Belle said nothing for a few moments. She picked up a pincushion and began arranging the pins in neat rows.
‘Right!’ Belle said eventually. ‘We both know you are very intuitive, so the chances are that you’re right about whatever you fear. So why don’t you tell me? We can mull it over together calmly, and then decide how we deal with it. Mari won’t need to know you said anything.’
Mog took a deep breath and then blurted out that she was afraid Mari had been seeing the blond sailor in secret.
Belle turned pale. ‘Heaven help us,’ she exclaimed. ‘I didn’t see that one coming! I knew, of course, that the man had come back to Russell – you can hardly miss him – but Mari’s never mentioned him.’
‘The best way to put us off the scent,’ Mog sniffed. ‘But bear in mind that I haven’t got any proof he’s the man she has been seeing. She also said it’s over. But the way she was behaving yesterday, I suspect she’s worried about something.’
‘Maybe she was just afraid of him coming here? We all know Etienne would tear a man like that limb from limb, if he thought he’d taken liberties with his daughter. Do you really think they have been …?’ She paused, unable to finish her question.
‘Yes, I do think they’ve been doing it,’ Mog said bluntly. ‘A man of his age and type isn’t likely to waste time on a girl who won’t cooperate. Besides, she’s had something on her mind for some little while now – easily distracted, and off with the fairies too.’
‘Etienne will kill him!’ Belle exclaimed, as all the implications sank in.
‘You see why I thought it would be a good idea to send her to London?’ Mog asked. ‘If Avril told Peggy she’d seen them together, you can bet she’s told others too. And that lout may have boasted he’d had his way with her too. You know what people are like around here. If this gets out – and it’s sure to – she’ll be seen as shop-soiled goods, and that might make her find someone even more disreputable.’
Belle leaned on the cutting table, her head in her hands. ‘Well, I certainly know what it’s like to be the one everyone is talking about. Remember all the nasty stuff that was said about me when Etienne arrived here? Even now, donkey’s years later, some women still think their husbands aren’t safe with me around. Some things you just can’t live down.’ She looked at Mog fearfully. ‘What was she thinking of?’
‘You, of all people, should know that girls don’t think at such times,’ Mog said tartly.
Belle blushed at the oblique reference to her affair with Etienne in France, while she was still married to Jimmy Reilly. ‘I thought I’d done the right thing by telling her the facts of life and how girls have to protect themselves by waiting till they get married,’ she retorted. ‘But perhaps I should have been like other mothers and told her sex was something to be endured.’
‘I doubt whether that would have made any difference,’ Mog said. ‘Mari is as hot-headed as both you and Etienne; she’s never listened to advice or abided by any rules. In my opinion, this has come about because she has too little to do. Boredom creates a fertile ground for wrongdoing.’
‘What are we to do, Mog?’ Belle pleaded.
‘We can pray she isn’t pregnant, for a start. But I can’t see how we can keep this from Etienne. To do so would make Mari think we are condoning her behaviour. She has behaved like a little trollop, and she has to face up to the consequences of that.’
Belle winced at Mog’s harsh words. ‘Oh, Mog,’ she sighed. ‘Once I’d married Etienne and we were all living so happily here, I really thought there would never be any bad times again for any of us. Now this!’
Mog reached across the table and took Belle’s hand to comfort her. ‘It might not be as bad as I fear, but the fact remains that we must do something. If we try to keep her under lock and key here, she’ll just rebel. Maybe she could get an office job or shop work in Auckland, but she’s too young to be without some sort of supervision.’
‘You’re right,’ Belle agreed. ‘But England seems so drastic, and so far away. Noah and Lisette are ideal in so many ways, parents themselves, and worldly enough to be aware of the dangers young girls can get into. They would be a good influence too, and inspiration for Mari. But how could we let her go?’
‘You coped in America, under hideous circumstances, and you were far younger than Mari. But before we give that any serious consideration, we need to get the truth out of her, and I think that must be in Etienne’s hearing.’
‘Perhaps we’ve got it all wrong?’ Belle said hopefully.
‘Pigs might fly!’ Mog retorted. ‘We’ve both got too much experience of girls going astray to hope for a more innocent explanation. We should do it tonight, after the boys have gone to bed.’
Belle and Mog put their anxieties about Mariette on hold when the rest of the family arrived home. They all had supper together, and Mog saw the two boys off to bed just after seven. When she came downstairs, Etienne was still sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper while Mog and Mariette finished off the washing-up.
Mariette hung up the tea towel to dry and then went to leave the room.
‘You can come back in here, and close the door,’ Belle said sharply.
‘Why?’ Mariette asked. ‘I was only going to get a book to read.’
‘We have things we need to talk about,’ Belle said. ‘Now, sit down there by your papa.’
‘What is this?’ Etienne put down his newspaper and looked at Belle in puzzlement.
‘Mari has something to tell you,’ Belle said. ‘In fact, she has something to tell us all. Come on, Mari, we want the name of this boy you’ve been seeing!’
Etienne was fond of saying he was an old man now but, at fifty-eight, he still had all his hair, his body was lean and fit, his eyes had lost none of their sparkle, and he was still as strong as a horse.
‘You’ve been unusually helpful today – has that got something to do with this?’ he said, looking hard at his daughter.
Mariette blushed. ‘It was just a boy, nothing special. And it’s all over now,’ she said quickly.
‘Name?’ Belle roared at her. ‘I already know, I just want to hear you say it.’
Mariette quaked visibly. ‘Sam,’ she whimpered. ‘I couldn’t tell you, I knew you wouldn’t approve.’
Etienne looked stunned, but more by Belle’s anger than by the name because he couldn’t think of anyone called Sam.
‘How could you expect us to approve of you going off alley-catting with any boy?’ Belle asked, her voice harsh and cold. ‘But that man! He’s at least twenty-five, uncouth, always getting into fights and full of himself. You have clearly been lying to us constantly in the past weeks in order to see him. Why is that, Mari?’
‘Because I knew you’d be like this,’ Mariette retorted.
‘Is this the blond Australian sailor?’ Etienne asked, looking aghast.
Belle nodded.
‘In that case, I agree totally with your mother. He’s an animal, drunk every night, and I’ve heard other men say their girls aren’t safe around him.’
‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ Mari said pleadingly. ‘You are right about him, but I didn’t realize it at first.’
‘Just the fact that you were meeting him in secret tells me you knew full well that he was a bad lot. How far has this gone?’
Mariette folded her arms, looked insolently at the kitchen wall and didn’t answer.
‘Answer me, Mari,’ Etienne commanded. ‘Have you been lovers?’
Her silence was his answer, and his face flushed with anger. ‘You are barely eighteen. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you’d throw it all away for a roll in the hay with someone as worthless as him. Are you pregnant?’
He looked at Belle and Mog, waiting for them to confirm or deny this.
Belle shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t sure till now that it had gone that far.’
‘Mariette! You will tell us all now,’ Etienne roared. ‘Are you pregnant?’
She con
tinued to avoid his eyes. ‘I could be, I suppose,’ she retorted, hearing his sharp intake of breath. ‘And don’t come all high and mighty with me. I know perfectly well Mum was having me when you got married.’
Belle was incredulous that her daughter had no sense of shame, or respect for her father, and her fingers itched to strike her. But she managed to control herself. ‘You’d better hope to God you aren’t pregnant. Because if you are, you’ll soon find out what real life is all about,’ Belle spat out. ‘Now, get upstairs to your room. I can’t bear to look at you.’
Mariette scuttled out of the kitchen as fast as she could. Her mother’s furious reaction, and the very fact that they’d all jumped to the conclusion that she was pregnant, made it seem even more probable.
What would happen to her if she was? There was no question of marrying Sam. Even if he agreed to it – which he wouldn’t – she’d have a miserable life with him, saddled with a baby she didn’t even want.
People were mean to unmarried mothers and, judging by her parents and Mog’s reaction, it would start here in her own home.
She flung herself down on the bed and cried. She could hear the hum of their voices down below, and every now and then her father’s became louder. That was the worst thing. She could live with her mother and Mog’s disapproval, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her papa being disappointed in her.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Etienne paced around angrily. Belle knew that he wanted to rush out of the door and beat Sam to a pulp. She had to prevent that.
‘He’s young and very strong,’ she insisted, standing in front of the door so her husband couldn’t get out. ‘If you go round there now, with all guns blazing, he’ll retaliate, and you are likely to come off worse. Furthermore, the whole town will get to hear of it – and once that cat is out of the bag, we won’t be able to get it back in.’
Mog intervened too. ‘Mari did this willingly, remember. She wanted a bit of excitement and she got it. Now she has to learn the meaning of the word “consequences”. As do you! If you go and beat Sam up, that will suggest to her that he is the only one to blame.’
‘Are you seriously suggesting that I do nothing?’ Etienne asked, bewildered that they weren’t crying for the man’s blood too.
‘Of course not,’ Belle said soothingly. ‘But Mog is right, Mari is as much to blame. I could have understood her more easily if she’d said she loved him. Sometimes she is so cold-hearted, I can’t believe she’s my child. Please sleep on it, Etienne, before you rush off at half-cock. All you will achieve is giving the gossips far more ammunition.’
Etienne had felt hurt that both his wife and Mog thought him too old to give his daughter’s seducer a good hiding. But he could see some sense in at least waiting until the morning before he did or said anything further.
As it was, he had a sleepless night, tossing and turning, with unwelcome pictures of Mari and that unkempt sailor together running through his mind.
At first light he got up, dressed and quietly slipped out, leaving Belle still sleeping. The fury he’d felt on the previous night had abated. All he wanted now was to confront the man and at least try to understand what Mari had seen in him.
He had heard the ex-sailor was camping on a piece of waste ground close to the start of Flag Staff Hill and, as he walked towards it, he remembered the only time he’d spoken to him. The man had come lurching drunkenly out of the Duke of Marlborough one evening, just as Etienne was passing, and had bumped his shoulder.
‘Steady up and look where you’re going,’ Etienne had said.
The man had straightened up and looked askance at him. ‘You must be the Frog war hero, with an accent like that,’ he’d said with a sneer.
‘And you must be the drunken lout from Australia with an accent like that,’ Etienne had retorted and walked on, ignoring a ridiculous further remark about whether he was out collecting snails to eat.
That brief encounter was as much evidence as Etienne needed in order to know the man was an ignorant buffoon, and it made the possibility of Mari carrying his child even more alarming.
He found the tent, half hidden behind some scrubby bushes, and he remembered then that there had been complaints from various people in the town about the man being there.
The tent was a small shabby affair that sagged in the middle as the guy ropes were slack. Etienne looked at it for a few moments, then kicked the ropes loose so that the tent collapsed. From inside came the sound of swearing as the man awoke to find himself buried in canvas.
Etienne waited – he suspected the man was enough of a slob to stay where he was, regardless of the damp canvas covering him – but after a minute or two he crawled out rubbing his eyes, wearing only a pair of filthy underpants.
During the moments of waiting, Etienne had noted all the debris around the tent – mainly beer bottles and food cans. He wondered if the man ever bathed and how Mari, who had been brought up in a clean home, could possibly tolerate such a lack of hygiene.
‘Did you bugger up my tent?’ the man asked, squinting up at him. He had thick stubble on his chin and his blond hair looked filthy. And yet, even so, his bronzed muscular torso was impressive and he was very handsome.
‘Guilty as charged,’ Etienne said. ‘Just be grateful I didn’t attack it with an axe and chop your head off. On your feet! I know you are lower than shit, but I like to look a man in the eye when I’m talking to him.’
‘What’s this about?’ Sam asked as he got to his feet.
‘As if you don’t know!’ Etienne scoffed. ‘You know full well I’m Mariette’s father. But then, if you’d had any sense of decency, you would have called on me to ask my permission before walking out with her.’
‘No one does that any more,’ Sam growled. ‘Go home, old man, and pick a fight with someone your own age. Mari threw herself at me. You might not like to hear that, but that’s the way it was. Now get out of here.’
‘I had hoped to find you had some saving graces,’ Etienne retorted. ‘But you live like a pig and smell worse than one. I think Mari must have temporarily taken leave of her senses getting involved with someone as low as you. You will leave Russell this morning on the first ferry, and never come back. If not, you may live to regret it.’
Sam laughed scornfully. ‘And you think you’re going to make me, old man? How do you plan to do that?’
‘Like this,’ Etienne said, and punched the man on the chin so hard that he reeled back and nearly toppled over.
Sam was momentarily stunned. He rubbed his chin and looked at Etienne, as if weighing him up. ‘I don’t want to fight with you because you’ll never get up again from it,’ he said. ‘So clear off now, before I do you an injury.’
‘Like this?’ Etienne gave him a second punch in the belly with his right fist, then followed it up immediately with a punch from his left fist, smack on the jaw. ‘Come on, don’t hold back. I’m an old man, remember.’
Sam staggered back, blood trickling out of his mouth from a dislodged tooth. He lifted his fists to hit back, but Etienne danced out of the way and landed two further punches on the younger man’s face before he could even blink.
Blood came gushing from his nose, and Etienne laughed. ‘I thought you were going to do me an injury? But you’re a little slow on your feet. This is how you do it,’ he said as he zoomed in with an uppercut to the chin, knocking Sam’s head right back, then followed it with an almighty blow to the solar plexus, which toppled him back and on to the ground.
Etienne went over to him, stamped his boot on the middle of the younger man’s chest and held him there with it. ‘For your information I learned to fight in the backstreets of Marseille,’ he said. ‘I’m handy with a knife too – would you like to see?’
He pulled a six-inch, narrow-bladed knife from a sheath on his belt and, leaning over Sam, held it to one of his nostrils. ‘One of my favourite punishments for people who displeased me then was to slice their nose open. It leaves a man looking very ugly, girls d
on’t look at them any more, they have to rely on ageing whores when they are desperate for a fuck,’ Etienne snarled at him.
Sam gave a squeal of terror, and Etienne smiled as he looked down and saw he was pissing himself. ‘They usually shit themselves as I start to do it too. Not such a big man now, eh! I can hardly wait to tell Mari that you never even managed to land one punch on me. Now, are you leaving Russell this morning? Or do I need to give you any more prompts to do as you are told?’
‘No, I’ll go,’ Sam whimpered. ‘Just don’t cut me.’
‘Afraid you’ll lose your looks? I think I should make sure of that so you don’t hurt any more young girls,’ Etienne said. ‘To be a real man, you have to treat women with respect. Every time you get tempted to do otherwise, think of me and my knife slitting your nose open.’ He taunted Sam further by running the blade around his nostrils, enjoying the terror in the man’s eyes, the way every muscle in his body was tense, waiting for the agony he was sure would follow.
Etienne straightened up and put the knife back into its sheath, but he pressed down harder on Sam’s chest with his boot.
‘I’ll be off now. But I’ll be waiting at the jetty to see you on the nine o’clock ferry. If you aren’t on it, I’ll be back for you. But just to make certain you obey me, here’s something to think about.’
Etienne clenched his fist and slammed it down on to Sam’s mouth. He took his boot off the man’s chest, and took a couple of steps back. ‘Sit up, or you’ll choke on your own blood,’ he said.
Sam did as he was told and spat out blood; with it came his two front teeth. His whole face was a bloody mess now.
Etienne smirked. ‘Knocking front teeth out is almost as good as split nostrils for putting girls off,’ he said. ‘Remember, be on the nine o’clock ferry. Or there’s more of that to come. This old man is going home for his breakfast now.’
Etienne walked away but, some fifty yards further on, he glanced back to see Sam trying to get to his feet, one hand on his belly, the other on his mouth. The pain he’d inflicted on him wouldn’t help Mari if she was carrying the man’s child, but it had made him feel a whole lot better.