The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [121]
At meals, he marveled at the everyday calm of her life now, the ease and expertise of her hands in the kitchen. She fed him well. She was generous but not wasteful. She gave him the last stalk of asparagus. Carefully, she stored the leftovers. The bread would go to the chickens. At the end of each meal, she presented three cheeses—a wedge, a flat slice, and a small round—like treasures brought out on special occasions. Marshall was agog—gorging and lounging in a way he didn’t remember ever doing at home.
Every day, to build up their stamina for hiking, they walked for several miles. They walked early before having coffee and again late in the day. On the terrace, Marshall read a Japrisot mystery novel from Annette’s study shelf. And he browsed through her histories. The workmen had finished the stone walk, and the courtyard was quiet, except for the bees in the ivy. Bernard began sitting at his feet when Annette was busy elsewhere. She arranged for her son and daughter to care for the animals and the garden while she was away. They did not ask suspicious questions, and Marshall suspected they would not be surprised even if their mother planned to learn deep-sea diving, or decided to go to Africa to nurse lepers.
Annette promised to invite Marshall for a grand family Sunday after they returned from the mountains. It would be an important occasion, she cautioned. Her mother, impatient to see him again, would come from Saint Lô. He met the daughter, Anne, briefly, the day before he and Annette planned to drive toward the mountains. He had been apprehensive about meeting Anne, for fear he would see in her the young Annette who was sent in a cattle car to Ravensbrück. There was something familiar in her eyes, but Anne had a less delicate face, straighter hair. She seemed to be the new liberated woman, with her hair cut severely short, her manner brisk.
“Maman, I plan to take Bernard home with me,” she said. “We will come every two days, and Georges will come the other days. Don’t worry. Everything will be just as you want.”
“Bernard, you poor thing,” Annette said, bending to hug the dog. “You would insist on going with me over the mountains if you knew. But now Anne needs you.”
“I’m going to give his face a trim,” Anne said, ruffling the dog’s fur. “Maman, he can hardly see through that curtain.”
“Don’t tease him, Anne.”
53.
THEY WOULD HIKE INTO THE MOUNTAINS ON A WELL-DEFINED trail in the general region where Marshall had crossed the border in 1944, southwest of Oloron-Sainte-Marie. Marshall never knew the exact location of his night crossing.
They drove straight south down from Bordeaux, through an expanse of farmland and villages with gray spires and red-tile roofs. Annette’s car needed brake shoes, so Marshall had rented another car, a small Citroën 2CV. It was like driving a snail, he thought.
They were easy driving companions, and for long stretches they were quiet, only now and then murmuring over scenery or road conditions. She praised his driving, and he congratulated himself on his new alertness at the wheel. He was starting to appreciate the pace on the small French highways—the numerous stops and detours and villages, alternating with straight stretches of earnest speeding. When they stopped for a picnic, he contemplated the leisure of it, the pleasure of the food. She was teaching him to be French. He was Julien Baudouin, grown up.
Marshall had not counted on plunging in so deeply. Getting together with Annette turned out to be both simpler and far more complicated than he had imagined. He faced something that demanded uncommon understanding and intimacy. He was inexperienced. With Loretta he had simply turned the marriage over to her. She ran the marriage, the home, the children, while he flew away.
OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE was an old town