The Silent Hours (9 page)

TRISTAN

The rough fabric of my grey shorts itches and Luc runs ahead of me as I stop to adjust them for the fourth time that morning. I call to him but he says he can’t stop because he is being the wind. If Maman was here she’d tell me off for dawdling. She often joins us in the morning but today she is looking after Dimitri who has been in bed with the flu for forever, so it is just us and I am in charge because I am the oldest. I think that means I have to hold his hand when we cross roads and things but there is only one road between our new house and the school so I’m not sure it is entirely necessary here.

Luc’s favourite part of the walk is around the next bend – a field on our left of brown cows, today all lying down in the shade of the trees. He tells me to hurry up. I think I’m still waiting for a cyclist to race around the bend, or to hear the sound of crowds walking to work, or a lot of cars beeping as I cross the road, but there is nothing. The long grass on the side of the road is curling into itself it’s so hot, and there is no breeze so the trees are all still.

It feels good to be out of the house. We lived at the Villiers’ home forever but last month we moved into the nearby village, called Oradour. Our new house still smells like the cellar did in Paris. Apparently the couple who lived there won’t be needing it for the time being; they have gone abroad somewhere as they don’t like the ‘political climate’, which is different from not liking the weather (I knew that but still Eléonore had to point it out to me). Anyway, clearly no one had lived in it for a while as we had to take lots of sheets off the furniture and all the dust in the air made us cough and cough and blink it all out of our eyes. Maman set us all to work scrubbing every surface like Clarisse used to do. I see now why she used to complain about her back hurting as Dimitri and I were set to work cleaning the bathroom and after an hour or so of trying to get orangey streaks off the bath we had to sit down for a rest. It’s like the workhouse. Maman says not to complain and that we’re lucky we have a house at all but I think she is being silly because everyone has a house.

Father goes into Limoges a lot as he has banking business there and Maman says he is talking to Monsieur Villiers about new opportunities. Maman isn’t alone though – a girl from the village has come to help her. She is called Claudette and she has two very big front teeth and sometimes when she speaks a little whistle comes out. She talks to Maman a lot which I think Maman likes as in Paris she had lots of ladies to talk to but here she is often by herself.

Luc is mooing at the cows now. I let out a great whoop and go chasing after him. Luc looks about, startled, but then joins in and we go racing down the street. I feel like I’ve been let out into the wild after years of being a pet. Maman would never have allowed us to walk to school in Paris – too many motorcars, too many dangers.

We get to the school gate and split up. Luc gives me a wave. I hope he doesn’t come up to me at break time again, as last time a couple of the other boys laughed.

We started the new term a few weeks ago. Eléonore’s school is further down the high street, along from ours, but she likes to leave earlier than us to be on time. Papa announced we would all be spending the ‘foreseeable future’ at our schools and that we were to work hard until we could go back to Paris after the war. It seems to have gone on practically for ever already and Paris has become all faded in my head like that picture in the nursery where the colours went all pale.

School is nothing like my last school in Paris, which was built with heavy stone walls which made it cold in both the winter and the summer, and had huge echoey rooms and stained-glass windows everywhere. This one is smaller and sits between the other shops and houses on the high street. It has flowers in little boxes on the windows and it has been whitewashed on the outside. Quite nice. For a school.

The teachers put football goal-posts up on a grassy bit at the back last week and the master in charge, who looks a bit like the Villiers’ dog (a sort of flattish face and a look that says: ‘My bite
will
hurt’), has organized shooting practice later today. I will probably make the team but first I have to get through a whole day of lessons.

It seems silly to be inside in a classroom learning algebra and reciting Latin. There is a war on. When a German soldier is running at you there’s no point quoting Virgil at him, better to kick a football at his face. We sit in three rows of four desks in a room with wooden beams and a massive map of Europe on the walls. Monsieur Pincet, who teaches us Geography and Science, has drawn a line all through it in red pen, showing where the occupied zone is. You don’t have to go very far north to get over the line. He got cross when Michel said it seemed a little strange – why would the Germans only want part of France?

Our form teacher is Mademoiselle Rochard and she isn’t like any of the teachers in Paris. She looks so small and delicate seated behind the huge desk at the front. I didn’t know teachers came like her at all: she’s softly spoken and her hair smells lovely, like honey. I once asked her to check a piece of my work just so I could catch the smell again. She has the sweetest voice which rises above all of us when we all sing in the mornings under the photograph of the old man whose name begins with a P. I had to punch Dimitri on the arm last week when he teased me about her. He claimed I loved her but that is stupid. I don’t love her, she is a grown-up. The punch left a good purpling bruise.

The good news is that Mademoiselle Rochard thinks I’m wonderful. She told me that I am very clever. This is not a view shared by my old teachers from Paris, where Monsieur Hébert was quick to get his cane and punish me for any small thing. He definitely didn’t think I was ‘
très intelligent
’. My heart skips a beat at the thought that I will not be seeing him at all this year. No more Paris is quite sad, but no more Monsieur Hébert – my backside rejoices.

Being new is fun too. We get a lot of attention. We’re the newest people to join the school and the only ones from Paris, and a lot of the other pupils love my stories about the Eiffel Tower and the busy honking of the Champs-Élysées. I am a glamorous city boy and I try to keep people happy, telling tales about Parisian life: women dressed in scarlet silk dresses and long, buttoned evening gloves, smoking cigarettes and drinking champagne; films; the newest motorcars I saw advertised; music I heard.

I am yet to decide on a best friend. They ask funny questions here – one boy asked me if everyone in Paris could see the Eiffel Tower from their house. Also some of the boys here have never been to the pictures, haven’t even heard of some films and some of them don’t have telephones in their houses! I have promised Michel to show him ours. He says he wouldn’t know who to telephone on it.

The small hand on the clock hanging in the corridor shows that the first lesson starts any second. A couple of others arrive, puffing, behind me, and I am glad I’m not last. Unlike in Paris, I want to be there at the start of the lessons, I don’t dawdle when break is over and I’ve stopped making up illnesses at home to get out of school. I’ve been doing very well in my classes and enjoy the feeling of being right for once, winning a lot of merits and praise – not just from Mademoiselle Rochard – and only sometimes wonder whether I should admit to covering some of the things at my school in Paris.

As I sling my satchel over the back of my chair, Michel nods a hello in my direction. The sun is pouring through the windows onto our desks and the butterfly wall display is as happy as I am. From the windows I can see the wide blue sky, dots of birds far, far away. The caretaker of the school is fixing a hole in one of the goal nets. The sunlight bounces off his bald head. I turn to point this out to Michel but Mademoiselle Rochard arrives and everyone scrapes their chairs back to stand up.

There are a few whispers as a small boy walks in nervously behind her.

‘Good morning, class.’

‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rochard,’ we chant, but everyone’s eyes are on the boy.

‘We have a new addition to our class this morning. Boys, can you all welcome Samuel. He is new to the area too, so I want you to make room for him and be helpful and polite.’

I notice André – the tallest boy in our class and an excellent goalkeeper – steer the new boy to the desk next door to his. He takes his seat and opens his bag quickly to try and hide his red cheeks behind it. I wonder if he is old enough to be in our class – he seems impossibly small, his feet dangling above the floor.

Our homework was to read a story. I quickly looked at it last night but then I got bored and Luc and I played a new game we made up and the winner got to wear Dimitri’s glasses, which make the whole world go blurry. Anyway, we read the book last year in Paris.

We are looking at where fairy tales come from. Some are based on true stories that actually happened, and this story is one of those. Mademoiselle Rochard asks the class to describe the central character, Bluebeard, and I close my eyes to try and see him. I think his beard is blue but can remember little else about him. I turn to a page that I think talks about him but Samuel has got there first. He raises a hand and the class looks at him curiously.

‘Yes, Samuel,’ Mademoiselle Rochard says.

Samuel describes Bluebeard perfectly, he floods into my mind in colour. He is massive and tall and scary, so strong he can smash the door to the tower down.

‘Well done, Samuel, beautifully put.’ Mademoiselle Rochard smiles at him. ‘So, can anyone tell me a story that reminds them of this fairy tale? What is the relevance of the door that she should not enter?’

Fast as light I put my hand in the air.

‘It is like the fairy tale “
La Belle et la Bête
”, because the beast in that is very nasty to the woman and that is the same in this story,’ I say, waiting for her praise.

Mademoiselle Rochard looks at me. ‘That is not quite what I was asking.’ She looks round the classroom.

‘Anyone else?’

When no one moves Samuel raises his hand again.

‘It’s similar to the story of Adam and Eve when God has forbidden Adam to eat the fruit from the Forbidden Tree. When Bluebeard tells her not to look in the room, it is tempting her to.’

‘Well done, Samuel – a merit. Excellently put.’

Suddenly, as if God has switched off the sun, the classroom seems darker, clouds form outside, it might rain. The new boy is blushing. André pats his arm.

The new boy is sitting in the seat next to mine, pouring some ink into the well in the desk, getting ready for our next lesson: dictation. His book is filled with neat pages of writing, no ink blotches or smears.

Mine is in a bad way after I dripped ink right across my last piece of work which then got stuck to another piece of paper, leaving a blurry mess on both sheets.

He sticks out a hand and says hello. ‘I’m Samuel.’

‘Tristan,’ I reply.

We shake hands awkwardly.

‘I’ve heard you’re from Paris,’ he begins.

I nod, looking around the room.

‘Which district?’

‘Sixteenth, Villa Herran,’ I say, taking the books out of my bag, removing my little pot of ink, taking out my pen from its case.

‘Where is that?’ he asks.

‘Quite near the Seine,’ I mumble, knowing this would be little help as lots of Paris is near the river that runs through it.

I don’t ask, but he continues: ‘We had a house in the third.’

Papa has mentioned the area in the past and not in a nice way. Maybe some of his workers lived there. I imagine it’s nothing like where we used to live. I think back to our huge town house with its shuttered windows, rooms three times as high as my papa, the hallway as big as any room we had in our new house, the wide staircase always polished, the chandeliers throwing light into every corner, making everything shine. The park outside our house was also what Maman called ‘the height of elegance’, with great trees stretched out, lots of paths and places for people to picnic, and a sort of little house made of wood where a band played.

I look at Samuel. ‘I haven’t heard of that part.’

‘It’s nice.’ He pauses. ‘It’s home.’

He says this in a way that makes me think he won’t be going back to it. Like it’s already in the past. And for this I dislike him even more.

‘Why did you leave?’ Samuel asks, still looking at me curiously.

‘I don’t know,’ I admit, realizing I didn’t. Not really. ‘Because of the war, I suppose.’

Samuel nods. It is obviously the reason he left too.

I remember when we left then – all the people on the road. I remember the boy.

‘Are you going back?’ he asks.

I blink and then shrug, cross that he is asking the same questions I have asked Maman for months and months. Questions to which I don’t have the answers.

Luckily, Monsieur Garande appears in the doorway. He is so enormous he makes me feel like a little toddler. There is no greeting or instruction; his big, booming voice begins our dictation: ‘
Je me trouvais sur le champ de bataille
 …’

I jump into my seat and lean over the page, concentrating hard. I start to write.

For the next forty minutes the only sounds are quiet scratches on the paper and Monsieur Garande’s footsteps as he walks slowly up and down the classroom. I remain bent over the page, careful to make it as neat as I can, keen to avoid any attention from Monsieur Garande. He calls, ‘Sit up, boy,’ to Michel and the whole class sits up straight. André said Monsieur Garande used to be high up in the French army and has a bullet hole in his leg. No one has seen it but on some days he rubs his left leg so it’s probably true.

Two pages are covered in lines and I think I have spelled things right. My hand feels like it might drop off. Monsieur Garande announces that the dictation is over. He walks slowly around the room, leaning over our desks, his shadow blocking out the light as he corrects our spelling mistakes, grammar and punctuation. When he gets to me I stand behind my chair. My hands twist nervously as he scans the page. Finally he writes a big ‘M’ on my work. It is my fifth merit since arriving at the school.