Madame Barbara. Helen Forrester
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Название: Madame Barbara
Автор: Helen Forrester
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007387786
isbn:
The taxi was carefully slowed, as the penniless one found that, with eyes clouded by tears, he could not see the road properly. He felt he too had reason to weep. Was not his own life shattered?
‘I stop,’ he announced. ‘We sit down on grass. We smoke, eh? We are better. Then nobody at the hotel stare at you.’
She did not answer.
He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Then he drew in to the side of the road. A drainage ditch ran alongside the asphalt; beyond it was a grassy bank, shadowed by a huge hedge.
He jumped down and opened the door for Barbara. ‘Come, Madame,’ he urged persuasively. ‘We rest. You become calm before we go to hotel, eh?’
Numbly, she allowed herself to be helped out. She looked uncertainly down at the ditch.
‘Jump,’ Michel instructed, gesturing towards the grass on the other side. He himself cleared the ditch as effortlessly as a circus performer, and held out his hand for her to grasp.
In her flat-heeled shoes, the ditch was no real problem. Barbara held his hand and jumped. As she landed, he put his arm quickly round her waist to steady her. It was instinctive on his part.
To her, it was an unexpected shock, not because he seemed presumptuous but it gave her a sense that somebody cared enough to do so, even if that person was a total stranger.
In and around the docks, where she had toiled through the war and even since peace had been declared, she had often hit out at men who, in her widowhood, felt she was fair game, and had importuned or otherwise harassed her with their coarse familiarity. Now, as she still shuddered with sobs for her husband, she felt the warmth of the slim, tired-looking stranger beside her, smelled the strong tobacco and male sweat of him, and she was honestly grateful for his sober, sensible presence.
He eased her round and sat her down on the grassy bank. Then he sat down cross-legged in front of her, so that he could look straight at her face. He fumbled under his jersey and brought out his precious packet of cigarettes and a box of matches.
‘Smoke?’
There were only three cigarettes left in the packet, and she hesitated; cigarettes were hard to obtain, and like gold in her particular English village.
He smiled and thrust the package closer to her. She heaved a sob, and then helped herself. He struck a match and held the light to her cigarette.
The lines on his face deepened and his brown eyes twinkled as he endeavoured to cheer her. ‘Cigarette good,’ he said firmly, as she inhaled the strong acrid smoke of a Gauloise.
She coughed, and smiled tremulously.
She watched him stick a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and light it. His face shone wet in the light of the tiny flame, and she realised with astonishment that he had really been crying. She wondered, with a feeling of profound compassion, if, in addition to the loss of his farm, he had lost someone in the war. Perhaps his fiancée? He had mentioned a fiancée’s parents on the way to the cemetery. He had not directly mentioned the lady herself.
For a while they sat in silence. As she smoked, Barbara’s sobs slowly decreased, became dryer and finally came to an end. Occasionally, she sighed shakily.
The persistent drizzle of the morning had stopped, though the sky was still overcast. Damp from the grassy bank on which they were sitting slowly seeped through their clothing. Neither of them, however, seemed inclined to move. A few trees, interspersed with huge hedges behind them, offered a protective canopy in the wrecked countryside.
Except for an occasional raindrop falling and the breeze rustling through the heavy foliage, it was very quiet. No traffic passed them. It was as if they were suspended in space, insulated for a few minutes from a world destroyed.
Barbara took out her handkerchief again and carefully dried her face, while Michel watched her through the tobacco smoke. She looked ruefully at her handkerchief, pink-stained with smudged makeup.
‘I must look awful,’ she said apologetically.
‘But no,’ he reassured her. He smiled slightly and continued to look at her gravely. His eyes, sad now, reminded her suddenly of her golden retriever at home, who, if anyone cried, would lay his head on the sufferer’s knee and gaze up at her in similar compassionate communion. Throughout the war, Simba had had to do a lot of comforting of both her mother and herself. He had done his best with Ada, George’s mam, too, when she came to sit in their kitchen and have a cup of tea and stare emptily into the fire.
Now, she had a stranger seated before her, trying to do the same thing, to comfort her and – she had a sudden flash of insight – to be himself comforted.
The persistence of his gaze compelled her to look back at him and smile a little. She wondered what else he had been through to cause the multitude of lines on his face, the patient resignation in his attitude, as if there were no reason to hurry back to the cold real world, plenty of time simply to sit and recover what one could of one’s sanity. Apparently impatient American morticians could wait.
At the remembrance of the Americans waiting for their taxi in the American cemetery, Barbara felt compelled to move.
‘Oh, dear me, I forgot. You have to collect your Americans.’
Michel leaned forward slightly and put his hand on her arm to restrain her. ‘There is much time, chére Madame. Rest a little longer. The Americans work as long as there is light – perhaps two more hours. And they are not far distant.’
He drew on his cigarette. ‘They stay in your hotel. I collect them en route. OK for Madame?’
‘Me? I don’t mind. They look like nice fellows. I saw them at breakfast this morning.’
She smiled at him, woebegone, her cigarette smouldering between her fingers, and he continued to sit quietly with her, to give her time to regain her equilibrium.
The Americans are generous, he thought. He had, however, grave doubts about how they might behave with an unescorted young woman; Americans seemed to have pockets full of nylons and piles of chocolate bars with which to seduce unwary females. It distressed him to think that his pretty passenger was herself wearing a pair of nylon stockings. That she might have bought them on the black market, which flourished as merrily in the port of Liverpool as it did in France, did not occur to him. Nevertheless, despite her obvious fall from grace, he would be in the taxi to protect her, and would see her safely into the hotel foyer.
He was not in the least afraid of three very tall, out-of-condition Yanks. Though he himself was so thin and had a hunched left shoulder, he had a long reach, which he found very useful when defending himself. Was he not a very effective kick-boxer, a master of old-fashioned savate, so quick on his feet as to be respected by all? The Americans did not seem to be aware of this particular art, and knowledge of it gave him considerable confidence when he met them in the streets of Bayeux, rather drunk – and where did they get enough to be drunk on, he’d like to know? The Boches had not left much worth drinking. Fortunately, Michel had never got into a real fight with them; sheer weight would very likely have overcome any skill he had.
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