Authors: Cesca Major
ISABELLE
Pushed, shoved by other mothers and daughters. Children swarming around my legs. I am clutching Sebastien so hard I momentarily worry that I will smother him.
Soldiers walk by, marching us up the wide stone steps and into the church. It is decorated with flowers for tomorrow’s First Communion. The air is sweet with their scent. I whisper nothing and everything in Sebastien’s ear. He is stirring again, blinking at me in recognition.
My heart is hammering and Sebastien is crying now, hungry, can feel his mother’s frightened breathing. Maman is here, backed into a corner by others. What is happening to the men outside? People are screaming for their husbands, fathers, and I can see Maman pale with the absence of Paul and Father, her face etched with questions. There are so many of us in here.
They are dragging something inside; Maman is looking at it, she returns to my side, her head looking left and right for an exit. There is a window just out of reach. There is smoke now and we are moving without thinking.
An explosion, a noise, heat.
‘Isabelle, come on, come on.’ She urges me forward somewhere. I am coughing, unseeing, feeling only Sebastien’s little body in my arms.
Maman has dragged a ladder from somewhere, she is pulling it towards the window. She is clambering up it.
I go to follow, put a foot onto the first rung. She has made it to the sill, looks down at me, her eyes rolling, almost unseeing, one foot already in the outside. I push Sebastien up to her.
‘Take him, Maman.’
She reaches an arm forward, struggles to reach him, looks behind her. It is so hot, I can barely make her out in this smoke. I clutch with one hand on another rung, feeling for the next.
I see her face one more time, reach Sebastien up so that he is nearly at her fingertips.
She slips away from me, through the window, her upper body slowly falling backwards. When I see her face for an instant, our eyes lock. The last time I will see her, the whites of her eyes, a blink. And she is gone.
Shouts, smoke, fiery heat and then a rattle of gunfire. I am falling, my head hits stone, sliding slowly down, down, down, Sebastien still in my arms. It is so hot. Sebastien cries, his face red, we are all burning, slowly, quickly, it rages.
ADELINE
1952, St Cecilia nunnery, south-west France
I wait for him in the orchard.
Doctor Taylor listened as I told him my story, the part meant for him at least. I spoke in short waves, taking sips of water, my tongue swollen in my mouth, weighty, some words slurred or lost, and then another sip.
My jaw aches at the end of the day. I open my mouth in the darkness, purse my lips, practise the movement, want it back.
He returned one final time. A phone call was made to Sebastien in England.
I knew this moment would come. Sister Marguerite found me this morning in the chapel. I lit candles for them. The flames quivered as I cupped each one, whispered words to them all. She drew me out here gently, precious, guiding.
I smooth my skirt down, tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, glance at the book I am holding and wait: every fibre of my being waits. The breeze is gentle and the subtle noises of summer seem in stark contrast to my drumming heart. My eyes flick to the road; little hints of shingle can be spotted between clusters of trees, any movement makes my chest constrict, a breath sucks in. A passing cart, a bicycle, will appear fleetingly before diving back into the trees, and I will wait once more for the rare sound of an automobile on the road.
I hear him before he arrives – the bumping of the tyres as he makes his way off the road and navigates around the pot-holes on the dusty track to the nunnery.
The engine is switched off, the crunch of his footsteps – just his – on the gravel. A knock, a bell, some words in the distance, a question and answer.
My palms are damp – perhaps it isn’t him, perhaps he won’t come? It sounds like one person, it must be him, it is time. They will direct him here; the sisters know where I am waiting. Perhaps they will offer him a drink. Perhaps I should greet him inside?
And then like a visitor from another life, another world, he appears beneath the crumbling stone arch. He is looking around and then, as his eyes focus on the figure underneath the apple tree, he freezes, just for an instant. Our eyes meet and, after a little hesitation, he makes his way across the lawn towards me.
I go to stand, pause in mid-air, bottom only centimetres from the bench, waver, sit back down and start pleating and smoothing my skirt once more. I look anywhere but at his face. I can’t help it, though; I’m drawn to it, want to see if I recognize the boy he was.
His hair is shorter than I remember, he has a slight limp, was that from the war? Had he always walked in that way? I don’t know, have never known.
He gives me a sort of smile as he approaches, as if we are meeting by accident, two near-strangers in a park, and then he points awkwardly to the other side of the bench and I nod as he goes to sit.
A man. Tall, well-dressed, dark hair, the ends slightly curling. A stranger in a park.
The bench creaks, gives in to the new weight as he sits. I swivel my body round to face him. Neither of us speak, and my head fills with shadowy faces.
‘Thank you for meeting me,’ he says.
He has thanked me.
I half open my mouth to respond in some way.
Thank you
. I blink, feeling hot tears building at the back of my eyes.
Thank you
.
I wave my hand towards the trees behind me and say, ‘Paul used to love orchards, the mottled shadows on the grass, the fallen fruit – and the promise of apple pie for dinner, no doubt.’The smallest laugh. Someone else. I hear my words, said in a voice that still sounds too scratchy to be mine, and wonder at the memory. Paul crouching low over a half-chewed apple, staring in childlike wonder at the maggoty inside.
‘My boy has to be force-fed any fruit,’ Sebastien replies, with a small, proud chuckle.
‘Your son,’ I repeat quietly.
‘I have a son,’ he says, looking at me. ‘And a wife, and a baby daughter,’ he states, searching my face. In a whisper: ‘We called her Isabelle.’
‘That is, that … wonderful, I think, I, perhaps … where are they now?’ I ask, needlessly looking around, feeling my chest tighten.
‘They’re in England. At home.’
I nod.
He has the faintest hint of an English accent.
Home.
A silence descends. There is movement outside the abbey: a nun holding a pair of secateurs, rhythmic clicks as she moves around the building. Perhaps it is the presence of another being, perhaps he realizes we can’t skirt around the issue forever, but Sebastien asks, ‘Can you talk about it?’
I know to what he is referring. For months, years, people have asked me to talk, have asked me to tell them my story, and I haven’t.
Perhaps the right people never asked because, as I take a deep breath, I am convinced I need to speak. This is what I have been waiting for.
He listens without interrupting as I tell him about that day. I do not spare him the details.
I fall silent after I recount the noise of the black box going off, the shattering of glass and the sudden feeling of being outside, not in … outside, not with them … outside.
He clears his throat. ‘What happened to Isabelle?’
I look up at him. ‘She was there, inside, we were together but the noise and the smoke and …’ My confession now. He understands. I look away as I continue. ‘I was by the window.’ I close my eyes, replaying those moments. ‘I didn’t wait, or think, or … I didn’t
know
, it was so hot and I didn’t stop to think and …’ I have to stop – I am gulping, forcing out the words and I am back in the darkness, fumbling to get out, without my daughter, without my grandson.
Guilt threatens to choke me as I try to carry on.
‘I escaped,’ I state, looking down at my hands – those of an old lady now. ‘I got out.’
‘And the baby,’ he asks, so quietly. ‘Edward told me there was a baby. What happened to him?’
My words are so soft they might have been lost to a stronger wind, but he hears every syllable as I say, ‘They were both in there.’
The weight of my words has forced us inside ourselves and it is a while before I hear his next question. His voice is shakier, slower. He loved her.
‘What did she call him?’ he asks.
I look at his face fully for the first time: kind eyes, grey flecks at the roots of his dark hair, a straight nose. Would my grandson have looked like this?
‘Sebastien.’
Tears edge at the rims of his eyes so that he has to look up to the heavens and blink them back.
‘Sebastien,’ he repeats, a flicker of a smile and then gone.
As he says his name, my grandson’s name, something cracks within me, and I huddle over myself – the story told but not answered – gripping my body, back outside the church, there again. ‘They burned the women and children. They burned them. I left them there. I covered myself in dirt and I hid, I
hid
. I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I am so sorry.’
He makes no move to comfort me.
We sit side by side on the bench as my breathing slows and I start to hear the subtle sounds of the garden alive around me once more. I look beyond Sebastien to the nunnery, see the outline of Marguerite inside. One hand rests on the glass as she watches us. What does she see from there? We are simply two figures beneath a tree in an orchard, surrounded by dappled shadows and juicy apples.
I look back at him. ‘I left them there …’ I say, pausing over every word. ‘I left them and I can see them always there, where I abandoned them and … I … I can’t …’
I am for ever outside, and they are inside, and I made my choice and I am living and they are not. I am in an orchard and the sun is shining and I am with him and they are not.
TRISTAN
There is something on top of me. It’s heavy and I take a breath.
There is only a tiny bit of air, like I’m buried underground, like in a shallow grave. Dimitri told me about a murderer who buried his victims – smashed them around the head and put them in a wooden box, and threw earth on the top until they were stuck with the ground on top of them, the holes leaking mud and dirt and their cries being lost in the wind.
I’m underground, in a shallow grave and it is hot and heavy and I can’t breathe and I’m going to die, and no one will hear me.
I gasp, eyes opening, but it is dark and smoky and my eyes sting. There are noises too, around me, groaning, murmuring: smells, smells so terrible that when they are in my nostrils I can’t get rid of them.
I try to move, it is so heavy; I push and I wiggle and I push and suddenly the weight is slipping away, he is falling to the side, he is off me. It is my brother. It is Dimitri. He isn’t looking at me, he isn’t looking anywhere any more. I tell him to come, I reach out to him. His glasses have fallen off. He doesn’t follow me.
There are so many bodies everywhere and they are all blurred and there is such heat, I can see barely centimetres in front of my face. I drag myself along the stone floor that seems warm, like the heat is coming from below, like hell is underneath the floor, warming it from the bottom. I’m dragging myself and I can see a patch, as if it is the outside and I try to crawl to it. I am tripping over things in the way and I feel a shoe with a foot in it but they don’t pull it back or tell me off for clambering over it. I don’t want to look at them but I can’t help it. The skirt has hitched up a little so below the knee I can make out a sliver of cotton shift like Maman wears.
That patch is still there, it is bigger and I can make out green. I have to get to it, I have to get to the patch of green as I think if I don’t I will have to stay here in this, for ever. I am so close to it now, it’s so small, little stones are all crumbled up around it, I reach out a hand and as I do I can hear something, a wail. A baby’s cry.
I look to my side, the smoke is still thick, swirling just above the floor like fog on the fields in winter that you can’t see beyond. But then there is the wail again and I have to move towards it. I can hear my name now, whispered – is Maman calling me? Am I going to find her through the patch? Is she there?
There are more people here, lying down, curled into balls and I stumble in a half-crawl, slipping as I put my hand down on someone’s hand. It’s still so hot and I don’t want to move away from the patch but it might be Maman calling me.
‘Tristan.’ It isn’t her voice. I think my arm hurts but it could be my head; I hear the wail again.
I cough and, I can see an outline. Mademoiselle Rochard is slumped in the corner, her head funny, resting on the wall. She is calling my name, quietly though, so quietly, and in her arms is her baby. He is the one wailing at me and as I approach her she is holding him out to me, this bundle who has gone quiet now. Her eyes are half-closed and she is mumbling, ‘Tristan, please, please, I can’t. Please.’
She is repeating that and I know what she means, that she can see the tiny patch, a sliver from here, where the stones have come away, so small, and then she coughs and I have the baby and it is so hot I sink my face into the bundle and the air is closing in on both of us but when I look up again I don’t find it any easier to breathe. I can’t see in front of me and for a moment I have no idea where I am, where is the patch? The green?
I crawl to the left, feel with one hand for the wall. The heat drives me on so that I start to feel my skin blistering as if I have suddenly come out in terrible sunburn, like when Luc had a patch on his back that went red raw and then all the skin fell off a few days later. I haven’t seen Luc. Where is he?
I have to get out and the patch is so close now I can see the hint of green beyond and know it will be cooler there, anything to get out. I’m hurting now, I can smell so many things like rubber and smells when the saucepan catches. I’m at the hole and I can just reach and so I push the bundle through.
He is out there on the green, in the safe patch, and then I wiggle and I squirm and the heat is roasting behind me and I think I won’t make it out of there, that I’ll be stuck half in hell and half out and I don’t know whether I want to leave. Isn’t Maman in there? Dimitri, Eléonore, Luc – I can’t see them in this new green world, I can’t leave. I shouldn’t leave them. But it’s so hot and I have to take the baby and then I am free and I’m crawling along grass, knowing I have to stay out of sight in case they are still there, and I can see a shed and I try and get to my feet.
If we can just get there. I take the baby, he’s making noise again, little noises, and I say ‘Ssh’ to him.
A girl is lying nearby, there is blood and some of her insides are beside her. I am sick. I keep moving. There are noises and shouts in the village, vehicles moving, we have to get there, we have to get to the shed. The baby is still now. I don’t want to be in the shed by myself but I can’t go back and I can’t get help.
Pushing open the doors I climb behind a barrel full of filthy water, moss growing on the side as I squeeze us down into a gap and wait. The baby is calmer, his heart beating a rhythm next to mine. It is quiet, and there is dark all around me.