The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [81]
“My son is often here on weekends. My mother comes from Normandy when she is able, or I go there. She lives near Saint Lô. My daughter lives in Cognac and is here almost every day, but she is in Saint Lô now with her children. I will join them later this week for Maman’s birthday.”
“I remember your parents so well,” he said.
She nodded, smiling faintly.
“They were like parents to me,” he continued. The champagne almost made him sneeze. “Your mother is in good health?”
“Yes, she is well. I would like for her to move here from Normandy. Saint Lô is too far.” She turned her head away. “But my father—oh, he died many years ago.”
“I’m sorry. He was a good man.”
“Oui.”
Marshall hesitated. He said, “I remember him cursing the boches!”
She smiled. “My mother will be very happy to know I have seen you.”
“I remember how kind she was,” Marshall said.
Annette lifted her glass. “You remembered me as the girl in the blue beret,” she said. “This is what Monsieur Albert told me. Is it not so? But our signals varied. Sometimes I wore a Scottish scarf. One of the aviateurs wrote me, and he remembered me as the girl in the red socks! The beret was a thing I had to wear to school.”
He laughed. “The girl in the red socks. It doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“During the war we couldn’t get stockings. We wore socks, usually white or red. Oh, how I hated them.”
The two workmen and the woman with the rake were leaving, and Annette crossed the courtyard to speak with them. Marshall could not hear their words distinctly. She was friendly with them, and he saw them all laughing. He sipped more of the champagne. The workers left, and she rejoined him, apologizing for the interruption.
“The work on this place is without end,” she said, laughing.
“It’s very grand,” he said. “I’m surprised to find that you’re a country woman now. You knew Paris so well.”
“My husband and I bought this place twenty years ago. It had been a working farm until 1950, and then it fell into ruin, but we saw the possibilities. This has been a slow, evolving project. We restored the barn and the granary. And the distillerie across the courtyard we made into a food-storage place—like a cold place? For winter? We renovated the house enough to make it livable. Let’s see, we lived in Paris until 1960, but his family is of this village, so we bought this. Oh, it is not luxury, I can tell you truly.” She laughed. “No central heating until about ten years ago. We had only the fireplaces. And you remember from the apartment in Paris what it was like with no heat, or maybe a few lumps of coal for that stove we had in the front room. I remember in Paris when there was no heat at all.” She seemed to shiver.
“Pardon me for asking, but where is your husband?”
“He is no more. Maurice was a veterinarian. He had his practice over there, in what was once the granary.” She pointed across the courtyard to the center building. “He was very happy here. He had his animals, his treatment rooms, his kennels.”
“What happened to him? Or am I out of line?”
She set her face, erasing her radiating smile lines. “It was an accident. Kicked by a horse. The hard shoe hit his skull in the most vulnerable place.” With a flash of anger, she said, “He took chances. He was the type of person who could walk into the middle of a dogfight—or thought he could—and stop it. He was so used to working with animals that he thought they trusted him. He thought he could reason with them.” She shook her head sadly.
“I’m sorry.” Marshall murmured what he hoped were the appropriate comments. “How long ago?” he asked.
“Five years in November. It didn’t have to happen, but it did. I can accept it. That is that. Some things happen that are neither just nor unjust. They are part of the nature of the universe.”
Marshall noticed that she had blamed her husband for his fate while deciding on the indifference of the universe. But there was nothing to argue.
“So you have a daughter and a son?” he asked.
Her face lit up again. For some time, she spoke proudly of the accomplishments of her children and