The Silent Hours (5 page)

TRISTAN

Our car is now at a complete stop and Maman tells us all to get out. Papa goes over and talks to one of the other drivers, whose car seems full to bursting with belongings: lampshades, bed sheets, books and clothes are all piled high. If he had a wife and children no one would know, as they’d be buried under all the items. He waves his arms around a lot and shakes his head at Papa. He offers to light a cigarette for Papa, who never normally smokes. Papa cups his hands around it, the light shows up his moustache, a thin angry line.

Maman gives us all a macaroon and tells us to be patient. Eléonore is stretching her arms up like a ballerina, leaning one way and the next to ‘loosen her muscles’. People are looking at her. Luc is asleep again in the back seat. Dimitri is cleaning his glasses quietly next door to him, pinned by a leg. He shrugs at me helplessly. I wouldn’t let Luc sprawl all over me like that.

We climb back into the car and continue on as the sun sets in front of us, leaving great streaks of pink and orange that give the people outside an unnaturally rosy glow and make the whole day even more dream-like. There is a girl, a little younger than me, about eight, dabbing at her mother’s face as they rest under a tree. There is another family all huddled onto a rug underneath an enormous umbrella, bags scattered about them, too tired to go on. An elderly man and woman are slowly pushing a trolley of books in front of them, one hand on the bar of the trolley and one hand in each other’s.

It seems to me the whole of the city is on the road, not in their houses. One man is carrying a saucepan and a guitar. A woman is dragging her child on a sledge; another goes by with a wheelbarrow full of bags. An older boy walks quickly as the younger brother holds his hand, doing little, quick steps to keep up. The older boy looks over at our car as we pass. He’s about my age, I think. His reddish hair is combed into a neat side parting like he’s walking to church. He glares back at me. I look away, pretending to be looking at the sky. My face burns. Why can’t we be there yet?

The minutes crawl by and our car is no quicker than anyone outside. I think we will never get there. It is getting dark now and Papa is talking to Maman about the needle that shows the petrol. Everybody on the road seems quieter in the night, or maybe I have just got used to the sound of boots and belongings dragging, the sighs of those walking. You can’t see them clearly any more but you know they are all out there, like a sea of ghouls walking alongside our car.

If I really try to listen I can make out the artillery fire in the distance, a sort of echo. Papa told me to stop talking about it. I have slept a little but my legs are so cramped now and stupid Eléonore has stretched right out so that she has practically shoved Dimitri into me. Luc woke up a while ago, his blond hair all sticking up so I laughed at him, but then he started to cry so Maman had to shush him and ended up telling us all a story that we used to love to listen to about a merman and his adventures in an underwater kingdom. But she started crying in the middle of it and Papa stopped the car and they hugged. She sniffed and apologized and said she was being silly, but the whole thing made me angry and I wanted to kick the stupid car and run outside and go back home to Paris.

It is past dawn now and Papa says we are going to stop soon and eat a sort of dinner and look for somewhere to sleep. I’m not sure you can call it dinner if you’ve missed all the meals before it but I am not about to point that fact out to Papa.

People outside are squinting up into the sky. I can’t see anything they’re looking for, perhaps some swallows someway off in the distance, but that’s all. No, wait. We have been transported into a moving picture. There is an enormous plane in the distance. Its lights are bright, two big circles of light. We are saved! It’s going to bomb the enemy! It’s going to bomb the stupid Hun!

But it’s coming this way. I make a noise and Papa looks up and notices it too and he shouts and brakes and we all lurch forward. It swoops right down low and passes our car but up ahead we see the people scattering in its path and it is firing at them, firing on the people who are walking.

I can’t believe it: it can’t be happening. It is firing actual bullets and people haven’t time to take cover. They are carrying bags and children and there was no warning. I see the boy with the neat hair standing right in the middle of the road looking straight at the plane; he is frozen, mouth open, as others rush around him, his younger brother isn’t there. I lose sight of him as people rush past, and the lights of the plane pass over. I can’t see him standing there any more, I don’t know where he’s gone.

Papa tells us not to look and he drives the car right off the road and stops by a tree. He tells Maman to stay with us and runs off to help the people who were shot at. I can hear him taking control, like when he ran into the middle of our hockey game once when a boy at school got hit in the middle of his face with a stick and everyone was screaming at all the blood. Maman repeats that we keep our heads down so we all lean completely over ourselves, not wanting to look, and praying, praying, praying that the aeroplane doesn’t come back.

Papa comes back and drives us back up onto the road. He steers us through the spot where the people were shot at. There are still things on the road and I moan when the wheels run over a doll, a book, a shoe. I see the face of that boy even though my eyes are closed now. I wonder if he found cover.

I don’t think he did.

ISABELLE

My thighs protest as I climb, the muscles in my legs not used to walking this far. Keeping my head down I push on into the wind. I feel my ankle almost turn, the shoes I am wearing narrow and slippery on this surface. All around me the weather roars and I feel tinier the further I clamber. Behind me is the village, the shop and the world we live in, impossibly small from this distance.

Standing at the top of the ridge I feel my lungs empty, my breath snatched away by the wind which picks up my hair, whips it across my face, strands cutting across my view as I steady myself, lean into it. The thrill of the air fills my head and I feel everything else pushed out: all my worries for Paul, my sadness for our parents waiting, Maman’s nervous worrying leaking into every room.

Something nudges against the noise: Sebastien’s face, his laughter, his hand hesitating for a second before taking mine, and then my head is full again, of him. I turn in the direction of Limoges, look out across the fields. The tram lines below me twist out of sight, a row of trees weighed down with leaves blocking my view, a fence, another field, green, but I still know it is snaking its way there.

I couldn’t believe my own boldness, the suggestion to meet and the incredible moment when I crossed the street and realized that he was waiting for me. I felt heady and reckless walking along the street with him. We went to a café, shared a chocolate éclair, the price now extortionate but entirely worth it. I told him more about the village, my childhood, giggled at a memory I hadn’t thought of for years: Paul and I building a fort in the garden, pretending the chickens were on sentry duty. I stopped then to watch him, his eyes sparkling as he laughed. I’d wanted to reach across and put my fingers through his hair, felt myself blush with the thought. Something shifted then, as if he had seen inside my head at that moment. The room seemed too small for the feelings I was having. He asked for the bill, paid in silence, looking at me quickly, a hand on the small of my back as we left.

We walked back to the tram in a sort of wordless bliss, the memory of his touch leaving me with nothing to say. He bought me a bag of
marron glacés
which I ate on the tram home, furtively, filling myself up with their syrupy loveliness. Scrunching the bag into my pocket I left the tram, feeling my stomach warm with the sugar, couldn’t eat Maman’s dinner. She protested – the veal was expensive, such a waste. Papa had looked at me, like he’d known. I’d smiled at him across the table, dabbed at my mouth with my napkin as if I still had sugar sticking to my lips, as if my new secret would spill out onto the dinner table.

I couldn’t tell them, they would only worry. Papa seems to have more lines on his face since Paul left, spends more time behind closed doors. Up here I can think again, recall Sebastien’s expression, feel the same calm that seems to descend when I am with him. The wind whistles around me, blowing my whole body back so that I take a step to balance, laugh into the emptiness, my body light enough to lift right off the ground.

PAUL

Dear Isabelle,

You do write good, long letters. Two arrived on the same day a while back and one a week or so later that nearly made me cry. Will you make this letter sound a bit better when you read it to Maman? I don’t have a way with words and I know you will add what I want to it. I can picture you all now crowded into the kitchen, Father with one eye on the newspaper, one giant hand holdinga drink, Maman stirring something on the stove as she asks you questions aboutyour day. You flatly refusing to answer them sensibly, and making Father look up from his paper and do that enormous rumbling laugh, like the tram has come into the village early.

I know you want a better picture of things but I can’t talk about details really, and you mustn’t worry if you haven’t heard from me – I seem to write these things to myself. All I can say is the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of new experiences. I continue to learn things all the time, it is physical and you know I amalways happier when I am outside. I was never any good in the fusty classrooms at home. We march and we clean and we eat and talk. I’m glad to have some of the other men from the village with me; we play marjolet and I am getting much better at lying. You laugh but it’s true. Looking back it is clear you had some kind of supernatural power and all those wins were therefore completely unjust. You tricked me, quite literally, and on return I shall prove it by roundly beating you.

Now, on a serious note, you cannot call Claudette a startled duck – that ismy future fiancée you are mocking and I won’t have it … Oh, I can’t be serious with you and you’re not ever here to laugh with, and I know half these letters don’t arrive anyway.

At the moment, in truth, I don’t think of any girls or marriage or love, all Iwant to be is a soldier. I want to be here in this place, preparing. I want to fight forFrance and do something with my life. This feels big, bigger than anything I ever thought I would be involved in. I stood in the fields in the early dawn on that last day in the village, saw the long strips of soil churned up ready for planting stretching out before me, the low mist hanging over the woods in the distance and I felt good, good to be fighting for our country. I feel France is in my blood and under my nails.

That sounded rather romantic, didn’t it? Maybe you can make a poet of me yet.

Shake Father’s hand for me, sister, kiss Maman and take care of yourself.

Until I return,

Paul

ADELINE

1952, St Cecilia Nunnery, south-west France

Sister Constance nods her head at me as I sit on the bench by the old well. It is in a quiet corner of the garden, its moss-covered walls dark with age, insects climbing hopefully over the surface. I lift a hand to acknowledge her. She is walking with Sister Marguerite who looks at me shyly, her mouth moving quickly, Sister Constance placing a hand on her arm. She stops talking.

Marguerite has pleaded with me to join them for a daily service. I know that I cannot. She says that others still do not think I should stay any more, insistent that I should be made to leave if I don’t start attending services. She walks over to me now. Her face kind as she sits side by side.

‘Sister Constance has told me we might have a few more weeks,’ she says, her voice light. She cocks her head towards me. ‘I love this corner of the garden,’ she breathes, leaning down to pluck a long piece of grass from the ground. She runs it through her fingers. ‘Sister Bernadette needs more help in the garden – perhaps we could work there tomorrow?’

She doesn’t wait for an answer, tips her head back and closes her eyes. A couple of strands of hair have broken free of her veil, are golden in the light.

A fly lands on my lips; I wave a hand at it, a quick panicked gesture. I raise both my hands, wipe quickly at my mouth again. Golden hair.

Sister Marguerite places a hand on my back in the present but I return: the smell of the earth is in my nostrils, the darkness, the insects.

The peas dangle above me but my eyes can’t make them out in the inky night sky. The sounds of men roll out: voices, bicycle wheels bouncing over cobbles, a bark of laughter. They’re replaced by the chatter of insects, untouched by the day, that make their way over the landscape. The men may return.

Flies land on my nose, eyelids. I blink, spit at them, not daring to move from the bed I have made. Beneath the damp soil my leg is numb, the throbbing pain dulled, the chill sweeping through my whole body. I tense, waiting for the shouts to start again but there is nothing now.

I am frozen in the silent hours until I am nudged awake, alert, by the lowing of cows in the fields next door, joined by others, so many, restless, tramping, unmilked, straining in the black. Their voices melt together like a terrible choir. They surround me, frustrated, persistent, and they stay that way forever. I am stuck in the shadows, unable to escape as they all moan for help.

PART TWO

TRISTAN

The trip from Paris might never have happened – almost like a horrible nightmare that you wake from and then forget. As if Maman has given us warm milk and a piece of chocolate and sung us back to sleep. Sometimes in the day, though, I am caught out. I think about a broken doll on the road and remember the noise and the feeling of our tyres slowly bumping, bump, bump.

We’re staying in a farmhouse now, just outside a village, and we have lots to do and see so I do often forget. It is only in my sleep that I have to face a blurred witch through a window, a wrinkled old woman who tries to claw at me. Her fingers look like Grand-mère’s but the nails are dirty. I always wake up then and lie still as a statue, trying to remind myself she never gets through the glass.

Our motorcar broke down south of Paris and Maman cried. We waited in the longest line of people I had ever seen for a train to take us. When we got on we had to have all our belongings piled high on our laps. We couldn’t fit it all on and some things were left in the trunk and Papa sold one man his jacket for food for the journey. Maman cried again.

It was quite fun on the train as there were a few other children and Dimitri and I managed to make a friend called Grieg. He also lives in Paris, not near us but in a district miles north, so we didn’t know his school, and he was an only child which I think is probably dull, although it might be nice to have the first choice of everything.

We stopped for a while as they were fixing the tracks or the signalling; I was only half listening when the conductor told Father that the train behind us had been ‘strafed’ and Papa nodded solemnly at the news and I guessed this was not good and hoped it wouldn’t mean more delays.

We slept all curled up, leaning over bags and boxes. Eléonore was being a bit weepy and so had to sit next to Maman for the whole journey, which didn’t seem like the best plan as they often set each other off. Dimitri and I managed to build a sort of den out of a bag of clothes and a thick, knitted jumper which made for quite a good pillow. The train was so busy and more people arrived at every stop. One man stood in the aisle for the entire journey as his pregnant wife tried to sleep in a seat next door. He apologized to people who wanted to get past him, and had to pick up an old suitcase and move it every time they moved through. He was standing when I was awake and eating a biscuit, and then I slept. When I woke up it was dark outside and I could see the man’s outline still in the aisle. It must have been the middle of the night. He was still standing in the morning. He’d stopped saying sorry to people who wanted to get past.

We’re staying with a couple who know Papa; Monsieur Villiers was at university at the same time as him and is now the mayor of a town near here called Limoges. He has a wife who was quite friendly when we first arrived but has since been rushing around like a whirlwind, and can get angry if you slow her up or get in her way. She is a different sort of woman from Maman – her hands are red raw and her nails are splitting. I also saw her chopping logs outside with an axe that was practically as tall as me. Monsieur Villiers is as wide as she is with a stomach that spills over his trousers. He has lots of dots of hair on his chin, not like Papa’s moustache which is always so neat.

We are staying here until Papa has worked out what to do. I would happily never travel again. On our first night here I realized that we hadn’t slept in beds for a week. It isn’t the same as home though, as I have to share the bed with Luc and Dimitri. It’s quite a squeeze but better than the train or car. It felt so good to smell the fresh sheets and stretch right out so that, even when I was pointing my toes right down, I was still ages away from the foot of the bed. Dimitri got the bolster and put that underneath our pillows so we had extra padding. Luxury.

After breakfast, Madame Villiers asks her husband to get the coal in from the shed. He tells her he doesn’t like being ordered about and slams the door as he leaves. He returns (with the coal) and she says something about his boots. I think they must have been muddy, and he stamps all through the hallway. Maman and Papa never shout like this and we are seeing everything.

Madame Villiers marches out of the kitchen, waving the frying pan around her head, and threatens to brain him. He starts shaking a fist at her and uses language that makes Maman shuffle us outside with her hands over our ears. It’s truly dramatic and I can still hear them going at each other from our room upstairs. We have to sit quietly on the bed as the voices bubble below. Maman is sitting with her hands in her lap, every now and again twisting her handkerchief and saying, ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Eléonore copies her, sitting in shocked silence, while Dimitri and I struggle to hide our giggles. Luc just keeps looking out of the window at the sunshine.

Once the voices stop (did she brain him? – it seems quiet) we are told to put our coats on and be ready by the front door.

‘We’ll go on a walk,’ says Maman, clapping her hands and standing up.

Madame Villiers appears in our bedroom doorway, red in the face and still looking thunderous.

We race right past her, no one daring to raise their eyes to meet hers.

‘That bloody man,’ I hear her say to Maman, who mumbles something about a glove in reply.

Maman’s coat is barely on as she walks down the stairs, through the front door and down the garden path.

We all follow her in a line. She goes down one road and then looks left and right when the road stops, uncertain as to where to go next. I think it’s unusual, Maman in charge of us all like this. Normally we have Clarisse or a nanny. Madame Masson had been the latest in a long line of nannies, she smelled of peppermint and used to talk about her only son who had died in the last war from a disease – something called gangrene, I think, which Dimitri told me was when your limbs fall off. It sounds disgusting.

No one is really in the mood and it starts to rain a little so now we are all just hoping Maman might let us go back and sit by the fire and play with some toys. Eléonore found an old set of dominoes in the cupboard in her room and we played with them this morning, making a line of them run right under the bed and out the other side. Dimitri starts kicking at the pebbles in the road and Luc starts saying that he’s getting wet and even Eléonore is looking put out, although she would rather die than complain to Maman. Luc tugs at Maman and she takes his hands and rubs them and starts to sing him a little song about a bird in a garden but Luc shakes her off before she gets to the chorus and runs on ahead. Maman comes to a stop and announces we have walked far enough and we all just turn and walk back again, towards the house.

We don’t know what’s going to happen. Maman doesn’t know any of the answers to the questions about Paris or when we are going back or if we’re staying here or going to go and live by the sea. She has an Aunt Augusta who lives there but I’m not too bothered whether we do go there, as although the sea is lovely Aunt Augusta is less so. She makes us take baths every day. She says children are always dirty. Once she made Dimitri strip down and wash his entire body from top to toe at the outside tap when he came in from a walk, and it was October.

I don’t dare ask Papa who has been in and out of the house every day. He keeps talking about his offices and whether they should all relocate, which means move I think, and I’m not absolutely certain what Papa does but I know he had lots of people working for him in Paris in banks so I suppose he is trying to find out the news from there. Everything is up in the air, and with the arguments between Madame and Monsieur Villiers added to that, we don’t know whether we’re coming or going.

I’m starting to think I wouldn’t mind going back to school.