The Sea Garden (14 page)

“I'm blind. . . . I don't know who you are.”

She sensed a momentary hesitation on his part. “They keep me in here . . . they don't want me to go outside. I can't see—have you come to help me? Please help me” She patted the fabric of his uniform. “Are you a gendarme? A nice gendarme?”

He slapped her hand away. “We're searching the house.”

“Well, I have seen nothing—how could I?”

Shuffling feet on the stairs. More voices. Then Musset, demanding that they speak to Kommandant Baumann and explain why they had come bursting into the home of a trusted businessman in the middle of the night. More noise in the corridor, and then her visitor was speaking.

“She can't possibly know anything. She's a halfwit farm girl, and blind to boot.”

“I know her, anyway,” said another. “She's a mouse who sees no one.”

They retreated down the corridor. Voices were raised in the hall.

“What about the girl you had working for you, Musset?”

“Which girl? I keep lots of girls in employment!”

“The one who makes the deliveries in Céreste.”

“Oh, her. . . . Look here, we're all just going about our business. I insist that you ask the
kommandant
. . .” Musset was still complaining, demanding that they contact Baumann. Wake him, if necessary. Telling them of all the times the Distillerie Musset had supplied the Germans with scarce products, and lamenting the lack of gratitude. The voices died away.

Then Mme Musset's arms were around Marthe, and they were trembling as one.

No further sounds until the particular footfall that told them Monsieur was coming down the passage, and he was alone. Then he was holding them both.

When he did speak, it was in a low tone. “It's all right. We're all still here and in one piece.”

“Thank the Lord.” Madame disentangled herself.

“Just wait a while longer, my dear. Just to be sure.”

“I thought I heard a car going away down the hill.”

“So did I, but . . .”

“You think they might come back?”

“They might.”

They waited an hour before they released Kenton and Scotty from their cubbyholes.

 

A
s if he could read her thoughts, Kenton reached out and touched her hand. The Mussets had left them, urging a few hours of sleep before morning broke. But how could they sleep now? They were sitting side by side on her bed.

Marthe pulled her hand away, unsure of herself. He said nothing, and she had no way of gauging his reaction. Why had she done that? She had felt the tremor in his hand.

Very slowly, she reached out for his face. She stroked his cheek, braver now. She felt his thick hair, how it slipped straight and smoothly through her fingers. She made his brow real—real to her—then the eyes, nose, and chin. Finding the lines between imagination and reality, blurring the boundaries between sight and touch. Slowly, she moved one finger to his mouth and traced his lips. They were full and soft.

“Can I get into the bed with you?”

Marthe nodded.

She felt the shape of his shoulders and chest against her side. He was wearing a rough shirt and trousers. “I'm sorry, I can't help it—after coming so far . . . I was scared.”

She found his lips and touched his mouth with her finger. “Put your head on my shoulder and close your eyes. Sleep here now.”

The comfort of another human body. Warm skin, limbs folding and fitting together. If he closed his eyes, there would be no difference between them.

 

T
he sun stroked the bed. Marthe was still half asleep. Then she started, realising. She had never woken up with a man before.

He was speaking to her, in a whisper, in his peculiar accent. She couldn't make out what he was saying.

“What do you look like?” asked Marthe.

“I have blond hair and blue eyes. Quite tall, quite broad. No strange distinguishing features.”

“Are you handsome?”

“I can't answer that.”

“Yes, you can. You just have. If you weren't, you would have laughed and said straight off that you weren't.”

He laughed then. “OK. You win.”

“So do the girls call you handsome?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Well, my mother does.”

“She'd be a poor mother if she didn't.”

“Very true.”

“Blond hair and blue eyes,” she repeated. “The lavender fairy.”

“Now, hang on a minute!”

“Just
like
the lavender fairy has. There's an old story about the beautiful fairy called Lavandula who was born in the wild lavender of the Lure mountain. She grew up and began to wander farther from the mountain, looking for somewhere special to make her home. One day she came across the stony, uncultivated landscapes of Haute Provence, and the pitiful sight made her so sad she cried hot tears—hot mauve tears that fell into the ground and stained it. And that is where, ever afterwards, the lavender of her birthplace began to grow.”

“Did you ever see it?

“Not here, no. But I still remember the lavender fields near where my family lives. The fields there are much smaller, but I saw them when I was young.”

“That's awful. It's such—”

“If I hadn't lost my sight, I might never have come here, never have discovered my true vocation. I would have been just a farm girl, never knowing what I was missing, and then a farmer's wife like my mother, and set to repeat her life. Don't you see, it has opened my world, not closed it down, and I shall always be grateful for that.”

“So you haven't always been?”

“No. I could see until I was nearly eleven years old.”

“What happened?”

She liked his directness. So many people were curious but did not ask. “It was very sudden. One day, one eye became blurred. I thought I had some dust in it, so I rubbed and blinked all day. Do you remember how simple life was at that age? I blinked and kept rubbing it, waiting for the eye to clear.”

“And it didn't.”

“No, it didn't. I told my mother, and she told me I just had to wait patiently and all would be well. That was her remedy for all life's ills, and for a while I believed her. Then one day my younger brother Pierre pushed me off a windowsill where I was sitting. I can't even remember why he did it. I banged my head and sprained my wrist in the fall onto the cobblestones in the courtyard in front of the house. She took me to the doctor because she thought I might have broken my wrist, and I took my chance to tell him about my eye.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“He seemed to agree with Maman. All we could do was wait. For the next few months I concentrated hard on everything I could see with the right eye, all the while alive to the smallest variation in the left. Sometimes I seemed to make out more, but mostly I saw only fuzzy black and white, occasionally with a burst or tint of colour.

“Then one day I went to put on my red dress and found it had changed to a dull olive green in the cupboard.”

The American stroked her hair. Even now, the memory was disturbing.

“Something strange was happening to all the colours. The sky stopped being the blue I had always known and became a stormy grey-purple on even the brightest day. The pink oleander flowers were inexplicably light blue. I couldn't understand what was going on.”

“Sounds like you'd gone colour-blind.”

“Just for a while. Then, shade by shade, they all disappeared, even the mixed-up colours. Every day the world became a darker place.”

He held her tighter. “It must have been awful.”

“I understand now, but then . . . it was very frightening. It was always there in the cells of my body, the doctor said when I saw him again. He had to read a lot of books to find out, but when he did, it all made sense. I was born with it, so I should be pleased I saw as much of the world as I did. I was lucky in that it came on later in my childhood, and unlucky in that it was always much more likely it would happen to a boy than a girl.” Marthe sighed. “But not in our family, it seems.”

“Do you see anything?”

“No. Though I am lucky because I have the pictures in my head. I still dream in pictures and colour, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents' faces, which will never grow any older.

“But it's strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling.”

The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman's apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.

“I can understand that. For me, hot dogs are football games. Fairgrounds are oil and candy floss. Paris is garlic, and Métro stations, that pungent—”

“You've been to Paris?”

“I came as a student before the war.”

“I have never been to Paris, but I'd like to. What did you study in Paris?”

“French, art . . . literature. I thought I wanted to make my mark by trying to write, and Paris is where American romantic idealists come to do that. It was a year's exchange from my college. I didn't know a thing when I arrived. I was a baby, with baby opinions and ambitions. Pitiful, really. But now? I've never been so grateful for anything in my life as I am for that year. That I learned enough of the language to get by. Without that I'd be dead for sure by now.”

“How did you come to be in the air force?”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “My father had connections . . . and they put me on a training course, and the next thing I knew I was flying in a Fortress over Europe with a full payload.”

“A long way from home.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet for a while.

“You are special,” whispered Kenton. “In more ways than one. What you did when the German came to the door—”

“There was no time to be afraid. I did what I had to do. It's normal. And he wasn't German. He was French. That is the most dreadful thing of all.”

“Maybe that was why he went away . . .”

“Maybe, but I don't think so. We fear our own people too.”

M. Musset had explained it to her when he first asked for her help. Those who helped behind the lines took the greatest risks, because there was no uniform to protect them. The greatest risk was betrayal. And if you were betrayed, you were either shot or sent to a prison camp in Germany. They said it was better to be shot.

“You are the bravest of the brave. Never forget that.”

“M. Musset says we are history as it is being formed.”

“He is a fine man. But Madame is unhappy,” said Kenton. “Or rather, she is worried. You can't see the way she looks sometimes when she thinks no one is watching.”

“But she always sounds so relaxed and encouraging.”

“It's not how things seem, it's how they are, sweetheart.”

“I know.” Marthe swallowed hard. “What would you be doing if there wasn't a war?”

He sighed. “I can hardly imagine anymore. I would have gone back to my studies. I might have graduated and then started more studies to work at the family firm. I might have been on my way to becoming a lawyer to please my father. The Attwaters of Boston—an old family.”

“My family is old too.”

“Old rich.”

“Oh. We are old poor. Becoming a lawyer—you mean that's not what you want?”

“I don't know what I want. No, wait—I do! I want to get out of here alive. How's that for an ambition?”

“Very sensible.”

“And I'd like to come back here. It's such a beautiful place. I would love to see it again when the war is over.”

Marthe felt unaccountably pleased. “You should. We will be better then.”

Despite what this extraordinary young man said about their bravery, it felt undeserved. So many people in this dark time were not what they should have been. Some were as closed as their shuttered houses. Too many seemed not to care about their own country. It was shaming. When the Gestapo started paying for denunciations, too many were only too happy to turn informant. Sometimes it seemed as if those who did care enough to fight back were akin to the boniest birds brought back from the shoot, the cold plucked skin that showed how very helpless they were against the hunters' guns.

Suddenly it was important to try to explain this.

“My family has lived here for as long as anyone could remember; it could be hundreds of years, because there was never any evidence that we came from anywhere else. We mark the years by vintages of walnut wine and fruit liqueurs, like the wines and olive oils of other farmsteads, and we keep our history in barrels and bottles laced with dusty cobwebs.

“If we don't stand fast now, we might be the last generation to live our lives like this.”

It was a while before he spoke.

“And when we win the war—as we will—what will become of you, sweet Marthe?”

“I shall be a creator of fabulous perfumes—and I shall go to Paris!”

She would remember that sunlit hour for the rest of her life. Like a fragile fragment of a half-forgotten dream, it would rise to the surface of an ordinary morning. Kenton opened the windows wide, and she felt the lighter air come in, the silkiness of a light breeze on her face. His touch still shimmered on her skin. There was so much to discover, so many ways to communicate.