The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [128]
Later, when she was in her silky gown, he drew her to him and embraced her tightly, feeling her warm breasts against him. He held her while she cried, her tears running onto his shoulder. In a while, she drew back to speak.
“You know, I must think of what Father Jean did for the Bourgogne. I must find Robert and confront him. We cannot let the abbé disappear into oblivion, without being acknowledged. We must commemorate him somehow.”
“Is that what your mother wants?”
“Maybe. I think she despairs of Robert, but I must get him to remember how he loved Father Jean.”
“If he lost his religion, wouldn’t he be reluctant?” Marshall said.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said almost dismissively. “The abbé was a person, and he sacrificed his life. He loved Robert. I must remind him.”
Marshall imagined setting out with Annette to find Robert Jules Lebeau. He had searched for the bright young man Robert had been, only to find that the trail had taken a dreadful twist—Robert damaged by the war, the young lovers split apart. It would serve him right, Marshall thought, if he helped reunite the two now.
“Thank you, Marshall,” she was saying. “Thank you, thank you.”
“For what? Don’t thank me,” he said. Not me.
He held her and she did not cry more. He thought she felt an immense relief in knowing him. She snuggled with him, letting him hold her a long time. She kissed him deeply. He was right to hold her close.
“Do I have a chance with you?” he ventured to ask.
“When we get over the mountains,” she said.
“Then what?”
“We will know.”
Later, he tossed around in bed, wondering where he was headed. He had come to France hopefully, pie-eyed, imagining a pleasant jaunt down memory lane. Now the faces of the absent characters—Annette’s father, Robert and all his children, Robert’s mistress, his priest, even the mysterious chief of the Bourgogne—paraded through Marshall’s waking dreams.
At dawn, hearing water trickling somewhere, then birdsong, he felt his mind clearing. Annette was lying close to him, curled toward him, her fine hair tangled, her lips hanging open. Were they thrown together inevitably, or had he imagined them into a couple with a destiny? After the war, Robert was crushed, but Marshall had been rescued, and he thrived. No matter what else he might feel, he was indebted to both Robert and Annette. The logic of that was undeniable. He wept inside for the priest—Marshall, whose religion ended when he was eight and heard that an old woman’s house had burned down with her picture of Jesus over the stove and her grandbabies sleeping on a pallet nearby.
56.
ANNETTE AWOKE LIVELY AND PLAYFUL, RISING SWIFTLY FROM the bed to throw open the shutters.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
“I slept completely,” she said, smiling.
Marshall had slept little. He hadn’t thrashed and flailed as he often did. Instead, trying not to wake Annette, he had lain quietly, trying to capture his runaway thoughts.
Coffee and croissants arrived. Annette hurried to the door to accept the tray from the young woman in a blue smock. A flurry of bonjours and mercis followed. Marshall was glad to see the large pot of coffee.
“I really should try to find Robert,” Annette said later, emerging from the bathroom with a towel on her head. “For the sake of Father Jean.”
“I believe you could march over the Pyrenees and then get right to work.”
She laughed. “It would be necessary to march back across the border first.
“I don’t know,” she said after a minute, falling into doubt. “Perhaps Robert is beyond rescue. Since the war, he has led a life of dissipation and irresponsibility. I don’t know if his true nature can be reawakened.”
Marshall was suddenly tired of hearing about Robert.
“Maybe we’ll find him behind a bush in the mountains.” His attempt at humor fell flat, he saw by the startled expression on her face.
He