The '44 Vintage

There was a steaming bowl on the table, but the bandages beside it told their own tale: the soup must be in the pan on the great black kitchen range.

'Corporal Jack, this is my daughter, Madeleine,' Madame Boucard said graciously. ' Ma cherie, Corporal Jack is a friend and comrade of our David, our own David.'

It required a prodigious effort to look away from the soup to the daughter, but the effort had to be made.

'Mademoiselle,' said Butler.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Madeleine Boucard was almost as beautiful as the pan of soup, with her little, pale, heart-shaped face framed in hair turned to red-gold by the lamplight.

And Madeleine Boucard was also looking at him with the same mixture of alarm and concern her mother had shown.

Butler passed his hand across his stubbly chin, uncertain as to how to react to that look, which made him feel a fraud, because of his red silk bandage.

'Mademoiselle . . . I'm really quite okay,' he managed to stammer. 'But... if you've got anything to eat.

Like a little soup, maybe?'

Mother and daughter exchanged looks, then Madame Boucard stepped towards the dresser. For a moment Butler hoped she was going to get him a soup-plate, but to his disappointment she offered him only a small tray.

He accepted the tray automatically. 'Madame?'

' Regardez, Corporal Jack—look, please.'

Butler glanced down at the tray. He saw that it was not a tray at all, but a mirror.

'Look, please,' repeated Madame Boucard.

Butler raised the mirror, and then almost dropped it with shock.

The face under the commando cap and the red silk handkerchief was a mask of dried blood and grime from which two white eyes goggled at him. In some places the blood and the dirt had mingled, and runnels of sweat had scoured the mixture; in others the blood had already blackened and cracked where the skin had creased. The mask was the more frightening and unrecognisable for being his own.

'Sit down, if you please,' said Madeleine briskly.

Butler sat down.

'There now . . .' She removed the cap and began to untie the handkerchief. 'You know, I did not recognise him—David—it is so dark and he is so big, so grown upwards as Maman says. But then it is six years past since he was living with us . . . it is very tight— le noeud— how do you say in English?'

'The knot?'

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

'The knot—yes, the knot—knot,' the girl repeated the word to herself. 'I remember it now.'

'You speak very good English—and your mother and father too, mademoiselle. I mean really perfect English,' said Butler shyly.

'Myself . . . not perfect, though it is kind of you to say so ... eh bien! It is untied at last. . . my mother and my father, yes. But then so they should. My mother is half English by birth, and my father, he was educated at an English school . . . now, I am going to wash these wounds of yours with the warm water ... at a most famous and expensive school, where he learnt to play rugby football. Do you play rugby football?'

Butler held his head very still. She was talking to him to take his mind off what she was doing, that was an old nursing trick. And no matter what, it was the least he could do to pretend that she'd succeeded.

'No, mademoiselle. I played soccer, but not very well. My game was cricket.'

It wasn't difficult really: her hands were as soft as thistledown— ouch! That was the dressing coming off.

'There now—that's done. Now, if you will move your head a little towards the light ... so! That's good. . . . Was this a bullet?'

'I don't honestly know, mademoiselle. It may have been a grenade fragment.'

'Mmm . . . ?' She was finding it difficult now to concentrate on her work and make conversation in a foreign language. 'Cricket ... a little more to the side please . . .'

Butler found himself gazing directly down the front of her dress at two small but perfect breasts six inches from his face.

'Am I hurting you?' She drew back suddenly.

Butler closed his eyes. 'No, mademoiselle,' he said.

The soft hands continued cleaning him up again. Cautiously he opened his eyes and discovered to his great joy that the breasts were still in view.

'My father played at cricket when he was in England, but it is not played in France . . .'

Butler held his breath, trying to imprint the vision on his memory. He had never seen anything like this before, except in pictures and photographs. Other men, even other boys at school, had managed to see it all and do it all; but he had somehow never had the opportunity . . . or the inclination or the time or the Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

courage—or whatever it was . . . and now he regretted it bitterly. He had passed his exams and learnt German instead, but now those didn't seem such clever things to have done.

'But for the war I would have gone to school in England too—to a school in Chelt-en-ham. Do you know Chelt-