Caspian made his way around the water filled bomb carters, the cat balanced on his shoulder, pressed against his ear, which tickled with fur heat. Everywhere destruction, strafes of bullet fire running in long lines, jumping from one building to the next, not one unbroken pane of glass in the windows. Where habitation had taken root, boards had been inserted to keep out the wind and strings of washing stretched from pillars of damaged house to loose posts, which swung on the spring air. Where a chimney did smoke, the scent of burning wood was comforting, the aroma of life prickling back in this ruinous landscape.
Another five minutes walk beyond the village, Caspian made his way along a long straight cinder path, with a paddock on either side, to a solitary homestead. A cow watched him, it's head following his passing, chewing on a cud while the night's dew rose in steam off it's hide. On the other side, behind a hawthorn hedgerow, the old orchard was busy with hens scratching beneath the twisted boughs of apple and pears.
The house hadn't escaped the firefight. An outhouse burnt to a charred skeleton, bindweed ensnaring it, the white trumpets making it grotesquely picturesque. The windows to the farmhouse had been poorly reglazed, he guessed the glasshouse to the rear had been sacrificed. The top left corner of the building was blown away, the bedroom his mother had grown up in, roof gone, rafters exposed, the door to the stairs covered in a tarpaulin to keep rain out of the rest of the building.
He looked in through the half opened stable door to the kitchen. A fire roared in the grate, a black pot that smelt like cassoulet hanging over it. To the left on the wall, was hung a brace of rabbits and three pigeons. Clustered on the window ledges, terracotta pots sprouted early beans and peas. The dresser was stacked with plates and rows of jars full of preserves and pickles. The wooden table was coated in a strew of flour, in the midst of which some dough proved for bread beneath a blue and white checked cloth.
"Grand-mere." He called, the cat jumped down and strolled towards the fire. He heard a scuffling and from the scullery his Grand-mere's head appeared, she stepped up into the kitchen and they hugged tightly.
"Oh Caspian, my boy, my boy come home." They kissed and she stood back to look him up and down. She was still plump but thinner than he remembered, he broader, older than she remembered. They scrapped back chairs and she poured coffee into wide cups and was introduced to the cat.
"You look well." He complimented, she shrugged implying looks were deceiving.
"I am alive." She crossed herself. "You came through the village?" He nodded, she puffed out an expression of dismay and spoke softly. "The Blancs were all killed, so to the Rousseau and Monsieur Lambert. The Tasse, The Martins left early on, The Lafitte," her voice fell to the cusp of hearing, "and The Benoits, the Germans took them." The fear of five years war was alive in her eyes. He held hands to stop them shaking.
"I thought you would be safe out here, so far from anywhere."
"They were here, they were everywhere searching for the maquisards." She twisted her neck to look behind at a sepia photograph of her husband. "Every time they came, I prayed didn't I Papa?" The photograph remained silent. "They were in the woods, but the Germans couldn't get to them. They tried to say I was giving them eggs, baking bread, but I told them, " her eyes steeled. "Would you call your Mother a liar, no, or your Grandmother? no NO! Get out! Out! Out!" Her face was red, she leant back and held up her palms expressing surprise to have lived. She pointed out the window at the cow. "The Marquis gave me that in thanks for all the stews I cooked for them." As if reminded she got up and stirred the cassoulet. The cat stretched and invited her to tickle it's tummy, she scooped it up and sat back down with it on her lap.
"A miracle they didn't shoot you." Caspian looked at her in wonder. She crossed herself again and Caspian found himself mimicking the genuflection. They sat silently enjoying the coffee and the purring cat.
"You will stay?" She enquired.
"For a while, help you get everything up and running again."
"Good good." He leant down and pulled a scratched box from his bag. "What's this?"
"A present. I was given it but I think it's more for a woman."
"A lady." She corrected with a wag of her finger.
""A beloved Grand-mere." He caught her finger and kissed it.
The rusty hinges creaked and after a few internal taps and dislocated notes, the box gave up trying to play, inside was a torn piece of paper and a tiny photograph.
"What's this?"
"It's supposed to play a tune." Caspian fiddled with the key while she read aloud the message scrawled in English.. "Ho-well, what does that mean?"
"It's a name."
"You should go back to your Father." She turned the paper over, "That's all it says." Caspian picked up the photo. It showed a baby pearched awkwardly on the knee of it's mother. She held one of its chubby arms, looking straight into the camera. The child could have been a box or a bag for all the care offered to it.
Caspian threw the picture on the fire and Grand-mere followed suit with the paper.
"A friend of yours?" Caspian nodded thoughtfully.
"An unlucky man I think."
"Sometimes God takes a while to remember some people." Caspian frowned, thinking Howell was a stranger to both God and luck. He resumed rattling the box and the music drum began to turn and the sound of peace grew its way about them and their attentive silence. Grand-mere closed her eyes until the clockwork wound down.
"Chopin?" Caspian guessed but she shook her head.
"Maybe Mendelssohn or Rachmaninoff, I know it I'm sure." She dropped the cat onto the table and scrapped back the chair, going through a red plaid curtain to the parlour. She pulled off a huge patchwork bedspread from a black upright piano, rising a cloud of dust particles which span like plankton in the sunlight. She patted one side of a green velvet cushion on the stool, and they sat close beside one another, one buttock off, one buttock on.
"It's a little out of tune, I haven't played much since it all began." She ran up and down a few scales and then tried to pick out the tune from the music box. Occasionally Caspian would prod a key that sounded to him, closer to the original, and together they made their way along the run of the melody. How rich it sounded played by intuitive fingers rather than the curt metal pins. The beauty of it, surrounded as it was by fields of blood and bullet, overcame them and she cried for her sorrows and the pleasure of Caspian's presence.
He looked up at a picture that had always hung above the piano, a vision of La Belle crashing through rough waves on course for The Gulf of Mexico, and longed for the smell of the sea and the movement of the ship beneath his feet, but for now home was where he was needed.
(For start of story see Madigan)
