The Victory (67 page)

‘
If it should be the same!' Héloïse said in distress. 'That he should have suffered so, when I promised his mother I would
look after him!
Oh ciel, je suis accablée de remords!'

‘
You don't know that it is the same child,' Roberta pointed
out, 'and even if it is, there is nothing you could have done to
prevent any of it.'

‘
But it must be made right now,' Héloïse said firmly. 'Where
is the boy, Lord Anstey? I must go and see him at once.'

‘
But wait,' Roberta interrupted with a frown, 'I don't
understand why you said he doesn't want to go back with the
other prisoners to France. If he has no memory of his origins, and the English captain treated him so cruelly, why should he
want to stay?'

‘
That is rather the point,' Anstey said. 'He says he has
nothing to go back to France for, and that if he does, he will
probably be pressed again, either into the navy, or more
likely into the army — Boney's plans seem to need more and more troops every year. All he knows is the sea, and fishing,
and what he really wants is to be taken on board an English fishing-boat, where they will treat him kindly.'

‘
No, that shall not be,' Héloïse said at once. 'He shall come
to me, and I shall take care of him, and feed him and clothe
him and — oh, how excited Mathilde will be, to find her
brother again! She always swore that he was still alive!'

‘
You don't know that it is he,' Roberta warned her, with an
anxious glance at Anstey. Héloïse seemed to be going
altogether too fast.

Anstey agreed. 'I must beg you not to say anything to
Mathilde, and not to make any plans, until you have seen the
boy. I should like you to meet him and talk to him, to see if he
is the child you lost, but after that —'

‘
Bien sûr,
he is the same! I can feel it in my bones!'

‘
After that,' Anstey continued firmly, 'we can decide what is best to be done with him. But I want you to promise me to
withhold judgement until you have seen him.'

‘
Very well, whatever you say,' Héloïse said happily. 'Oh,
my dear Lotti, at last I shall be able to fulfil my promise, and
you will be able to rest in peace! When may I see the boy, my lord? Very soon, it must be very soon, so that we can begin to
make up to him for all the horrible things that have
happened.’

Anstey exchanged a glance and a sigh with Roberta, and
said, 'I will take you to see him tomorrow, ma'am, but please, in the meantime, don't make any plans, or get too excited. He
is not like any child you know.’

*

John Anstey did his best on the way down to prepare Héloïse
for disappointment; but nothing he could have said would
have prepared her for the pathetic piece of human jetsam who
was at last brought before her. She stared a moment, and
then turned an appealing face to Anstey, begging quite
plainly to be told that it was a mistake, that this was not the boy. But Anstey nodded grimly, and said, 'Charlie, this lady
thinks she may know something of your past, before the
shipwreck. Stand up straight, and answer her questions truth
fully.’

It took Héloïse a while to restore order to her thoughts.
The boy before her might well have been fifteen or sixteen,
but he was puny and thin and small from malnourishment,
with the pale, unhealthy skin and dull hair of poverty. On his
face there were the marks of half-healed burns from the
explosion which had flung him into the water, and when he
moved his head, she saw to her horror and distress that where
his left ear should be there was only a hole and puckered scar.
She remembered the brutal captain, and prevented her mind
from speculating on how he had lost it.

But worse than his appearance was the way he stood, his
thin shoulders hunched as though against an expected blow,
watching her with the sullen wariness of an ill-treated animal.
And when she spoke to him, there was no light of intelligence
or humanity in his eyes; he merely stared at her dully, with
his mouth open.

She began to question him, speaking slowly and clearly in
French, and at first there was no response at all from him, not
even the flicker of comprehension in his face. Then, when at
last he did speak, it was in a blurred, guttural voice, which
ran words together, mispronounced them, and mixed in other
languages almost at random, and a salting of coarse oaths
which he evidently used as a matter of course, without,
probably, knowing that they offended. It was very hard to
understand his terse, jumbled answers, and what she did
understand was not to the point. He remembered nothing
before the shipwreck. He had never had a mother or father,
that he knew of.

‘
But you must have had them once,' Héloïse persisted. 'Do
you think you were French to begin with? When you were
very little, did people talk to you in French? No answer. 'Or in
German?' She asked the same question in German, and again
received no answer. 'Do you remember another shipwreck,
apart from the one in England? When you were very little?'

‘I was wrecked on the sands,' he said doggedly, seeing some
response was essential, and not knowing what was wanted of him. 'They took me to a place for children, but I didn't like it.
I ran away.'

‘
No, before that,' Héloïse insisted, and then decided to try
to shock him into memory. 'Karellie,' she said sharply in
German, 'where is Mathilde? What happened to your sister
Mathilde?’

For an instant she thought that she might break through
the fog in the boy's mind. He looked at her, not with the dull,
uncomprehending patience he had shewn so far, but in bewil
derment. Some struggle seemed to be going on inside him,
and his lower lip quivered. Her heart was tugged with pity.
She wondered how long it was since he had allowed himself to
cry.

‘
You remember Mathilde, don't you, Karellie?' she asked,
searching his face for understanding, and for some resembl
ance to her ward or to Lotti and her husband. But the boy
only shook his head. He did not cry; the veil descended again,
and his face hardened into its former lines. In them she could
see nothing that could tell her certainly that this was Lotti's
child.

She turned to look at Anstey, and he nodded and dismissed
the boy with a kind but finn command, and he turned and
shuffled away obediently.

When he had gone, Héloïse said, 'Oh, it is so terrible, so
sad! The poor, poor child!'

‘
He really doesn't remember anything,' Anstey said, with
the hint of a question in the statement, since he had not
followed all of the conversation in French.

‘
Nothing at all. And yet I am sure it is he,' Héloïse said.
'The coincidence would be too great. I must take over responsibility for him at once. He shall not suffer again. I shall give
him a loving home, at least.’

Anstey shook his head. 'My dear ma'am, you cannot take
this child into your home. You see now why I wanted you to
meet him before you made plans? He is not like Mathilde. He
is a dirty, foul-spoken, ignorant, coarse boy. No amount of
washing or feeding or new clothes would turn him into a fit
specimen for your drawing-room.'

‘
But yet you wanted me to see him. Why should you do
that, if you wish me to do nothing for him?' Héloïse said.

‘
I hoped you would wish to help him, but in the right way,'
Anstey said. 'Help to place him in the way of keeping himself
respectably, and in a place where he will not be ill-treated.
That would be a true kindness.'

‘
If he were not Lotti's child, if it were certain he were not
Karellie, I should want to do as much for him, now that I
have seen him. I cannot tell you,' she added, with an unhappy
look, 'how his story has appalled me. But what do you think
we should do with him,.my lord? Give me your advice.'

‘
The boy wants to go back at sea. If he were more intelli
gent, I would suggest placing him in the Naval College at
Portsmouth, but you see how his mind is clouded, whether by
the accident or by constant ill-treatment I don't know.
Whatever the reason, such training would be far beyond his
capacity.'

‘Yes, I suppose so,' Héloïse sighed.

‘
I think the best, and the kindest thing, would be to find
some kindly, respectable fisherman's family to take him in. If
the family were paid a small amount regularly for his keep,
and visited from time to time, it would ensure that they would
do right by the boy. That way, he would be trained up to a useful trade, and protected from exploitation by unscrupulous people.'

‘
And you wish me to furnish the small amount?' Héloïse
said. 'Well, it is little enough to do for him. But Lotti's child,
to be an ignorant fisherboy! I do not think this is what she
would have wanted.'

‘
Perhaps not, but what has happened was not in your
power to alter, and I am sure this is the best thing to do for
him now. You see for yourself how his mind is affected.
Perhaps kind treatment and good food may begin to lift the
cloud from his faculties, and if so, then you may wish to do
more for him later. But for the moment —'

‘
Yes,' Héloïse said with a sigh, 'I see that you are right. And
yet I feel so guilty about it.'

‘That,' said Anstey firmly, 'is absurd.’

A week later, Héloïse travelled with John Anstey down to
Folkestone, to interview the family that he had selected to
receive the boy. Héloïse had insisted that she must see them for herself, to make sure they were suitable, and Anstey had thought it reasonable. He also thought that it would impress the family to see her in person, and make them more careful
of their charge.

The cottage was very small, but looked neat and snug, the
side which was towards the prevailing wind being faced with
flints for protection, and the windows set deep in the walls. There was a strong smell of fish and tar and rotting weed in
the air, and the bitter, sulphurous reek of cheap coal being burned. Inside, the cottage was sparsely furnished, but the
floor was flagged and the walls decently whitewashed, and on
the shelf over the fireplace were some pieces of pewter, well-
polished.

The smell of fish permeated the air inside, too, but there
was also a more agreeable smell of cooking issuing from a pot
on the fire. The Upjohns were all there, ready to meet the
visitor who was to make such a difference to their lives.
Upjohn himself was a short, swarthy man, with massively
powerful shoulders and blunt, scarred hands. His face was
blue with bristles, but his eyes were quick and bright, and he
looked at Héloïse directly and frankly, without either insol
ence or obsequiousness, which made her like him at once.