Le Temps des Cerises (16 page)

Others weren't quite so lucky or so discreet. Someone ran by, squealing like a pig, his eyes rolling around in his head. Another toppled beside Laurie, gasping for breath and clutching at his neck. He didn't look much older than Jacques and his teeth chattered like castanets as he pressed his fingers to his throat. Laurie dug out a bandage from his kit bag and wrapped it around the wound but the blood still poured out in strange arterial pulses. He tried to tourniquet the bandage with the sheath of his bayonet but the sheath broke. He wanted to shout for help, for Alphonse, for anybody, but nobody could hear or was listening. He didn't know what else to do for the boy; he dragged him to a nearby hedge and sat beside him as the life blood leaked through the little white bandage. He wondered if he oughtn't to say a prayer but all he could think of was a line from Victor Hugo and he didn't think that was entirely appropriate. So he sat as if in a dream as the boy's breath grew more ragged and shallow. After a while it petered out and he knew that the boy was dead though he still felt quite unable to move. A riderless horse galloped by, its empty stirrups clinking eerily and he wondered if Coupeau was ducking somewhere out of sight. Men were still charging past with smoking guns and streaming eyes, but he didn't know any of them; and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of a Prussian. They'd shot from the mist like invisible men. Is that what God did? Shoot from the clouds like an invisible man? Bayonet with a ray of sunshine? Stop a heart with a turning world?

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there when he felt a touch on his arm.

‘Laurie!' It was – Good God Tessier old chap! Tessier the dear old game-legged bugger – crouching down and whispering at him urgently. ‘Come on, mate. That poor sod's snuffed it. We've got to get going.'

Laurie shook his head stubbornly. He was quite happy here thank you under his hedge. It was quite comfortable, afforded great protection and if Tessier had any sense he'd have a sit down too. Wait for the whole thing to pass over. Nothing but a rainstorm. They could share a bottle of mouth warmer and he could recite a little bit of Victor Hugo to while away the time as he'd done for the young chap here who'd appreciated it greatly as far as he could tell. If the enemy came, well, too bad. He'd duck like little Coupeau or blast them away to kingdom come like the little jiggy man.

Tessier was staring at him in dismay. ‘Come on, mate. Alphonse has taken the men back. You can't stay here.'

‘Oh, alright.' Laurie agreed grudgingly in the end, mainly to humour his friend. He allowed himself to be dragged to his feet and led off back down the way they had come, the muddy track now strewn with debris, flags, kit bags and lukewarm corpses. They were heading for a wood at the top of the next field, Tessier said. It was safe and a good place to defend from – he was an old stoat for knowing that sort of thing; at least Laurie thought he said old stoat though it seemed a very odd word to use. Old stoat, old stoat, he giggled to himself, wondering if he'd lost his head at last. The copse seemed miles away to him but Tessier told him it was a trick of the light; and led him gently along the edge of the field, sticking closely to the hedge so as not to be detected by the enemy. The invisible enemy. They passed no one and no one passed them. The sun came out as they scuttled – like little field mice, Laurie decided, not stoats, they would look like field mice from the air – dancing over snow peaks and skating over iced-up puddles.

It was warm and dry in the wood and it looked to Laurie like an ideal place to sleep. He sank back against the trunk of an old tree and put his head in his hands. His fingers felt a wet sticky patch and he almost cried out in alarm. He'd been shot! No wonder he felt so light headed. As if he'd drunk a pint of wine. He thought he heard a bang like a firecracker going off but decided it must be a squirrel throwing nuts. That was the sort of thing that happened in woods – squirrels threw nuts at each other, old stoats knew where to look. His head was spinning and everything seemed to be dancing before his eyes. He could swear that was an old oak tree waltzing away to the rhythm of
The Blue Danube in his head as badly out of time as his little sister Molly thumping away on the piano. Even Tessier was dancing, pirouetting and swaying on his game leg. He could spin with the best of them! The old bugger was wasted off a dance floor!

‘Stop fooling, Léon,' he giggled as the bookkeeper's arms flung out from side to side.

But Tessier didn't stop fooling. If anything he began to dance more fiendishly than ever, his arms and head seemed to go one way, his legs another as if he'd split himself in half. Laurie rubbed his eyes. It was probably one of Léon's illusions like his sleight-of-hand card trick stunts.

‘Hey Léon, stop fooling. This isn't the Gingerbread fair!'

But Tessier didn't stop fooling – he was playing dead on the ground; and to Laurie's surprise a French officer suddenly stepped out from behind a tree, picked up Tessier's gun which was lying beside the bookkeeper's clubfooted boot and silently walked off with it. He didn't say a thing. Not a word. Not a peep. Just marched off with Tessier's gun.

Laurie stared after him in astonishment. ‘Hey you, what the hell d'you think you're doing? Yes, I mean you. Come back here you scoundrel.' But the figure didn't turn back and as it disappeared from view a sudden fury bit into Laurie. He stood up, leaning against the old trunk, and fired into the trees. He kept re-loading and firing until his fury was spent and he had no cartridges left. Then he toppled forward into snow and mouldy leaves, the smell of old and decaying things filling his nostrils, mixing with the sickly sweet odour of violets. His last conscious thought before everything went black was that the old stoat's remains would be as indecipherable as his minutes.

Chapter fourteen

Eveline gave the lion's-head door knocker a nervous tap. ‘Mouse,' she thought she heard Alphonse teasing in her head and, laughing at herself, she knocked a little harder then stepped back to wait.

The girl from Potin's had been right in so far as 21 Rue de Turbigo had once been an end-of-terrace house. Now it stood alone beside a pile of rubble like a flower still standing in an expanding wasteland. The house opposite had taken a pounding too, leaving its occupants with a roof of stars; and a row of rusty saucepans sat outside as if to catch any drops of leaking moonlight.

She heard the sound of laughter like the clear tinkling of a bell and a raven-haired woman suddenly opened the door. ‘Yes?' she said curtly, looking at her suspiciously.

Eveline brought the little card from her pocket purse and the woman's face relaxed into a smile. She waved her in, apologising for her ‘rudity'. ‘Men have been playing hoaxes,' she explained in a high, accented voice. ‘We cannot be too careful.'

‘Oh.' Eveline wanted to know what sort of hoaxes but she felt it a little impolite to ask. She was led down a corridor to a lamplit room and she stood on the threshold and gasped. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before. It made Laurie's room look like a monk's cell. Books lined the walls from top to toe and on the floor in place of tables and chairs were hundreds of rainbow-striped scatter cushions against which women of all shapes and ages lolled, leant, smoked and slept. The room was very warm and yet, Eveline noted, there was no crackling fire in the grate. Perhaps it was the rugs that glimmered softly from the ceiling, wrapping the room in a cocoon of warmth and colour, colour chosen and woven by ancient Eastern eyes that looked out on silvery deserts and golden glowing sunsets.

Eveline hid a secret little smile of satisfaction. Outside was a house with a roof of stars and here was a house with a roof of rugs! It was like another of the fairytales she'd read to Jacques but this, at last, was her own adventure.

The raven-haired woman was taking names, ages and occupations and writing them down in a little black book. Eveline wanted to say, when it came to her turn, that she was an actress, a singer, a dancer… but in the end honesty led her by the nose as her father would have said.

‘I work in a bakery,' she mumbled, hardly daring to meet the strange, green catlike eyes that were looking at her so appraisingly. ‘I'm eighteen, I mean seventeen and three quarters. My name's Eveline Renan.'

‘I'm Elizabeth.' The raven-haired woman broke into a smile as her eyes slanted up above her cheekbones more bewitchingly than ever. She smelt of roses, wore trousers and her hair grew down to her waist. Eveline envied her immediately. The effect of Elizabeth, she decided then and there, was the opposite of smelling salts! She made you want to swoon. No wonder half the women were lolling against their cushions. They'd gotten into Paradis and gotten too close to Elizabeth T.

The girl from Potin's was handing out fried snacks, cinnamon biscuits and what looked like a plate of Turkish Delight. Eveline took a bowl of biscuits and sat down on a cushion beside a gap-toothed old woman who introduced herself as Queenie.

‘After the Queen of England,' she giggled. ‘My husband said I had so many airs I should have been the Queen of England.'

‘Surely not,' Eveline murmured politely, not knowing quite what else to say.

‘Of course not! The little whelp was a drunken bastard. If anyone wanted to be the Queen of England it was him! Here,' she offered, taking a swig of wine and passing the bottle to Eveline. ‘Put some colour in your cheeks. You look half dead to me.'

Eveline, not wanting to be seen to be ‘putting on airs' accepted gingerly.

‘Down the hatch! Down the hatch,' gurgled Queenie as Eveline tipped the bottle very gently to her lips. ‘That stuff'll warm your guts. Put a bit of fire in your belly.'

It certainly did put fire in your belly! Eveline felt as if she were breathing out flames – it wasn't like any wine she'd ever tasted. She coughed and gulped, her face turning as red as her curls.

‘Sshh,' whispered Queenie, putting a finger to her lips. ‘We're about to begin. Maria has just arrived.'

‘Who's Maria?' asked Eveline when she'd got over her fit of coughing.

Queenie's face took on a reverential look. ‘Maria is Elizabeth's...'

But Eveline didn't hear what she said because a great hulking figure marched through the door and the women started clapping and shouting ‘Maria'. Maria was wearing trousers and a little waistcoat, a red scarf wrapped around her neck, her hair was cropped close to her head and she didn't smile at all. She simply took her place beside Elizabeth in front of the empty grate and stared around the room, her thumbs hooked nonchalantly under the broad belt of her trousers. When the whispers and shouts of ‘Maria' died down Elizabeth began in her strange, passionate, exotic little voice.

‘Many of you are here because you are dissatisfied with men. You are sick and tired of their drinking, their fornicating, their cowardice. We are in the grip of war, famine, disease and despair and most of them are drinking themselves out of their minds in bars or visiting our sisters in the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne
16
.'

Eveline crunched a little nervously on a biscuit and got a dig in the ribs from Queenie for doing so.

‘Some of you have come on a hunch, perhaps, an intuition. All the better for it. Intuition is women's greatest gift and better than anything man has yet to bestow upon the world.'

There were vigorous nods at this and Elizabeth smiled grimly. ‘They say we are on the brink of revolution,' she went on, her vowels becoming more elongated than ever. ‘I say it will be a revolution of women, women rising up to demand their rights, take their place on an equal footing with men. We will no longer be the slaves, whores, mistresses, handmaidens to the useless sex. We will no longer fill their fantasies, their dreams, warm their beds, cook, sew and clean for them. We will be their nightmares, their doppelgängers, their better halves in the truest sense. It will no longer be “Sauvez la France” but “Sauvez la Femme”! That will be our standard.'

‘Sauvez la Femme,' the women repeated, nodding seriously. One young girl cried out: ‘If men had to endure childbirth the human race would be extinct!'

‘I'm afraid it would,' Elizabeth smiled. ‘They are weak, spineless, insensitive – those are the good ones. The bad ones...' a steely look entered her eyes and she almost appeared to be shaking. Maria put a protective hand on her arm ‘...Well, let us just say they go by the name of Satan.'

‘She was married to a Russian Count,' Queenie gurgled in Eveline's ear which Eveline thought was incredibly rude seeing how Elizabeth was still speaking, much ruder than crunching on a cinnamon biscuit. ‘He subjected her to every
volupté
known to mankind. She was in bed for a month. Then she ran off with Maria and the Count's jewels and heirlooms. That's why she can afford all this.'

‘We have guns and uniforms.' Maria spoke then in a deep, authoritative voice, stepping forward, fingers still hooked beneath her broad black belt. ‘The only thing we ask is that you live your life as independent human beings and that you fight for the women of Paris – the mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters. Follow me.'

They followed obediently out of the warm soft cocoon down a small corridor and some hard cold steps to a mouldy, suppurating basement – Eveline, all the while, staring at Elizabeth's slender back and pondering what ‘every
volupté
known to mankind' consisted of. The room was lit by candles and Aladdin lamps and flickering rays illuminated yellow patches and growing fungi on the walls. Two tables stood in the near corner, one piled high with guns, the other piled high with National Guard uniforms. Oak barrels were stacked against the far wall, chalk-decorated in men's names, smirking faces and phallic doodles.