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the relief of breaking the silence than to convey information.
"I hope the car can be repaired in the morning," I said. "If it's something
serious I might have to go to the nearest big town for a spare part or a
breakdown van."
I shuddered to think what that expense might do to our tiny postwar tourist
budget
"What is the nearest big town?" asked Bernadette between mouthfuls of soup.
I tried to remember the map in the car. "Bergerac, I think."
:,How far is that?" she asked.
'Oh, about sixty kilometres," I replied.
There was nothing much else to say, so silence fell
again. It had continued for a fall minute when out of nowhere a voice
suddenly said in English, "Forty-four."
We both had our heads bowed at the time and Bernadette looked up at me. I
looked as puzzled as she. I looked at Madame Preece. She smiled happily and
went on eating. Bernadette gave an imperceptible nod in the direction of the
farmer. I tamed to him. He was still wolfing his soup and bread.
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
He gave no sign of having heard, and several more spoonfuls of soup, with
more large chunks of bread, went down his gullet. Then twenty seconds after
my question, he said quite clearly in English, "Forty-four. To Bergerac.
Kilometres. Forty-four."
He did not look at us; he just went on eating. I glanced across at Madame
Preece. She flashed a happy smile as if to say, "Oh yes, my husband has
linguistic talents." Bernadette and I put down our spoons in amazement.
"You speak English?" I asked the farmer.
More seconds ticked away. Finally he just nodded. "Were you born in England?"
I asked.
The silence lengthened and there was no reply. It came a fall fifty seconds
after the question.
"Wales," he said, and filled his mouth with another wad of bread.
I should explain here that if I do not, in the telling of this tale, speed up
the dialogue somewhat, the reader will die of weariness. But it was not like
that at the time. The conversation that slowly developed between us took ages
to accomplish because of the inordinately long gaps between my questions and
his answers.
At first I thought he might be hard of hearing. But it was not that. He could
hear well enough. Then I thought he might be a most cautious, cunning man,
thinking out the implications of his answers as a chess player thinks
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out the consequences of his moves. It was not that. It was simply that he was
a man of no guile at all, of such slow thought processes that by the time he
had ingested a question, worked out what it meant, devised an answer to it and
delivered the same, many seconds, even a full minute, had elapsed.
I should perhaps not have been sufficiently interested to put myself through
the tiresomeness of the conversation that occupied the next two hours, but I
was curious to know why a man from Wales was farming here in the depths of the
French countryside. Very slowly, in dribs and drabs, the reason came out, and
it was charming enough to delight Bernadette and myself.
His name was not Preece, but Price, pronounced in the French way as Preece.
Evan Price. He was from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. Nearly forty years
earlier he had been a private soldier in a Welsh regiment in the First World
War.
As such he had taken part in the second great battle on the Marne that
preceded the end of that war. He had been badly shot up and had lain for weeks
in a British Army hospital while the Armistice was declared. When the British
Army went home he, too ill to be moved, had been transferred to a French
hospital.
Here he had been tended by a young nurse, who had fallen in love with him as
he lay in his pain. They had married and come south to her parents' small farm
in the Dordogne. He had never returned to Wales. After the death -of her
parents his wife, as their only child, had inherited the farm, and it was here
that we now sat.
Madame Preece had sat through the oh-so-slow narration, catching here and
there a word she recognized, and smiling brightly whenever she did so. I tried
to imagine her as she would have been in 1918, slim then, like a darting
active sparrow, dark-eyed, neat, chirpy at her work.
Bernadette too was touched by the image of the little French nurse caring for
and falling in love with the huge, helpless, simple-minded overgrown baby in
the lazaret in Flanders. She leaned across and touched Price on the arm.
"That's a lovely story, Mr. Price," she said. He evinced no interest.
"We're from Ireland," I said, as if to offer some information in return.
He remained silent while his wife helped him to his third portion of soup.
"Have you ever been to Ireland?" asked Bernadette. More seconds ticked away.
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He grunted and nodded. Bernadette and I glanced at each other in delighted
surprise.
"Did you have work there?" "No."
"How long Were you there?"' "Two years."
"And when was that?" asked Bernadette. "1915 ... to 1917."
"What were you doing there?" More time elapsed. "In the Army."
Of course, I should have known. He had not joined up in 1917. He had joined [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]