The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

It became clear natural sympathies rested with Jerome. For all his enumerated faults he was a human-being. Dominique was bland, a creation of his despised father. The election was there for the taking. Sara wished The Prefect could close it, produce the urns now, and he might be saved. As a Mayor. Ridiculous, but. As the tide against them rose Jean-Louis stood from his seat. The meeting stilled immediately. Madame Lacaze straightened. Here it is.

  Duthileul waited for silence and then addressing the Hall said, “Is it right, I ask our commune, to elect someone who – we must call a spade a spade – robbed us, criminally, of one of its most valued members?”

  Quiet.

  Jerome froze.

  Dominique, he later dimly remembered, did not. The meeting turned to Jerome.

  The election, the future, was there for the taking. Right there. Sara, Arbel, Madame Lacaze, everyone, could feel it. Get this answer right and ride home.

  Jerome went to stand and stopped, arrested, as Madame Valet rose to her feet. Immediate silence.

  “Point of order, M. Chairman.”

  “Madame?” said Bernadie.

  “I was widowed, was I not, by the politics of war?”

  “In my estimation,” Bernadie unhesitatingly replied, “yes, Madame.”

  “Then as I have nothing but respect for the character of M. Lacaze, may we not keep now to the politics of peace?”

  The election was won. Vote now. He’d done nothing – she’d won it for him. Vote now. It was done.

  Dominique Duthileul scraped back his chair and stood.

  The babble in the hall dropped again. To curiosity. What could he possibly have to say?

  “I rebuke both my father’s question and its inference.”

  The room hushed deeply.

  Madame Lacaze stiffened with apprehension. Dread.

  “We must live in the future, not the past,” he said. “What has been done should have no bearing on what needs to be done, or why.” Everywhere necks strained to see Duthileul Pére reddening.

  Dominique paused.

  “Further, I have to say, and publicly, that I take issue with my father’s action against our neighbour, Jacques Vermande.” Absolute silence.

  “What’s done there is also done and I ask my father now, as a gesture of goodwill for the future of this commune, to publicly withdraw from his action.”

  He looked to his father. Everyone did. Immobile.

  As the meeting waited Dominique seemed to turn the screw.

  “We have been at war. We need to heal and wounds kept vengefully open can only fester and cancer us all.”

  Silence.

  “Well, father?”

  Silence.

  Jean-Louis rose, gathered up his hat, almost inaudibly growled, “As you will,” and elbowed his way out of the meeting.

  Dominique stood whilst his father made his way through the stunned room, then as all eyes returned to him, nodded to Jerome to speak, and sat down.

  Too late. No need.

  The election had just been won.

  Madame Lacaze’s jaw hurt. She couldn’t help but admire the tactics.

  Jerome drank hard all day Saturday and on the Sabbath Dominique was elected Mayor. Jerome was invited to stand on the council but as he chose not to be able to stand at all, that chance, if indeed chance it was, was gone too.

  Sara watched as her pissed ex-husband weaved about the platform.

  “Vive Ma Pauvre Republique!”

  She took Zoe home.

  Madame Lacaze shook Jean-Louis’s hand. “Congratulations.”

  “Madame.” He even motioned to bow. “May I introduce my son?”

  “In a moment. May I ask a personal question?”

  Jean-Louis Duthileul’s eyes registered surprise. “Of course, Madame...”

  “Why do you go to Church?”

  Jean-Louis allowed what he trusted was a private smirk to calm his briefly rattled spirit. “Oh, hope?”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “Show?” he offered.

  “Form?”

  “Voilà.”

  They nodded. “And yourself?”

  Madame Lacaze flushed with outrage and Jean-Louis took the woman in for the first time. Strong shoulders, petite breasts, neat waist, thickening legs – and, of course, money.

  Madame Lacaze stared hard into the walnut face, plonked on rounding shoulders, above the paunch, and the good legs.

  “We have so very little in common, Monsieur,” she said, whilst hearing herself think, ‘And I will have such revenge on you for that – and all of this.’ And she smiled.

  Jean-Louis sensed Something.

  An impulse moving in her. He returned her smile, “I’m sure neither of us meant any offence. My son.”

  His arm beckoned and Dominique abruptly left off his conversation and appeared at his father’s side.

  He offered his hand.

  “Monsieur Le Maire,” Madame Lacaze took it, almost bobbed, but held herself.

  “Vive notre Pauvre Revolution!” her son droned from a chair somewhere.

  “Madame Lacaze – would you please consider being a member of my council?”

  “Yes. I will consider it.”

  “I’d consider it an honour.” He let the hand go.

  “You flatter us both, sir.”

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  Dominique Duthileul smiled. It was warmer, more generous than his father’s but she returned it, thinking, “And I will take revenge on you both for my son.”

  He could feel grit with each blink.

  He had a day left on this section before he would have to lift the first of the corner stones. He would need to strengthen the stairs. Assuming he could lift and carry the stones, he certainly could not afford for the stairs to give. And there’s the lintels over the two windows. And the two beneath them. They’re bigger yet. Fix the stairs. No. Finish the wall first.

  “What did you find to talk about with M. Duthileul and his Mayoral fils? And where’s the brandy?”

  “Politics. There, sot.”

  “He wants your money. Are you blind?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Blind. Perhaps I want him in my bed.” She relished the chaos on her son’s face.

  “This village should be quarantined. There’s no-one sane it.”

  “Sara?”

  Jerome poured a tumbler full. Half way down the glass he thought of going to see Celine Valet.

  Galtier cycled up with the photo. This’ll break his heart. He left the envelope lodged in the door and went across to Duthileul for another celebratory glass and a pre-council talk. Immigration – that’ll be the new world problem when the Nazis surrender...

  Jacques found the letter when he next slung a sack of the small stone over his shoulders. He dropped the sack on his top step and it tottered over and spilled a pebble cascade slowly down his steps as he gazed at the stamp, took the letter inside, closed the door and took out the black and white image that begged the question how many times can one heart shatter?

  He sat and read.

  “Here he is, here we are and where are you? I have two jobs, he has two teeth and you have two loved ones. The war is over isn’t it? Japan seems mad...”

  The letter detailed their lives, the buildings, smells, noise, speed, everything but any notion of return.

  It ended “Write to me, please, tell me what it is you understand so perfectly,

  Your friend and much much more Simone.”

  Dominique Duthileul’s council consisted of Madame Lacaze, Galtier, Severine and in a temporary advisory capacity, Bernadie. There should have been ten but there weren’t.

  He exposed the huge square granite corner stones of the barn-end wall. If I push them off, spose they break? ‘And much much more’ And much much more. He took the photo from the envelope and kissed it again. Strengthen the stairs.

  In a drawer he found the photo of his father. He wrote on the back, “Show him his grandfat
her. He should know his history. You are mine. Jacques.” He wiped an envelope dust-free and sealed it. I won’t go to La Poste – I’ll wait for Sara. And work. Strengthen the stairs. But something in him said this was wrong. If he was taking the house down surely there was another way than building bits of it up. It was wrong. He began on the stone of the north wall.

  Arbel worked. Ate and swapped the platitudes that pass for meal-time conversation in a wounded house and they began to make love again. Not intimately but Ardelle waited and held him and hoped.

  Dominique’s one rebellion from his father’s vision of the new St. Cirgues was to take the flat above the Mairie. So his father need only place a man in Dominique’s job.

  Jean-Louis went to the family LaCroix.

  He offered Renée the position of working his farm and a wage he couldn’t, and didn’t, refuse. Meanwhile, and more pressing, his mother was approaching senility fast and couldn’t be trusted to cook any more. Jean-Louis went to the Tabac, took his corner throne, stared at the mid-day-sloshed Jerome and thought.

  The Conseil General had called for nominations for medals for war-heroes. Such as Arbel Jammes, offered Monsieur Le Mayor. The tiny council nodded.

  Or, Galtier moved, Jean-Louis, who had given money and helped with the parachute drops, wasn’t that so, M. Bernadie?

  Bernadie left the council at the end of that meeting.

  “You’ve no need of me. You’re absolutely fine. In control. Bon courage.”

  He had a last drink with Jerome.

  “Some you lose. You risk your life for a standard, a faith, you turn around and it’s gone. Like yesterday.” He drank. “When they start with the statues we’ll blow the buggers up. I know where there’s some dynamite...” A grin came and went. “Should have executed them both. Too late.”

  “Too late,” Jerome agreed and smiled emptily.

  “Go back to her. Get back to them both.”

  He was gone.

  Jean-Louis suggested to the new Mayor that it might be an idea to invite the council members round for an aperitif, ou quoi... One night. When Spring came. Or the surrender, the Armistice.

  24

  St. Cirgues smoothed its feathers and sat to cackle. Of course they’d voted for the wrong man. Of course they’d been duped. Jean-Louis had control of the village now via his mouthpiece son. God knows what they’d get up to. Mind you, Lacaze revealed his true colours, hadn’t he? The drunk. People shrugged. The rich always win, isn’t that so?

  The Allies were on course for making twenty million Germans homeless. Laval was arrested and to be executed. Petain too, when they found him. De Gaulle nationalised the Renault factories.

  Madame Valet prepared lessons.

  Arbel ploughed. And Sara. And Renée Lacroix.

  The cycle re-started. The hibernation of winter and war was ending.

  Mayor Duthileul had Severine print letters announcing the re-opening of school

  The letter to America with the photograph of little Jacques’ grandfather waited for Sara to call. He left the two pillars of corner-stones and worked on the windowless north wall, under his tarpaulin wigwam. The rubble of the house began to fill what had once been a garden.

  The Maternelle re-opened. Sara packed Zoe’s bag.

  Madame Valet took five children – Alexandra, Arno, Cara, Marie and the youngest, Zoe, into her school-room.

  And she took the drunk into her bedroom.

  In the newly silent house Madame Lacaze suspected he might have gone back to his wife and daughter but some instinct knew that wasn’t so.

  He was missed in the bar, but no-one cared to question why. It was quieter and that was better.

  Celine accepted it was insane.

  Time would reveal them and what then?

  But she lead him upstairs again, and willingly embraced their sensual oblivion again, thinking – whatever happens it cannot be as good as this.

  She could become addicted, like him to alcohol.

  Why doesn’t Sara come? The letter to America remained unposted. Why don’t you go and see her?

  Or walk to La Poste? What have you become?

  He worked on dismantling his walls rather than consider that.

  Celine’s tidy home rotted around them as they spent more and more time exploring sex. Every position, any fantasy – their appetites unending, it seemed.

  They made love on the table, under it, on the stairs; the whole house became a lust-sack. Between her years of emptiness and his desire to never think again, they created an empire of exploration. It was so total only school and food interrupted them. And at meals they would bargain potatoes for buttons undone, wine for underclothes removed and the plates and cutlery clattered and congealed on the floor as they swept a place clear to lay one or either down for the other to feast on. Both brains transferred wholesale to their loins and answered only those questions, those cravings. And each week-day morning she would dress prim and tidy and hope the facade held. Till she could get home.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” Ardelle said at supper, serving soup.

  Arbel cried.

  She waited, afraid to touch him, and he wept and wept and left the soup and took her once in his arms, stepped back and went out to the village for a bottle.

  In the café he read that Dresden had been obliterated and 130,000 were dead.

  And he would be a father.

  He walked back up the lane, a full early Spring Moon casting his shadow sharply, knocked on Jacques’ door, jiggled it just so, petted the barking dog quiet and when Jacques stumbled, gritty and clothed from his sleep Arbel said, “You’ll need a beast to pull that cart now it’s thawed. Help yourself.”

  And went home to his family.

  Two men came back from Germany.

  Jauliac, aged terribly, and George Gley. The rest were dead. Madame Jauliac folded the wretched shocked body in her arms, as did Gley’s sisters, consuming them with tears of grateful horror. Dominique, encouraged by Madame Lacaze, decided to re-instate Chibret’s feast for returning heroes. But to wait for VE day. When his father suggested the same idea over their thin Sunday meal Dominique was pleased to say, “It’s already in hand,” and then felt anger at his father’s condescending, “Good, son.”

  It took Jerome a week of sex and alcohol to realise he was akin to a sexual prisoner. And a more than willing one. Craving even. This oblivion of flesh was perfect. Barring only that it be acknowledged. He dressed.

  “I have no-one to talk to,” Sara said to Jacques’ back. She sat in the attic grime, watching him.

  He swung the bag of stone over his shoulder, took it down the stairs, loaded it onto the cart, came back upstairs, opened the bag, laid it on the floor next to his wall and prised out the next stones. A minute or two passed.

  “How are you going to take those corner stones down?”

  Jacques turned slowly, his back bent beneath the sagging bache and his eyes passed from her to the stone columns.

  “You don’t know?” Sara was surprised. A fragment of Time passed. “How did I get so old so quick?”

  He had the bag filled. Swung it onto his shoulder and as he passed her at the top of the stairs she asked, “Would you miss me if I didn’t come?”

  “Yes,” he said and went down the stairs, loaded the stone on the cart, came back upstairs, opened the bag, laid it on the floor next to his wall and prised out the next stones.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The bache drooped on the shrinking stone-work.

  She lit a fire, pulled water from the well, boiled it, took the winter vegetables she’d bought in her panier, covered the pot with the clean muslin she’d bought to counter his dust, and the soup smell eventually penetrated even his grit-loaded nostrils. She sat stirring, tasting, as Jacques went in and out of the house with bag after bag of stone. Finally he stopped in the doorway and said, “That’s ready.”

  He swept the top layer of stone and grit off the table with his gritty sleeve. Found two bowls and
blew a cloud from them.

  “Wash?” she said.

  He rubbed his hands on the arse of his trousers – more dust – and sat to roll a cigarette that was one quarter grit to three of tobacco. “How is Zoe?”

  Sara looked up. Grey man speaking. Grey man asking. “Surviving...”

  They ate. She ate, he savoured. Every nuance, every possible flavor he filtered around his grimy mouth, but most of all the heat. Hot food.

  Madame Lacaze now felt for certain wherever her son was he had descended. She also knew who she blamed and the idea, the possibility and the compulsion of revenge took a more serious grip in her.

  The school-teacher wished the mothers and children a good weekend and on the way back from shopping saw Jerome in the bar.

  Her blood stilled.

  He looked up. “Celine!” Ancient raddled heads turned. He waved her to come in.

  “I’ll carry the bags home.” That was enough.

  He’d said enough. On purpose? What was the difference now? She came to sit with her lover for a drink.

  A fire, a fag and Memory.

  The dog rolled over in a dream, his feet twitching, running, chasing; snorting through his nose.

  Jacques looked across the fireplace at his woman-friend. Sitting there. Where...

  She was right. She had aged. And saddened. Still earthed though. Rooted.

  He heard himself say, “Sara...”

  “Jacques.” She didn’t look up.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He dropped the fag-end in the ash.

  “I was telling myself your name.”

  She laughed.

  “What?”

  “Is this Life?”

  When she left, taking his letter, she said, “Lay some hay beneath the corners of the house and push the stones off. One at a time.” She couldn’t be sure but he might have smiled at that.

  On Sunday when Celine returned from Mass she and Jerome sat perfectly still. Waiting. Talking of what each would do to the other. Zoe forgotten. Hours of dirty luscious endless talk. As dusk came they went upstairs, where she tied him naked hands and feet and beat him with her clothes till he spurted all everywhere and she licked the love up and then lay as he tied her and licked her to screaming bliss.