The Child Left Behind

SEVEN (#ulink_2786aff3-b0bd-51c6-8a01-5b9862ab4836)

With the casualty lists rising in Ireland and no sign of the promised Home Rule, an insurrection began in Dublin on Easter Monday. The postman told Biddy about it the following morning and when the men came in for breakfast they could scarcely believe what she related.

‘Surely not,’ Thomas John said. ‘They would not be so stupid as to take on the might of the British Army.’

‘I don’t know so much,’ Joe said. ‘There are plenty of stupid fellows in that Irish Republican Brotherhood, or whatever they call themselves these days.’

‘Well, I think we need to know what is happening in our own country,’ Thomas John said decidedly. ‘Someone of us must go to Buncrana and buy a paper.’

Tom went in on the old horse, and when he got home, regardless of the jobs awaiting attention on the farm, Thomas John spread the paper on the table.

‘Just a thousand of them,’ he said in disgust. ‘What on earth can a scant thousand men achieve? Connolly and Pearse are leading them to be slaughtered.’

‘They have both sides of the Liffey covered, though,’ Joe put in, impressed despite himself. ‘And taken over the GPO in Sackville Street like the postman was after telling Mammy.’

‘Hoisted up the tricolour flag too,’ Tom said. ‘It might be ill timed, stupid or whatever you want to call it, Daddy, but isn’t it a fine sight to see the tricolour flying in Ireland again?’

‘Aye it is, son,’ Thomas John said rather sadly. ‘And take joy in it, because it won’t flutter there for long. It wouldn’t hurt to get a paper each day though and keep abreast of things.’

That night Tom wrote to Finn telling him all about the uprising.

The worst thing is, there are so few of them pitted against the might of the disciplined British Army. Daddy thinks the whole thing is doomed to failure and I am inclined to agree with him. In fact the rebels might have hindered, not helped, the peace process.

Finn tried to be concerned, but the uprising seemed far removed from the war in France. It was as if Buncrana was in his distant past, almost another life, a life that hadn’t Gabrielle in it.

The day that he received Tom’s letter he met Father Clifford in St-Omer. He was really pleased to see him and he greeted him warmly. ‘But what are you doing here, Father?’ he asked.

‘I am here to tend to the injured in the hospital,’ the priest replied. ‘Father Kenny has been taken ill himself and I offered to take his place for a while.’

‘So have you left our battalion then, Father?’

‘No, not at all,’ Father Clifford said. ‘This is just temporary. I am moving out with you.’

‘No one knows when that will be yet?’

‘The next forty-eight hours, I heard,’ Father Clifford said.

Finn knew that once he moved from St-Omer there would be no way that Gabrielle could find him. In his reply to Tom that night he mentioned not one word about the uprising, but said that the whole company was on the move, no one knew where, and he was heartbroken at leaving behind his beloved Gabrielle.

Before Tom even received Finn’s reply the rebellion was over. Britain’s response had been immediate. Thousands of troops had arrived in Dublin, field guns were installed, and by Wednesday a gunship had sailed up the Liffey and began shelling the place to bits. And as Dublin began to burn all those shops not shelled or burned to the ground were closed up. The Dublin people were starving, and looting became commonplace, with the British Army shooting anything that moved.

By Saturday, it was all over and the rebels marched off to Kilmainham Gaol, apart from de Valera, who had an American passport and was taken to Richmond Barracks. Tom didn’t tell Finn any of this. Instead he wrote back to him in conciliatory tone, though he wasn’t too worried about his brother. He was young and impetuous and, though he seemed very fond of the French girl, it was likely that he would fall in love many times before wanting to settle down

In Paris, Bernadette was seriously concerned about her niece, who seemed filled with sadness. In an effort to amuse her, her aunt and uncle had taken her to concerts and theatres, as well as private parties and soirees. Her aunt had taken her shopping and bought her beautiful gowns, and they paraded the streets of Paris dressed in their finery, stopping to talk to this one and that, or taking a break at a café for coffee and cake, or a reviving glass of wine, which Gabrielle had never tasted in her life before.

She thanked them for their kindness, was polite and solicitous to her aunt’s friends, and answered their many questions without a hint of annoyance. Bernadette noted, though, that Gabrielle’s smile never reached her eyes and she never saw them dance with delight as they had once used to. Even her movements seemed slow and heavy and she held herself stiffly, even when she submitted to her aunt’s embraces. And that was the word—submitted.

‘It’s almost as if she’s frozen inside,’ Bernadette said to her husband as they made ready for bed. ‘I remember how she used to hug and kiss us both when she was a child, and even last year she was the same. I have never seen such a change in a girl before.’

‘I have noticed it myself,’ Raoul said. ‘Why don’t you send a note in the morning to ask the doctor to call to look at the girl? What if there is something radically wrong and we haven’t sought medical advice?’

‘You’re right, Raoul,’ Bernadette said. ‘I’ll see to it.’

The following morning after breakfast, Gabrielle retired to her room with a book, but she didn’t even attempt to read. She knew by now something was the matter with her and it occupied all her thoughts.

She hadn’t seen her monthly bleed since before Christmas, and she had noticed the other night that her nipples were brown when they had once been pink. She had let her nightdress fall from her, and studied herself in the mirror. She saw that her breasts had definitely changed. They looked slightly larger, though she wasn’t sure about that, but they definitely had blue lines on them that she had never noticed before.

She knew what she and Finn had done just that one time could have resulted in a baby because Finn had said so and that had been why he had refused to do it again, though when she remembered how he had made her feel inside, she couldn’t wholly regret it. In fact, if Finn had transplanted a seed inside her that would grow into a child, his child, whom she would rear and nurture until he came back from the war, she would leap up and down with delight, but she knew that no one else would see her situation in the same light. Most people would consider it just about the worst sin that a girl could commit. She dreaded telling her father, yet if she was right, there was no way she could get out of telling him.

This was her mood then when her aunt knocked on Gabrielle’s door.

‘Ah,’ Bernadette smiled. ‘Here you are.’

‘Do you want me, Aunt?’

‘No, my dear,’ Bernadette said. ‘But it’s just that the doctor has called to have a look at you, for you are not yourself, are you?’ Bernadette met her niece’s eyes.

Gabrielle knew she wasn’t, and she shook her head. Now it was all out of her hands and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. So when her aunt said, ‘Shall I ask him to come in?’ she nodded her head and said glumly, ‘You may as well.’

Downstairs, waiting to hear what the doctor had to say, Bernadette ran through in her mind the symptoms that Gabrielle had displayed almost since the day she had brought her to Paris, and came up with all manner of ailments that Gabrielle could be suffering from, except the right one. She castigated herself for not contacting the doctor sooner, but she had thought it was some sickness of mind, some form of depression, due partly to the way that she had been raised, and she’d been convinced that the freedom and gaiety of Paris would soon sort her out. It hadn’t, however, and so she waited anxiously for the doctor’s verdict.

The doctor had been the Dufours’ physician for many years and they had become friends, and so he came down the stairs with a heavy tread. He knew that he was about to deliver a hammer blow to these good people. Bernadette had made it clear over many years the feeling she had for her sister’s children, and especially the elder, Gabrielle, who truly was a very beautiful girl. He wondered how she would feel about her when he delivered his news.

Bernadette came hurrying to him when she saw him descending the stairs, wringing her hands with anxiety. ‘What’s the matter with her, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘I blame myself for not consulting you sooner.’

‘Calm yourself, dear lady,’ the doctor said. ‘My diagnosis would have been the same in any case, and I am afraid that you must prepare yourself for a shock.’ He saw Bernadette’s eyes open wide in concern and confusion as he continued, gently, ‘I am very much afraid that your niece is expecting a baby.’

Bernadette stared at him almost in disbelief. Her mouth opened but no sound came out, and she staggered in shock. The doctor steadied her and he led her into her sitting room to the sofa. Then Raoul poured them each a glass of wine with hands that shook.

Bernadette sipped the wine gratefully as she looked steadily at the doctor. ‘Are you sure of this, André?’

‘I am, Bernadette,’ the doctor said. ‘And I wish from the bottom of my heart that it wasn’t true, but Gabrielle is more than three months pregnant.’

‘But her father is like a gaoler with the girls,’ Raoul said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I’m sorry, and I don’t doubt you for a minute, but it seems incredible. The girl goes nowhere and sees no one, and she is sent to bed at eight thirty each night. Remember we have spoken about it before with your wife?’

The doctor nodded. ‘There is someone special in her life, though.’

‘I don’t see how there can be,’ Bernadette said.

‘Ah yes, this much she has told me,’ the doctor told her. ‘Only she wouldn’t say who the man was. You see, all will not be lost if there is some arrangement between them. They can be married speedily and the problem solved.’

Bernadette shook her head. ‘St-Omer, like Paris, has few young men left. They are mostly enlisted in the army, and she has been given no opportunity to meet anyone, though the town has plenty of British soldiers.’

‘She would never have been given the opportunity to meet any of those, though,’ Raoul said.

‘Well, she met someone,’ the doctor said. ‘And it needs only one to put her in the state she’s in.’

‘Then I intend to find out who the man is,’ Bernadette said, ‘and, if possible, take the girl back to St-Omer and see if the man will do the decent thing by her. That little lady,’ she added grimly, ‘has some explaining to do.’