The First of July(109)
The same man turned him back toward the square and gave him a firm push in the small of the back. As he walked on, both of them close behind him, he sensed their guns still on him and thought how ironic it would be if he were shot by France’s allies and in his own home town. He was shivering, from his wet clothes, from fatigue and hunger, and now from fear. Around him, the whole town seemed subtly changed. It was like a bad dream, its very familiarity making it appear stranger. It was not just the air of watchfulness, the pockmarked stone of the fine houses on the square, the half-boarded windows and sandbags around the doors, nor even the British flag entangled above the ancient gate to the abbey: the town’s whole character had changed. The sense of euphoria he’d felt on seeing Corbie at a distance from the ruined farm and the weary relief that he’d felt on crossing the river had both faded now, to be replaced by anxiety.
They passed along the Rue Pichet. Many of the shops were closed and boarded up, a handful with smashed windows. One of them, a draper’s, had belonged to a distant cousin of his father’s who in his lifetime had always done his best to put distance between them. Now his shop appeared to have been burned out, reduced to a black cave. More soldiers passed them, marching in loose formation, heavy packs on their backs, looking clean but tired. They reached the abbey, where the great studded door was shut against them. The Virgin in her little shrine had lurched to the left, clutching her child as if she might drop it. Diagonally opposite on the corner, Armand’s bar looked much the same as it had when Jean-Baptiste had left, with its peeling paint and grimy windows, but then Jean-Baptiste’s mother had always said both the bar and Armand himself needed a good cleanout and setting straight. They used to laugh at the priest, who could have crossed the ten meters of the square separating church and bar after mass but instead took a route right around the back and behind the cottages before coming up Rue Pierre Guinard and emerging on Armand’s worn steps, as if he were somehow a different person and surprised to be there at all.
The ancient abbey buildings were scruffier and much, much smaller than he remembered. He knew this was probably due to his time in Paris rather than because of the war. The Boche could blow men and houses into so many bits, or incinerate them to a cinder, but they couldn’t yet shrink them. Vignon came into his head again and he understood the man’s air, which had once irked him, of seeming to find everything in Picardy rather undersized. Vignon came from a city, and cities made men bigger but they also diminished the places men had come from.
The abbey church was much the same, its tower intact, unlike so many he’d seen that had made convenient targets for gunnery crews. And there, in front of it, stood the priest and, even more dreamlike, he was talking to Armand, out in the street, which would never have happened before the war. But the soldiers were hurrying him on, and although Armand and Father Lefroy looked across at the tiny drama, neither seemed to recognize him. The next shop was open, although it seemed to be selling nothing but onions, and then the tabac too, and across the square several small shops were doing business. Smoke rose from the baker’s chimney. It was as if all the life of the small community had been sucked into its center.
Jean-Baptiste had begun to see what sort of place it had become. Because Corbie was well behind the lines and of reasonable size, the British were obviously using it as some kind of headquarters, which was hardly surprising. Some of the town life still continued as it always had. Two women in aprons and an old man stopped to talk on the street. One was Madame Didot, who took lodgers, her reputation suffering because of it. His mother had sometimes helped with the laundry. The younger one must be her daughter, Angeline, only grown from a lanky child into a young woman while he had been away. Both looked in his direction, and he wanted to wave but didn’t dare make a sudden movement. If only he could explain to his current guardians that he only wanted to be home. The two women continued to stare. Had he changed so much in two years?
They had reached the old schoolhouse, from where Jean-Baptiste had turned his back on his birthplace, not as he had dreamed in Vignon’s boat but on the schoolmaster’s bicycle. Would they have realized it was he who had taken it? Would his mother have looked for him, or would she have felt too ashamed at having to explain the reasons he had left so suddenly? Perhaps they’d think it was old Godet’s death that had somehow unhinged him and sent him running off to Paris. He’d seen plenty of men since go stark raving mad, faced with smashed heads and raw blood. But she knew why he’d gone; she knew because he’d left his father’s boots and taken Vignon’s, which were more elegant and much better fitting.