Survivor (6 page)

Mariette blushed. ‘It was just a
boy, nothing special. And it’s all over now,’ she said quickly.

‘Name?’ Belle roared at her.
‘I already know, I just want to hear you say it.’

Mariette quaked visibly.
‘Sam,’ she whimpered. ‘I couldn’t tell you, I knew you
wouldn’t approve.’

Etienne looked stunned, but more by
Belle’s anger than by the name because he couldn’t think of anyone
called Sam.

‘How could you expect us to
approve of you going off alley-catting with any boy?’ Belle asked, her voice
harsh and cold. ‘But that man! He’s at least twenty-five, uncouth,
always getting into fights and full of himself. You have clearly been lying to us
constantly in the past weeks in order to see him. Why is that, Mari?’

‘Because I knew you’d be
like this,’ Mariette retorted.

‘Is this the blond Australian
sailor?’ Etienne asked, looking aghast.

Belle nodded.

‘In that case, I agree totally
with your mother. He’s an animal, drunk every night, and I’ve heard
other men say their girls aren’t safe around him.’

‘I’m sorry, Papa,’
Mari said pleadingly. ‘You are right about him, but I didn’t realize it
at first.’

‘Just the fact that you were
meeting him in secret tells me you knew full well that he was a bad lot. How far has
this gone?’

Mariette folded her arms, looked
insolently at the kitchen wall and didn’t answer.

‘Answer me, Mari,’ Etienne
commanded. ‘Have you been lovers?’

Her silence was his answer, and his face
flushed with
anger. ‘You are barely
eighteen. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you’d throw it all away
for a roll in the hay with someone as worthless as him. Are you pregnant?’

He looked at Belle and Mog, waiting for
them to confirm or deny this.

Belle shrugged. ‘I don’t
know. I wasn’t sure till now that it had gone that far.’

‘Mariette! You will tell us all
now,’ Etienne roared. ‘Are you pregnant?’

She continued to avoid his eyes.
‘I could be, I suppose,’ she retorted, hearing his sharp intake of
breath. ‘And don’t come all high and mighty with me. I know perfectly
well Mum was having me when you got married.’

Belle was incredulous that her daughter
had no sense of shame, or respect for her father, and her fingers itched to strike
her. But she managed to control herself. ‘You’d better hope to God you
aren’t pregnant. Because if you are, you’ll soon find out what real life
is all about,’ Belle spat out. ‘Now, get upstairs to your room. I
can’t bear to look at you.’

Mariette scuttled out of the kitchen as
fast as she could. Her mother’s furious reaction, and the very fact that
they’d all jumped to the conclusion that she was pregnant, made it seem even
more probable.

What would happen to her if she was?
There was no question of marrying Sam. Even if he agreed to it – which he
wouldn’t – she’d have a miserable life with him, saddled with a baby she
didn’t even want.

People were mean to unmarried mothers
and, judging by her parents and Mog’s reaction, it would start here in her own
home.

She flung herself down on the bed and
cried. She could hear the hum of their voices down below, and every now and then
her father’s became louder. That
was the worst thing. She could live with her mother and Mog’s disapproval, but
she couldn’t bear the thought of her papa being disappointed in her.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Etienne
paced around angrily. Belle knew that he wanted to rush out of the door and beat Sam
to a pulp. She had to prevent that.

‘He’s young and very
strong,’ she insisted, standing in front of the door so her husband
couldn’t get out. ‘If you go round there now, with all guns blazing,
he’ll retaliate, and you are likely to come off worse. Furthermore, the whole
town will get to hear of it – and once that cat is out of the bag, we won’t be
able to get it back in.’

Mog intervened too. ‘Mari did this
willingly, remember. She wanted a bit of excitement and she got it. Now she has to
learn the meaning of the word “consequences”. As do you! If you go and
beat Sam up, that will suggest to her that he is the only one to blame.’

‘Are you seriously suggesting that
I do nothing?’ Etienne asked, bewildered that they weren’t crying for
the man’s blood too.

‘Of course not,’ Belle said
soothingly. ‘But Mog is right, Mari is as much to blame. I could have
understood her more easily if she’d said she loved him. Sometimes she is so
cold-hearted, I can’t believe she’s my child. Please sleep on it,
Etienne, before you rush off at half-cock. All you will achieve is giving the
gossips far more ammunition.’

Etienne had felt hurt that both his
wife and Mog thought him too old to give his daughter’s seducer a good hiding.
But he could see some sense in at least waiting until the morning before he did or
said anything further.

As it was, he had a sleepless night,
tossing and turning,
with unwelcome
pictures of Mari and that unkempt sailor together running through his mind.

At first light he got up, dressed and
quietly slipped out, leaving Belle still sleeping. The fury he’d felt on the
previous night had abated. All he wanted now was to confront the man and at least
try to understand what Mari had seen in him.

He had heard the ex-sailor was camping
on a piece of waste ground close to the start of Flag Staff Hill and, as he walked
towards it, he remembered the only time he’d spoken to him. The man had come
lurching drunkenly out of the Duke of Marlborough one evening, just as Etienne was
passing, and had bumped his shoulder.

‘Steady up and look where
you’re going,’ Etienne had said.

The man had straightened up and looked
askance at him. ‘You must be the Frog war hero, with an accent like
that,’ he’d said with a sneer.

‘And you must be the drunken lout
from Australia with an accent like that,’ Etienne had retorted and walked on,
ignoring a ridiculous further remark about whether he was out collecting snails to
eat.

That brief encounter was as much
evidence as Etienne needed in order to know the man was an ignorant buffoon, and it
made the possibility of Mari carrying his child even more alarming.

He found the tent, half hidden behind
some scrubby bushes, and he remembered then that there had been complaints from
various people in the town about the man being there.

The tent was a small shabby affair that
sagged in the middle as the guy ropes were slack. Etienne looked at it for a few
moments, then kicked the ropes loose so that the tent collapsed. From inside came
the sound of swearing as the man awoke to find himself buried in canvas.

Etienne waited – he suspected the man
was enough of a
slob to stay where he was,
regardless of the damp canvas covering him – but after a minute or two he crawled
out rubbing his eyes, wearing only a pair of filthy underpants.

During the moments of waiting, Etienne
had noted all the debris around the tent – mainly beer bottles and food cans. He
wondered if the man ever bathed and how Mari, who had been brought up in a clean
home, could possibly tolerate such a lack of hygiene.

‘Did you bugger up my tent?’
the man asked, squinting up at him. He had thick stubble on his chin and his blond
hair looked filthy. And yet, even so, his bronzed muscular torso was impressive and
he was very handsome.

‘Guilty as charged,’ Etienne
said. ‘Just be grateful I didn’t attack it with an axe and chop your
head off. On your feet! I know you are lower than shit, but I like to look a man in
the eye when I’m talking to him.’

‘What’s this about?’
Sam asked as he got to his feet.

‘As if you don’t
know!’ Etienne scoffed. ‘You know full well I’m Mariette’s
father. But then, if you’d had any sense of decency, you would have called on
me to ask my permission before walking out with her.’

‘No one does that any more,’
Sam growled. ‘Go home, old man, and pick a fight with someone your own age.
Mari threw herself at me. You might not like to hear that, but that’s the way
it was. Now get out of here.’

‘I had hoped to find you had some
saving graces,’ Etienne retorted. ‘But you live like a pig and smell
worse than one. I think Mari must have temporarily taken leave of her senses getting
involved with someone as low as you. You will leave Russell this morning on the
first ferry, and never come back. If not, you may live to regret it.’

Sam laughed scornfully. ‘And you
think you’re going to make me, old man? How do you plan to do that?’

‘Like
this,’ Etienne said, and punched the man on the chin so hard that he reeled
back and nearly toppled over.

Sam was momentarily stunned. He rubbed
his chin and looked at Etienne, as if weighing him up. ‘I don’t want to
fight with you because you’ll never get up again from it,’ he said.
‘So clear off now, before I do you an injury.’

‘Like this?’ Etienne gave
him a second punch in the belly with his right fist, then followed it up immediately
with a punch from his left fist, smack on the jaw. ‘Come on, don’t hold
back. I’m an old man, remember.’

Sam staggered back, blood trickling out
of his mouth from a dislodged tooth. He lifted his fists to hit back, but Etienne
danced out of the way and landed two further punches on the younger man’s face
before he could even blink.

Blood came gushing from his nose, and
Etienne laughed. ‘I thought you were going to do me an injury? But
you’re a little slow on your feet. This is how you do it,’ he said as he
zoomed in with an uppercut to the chin, knocking Sam’s head right back, then
followed it with an almighty blow to the solar plexus, which toppled him back and on
to the ground.

Etienne went over to him, stamped his
boot on the middle of the younger man’s chest and held him there with it.
‘For your information I learned to fight in the backstreets of
Marseille,’ he said. ‘I’m handy with a knife too – would you like
to see?’

He pulled a six-inch, narrow-bladed
knife from a sheath on his belt and, leaning over Sam, held it to one of his
nostrils. ‘One of my favourite punishments for people who displeased me then
was to slice their nose open. It leaves a man looking very ugly, girls don’t
look at them any more, they have to rely on ageing whores when they are desperate
for a fuck,’ Etienne snarled at him.

Sam gave a squeal
of terror, and Etienne smiled as he looked down and saw he was pissing himself.
‘They usually shit themselves as I start to do it too. Not such a big man now,
eh! I can hardly wait to tell Mari that you never even managed to land one punch on
me. Now, are you leaving Russell this morning? Or do I need to give you any more
prompts to do as you are told?’

‘No, I’ll go,’ Sam
whimpered. ‘Just don’t cut me.’

‘Afraid you’ll lose your
looks? I think I should make sure of that so you don’t hurt any more young
girls,’ Etienne said. ‘To be a real man, you have to treat women with
respect. Every time you get tempted to do otherwise, think of me and my knife
slitting your nose open.’ He taunted Sam further by running the blade around
his nostrils, enjoying the terror in the man’s eyes, the way every muscle in
his body was tense, waiting for the agony he was sure would follow.

Etienne straightened up and put the
knife back into its sheath, but he pressed down harder on Sam’s chest with his
boot.

‘I’ll be off now. But
I’ll be waiting at the jetty to see you on the nine o’clock ferry. If
you aren’t on it, I’ll be back for you. But just to make certain you
obey me, here’s something to think about.’

Etienne clenched his fist and slammed it
down on to Sam’s mouth. He took his boot off the man’s chest, and took a
couple of steps back. ‘Sit up, or you’ll choke on your own blood,’
he said.

Sam did as he was told and spat out
blood; with it came his two front teeth. His whole face was a bloody mess now.

Etienne smirked. ‘Knocking front
teeth out is almost as good as split nostrils for putting girls off,’ he said.
‘Remember, be on the nine o’clock ferry. Or there’s more of that
to come. This old man is going home for his breakfast now.’

Etienne walked
away but, some fifty yards further on, he glanced back to see Sam trying to get to
his feet, one hand on his belly, the other on his mouth. The pain he’d
inflicted on him wouldn’t help Mari if she was carrying the man’s child,
but it had made him feel a whole lot better.

When Belle woke up to find herself
alone in bed, she guessed that Etienne had gone to have it out with Sam. She leapt
out of bed and went downstairs to stir up the hot embers in the stove, adding more
wood to boil the kettle for when he returned. But she was afraid he might be lying
somewhere too badly injured to get home, so she decided she must get dressed and go
to look for him.

At that moment, the door opened and he
came in. One look at his face was enough to know his mission had been successful; he
didn’t appear hurt, except for some blood on his knuckles.

‘What happened?’ she
asked.

‘Nothing you need worry
about,’ he said, and his eyes were twinkling.

‘Let me bathe that,’ she
said, pointing to his hand.

‘No need – it’s his blood,
not mine,’ he said calmly, and went over to the sink to wash his hands.

She didn’t ask anything more, but
busied herself taking some scraps out for the chickens and laying the table for
breakfast. When she came down from waking the boys, she found Etienne sitting at the
table staring blankly into space.

‘Do you really think Mari has a
cold heart,’ he asked suddenly as she put the teapot on the table.

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted.
‘She doesn’t appear to have much compassion. And I hate to say it, but
there are times when I think she takes after Annie.’

Belle rarely spoke about her real
mother, who had died
five years earlier.
The only contact between them since Belle had come to New Zealand was an annual
Christmas card, and she only heard of her mother’s death via Annie’s
solicitor. She had left everything she had to her daughter – a sum of just over
£1,000 – but, as grateful as Belle was to have that money at a time when things were
so hard for them all financially, she would gladly have traded it for one proper
letter telling her that her mother loved her and was sorry for the neglect and
stony-heartedness over the years.