Anne Bennett - The Child Left Behind

She waited a few more minutes to ascertain that she wasn’t imagining it and then, thoroughly alarmed because she thought someone might be trying to break into the room where the girls were sleeping, she got out of bed. She wondered for a moment if she should try rousing Raoul, but he could be difficult to wake, and anyway, she wanted to satisfy herself first that there was something worth shouting about.

However, Gabrielle was now adept at climbing the tree, and by the time her aunt got to the window the girl was not only in her room but almost undressed.

Bernadette returned to her bed, smiling to herself. She had became really citified if she allowed a rustling tree to worry her, she thought, and was glad she hadn’t woken Raoul and she cuddled against him and went fast asleep.

Gabrielle was also trying to sleep as she knew that they had an early start in the morning, but all she was aware of was the ache in her heart that grew bigger and bigger. Whether she was in Paris or St-Omer she knew she would miss Finn every waking minute. In fact she was missing him already, and as the tears started in her eyes she muffled her face in the pillow.

The following day, as he walked with Christy in to work, Finn felt it hard to lift his mood and yet he knew he must. It might be months, even years, before he would see Gabrielle again and he had to deal with that just as she had to do.

Christy cast a glance at his morose face and, risking a rebuff, he said to him, ‘What’s up, mate? You look as if you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.’

Finn sighed. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘At least nothing that anyone can do anything about. Last night I bid my girlfriend goodbye, that’s all.’

‘Well, I suppose it was as well,’ Christy said. ‘To delay only puts off the inevitable.’

‘I know,’ Finn agreed. ‘Anyway, she was going to relatives in Paris for a while, so it seemed the right time. It would suit me now though if we started moving out. It would be something positive to do.’

‘Can’t be too long now,’ Christy said. ‘I overheard yesterday that we are part of the New Army held back for something special.’

‘Well, I for one can’t wait,’ Finn said.

However, day after day passed on with no further orders, and by the time Gabrielle had been gone over a week there was still no sign of the company moving on. Meanwhile, thoughts of her filled Finn’s mind by day and disturbed his sleep at night. He didn’t think it was possible to miss anyone as much as he missed Gabrielle, and without her he was often so sunk in melancholy that he didn’t hear if someone spoke to him.

This had caused Captain Hamilton to yell at him a few times, and in the end he had said, ‘I don’t know what ails you, Finn Sullivan, but I will give you a word of advice. Snap out of it. Before long you will be on the battlefield and then you’ll need to focus your mind on the enemy and keep your wits about you or you will be blown to kingdom come, or else end your life on the tip of a German bayonet. Do I make myself clear?’

He did, of course, and yet still Finn found it hard to lift his despondency.

‘Can’t you write to her or something?’ Christy said, one morning as he and Finn set out for Headquarters, and then slapped his head as he added, ‘Oh, that’s stupid of me. How can you write to a French girl? It’s hardly likely she could read English.’

‘She can read and speak as good English as you and me, though with a really lovely accent,’ Finn told Christy. ‘But writing to her has never been an option’

‘Why not?’

‘It just isn’t.’

‘Why?’ Christy said. ‘And who is she, for God’s sake?’

There was no need to keep her name a secret any more and so Finn shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it matters now. Her name is Gabrielle Jobert.’

Christy stopped dead on the road. He looked at Finn incredulously as he said, ‘You are joking? Tell me that you are joking?’

‘It’s no joke,’ Finn said. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘I bet her father doesn’t know that you were seeing his daughter,’ Christy said, ‘and that’s why you can’t write to her.’

‘That’s it exactly,’ Finn said, as the two men strode on again.

‘But, I’ve seen you at Mass,’ Christy said, ‘and the whole family has been there, and you haven’t even looked at her. I spotted more than one hopeful young Frenchman lusting after her, but I never thought you felt that way too.’

‘Well,’ Finn said, ‘d’you think I should have carried a banner advertising the fact that I love Gabrielle Jobert?’

‘No, but—’

‘It wasn’t just her father we had to worry about either,’ Finn said. ‘It was the army. When I admitted at first how I felt about her to the captain he warned me away from her. He said the town was full of girls more than willing, with fathers not as formidable as Pierre Jobert, but when you have your eye on the main prize you don’t settle for second best. We both knew, though, that if the army got a hint of any sort of romance between us, I could be whisked away to join the rest of the company before I had time to draw breath.’

‘Well,’ Christy said, ‘if it was all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, where the hell did you meet? You could hardly be out of doors in the depths of winter, however hot with passion you were.’

‘If I tell you that, then you are not to mention it to another soul,’ Finn said. ‘It would sort of spoil it then.’

‘Don’t see why it should,’ Christy said, ‘now your affair is over and your bird flown away to Paris.’

‘We didn’t have an affair,’ Finn retorted. ‘And it isn’t over. Although I will probably have left here by the time she returns from Paris, she has said she will wait for me.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Christy said sneeringly. ‘Were you born yesterday or what? Her father probably has some person he feels suitable for her to marry and he will have a fair choice, for the girl is a looker and set to inherit the bakery, I suppose, as she is the eldest.’

Finn remembered Gabrielle saying her father wanted her and her sister to make what she termed ‘good’ marriages, and her reaction to that. ‘Maybe her father will have some ideas that way, but Gabrielle has sworn to me that she will only marry for love, and that she loves me, and that she will wait.’

Christy looked at his friend pityingly, certain that he was heading for one massive disappointment if he thought that was actually going to happen, but what he said was, ‘All right then, where did you conduct this great love affair? And you are all right, I shan’t tell a soul where your love nest was.’

‘A farmhouse I stumbled on one night,’ Finn said. ‘It is quite a way from the camp though some of the land the camp is on belonged to the owner, but Gabrielle said when he died there was no one to inherit and so the house is lying empty. I cleaned it up because it was filthy, and we used to have the fire alight, and it was real cosy. I even brought a blanket from my own bed.’

‘But how did she get out of her father’s house?’

‘She climbed out of the bedroom window and down a convenient tree there,’ Finn said. ‘Because her father has to get up so early, the whole house retires at eight thirty every night. She would wait until it was all quiet and creep out. Her sister was the only one to know because they shared a room.’

‘God!’ Christy breathed. ‘I wouldn’t have said she had enough gumption.’

‘Oh, she has gumption enough, believe me.’

‘And did you…you know?’ Christy said, nudging Finn with his elbow.

‘That’s none of your bloody business.’

‘Maybe not,’ Christy said, ‘but I bet you didn’t go to all that trouble to bloody well hold hands.’