The Child Left Behind (25 page)

‘Does she know where he is now?’ he asked.

Bridgette shook her head. ‘Nothing definite, though Lisette feels certain that he would have joined the Free French army under de Gaulle.’

‘She’s probably right,’ James said. ‘A good few Frenchmen did that.’

Bridgette translated this to Lisette and her mother as she translated anything they said to James, and when they had gone home later that day, James asked if Bridgette would teach him to speak better French.

‘To be able to understand what people say would be a great advantage. I watched you today and you must be worn out.’

‘Not really,’ Bridgette said. ‘Though it might be a good idea for you to learn anyway. Of course we don’t know how long you are going to be here and you might be moved on before we have got very far, but we can make a start at least.’

The next day, as Bridgette approached the cathedral before Mass, she was accosted by Madame Pretin. Bridgette hadn’t a great liking for the woman, who she thought must love grumbling and complaining as she did so much of it.

That morning she fixed her gimlet eyes upon Bridgette and they glittered with malice as she said, ‘What I want to know—what many want to know—is the reason why your house wasn’t searched the day before yesterday like everyone else’s in the town?’

Bridgette looked at the knot of women standing a little way from them and thought that Madame Pretin had put into words what they were thinking. They might have all being discussing it before she arrived.

She lifted her head a little higher and said stiffly, ‘I have no say in what the Germans do. Maybe they didn’t search our house because Maman is so ill and they knew they would find nothing anyway.’

‘You’re hand in glove with them, that’s the truth.’

‘I am hand in glove with no German.’

‘So you say,’ one woman spat out. ‘But I remember the way you behaved with them stationed in the town and that was only a little while ago.’

Bridgette knew that was the time she pretended to like and even at times flirt with the German soldiers so that she could get across the town unmolested by them with the vital messages she had hidden in her beret. She couldn’t say this, though, but what she did say was, ‘I really don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘Oh yes you do,’ the older woman said. ‘I was not the only one to notice.’

Bridgette’s eyes flashed with sudden anger and she snapped out, ‘I am surprised that one person notices with such interest the actions of another. My life is too busy to do that. Maybe you should think of doing more with your own life and keeping your nose out of other’s business. In fact,’ she said
to the other women watching the exchange, ‘maybe you should all do the same.’

She walked away before Madame Pretin or any of them could make a reply and all through Mass she could almost feel their affronted eyes boring into her back. As Mass finished she was out of the door in an instant and hurried home without stopping to speak to anyone, though she had seen Marie and Lisette in the congregation.

She regretted losing her temper. Despite what her mother and Marie had said, she knew many of the congregation would be unaware of her father’s relationship with the German officers in the town. It was not something he broadcasted. And so, people being people, would probably assume her house had been spared because of favours given and this would be compounded by the way she had reacted. She should have held her tongue, though she feared the damage was done now.

Life at the bakery with James in residence assumed something of a pattern over the next few days, although they never took chances or dropped their guard. And yet, despite the danger, Bridgette realised that she liked having James around. He was a good, kind man and she loved him for the way he was with her mother. He would do anything for her, however distasteful, without the slightest hesitation, and he would entertain her when Bridgette was busy. If Legrand and Georges were
away in the bakery and there was no danger of hearing the timbre of his voice he would talk to her or they would play cards together.

Each day, Bridgette made an early lunch for everyone and when she had eaten hers, she went downstairs to relieve the girl in the shop so that she could have a lunch break too. She had told James that if her father was going to look in on Gabrielle, he usually did it on his way to bed after the midday meal and so James went into Bridgette’s room where he hid under the bed until Bridgette came to fetch him. Then she’d take him into her mother’s room because it was further away from the two snoring men than her own was, and she would give him his French lesson.

James was making excellent progress, as he proved the next time the Marie and Lisette came. He found that he could understand a lot of what they said, although he was still wary of talking in French, certain that he would make a fool of himself. Bridgette was really pleased for him, though she knew when James eventually left them she would miss him enormously.

After the encounter with Madame Pretin, Bridgette didn’t risk going back to the cathedral to Mass on Sunday mornings, using the excuse to the priest and to Marie and Lisette, that she didn’t like leaving her mother so long. Even the priest accepted that because he knew that Gabrielle was very ill, though Marie and Lisette both offered to sit with her
mother so Bridgette could attend Mass if she wanted to.

She thanked them, but never took the offer up and instead attended the Mass that the priest said for her mother in the house on Wednesday. James stayed in Bridgette’s room when the priest was there and he was just as careful whenever Legrand and Georges were around, particularly when they were not down in the bakery, but he only really breathed easier when they were out of the house altogether, and he knew that Bridgette felt the same way.

As Gabrielle’s morphine was increased to deal with the pain she often felt dizzy and disoriented in the evening and too tired to want company. So Bridgette and James too would make her comfortable and check she had everything to hand before leaving her until the morning. And then, as her father and Georges would almost definitely have left the house, Bridgette usually went to the kitchen to wash the dishes and James would follow her.

She knew that James needed to make his way back to Britain, and as quickly as possible, and she had imagined that he would be with her for a week or ten days at the most, but one week followed another and when he had been there four weeks, she’d still had had no word from anyone.

‘It’s the not knowing anything that gets you in the end,’ Bridgette said as she plunged her hands into the soap suds that night. ‘I did think I would have heard about some system of getting you home by now.’

‘So did I,’ James said, picking up a drying cloth. ‘Why don’t you contact Charles and ask him?’

‘Because I can’t,’ Bridgette said. ‘I know nothing about Charles, but his first name. If I was lifted, whatever they did to me I could tell them nothing more than the name he gave me, and that might be false for all I know. He always contacts me. And,’ she added, ‘I thought that he would be as anxious as we are to get you home.’

‘I know, and I worry about it for your sakes.’

‘I worry about it for all our sakes,’ Bridgette said with a sigh. ‘But there is nothing that we can do about it, is there? We must, like you English say, “grin and bear it”, and at least the Germans have given up looking for you in this town anyway. They must think you have outfoxed them and are home and dry now.’

‘I wish I was,’ James said. ‘Yet I will never forget this bakery and the courage you had to hide me in the first place, and the kindess you have shown while I have been here.’

Bridgette turned to look at James and saw his eyes were alight with emotion and when he suddenly said, ‘Dry your hands,’ she did so hurriedly. Then James enfolded them with his own and his eyes held hers as he said, ‘If anything happened to you, I don’t think I could bear it. This is neither the time nor the place, and yet I must tell you that I think I have fallen in love with you.’

Bridgette’s heart quickened. ‘Oh, James,’ she
said. ‘Please don’t be cross at what I am about to say. These are not natural times and we are not living normal lives and are under extreme pressure. In such an atmosphere emotions probably get intensified.’

James withdrew his hands and said, ‘I don’t expect you to think of me in the same light, Bridgette. I know that I have sprung it on you. I just needed to tell you that at the moment I am eaten up inside for you. I don’t know whether that is natural or normal, but at the moment that’s how I feel.’

‘And now, I must be as honest as you,’ Bridgette said. ‘You have engendered feelings in me that I thought were left with my husband’s body on the beaches of Dunkirk.’

‘You mean…?’

‘I mean I love you too, James. And yet I don’t know whether it’s the strange and confined way we are living that has caused us to become so close so soon.’

‘What does your heart say?’

‘My heart quickens every time you are near,’ Bridgette admitted. ‘But hearts are not always reliable indicators of sustainable love. I have tried to deny the way I feel about you, and the fact that we have now admitted our feelings changes nothing. If anything, I will worry even more about your safety.’

‘And I yours,’ James said. ‘We know that our future is uncertain. Any moment we could make
a mistake, get careless and it would be over for both of us. In the meantime, can we not be a comfort to one another?’

Comfort, Bridgette thought. How good that word sounded.

James held out his arms. ‘Come,’ he said gently, and Bridgette went into them as if he had done it every day of her life. James’s arms enfolded her and it felt so right she sighed with contentment. Arm in arm they walked through to the living room and sat together on the sofa, and when James’s lips met hers she felt the beat of her heart increase.

It was the very start of a bittersweet romance, and as each day passed Bridgette wanted more. Another week went by and she knew that she would ask James to share her bed that night. Now, accepting how she felt about him, it was a torment to have him lie beside her bed the way he did, so close and yet not close enough. She was surprised at herself for even considering having sex with a man when there wasn’t even any sort of understanding between them, as there could never be in the circumstances.

She suddenly didn’t care how society would view their liaison, or even the Church, which she knew would regard what she intended to do as a grave and mortal sin. She yearned for James to make love to her and then to sleep in his arms all the night long.

However, when later that night she said this to
James as she flung back the sheets, he shook his head.

‘It’s not that I wouldn’t love to,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t risk you falling pregnant.’

‘I am almost infertile,’ Bridgette said. ‘I was married to Xavier for years with no sign.’

‘Even so.’

‘Please, James?’

‘Don’t do this to me,’ James pleaded. ‘I am only flesh and blood like everyone else. It’s because I love you so much that I don’t want to do this to you.’

Bridgette dampened down her ardour. She knew deep down that James was right but still she grumbled, ‘Why have you to be so wise and worthy?’

James gave a chuckle. ‘Because one of us has to be,’ he said, getting to his feet and giving Bridgette a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘Now lie down like a good girl. The men come in at this time of night, as a rule, and it would never do for them to hear us talking.’

Bridgette stayed silent, knowing James spoke sense, but she was too churned up to sleep for a long, long time.

When Bridgette saw Charles in town a few days later, her mind was teeming with questions but she knew she had to wait until they were in a much more private place. Suddenly Charles ducked into an alleyway and Bridgette, with a surreptitious look behind her, followed him.

Before she was able to utter a word, Charles, never a man to waste time on pleasantries said, ‘We have trouble getting your Englishman out.’

‘Why?’ Bridgette said. ‘He’s been with us now over four weeks.’

‘I know,’ Charles said. ‘We were arranging an escape route for him. But two weeks ago we heard something that made us stop. It’s too late now and he must stay where he is for the moment.’

‘How big a moment?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Charles said. ‘Anyway, what’s scheduled to happen in the next week or month is bigger than both of us and
Carmichael too. We have had news that the Allies are massing on the other side of the Channel.’

Bridgette stared at him. ‘Invasion?’

‘What else could it be?’

‘Oh God,’ she breathed. ‘Another Dunkirk?’

Charles shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. But you can see that with all that activity on the British side it would be far too dangerous to try to move Carmichael anywhere just now.’

‘And you have no idea when this invasion will take place?’

‘They’re not going to let that information slip out, are they?’ Charles said. ‘And then have a welcoming committee waiting on this side. All we have to do is sit tight and hope the right side wins. Anything the Resistance can do to help that along a little we are ready and willing for.

‘Charles—’

‘There’s nothing more to say, Bridgette,’ Charles said. ‘You’re doing a grand job just at the moment. Just keep on with it a little longer.’

‘Have I any choice?’ was on the tip of Bridgette’s tongue, but she never said the words for Charles had left the alley and was heading towards the town. She knew better than to follow him and draw attention to herself.

Later, as they sat together in Gabrielle’s room, she told her mother and James what Charles had said.

‘So, we’re in for a long wait perhaps?’ James said.

‘Maybe,’ Bridgette said. ‘I have been thinking
about it since, though, and I would have thought it always better to invade in the spring or early summer.’

‘I would too,’ James said. ‘I have a feeling that this isn’t the relatively small Expeditionary Force they sent last time; this is make-or-break time.’

Bridgette felt icy fingers of fear trickle down her spine and when she shivered, James put his arm around her automatically.

Gabrielle’s eyes opened wider. So that’s how it was between them, she thought. She had seen a difference in Bridgette over the past couple of days. She had sort of bloomed with happiness and this now was the reason.

Left alone in her bed later that night she thought it a very silly time to fall in love but then love was no respecter of time, place or suitability. Look at her and Finn all those years before. Funny, he had often come to her mind just lately.

She wondered if there really was an afterlife. She had scandalised the priest the last time he had called, by expressing doubt. She hoped they were right because then she would see her beloved Finn again and her dear mother. She would know soon enough and she feared for James and Bridgette, for the tentative journey they were undertaking together. There was no way that things could ever run smoothly for them and her heart bled for her poor daughter and the heartbreak she was storing up for herself.

Marie and Lisette came the following Saturday afternoon and told them all about the almost expectant mood in the town.

‘And the Germans are really jumpy,’ Lisette said. ‘It’s as if they know that the writing is on the wall.’

‘They’re windy, all right,’ Marie said. ‘They gathered together all the remaining Jews in the town the other day and shipped them out in the cattle trucks they seemed to have reserved for them, and many of the Communists disappeared as well, people say.

‘And I’ll tell you who else is worried.’ Bridgette said. ‘Georges and my father. Let’s hope they have reason.’

‘Well, invasion is on everyone’s lips just now,’ Marie said.

James had followed the conversation, but replied in English, ‘It can’t come soon enough for me. And when it does, I will leave here as soon as I can.’

‘James, you can’t.’

‘Of course I can,’ James said. ‘It wouldn’t be right for me to sit here in comparative safety when I could be helping. I was, after all, a trained soldier before I volunteered to be dropped into France. I was brought here in the middle of April and now it’s June and I have done nothing in all that time but hide away. I want to be part of any planned invasion.’

Bridgette knew James’s mind was made up. Marie and Lisette only got a smattering of what James had said, but they understood his meaning,
and Marie also noticed the way James’s eyes locked with Bridgette, and the stricken look on her face when he told her of his intentions. She knew with certainty that there was something between them and that they were aware of it too. She wasn’t upset that Bridgette might have found herself someone else—she was still a young woman with needs of her own—but she thought it was bad enough to lose one man to war, without going through all that worry and possible heartache again.

Three days later, the programme on the wireless that they had been listening to on the BBC was interrupted by an announcement from Reuters News Agency.

‘The official communiqué states that under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.’

James switched off the wireless and in the ensuing silence they could hear the sound of distant gunfire, the drone of planes in the air and they knew that war had been brought to France for the second time and this time the Allies had to succeed.

Although the sound of conflict was all around, essentially nothing had changed for the people of St-Omer. Then just a week after the invasion, which was being called D-Day, a German pilotless plane carrying a bomb in its nose landed in Kent. Though
the newscaster said it had caused little damage and no loss of life, James was still flabbergasted. He’d felt sure that the bombing which had continued throughout May, had put the two constructions—Le Blockhaus and La Coupole—out of action.

The Allied bombing of both sites began again. The sirens screamed out in St-Omer once more, and though the people took shelter, some houses near to La Coupole were damaged or demolished altogether. Dispossessed and homeless people wandered into the town with all they had been able to retrieve from their damaged homes carried in any receptacle they could find. Bridgette had caught sight of a few of them as she was out shopping, and the despair and desperation on their faces tore at her heart strings. And yet the bombing had to continue because those harbingers of death were still being launched across the Channel.

It was Charles who told Bridgette why the rockets were still being launched. The Germans were using launchers hidden in the trees, well away from the two constructions sites in the forest.

The Resistance had located them and communicated the information to London, and most had been rendered unusable by Allied bombing.

‘So why are they still able to target London in particular?’ James said when Bridgette told him this.

‘Well,’ Bridgette said, ‘Charles doesn’t know, but people who have studied the direction they are
coming from think they are being launched from various mobile sites across Europe.’

‘Oh well, that’s that then,’ James said morosely. ‘Unless someone can tell us where they are it will have to wait until we have overrun the countries concerned to stop them. I feel as if I came here for nothing. And now I seem to be playing a waiting game.’

‘For all of us now, it’s a waiting game,’ Bridgette said. ‘My mother is waiting too and I want to make that as easy as I can for her, but I have given her the last of her tablets. Will you sit with her while I go for the doctor? I think she wants her medication increased.’

‘Of course,’ James said. He took up position by Gabrielle’s bed and held her hand.

She was feeling woozy, but when she felt his hand holding hers, she opened heavy eyes and smiled at him and said, ‘I was dreaming.’

The words were indistinct, but James was able to understand them and he said. ‘I hope they were nice dreams.’

‘I was dreaming about letters,’ Gabrielle said, and James knew that she was battling to keep the slur out of her voice. ‘Everyone loves getting letters,’ she continued and a smile played around her mouth for a moment before she went on, ‘I had some wonderful letters from Bridgette’s father.’

‘Did you?’ James said in surprise. Somehow wonderful letters and Legrand didn’t go hand in hand. ‘When was this?’

‘In the Great War.’

James decided that Gabrielle was rambling, for Bridgette had told her that her father hadn’t served in the war. He didn’t know whether to say anything or not, but Gabrielle caught the doubt in his eyes. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she said.

‘It’s not that,’ James said. ‘It’s just that I understood your husband wasn’t in the forces in the Great War.’

‘Not this husband, no,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I am talking of Bridgette’s father.’

‘So, Legrand is not her father?’

‘No.’

‘Does she know?’

Gabrielle shook her head slowly.

‘But you must tell her,’ James said. ‘She has a right to know.’

‘I will tell her,’ Gabrielle said. ‘But you mustn’t say a word to her about this. Promise me?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ James assured her. ‘It’s your story to tell, but she should hear it from someone and that someone should preferably be you.’

‘I will tell her,’ Gabrielle promised. ‘When I think the time is right.’

James hoped that she wouldn’t leave it too long, but he could say nothing just them because he heard Bridgette coming in the door. She had obviously brought the doctor back with her because she was talking to him and it was time for him to disappear.

He found himself watching Bridgette the rest of
the day, wondering who her father really was. That was, of course, if Gabrielle had been telling him the truth and it wasn’t some figment of her imagination. If it should be true, though, he knew Bridgette would be pleased. When they were alone that evening he longed to tell her what Gabrielle had told him, but he had given his word to a dying woman and couldn’t go back on it.

Bridgette was aware that he had something on his mind, but she presumed that it was to do with the invasion and she didn’t want to talk about it that night. The doctor had told her that day that her mother could have as little as two weeks to live. That was enough for her to come to terms with and she also had the worry of breaking the news to her aunt Yvette, who the doctor said should be contacted immediately.

The next afternoon Bridgette came back from shopping full of excitement to find James standing looking out the window in her mother’s bedroom. ‘Get away from the window,’ she said. ‘You’ll be spotted.’

James didn’t move away, though he turned to face her. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘The streets are full of people, but they all look too agitated about something to notice me looking down on them. What’s going on?’

‘You can’t see it from here, but there are plumes of smoke rising up from the Gestapo Headquarters and someone was telling me they have cleared the cells of prisoners and packed them off on trains.’

‘Destroying the evidence,’ James said. ‘The Allies must be drawing close now. There’s Charles, look.’

Bridgette nodded. ‘I was talking to him,’ she said. ‘He thinks the Gestapo will pull out next. That’s what he is waiting for. Loads of people want to storm the building when they’re gone and check the place is really empty.’

‘Well, I would imagine many went in there and never came out,’ James said. ‘I doubt they’ll find any live prisoners, though there maybe some dead ones.’

‘It was a terrible building,’ Bridgette said. ‘I hated even passing it. Won’t it be wonderful if they all leave?’

And it was wonderful when, just an hour or so later, the hated Gestapo piled into their military vehicles and sped away. The waiting crowds on the pavements watched them go silently. Later, however, when the soldiers marched down the streets, many booed or spat or shouted after them. And while Bridgette was watching this marvellous spectacle, and explaining to her mother what was happening, James disappeared.

Seeing her preoccupation, he knew it was his chance to speak to Charles and see if there was any chance of meeting up, if not with his own unit, then some other British one. He slipped quietly from the room and down the stairs. Here he was cautious, because even now he didn’t want Bridgette involved, but he heard the voices of Legrand and Georges in the bakery, where they
had returned to after their afternoon nap, and so he went out the back door that opened onto the yard and into the street that way.

Georges and Legrand were unaware of the exodus happening in their small town at first, though they knew the Germans were worried and had been for days. They had both been nervous when they had heard about the invasion, but certain that the Allies would be repulsed by the Germans, as they had been before.

However, as the days passed, and they heard of the scale of the whole operation it did concern them, as did the attitude of the German officers, who seemed to forget the help that Legrand had been to them over the years. Suddenly, they wanted little to do with him and the steady supply of food and coal dried up.

However, they had given him no hint that they were pulling out of the town. Even the girl in the shop was not aware of it straightaway, though she did think there were more people on the streets than normal, and in the end she stopped a man who was hurrying past.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s over, that’s what it is,’ said the man. ‘The Gestapo have gone already, and now the soldiers are following.’

The girl could scarcely believe it, though she didn’t doubt the man, and she went into the bakery, a thing she very seldom did, to tell them all about it.