The Child Left Behind. Anne Bennett

before you catch your death of cold.’

       SIX

      Gabrielle knew that Finn’s family would worry about him as much as she did when he left, but they at least would have letters to sustain them. Maybe, she thought, she could write to them for news of Finn. His parents might not be that understanding, but his sister or brothers were probably more approachable. So one evening she said, ‘What are your brothers like? The only thing I know about Tom is that you consider him to be a plodder.’

      ‘He is,’ Finn insisted, ‘and he would be the first to admit that there is little else to say about him. He doesn’t mind in the least that each day is like the one before it and he knows that tomorrow will be just the same. The only thing that disturbs him is the milk yield being down. Yet he is the kindest man that walked the earth and it would be very hard to dislike him. It’s just that he won’t stir himself to do anything, not even to come to the socials with me and Joe.’

      ‘So Joe is not like Tom?’

      ‘No,’ Finn said, ‘he is more like me, though maybe not as determined. He has been saying for a few years now that he doesn’t want to stay in Buncrana all his life. Once he told me that he wouldn’t mind trying his hand in America. I suppose the war has put paid to that, but I sometimes wonder if he will ever leave the farm. Yet after my father’s day, everything will go to Tom.’

      ‘Joe would do well to leave then,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Otherwise he will be left with nothing, though it hardly seems fair.’

      ‘I suppose not,’ Finn agreed. ‘Though in this case it seems so, because Tom suits the work much better than Joe or me. Particularly me. My father always said I was too impatient to be a good farmer. I didn’t care about that because I didn’t want to be a farmer all my life, but I tried my damnedest just the same because I loved my father dearly.’

      ‘More than your mother?’

      ‘I’m not sure what I feel about my mother,’ Finn admitted. ‘I was afraid of her for so long.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I suppose that I have tried to respect her, but, hand on heart, I can’t say I love her. Biddy Sullivan, I would say, is a hard woman to love.’

      ‘What a shame,’ Gabrielle said, and then added, ‘Biddy is a strange name. Is it Irish?’

      ‘I suppose it is,’ Fin said. ‘Her full name isn’t Biddy, of course, it’s Bridget.’

      ‘Bridgette,’ Gabrielle said. ‘That is like the French name Brigitte, and it is a shame to shorten it to Biddy.’

      Finn laughed. ‘It’s lovely the way you say it.’

      ‘And isn’t it a tragedy for people who never experience love in their lives?’ Gabrielle went on. ‘My father is the same. Somehow, I cannot imagine my mother ever loving him.’

      ‘From what you say,’ Finn said with a broad grin, ‘I imagine that my mother and your father would suit one another. Maybe we should maroon the two of them on a desert island somewhere.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Gabrielle giggled. ‘Maybe your mother loves your father, though. You said before that he is the only one that she listens to.’

      ‘That’s right, but I don’t know whether that is love or not. My father is a good man, and one I always tried to please, and yet nothing I did was quite good enough. In a way it is my father’s fault I enlisted.’

      ‘Did he want you to?’

      Finn laughed. ‘Just the opposite. I did it, in a way, to spite him.’

      ‘Do you regret it?’

      ‘No,’ Finn said, putting his arms around Gabrielle as they sat on the sofa, ‘though I did think that a soldier’s life is more exciting than it is. I also thought I might get treated more like a man, after being at the beck and call of my father and brothers, only to find that in the army I am at the beck and call of all and sundry. But then I came to St-Omer and I met you, and my life was turned upside down because I love you with everything in me.’

      ‘I am the same,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Without you my life is worth nothing.’ She lifted her face as she spoke and their eyes locked for a moment, then their lips met in a kiss that left Gabrielle gasping for more.

      Since they had made love that one time, their lovemaking had got more daring so that as January gave way to February and then March—coming in like the proverbial lion, gusting through the streets of St-Omer—not only did Finn know every area of Gabrielle’s body, she had began to explore his too. Finn had wanted her to do this and she had begun tentatively and timidly, hardly able to believe that she was actually touching the most private parts of a man.

      In the cold light of day afterwards, just the thought of doing so had embarrassed her so much she grew hot with shame. In the heat of passion, though, it was different, and anyway, when she saw how much pleasure she gave Finn, she persevered. Her one desire in life was to please him. They did come dangerously close to making love again a few times, but Finn always made sure they stopped short of it and although this made him as frustrated as hell, he would not go any further.

      Gabrielle, however, was still remarkably naïve about how babies were conceived, or how they got out once they were inside a woman, because she had been told nothing. She didn’t have the advantage of girls reared on a farm who might see the animals mating and, later, the birth of the babies, and she had no friend with a confiding married sister or young aunt who could have put her right about things.

      She knew the Church had said it was wrong to go with a man until a woman was married, but no one had told her what that actually meant. She had no doubt, though, that they would say what she and Finn was doing was a sin, because the Church semed to see sin in everything enjoyable and she certainly had no intention of telling in the confessional anything she and Finn were doing. How could you explain things like that to a man, even if he was a priest?

      She didn’t know either why the bleeding that used to happen every month had stopped. When it had begun two years before and she had thought she was dying, her mother just told her that it was something that happened to women. It wasn’t to be discussed, and certainly not with men, and there was no need to make a fuss about it. She hadn’t been told that it had anything to do with fertility, and so when she didn’t have a monthly show of blood, she didn’t automatically associate it with what she and Finn had been doing.

      Neither did Mariette, who knew nothing of her daughter’s nocturnal sojourn with a British soldier. She did know, however, that there had been no bloodied rags in the bucket she had left ready and she said to Gabrielle, ‘Funny that your monthlies should have stopped. Do you feel all right?’

      ‘Yes,’ Gabrielle said. ‘In fact I have never felt better.’

      ‘Well, you certainly look all right,’ Mariette said.

      And Gabrielle did. She had developed a bloom on her skin that had not been there before because she was thoroughly loved by a man she loved in return. Even her not very observant parents noticed in the end and remarked on it, and many of the customers said the same, while Finn thought she had never looked more beautiful.

      ‘We’ll leave it for now then,’ her mother said, ‘but if they don’t return then I will ask the doctor to have a look at you. Just as well to be on the safe side.’

      However, other matters took precedence. At the end of March, Yvette was fourteen and would be leaving school at Easter. In early April, Aunt Bernadette wrote to Gabrielle, repeating the invitation she had made at Christmas.

      ‘I don’t really know how I can refuse this time,’ Gabrielle confessed to Finn.

      ‘When are they arriving?’ Finn asked.

      ‘After the schools are closed, and that is less than two weeks away.’

      ‘Darling, I