CHAPTER 26
We were four again, on the bus, until the boys mounted a few stops later. Margot seemed slimmer, and she had bronzed almost as much as I had. Elle was simply Elle.

“How was the far South, Sophie?”

“Wonderful, Elle! The beaches, the swimming, the food, the people, it was all wonderful!”

She grinned in her way. “Did you meet anyone?”

“Oh yes! Roser, she is a lovely old lady–“

“No, you silly one! Boys! Boys in little costumes for swimming! No need to check their shoes!”

I laughed aloud, and slapped her arm gently. “I come back, of my own will, to this insanity? And your boy just mounting the bus?”

“A girl can look, and this one does! Anyway, your boy is also here”

Her chatter ceased abruptly as her mouth was obstructed, but then mine was similarly blocked. I smiled up at my blond. “Did you miss me?”

“Did I not tell you that every evening? Why the telephone in the booth?”

“Benny, you are aware how much a mobile telephone call can cost? Maman gave me a series of cards so that I would know how much I had to pay. She said I would learn control”

Elle pulled back for a moment. “She said she was looking at the boys on the beach!”

“No I did not! I said I met a nice lady. Elle, you are evil in a very short measure”

“But am I not also amusing and delightful? Matty, am I amusing and delightful?”

“You amuse and delight me, Elle”

“See? I am right!”

There was an ease between them that charmed me. Then again, I had my great big boy beside me, and then sat beneath me as I moved from a set on the bus to a perch on his thighs, and all too soon we were at the school and once more showing everyone we were joined just as we parted for the classes. I had been looking carefully at Margot, when I thought she did not see, trying to see anything in her face that was similar to my own features. Perhaps, just a few places; the nose, maybe, but that was also her father’s…our father’s. But then I had to watch Benny as he left, happy to see him from behind knowing that I would soon see him again from in front.

Mme Calvet caught up with me later, just as I was about to leave her room for another class.

“How did you find the far South, Sophie? Ah, such a smile! It was that wonderful?”

I laughed. “Apart from the making up of beds every morning, but that was only an hour, and Maman did not tell my brother the exact truth about how many evenings she had to work”

My teacher laughed. “But then, hoteliers remain businessmen, and I am sure he got more than the value of the room from your mother and you. We must talk properly of this. Did you mention your plans to your mother, about University?”

“Yes, last night. I believe I have decided upon Perpignan”

She nodded. “Yes. Too many people who have known you in Caen”

Oh dear. “You…you are aware of my problem?”

She put a hand to my shoulder. “I know only that I have a girl in my class who had an unfortunate childhood, but who I hope will have a remarkable future. Do not worry. Now, you have another class; run! We will talk of University later”

We sat with our boys and our lunch in the warm September sun. Elle was still curious about the boys of the beaches, and so I told her stories of very tall boys from Scandinavia and the Low Countries, blonds of firm bodies and minute bathing costumes, and she pretended to salivate to make Matty upset, but he just sighed and turned to Benny to talk about football. Men…

“So, what have you decided for next year?”

“Eh? Sorry, Margot, I was just dreaming”

“Danish boys, I bet!”

“No, Elle, about University. I am thinking very hard about Perpignan, to do the English. It is a lovely place”

Fatima sighed. “Mother does not like the idea of my going. I should meet a nice man, marry, have children”

“And you do not want this?”

She smiled in delight. “Oh yes, of course! But there is more to life, and Papa says that if the Almighty has given me a mind, I should make the best use of it. So…is it a silly idea, for me, to want to teach?”

Margot leant towards her. “No. You have a good heart, and that would be right for you. And besides…”

She paused, just for a second. “Do it before you have any children of your own. Schoolchildren are returned at the end of classes each day; your own, you must suffer all the time!”

Elle waited for the end of laughter. “And Margot? You would have how many?”

“We have decided, Elle, we have chosen a time, not an actual day, but a time. We shall sit our Bacca and if all goes well I shall continue to Caen, and study mathematics. In between, my man shall marry me. Children will come later, but my beloved says that I will not waste my talents too young”

I knew Roland’s mind on that: he remembered how Maman had been able only to show her talents in the kitchen, and that only recently. What might our mother have become if she had not met our father?

His father. Not mine, not ever. I resolved that I would do what I could to help Maman and her Handsome Merchant to make their second chance work properly. This was her Fate, come to call a second time.

“Margot, you are with us on Sunday?”

She smiled, and once more I could see her mature beauty shining past the adolescent. “I am to be married to a man; is it not traditional to share meals with his family?”

Elle laughed. “Yes, and then there is your father and his mother…”

Fatima raised her head. “This is true?”

I made a sign for yes with my head. “It is. I think…I think they are in much the same position as Margot”

With a very serious frown, Elle asked, “Is this true? We must be told. Is it like the dogs, or perhaps face to face, or sixty-“

As one, we all shouted her name, and she stopped, giggling. Fatima raised her hands. “No, no, and Elle, you know absolutely that is not what I meant. Sophie, Margot’s papa is free, sadly. I do not mean that in a bad way, but we all still remember how horrible it was for dear Margot. What I am saying is…has your maman done anything about your father?”

“Sperm donor”

There was a snort from Elle, and another from Matty. Fatima sighed. “No, my little friend, a divorce, or other ending of the marriage. How long has it been?”

“Nine years since he went with that woman. Never a word, certainly not a sou. As far as I am concerned, he does not exist”

“Yes, Sophie, but as far as the law is concerned is what you must consider. Look, my brother, he is an advocate, yes? I will ask. There must be ways to finish such things. We have, after all, abandonment and adultery, just for things to begin with. There will be more”

Once more, those thoughts, the words of maman: Serge could never have been like this, had never had friends who not only smiled for him, not only shared his troubles, but actively sought ways to remove them. I began to cry, and Elle came to hold me just a second before Benny. She took a paper tissue to my eyes.

“Why, Sophie? Why the tears?”

“It is just…I love you all so much, yet I do not know what I have done to deserve such fortune”

“By being yourself, my sweet. Just by being yourself”

Margot reached across and took my hand with her left, the ring sparkling. “This is not exactly a small matter, my sister-to-be”

That was when I very nearly broke my promise, for she was no sister-to-be but an actual sister in fact. I bit down on my treacherous tongue before it could betray my mother’s trust.

That evening, before Maman was home, Rollo sat with me and asked what had been the drama of the night before, and that was when I felt that my mother’s confidence had been upheld sufficiently. We sat with cocas in our garden, enjoying the sun.

“Rollo, there were things said last night, and they concern you. I would simply ask that you hold your anger, if it comes, and think of all who are involved. It is easiest for me if I am direct and go to the heart: I had a father, not a sperm donor. He lives yet, and you know him”

“He is in Rouen with that whore”

“No…that is your father”

“You…what do you mean?”

“That is not my father”

He sat for at least two minutes without speaking. I broke the silence. “Did you know that he beat our mother?”

He looked away, lips white as his jaw tightened. “Yes, I would hear, as a child. I tried to stop him sometimes, and he would strike me, but I bit him once, in the hand, and he would then lock me out of the room he took her to, the piece of a cunt. It was well he left, for I would have killed him in the end, for maman, for our mother, yes? I met him again two years ago…

“I was in Caen, in the centre, near the cold meats, and he was there, and as ever he had been drinking enough to forget who he was, and what he had done, and what he had made me, and he tried to act as if I was his son and friend. So I took him to a quiet door, and I put my service arm to his jewels and told him that if I ever saw him again they would come off one by one, and how lucky he was to have been able to lock the door in our house because I was ready to do it then with a knife from the kitchen. I took his hand…”

There were tears, just then. “I took his hand, where I had bit him, and I showed him the scar, and I said this scar, this is all a boy could do, but now, if you are wise, you will not seek to find out what this man could do, and I cocked my pistol, and there, in that doorway, he pissed down his leg in fear, and I told him, once more, that I would be his executioner if ever he gave me cause, and to find him upright and in my sight again would be cause enough.

“And I let him free, and he ran, and I was ashamed, and yet not so. He will not touch maman, ever again.”

I moved round our little table, and took him to me, not as a sister but as a mother, until his tears had ceased. His voice was soft.

“And your father…do I know him?”

“Yes”

“He lives yet?”

“He is Guillaume. Margot’s papa”

Suddenly, he was laughing, tears still coming.

“Whore of a brothel of shit, thank the Good Saviour that she only picked the good man the second time! Otherwise Margot and I would be completely buggered!”

I kissed him, again as a mother would her child. This was yet my brother, whom I would love till I died.