A Soldier's Tale (7 page)

The abbey had a double iron gate set in an arch in a long whitewashed wall.

Not here, she said, trying to pull her arm away from his firm grip.

We'll see, he answered, and gave an impatient tug at the long iron bell-rod. A bell clanked surprisingly near, a single ugly note, and a small bent man in a worn black soutane came out of the porter's office.

You speak English, parlay onglay? asked Saul.

The old man shook his head.

Tell him we want to see the gaffer, said Saul, you know, the boss, the chief.

Écoutez
, she said,
ce monsieur est un officier anglais. It veut parler au père supérieur. Conduiseznous, s'il vous plaît
.

The old man nodded, mumbling. He opened the gate with a big old key and led the way across the courtyard in which the cobblestones were polished by rain.

You are a fool to bring me here, she said. They will know who I am, what I did. There is danger here, just like outside.

You don't have to worry about danger while you're with me, he said. And I thought these monasteries were supposed to be sort of holy places? You don't
seem to think much of your Church.

Looking round at her, he saw that her face had that pinched look again.

It has been a terrible war, she said. There are no sanctuaries left.

The old man hurried on before them with his scuttling walk, across the cobbled yard, along an open corridor and into a wide inner courtyard. The buildings had severe white walls and steep-pitched slate roofs, the white walls darkened with rain and the slates gleaming with a leaden sheen. There was a chapel with an ornate scrolled front, and another building that might have been a hall of some kind. But the old man turned aside into a short colonnade, and led them into a room that opened off it.

It seemed to be a visitor's parlour, and little used of late. The old man whispered and muttered to himself as he clattered open the window-shutters and scuttled off, leaving the door open. The room was musty, damp and cold. Belle shivered. There were three high-backed chairs covered in faded tapestry; they sat on two of them. A nondescript book bound in black leather lay on a small table. Over an empty fireplace hung a huge old blackened picture of some female saint with dishevelled hair and gleaming eyes fixed ecstatically heavenward.

You see, she said. It is cold, dead. No one should come here.

Perhaps I was wrong, he said guardedly as he looked round the bare seedy room with contempt. I thought it was a chance we might take. I don't know much about your Church really. It's like seeking refuge in the house of Rimmon.

She looked at him angrily, not understanding.

There was a sound of firm sharp steps outside. Instead of the priest-figure that Saul expected a French officer stood for a moment in the doorway silhouetted against the pale daylight, and then entered the room. Surprised, Saul rose to his feet and snapped him up a smart salute, which the officer returned with courtesy. He was dressed in olive-drab uniform and cylindrical blue kepi, a shortish bulky figure. He removed his kepi and sat casually in the third chair, turning towards the light as he did so, and they could see that he was perhaps in his middle forties, with thick short greying hair and a pale square lined face.

Madame, he said, nodding towards Belle. Monsieur le Caporal. Can I 'elp you?

He spoke correct English, like the
maquisard
school master, but with a heavier accent, as if out of practice.

Excuse me, said Saul, Sir, we was expecting the father superior.

He glanced at Belle to see if he'd got it right, but she shook her head.

I am the father superior 'ere, said the officer, glancing down at his uniform. Since the liberation (he gave it the French pronunciation) I am recalled to the flags.

You'll be a chaplain, I expect, Sir?

The officer smiled and Saul could see how tired his face was.

In my country, unlike yours, priests are not exempt from the conscription. I am a captain of artillery. It is more fitting.

Like I seem to remember, Sir, said Saul, that in olden times your bishops fought like knights but carried maces, because that way they didn't have to shed blood.

As for that, Sir, I believe that we may smite the unrighteous. But for a priest it seems strange. Christ wasn't a fighting man.

But 'e was a friend of soldiers, the centurion 'e loved for 'is faith and discipline. And saints 'ave been soldiers.

Joan of Arc, said Belle unexpectedly.

Exactly. You are from Rouen, Madame?

He looked across at her sharply.

Yes, she answered in a low voice. When I was a child they took me to see that prison where they kept her before she was taken and burnt. Soldiers did that to her.

The way I heard it, said Saul, it was some of your bishops.

Collaborators, said the priest sharply. Like as today.

The woman flushed.

Collaborators, she said, it is easy to say, father.
Les collabos, ça se dit si facilement, si on ne connaît pas les necessités, les terreurs.

Mais nous sommes tous dans cette galère, ma pauvre fille
, said the priest, and turned politely to Saul. There 'as been great—pression?

He turned back to Belle, seeking a word.

Pressure, she said.

—pressure, he went on. Imagine, mon caporal, five years, men 'ad fear for the families, the friends. God forgive weakness. One must live. But it is another thing for some ones who—betray.

He hesitated, glancing around the bleak room and the grey light that leaked in through the window, the defiant ugliness of austerity. Then he raised his tired hooded eyes to her almost shyly, ashamed of what he must say to her.

I know, madame, he said, your name, your family. I know why the strike group is 'ere to seek you.

Look, Sir, said Saul, she's been too friendly with the Germans, she's not denying that. I expect she's not the only one. But those men out there, they're going to kill her. If she's really done something wrong, then put her in gaol, let her be tried.

Who do you think are running the gaols? said Belle bitterly.

Saul went on looking at the priest, trying to reach the compassion that he sensed in him.

What about forgiveness? he asked, nodding towards the dark painting on the wall, the penitent with her lustrous weeping eyes raised to heaven in repentance and joy. What about the woman taken in adultery? And casting the first stone? Sir, he added as an afterthought.

He had spoken quickly, and the priest hesitated, only half understanding.

Belle translated in a low voice:…
la femme adultère…sans péch
é…
jette la pierre le premier
.

The priest sighed.

If alone it might be so simple, he said. I know who you are, why you are 'ere. The Réseau Alésia.

Belle caught her breath.

There was a cell of the Résistance in Rouen. You
betrayed it to your lover in the SS—

Father, please, I swear—

We think we know almost what was said, and when. I am
résistant
myself. We 'ave the reports. And more. He leaned forward in his uncomfortable chair, hands clasped together, staring at the floor.

One of the dead was from the village, he said. They were strange people, the Boches, very methodic. They sent back the body for the burial. In a sealed coffin, naturally, a coffin of lead, and one of wood. Forbidden for to open.

He went on, picking his words slowly, painfully, clearly.

So we opened it 'ere, in the cellar. One of our doctors was 'ere, for the autopsy. The young man 'e 'ad submitted the torture. They—(he gestured)—I cannot say it before a woman. And 'e 'ad not spoken, for others should have died. 'E was the son of old friends. I cannot 'elp your friend, mon caporal.
Je ne peux rien faire pour toi, ma pauvre fille
.

Belle pressed her hand tightly to her mouth—no gleaming orbs raised to heaven, but red eyelids and a snotty nose. Saul stood up suddenly and stood behind her, hands resting on her shoulders. The priest-soldier stood up too, and they faced each other
over Belle's bowed head. The Frenchman still had that shy, almost apologetic look; Saul's heavy jaw was clamped tight with anger, against himself and his inarticulateness, against all the clever educated people who could talk and argue.

Look, Sir, he said slowly, I'm not clever and I can't beg. I'm sorry about your friend's boy. I don't think she had much choice really. I'm not asking she be let off, only for her to be kept safe till she can be tried properly, according to law.

She 'as been tried, said the priest. The judgement is passed.

You're a priest, said Saul, don't you believe in God's mercy?

I do not speak as a priest, I speak as a soldier. I 'ave orders.

You'll carry the guilt of this all your life, Sir.

You, Monsieur le Caporal, have you not killed?

I have, Sir, but that was fair fighting, against men.

'Ave you not killed young men, boys perhaps, with the gun, with the knife? (He glanced down at the broad knife at Saul's belt. There was a little silence.) You see, to be a soldier, it is to 'ave guilt, to carry guilt for others, all our lives. The guilt is necessary.

He went slowly and turned around to face them in the doorway.

Tu veux faire la confesse, ma pauvre enfant?
he asked her.

She glanced up at Saul as if in explanation and shook her head. The doorway was empty and they could hear the officer's sharp footsteps retreating along the cloister.

Come on, girl, said Saul, let's get out. We're wasting our time here.

She got up quietly and obediently—no need to grasp her arm now. The old man came hobbling up and escorted them out; the gate clanged shut with finality behind them. The cloud was broken now with patches of blue, the hedgerows smelt of damp earth and the birds were singing. A flight of Spitfires roared in low and tailed off in the direction of the front.

Belle walked beside him in sullen silence.

Cheer up, girl, he said, I said I'd take care of you, and I will. You shan't be hurt, I promise.

The Church cannot save me, she said, do you think you can?

Yes, he said. It was so absurdly confident that she laughed bitterly, but it changed things, and the warm dank earth smelt of life after the bleak austerities of the abbey. He took her arm comfortably.

As I try to visualize the scene in the bleak visitors'
room, to follow it back, track it through his eyes, decode it from his laconic speech, I am baffled. I can still hear the phrases he used—She was very quiet-like, you could see she didn't like it—This priest, I didn't take to him, he looked crafty, sort of. I can reconstruct the surface reality which they represent in a cryptic and oblique way. For example, when he called the soldier-priest ‘crafty' he was translating the Frenchman's pain and embarrassment, for which he had no name, into a childhood Protestant stereotype.

I can see the pictures, and up to a point I can perhaps understand what they mean, the woman first sulking, then afraid, humiliated, angry, the priest's horror and revulsion. But both are also baffling—in spite of all, the woman's lack of shame, the priest's lack of compassion.

As I write this, it is just after eleven o'clock at night, and the transistor on my desk is carrying the BBC news for Monday 19 February 1973. The body of Marshal Pétain has been stolen from his felon's grave on the Ile d'Yeu by political resurrection-men, either to be tossed into the sea or to be reburied at Douaumont, in the haunted wasteland of Verdun. Either way it is sinister and strange, conjuring old ghosts, recalling old stories (as in Hans Chlumberg's play,
Miracle at Verdun
) of the war-dead rising in
their thousands and marching back with rolling drums to accuse the living. Either way there will be no rest for the old hero, old traitor, though (my God) the Occupation of France is thirty years gone. (The Irish have remembered for three hundred years, the Jews for three thousand.) Some bitternesses never die. As she tried to tell him: You do not know, you should be glad you do not know.

As for Saul Scourby himself, perhaps he simply assumed that, since the woman and the priest were foreigners and Papists, their minds would be unintelligible to him, like their language. He waited patiently, as if in a solitary ambush, for something to move his way.

When they got back to the cottage, Charlie had cleaned up and brightened the fire in the stove, where the blackened kettle was starting to boil. As they entered the door, he had thrown open the grate and was blowing gently on the fire, so that the red-gold light of it lit up his thin pale face and faded blue eyes with a rich glow.

Wotcher, Charlie boy, said Saul.

Hullo, Corp, he said. Hullo, miss. I won't be long, the kettle's singing and I see you got some dry bread in the bin there so I'll make a nice bit of toast.

And he stabbed a slice on to a long kitchen-fork and held it steadily to the flames. Belle sat down slowly at the table and pulled off her head-scarf, letting her thick red hair fall loose around her shoulders. Saul unclipped the magazine from the sten, checked it over and quietly set it down by the dresser. He looked at the woman, who sat silent and still, watching Charlie at his domestic work. The first slice of toast was turned and finished and set down golden-brown on a plate. The kettle boiled and tea was made in the enamel coffee-pot. A second slice began to toast and the kitchen filled with the good dry smell.

Will you be mother, Corp? said Charlie. Sorry we ain't got no fresh milk. 'Ave to use powdered. Don't taste the same without fresh milk. S'pose all the cows must've died round 'ere.

You wouldn't chuckle, said Saul, the fields are full of 'em, legs stuck up in the air. You mightn't believe it, but Charlie here is an expert on milk.

As he handed her the tea and toast, Belle broke off her introspective stare at the firelight and asked, Are you a farmer, Charlie?

Charlie laughed, a shy wheezy chuckle, at this small familiar joke.