?”
“Sleep with us. I’m tired and I’m sure he is.”
“Sleep on me. I won’t.”
She leaned against his chest and he gazed at the minute fingernails, the tiny lines on the minute thumb, the wizened ancient face. “He’ll leave me one day,” said Simone.
“Don’t.”
The eyelashes, the hair, some tufts springing up as the birth – liquids dried, the mouth – look at it! – it was a kiss – that was a kiss! Jacques. Their son.
I’m doing better than my father then, he never even saw me. Jacques – born into war – welcome to this peace. The two-hour human made a noise from somewhere within that tininess and his mother and father smirked with wonder. When he sneezed their laughter spilt over the edges of human reason – Joy.
Maquis groups now raided banks, La Poste, tabacs, the bigger grocers and the fear of German reaction grew.
Still the Gestapo and the soldiery waited. Gathering information – true or false – about the whereabouts of the Maquis groups – waiting for the moment to strike.
A raddled cobra.
The Das Reich division based in Toulouse; tanks, lorries, armoured cars, motor-bikes and sidecars, moved up to Cahors.
People believed it meant the invasion in the North – The Debarquement – was imminent and the Germans must be headed there.
They would pass. They would pass. It would pass.
Wrong.
The army rolled into the Lot en route to surrounding every village, every commune on the eve of their solution to the problem of the Maquis and its collaborators. How you deal with terrorists. The great convoy spewed out groups of men in each and every village square.
6.15 in the morning.
A unit of twenty soldiers arrived in St. Cirgues to supplement the ten in the Gendarmerie. Chibret was ordered to round up every single member of his commune. By eight the villagers were in the church square. Jauliac had been beaten to a pulp in his kitchen. He was dragged into the square and thrown down in front of them all.
Madame Jauliac went to help him and was fired at.
Chibret was made to kneel in front of the crowd too, a gun at his head. He pointed on maps taken from his office to all the outlying hamlets – all the Puech’s, and then to the names on the list that ought to be there. The young officer who’d arrived here a month before shrugged – he’d been and his men had searched all these places. Nothing. Perhaps he hadn’t searched hard enough – what did Monsieur the blubbering Mayor think? Monsieur the blubbering Mayor thought it was unlikely both his lists and the officer could be wrong. Monsieur the Mayor was made to understand what would happen to him and the young officer should the lists or he be wrong. Everyone watching – and everyone was watching – understood the barking German language fluently.
Jacques, Simone, Duthileul, Dominique, the grandmother and Ardelle all knew.
“If we survive today – you leave with Jacques.”
“If. Go to the copse. They won’t take me and the baby – but you must go now. And Pray.”
The last thing Duthileul said to Dominique as he bustled him out to the woods was the money was buried in the wall of the well. Now he and his senile mother sat. To wait and pray. Ardelle, too. Jacques took the dog, scuttled as low as he could down to the copse, and lay and fixed his eyes on his home and he really prayed.
In the village the hell continued as a hot day rose. Houses were ransacked and any money found was taken, any jewellery, anything. Then Galtier was pulled from the crowd and ordered to denounce anyone. He didn’t understand and was beaten. Chayriguet was beaten for moving to help him. But no-one denounced old Feyt, their Israelite, shivering in the morning heat. Now riders went sent out to the surrounding farms.
From the square they could see plumes of smoke rising in the distance. Whose farm had been fired? Would they all be shot? Fear. You could touch it and it touched everyone.
Jacques heard and then saw two side-cars swing up the lane to Puech.
His heart froze.
What of his talk of protecting Simone? Of fighting for his? Defending his wife and child. Here was the attack and they faced it – he was on his dreadful empty stomach, cringing in hope. For shame. Here he was – here It was – and he was protecting what? His dog. For shame.
His son slept on the bed and woke with Simone’s terror as boots clattered up the steps and the door was bashed open. She picked him up, bawling, and faced three men. One went straight upstairs, kicking the cat dead against the wall, another to the barn. “Where is he? The man?” the corporal asked in awful French. “What man?”
“The father of that noise.”
“Dead.”
“Liar,” he said.
“No, I’m not,” she replied in German.
“You speak German?”
“Yes.”
One came clattering downstairs. “There’s no-one here.”
“You learned German?”
“I studied it, yes.”
“You speak it well.”
The second came in from the barn, shook his head, looked at her and said,
“She’s fuckable.”
“Shut your shit-filled brain,” said the corporal. “She’s just had a child, hasn’t she?”
The first man went into Jacques’ room. “Why did you study it?”
“I wanted to teach.”
“You probably could.”
“Sir, there’s another bed here and it’s been slept in.” A beat. A heart-beat.
“You lied?” asked the corporal.
“No. I slept there to get a night’s peace. The baby.”
“She’s lying – come on – a quick fuck.”
“Ohh – give me the baby.”
The infant was passed to the corporal and the two men dragged her to Jacques’ bed.
“I’ve got the clap,” she screamed as they ripped open the dress.
“Not yet,” laughed one and hit her on the jaw with his rifle butt and they stripped her and burst through Chayriguet’s stitches, one sucking at her milk whilst the other waited. It took them both three minutes. The baby cried and the corporal jiggled it. The men emerged, grinning, sated, and the corporal placed the baby next to the wreck of woman, bleeding from the mouth and vagina, and left.
Two other soldiers raped Ardelle, Duthileul’s house was looted, he was beaten up as a useless old article and his mother frozen in the trauma and the war left Puech.
Jacques waited ten minutes and then ran low as he could home. He asked no questions, said nothing as he bathed her mouth and washed her breasts and crotch, oh so deeply shamed by and oh so gentle with the teeth-marks round her nipples; found a clean shirt and placed her in her bed with her child, made a drink, fed it through the swelling lips and stroked her forehead, trying stupidly to iron horror away. She lay there numb, watching him but not seeing him as she deliberately re-played the whole scene over and over again and again. Every minute detail every pain every detail every scrap of the humiliation till she was sure she’d missed nothing, till she was certain she’d utterly assimilated her degradation.
“They won’t come back,” she said.
“Sleep. You won’t be here when they do.”
“They won’t.”
“You’ve risked enough.”
He buried the cat, came back and sat with them.
At four o’ clock,
no-one having eaten or drunk a thing under the blazing sun all the men were loaded into wagons – save Chayriguet to doctor the useless pulp of Galtier and Chibret – and, irony of ironies, old Feyt and as the women howled their despair, they were gone.
Forever.
As evening fell on the shell of St.Cirgues Jacques walked the back fields to Madame Lacaze. She agreed to come tomorrow at this time. He had one day left as he walked back.
Everywhere; Gorses, Gréze, Roqueyroux, Souceyrac, Senaillac, Lacapelle – at every inhabited dot on the map of the Lot, men were rounded up and piled into lorries, and taken to Cahors. The Germans filled commandeered schools with them. Tongues were cut from the first few who shouted defiance, others tortured for the fun of it, all that night and the next day, until the cold and un-fed men were sent on to Germany and their many deaths. The villages were left to the women, the children and men too old to use. Or abuse.
Jacques boiled water for tisane. The last supper.
Tears mounted and he quelled them. No place now for anything but action. They ate and put their son to sleep and he packed her suitcase with clothes and her books and she watched him. He lit the candle and they took it to her bed and lay, their blood breathing between them in a peaceful sleep a thousand miles away. He woke at midnight and Jacques changed the nappy and Simone fed him, his hunger hurting her bruised breasts. His father nursed him and laid him in the cot and they lay again, both hurting. She dozed on his shoulder and he, who had prayed so often that Time would freeze, and it had, knew now it hadn’t, and it couldn’t.
The babe woke five hours later as a beautiful last day came and they rose.
“She’ll come tonight.”
“They won’t come back, Jacques.”
“Simone – don’t. I beg you. It’s ‘iffing’.”
He took his herd from the barn to their field; by tonight they would be Duthileul’s – but she and the child would be on their way to Life.
He came back to the house where she sat in the rocking chair, her face swollen and coloured, playing with Jacques.
“Let me.”
He put a cotton bonnet Ardelle had made on his child’s head and took him out into the bird-song and the light. He walked him round the barn, the fournil, the garden, the well, out to the field, the cattle, the copse and the view of his home, “Your heartlands,” he whispered to his son; back into the garden, showed him the delphiniums Simone had planted, the vegetables he’d sowed and back up the stairs to Simone, asleep like his mother in her chair. He stood in the doorway keeping his shadow from her and counted the hairs falling across her forehead, the lines at her eyes, the purpling welt of her bruised lips, the mouth he had kissed, the mouth that had kissed his, her neck, her chest rising shallow to the thin dress, her bronzed forearms, her hands, all of her – her ankles – all of her, all of his Simone he printed one last time in his heart’s photo album and then he laid the child on it’s back in the cot and moved around her sleeping, aching to breathe one last time the heat at her neck – but that was all done now. He had been to paradise, lived in this heaven and now it was the day of departing.
She slept till the child woke her, and saw her man sitting, smoking. “Staring?”
“Yes.”
She fed the child and he watched the tiny fists open and close as her milk thrilled him and he sat with them, his family, and the tiny hand grasped his little finger as it guzzled. Silence. No, not so, birds and baby and breath.
He burped his son and handed him back. But the action distressed him so much he took the child again in his arms, nestled him on his shoulder and walked the room as Simone tidied herself.
Lunch. Every common-place thing drenched in anguish. Talk too painful for words. Nothing to do but watch Time pass as he had done so often in joy – now it was all to be wrenched through the dreadful rightness of what must happen.
Simone didn’t, wouldn’t, argue.
With the babe in her arms she knew Jacques was right – but somewhere she guessed she also was right – that the war had passed St. Cirgues and Puech and would not return.
And she dared ask herself what she wanted.
Life here, with Jacques and their child – or more? Was this enough?
Had she even the right to think such a thing?
What of her dreams? The past and the future she’d buried? No!
No, selfish Simone – that was not the question.
The question was the child. If the Germans retreated and the child was injured or worse – what reparation could she ever make when his future had been promised, and paid for, by his father?
None. She looked at Jacques as he went to bring the beasts in and she accepted she didn’t know the future – she couldn’t – she could only take this chance.
They ate their last meal. Only their son had an appetite.
Jacques checked her case, rolled a cigarette and dreaded the dying of this day and the sound of Madame Lacaze’s car.
“I can’t speak,” he said.
“I know. What can we say?”
“That you’ll return?”
“I can’t say that.”
“No, I know. But – that you would?”
“Jacques. Please don’t make me say false things. False hope – false everything.”
“That you would. That would be false?”
Say it – say it for him. Say those words, Simone.
“Jacques, I don’t want to go. Neither of us know where I’m going – how far, how impossible; so there is no future. Yet. No peace. Please. I agree to go – to save our child – and that’s all the future I have.”
He nodded, hurt. She hadn’t said it.
But she did say, “Did you never consider coming with us?”
“No.”
A gulp of hope.
“They wouldn’t take men.”
“They might. I never asked.”
“It’s for children. Not men. I have to stay.”
“How much money is there?”
“As much as you said.”
“Then come tonight and see if it’s enough. What’s to stay for? What did you sell for the money? Don’t tell me. But what’s to stay for? Come. To see. Or to say good-bye.”
Half an hour more with you, he thought, is reason enough; to hold the child in the car, to breathe his smell, and to hope.
“They won’t let me go.”
“I don’t think so either, but come. To say good-bye. No, come for me.”
“I’ll come for me.”
She smiled.
The last hour.
Madame Lacaze came.
“Will you pack clothes?” Simone asked as he stood.
“Simone,” he almost laughed, “all I ever had of value is in your arms.”
“And in my heart.”
“That’s all I need.”
He took the money from the jar, the carry-cot and her case and they crammed into Madame Lacaze’s car. She drove off. “If we’re stopped Vermande, then we are all dead.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for risking my life.”
“Thank you for risking yours.”
As they drove into Souceyrac, silent as the moon, Jacques’ heart hatched a hopeless last hope. Surely the Curé could have been taken? The escape route gone? The Germans had shattered it. Oh, please. We could go home. Give the money back. Live. Hope Simone’s right. The Germans won’t come back.
The Curé was there. And the money warmed his heart. “Bless you. I won’t ask how – but God Bless you.”
“Can he come?” asked Simone.
“No.”
The Curé was surprised by the question and Madame Lacaze shook his hand and went to wait in the car. Jacques stared at the Curé, beaten.
“They’ll leave for Spain tonight.”
He left them in his vestry to their good-byes.
“One last stare my brother-man. You saved my soul, you know that.”
“You made mine.”
“And his.”
“And his.”
In the square Madame Lacaze parped the horn. “I love you, Simone.”
“Good-bye, Jacques. I loved you. If it’s ever safe and I can return – I will.”
He kissed his son’s head and Simone’s bruised lips and turned and left. He shook the Curé’s hand. The man looked into his desolation and told him God had work left for him to do.
Jacques heard himself say, “I’ll bring the children now.”
“Thank you. Bless you.”
He climbed into the car and she let out the hand-brake and it was finished. Finished.
He knew.
No doubt anywhere in his mind.
Madame Lacaze let the silence engulf them for a few minutes. “War,” she said.
“Hell.”
“Yes.”
They drove through Senaillac, another clump raped of men. St.Cirgues – 3km.
“My son killed.”
“No!” Jacques sat bolt upright – Simone forgotten in that shocking instant. “No! When?”
“He killed. Valet.”
“He’s not dead?”
“No. He killed. He took Life. He murdered Valet.”
“But he’s alive?”
“His body is.”
Jacques’ spine spread back into the leather seat. “Valet would have rejoiced at Jerome’s death.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“I don’t know what is right.”
“What you did tonight was.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“That’s selfishness.”
“I know.”
“You’re a good man, Vermande. A simple fool but a good soul.”
“Am I? Why did Jerome hate you?”
“You’ll be spared that – your children rejecting you.”
“But why?”
“What did he say?”
“He never forgave you for looking down on Sara.”
“He only had her so I would.”
“I don’t believe that. Sara has heart.”
“Yes, and years ago you should have claimed it.”
The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama Page 17
