Chapter Forty-One #2
‘Fresh air, at least,’ she said as the conversation of old Frenchmen filtered in. It mixed with the sounds of teacups on saucers and conversations in French and English and the Hindi of a trio of Indian soldiers.
‘What tea are they drinking?’ I wondered aloud.
‘English breakfast, without a doubt,’ said Alison.
We were all pretending – that’s what I thought then and that’s what I know now.
We were pretending to be normal. Pretending for just an hour that the war wasn’t happening.
That we were on a grand tour of Europe and taking tea in a French cafe frequented by artists and bohemians.
It was necessary. But Iso and her sister were the only artists left.
One of Iso’s paintings hung on the back wall of the cafe, a woman in a white bonnet and blue skirt, leaning against a tree in the woods.
It had been painted at the end of the last century and Iso had given it to Hotel Ioos to pay an outstanding account.
Art was the currency in that town before the war; it was the conversation and the whole reason for being there if you were from somewhere else.
I could only imagine the grief Iso felt at the loss of that life, of conversations about art and beauty, of so many friends.
When we sat in the cafe at Hotel Ioos she always appeared more confident. And it was Iso the waiters deferred to, not Alison or me.
Iso ordered a large pot of Darjeeling and a plate of sandwiches. When they were delivered she spoke to the waiter about his elderly father and the nephew who’d gone missing. Her French was perfect.
‘Has he been found?’ I asked as Alison poured the tea.
Iso shook her head and looked out the window. The stallholders had packed up and the square was emptied of locals. A group of enlisted men began kicking an empty can from one to the other. It was the Australians.
‘Are they mad?’ said Alison. ‘It must be ninety degrees out there.’
‘Nothing to them,’ I said. ‘An ordinary day where they come from, isn’t that right, Iso?’
But she wasn’t listening. She’d taken out her sketchbook and was making quick studies of the men in pencil.
The page was filling with disconnected limbs and torsos.
The Australians wore shorts and Iso sketched the contours of their calves and the bend of their knees.
When she’d filled a page she turned to another.
This time she sketched in the town hall with its clock tower and she joined a few torsos with their limbs, placing the men in the formation of play.
It was rough, but the joy of the game was evident.
The sound of the can scuttling along the paving stones animated the drawings.
Then there was a smash. The can hitting something it shouldn’t. I looked away from the page and into the square.
‘Oh dear,’ said Alison. ‘Now they’re in for it.’
A man in uniform was rising from where he sat on the terrace.
His trousers were wet. A jug lay in pieces beside his chair, shards of white porcelain.
Our waiter walked past us with a dustpan and brush.
The man in uniform picked up his hat from where it sat on the table, its red cover as bright as fresh blood. He secured it on his head.
‘What do they say about spilled milk?’ asked Alison. ‘I predict more than tears. Drink up, ladies, I think it might be time for us to leave.’
‘And miss the show?’ I said.
In the end, we had no choice.
As the waiter bent to sweep up the mess, the Redcap walked into the square.
‘Sorry, mate,’ the Australian called. ‘Don’t know my own strength.’
The Redcap put his right hand on his truncheon and his fellow Redcaps took it as a signal.
There was a click of cups as they returned them to saucers, a scrape of chairs.
They had all removed their hats to have their tea – strangely civil, when I think of it now – and, as if choreographed, they picked them up and placed them on their heads.
One pulled his down so low that he had to tilt his head back in order to see beyond the visor.
Perhaps I’ve slowed it down and selected the soundtrack, but a silence fell, on the terrace and inside the cafe, and all I could hear was the scratching of Iso’s pencil.
Quick lines. The shape of the men striding out – puttees tight around their calves, their breeches wide at the top, like jodhpurs, their long-sleeved tunics and their despised red caps.
Did she colour them then or wait till later?
I can’t recall, but it was important to her that we knew who was who.
She sketched a hand on a truncheon and drew the Redcaps tall and broad.
The impression of threat that came from the square was there on the page.
‘Ya gunna join us?’ I heard the Australian say. ‘Can always use a few extra players.’
‘Cheeky bugger,’ Alison said, but this time without a smile.
Iso sketched her countryman. Shorts and skinny legs, rolled up shirtsleeves and a slouch hat.
On paper he looked like a boy, a good head shorter than any of the Redcaps, though in real life he was just as tall.
Then she sketched the others, the men who had fallen in behind him: the other Australians, three New Zealanders with their lemon squeezer hats, two Scots in kilts.
‘Choose a side,’ the Australian said. All humour gone.
Charlie, the ambulance driver had called him.
Cheeky bugger, Alison had said.
The Redcap was in Charlie’s face, close enough to smell his breath, his head tilted back so he could look down his nose at the ‘insolent bastard’.
Charlie should have stood down, stepped back, apologised for the spilled milk.
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. And I liked him for that.
We all did. When the Redcap brought his elbow up under Charlie’s chin, one of the ambulance drivers ran out of the cafe.
‘Back off,’ she screamed. To Charlie or the Redcap, I still don’t know. But neither of them listened. Charlie took a swing and missed, the Redcap followed with an elbow to Charlie’s nose. His colleagues closed ranks. A Scot and two New Zealanders moved forward.
‘Idiots,’ Alison said. ‘Don’t they know that some rules don’t bend?’
A Redcap brandished his truncheon. ‘Stand down,’ he shouted.
They stilled. The Redcap motioned them closer to Charlie, who was holding his face. Blood streaming through his fingers.
‘Brutes,’ the ambulance driver shouted. ‘You should be fighting Germans, not our lot.’
Any men left inside the cafe made their way to the terrace. Not to intervene. Just to watch.
‘Get her inside,’ Alison said to one of the other ambulance drivers.
The Scot said something I couldn’t hear and a Redcap grabbed his arm and pulled it behind his back.
In a moment, all four were in handcuffs.
Charlie’s face was covered in blood and I wondered how Iso might paint it.
It was fresh and flowing – vermilion red, I thought.
I looked over, but she’d put her sketchbook away.
‘They won’t forget this,’ I said.
‘Who?’ said Alison.
‘Charlie and his mates and every enlisted man watching on.’
‘They know how it works,’ she said.
‘And how does it work, exactly?’
Her eyebrows went up. ‘Those in charge of enforcing the rules must appear to do so or the whole thing falls apart,’ she said.
‘And when the rules are unfair or impossible to follow?’
She looked at me a moment. I didn’t look away.
‘There is no grey, Tilda.’
‘There is always grey, Alison.’
‘No. There isn’t. Not here. And you’d do well to remember that.’ Then she turned from me. ‘They’ll spend a day or two in detention and then get on with it.’
I looked around the square. Enlisted men sat on the town hall steps and stood in the shade of shop awnings and alleyways.
None of them moved. None of them said a word.
They looked at ease but it was a false impression.
Their faces were grim and their muscles twitched with restraint.
They watched as the Redcaps marched Charlie and the others back towards the camp and the square shimmered in the unbearable heat.
I thought of all the marches I’d been on, all the women I’d seen arrested for apparent misbehaviour, the time they’d spent in cells, the days they’d spent starving themselves and the brutality of force-feedings.
It broke some, but I remembered the feeling of invincibility when we all joined together and began to shout.
‘They won’t get on with it,’ I said.
‘They have no choice,’ said Alison.
‘But they do.’
‘Not one they could live with.’