Anne Bennett - The Child Left Behind

She realised, possibly for the first time, that pleasure wasn’t a sin and that life didn’t always have to be the austere, sterile one demanded by her father and followed blindly by her downtrodden mother. Her life would not be like that, she resolved. When I marry Finn our life together will be full of happiness. I shall see to it that it is.

She got ready for Mass the first Sunday after Christmas, knowing that, surrounded as she would be by her aunt and uncle as well as her parents, she would dare not even sneak a look at Finn. It had been the same on Christmas Day, and so she felt rather than saw the melancholy surrounding him, but could do nothing to ease it.

The following morning Gabrielle dressed to go into the shop, because never before had her father allowed the visit of her aunt and uncle to upset her work at all. She had no idea that her aunt had decided to try to do something about this.

Bernadette went straight into the bakery kitchen where Pierre was working. He looked up in surprise, for she had never done such a thing before.

‘Is anything the matter, Bernadette? he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

Bernadette was a carbon copy of his wife, Mariette, though her features were firmer somehow. She and Pierre had always got on well, so she smiled as she said, ‘I am perfectly well, thank you, Pierre. But I feel I do need to speak to you about your daughters.’

‘What about them?’

‘Well, the girls should be allowed to go into town sometimes,’ Bernadette said. ‘What can happen to them in their own town in broad daylight?’

‘You don’t know the worry of trying to rear daughters decently these days,’ Pierre said morosely. ‘More especially now that the town is teeming with soldiers and some of the girls’ morals very lax because of it. Anyway, Gabrielle has her duties in the shop and Yvette is at school all day.’

‘Ah, that is something else I need to talk to you about,’ Bernadette said. ‘Surely Gabrielle deserves time off sometimes, and isn’t Yvette on holiday now?’

‘Gabrielle’s help is needed,’ Pierre said doggedly.

‘Surely not all day and every day,’ Bernadette said. ‘While we are here at least, Raoul can give you a hand, and if Mariette would take a turn in the shop it would free Gabrielle for a few hours. The girls, and especially Gabrielle, need some fun in their lives.’

‘Life is not one long entertainment, Bernadette, whatever you think,’ Pierre growled, and his eyebrows puckered in annoyance. ‘And did you not hear me tell you about the soldiers?’

‘Of course I heard you,’ Bernadette said. ‘I would have to be deaf not to hear you, but do you really think that some soldier is going to leap on them as soon as they leave the shop, especially as they will be in my charge?’

‘No,’ Pierre had to admit. ‘I suppose if you were with them it might be all right.’

‘I would like their company,’ Bernadette said. ‘You don’t know how I envy your two fine girls like that.’

Pierre thought daughters were all very well, but sons would have done him far better. Bernadette and Raoul, however, had neither a chick nor child to call their own and he acknowledged that that must be hard.

‘All right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘You win. While you are here, Bernadette, Gabrielle will have lighter duties and you may take her out now and again, and Yvette too.’

‘Thank you, Pierre,’ said Bernadette. She thought it was a start at least, and she scurried off to tell the girls the news.

She found Gabrielle fully dressed, but still in the bedroom, sitting on the bed and staring fixedly out of the window. She was so preoccupied that Bernadette stood for a few moments on the threshold and Gabrielle was unaware of her. ‘Gabrielle,’ she said softly and then, as the girl turned towards her, she was staggered by the bleak look in her eyes before she recovered herself and replaced her sadness with a smile of welcome.

Bernadette told her what had transpired between her and Pierre. Even as she did so she wondered if Mariette or Pierre had ever really looked at their elder daughter. It was obvious to her aunt that the girl was burdened over something. Small wonder, Bernadette thought, when she was almost a prisoner in her own home.

Gabrielle wished that she could have confided in her aunt, but much as she loved her and her uncle Raoul, a large and jovial man, she knew she couldn’t. However, she was very pleased at the thought of time away from the shop and outings with her aunt, and she began to get ready while Bernadette went off to find Yvette.

Finn, of course, did not know this, so when the captain dispatched him for bread on Monday morning, he went eagerly. He thought if Gabrielle was alone he might manage a word or two with her at least. However, Gabrielle was nowhere to be seen, and though Finn hung about outside for as long as he dared, eventually he had to buy the captain’s loaves from her mother.

The next day was the same. But returning to the Headquarters, he spotted Gabrielle with her sister and a woman he presumed to be her aunt. They were ambling through the town, laughing and joking together, and looked as if they hadn’t a care in the world, while he felt as if his heart was breaking.

Captain Hamilton took one look at him when he returned and said, ‘Good God, man, what the hell’s the matter with you? You look as if you’ve lost a pound and found a penny.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Finn said. ‘Tell you the truth, sir, I feel a bit like that.’

‘Woman troubles again, I suppose?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Finn said. ‘Sort of, anyway.’

‘Ah, well, no doubt it will resolve itself,’ the captain said. ‘And if it doesn’t, well, you’re not going to be here much longer so it will hardly matter.’

Although Finn had known that the day would come when he would leave St-Omer, he suddenly felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He didn’t expect to be told anything, but he asked, ‘Have you any news of when, sir?’

‘Nothing definite,’ the captain said. ‘I know that some units are moving out by the end of January. You won’t be going then, because you won’t move until we go, but I reckon we will all be left here by the spring.’

He caught sight of the woebegone look on Finn’s face at his words and he laughed. ‘Now what’s up with you?’ he demanded. ‘You knew it was only a matter of time until it came to this. You are here to fight a war, and while a carnal liaison with a young French maid is a great attraction, it must be no more than that for a soldier going to war. You don’t need me to tell you this, do you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well then, let’s have no more long faces and heartfelt sighs,’ the captain said. ‘You get on with the job you came to do and in this instance that means brewing me up some tea.’

‘Right away, sir,’ Finn said.

Finn tried, but his heart felt heavy, and at the turn of the year he looked forward to 1916 with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Bernadette and Raoul were to return to Paris on Monday 3 January.

The day before, as they tucked into their large Sunday dinner after Mass, Bernadette said to Gabrielle, ‘If your parents are agreeable, how would you like to return to Paris with me and your uncle? We would love to have your company for a while.’

‘We would indeed,’ Raoul put in. ‘A pretty young woman about the house is just the thing for chasing away the winter blues.’

‘And you would see all the sights of Paris. What do you say?’

Before she had given her heart to a soldier that she loved and longed to see again with every thread of her being, Gabrielle would have thought she had died and gone to Heaven to receive such an offer, but now it was too late. She couldn’t leave. She honestly thought if she didn’t see Finn soon she would die of a broken heart.