The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  “Their future?”

  “The fuck-wits.”

  “Allow me, if I may be so bold,” The Mayor weaved to his feet, “to escort a free woman home…?”

  “Enchanté, Monsieur,” replied a merry Madame Lacaze. He made a clumsily gallant bow and giggled.

  She stood, gathering her bag. “Goodnight one and all.”

  Two final heads lurched a nod.

  “One for all,” Dominique repeated foolishly.

  He held the door open and sucked the evening air deep inside. Madame Lacaze dipped under his outstretched arm, bobbing out into the square.

  Freedom.

  Victory.

  There was both a nip and a warm breeze. They set their steps for her house.

  “A good day,” he slurred, “No. No – A great day.”

  “A very good day,” she agreed.

  “Madame Lacaze, as I must be so damned bold, but what is your name?”

  So.

  He was the one, he was the first. He would be well rewarded. “You may. It’s Elianne.”

  “Elianne,” he purred. It sounded like an approval. She approved of his approval. “Dominique,” she added.

  They walked. A curtain or two moved.

  As they passed The Gendarmerie and the last light he took her elbow in his hand and she leaned into it. They walked.

  “I appreciate your support,” Dominique said. A slight shiver ran through his mouth and it wasn’t the cold.

  “Likewise,” she pressed into his arm and almost giggled. “It means – a great deal,” again his lips and jaw trembled. Don’t kiss him, she ordered herself. No matter what, don’t. “Thank you,” and her voice just trembled too.

  “You’re cold.”

  “No.”

  His coat was round her shoulders in an instant. He stretched his arms high above his head and bellowed, “Peace!”

  His voice careered off, swallowed in the night.

  “I could do anything,” he heard himself say.

  “I’m drunk, too,” she said.

  “I know – I’m enjoying that.”

  Defences were lowering. Caution.

  “Are you? So am I.” She laughed and imagined she’d recovered herself.

  “We should do it more often,” he gushed.

  “We will.”

  “We will?”

  A beat.

  Careful, Elianne.

  “On Sunday?”

  “Oh! Yes, Sunday – God! I’d forgotten! Yes. That will be...” he paused. “I was going to say magnificent but I’ll settle for fine.”

  She said nothing and he blurted, “No, I meant you and I.”

  “I know you did.”

  Oh, taste the power.

  “And you said, ‘we will’?” His feet slowed as his heart sped.

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  Ten charged, silent, strides and she peeled his coat off, folded it into his arms.

  “My door, thank you young man,” and she curtsied.

  “My pleasure. My pride, Madame,” he bowed.

  “Elianne,” she reminded.

  “Elianne.”

  She kissed him three times on the cheeks, hesitated and the drink had her lips on his for a touch, a genuine kiss of contact and gone and through her gate. “Good night.”

  Dominique stood there, everything racing round him. Everything. She walked into her front room. Deliberately, drink focusing her actions, she turned a single side-light on. Placed her hands flat on the iron-cold Godin, felt the shiver run right through her, and her feet moved in an almost forgotten jig.

  One and two and a one and a two and a turn and two and a kick and spin. One and a two...

  Laughter belched from her and her hand stifled it and her feet stopped lest somehow the love-struck Mayor should hear.

  Hell, no.

  Dominique, walking, whirled between the taste on his lips, a cold dread of Vermande and Sunday, the warmth of the alcohol, Peace, the night, his father and – the taste on his lips.

  He’d sleep in the Mayor’s flat tonight.

  The dog slept in his arms with Jacques’ coat on top of both them and the blankets. Wet warmth.

  ‘Jean Louis’ she thought as the hang-over bit.

  Jean-Louis, today.

  It was moving fast now.

  “A party dress? What’s that? What’s a party?”

  “A special day.”

  Sara’s mother had cloth, scissors, measures, edgings, cottons, wee buttons, two magazines, their patterns and a mouthful of pins. “Wait and see,” said Sara.

  “Will papa be there?”

  Sara and her mother glanced at each other.

  “We don’t know,” said Sara, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Is that why it’s a party?”

  “Shut up and stand still,” Sara’s mother managed without swallowing a pin.

  Would ‘they’ come?

  As the hours to Sunday passed the whole commune came to that question. Sara and her mother cut and sewed and didn’t discuss it. What was to discuss? Pray to God for the child’s sake they don’t. Sara’s mother briefly considered, and she was not the only one, calling round to beg them to stay home; but she wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t attack him if he stood in front of her.

  He will, I know him, Sara thought. I’ll leave. I’ll take her home. Why are we making this dress? It’s to be spoiled. By her own blood. This is a world I’ll never learn.

  Dominique’s nerves too were rattling hard. By Saturday afternoon he was in his father’s kitchen.

  Jean-Louis was not best pleased to see his son. But his invitation to Madame Lacaze’s house ‘to discuss their detail’, gave him reason not to display any negatives.

  Dominique came straight to the point. “Can we move them tomorrow?”

  “Move who?” Jean-Louis looked puzzled.

  “Lacaze and her,” stating the blindingly obvious. “Haven’t you a place in mind?”

  “Of course not!” His father gurgled with buried laughter. “Are you mad?”

  “I thought – I understood you and Madame Lacaze had agreed...”

  “So we did.”

  “On a place? A house – a room?”

  His father laughed openly. “On him? My money on him? You are mad, boy.”

  “Then what have you and Eli – she agreed on?” Dominique cursed his damned slip of the tongue, but pressed on. “She said she’d split the cost...”

  Jean-Louis absorbed the snatch of her name. They were talking money.

  “We will pool our money – but not on vermin.”

  Something in Dominique chilled. His hands came to the table-top. He pressed them down. Behind his father his grandmother nodded and grumbled from her dark fireside corner.

  “On what, then?”

  “The future...” Again the nauseating smirk.

  “What future?”

  The old fox arched his back, preened and took a long breath. “Whose future,” he corrected.

  Dominique cracked. “Sunday, tomorrow, is my future! And if they come – it will – it could all just – go...” he finished lamely.

  “Have the Gendarmerie place them under house arrest as a potential public nuisance.”

  “We’re celebrating Peace!”

  Father and son looked at each other.

  He shouldn’t have raised his voice. Weakness and need were apparent. And would be punished.

  Jean-Louis settled back in his chair. He’ll say nothing now, damn him.

  I know him.

  Fine, neither will I. Five seconds passed.

  “Father, please – what do I do?”

  “You’d like my counsel?”

  The old bastard was like a rancid elephant – he forgot nothing. “Yes.” Dominique’s teeth ground.

  “Please..?”

  Dominique cracked again. “I’m the Mayor. I’m the fucking Mayor!”

  “Language.”

  Both men looked at her.

  Jean-Louis
composed himself. “Of course you are, and my counsel, for what it’s worth, is that they will come – and then they will leave.” Dominique blinked.

  “And what’s that idea based on?”

  “Oh, you know – experience?” That bloody smirk.

  “I don’t trust you, Father.”

  “Neither should you.” And said with approval.

  “What have I got,” Dominique leaned forward again, “that you want?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Son.”

  “Oh. Are you sure?”

  When Jean-Louis smiled again Dominique had to leave.

  He stood on the doorstep and watched his neighbour, grey as November, loading his cart.

  He strode across to Arbel’s house.

  Arbel had made a bench and he wouldn’t hesitate this second time. A booze-up, Peace – and to spread the joy of her pregnancy. “We’ll be there,” he told Dominique.

  “Good man. Is there any point asking him?” Arbel looked past him to Jacques.

  “You can try.”

  Dominique stood in what had once been a garden.

  On the cart oak beams and floorboards were stacked. The bache was now a shallow pyramid that would run any rain off it. The house was a stone staircase leading nowhere, and the remnants of his cave walls. From which Jacques picked more stone and tossed it into a barrow.

  The longer Dominique stood there the more he was sure Jacques wouldn’t and couldn’t share. Anything.

  “Vermande.”

  Jacques loaded stone into his barrow.

  “It’s over.”

  He’d heard those words before. Used them.

  “The war. It’s done.”

  He straightened, caught at his back.

  “Well, not in Japan – but here. We won.”

  Jacques turned back to his work.

  “There’s a celebration – a meal – in the village. Tomorrow. Please come?”

  Jacques took a key stone out, chalked it, placed it in the barrow.

  “So, it’s not over?”

  “For us, yes. But it – no.”

  Work.

  “But soon.”

  “Tell me then.”

  He bent to his barrow and walked to the cart, unloaded it, walked back, ripped at the stones and it seemed to Dominique he worked faster.

  Soon.

  ‘Soon?’ What’s soon? Six years ago it would be over ‘soon’. Work. Soon.

  Work. It gets soon if you work. Obviously.

  Jean-Louis wondered if Eli meant Eleanor. Like The Yankee President’s wife.

  He would check the register in Severine’s office.

  He formally requested her hand.

  “Jean-Louis – I’m flattered and honoured.”

  “You’re neither, my dear – I’m not a fool. But I’m delighted you accept.”

  “I haven’t,” she reminded him.

  “You will, though.”

  “When we’ve agreed the detail, yes.”

  “Money?”

  “Voilà.”

  She produced cognacs.

  Jerome got out of bed. He stood.

  She waited.

  The single light, that fluttering candle of possibility he’d seen at the bottom of his bleakness beckoned. He considered it.

  “Where’s the drink?” Celine Valet blanched.

  “There is some little difference in our ages,” Madame Lacaze said gently, “What if – heaven forbid – I should survive you?”

  “Then a percentage of my estate would go to my son.”

  “Naturally. What percentage?”

  “Well. If, heaven forfend, I should survive you – a percentage of yours would go to your son?”

  Elianne Lacaze thought for one cold second before she said, “Of course.”

  “What percentage?”

  “Whatever you had planned for your son I’m sure would be just, Jean-Louis.”

  He smiled. She was neat. “What was it?” she prompted. “Half.”

  “You lie.”

  He smiled. “I do.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know,” he added, “But you think I won’t always.”

  “I’ll hope you won’t,” she countered.

  “Meanwhile?”

  “Forty per cent?”

  That wasn’t a lie so much, she saw, as the first time the man has even considered the idea. Of giving money. It almost tickled her. Then he said, “How much would you leave your son?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jean-Louis nodded respect.

  “A woman after your own heart?”

  “I hope so, but I doubt it.”

  “Oh, but I’ll prove it to you, sir. I promise.”

  “Really?” Jean-Louis’ old balls rustled.

  “Why, yes.”

  Jerome felt like shit.

  He was shit. Inside and out. Refuse. Rank. Worthless.

  He turned to Celine.

  “Sex?”

  Her eyes lit.

  “Get a bottle.”

  “Where will we live?”

  “Wherever you wish. Elianne.”

  Oh, but I will punish you for using my name without ever asking it.

  She smiled.

  At Janatou he’d noticed blossom, Spring’s calling card. At Puech there was none. “It’s because we’re higher here,” he told the dog. That and his trees choked with months of dust.

  They would live in his house, then.

  “What will you do with this?” Jean-Louis asked.

  “Oh,” she demurred, “we’ll think of something.”

  The dress was ready, the child was completely over-excited and Sara considered going to see her husband. And didn’t. Couldn’t trust herself. She’d seen her, yes; but him and her, no.

  “And – the place, the room? For – them?” Jean-Louis dared glance round the room.

  She laughed at him. “You don’t imagine I would allow that creature over this doorstep?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “In hand,” he said. She laughed again.

  “Dear one, you can’t lie to me.”

  “I can’t, can I?”

  They laughed. “We’re more alike than you dared think,” he said.

  Jerome dressed.

  “You won’t get any, anywhere.”

  “I know that,” he snarled.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I don’t need a nanny.” In his poison he almost added ‘goat’.

  “Really?”

  They walked to Feyt’s house and were told the news. Of The Victory and of tomorrow’s celebration. He shook the old man’s hand in a parody of joy and stumbled back.

  Celine led him back to bed where he shook such dry tears for the memory of Captain Phillipe, his lost comrades, lost hope, lost youth and his lost soul.

  They talked all afternoon, settling details and avoiding, till last, the real issue. When do we tell our children?

  Jean-Louis, warmed through by cognac, money and the promise of something he hadn’t considered in so very long said, “We tell him, Jerome, tomorrow, at the meal, surely?”

  She took her time to nod; no mistakes now.

  “You think so?” she said.

  Jean-Louis had gathered enough of her ways. Here was the nub of all this, he was quite sure.

  “When you said,” he leaned forward, demanding and receiving eye-contact, “you could think of no means to make him accept a room – away from here – you meant beyond disgracing him. Driving him away. Repulsing him. Didn’t you?”

  In the beat of her silence he was suddenly nervous. Had he misjudged all this?

  “That’s what this is, isn’t it?” He pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s been your plan all along?”

  ‘Partly’ she thought as she bowed to his perception, “Yes.” She watched her flattery warm his Pride.

  “It’s a good plan.”

  His voice was not patronising.

 
; She demurred, surprised. Where was he driving now?

  “I’ll go and see them.”

  She blinked.

  “Tell them I’ve rented a place in Lacapelle.” He fished in his pocket. “Here are the keys.”

  She was genuinely surprised.

  “You see,” he smiled, “I can lie to you.” She smiled at his pleasure.

  “How long have you rented it for?”

  “A month. They’ll be finished in a week.”

  She nodded. “He’ll be back and living here, probably.” He nodded. So that was her plan, eh?

  “And her?” Madame Lacaze asked.

  “Who cares?”

  “Perhaps he does.”

  Jean-Louis snorted. “He won’t once he’s away from his audience.”

  “Exactly,” she said, tasting the bitter sadness of agreeing with his contemptuously correct analysis.

  “We understand each other.” A quiet began.

  “And your son?” Madame Lacaze hoped she sounded curious and almost disinterested.

  “When I get home. Happy news shouldn’t wait.”

  Elianne Lacaze and Jean-Louis Duthileul smiled at each other and sat back.

  Finally he said, “I’m glad I met my match.”

  “You old fool,” she said.

  He placed a surprisingly warm, soft palm on the back of her hand. “I’m old – I’m not a fool.”

  Jacques worked.

  “Have you found them a place?”

  “Yes.”

  Dominique was surprised. And genuinely grateful. And then suspicious.

  “Thank you,” he managed.

  “When will you tell them? Today?”

  “I won’t. You will. You’re the Mayor.”

  He placed the keys and an address on the table. Dominique looked from the keys to his father. “Why are you doing this?”

  The kind of question his father liked. “You asked me to...”

  “No. Why are you doing this?”

  “Oh, you’ll see.”

  “Has she paid?”

  A gesture that read ‘none of your business’, but the old man thought, ‘She will.’

  Sunday dawned.

  Jacques rose, worked.

  Sara worked.

  Dominique scoured the clear sky for clouds.