The Child Left Behind (9 page)

‘Finn, I hate to think of anything happening to you and that is why I have said nothing until now, but it may, for I know war is no game. But how would I ever know? Would it be all right if I write to your family—if not your parents then your brothers, or your sister?’

Finn could just imagine how such a letter would
be received, especially by his mother, and that would probably colour her opinion when he brought Gabrielle home after the war. If she refused to accept her then he would take her somewhere else, but he would hate to be estranged from his father, his brothers and Nuala, and he knew that could so easily happen if his mother took umbrage.

‘My parents know nothing about us as yet,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t they approve either?’

‘As I said, my mother really is one on her own,’ Finn said. ‘And in all honesty, she finds it hard to approve of anything. As I said, I have told Nuala all about you and my brothers too know a little, but if you wrote to them at the cottage my mother would not be above steaming open the letters.’

‘My father would do that too,’ Gabrielle said.

‘I would have to think very carefully about a letter to my parents telling them about us,’ Finn said. ‘And I think the first approach must come from me, but I will ask the priest.’ Lowering his voice still further as they approached the bakery yard, he went on, ‘Father Clifford was assigned to our battalion as soon as we passed out last spring in Belfast. He is fairly young and one of the worldliest priests I have ever met. I am sure if anything happens to me, he will get word to you, but maybe you will still be in Paris.’

‘I doubt that,’ Gabrielle said. ‘My father says I can stay one month, but no longer, and you haven’t had orders to go anywhere yet, have you?’

‘Not yet.’ Finn whispered as he put his finger to his lips. ‘Now, not another sound. We’re getting too close.’

They crept along holding hands, and once in the yard underneath the tree, Finn drew Gabrielle into his arms.

She felt tears start in her eyes. She knew this was goodbye. She wasn’t sure that she could exist without Finn, but she knew the forces pulling them apart were stronger than they were. As she kissed Finn with such intensity it seemed to come from the very essence of her being, and she couldn’t help the little moans that escaped from her mouth. Then, very gently, Finn lifted her into the tree.

Her aunt Bernadette didn’t sleep very well or deeply, and at that moment she was lying in her bed wide awake and imagining the treats in store for her niece. As for her just saying a month, she would stay as long as Bernadette wanted. There was nothing Pierre could do about it. He could hardly leave his precious bakery and come to fetch her.

Telling herself that she would never sleep with all these thoughts running around in her head, she tried to clear her mind and relax, and that was when she heard the sound in the yard below. She listened intently. There were no further sounds, and Bernadette told herself she had imagined it. She knew if she got out of bed to look she would be thoroughly wakened. She closed her eyes, but a few minutes later she heard rustling coming from
outside. She lit the lamp beside the bed and saw that it was past two in the morning.

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.’

They had reached the Headquarters and as they went up the steps Christy caught sight of Finn’s face, with a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Suddenly he knew with absolute conviction that Finn Sullivan had lain with Gabrielle Jobert and was remembering their nights of passion. Oh, how he envied him. He would have sold his soul for such an experience himself.

With the casualty lists rising in Ireland and no sign of the promised Home Rule, an insurrection began in Dublin on Easter Monday. The postman told Biddy about it the following morning and when the men came in for breakfast they could scarcely believe what she related.

‘Surely not,’ Thomas John said. ‘They would not be so stupid as to take on the might of the British Army.’

‘I don’t know so much,’ Joe said. ‘There are plenty of stupid fellows in that Irish Republican Brotherhood, or whatever they call themselves these days.’

‘Well, I think we need to know what is happening in our own country,’ Thomas John said decidedly. ‘Someone of us must go to Buncrana and buy a paper.’

Tom went in on the old horse, and when he got home, regardless of the jobs awaiting attention on the farm, Thomas John spread the paper on the table.

‘Just a thousand of them,’ he said in disgust. ‘What on earth can a scant thousand men achieve? Connolly and Pearse are leading them to be slaughtered.’

‘They have both sides of the Liffey covered, though,’ Joe put in, impressed despite himself. ‘And taken over the GPO in Sackville Street like the postman was after telling Mammy.’

‘Hoisted up the tricolour flag too,’ Tom said. ‘It might be ill timed, stupid or whatever you want to call it, Daddy, but isn’t it a fine sight to see the tricolour flying in Ireland again?’

‘Aye it is, son,’ Thomas John said rather sadly. ‘And take joy in it, because it won’t flutter there for long. It wouldn’t hurt to get a paper each day though and keep abreast of things.’

That night Tom wrote to Finn telling him all about the uprising.

The worst thing is, there are so few of them pitted against the might of the disciplined British Army. Daddy thinks the whole thing is doomed to failure and I am inclined to agree with him. In fact the rebels might have hindered, not helped, the peace process.

Finn tried to be concerned, but the uprising seemed far removed from the war in France. It was as if Buncrana was in his distant past, almost another life, a life that hadn’t Gabrielle in it.

The day that he received Tom’s letter he met
Father Clifford in St-Omer. He was really pleased to see him and he greeted him warmly. ‘But what are you doing here, Father?’ he asked.

‘I am here to tend to the injured in the hospital,’ the priest replied. ‘Father Kenny has been taken ill himself and I offered to take his place for a while.’

‘So have you left our battalion then, Father?’

‘No, not at all,’ Father Clifford said. ‘This is just temporary. I am moving out with you.’

‘No one knows when that will be yet?’

‘The next forty-eight hours, I heard,’ Father Clifford said.

Finn knew that once he moved from St-Omer there would be no way that Gabrielle could find him. In his reply to Tom that night he mentioned not one word about the uprising, but said that the whole company was on the move, no one knew where, and he was heartbroken at leaving behind his beloved Gabrielle.

Before Tom even received Finn’s reply the rebellion was over. Britain’s response had been immediate. Thousands of troops had arrived in Dublin, field guns were installed, and by Wednesday a gunship had sailed up the Liffey and began shelling the place to bits. And as Dublin began to burn all those shops not shelled or burned to the ground were closed up. The Dublin people were starving, and looting became commonplace, with the British Army shooting anything that moved.

By Saturday, it was all over and the rebels marched off to Kilmainham Gaol, apart from de Valera, who had an American passport and was taken to Richmond Barracks. Tom didn’t tell Finn any of this. Instead he wrote back to him in conciliatory tone, though he wasn’t too worried about his brother. He was young and impetuous and, though he seemed very fond of the French girl, it was likely that he would fall in love many times before wanting to settle down

In Paris, Bernadette was seriously concerned about her niece, who seemed filled with sadness. In an effort to amuse her, her aunt and uncle had taken her to concerts and theatres, as well as private parties and soirees. Her aunt had taken her shopping and bought her beautiful gowns, and they paraded the streets of Paris dressed in their finery, stopping to talk to this one and that, or taking a break at a café for coffee and cake, or a reviving glass of wine, which Gabrielle had never tasted in her life before.

She thanked them for their kindness, was polite and solicitous to her aunt’s friends, and answered their many questions without a hint of annoyance. Bernadette noted, though, that Gabrielle’s smile never reached her eyes and she never saw them dance with delight as they had once used to. Even her movements seemed slow and heavy and she held herself stiffly, even when she submitted to her aunt’s embraces. And that was the word—submitted.

‘It’s almost as if she’s frozen inside,’ Bernadette said to her husband as they made ready for bed. ‘I remember how she used to hug and kiss us both when she was a child, and even last year she was the same. I have never seen such a change in a girl before.’

‘I have noticed it myself,’ Raoul said. ‘Why don’t you send a note in the morning to ask the doctor to call to look at the girl? What if there is something radically wrong and we haven’t sought medical advice?’

‘You’re right, Raoul,’ Bernadette said. ‘I’ll see to it.’

The following morning after breakfast, Gabrielle retired to her room with a book, but she didn’t even attempt to read. She knew by now something was the matter with her and it occupied all her thoughts.

She hadn’t seen her monthly bleed since before Christmas, and she had noticed the other night that her nipples were brown when they had once been pink. She had let her nightdress fall from her, and studied herself in the mirror. She saw that her breasts had definitely changed. They looked slightly larger, though she wasn’t sure about that, but they definitely had blue lines on them that she had never noticed before.

She knew what she and Finn had done just that one time could have resulted in a baby because Finn had said so and that had been why he had refused to do it again, though when she remembered
how he had made her feel inside, she couldn’t wholly regret it. In fact, if Finn had transplanted a seed inside her that would grow into a child, his child, whom she would rear and nurture until he came back from the war, she would leap up and down with delight, but she knew that no one else would see her situation in the same light. Most people would consider it just about the worst sin that a girl could commit. She dreaded telling her father, yet if she was right, there was no way she could get out of telling him.

This was her mood then when her aunt knocked on Gabrielle’s door.

‘Ah,’ Bernadette smiled. ‘Here you are.’

‘Do you want me, Aunt?’

‘No, my dear,’ Bernadette said. ‘But it’s just that the doctor has called to have a look at you, for you are not yourself, are you?’ Bernadette met her niece’s eyes.

Gabrielle knew she wasn’t, and she shook her head. Now it was all out of her hands and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. So when her aunt said, ‘Shall I ask him to come in?’ she nodded her head and said glumly, ‘You may as well.’

Downstairs, waiting to hear what the doctor had to say, Bernadette ran through in her mind the symptoms that Gabrielle had displayed almost since the day she had brought her to Paris, and came up with all manner of ailments that Gabrielle could be suffering from, except the right one. She
castigated herself for not contacting the doctor sooner, but she had thought it was some sickness of mind, some form of depression, due partly to the way that she had been raised, and she’d been convinced that the freedom and gaiety of Paris would soon sort her out. It hadn’t, however, and so she waited anxiously for the doctor’s verdict.

The doctor had been the Dufours’ physician for many years and they had become friends, and so he came down the stairs with a heavy tread. He knew that he was about to deliver a hammer blow to these good people. Bernadette had made it clear over many years the feeling she had for her sister’s children, and especially the elder, Gabrielle, who truly was a very beautiful girl. He wondered how she would feel about her when he delivered his news.

Bernadette came hurrying to him when she saw him descending the stairs, wringing her hands with anxiety. ‘What’s the matter with her, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘I blame myself for not consulting you sooner.’

‘Calm yourself, dear lady,’ the doctor said. ‘My diagnosis would have been the same in any case, and I am afraid that you must prepare yourself for a shock.’ He saw Bernadette’s eyes open wide in concern and confusion as he continued, gently, ‘I am very much afraid that your niece is expecting a baby.’

Bernadette stared at him almost in disbelief. Her mouth opened but no sound came out, and she
staggered in shock. The doctor steadied her and he led her into her sitting room to the sofa. Then Raoul poured them each a glass of wine with hands that shook.

Bernadette sipped the wine gratefully as she looked steadily at the doctor. ‘Are you sure of this, André?’

‘I am, Bernadette,’ the doctor said. ‘And I wish from the bottom of my heart that it wasn’t true, but Gabrielle is more than three months pregnant.’

‘But her father is like a gaoler with the girls,’ Raoul said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I’m sorry, and I don’t doubt you for a minute, but it seems incredible. The girl goes nowhere and sees no one, and she is sent to bed at eight thirty each night. Remember we have spoken about it before with your wife?’

The doctor nodded. ‘There is someone special in her life, though.’

‘I don’t see how there can be,’ Bernadette said.

‘Ah yes, this much she has told me,’ the doctor told her. ‘Only she wouldn’t say who the man was. You see, all will not be lost if there is some arrangement between them. They can be married speedily and the problem solved.’

Bernadette shook her head. ‘St-Omer, like Paris, has few young men left. They are mostly enlisted in the army, and she has been given no opportunity to meet anyone, though the town has plenty of British soldiers.’

‘She would never have been given the opportunity to meet any of those, though,’ Raoul said.

‘Well, she met someone,’ the doctor said. ‘And it needs only one to put her in the state she’s in.’

‘Then I intend to find out who the man is,’ Bernadette said, ‘and, if possible, take the girl back to St-Omer and see if the man will do the decent thing by her. That little lady,’ she added grimly, ‘has some explaining to do.’

Gabrielle was sitting on her bed waiting for a visitation by her aunt, and when she saw her framed in the doorway, her face so full of sadness and disappointment, she cried, ‘Oh, Aunt Bernadette, I am so sorry.’

Bernadette crossed the room. ‘What possessed you, child?’

‘Auntie, we couldn’t help ourselves.’

‘Tell me, was it one or several men you lay with?’

Gabrielle was truly shocked. ‘One man only, Aunt, and one I love with all my heart and soul. What sort of girl do you take me for?’

‘You know, Gabrielle, a year ago that wouldn’t have been a hard question to answer,’ Bernadette said, disappointment being replaced by anger. ‘But now I don’t know what sort of girl you have turned out to be. A girl who lies down and offers herself like some repulsive harlot is not the sort of person I would wish to be related to.’

Gabrielle recoiled from the harsh words, and
yet she tried to defend herself. ‘It wasn’t like that, truly it wasn’t!’ she cried desperately, yet she knew that is how everyone would view it. The love she and Finn had shared in the farmhouse would be tainted and spoiled, and she could almost feel a coldness between her and her aunt that had never been there before.

‘And who is the boy or man who took you down in such a manner? Was he from the town?’

‘No,’ Gabrielle said, and when she saw the look of repugnance sweep over Bernadette’s face, she lifted her head higher. ‘His name is Finn Sullivan and he is an Irishman in the British Army.’

‘A common soldier!’ Bernadette cried. ‘How could you lower yourself like that?’

‘He wasn’t. He isn’t!’ Gabrielle exclaimed. ‘You don’t know him. I don’t care what you say either because I love him and he loves me.’

‘And what would you know about love?’ Bernadette sneered.

‘I know how I feel.’

‘I know how you felt as well,’ Bernadette said. ‘Full of wantonness. How did you meet this common soldier you say you love?’

There was little point in concealment. It would all come out in the end, but when Gabrielle began explaining how she climbed down the tree, even she was aware how sordid it sounded.

Bernadette suddenly remembered the sound of rustling she had heard outside her room the night before she and Raoul had left for Paris, and she
said, ‘You even crept out to see him the night before we brought you here, didn’t you?’

Gabrielle nodded. ‘I had to do that,’ she whispered. ‘It was to say goodbye. I don’t know when I will ever see him again.’

Bernadette’s face was full of disgust. ‘You shouldn’t have seen him in the first place, you stupid girl. You behaved little better than a common tramp, Gabrielle. To think I felt sorry for you, cooped up in that house. I see now that your father was right. He must have known that he had a slut for a daughter.’

‘I am no slut,’ Gabrielle cried. ‘We didn’t intend this to happen and it happened the once only when we forgot ourselves. Finn is a fine man and will marry me willingly, I know, and he is a Roman Catholic.’

‘Then that is the only good thing about all this,’ Bernadette said. ‘At least it is not some heathen you will be married to.’

‘And we should be grateful to him and men like him because he is fighting for France,’ Gabrielle said, lifting her chin in the air. ‘I’m proud of what he is doing.’

‘You can take that haughty look off your face before I take it off for you,’ Bernadette said sharply. ‘You have nothing to be so high and mighty about, and the idea that he and his kind are fighting for France is nonsense. They are fighting for themselves. But that is neither here nor there. He has got you in the family way and he must be made to marry you.’