Satruday Sample: The Story Weaver by Sally Zigmond

 

THE STORY WEAVER

I first saw him as a black speck on the white plain; a man leading a starving horse; his eyes snow-blind, his cheeks sheened with fever. He came closer as I waited. He staggered and fell at my feet.

            I took him into my tent and made him drink some of the blood I had left over from a still-born foal. He drank it without knowing what he drank. He slept for three days. When I told him what saved him, he wept. I do not know why.

            When the others first saw him, they wanted to kill him. I stood before them and proclaimed him mine and they would touch him at their peril. Grins were exchanged. For it is known that I have never had a man.

            He remains with us still; a man among women. He shrank into the shadows when the others were here but now they are gone. Left behind are the toothless grandmothers, the children who are weaned from the breast and me.

            And the man.

            We sit with the fire between us. He is always cold although the fire burns hot. I weave and he talks.

            He is a strange man. He is tall but has no body hair. His skin is pale gold and his hair is black. He speaks softly. The men of our tribe are stocky with beards and hair of flame. They swagger, bone daggers at their waists. They are hunters and tamers of horses.

            ‘Your men are savage brutes,’ he says, although he has not yet seen them. ‘We live in cities. We have streets, laws and good government.’

            `I do not know those words,’ I say. He stands up and walks to the entrance of the tent and lifts the cloth.

            I hear the hobbled horses strike the ground with their hooves. It rings like hammer on metal. The wind whistles through their tangled manes. The dogs by the fire grumble in their sleep. He drops the curtain I wove three summers ago. He returns to hug the fire. Then he laughs and picks a piece of flesh from his teeth. ‘To think I am living thus,’ he says.

            Some days later, pounding hooves, jingling harnesses and shrill cries announce the return of the women once again. The raw air is slashed by the heat of fresh blood. A hog, thin but with meat enough upon its bones is dropped at my feet. The dogs that returned with the hunters greet those left behind with furious barks, jumping at each other’s throats, tails thrashing like sword blades. The babies and toddlers wake in their woven cribs and howl. We all share the same hunger. Even the stranger.

            As I put pots to heat on the fire. Olgatha enters. She helps me skin the beast and scrape it clean of flesh and fat. We throw the meat into the pots. Beneath her tunic, her new-born son suckles from her swollen breast. We work swiftly. I see the man watching her.

            She was once Takalam’s woman. But she is good to me.

            Soon the pig-flesh has devoured our hunger. Outside, the wind screams across the plain, kicking up a blizzard. The children ask for the tale of the Raven and the Foal, but I am shy in the presence of a stranger.

            He lifts his head at my words. ‘In our land women do not tell tales. It is men who sing their songs to the trill of the lyre.’

            ‘What do your women do?’

            ‘They make themselves beautiful,’ he says. ‘For men.’

            Does he mock me? Despise my ugliness? I feel his eyes rake my misshapen jaw and twisted back and I want to cry.

            He touches my hand. ‘I would like to hear your stories.'

            The other women have already left the tent and returned to theirs, scooping up the sleeping children under their arms. We are alone. I reach for my knife I use to sever the yarn and the cord that binds the newborn to their mothers. ‘No stranger steals the stories from our ancestors. I will not tell you.’

            The night passes with no word between us. The wind drops and the tent sighs and stiffens with ice. The fire burns low. I concentrate on my loom, keeping count of the warp threads, changing the colours, the twisting of the weft beneath and over the warp. Which is he and which is I?

            ‘Where are the men?’ he asks the following day.

            ‘Away.’ I do not wish to think of the men.

            ‘Why are they not here to take care of their women and children? Provide for them?’

            ‘Women do not need men.’

            Just then, one of Olgatha’s tall daughters enters the tent and shyly hands me a skein of thread she has spun herself. I inspect it thoroughly for knots and burrs. I find none. She goes away, her braided head tilted with pride.

            ‘If men and women live apart, where do the young come from?’

            I have to explain the simplest things. ‘The men come every second full moon. When they come they take away the boys who have grown beards and plant their seed within us, then leave. It is the custom.’

            ‘But what of love?’ he whispers. He is a strange man.

 

Now the days and nights stand as equals. Soon the days will begin to nibble the tails of the night and grow longer before the nights exact their revenge, as the old tales tell us. The grass grows again. Today I freed the horses from their ropes. They careered across the plain, rolling over and over, kicking up their back legs and playing the fool. They soon settle, their shaggy necks curved to crop the first sweet shoots of the season. Their tails flick. The flies are waking too and cloud their heads. The whole world is yawning. The sky is the colour of skimmed milk thawing in the bowl.

 

The moon is full tonight. Tonight the men will come. The children are excited, especially the boys. They squabble and the women cuff them about their ears. Those who will leave with them on the morrow strut like warlords.

            I lift the entrance cloth. The sun stabs the floor and slices the body of the stranger who has just risen from his sleep. His back is to me. He lifts a bowl of mare’s milk from the fire and places it on the rug-strewn floor. He takes a piece of foal-skin, swishes it in the steaming liquid, squeezes out the excess moisture and applies it to his body. Then he dips his face in the now cool liquid and splashes it about his face before applying a sharp blade to his cheeks. I have touched this blade. It is sharp and cold beneath my finger. When he has finished he puts the used milk to one side. He has learned that we waste nothing. The children will use it to make supple the saddles and soak the read stems ready to fashion into arrow shafts.

            It is strange to me, this desire to remove the signs of manhood. A beard divides the man from the boy. His people must remain as children until they die. And yet he tells me how the call to manhood is strong in his land. He tells me that when the sun blazes fiercely above their heads they engage in vigorous sports, testing each others’ strength to the very limits of endurance: running, wrestling, throwing wooden spears and discs of stone.

            And now he stands up and turns to face me. The shaft of sunlight ripples across his nakedness. For a moment we gaze upon each other in wonder. I now see the beauty of the clean, white, male form. He is less thin than he was when he arrived and his muscles are well-formed. I see each sinew beneath the skin. He only shaves his face and head. There is a straggle of hair on his chest and his cock stirs within a nest of black curls.

            He is without his beard but a man for all that.

            He binds a piece of cloth about his waist and strides from the tent on sturdy legs, passing close to me as he does. He smells of the spring sky and fresh grass. I watch him go. Slowly at first as if testing his muscles, he begins to run, picking up speed, bearing down upon the group of horses. They scatter whinnying in alarm, tossing their heads, their hooves pounding the plain, before regrouping and continuing to graze.

            I am used to solitude. But I have never felt lonely until this moment.

 

The other women are dressing their hair in tight braids, twisting strings of wool around them. They are laughing, showing their fine pointed teeth. They take it in turns to drag bone combs through the tangled flames of their hair.

            I take no part in this but continue at my loom, thinking about the stories I will tell during the feast tonight. The stranger is returned. He squats beside me, shooting a quiverful of questions about what happens when the men come.

            ‘What do you think happens when men meet women?’ I laugh and am surprised by my own bitterness. I stand back and regard the cloth stretched across my loom. That at least is fruitful. The stranger has said much about the strange land in which he lives. There are beasts with skins of leather like the snake but walk on four legs. There are creatures that can live in pools of water. Their skins are featherless but they fly like birds through the water, which he says is wider than the plain, which is impossible. He says horses gallop across these watery plain, wild and snarling, full white tails streaming behind them like clouds presaging a storm. Beneath them fly the water-birds in all the colours of the known world, but more dazzling, more alive.

            I recreate these strange beasts and weave them into my cloth. I will tell tales of these creatures that drink nectar from heart of flowers the size of our round tents and the colour of blood. For that is what the stranger tells me. He has made my world wider and brighter. I see beyond the brown plain, further than the edges of my mind. I feel my body stretch and strengthen.

            Suddenly the women leap up and the children run screaming towards the horizon.

            ‘The men are coming,’ I tell him and he too rises and makes his way to the curtain and pushes it aside.

            ‘I see nothing,’ he says.

            ‘Look again,’ I command him as I would a child. ‘Do you not see the sky darken beneath the cloud of dust that rolls towards us? How in the name of our ancestors do you defend yourselves? Do you lie down and offer your necks like curs?

            I know my words have stung him. I wish they had not but I am sharp because the men have come. I have never heeded their indifference to me nor longed for their fierce embraces, but today I feel bereft, jealous of the rough attention that will be denied me. My thoughts are as tangled as raw yarn and I sense something of the excitement the other women feel and thought would never be a part of me.

            The stranger too is as tense as a strained bow before the arrow flies. I see a vein in his neck throb. He is right to be afraid.

 

The feast is over. The boys have been handed over to the care of the men and they are enjoying their first taste of fermented mare’s milk. It is always a moment for laughter as they splutter and cough and then grow sleepy. The men lie with the women in their arms, slowly stroking their bodies, savouring the pleasures to come. Some couples, the eager ones, have already slipped away to other tents.

            But my tent remains full. Someone mouths a tuneless song until kicked into silence. Dogs nose the rugs, seeking discarded bones and licking grease from the children’s faces. Moisture glistens on the skins hanging on the walls and trickles to the floor.

            One of the men calls out to me. ‘Old Crone! Tell us the tale of the braggart, Vostik and how his sword was stolen as he fucked his master's wife.’

            ‘No,’ cries another. ‘I want to hear of the passion of Urmlich for the queen of the Ice.’

            I stand up knowing that I will have to tell them both and many more before they will let me rest.

            Takalam staggers to his feet. Takalam, my twin. My womb-companion. He sways glowing in the firelight, a giant who fiery head butts against the roof. His green eyes are fixed upon the stranger, my stranger, who is looking elsewhere, gravely regarding two women who are beginning a slow, sinuous dance, weaving between the couples, placing their bare toes in the men’s mouths and snatching them back before they are bitten. I should have warned him. He should not look upon them. They are Takalam’s new women and Takalam is a jealous man.

            We dwelled in the womb together for nine months, our bodies twisted so tightly together our mother was cut apart to give us life. Takalam was lifted out as true and strong as a mighty tree. I was peeled from around him, a weak vine, twisted and bent. Yet, we are matched. We are both proud of our skills, but he is as handsome as I am ugly. He is harsh and I am gentle. My mind is true; his is twisted. Say one word to defy him and he cuts your throat. I have seen it.

            Takalam has seen. The tent falls silent, but for the snoring of the dogs and the hiss of the fire. He draws his bone-blade from his waist and points it at me.

            ‘The cripple has not yet told us the tale of this cuckoo in our nest. Why is he here? What does he want of us?’

            Sneering laughter crackles around the tent. ‘Does he want to steal a woman?’ he jeers. ‘Does he know what to do with one?’

            More laughter - dangerous low laughter.

            ‘Does he wish for the wild Olgatha?’ Takalam despises Olgatha because she would not give him a son. He aims a boot at her backside, almost knocking her into the fire. She snarls and retreats to the edge of the crowd. ‘Or this one?’ He pulls a woman from the floor by her braids. 'But, remember. If you take her, I will slice the head from your shoulders and feed it to the dogs!’

            Thin laughter dribbles from the drunken men like piss from a frightened dog.         Takalam speaks again. ‘Perhaps not, eh, stranger?'  Then he slaps his leather thighs and the dogs leap up barking until he roars them to silence.  ‘Listen. I have a better idea. Let him have my sister. No-one else wants her!

            He taunts the stranger. 'Do you have a sword?'

            One of his lackeys takes up the cry. ‘It will be but a blade of winter grass, soft and withered!’

            ‘Show us your reed-pipe and pipe us a tune!’

            ‘If he can find it!’

            I flash a warning glance at the stranger but I am too late. Takalam leaps on him, then his cousin, Gangest and more and more. Even some of the younger, sillier women crawl over him and claw at his garments, giggling over his bare legs, kissing his bare buttocks.

            I peer between my fingers. I see Takalam seize the stranger by his ears and haul him to his feet, gasping and spluttering. His nose pours blood and his face is bruised. He is naked. Teeth marks scour his back, his legs, his arms.

            He bears his humiliation with dignity.

            But I am ashamed. Of my people and that I dwell among them.

            I take the knife from my belt. I slice the warp threads from the top and bottom of my loom. I shake the cloth to life. It is the red of blood, woven with the fishes of the blue and green water, the dazzling white mares of the mighty ocean that is wider than the plains. It is strange. It is magnificent and my people gasp.

            I take it to the man and with it clothe his naked and wounded body. Carefully, slowly I fasten shoulder and hip buckles from carved bone and take the girdle from my waist and tie it around his. My people watch. They know what it means. It is known that this prize should be Takalam’s and therefore it is known that he is slandered and humiliated. Takalam's mouth hangs open like an old saddle-bag. I approach him boldly and take the sword from his belt and present it to the stranger.

             ‘Leave us now,’ I say to the stranger. ‘Go home and tell your people about us. Not of Takalam. He is rabid wolf, foaming at the mouth when the moon is full. But of our land and our ways.'

            He nods. ‘You have taught me much,’ he says. ‘This garment and the giving of it tell me everything.’

             ‘Tales are tales. Only this is true.’ I place his hand on my heart.

            The next morning when only I am awake, I stand on the plain and watch the sun rise. The dawn wind ripples through the grass and a tiny feather flutters to my feet. I take it back to my loom and weave it into a new story.

Find your copy here 

           

Sunday Serial: The Story Weaver and Other Tales by Sally Zigmond, white wine, A LOGICAL EXPLANATION

 

‘But forty’s young these days, Mum,’ Helen said when Lynne was having one of my ‘I’m past it’ days.

She  looked down at my shapeless skirt and Tee-shirt that had been through the wash one spin-cycle too many and said nothing.

Helen and Debbie were paying me one of their duty visits, both sprawled on my sofa leaving me the floor as Charlie was stretched out on the armchair, shedding hairs, his claws shredding the upholstery. Bless them, they both feel she needed ‘taking out of herself’ since the divorce. The first months were spent drinking her wine and eating her out of Pringles whilst they pontificated on the ‘all men are a waste of space’ debate. Since both of them still adored their father and were never without some member of the hated species somewhere in the background, she felt this was a bit rich.

It didn’t last, of course.

They’ve now changed tactics. Their latest project is clearly ‘let’s get mum fixed up whether she wants it or not.’

       This tactic started when they took her out for an outrageously expensive dinner. It was when they were all at that mellow stage, giggly and stuffed with profiteroles that Helen murmured oh-so-casually, ‘By the way, Mum. I'm having a few friends round to my flat on Friday. Why don’t you come along?’

            Discreetly undoing the top button of her skirt, Lynne said, ‘Your friends won’t want an old wrinkly like me cramping their style.’

            ‘Don’t worry,’ said Helen waving her glass, ‘there’ll be one or two people your own age.’

            ‘And, you need to get out more, Mum,’ confirmed Debbie, not altogether helpfully.

            Afterwards, Lynne couldn’t believe she’d fallen for that one. She could only blame herself when she'd found herself in Helen's flat, wedged between a sofa and bowl of avocado dip and the only person her own age in the room who just so happened to be male, who decided she needed to know the rules of crown-green bowling.

            A few weeks later it was Debbie's turn. ‘I've got a spare ticket for Les Misérables. Please come.’

             ‘Not sure it's my sort of thing’

            ‘You'll love it.’

            ‘No.’

            But again she was beaten into submission, only to find that Debbie had gone down with flu and had been replaced by a limp-wristed individual, carrying a box of soft-centres and a wilting bunch of lilies.

            ‘I really thought you and Len would get on like a house on fire,’ a miraculously-recovered Debbie sighed the next morning when Lynne phoned to complain.

            ‘Why?’

            ‘Well, because ...’

            ‘Because he's old and boring?’

            ‘Don't be silly.’

            Helen took up the challenge with a seeming never-ending supply of available candidates. Where did she find them? Rent-a-Grandad? ‘But, Mum, this one's so right for you. Mature. Rich. Architect. Designed that precinct by the bus-station.’

            ‘The one that looks like an abattoir? No thanks.’

            ‘He's an animal-lover. Keeps budgerigars.’

            ‘No.’

            ‘And gerbils.’

            ‘No.’

            ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

            Eventually, the girls got the message and the match-making attempts ended. Lynne breathed a mental sigh of relief, took up watercolour-painting and got a job in the make-up department of her local Debenhams. She enjoyed it because her customers were women. Not that she was totally against meeting an eligible man. But she wasn’t going out of her way to find one.    

            Peace at last. Every evening when she got home from work, she would pour herself one glass of chilled white wine, kick off her shoes, put her feet up on her new reclining armchair and check for phone messages. Most of her friends always seemed to forget she was a working woman and hadn’t got out of the habit of phoning her during the day.

            ‘You have three messages,’ chirped the disembodied voice. Message one. Beep. ‘Hi Mum. It’s Helen. Fancy a girl’s night out tomorrow? No ulterior motive. Honest.’

            Message two. Beep. ‘Debbie here. How's the job going? Any chance of free samples? Let's catch a meal and talk about it.’

            It would seem the truce was over. They meant well but needed to be told enough was enough. She was about to tell them both so when the last message whirred into action. Beep. A male voice filled her ear. Gravelly enough to be intriguing but warm enough to be seductive and yet, so forlorn she felt her heart tighten. ‘Why don’t you ever pick up the phone? Why don’t you return my calls? Please give me another chance. Please. I’ll be in The Grapes of Wrath at half past eight tomorrow. Please be there. I need to talk to you. I love you so very much.’ Click. End of messages.

            Who the hell was he? Not a clue. She trawled through the metal database of ‘men who were in love with her’ only to find it empty, of course. Then it dawned on her. She didn’t know this man from Adam. It was a mistake. In his distressed state, he’d misdialled and blurted out his misery to a total stranger.

            Poor soul. The hard-hearted bitch didn't deserve him. Lynne could see her clearly. A size-eight-blonde who, even as he declared his misery, was slipping into five-inch Jimmy Choos and applying jammy lip-gloss in preparation for a date with another man. And tomorrow, there he’d be in The Grapes of Wrath, wherever or whatever that was, waiting for her to appear, lifting his head eagerly every time the door opened, only to lower it when it wasn’t her, which it could never be because she hadn’t got the message ...  So what? She plunged a fork into the film lid and slammed the pack of vegetarian moussaka into the microwave. After all, if he was stupid enough to dial the wrong number, that was his problem.

            And then as she gazed upon the moussaka turning a stately dance behind the glass, she saw him again, tears blurring his vision. No wonder he’d got the wrong number. Divorce or no divorce, she still recognized a broken heart when it landed on her answer-phone.

            The moussaka tasted of cardboard dunked in a ‘rich sun-dried tomato sauce.’ She found Eastenders even more depressing than usual and opted for a good book and an early night but couldn’t sleep. She thumped her pillow. What on earth was she doing lying awake worrying about a stranger?  She’d even looked up The Grapes of Wrath in the Yellow Pages for goodness sake. It was a wine-bar in South Street. Only a short bus ride away. It wouldn't take long. It couldn't do any harm. Could it?

            Next morning, bleary-eyed and still undecided, she called Helen. Her daughter was not amused. ‘Have you completely lost your marbles? He sounds a real loser. Can’t even use a phone. You need to find a man who can look after you. Strong. Dependable.’

            ‘I’m not after a date with him. I merely want to tell him what happened.’

            Debbie was equally emphatic. ‘Don't be stupid. He might be a psychopath.’

            ‘He sounded sweet and loveable.’

            ‘I bet they said that about the Hannibal Lector.’

            Instead of putting her off, their words had the opposite effect. She'd show her daughters she could take care of herself. She wasn’t some starry eyed teenager wearing rose-tinted spectacles.

            The Grapes of Wrath turned out to be a dim and dingy cellar from which music of high decibels and low quality boomed forth. The tables were fashioned from old barrels and the seats were smaller barrels cut in half and upturned. The whole place was a hideous throw-back to the nineteen seventies, even down to Marc Bolan warbling in the background.

She took a deep breath and told herself she had to see it through. She checked her watch. Almost eight. All she had to do was find the man and explain. He might even buy her a drink to say thank you. They’d make an evening of it and then find they had a lot in common . . .

            Kerchungg! It was that quintessentially comic TV moment where the background music screeches to a halt. The penny had dropped. What an idiot! The message left on her answering machine wasn't a mistake. It was a set-up. And Lynne knew who to blame. Helen and Debbie had lulled her into a false sense of security. They were at it again. And this time they thought they were being really clever. They knew she had a stubborn streak and that she always liked to do the opposite of what people expected. They’d set up the sting, pretended to put her off, knowing she’d be bound to trot along. She had to smile at their persistence. But she wasn’t falling for it. No way.

            She swung round and made for the exit.

            What happened next wasn’t entirely clear to her. She must have collided with one of those heavy tables or skidded in a slick of spilt wine. Because there she was, seconds later, flat on her back. Even as she lay there, pain radiating from her wrist to her shoulder, she was aware of the corny nature of the situation. As  a  strong male arms gathered her up and placed her on one of the upturned barrels, she knew she he would be the right age, handsome and definitely not into crown-green bowling. He was tanned, slim, immaculately, but not over-immaculately, dressed in a pair of dark blue chinos and a beige shirt, casually unbuttoned at the neck. His hair was slightly greying at the temples and deep laughter lines framed his hazel eyes.

            Not bad, girls. Not bad. And it may have been the bang on the head that allowed her to accept a glass of very expensive red wine from him. Not only that. She downed it so quickly that he immediately bought a bottle of rather luscious Cabernet Sauvignon and led her over to a quiet, secluded corner.

            After her third glass any injury she might have sustained had melted away and the hideous wine bar miraculously transformed itself into a temple of delight. His name was Adam, divorced like her. He was an actor, currently appearing at the local theatre in the very production of Les Misérables she’d been forced to endure in the company of Len and his wilting lilies. As they swapped anecdotes, discussed the books and music they loved, chatted and laughed, the pieces began to fall into place. Helen or Debbie must have met him at a party somewhere, found out he was an actor and had concocted the plan. She knew exactly what they’d have said to him. ‘Sound pathetic. She's very soft-hearted. We’ll make sure she turns up. Give her a lovely evening. Dad’s been a total plonker. Let her know there are still some decent men around.’

            Only it hadn’t worked totally according to their little plot, had it? He never got a chance to put his acting talent to the test before she literally fell at his feet. And yet, if he was acting, he was very convincing, so she decided to play along for a while.

            All too soon, the flickering candles had melted to stubs. It seemed a shame to spoil what had been the most enjoyable evening she'd had in ages, but the time had come to tell him she wasn't fooled.

            ‘So how did you know it was me when you picked me up from the floor?’ she began cautiously. ‘After all, there must be hundreds of middle-aged women with bags under their eyes and swollen ankles.’

            ‘I beg your pardon?’

            Perhaps she sounded more drunk to him than she did to herself.  But she wasn’t drunk. She’d only drunk three glasses, well, four, she supposed if she counted the first glass he bought her. She was high on happiness. She repeated the question with difficulty. ‘Still not with you,’ he said, frowning but still looking wonderful.

            Maybe, she hoped, he was playing dumb because he liked her just that little bit, after all and wasn’t ready to end the evening just yet. But Lynne couldn’t live on dreams. She wanted things out in the open.

            ‘I don’t usually drink with strange men,’ she explained. ‘I only meant to give you the message and go home. Only there wasn’t a message, was there? No size-eight-blonde nor a broken heart. You really are a brilliant actor.’

            He looked anxious. ‘Are you really sure you’re all right? Perhaps he thought she was the psychopath or at least a pathetic case of post-divorce flakiness. ‘I’d better get you home,’ he said and get to the bottom of all this. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.’

            Just then a bearded man in green tweed emerged from another part of the bar she hadn’t known was there. He pushed past them, muttering into his mobile. ‘I’ve been here for hours,’ he moaned. ‘Perhaps you couldn’t make it but you could have let me know. I’ll be in The Noble Rot at eight tomorrow. Please be there.’

            ‘There’s an explanation all right,’ she said, hooking her arm into Adam’s, ‘but I’m not sure it’s at all logical

Sunday Serial : The Story Weaver and Other Tales by Sally Zigmond, rough white wine: BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND STRIKE

                 

The village of Cailloux-Sainte-Cecile pants like an old dog in the heat. The church clock strikes one. The cracked note hovers above the rooftops then dissolves. Thérèse appears at her door, as she does every day at this hour.

            She lives alone at the very top of the village. From her house, a narrow street hobbles down past the village graveyard that jealously guards its dead and along the grey flanks of the church that again strikes the hour. It then turns left, squeezes between dusty shuttered cottages still bearing their bullet grazes. At the bottom of the hill it sinks into a rectangle of beaten earth. Later, here in the evening shade, old men will play petanque and talk of old times.  

            Beyond, a field of maize rustles under a jet of water that wafts to and fro in lazy swathes. The maize is ripe. An army of starlings gorges on its plump kernels. Monsieur Tapis, who rents the fields from Monsieur le Maire, oils his gun and grunts into his moustache.

            High above him Thérèse shakes crumbs from her tablecloth. Three hens scuttle out from the shade of an upturned wheelbarrow. She kicks them away, takes the cloth back in the kitchen and returns with a bentwood chair.           

            In an ivy-clad mansion at the foot of the hill lives old Natalie Bouchier. She lives alone, too, but today her great-grand-daughter, Brigitte has come to visit. They have been playing a long and laborious game of bezique. The old woman's head droops over her cards.

            Brigitte is bored. She looks through the wide open doors of the drawing-room with its jumble of china figurines and photographs, through the high iron gates and the tumble of hot, scarlet geraniums in their baked-earth pots along the wall. The paint-box blue sky beckons. She shuffles. "It isn't what you think," the old widow murmurs before sinking into a deeper sleep.

     Brigitte creeps through the doors, skittering the gravel on the terrace, and slips through the gates and into the street. Once away from the shadows of the black cypresses the heat is fierce. Like the street she meanders uphill to no obvious purpose.

            Thérèse, too, has fallen asleep on her bentwood chair. She hears them coming. Tramp. Tramp. Tramp. Up the hill.

            But the boots belong to a troop of Dutch back-packers. They consult their guide book which says there is a fine monument to the Maquis in the cemetery. They reach the gates. They rattle the catch. The keys are in Thérèse`s pocket. But she sleeps on. The back-packers march back down the street and the air congeals behind them into hot stillness.

            Thérèse saw them first. She could climb higher than any of the village boys and that day she was swinging her legs in an elbow of the oldest apple tree in the orchard. Her beloved brother, Thierry, ran the farm now her parents were dead. He was in the fields cutting maize. He was too frightened to tell her he was in love with Natalie. She and her widowed mother ran the café. She was the prettiest girl in the village and Thérèse thought the family beneath her and Natalie a fool.

            The village was as still as stone. Nothing moved. Unseen, Thierry and his friends crept from the village and into the surrounding hills, leaving the women and the old men to face the enemy.

             The occupiers were more an irritation than a threat. They were there. That was all. Most of them were billetted with Natalie and her mother. Was it only Thérèse who watched them bloom and fatten while the rest of the village grew lean?

             Her contempt festered into an irrational hatred as she shouldered the burden of the farm. She wore her brother's clothes and stomped about in his boots with a defiance that suppressed ridicule. No-one, not even her neighbours, suspected it was she who passed news and supplies to her male contemporaries camped under the stars or how she yearned to join them and not have to stagnate with the likes of Natalie.

            No-one could say that the farm flourished under the occupation, but no-one starved. Natalie came up the hill once to ask for food, but Thérèse sent her packing, the little slut. The Germans took all her produce anyway. She always spat in the cans before she handed the milk over; made sure the rats had got to the grain. Her muscles hardened, her breasts shrank to nothing, her hair was short, her face bronzed and lined. She chopped wood. She mended the roof when a hailstorm shattered some tiles. She harvested what little maize was left after the German soldiers had used the field for target practice. Sweat soaked her back but she was proud.

            And even as she dreams, the starlings stab the plump kernels with their thieving beaks. But it is no longer her concern. Stiff joints and dwindling funds forced her to sell her land to the Mayor twenty years ago. Now he rents it out to old Monsieur Tapis, who is waiting for the harvester to come and curses the starlings.

 

Brigitte finds a stone as white and smooth as a sugared almond. She kicks it up the steep hill, past the church and cemetery. Then she kicks it too fiercely and loses it in a ditch. She searches for a while before losing interest. It is only a stone and Cailloux-Sainte Cecile is full of stones.

            When she looks up she sees a wrinkled old woman folded in sleep on a bentwood chair. Her hands flutter in agitation, although her eyes are firmly shut. She must be dreaming, thinks Brigitte. She can't imagine what an ugly old woman with wrinkles as deep as plough furrows has to dream about.

            She has reached the top of the village. The road ends at the gates of the walled graveyard. Brigitte isn't interested in graveyards. In a field beside the old woman's house is a gnarled apple tree, propped up by a metal rod. She picks an apple, but it is small and sour. She tosses it to some scratching hens.

            The church clock strikes. One. Two. Brigitte rubs her hands against the bark of the apple tree. It is old and gnarled. Everything in this village is old.

            The church clock strikes again. One. Two. Why does it strike twice, she wonders. Which one is the right time, the first or the second strike? They can't both be right. Does time stand still between the two strikes? Such things worry her.

 

            Yes, the old woman dreams, she ran that farm well. She could still have it now had that cow not gone into labour when it did. She had struggled with it for hour upon hour as day darkened to night. The beast was already exhausted by the time she found the birthing ropes.

            To her annoyance and shame, she did not have the strength to use them. She ran down the hill and banged on doors but no-one wanted to help proud Thérèse. In the end she was forced to try the café.

            Natalie opened the door. From behind her steamed a rich, fatty mixture of garlic and red meat, along with the sound of music and drunken German voices. Natalie looked flushed. They could have been friends had Therese known Natalie's love for Thierry and her contempt for the Germans: had she known that she cried herself to sleep every night ashamed of the way her mother indulged her visitors. But Therese only saw a pretty girl in the house of the enemy.

            "One of my cows is in trouble. I need help."

            "What do you want me to do?" said Natalie, glancing behind her. "I know nothing about animals."

            "Do you think I don't know that? Find someone who does, idiot."

            "Who?" Laughter breaks out behind her. "I must go."

            Thérèse thrusts a boot into the closing door. "If that cow dies, so do you, Slut."

            Tears trembled on Natalie's eyelashes. "I'll try."

            Thérèse grabbed her hair that slipped like silk in her fingers. "You'd better. Slut."

            "It's not what you think."

            "How dare you presume to know what I think?"

            Thérèse stomped back to the barn. From time to time the cow moaned. In the corner of the barn rats scuttled under the straw. Thérèse cursed Natalie and cursed herself for having to ask her.

            It was almost dawn when she heard the barn door creak open. "Where the hell have you been?" But it wasn't Natalie.

            "I saw the light," the soldier said in good French. "Is there a problem?"

She hadn't seen him before. He was very young. His ears stuck out at right-angles from cruelly cropped hair.

            "The calf's stuck. I think it's dead." Thérèse cocked her head towards the cow, now lying on its side, breathing in shallow gasps.

            "I can help, please?"

            Thérèse snorted.

            "I am a farmer's son. My name is Helmut."

            Thérèse couldn't imagine any farms in Germany. That country was one big factory with belching chimneys and red furnaces forging bullets to shoot Frenchmen. But she needed help. "Help yourself," she shrugged.

            Helmut placed his gun carefully across a hay-bale. Thérèse saw how he had held it as if it was something he had found in his hands without knowing who had put it there or why. He removed his shirt and went over to the cow. His pale chest gleamed in the dim light. He murmured something in the cow's ear; something Thérèse couldn't understand so it sounded like a magic spell to her. The cow staggered to its feet.

            "Bring the lamp closer," he said. He examined the cow, all the time whispering in its ear, blowing in its nostrils. `There are two calves and their limbs are tangled." He thrust his arm into the birth canal and pushed and twisted inside. Thérèse stood by, feeling as soft and useless as Natalie, who had let her down.

            It took an hour to coax the first calf out. Finally, it lay panting on the damp straw, weak, but alive. Helmut pushed it closer to its mother who began to lick its wet face. "The other's not ready yet. We wait."

            "So, you live on a farm?" Thérèse asked awkwardly.

            Helmut looked away. `Yes. It was a good farm, once. The soil is dark and rich, not stony like here. The cow stirred and his mood suddenly changed. "Quick. Quick. Put your arms round my waist. Yes, that's it. Now. Together. Pull!"

            Thérèse wrapped her arms about his naked chest. She could smell his body, a rich mixture of sweat and good, rich earth. She watched as the snout of the calf emerged. She gripped Helmut more tightly in her excitement. But he had relaxed his hold on the rope as the calf slipped out with ease, still enveloped in its soft wet membrane. Down they both went, the bloody straw greasing their feet. They still clung together, rolling about, trying to regain their balance and dignity. As the soldier struggled to right himself, he almost flattened the flailing new-born.

            Thérèse cried out a warning "No! No! Get off! Get off!"

            There was a flash and a sharp explosion that shook the rafters. Something whistled past her ear and the boy slumped in her arms. Thérèse pulled herself up and stared at the man who had fired the shot. It was Thierry. Natalie was clinging to his shirt, screaming. Behind them an angry dawn slashed a blooded blade between the sky and the land.

            "You fool!" Thérèse snarled at Natalie. "You stupid, little fool." She cradled Helmut's head in her arm. He stared back at her, a look of astonishment across his kind, dead eyes. Still Natalie screamed.

            "Shut up or we're all dead."

            Too late. The doors swung wide open. A pack of Germans rushed in. Saw Helmut's mangled corpse and Thierry with his gun. Thérèse grabbed Natalie and pulled her down. Thierry was too slow. After he fell, the soldiers went on a rampage around the village. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to step out of their doors was shot. Bullets flew from building to building pock-marking the stone.

 

Old Monsieur Tapis pulls on his boots, picks up his gun from the table and strides out into the sunshine. He points his rifle up and through the dry stems. Once, Twice. Again. Again. A volley of shots rises higher than the tower of the church.

            With them rise a cloud of starlings. Never had he seen so many together, Monsieur Tapis later tells anyone who will listen. A hundred, maybe two hundred erupt like a black volcano, darkening the sky into night before wheeling off in the wake of the gunshots.

            They settle on the village roofs, on the telegraph wires, the walls, gravestones and washing lines. They jostle on their makeshift roosts, lifting and flapping their black wings, circling the sky, landing, taking off, uncertain, bewildered.

            Thérèse wakes with a jolt. The sound of gunfire, the smell of blood and fear and hatred pounding through her old bones. She stands up unfolding like a rusty umbrella. Sees armed soldiers circling her, black as death. Sees Natalie awash with tears clinging to her dead love. "He was helping me, you fool. He was a fine young man and you killed him. Slut! You killed my brother. You shamed us all." She lifts her apron to her face and sobs.

            Brigitte watches the starlings as they whirl about the old woman. She is not afraid of them, but the old woman is terrified. She is raving like a mad-woman.

            She runs to her, places her small hand on her shoulder. "See, Madame. They are only birds. They will not hurt you. Leave them and they will return to the fields." And sure enough as Brigitte leads her back to her chair, the birds rise one by one and flap back to the maize. Soon they are filling their beaks once more.      The church clock strikes. One. Two.

            The village waits trembling between the past and the present.

            The church clocks strikes again. One. Two.

            Thérèse grunts. Afraid? Who says she's afraid? She begins to speak, but the child interrupts.

            "Why does the church clock always strike twice?"

            "It doesn't. Go away child and leave me in peace."

           

"Well, well," smiles Natalie, fluffing up her hair, as Brigitte later tells her about the birds and the old woman. `So you met the old witch of Cailloux-Sainte-Cecile."

            "She looked so sad, Grandmaman."

            "I tried to tell her. But she would never listen."

            "Grandmaman?"

            "Yes, ma petite?"

            "Why does the church clock always strike twice?"

            "It leaves time for wrongs to be righted and mistakes forgiven."

            But Thérèse only ever hears the clock strike once. She picks up her chair and goes back inside her house, locking the door behind her.