The Silent Hours (19 page)

TRISTAN

Samuel is nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t turn up late and he isn’t there at break, and doesn’t appear in any lessons all morning. At lunch, I ask André, who always plays with him, where he is, and he doesn’t know.

We play football and one of the sides is short because he isn’t here. I play on the side with only seven of us and we get beaten 0–2. I definitely think it would have helped having the eighth man. Samuel isn’t exactly a great footballer, but it is better than having no one there at all.

We are covered in mud by the end of the lesson and we all wash in freezing cold water in the little building they call the wash house. It’s been there for ever, with its barrels full to the brim with water that has little drowned insects floating on the surface. I make Hugues yelp by picking up one little bug by its wing and dangling it in front of his nose. He practically falls backwards into the barrel. He’s such a little sniveller.

Mademoiselle Rochard is strange in our lesson today, looking at the empty chair where Samuel sits, and then out of the window. She sighs a lot. She doesn’t get angry at all when Michel spills his ink all over his book; in fact, I’m not sure she notices. She makes us read in silence for most of the lesson and I am so bored I can’t concentrate, and anyway I don’t understand a lot of the words I am reading and when I ask her to tell me what one means she seems to be cross with me for not knowing it. It’s a long word though –
inéluctable
– which I don’t think even Eléonore knows and she is in a class two whole years above me. Mademoiselle Rochard usually writes the new words on the board in her round writing with the i’s with the big dots. She seems tired since the bump came.

She sets us a piece on what we have read and I work extra hard in the hope that she will snap out of her strange mood and notice.

At the end of the lesson I take my final piece up to her. ‘Mademoiselle,’ I say, pushing the paper towards her. ‘I wrote over one side of the page in less than ten minutes.’

Normally she would be full of praise, but today she simply waves me away with one hand.

PAUL

Dear Isabelle,

Do you remember the day after Grandpoppy died and you screamed at me tocry? To cry for all the times he’d sit with us by the river, his trousers rolled to just below the knee, the scar on his shin, for his enormous reassuring hugs, his explosive laughter, his surreptitious passing of sweets beneath the table?

You were there sobbing your heart out for him, curled up and clutching the corner of his quilt that smelt of mothballs and peppermint, your face streaming, the pillowcase sodden and I patted you, pathetically, inadequate. And you reared up and shouted at me in broken words to cry for him, to show something.

I’d wondered it myself – was the stone that was lodged in my throat enough for a man who had taken me fishing for the first time, who had given me my first taste of wine, taught me to ride a bike? But, I thought, you cried over anything: a snatch of a song, a sunset bleeding over the tree line, a letter. You’d cry when youlaughed too hard, snuffling, a hand to your mouth trying to cram both back in, but half-hearted, not caring to dab at your eyes.

‘Cry!’you’d screamed.

They hanged Rémi yesterday. In the courtyard. We were all watching. He pissed himself.

They hanged him, Isabelle.

I cried then.

ADELINE

1952, St Cecilia nunnery, south-west France

All I see is Isabelle. My mind is suddenly full. Isabelle laughing, Isabelle turning in the doorway, bent over the vegetables, checking stock, cheeks flushed, grubby hands wiped on her apron, dancing in the aisles when she thinks I’m not watching. Laughing. Always laughing.

Isabelle pregnant, ankles barely swollen, a neat bump straining at her clothes. Puffing around the house, a hand always resting on her stomach, remaining tight-lipped as to the identity of the father. Her scarlet face when I asked whether she had been mistreated.

Her meeting the postman before he had a chance to step fully into the shop, squirrelling away letters to her room. Letters with a foreign postmark.

Isabelle ignoring the staring in the village, staying in the shop on the stool, no longer spending time with any other girls. Her gratitude to Monsieur Garande when he visited, her unexpected ally: wanting her back to teach at the school despite complaints from a ring of affronted mothers. Her face as it broke into a beam, her grateful thanks, her assurances she wouldn’t disappoint, his gruff red-faced response.

Her silence as Madame Garande, not nearly as forgiving as her husband, eyes out on stalks, came to buy her weekly ration of butter, goggling as Isabelle reached up to the shelf behind the counter, her blouse lifting a little at the waist, the tell-tale sign of her shame on full display. Her pointed look at me. What kind of mother is she? What kind of girl has she raised?

Then Vincent – his open face, cheeks permanently brown. His anger forgotten as they made plans for the future. Him carrying the cradle down from the attic, washing and scrubbing it in the kitchen as I cooked, humming songs from his own childhood.

The cradle that first held my Paul, that tiny little bundle, lying on one side, underneath soft blankets, one hand thrown up by his face as I leant in to check he was breathing, so softly and silently I would lean in again.

Isabelle on the day her own baby came. Vincent banished from the house, Madame Martin summoned to take control of the room. Her orders, barked in a brisk voice, no-nonsense, five children of her own.

‘Fetch more towels, madame,’ she says, handing me a damp, soiled sheet.

The sweat forming on Isabelle’s forehead as I stumble across the bedroom to the cupboard, reach down to collect more towels, Isabelle’s cries filling the air, forced out of the little room on the second storey, into the street below. Terrible sounds, pain I couldn’t alleviate, just watch helplessly.

Hours later, the sky darkens, candles throw snatches of light around the room, everything half in shadow, half out, fetching a warm saucepan of water. Vincent prowling the kitchen, starting at each cry.

‘How is she, Adeline?’ He rakes his fingers through his hair. I reassure him, place a hand on his arm and look into his open face. Our baby. He pulls me towards him, holds me tightly, talks into my hair, ‘My daughter, my poor baby.’

I soothe. I say it is going to be all right.

Madame Martin washing, tired, wearily smiling at us both as she wraps the baby – a boy – in a towel, handing him to Isabelle who reaches out to take him. He is cradled in her arms and she is cooing at him, her face full of love and tenderness, eyes not leaving his face even when Vincent rushes past, thanks Madame Martin, pulls up a chair at the side of the bed.

Our first grandchild: my grandchild.

‘Hold him, Maman.’ Isabelle holds out the little bundle.

A miniature face, darker hair and skin, different from the rest of our family.

I turn towards the door. ‘I’ll bring you a glass of water,’ I say, leaving the room. Closing the door behind me I rest against it.

‘Sebastien.’ Isabelle’s voice muffled, ‘I want to call him Sebastien.’

I press my eyes closed with both hands.

The smile in Vincent’s reply is unmistakable. ‘Welcome to the world, little man.’

Sebastien.

His face when asleep. It is a narrower face than either Paul’s or Isabelle’s, and a shock of dark hair so startling to people when they look at his blonde mother and her family.

Isabelle’s face as I ask questions, my confusion that Vincent is not concerned. Isabelle begging me to talk of something else.

I soothe. I say it is going to be all right.

A baby’s cry makes my eyes snap open in the darkness. I lie there and listen to the muted sounds of Isabelle reaching for him, shushing him, rocking them both in the chair by her window as she nurses him. When they are asleep again I am still twitching, awake, alert, tense.

It is going to be all right.

Isabelle.

‘The English doctor is coming. Will that change things?’

Marguerite still asks questions as if I will provide the answers.

She has brought me into the village. We are standing on a small triangle of grass, rough-edged and spattered with dandelions. In the middle there is a memorial to those soldiers who died in the wars – more names recently engraved. Its stone is pale and smooth even in this dull light; it is older now than some of the names etched into its surface, snaking around the base and across, some with the same surnames, again and again, around.

‘Sister Constance says if he can’t help you then you will be off to Toulouse next month. You must try.’

I continue to look at the memorial.

Sister Marguerite turns back to the memorial with a slight puff of frustration, then catches herself. ‘So many,’ she says, her hands clasped in front of her.

So many. I think then of all the other memorials in France, the other names that can barely fit onto the surfaces: so many names. I think of my father’s name somewhere, he would be somewhere. I haven’t thought of my father for an age. I feel tiny, a patch on a quilt, surrounded by other people’s names and stories. For a second I feel the day sharpen, feel my limbs quicken for an instant with the feeling.

‘It seems everyone has lost someone,’ she says, a sideways glance at me.

As I look back at the names I feel my eyes sting with the truth of her words. And yet one name above all keeps running through my head. Her name.

Isabelle.

ISABELLE

Darling Paul,

We have heard nothing from you in an age.

You are an uncle. Will this news bring you home to us?

He is a tiny miracle, so small it frightens me sometimes. I can’t imagine how his little body functions. I imagine those ghastly biology lessons at school, thinkingof all the parts. Tiny. Pumping blood round his body, coursing through his veins, making his cheeks flush. I want to smother him to my chest, scratch the eyes from anyone who threatens him. It is a mad love: it hurts.

All the whispers and the words are meaningless when I look at his face. Hisfather is out there. He doesn’t know. I have done the right thing. This is the kind of love that would make a man cross an ocean. He is safe and will come home to us. As you will.

Isabelle

PAUL

Dear Isabelle,

Do my letters get through? Am I writing to myself?

I lie here sometimes and drag myself back with you all. I see the blues, greens and the hazy yellows of the village and I feel my heart beat slow. I hear the chatterin the high street, the gentle clink of cutlery from the round tables outside the Hotel Avril, Father’s low laughter, the rustle of his newspaper. I feel my body slowlyunclench, stretch my toes, roll my shoulders. I see me, the man you all remember, sitting languidly in the kitchen, a small glass of wine in my hand, teasing Mother as she cooks. The man whose concerns don’t move beyond what she might be making for dinner. He smooths the table with his palm. He has tanned hands. She is laughing, tickled by one of his stories.

I can’t remember the stories any more.

It doesn’t work. The noise is replaced – the lonely cough of my neighbour, distant talk from the guards in a language I don’t understand, conspiratorial whisperings, the too-low whine of aircraft overhead, shouting, an explosion. I see only blacks and greys. My body is angular, bunched up, alert. My eyes move quicklyto doorways, turned by the harsh clang of an order, my palms quickly dampen, my heart drills through my body.

I miss that man in the kitchen, the man you write your letters to.

Paul

ADELINE

1952, St Cecilia nunnery, south-west France

‘And if you could remove your shoes and sit on the bed, that would be perfect.’The English doctor’s accent is impeccable and he says the words with confidence. He hoists his bag onto the stool, unzips it and starts to pull out some of his instruments, placing them in a neat line on top of the woollen blanket at the foot of the bed. He must only be early thirties, mid-thirties perhaps. He has lost most of his hair, which always makes it a little harder to tell. He would be about Paul’s age, I think.

‘Our research has been focused on trying to help people with your affliction and we’ve had some successes both in England and across the Atlantic.’ He pulls out a little stick with thin bristles around the top of it; a sort of toothbrush, although I have never seen one shaped that way. Another small box with wires emerges. The wires have pads attached. His things seem so at odds with the ancient stone rooms of the nunnery.

‘I’ve brought some things with me and I don’t want you to be in any way alarmed – I will explain each one to you before we proceed. But, of course’ – he looks up at me – ‘your other doctor tells me you have come across some of them before.’

I nod.

‘Right, let’s get cracking.’ He looks at me. ‘Oh, could you please remove your stockings? I want you to be able to really feel the effects.’

I get up from the bed and move behind a screen in the corner where I quickly roll down the offending stockings.

The doctor doesn’t wait by the bed: hands crossed behind his back, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he walks across the room still talking. I emerge and pad across the wooden floorboards in bare feet. He is at the window, gesturing to the view outside, a little corner of the garden. ‘Need it in this place, I expect. Place to grow vegetables. My wife would like it.’

I go to sit back on the bed, my back against the headboard, my legs now bare, my modesty protected by a rather ugly woollen skirt. A draught has triggered a spattering of goosebumps on my exposed legs but nothing is distracting the doctor.

He strides across the room. ‘Shall we begin?’

The usual silence that greets any question directed at me does not throw him off course; in fact, he barely notices, perhaps relieved to be with a patient that isn’t chattering away about their cold or their husband’s chilblains.

‘I must confess, madame, that I have been most curious to get over and see you.’ A beat and he moves on. ‘I’m going to try a range of methods to glean a vocal response from you. If at any moment you are uncomfortable and wish me to stop, please raise a hand and I will. Right.’ He takes up the little stick with bristles and moves towards my feet. ‘Doesn’t last long on me – giggling like a schoolgirl after two seconds – but let’s see how you get on.’

He tickles the soles of my feet and they jerk in response to the foreign feeling. The doctor glances up at my face, no doubt assuming I might break out into speech from the first touch. Not the least dejected, he spends a while running through different instruments on my feet: a rather shiny ball, cold to the touch; a sponge dipped in some kind of gel; a tiny needle which, he assures me, can penetrate only one millimetre.

At each surprise feeling I make little grunts, noises. Some are new, I feel my eyes widening in surprise as another sound escapes.

The doctor seems to speed up the routine, switching back and forth between different instruments, trying various patterns, always checking my face for a response, encouraging any sound with a small nod.

Now he has set up the little box and wants to attach the pads to my left arm. ‘It will administer a little shock to you in the hope of jump-starting … well, like all these things, prompting a response. I am hoping that one of these new-fangled tools might do the trick.’

I swallow, eye the box.

He presses a button and I start with surprise. Tiny vibrations course through my arms at the same time.

My passive response apparently troubles the English doctor, deflated now as he continues to manipulate and prod my limbs. He stops, a last little zing from a pad on my elbow making it twitch. ‘This isn’t working,’ he says.

He removes the pads, slowly puts everything back into the bag and moves the bag off the stool.

Just when I expect him to make his goodbyes he drags the stool closer towards me and sits down. When he looks at me his blue eyes seem enormous behind the thick lenses of his glasses. I shift a little under his gaze.

‘I see you have a notebook there. I’d be most grateful to know a little more about you. Can you write some answers to my questions?’

I reach for the notebook and pencil on the side table and open up a page towards the back of the book in affirmation.

‘What is your name?’

I write:
Adeline
.

‘Surname?’

I don’t remember
.

Even as I write I feel a name nudging in my subconscious, just out of reach. Am I always doomed to repeat the same memories and not recall my own name?

‘Can you remember when you last spoke?’

In my neat hand I respond.

Years ago
.

‘Can you be more precise?’

Before
.

‘Before? Before what, madame?’

I shake my head.

‘Are you from the region?’

I shake my head from side to side, scrawling:
No
.

‘Which region?’

Sister Marguerite has asked me this before.

I write
Limousin
.

‘Ah! Famous for
la vache Limousine
.’ He chuckles.

I nod.

He appears to have run out of questions.

‘Madame, if I may – may I take a look at your throat?’ He produces a torch from his shirt pocket. ‘Open up.’ He leans towards me and I duly obey. He inspects the insides of my mouth for a few moments, tilting his head this way and that, exploring every corner with the light and then, standing upright, he snaps off the torch, musing aloud: ‘Had a room-mate in the war from that area. Terribly nice chap.’

My pencil hovers.

‘Whereabouts exactly are you from, madame, in the region?’ He looks at my notebook, expecting me to write down the answer to his question.

My hand wavers.

He looks at me. ‘When you lost your voice, was it after an accident, a fall perhaps? A knock to the head?’

I shake my head.

‘But it came on suddenly, something triggered it?’

A pause as he holds my gaze. I nod slowly.

He persists. ‘The nuns tell me you arrived late summer of ’44. Where had you been up to then? Where was your home?’

I turn my face away from him, the pencil drops to the floor.

The doctor is still standing, waiting for my response. ‘Madame,’ he states. ‘Madame, if you could help me to understand. May I?’

He reaches for my notebook.

I surrender it to him.

He reads snatches of the start, moments, dreams. He studies a sketch, lightly drawn. It is a girl’s face.

He hands it back to me, searches my face. He has kind eyes. ‘I hope very much, madame, to help you find your voice.’

He packs away his things, wrapping them carefully and placing them in his bag. I watch him as he shrugs on his coat, picks up his bag.

‘I will see you tomorrow, madame.’ He walks to the door, one hand lifting the latch before he turns and looks at me still on the bed. ‘Please let me help you.’

I lie back, staring ahead, hearing voices in the corridor just outside. The door finally thuds closed and the words are muffled.

I turn to the page in the notebook. She is smiling at me. Something in my chest flutters: a whisper. I remember more.