The Avignon Quintet (110 page)

However they dined very early, for the winter dusk fell betimes at this season, and then the children were sent up as warming pans to warm the beds made with fresh, rain-smelling sheets. The little boy insisted on performing this service for Constance’s bed, for he had been hopelessly in love with her since the beginning of the last summer. He lay still and thoughtful, gazing open-eyed at the ceiling, remembering how she looked when almost naked, in her old-style bathing costume. He groaned. He had been so jealous of Sam. He put his hand upon himself and imagined how it would be if he could get Constance to make free with him as his sister so obligingly did when they played in the barn. He groaned again and turned from side to side in a small paroxysm of desire. (And to think, thought Constance to herself, nobody noticed such things before Freud discovered infantile sexuality. It is quite unbelievable.)

Then she admonished herself by saying, “Dear me, being schoolmarmish again. Every mother must have known it, seen it; but social convention gagged her, she couldn’t speak about it.” Yet she was not so sure. As for the famous infantile sexuality there had been an incident during that memorable last summer which had been anything but equivocal. It had happened one morning when Sam had forsaken their nest-warm bed, to brave the cool of the weir and gambol among the water-lilies, leaving her half-stunned between love and sleep. The sun would soon be up. So, lying there, dozing dazedly, she felt the sheet drawn back enough to admit the smaller body of Blaise’s son who slid down beside her, into the circle of her arms, to shower kisses upon her sleeping face. She awoke surprised and lay there nonplussed for one long moment, unable to formulate a form of conduct to suit this forbidden intrusion which at the same time seemed almost innocent because of the youth of the young Tarquin, who did not seem able to help himself. He was in an agony of love. Emerging through the barrage of tiny bird-like kisses she found herself saying,
“Non. Non. Arrête!”
but even as she uttered them she felt his small throbbing penis tremble and discharge like silk against her warm sex. What should she do? It was a quandary! The speed of the assault had taken her by surprise.

She managed to utter the saving words without undue priggishness but it was already too late, the deed was done, and the boy’s transfigured face spelt out the innocence of his emotion. His weapon had now started to shrink and wilt, he uttered brief smothered cries of pleasure and buried his face between her breasts. This would not do, and she was about to take a more forceful and definitive line when providentially they heard the latch of the kitchen door down below click open, and a step fall upon the kitchen flags. In the most miraculous way the boy disappeared – as if into thin air; it was an act of the purest de-manifestation! He slipped out of sight and sound so swiftly that she could not even formulate her aroused reproach, and even began to wonder whether she had not dreamed the whole episode. But no, the little pool of semen was there, proof positive, with droplets caught hanging in her bush. She dozed again, or tried to, until the reappearance of Sam and the renewal of his caresses, his cool flesh turning warm under her responses. They made love once more and slowly, a little wearily; and because the incident and her own arousal made her feel a little guilty she felt overburdened with the truth and the desire to confess – or nearly as possible! She needed to feel a vicarious absolution in this richer, deeper coupling with her mate. “I’ve been raped,” she said, but in such a way as to make it sound a jest. Obligingly he took it as such and said, “By what – by a dream, or a wish, or a clergyman’s thought?”

“Yes,” she said, but not specifying.

“Well, you are pretty warmed up,” he said, with a mock sigh of sadness. “One always has to thank the other, l’
Autre
, the Lodger, the sod …”

“Homosexual ploy, that,” she said, proud of her new analytic skill. “Ah, the public school.”

“If there were world enough and time,” he said, most unexpectedly, and bit into her bottom lip until it hurt intolerably. “Constance, you as my
ideal
girl will always keep a gilded dildo for doldrums – as when I go to the wars, like.” She felt him deeply, deeply sad.

“You authorise me, my Lord?”

“Anything you do is fine,” he said. “Only because it’s you, that’s how I feel it.”

“Only because it’s me?”

“That’s it, that’s how I feel it.”

They lay staring into each other’s eyes as if mesmerised for a long moment before he turned on his elbow and groped for a life-saving cigarette. “My dear,” she whispered, and put her arms upon his shoulders which were still cool from the waters of the weir. He did not mean a word of it!

As absolution that was all there was and it would have to do.… And now, remembering these past events, so sharp in memory’s focus, she told herself the real reason for her decision to stay – it had not even been clear to herself until a moment ago. The truth was that for all these people Sam was not dead, he was still in an unspecified somewhere which would one day divulge him again and restore him, blithe and unharmed, to this landscape, to these people. It made her a little shamefaced to realise this, for she had rather strong views about sincerity; but she needed time to herself, time to stare Sam’s death out of countenance. Here she could live without having to give an account of herself or of him. For how long she could not tell, but evidently one fine day, when she could resume life to the full, there would no longer be the need to cheat. She would assume his death before the world.

The fire in the range blazed up now, and their dinner which consisted of a large
ragoût
of various palatable scraps, conjured from God knows where, and eaten with that rarity, a home-made loaf, smelt marvellous. The children came down and announced that the beds were blazing. Their mother despatched them to bed betimes to save fuel, but they refused to go unless their father gave them a glimpse of the family of ferrets which he had just managed to acquire. They were kept in a large wooden mousetrap of the old-fashioned kind, one with several compartments, almost like a small apartment. Blaise said, “To call in the farm-guns as the Germans did could have spelt starvation for many – perhaps it still does, who can say? But I thank God for the warrens of rabbits in the forest, and for these little fellows. I had ten conies yesterday. Aren’t they pretty?”

The ferrets were sleek as very tiny greyhounds; they slid about their cage with an evil composure, their eyes gleaming as they made a queer little clicking sound. The children were given their glimpse but not encouraged to caress the little animals. “To bed,” cried their mother. “Kiss the ladies goodnight and off you go!”

Constance did not fear that the son of Blaise would risk renewing his addresses as she had successfully quelled him by hinting that if there were any renewal of such behaviour she would inform his father of it. The boy turned pale and from then on avoided her stern eye whenever chance brought them together. The threat weighed heavily upon him, as well it might. Nevertheless now, after such a lapse of time, the event itself did not weigh so heavily, and she kissed him lightly, giving his shoulder a squeeze. They locked up the little duty car in the great barn of the Bastide where Blaise lived as caretaker to absentee tenants; it would not do to let the motor freeze in the whirling mistral which had risen upon the night, like an outrider of the coming snow. They said goodnight and locked themselves in the kitchen, having blacked out the room with scrupulous care. Nancy Quiminal played a hand of solitaire on the kitchen table in order, as she said, to calm her spirits before sleeping. Constance brewed a
tisane
of sage – she had picked some in the field outside the house.

When they crawled into their tepid beds and bade one another goodnight Constance felt that for her the war had really begun; this was her first night of it and Sam was still alive, had been unobtrusively salvaged from the wreck of the world.

Both girls slept badly, unaccustomed to the sense of emptiness engendered by the country noises which came to their ears from the garden with its sombre greenery and tall pines and chestnuts, and from the strip of forest which lay beyond the high road. It was not fear, but strangeness which bade them rise before first light and set the old oven going to brew morning tea. They had begun to move imperceptibly into winter – the dawn showed it with its sullen crimson gashes, its clouds wind-scarred from the fitful mistral of the night before, its ringing frost upon the highroad leading to town. Quiminal remarked upon it when the little duty car rumbled and skidded downhill to the town, and added, “Now our troubles begin; the cold will soon strike.” But they were in good heart after all, the trip had refreshed them, and they supported the insolence of the soldiers at the checkpoint on the bridge with a vexed resignation. Now they could see the point of having a uniformed driver to conduct them, for he would bear the brunt of such encounters with the soldiery. It was as good as having an armed guard. “Paradoxically enough, our dangers will come from the
maquisards
when once they form – if ever they do.” The loathing and despair engendered by Vichy was apparent from her tone.

But good news awaited them in the form of permission to travel about the area replenishing medical stocks in hospitals and clinics, and this task was delegated to Constance, as the newcomer, a fact which rejoiced her. Here was a chance to move about, to restore her contact with the Provence they had once known as a playground; it was as yet not quite a cemetery, despite the depredations of the Germans. Even in chains, like this, denied all the brilliant trappings of its bullfights, Corsoes, village fêtes, religious or secular foregatherings – its life-giving ethos of pious joy and unbridled paganism: even now as it was occupied and defeated, it emanated life and hope. So long as there was one point of light in the bleak world there was hope. And Constance was irrationally proud that it was England which had fed this flame. Though the defeat and the betrayal hung heavy, people had begun to feel that it was redeemable. It was sufficient to hope for the moment. And in the final analysis hearts rose to realise that already France Libre under its youngest General had twenty thousand French volunteers under arms … None of this could be said; but in every look cast at a German soldier or at a member of the Milice there was a buoyancy which conveyed the thought. The insult was there to be read, which is why both the Huns and their instruments took special pride in their routine cruelties. It was their reply to the silent reproach of the public’s charged silence. A new kind of hate had been born, and it was with anger that they filled the trains to bursting point with poor half-demented souls from the camps, bound for the better equipped camps in the north. It was with deliberate pride that they ordered them to go slowly, at a walking pace, through the town and over the famous bridge, so that everyone could see their captives. In olden times they would have impaled them and stuck their heads on pikes to be exhibited along the walls, over the gates of Avignon. Yes, but the enormous numbers of such quarry precluded such a medieval gesture, or else certainly the Nazis would have revived it, as they had revived ritual beheading.

Sentiments and emotions such as these are difficult to express to oneself unless they are illustrated by some concrete instance which stands forever as a marker, a history which clinches the matter. So it fell out for them.

One such train, full of children and adolescents – some girls – slowed to a halt upon the main line at dusk, in a light skirling snow. The doors of the wagons were open or ajar and from them flowered these pale, exhausted faces in abstract expressions of estrangement or grief. It was a bereavement just to see them and to know oneself helpless to aid them. The Red Cross truck was crossing the sidings below the main road when the lights held it up for the train to pass; the whole expressive object with its penitential cargo of suffering passed directly across the vision of Constance as she crouched beside the driver. Their own cargo consisted of medical supplies bound for Nîmes and its clinics, but it also contained a treat of one hundred whitemeal loaves for the children. The flour had been hoarded and saved with great difficulty, and every week this little offering was given to the young, either in Aries, Nîmes or Aix. It was not much, but it cost thought and time – and a certain sharp practice. As chance would have it, Nancy Quiminal was at Constance’s side, for she had asked if she might be given a lift as far as the Lycée, and she shared the sombre vision with her friend. But she was quicker-witted than Constance, for as the train lingered at the level crossing she gave a sudden gasp as an idea came into her mind; and before anyone could ask what she was at she had leapt out of the car and thrown back the tarpaulin which sealed the back. “Come quick,” she gasped, and before she even fully realised the intention behind the gesture Constance followed suit, bounding into the road under the dully amazed regard of the uniformed driver. They seized the two laundry baskets filled to the brim with fresh loaves of bread, and dragged them up the concrete slip to the waiting train, uttering little breathless cries to attract attention. It was like feeding seagulls; the hands floated in their anxiety above and around their upturned white faces – the wagon stood too high off the permanent way for them to hand the loaves, they must pitch them. But not one fell down, not one was missed, while here and there on the frozen faces glimmered something which approached a smile of gratitude, or perhaps something more inscrutable, like an expression of desireless fatigue and pain.

The baskets were almost empty when the expected reaction came; a whistle blew once, twice – a piercingly urgent note. In the distance, way down the long platform, a slim figure in the uniform of a Nazi lieutenant gesticulated and shook his fist to mark time with the string of imprecations he was uttering – too far away to be audible. But the action was sufficient to bring down retribution on their heads, for nearer at hand some burly civilian figures who looked like stevedores or lorry-drivers broke into a jog trot towards them, growling like mastiffs, their boots striking sparks from the concrete of the platform. One undid his belt as he ran, the other brandished as a weapon a pair of long wool-lined leather gloves, elbow length – murderously heavy. The two girls saw them advancing out of the corner of their eyes, but they kept their minds resolutely upon the task they had set themselves, and by the time the first two men reached them in a scuffle of boots and a welter of guttural oaths and snarls, their baskets were empty, down to the last loaf. Then the sky flew apart as the men – they appeared to be either Czech or Russian muleteers – waded in with their blunt weapons and crashed them down upon their poorly defended heads. They cried out in protest of course, but this only enraged their assailants and the blows redoubled in violence. They shrank down, shielding themselves as best they could with their arms, but to little avail. They were beaten to their knees, and then even lower until they were almost on the ground, gasping under this punishment.