The Child Left Behind

‘It isn’t all your fault,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I could have put a stop to it if I had wanted to. Maybe when two people love as we love, it’s impossible to wait.’

Finn got up and began to dress. What if she was to have a child? That would be the very worst thing to happen to an unmarried woman. And it wasn’t as if he would be there to share the burden with her. That thought brought him out in a cold sweat.

Gabrielle seemed not in the least bit worried about that and she looked into Finn’s eyes as she said, ‘With or without marriage I now belong totally to you, Finn Sullivan. My lover and my very own British soldier.’

Finn felt his stomach give a lurch as the passion rose in him at Gabrielle’s words. He knew, however, that he must never let himself be overcome in that way again, and he pushed her from him gently and said, ‘Get dressed, my darling, before you catch your death of cold.’

SIX

Gabrielle knew that Finn’s family would worry about him as much as she did when he left, but they at least would have letters to sustain them. Maybe, she thought, she could write to them for news of Finn. His parents might not be that understanding, but his sister or brothers were probably more approachable. So one evening she said, ‘What are your brothers like? The only thing I know about Tom is that you consider him to be a plodder.’

‘He is,’ Finn insisted, ‘and he would be the first to admit that there is little else to say about him. He doesn’t mind in the least that each day is like the one before it and he knows that tomorrow will be just the same. The only thing that disturbs him is the milk yield being down. Yet he is the kindest man that walked the earth and it would be very hard to dislike him. It’s just that he won’t stir himself to do anything, not even to come to the socials with me and Joe.’

‘So Joe is not like Tom?’

‘No,’ Finn said, ‘he is more like me, though maybe not as determined. He has been saying for a few years now that he doesn’t want to stay in Buncrana all his life. Once he told me that he wouldn’t mind trying his hand in America. I suppose the war has put paid to that, but I sometimes wonder if he will ever leave the farm. Yet after my father’s day, everything will go to Tom.’

‘Joe would do well to leave then,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Otherwise he will be left with nothing, though it hardly seems fair.’

‘I suppose not,’ Finn agreed. ‘Though in this case it seems so, because Tom suits the work much better than Joe or me. Particularly me. My father always said I was too impatient to be a good farmer. I didn’t care about that because I didn’t want to be a farmer all my life, but I tried my damnedest just the same because I loved my father dearly.’

‘More than your mother?’

‘I’m not sure what I feel about my mother,’ Finn admitted. ‘I was afraid of her for so long.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I suppose that I have tried to respect her, but, hand on heart, I can’t say I love her. Biddy Sullivan, I would say, is a hard woman to love.’

‘What a shame,’ Gabrielle said, and then added, ‘Biddy is a strange name. Is it Irish?’

‘I suppose it is,’ Fin said. ‘Her full name isn’t Biddy, of course, it’s Bridget.’

‘Bridgette,’ Gabrielle said. ‘That is like the French name Brigitte, and it is a shame to shorten it to Biddy.’

Finn laughed. ‘It’s lovely the way you say it.’

‘And isn’t it a tragedy for people who never experience love in their lives?’ Gabrielle went on. ‘My father is the same. Somehow, I cannot imagine my mother ever loving him.’

‘From what you say,’ Finn said with a broad grin, ‘I imagine that my mother and your father would suit one another. Maybe we should maroon the two of them on a desert island somewhere.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Gabrielle giggled. ‘Maybe your mother loves your father, though. You said before that he is the only one that she listens to.’

‘That’s right, but I don’t know whether that is love or not. My father is a good man, and one I always tried to please, and yet nothing I did was quite good enough. In a way it is my father’s fault I enlisted.’

‘Did he want you to?’

Finn laughed. ‘Just the opposite. I did it, in a way, to spite him.’

‘Do you regret it?’

‘No,’ Finn said, putting his arms around Gabrielle as they sat on the sofa, ‘though I did think that a soldier’s life is more exciting than it is. I also thought I might get treated more like a man, after being at the beck and call of my father and brothers, only to find that in the army I am at the beck and call of all and sundry. But then I came to St-Omer and I met you, and my life was turned upside down because I love you with everything in me.’

‘I am the same,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Without you my life is worth nothing.’ She lifted her face as she spoke and their eyes locked for a moment, then their lips met in a kiss that left Gabrielle gasping for more.

Since they had made love that one time, their lovemaking had got more daring so that as January gave way to February and then March—coming in like the proverbial lion, gusting through the streets of St-Omer—not only did Finn know every area of Gabrielle’s body, she had began to explore his too. Finn had wanted her to do this and she had begun tentatively and timidly, hardly able to believe that she was actually touching the most private parts of a man.

In the cold light of day afterwards, just the thought of doing so had embarrassed her so much she grew hot with shame. In the heat of passion, though, it was different, and anyway, when she saw how much pleasure she gave Finn, she persevered. Her one desire in life was to please him. They did come dangerously close to making love again a few times, but Finn always made sure they stopped short of it and although this made him as frustrated as hell, he would not go any further.

Gabrielle, however, was still remarkably naïve about how babies were conceived, or how they got out once they were inside a woman, because she had been told nothing. She didn’t have the advantage of girls reared on a farm who might see the animals mating and, later, the birth of the babies, and she had no friend with a confiding married sister or young aunt who could have put her right about things.

She knew the Church had said it was wrong to go with a man until a woman was married, but no one had told her what that actually meant. She had no doubt, though, that they would say what she and Finn was doing was a sin, because the Church semed to see sin in everything enjoyable and she certainly had no intention of telling in the confessional anything she and Finn were doing. How could you explain things like that to a man, even if he was a priest?

She didn’t know either why the bleeding that used to happen every month had stopped. When it had begun two years before and she had thought she was dying, her mother just told her that it was something that happened to women. It wasn’t to be discussed, and certainly not with men, and there was no need to make a fuss about it. She hadn’t been told that it had anything to do with fertility, and so when she didn’t have a monthly show of blood, she didn’t automatically associate it with what she and Finn had been doing.

Neither did Mariette, who knew nothing of her daughter’s nocturnal sojourn with a British soldier. She did know, however, that there had been no bloodied rags in the bucket she had left ready and she said to Gabrielle, ‘Funny that your monthlies should have stopped. Do you feel all right?’

‘Yes,’ Gabrielle said. ‘In fact I have never felt better.’

‘Well, you certainly look all right,’ Mariette said.

And Gabrielle did. She had developed a bloom on her skin that had not been there before because she was thoroughly loved by a man she loved in return. Even her not very observant parents noticed in the end and remarked on it, and many of the customers said the same, while Finn thought she had never looked more beautiful.

‘We’ll leave it for now then,’ her mother said, ‘but if they don’t return then I will ask the doctor to have a look at you. Just as well to be on the safe side.’

However, other matters took precedence. At the end of March, Yvette was fourteen and would be leaving school at Easter. In early April, Aunt Bernadette wrote to Gabrielle, repeating the invitation she had made at Christmas.

‘I don’t really know how I can refuse this time,’ Gabrielle confessed to Finn.

‘When are they arriving?’ Finn asked.

‘After the schools are closed, and that is less than two weeks away.’

‘Darling, I might be gone before then,’ Finn said. ‘The camp is on high alert. Any day we expect orders to move out.’

‘Oh, Finn…’

‘Go on with your uncle and aunt to Paris,’ Finn urged. ‘It might make it easier for you.’

Gabrielle tossed her head impatiently. ‘Nothing will make the loss of you easier.’

Finn put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. ‘My darling,’ he said, ‘in many ways I wish you and I had not met and fallen in love because it will be harder for us to part. But part we must and our lives must take different paths for some time. When the Army says “March”, then I must march.’

Distressed though Gabrielle was, she knew Finn spoke the truth, and she wished she could hold back time, even for just a little while. Once Finn left St-Omer she would be desperately worried about him. As so many soldiers had already left, he and Christy had been drafted in to help with the wounded again. She was aware that more and more came every day and the hospitals were filled to breaking point.

The talk around the Jobert table at night, and often in the shop too, was of the number of Allied soldiers, and especially British, that had been killed or injured on the battlefield so far, of the disbanded camp, and more and more troops going off to join the carnage being enacted in many areas of France.

Gabrielle never contributed in such discussions. In fact, if she could have done so she would have stopped up her ears so that she didn’t hear such things. She wasn’t stupid, and knew that when Finn left here he would probably soon be in danger, and could well become one of the casualties, but her love was so deep and all consuming that she imagined he could fold it around him like a cloak and it would protect him from any German onslaught.

Bernadette and Raoul arrived in the middle of April, and wished to return the following day. That shook Gabrielle, who thought that she might have another few days’ grace and, despite the risks, she had to see Finn one more time. She communicated this to him in a note that she gave him with his change in the bakery that morning.

It was late that night when Gabrielle went to bed. Yvette was already asleep and Gabrielle forced herself to lie and wait until she heard everyone settle for the night and the house grow quiet.

Then she opened the window carefully. She knew Finn would be waiting for her, though she couldn’t see him for she dare not turn on her torch, her aunt and uncle’s bedroom being only a few feet away. She had never before climbed down the tree with such care, especially as she had the cape in a bundle under her arm.

In the bakery yard Finn had waited so long that he was worried that something had happened to prevent Gabrielle meeting him. He had begun wondering how long he should stay before returning to camp when he heard the distinct rustle of the tree.

Then she was above him, and the next minute in his arms and kissing him, and the next fastening her cape about her. Not a word was spoken until they were in an alleyway well away from the bakery.

Then Gabrielle said, ‘Oh, Finn, have you had to wait a long time?’

‘No matter. You are here now,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think they would ever stop talking and go to bed,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I had already—’

‘Hush,’ said Finn. ‘It is of no consequence. I would wait for you till the end of time. Don’t you know that? Now, let’s hurry. I can barely wait to hold your body close to mine.’

Once inside the farmhouse there was no hesitation. They didn’t light the lamp and so they only had the flickering light of the fire. As Finn began to caress Gabrielle, she helped him remove all her clothes for the very first time. Finn tore off his uniform, and when he too stood naked Gabrielle gasped as even in the dim firelight she could see how aroused he was.

Finn pushed her gently back on the sofa and lay on top of her, skin to skin. She shivered in delicious anticipation, and Finn knew he wanted Gabrielle more than he had ever wanted her before. Yet when she said, ‘Love me, Finn,’ he shook his head.

‘I mustn’t; I dare not,’ he said, though his hands continued to stroke her gently.

‘I will go mad if you do not make love to me tonight,’ Gabrielle said. ‘How can you be so cruel? Can’t you leave me one beautiful memory of you to hold against my heart, until you return for me?’

‘Gabrielle, you know I can’t,’ Finn said huskily.

‘You can, you must,’ Gabrielle said frantically. ‘I tell you, I will die if you do not make love to me tonight.’

‘And I,’ Finn might have said, because he felt as if he was burning up inside, such was the intensity of his desire. He was also well aware that this was the last time, perhaps for years, that he would hold this girl in his arms.

His fingers and hands stroking, caressing and gently kneading were followed by his lips kissing and nuzzling all over Gabrielle’s body. She felt as if she were being consumed by lust for this wondrous man she loved with all her heart, and when he kissed her lips, his tongue darting in and out, her need was so great that she felt as if her body was melting under his touch.

And then came unbidden into Finn’s mind a vision of him marching away and Gabrielle behind and alone, carrying his child in her belly. It took every ounce of his willpower to pull back.

‘What is it?’ Gabrielle said, her voice still husky with desire.

‘Gabrielle,’ Finn said, ‘I do love you so much. Far too much to do this to you.’

‘Oh, no, my darling Finn. Please?’ Gabrielle pleaded.

Finn hesitated. How he wanted to do as Gabrielle was begging him. Shafts of acute desire were pulsating through him, and Gabrielle’s body was all of a tremble. She cried out to Finn again and the picture he had had danced before his eyes again. Then his hands lay still on her body, and he pulled his mouth from hers and he got to his feet, staggering slightly.

‘Don’t you love me any more, Finn?’ Gabrielle asked, and there were tears in her eyes.

‘Love you?’ Finn repeated incredulously. ‘You might as well ask me if the sun never shines. I love you so much that I cannot risk leaving you with a child.’

‘I would love to carry your child,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I would be honoured.’

‘And you will, my darling,’ Finn said. ‘When this war is finally over and we are married. We will have the rest of our lives to make love and each day we will love each other more. Think on that, my darling, darling Gabrielle. Now please, get dressed before I forget myself entirely.’

Gabrielle was still a little upset and very frustrated, but in her heart of hearts she knew that Finn was thinking of her and so she began to put on her clothes.

It was as they were walking back towards the town that she mentioned something that had been worrying her, talking in little above a whisper for sounds carry further in the night.

‘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.’