Chapter 7 #3
“I envy you. I can’t even imagine that kind of marriage. Brigitte and I aren’t even friends. It has made the past three years even harder.”
“You’ll find another job or a project, Xavier.” He was energetic and dynamic, and intelligent. “The right thing will come along and surprise you when you least expect it.”
“I used to think that too, but recently I’ve had my doubts. I don’t see anything on the horizon.”
“It will come. You’re too young for this to be the end of your story. Either another big job, or another start-up. Which would you prefer?” She was curious about the answer. And he smiled.
“I’m not sure. I loved the prestige and power of my job as CEO. It made me feel important,” he said honestly, hiding nothing from her. “But the start-up was much more fun. I’d love to do both again, or some kind of fun project. You had an art gallery, didn’t you?” He vaguely remembered.
“I still do, and I had a terrific time with it. But nothing is fun now without Malcolm.”
“You will find the right project too,” he reassured her. She was still young, and smart and beautiful. He couldn’t envision a woman like Sabrina doing nothing, just languishing in the chateau with no project or activity. She was too energetic to do that, even now.
When they left the restaurant, they’d both had a wonderful evening.
They had bared their souls and been completely honest with each other, without artifice or secrets.
Sabrina was entirely alone in France and needed a friend to talk to.
She spoke to her children almost every day, but that wasn’t the same thing.
And she wanted to appear strong for them.
She was their only parent now. Xavier needed someone he could confide in too, to balance the soul-crushing blows that Brigitte dealt him every time she told him what a loser he was.
It was so obvious that she didn’t like or respect him.
He wondered now if she ever had. If so, it was so long ago that neither of them could remember it.
All he remembered now was how bad it had been right from the beginning.
Neither of them had been enthusiastic about getting married, but had done it for the baby she got pregnant with and to please their parents.
A marriage like the one Sabrina described to Malcolm was completely foreign to him and Brigitte.
They walked for a little while after they left the restaurant. The dinner had been excellent, and it was fun seeing the nightlife of Biarritz for a few minutes. They stopped to look at the ocean and the boats in the distance.
“I had a terrific evening,” he said to her. “I’m sorry to tell you all that unhappy history, and the start-up and all of it.”
“It’s part of your life, it’s real. These things happen to people, marriages go sour, businesses fail, kids get into trouble, people we love get sick and die.
It’s all part of life.” She was more philosophical about her losses and heartbreaks than he was.
He was still railing at the fates and fighting with Brigitte.
Sabrina seemed to have risen above the tragedies and disappointments in her life.
“Life is scary sometimes, and sad. It’s easier to get through if there are two of you.
I always had Malcolm to protect me and face anything hard with me.
It doesn’t sound like you had that with Brigitte. ”
“Certainly not,” he confirmed. “She’s not a supportive person. She is very competitive, especially with men. I think at times she wanted to be me, not be married to me.” Sabrina thought it was an interesting observation and wondered if he was right.
He dropped her off at the chateau and watched her go in.
It was an odd feeling watching her go into his house, and he wasn’t living there.
And all he could think as he drove to the dower house was what a good friend she could be, and he hoped that eventually, she would be.
Even knowing her for a short time, he trusted her completely, and she trusted him. It was a good place to start.
—
The day after Sabrina’s dinner with Xavier, she sent him a friendly text, thanking him for a wonderful evening, and after she sent it, she dressed and drove to the monastery.
She wanted to look around and see what they did there.
Xavier had spoken highly of the nuns there at dinner the night before.
It made her want to at least meet them. They were neighbors, after all.
She rang the bell at the outer gate, and a very elderly nun opened the door in the wall.
Sabrina was surprised by how big the inner courtyard was, and the convent garden.
It seemed much smaller when viewed from outside.
It looked like a busy village and a world unto itself.
It was in an old fortress, with the church right next door where she had gone to mass on Sunday.
“May I help you?” the nun who was the doorkeeper on duty asked her with a wide smile. She looked to be somewhere in her eighties and walked with a cane but she was very spry.
“Am I allowed to take a look around, Sister?” Sabrina asked.
“Of course,” the elderly nun said warmly.
“The walls are here to shelter us, not to keep anyone out.” Sabrina noticed nuns leading groups of children to what looked like classrooms. There were dormitories as well, and she noticed that there were both boys and girls at the monastery, of all ages.
There were the sounds of talking and laughter, and a few squeals from the children, and now and then one child would break from the group and run around.
There was a beautiful garden with benches, and a separate vegetable garden where two nuns were putting what it produced into baskets.
When they finished, one of them came over to speak to Sabrina on the bench.
Sabrina had been fascinated by the methodical project.
They were Dominican nuns, each in the white habit of the order with a black veil.
Sabrina was intrigued to see that they hadn’t modernized their habits, which were still long, with wide sleeves.
Large wooden rosaries hung from the nuns’ waists, and they were all wearing sandals barefoot, even in winter.
She noticed that they had sweet faces, and the nun who approached her was smiling and came to sit down next to her.
It was difficult to guess her age. Sabrina thought maybe somewhere in her thirties.
“Are you traveling?” she asked Sabrina kindly in English. She was wearing her favorite blue parka.
“No, Sister. I just moved in, at the Chateau de Bonport.”
“Then we’re neighbors. I’m Sister Anne. I’m in charge of the school here.” Sabrina was intrigued by how lively the inner courtyard of the convent was. It seemed like a happy place, and the children looked neat and well cared for. Many of them were young, but a handful were in their teens.
“How many children are there here?”
“Forty-seven,” Sister Anne said proudly. “We actually have room for thirty-five, but the diocese always sends us a few extras. We have more than usual right now, it’s not normally this crowded.”
“Is it an orphanage?” Sabrina asked her.
“No, though some of the children are orphans, some because of the pandemic, or from other circumstances. It’s a temporary home, until we can assess their situations, and place them appropriately.
Many of them will go to foster homes when they leave here.
Others will stay with us until their parents can come back for them, if they are in some kind of transition and can’t care for them right now, but can eventually.
In some cases, we’re looking for their parents, and their status as to whether they qualify for adoption or foster care, if it hasn’t been determined.
We research each child very carefully, so we don’t make any mistakes.
The four teenagers over there are here until they turn eighteen in a few months, and we’ll try to place them in the community and help them find jobs.
Sometimes they live with families in the area until they get on their feet. ”
“It sounds like a very efficient operation,” Sabrina said with admiration. And a compassionate one, designed to meet the children’s needs.
“We try to be,” Sister Anne said. Sabrina introduced herself then. “Do you sing, Sabrina?” Sister Anne asked kindly, and Sabrina laughed.
“Not a note.”
“You’re welcome to try out for the chorus.
We can always use fresh voices. And you’re welcome to visit the children any time.
It’s good for them to see people who aren’t nuns.
Many of them are very shy. They’ve had hard experiences before they got here.
We try to help them get over it.” Sabrina wondered if they got therapy for their hard experiences, or just religious training, but she didn’t want to ask.
“We dine at five-thirty every day, and there’s always a spare meal at our table.
” She was so hospitable that it made Sabrina want to stay forever.
The atmosphere inside the convent walls felt like a blessing, and she liked Sister Anne immensely.
“Our Mother Superior is very modern in her thinking,” Sister Anne explained to Sabrina.
“And the Provincial of the Order sends us children from all over France. There are other interim residences like us, but children seem to like to come here.” She looked at Sabrina seriously for a minute then.
“Do you know the history of the Chateau de Bonport?” she asked her.
“Very little. Just what the owner told me.”
“Ah yes, Mr. de Bonport. He’s very helpful to us. He volunteers to lend us a hand whenever he’s here. He’s very handy with a hammer and nails and a wrench. We have a handyman here but he’s very old now. So Mr. de Bonport does whatever he can. I was referring to the history from the last war.”
“He hasn’t told me,” Sabrina answered.
“He should. His grandmother was a very brave woman. Xavier de Bonport’s grandfather was shot and killed in the Resistance.
He was quite young, his son was only three, and the baroness was in her twenties.
They built underground tunnels and passages to hide Jewish children when the Nazis started rounding them up.
They had a very efficient system to erase all trace of them, give them new identities, and get them out of France.
Apparently, she was fearless, and they saved close to a thousand children, right under the noses of the German soldiers billeted at the Chateau de Bonport.
The senior officers and headquarters were at the Chateau d’Arcangues, but the whole rescue operation was underground at Bonport.
It’s quite a beautiful story, isn’t it? That was his grandmother.
His family has a long history of helping the villagers.
I’m surprised he hasn’t told you. You should ask him about it. He’s a very modest person.”
“Yes, he is,” Sabrina agreed. She was fascinated by the story.
“Well, I’ve got to get my vegetables to the kitchen for tonight’s dinner. It’s my turn in the vegetable garden. We rotate.” There were eighteen nuns in residence, she had told Sabrina, and forty-seven children. That was sixty-five people they were feeding at every meal. That was a lot of people.
Sabrina couldn’t wait to ask Xavier about his grandmother the next time she saw him.
She thought about the nuns and the convent and the children on her way back to the chateau.
Going there had made her want to volunteer there too.
She wasn’t handy with a hammer like Xavier, but maybe she could play with the children, or help serve meals.
It would be a nice way to spend her time, and she missed having children around.
She was planning to go back and ask Sister Anne about it.
She wondered if the secret tunnels and passages were still underground at the chateau.
It was an impressive story, for a young woman with a three-year-old herself at the time, after her husband was shot in the Resistance.
It made Sabrina think that one antidote for her grief might be helping others, not as dramatically as Xavier’s grandmother, but where there were children, there was always work to do. And she had plenty of time to do it.