The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  He boiled water and cooked a chicken feast casserole for his friends and it smelt so good when he used the pepper for the first time since Simone left he laughed and told himself he hoped they didn’t come.

  At church everyone guessed why Arbel and Ardelle were not at Mass and everyone smiled forgiveness. Madame Lacaze nodded to Sara and her mother and passed muslin-wrapped bonbons to Zoe, taking the kiss Sara prodded her into giving. Duthileul Pére again cracked his starched face open to smile at her and it raised a curious nausea in her. And, as the Curé invited them all to celebrate Arbel’s deliverance, Madame Lacaze fleetingly wondered whether he, the Curé, felt either a hypocrite or simply a coward for still being here when so much of his flock had been taken. And then knelt for ten minutes after the ‘Go in Peace’ to beg His Almighty forgiveness.

  Sara, Zoe and Mamman One cooked and ate their thin celebration. Beyond the innocence and health of the child they hadn’t a great deal to celebrate. But they toasted Arbel’s return and Ardelle’s relief with full hearts.

  Jerome drank a bottle of good red, more than his share of a bottle of port and was into the brandy. His mother sipped at her glass. They had eaten Christmas dinner.

  They had not spoken.

  The silence suited them both.

  They had exchanged neither presents nor touch that morning. And she had not told him about Arbel.

  It was ready and he would have to go round.

  He had an idea. He crossed the lane, wished Jean-Louis the season’s best, paid for a vat of milk, came back and was churning for cheese, when he heard Ardelle’s clogs on his stone staircase. “I’ve cooked us dinner,” he said.

  “Smells good.”

  “You’ll both come?”

  “I think we should tell him in his house, don’t you?”

  Today, then.

  “Yes.”

  He rose, sudden dread in his thighs.

  He left the dog in a house smelling of cooked chicken and gravy. “How is he?”

  They walked the few metres. “He’s – he’s home Jacques.”

  As they neared the house Jacques said, “Must we, do this? Today?” Ardelle said, “We said he wouldn’t judge us badly. I can’t live with this a secret.”

  They came in.

  Arbel was older now than both of them. His hair had thinned and seriously grayed. Jacques’ beard and uncut mass of curls felt like mockery. The two men shook hands, hugged again and Ardelle moved round the table to sit next to her husband.

  “We missed Mass!” Arbel laughed and poured them all a glass.

  “So did I.”

  “Shame on you.”

  Jacques sat opposite. He looked at Ardelle. She expects me to speak.

  O.K.

  Speak, then.

  Speak.

  “What?” Arbel grinned.

  “Simone...”

  He stopped. Wrong. Wrong place to start.

  “Of course! Where is she?”

  “Oh – America.”

  Change the subject, quick now change the subject.

  “Is that – good news?”

  “It was the worst. I – wanted to die.”

  Silence for one second.

  Not a pause, nor a beat – but ocean-deeper – a whole second of total silence.

  Speak.

  “Ardelle – comforted me. And I – I comforted her.”

  Arbel tasted the change in the air. “And is this good news?”

  “It was. It was.”

  Ardelle saw Jacques’ mind stall.

  “Husband – he and I shared your bed once. That one time.”

  Silence much much longer than a second fell.

  “Pass me that wine.”

  He drank the glass she poured, then reached for the bottle, to hold it, to have something to squeeze.

  Water, dripping somewhere.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “We – didn’t... I didn’t...”

  Again his brain seized.

  Again silence.

  “Husband?”

  No sound, no movement.

  “Arbel?”

  “Wife?”

  The word seemed to scrape through his voice-box as he looked round at her.

  When his gaze shifted Jacques’ eyes fell to an examination of a knot in the wood of the table-top.

  “Friend?”

  Arbel poured another glass and let it stand.

  “I’ve spent two years learning how not to think – and now…” he thought, “Now I can’t think.”

  “I’ll leave,” said Jacques.

  He opened the door, tried to say something.

  “Arbel. It was – friendship – not desire. Not Lust.”

  “It was penetration,” Arbel said quietly.

  He left them sitting at their table. A candle guttering.

  Two glasses, one empty, one to be emptied. A bottle.

  A man.

  A woman.

  The sound of his clogs left them.

  With a private silence now. Ardelle froze. “Is this why we missed Mass?”

  “Yes.”

  Jacques ate the tiny amount he could force past his emotions and the dog demolished everything else. Groomed itself, licked Jacques’ draping hand gratefully and slept like a baby next the dying fire. The milk had curdled. Still no cheese. And now I do feel a Judgement on me. And this is mine.

  Sara came with Zoe. Christmas evening.

  Jacques made the supreme effort, focusing on the child. He and Zoe sat close on Arbel’s bench in the fireplace and she showed him the candied bonbons. Five left. Jacques could hear her brain working out how to offer them round so she would surely get two. He kept his focus on the child, because anything was so preferable to talking. Sara saw he didn’t want to speak, respected it, took it as his thinking of his family on this day.

  “Are we going to see the sad woman?” Zoe looked anxiously up at Sara.

  Before Sara could respond Jacques said, “I think you should leave them for today.” He even managed a kind of tortured wink for Sara to misread.

  “No, they won’t want to see us, not today. So, eat up.” Jacques and Zoe breathed an inch of relief.

  “And she must the happiest woman in the whole world, today. Isn’t that so, Jacques?”

  “Of course she is.” How simple lying is.

  Sara’s eyes rested so fondly on his he had to ask in a desperate hurry, “And why isn’t her father here with Zoe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He watched his hand reach to rest on hers. Two of her fingers gently squeezed his.

  “I thought I was mad. He’s certifiable.”

  Zoe didn’t understand either the words or the context but she recognised he had paid her mother a warmth. She smiled at him. It took a minute or more in a house with half a roof for either adult to realise.

  New morning and weather for ducks. A veil of thin rain. Arbel emerged to breathe this, the fresher air he’d dreamt of. To taste the view he’d held in his mind’s eye.

  The reality he’d clung to. That fool’s mirage.

  Jacques’ house was covered in a tarpaulin and Dominique Duthileul was walking Jacques’ herd to the pasture behind Duthileul’s house. What?

  He’d walked all that way, imagining home. And it was this. It didn’t fit. Nothing fit.

  And now Duthileul Pére came to his doorstep, saw Arbel and waved. Called inside the house and the old woman shuffled out beside him, gazed across at Arbel, nodded, sniffed the rain and shuffled back inside. Duthileul raised his cap.

  By reflex Arbel tipped his finger to his brow and turned. And went back inside to -

  His roof?

  Simone in America? Him and my wife?

  He opened a bottle and had drunk it in the time Ardelle walked ashen through the house, out to their beasts, milked them, walked them to their mudding pasture, and returned, wet.

  In the awful silence she laid a fire and lit it.

  She went back o
ut into the sodden grey for water. Puech has been raped, she thought.

  Like me.

  Oh God – I haven’t told him that. I won’t. That wasn’t my choice. The wife-robot made coffee.

  “Do you want some?” She dared to offer. To break the iron silence.

  He looked up at her. “You haven’t been to confession, have you?”

  “No.”

  Silence. Worse.

  Nothing he’d held in his heart – nothing he’d anchored his soul to – nothing remained. Nothing. You keep the faith – and it all goes shit.

  In a conversation.

  The bowed head, the aged shoulders, the heart-break in him. Why?

  Why had they spoiled his life?

  Why hadn’t they carried that weight?

  It was theirs – their Sin – their lie – their stone, hers and Jacques, and they’d loaded it onto a man freshly returned from a Hell they couldn’t begin to even want to imagine. Why had they been so selfish, so guilty, so eager? So needy?

  And what now?

  This silence is choking. I deserve it.

  Where is warmth? Gone.

  I don’t deserve warmth. He does and I’m neither worthy nor capable of offering it. Not fit to. I’m where I deserve to be.

  I accept. But him? Where’s his comfort?

  “I’m going to church,” she said in a silent voice. Nothing. No movement.

  She took her coat and beret, wrapped a scarf around her throat and walked to the door.

  He sat at the table – the nothing man. She walked into the drizzle.

  Half-way down the lane she saw Jerome, Sara and Zoe coming towards her.

  Jerome waved a bottle in each hand and she could feel Sara’s smile. “No! No!” she screamed, waving her arms, shooing them back. “No! No!”

  They stopped.

  “Go back! Not today. Please!”

  She watched Sara turn the child and take her ex-husband’s arm and force him to turn too. Dragging him. Ardelle stood in the drizzling lane and waited till they’d turned the corner. She waited till she was sure they were not going to return. Then she knelt.

  The crude tarmac bit into her knees. She welcomed it. Had always associated prayer with pain. She put her hands together. Looked up into the spitting grey.

  “Guide me. Comfort him. Save us all.”

  Her head sank down. Rested on her chest. Water dripped down her neck.

  “You know I’m sorry. Penitent. Forgive me for telling him. Forgive me all my trespasses. Please.”

  “Name of the Father...” she intoned and crossed herself and pushed herself upright.

  She stood in the lane. Turned. For Home. Headed back up the lane.

  As she walked past it Jacques’ house felt as silent as her own. As leprous. Disturb it? She couldn’t. For what? Bear your cross, woman.

  What had happened? Jerome had wanted to see Arbel. Ardelle screaming ‘no’? Sara didn’t know. So, he vaguely kissed his daughter and headed to the bar.

  Jacques sat in the wreckage.

  I hate myself.

  And I regret. So much, too much.

  I won’t have to look into his eyes, now.

  So. The sooner I’m away from here the better. A beast. I need a cow. Oh, no.

  I should have asked them to lend me one before we – Ugh! Agh! Damn and silence on this rancid selfish brain! Buy one.

  I’ve enough. Or barrow it all. Hand-barrow your house. Take the rest of forever – what does it matter?

  Isn’t it plain insane anyway? Aren’t I trying to turn back time? Is that what the rest of my wretched life is for?

  If it is for anything. God’s work? Ha!

  I will deal with it as it comes to me. But I can’t go towards people anymore. I’m poisonous for others.

  He stood.

  He went upstairs.

  He started on the horizontal cross strips. The no-headed nails were a pain – who’d invented them? His grandfather clearly never imagined anyone would ever have reason to remove them. Ha! Too many of the slats split before he thought of taking them out from above, by loosening the hole round the no-head with his penknife and lifting the slat out whole. His back pressed against the bache, rain lashed at him and he did not care. There was nothing nature could do to him. He split another slat with this thinking and cursed the damned thought that had wasted that strip of ancient wood.

  Madame Lacaze checked her cellar. At this rate her son and his alcohol needs would be back in the Bar Tabac by early April.

  Jerome too counted the stacked summers and wondered what, if anything, he might have learned by the time he had finished them. Which, he accepted, had become one of his very few objectives. And he knew he drank rather than consider any others. He thought about Zoe, but only carnally did he recall his wife and he owned up, to himself, that he had used her as a red-rag to the sow sitting reading by her expensive Dutch stove. Why? He had absolutely no idea.

  As the day ended she marked her place in the book and went to her room, placing a hand on the back of her son’s chair for an instant as she passed. She knelt and prayed continued thanks to God for her son returned. Prodigal he was, but home. And in bed she wondered where His will would lead them. And as these days moved into weeks her bed felt warmer. The blood in her thighs warmed, and one night reminded her she was only 47 years old.

  21

  Ardelle farmed in the rain.

  Jacques Vermande took his roof off.

  Arbel drank as Ardelle worked around him.

  Jerome drank as his mother cleaned around him.

  The Allies advanced, as implacable now as The Hun had been.

  The priests of The Allies gave thanks as The New Year dawned.

  Simone went to Cathedral in New York.

  The main beam. Nine metres of oak. At least two men put it there. And it was never meant to come down. It couldn’t of course, till he’d dealt with all the tiles and slats and cross-pieces, but still.

  And snow soon.

  Is this impossible?

  Mad.

  Am I like Louis now? Is this my mushrooms? It’s your work. Do it.

  I have no beast to take my home to Janatou. What moon is it?

  Mad moon season.

  I miss her. Him. Them. Life. Warmth.

  The chimney must stay till last. And I’ll need heat there. For the dog. And the beast. What beast – I have no beast. A stove. A pipe running outside the bache. Why not?

  Despair, that vicious Arctic wind, enveloped him in an icy grasp. No, don’t!

  Think, quick!

  A beast. Deal with it.

  Start digging out a garden at Janatou.

  If I were to buy a beast where would I graze it? Janatou. Duthileul won’t let me use what was mine.

  He went outside to piss. The dog followed. The cart waited, half laden.

  Arbel sat in his silence. Poured a glass. Sipped at it. His eyes looked round, again. Another day, then. Nothing has moved.

  Should I go to confession? Do I confess. To feelings of – what? He drank the glass and poured another.

  My God.

  That I lived for this.

  The snow came as he’d known it would. A metre and a half. He’d never get to Janatou now before the thaw. If he’d been there he’d never have got back. He wasn’t sure which he’d prefer.

  So day by day he dismantled his roof. The tiles, beams, struts, nails were stored on the cart or in the caves. Dominique coming and going with his herd became as unremarkable as dusk and dawn. He became cocooned in his dwindling building. He’d step out to toilet or fetch vegetables or wood for a fire when he was truly perished; but otherwise, climb the stairs, remove the roof, don’t think, store it, climb the stairs.

  Sara struggled up the snowbound lane to see Arbel. Her galoshes were soaked and her skirts sodden. She found Jacques’ house colder than the walk and him, lean, stinking and unwilling to stop work. Or talk.

  Ardelle and Arbel had a fire to dry by but no other warmth. Though she hug
ged him and kissed and rubbed his hands and he smiled, the effort was not disguised. Their lips were set thin as string. Yes, they talked and nodded and listened but they wished her gone.

  The sky darkened winter-quick. Sara sloshed home and Zoe had a painting of a man made of tomatoes to show her.

  Ardelle and Arbel came to Mass for the first time together, but they did not stay to drink. They did not stay to talk either. They were the first out of church and no-one was given the opportunity to shake his bony hand, tell him how very glad they were he’d returned. Even though his return made their own loss the sharper. Mass was the ritual of Sanctity and nodding. Sara to Madame Lacaze, Madame Lacaze to Sara’s mother and Duthileul and Dominique to Madame Lacaze, which she, curious with herself, began to return. If God did look down on St. Cirgues He must have wished them a Spring.

  Chibret sat in his office and thought of his responsibilities as a Mayor. To his commune. He took a piece of paper and doodled. By the fourth attempt he was satisfied and passed it to Severine. “Print this and have Galtier deliver it everywhere.”

  He went out, pleased, to find who could plough the snow off the lane up to Puech.

  Severine read, ‘New Year’s Night. A Feast! Salle de Fetes. 7.30. Celebrate!’ There was a half-way decent drawing of a champagne bottle and a cruder one of a roasting duck. She dusted off the printer.

  Chibret returned, phoned the commune of Grézes and arranged that their musical troupe would play. He had the lane cleared of snow and drove up with a first copy of the poster.

  He stood, beaming, on their doorstep, whilst Arbel scanned the paper.

  “I won’t come,” said Arbel.

  Chibret rocked on his heels.

  “I’ve printed the posters…” he spluttered.

  “I won’t come.”

  It was snowing again. The Mayor and Arbel looked at each other.

  “This is a commune, Arbel.”

  Snow and silence.

  “A commune of ruined lives—”

  “I know that.”