Ignorance (9 page)

I'd laid up my trousseau as a young girl, stitching away over the years at a stock of household linen. Even with the war, I'd managed to hold on to it. I'd refused to let my mother have it to replace her worn-out stuff, the sheets she'd lost at the start of the war, the tablecloth with indelible wine stains. Now Jeanne's mother came in to embroider my new initials on to my sheets, to sew new nametapes on to my drying-up cloths and towels. My mother threw a couple of thin, old sheets at me: you can have these! From them Madame Nérin stitched me a wedding dress. She did quite well. Over each darn she embroidered a white flower. She made buttons from bunched discs of leather snipped from the uppers of Marc's worn-out shoes then covered with linen. She cut strips of drawn-thread work from the top edges of the sheets and sewed them into a frilled collar and cuffs.

She fitted the dress in silence, pins held between her lips. She knelt at my feet, adjusting the hem. I said: how is Jeanne doing? She mumbled something. Looking at her bowed head, I felt a rush of pity. I said: I've been saving some hand-me-downs for her. Remind me to give them to you before you go. She mumbled again.

Maurice gave me a fur coat. Second-hand, obviously, but new-seeming. I hugged it and buried my face in it. Fresh, gleaming fur, tawny and gold. My mother had her marten cape, and now I had a long fur coat, its deep sleeves lined with rich brown silk. On our wedding morning in November the church was unheated as ever, but in my coat I felt almost cooked. The curé blessed us, shook holy water all over us, and said to me: have lots of children for the Church and for France.

On the afternoon of our wedding day Maurice and I lay together on my narrow bed, on the pink coverlet. Maurice embraced the curve of the child: I swear to take good care of you both. As a token he gave me a gold ring, elaborately chased, and a gold chain, and he gave my mother a gold bracelet. He gave my father a gold signet ring.

My mother hid Maurice's gifts, for the duration of the war, along with her other treasures in her cupboards. Maurice and I watched her lock the cupboard door, pocket the key. I stayed sitting at the table. My belly showed less that way. I had indigestion, and my legs ached, but I didn't want to make a fuss and draw attention to myself. Maurice got up and put his arm round Maman's shoulders. Her hand came up and gripped his.

He said: you've got plenty of storage space downstairs, mother-in-law, haven't you? Would you look after something for me? Just for the time being? Until I get settled?

When a big painting arrived, soon afterwards, enclosed in an old coverlet, Maman left it in its frame and propped it, wrapped in sacks, against the wall of the shed. Everybody had things hidden: their wine and spirits and cider; anything valuable. My mother locked away all my precious gold for me. She said: I'll take care of it until after the war. Then you can bring it out and enjoy it.

Hubert was born in March 1943. By then we'd moved into our new house. When I got back with the baby from the clinic, when he was a week old, Maurice gave me a gold ring set with tiny diamonds. He said: it's for eternity. You and Hubert, for ever. He began crying. He sat on the edge of our big marital bed, holding me holding the baby, and said: I will take care of you always. My darling, my darling. His tears wetted my face. I folded my arms closer around Hubert. My father cried when he was upset. Men weeping like babies: where was the use in that? Maurice had a soft heart where other people's suffering was concerned, all very well, but at this moment I needed him to be strong, so that I could depend on him. I still felt very weak, very tired after the birth. I said: this is supposed to be a celebration! Maurice apologised, got up, opened his bag, produced a bottle of Taittinger. I said: miracle!

He had found us our new home a while back, an abandoned house up at the top of town, which was going cheap; all the furniture thrown in. He kept the transaction a secret, wanting to surprise me. I wouldn't have chosen that particular house, but I knew Maurice needed to live somewhere dignified and spacious, befitting his good job in the town hall. He exulted in the elegant proportions of our
salon
, the graceful curve of our stairs. He'd had some preliminary works done on the house, the walls whitewashed and the floors re-sealed, as an extra wedding present. The day after we were married we moved. I put my few things in Maurice's car, kissed my parents: now the future could begin.

For the moment that meant cleaning and restoring. I scrubbed and scoured the shabby rooms, poulticed with dust, smelling of dead mice and turps, polished the shabby old furniture. In the wild, overgrown garden, Maurice dug a vegetable patch. Come summer 1943, I could pick big handfuls of spinach, cram them into a string bag, take it down to my mother.

Having promised me to run no more risks, to do nothing that would endanger us, Maurice concentrated, now, on his job, on us, his family. I ceased worrying so much about his safety. Life became simpler, centred on marriage, on home. We went on surviving. From day to day. You just got on with it. What choice had we? None. We were living under a harsh and vicious Occupation. Anybody who wanted to be a hero and defy the Germans got imprisoned, tried and then deported or shot. That was that. Communists ran the Resistance. We weren't going to get mixed up with Communists. We were just ordinary people, doing our best, trying to stay decent and kind. I locked up my thoughts about the war. For the sake of my health. You can make yourself forget if you try.

Jeanne, that poor, stupid unfortunate, was not allowed to forget. In November 1943 she returned from Ste-Madeleine and hid in her mother's flat. Madame Nérin began doing extra laundry and charring, to support her daughter. Jeanne took in sewing at home. I wanted to help her and so I sent her some mending to do for me. I didn't go to see her: I was too busy looking after my son and my husband, going to visit my mother and giving her a hand. Jeanne remained someone with whom I could not mix. Maurice preferred me to keep away. When I got restless, cooped up indoors, he would take my hand between the two of his and squeeze it. He'd hum some dance music, waltz me about, spinning, until we bumped into the furniture and got breathless. I depended on him to look after me. When I complained, he comforted me: what would Marshal Pétain say? Be brave, little soldier.

Jeanne's problem was precisely that it showed. Everybody could see her condition and everybody knew she had no husband.

We all know how she's spent the war, my mother said.

I'd come to keep her company for the day. I'd done her ironing for her, her sweeping and dusting. Now, in the late afternoon, we were sitting in the
salon
over the shop, wearing our overcoats because she'd no fuel. The clock sounded loud in the hush. Like a heart beating. The clock would go on ticking, and we would go on, and the war would end. We could allow ourselves to hope for that now.

Marc was out at his youth group. Maurice and my father were off on business somewhere. Little Hubert was tucked up in my mother's bed, the only warm place. My mother and I were knitting, making a jumper and blanket for Hubert with variegated wool from jumpers of our own we'd unknitted, working by the light of a candle as the electricity was off. I looked at my mother's wasted face, her jutting cheekbones, her fingers knotted with arthritis. Her deep-set eyes were sunk in shadows. At lunchtime she'd given half her portion to Hubert. Jeanne hadn't gone as hungry as my mother.

Madame Nérin came to do Maman's laundry as usual. As often as I could, I went down to help the two of them. Jeanne's mother looked skinnier than ever in her washed-out black clothes. Face seamed with wrinkles. One day, in early December, she began coughing into the wash, and my mother had to stop the mangle and make her sit down on an upturned bucket. She ended up recounting all her troubles, that's to say Jeanne's troubles. The child was due any day now and Jeanne hadn't been well. But she must go to the doctor, my mother exclaimed. Madame Nérin said: we haven't the money.

My mother clenched her fists and cast up her eyes at this fecklessness.
Nom de Dieu
! When she saw someone suffering, she couldn't abide it. She wanted to stop the suffering. It hurt her too much. Sometimes you had to drown kittens, if there were too many of them. Sometimes it was right a child died at birth, if he'd been born unfit in some way. Sometimes you just had to admit defeat with yellowing pot-plants and tip them into the dustbin. What could be done with Jeanne?

I felt obliged to visit my old schoolmate. The following morning, leaving Hubert with my mother, I wrapped up well in my fur coat, a woollen hat and scarf, and made for the Nérins' flat in the lower town. I walked briskly through chilly mist down towards the smithy, the river. I told myself: just get it over with.

The ugly tenements rose up around me. Rusty window-frames, broken panes patched with cardboard or tin, paint peeling off doors. I wasn't too happy to have to go into such a poor district, nor to have to be near Jeanne. Thinking about her made me itch, as though she were a flea biting me. She was like a flake of skin I longed to dislodge. I didn't want to be seen entering her flat, even though I was on an errand of charity. At the same time I felt a sort of fascination: how would she behave?

Madame Nérin opened the door. Thank God you've come. She had on her coat and hat. She pulled me inside the brown-painted entry. Quick, quick. Jeanne's waters have just broken. Stay with Jeanne, will you, while I go to fetch the midwife?

How familiarly she spoke to me in her urgency. She called me
tu
: I felt quite put out. She took no notice but banged out, and I went into the bedroom.

Light filtered under the lowered dark red blind. The poky little room smelled newly scrubbed. Cold air and cold bleach. Brown walls and brown floor. Little furniture: two iron beds, a chair, a chest of drawers. Jeanne without her gaudy make-up looked like a brown mouse. Sweating. Biting down on her lip with her little white teeth. I stood at the end of her bed. When she whimpered I flinched. I tried to be kind. I told her to keep her courage up. I felt frightened, being here with her all alone, having this unwanted responsibility forced upon me, and so I became the soldier self Maurice loved, dutiful, on guard, keeping watch. Jeanne seemed like my prisoner, but not one I could respect. She'd collapsed into the pains. They were rushing her away, like the current in the nearby river swirling debris under the bridge.

Giving birth is a lonely business. The nuns in the maternity clinic had been brisk, not kind. No one had comforted me. In the labour ward I was just left alone to get on with it for a night and a day. No visitors allowed. When I went in, my mother signed a cross on my forehead. Be brave! Then she left. I wanted to run after her but was felled by a pain. A nun gave me an enema and shaved me. I remember the shiny metal rails around the bed and the pale green lino floor, polished so clean they hurt. Steel rods everywhere, inside me and outside. Finally I tore apart and exploded. I felt I made a terrible mess. I didn't dare look. The baby existed outside me. The nuns whisked him off. To clean him up.

Jeanne gasped and screamed my name. I went round the bed and gave her my hands and she gripped them. She panted, she yelled good and loud. She didn't seem to care a bit about the animal noise she was making. Her pink nightdress was creased up round her waist and she'd kicked off the blanket and sheet. Her opened thighs, gripping the painful air between them, looked so strong. Her bare feet shifted, stamped. Don't push, I cried: I can see the head, you mustn't push, you've got to wait for the midwife. Fuck that! Jeanne shouted. She howled. A baby shot out as though greased, fat as a codfish. I cried out too. I caught the baby. A girl, red and creased, all slimy against the sleeves of my fur coat.

I studied her black eyebrows, her licks of black hair, her blue eyes. Jeanne, sunk in pillows, tried to sit up. She said: is she all right? I said: I think so.

The crimson, crumpled baby took a breath and began bawling. I put her into Jeanne's arms. Jeanne lay back, holding her. Mother of God, it hurts! Damned holy Virgin, why does nobody tell us what it's like? She pushed her nightdress off one shoulder, put the child to her breast. Immediately she began to suck.

What a smell in the room: blood and urine and worse. I disliked seeing Jeanne flopping so helplessly in her bed in her mess, floundering in her soiled bedclothes. I pulled the sheet back up and said: well, did you ask the Holy Virgin to help? You've left it a bit late, haven't you?

Jeanne said: I loathe you, Marie-Angèle. Her voice cracked. She glared at me, put up a hand and pushed her hair back. She was sweaty, pale as a pig, and shivering. The baby stopped sucking and began to wail. I didn't know what to do. The room seemed jumping around me. I couldn't quiet it. Hush, I wanted to say to the room: hush. I wanted to smash my hand over the room's mouth until it shut up.

Madame Nérin arrived with the midwife, a big, blonde woman in a skimpy grey coat and skirt. I didn't know her. She took over. I backed away, stood near the window. Madame Nérin started crying. She kissed Jeanne, over and over. I held on to the blind. My fingers found the little wooden barrel knotted on to the end of its string, and clasped it. Madame Nérin held Jeanne's hand while the midwife cut the cord, washed the baby, wrapped her in a towel and put her back in Jeanne's arms. She began to suckle again. Jeanne seemed to drift off then, to go elsewhere.

After a little while she opened her eyes, looked at me and winked and said: Christ, I could murder a cigarette. You haven't got one, have you? I bet Maurice keeps you supplied with fags, doesn't he, lovely treats?