A BRIDGE TO DREAMS - PART TWO

A BRIDGE TO DREAMS .

PART TWO

The sound of screeching brakes announced their arrival. Rising up through the valley the noise as it reached Madeleine sounded like the cries of an injured animal.

Dropping from the rock she snatched up the cat, and ran as fast as she could to the courtyard in front of the farmhouse. Her voice throbbed with excitement as she ran. ‘They’re here, look, they’re here. And, Minette, what a crowd. It’s a convoy’

The cat sprang away, but then strolled to where Madeleine now sat on a stone bench pretending to top and tail beans.

Still beaded with early morning dew these rested in a basket next to her, shielded from the sun beneath a massive oak tree. But she didn’t sit for long; she couldn’t resist the urge to watch the vehicles’ slow progress as they toiled up the sandy lane towards her.

In a sudden movement she scooped up the cat, and pressing its head tightly against her face she whispered into its fur.
'Minette, tell me I’m right. Not all men are bastards. Are they?’ Then forcing her tone to strengthen and straightening her back: ‘Anyway, it’s nothing like that circus, and it never did come up here anyway’.

The cat wriggled from her grasp, yet stayed close and watched with suspicion the final vehicles rattle across the grid into the yard.

The noise was unbelievable. The carcophany made by the ancient vehicles and the voices of the workers as they encouraged the drivers up the final few metres still echoed through the mountain air and drew Madeleine’s father to her side.

'Mon Dieu.' His grasp on her elbow was so tight she was sure he would leave a bruise when he let go. ‘God save us.’

She recognised in his voice the same fear as had gripped her earlier. His manner of dealing with it was to gulp down a swig of Armagnac from a bottle always concealed in his pocket. With practiced hand he re-corked it and slid it back into its hiding place whilst his mouth closed towards her ear. Automatically she recoiled at the alcoholic fumes swirled around her. Again he grabbed her arm, drew her closer ‘Heed what I say. They're gitanes every one. Give 'em a wide berth. If I find you've as much as even talked to one I'll....’

His sentence remained unfinished for the gang boss came over, hand outstretched in traditional greeting. 'Bonjour M'sieur, Mdme.'

Madeleine knew what her father had intended to say. He repeated it at every opportunity - even when there were not a dozen or so men around the place to tempt her.

She thought back to how she had felt in springtime before the arrival of the letter. Then it had been merely an occasional longing, the need for something more in her life. The letter had turned it into an overwhelming obsession. During the hot months of summer the need had gnawed into her until sometimes it felt like a genuine pain. Now, as she watched the men jumping one by one from the trucks, the longing caused her to stand up straight, breath held, arms tight across her chest.

‘Which will it be?’ she murmured to Minette. ‘In all my dreams he’s never had a face. I never imagined there would be so many.’

An enigmatic smile flitted over her face as with strong work-worn fingers she lifted the mass of hair from her neck in a sensual gesture. Then once again scooping up Minette she strolled back to the bench beneath the tree.

Before taking up a handful of haricot from the crate beside her she loosened another button on her shirt, dragged her skirt above her knees, and lifted the damp hair away from her neck, knotting it high on her head. Beads of perspiration, provoked by the humid currents rippling through the heavy air, trickled between her ample breasts. Drawing the pail of water closer she began work, the beans meeting their fate at an ever increasing pace.

On some days the rhythmic splash as they entered the water beguiled her, lulled her into a kind of trance in which time stood still. On others it was the caress of the plants' pliant green tendrils on her legs as she moved through the dew covered rows at dawn harvesting the crop that entranced her. Then the tantalising thrills of pleasure dawdling over her skin transported her into a world in which imagination ran riot.

Today, however, she wanted time to fly for the dream she’d been developing - ever since the day she heard about the new bridge - was on the verge of becoming reality.

At first it had been merely a daydream, but the more often she let it enter her mind the more it took on an aura of reality, a possibility that could turn into fact. Almost every minute throughout every day she refined what she saw as her options. Now she had what she believed was a viable strategy. At night with Minette gently snoring on the bed alongside her this invaded her dreams and she woke in a tangle of sheets, damp with perspiration.

Now as each haricot splashed into the water a smile of anticipation lit her face. Emerald eyes scanned the countryside plunging away from her and her plotting continued.

The bridge builders mostly slept in the barns and ate at tables set beside the caravan, both restaurant and bar. Their presence seemed to transform the air Madeleine breathed, charging it with something unseen, an element of masculinity that had not been there before. It made her breasts tingle and caused her to breathe faster, to swing her hips as she walked - and made her ever more anxious that soon she must turn thoughts into action.
In the evening the bar was well used. Then Madeleine climbed the ladder into the grenier above the barn where they stored the hay. Here she crouched, silent as the owl on the rafter above her head waiting for darkness so that he might float out above the world in search of prey. With one eye pressed to a knot hole in the weathered grey wood Madeleine also waited and spied on the unsuspecting men.

At first her thoughts were of the nights years ago when she crouched on the landing outside her bedroom door spying on her quarrelling parents, imagining that if things became too violent she could dash down and separate them. But the sound of the men's entertainment, the music of the accordion and the guitar, the singing drifting up through the floor boards where she squatted, soon obliterated the agony of her memories.

From her birdlike vantage point she was able to watch the men, evaluate them, give them nicknames based on physical image. Bow-legs, Grizzle-hair, Fat-belly, Piggy-eyes, Bighead, Muscleman.

'None of them'll do,' she confided to Minette.

On other evenings as the light faded and midnight approached, the voices grew louder and more quarrelsome. Then the sound of breaking glass shattered the good humour and fighting broke out. More candidates were deleted. Aggressive Pig, Short Fuse, The Cheat, Knifeman, The Alcoholic, Scar-face.

More memories surfaced in Madeleine's mind. The nights when her mother, realising her daughter was at the top of the stairs, ran up and escorted her back to bed with soothing murmurs and stroking hands. 'It's all right baby. Papa's had too much to drink at the market and he's cross because.... Never mind, ma cherie. Go back to sleep.'

The memory of how sometimes on the mornings after those nights Mama's face had been bruised or she’d held her arms close to her chest as if it hurt. 'It's nothing,' Mama would respond to her questions. 'It's nothing. I ran into the door.'

And then, with the circus, Mama had gone. Madeleine could only accept she had suffered enough.

'But she could have taken me,' she recalled crying. 'Why didn't she take me?'

With hand raised as if to strike, her father’s response had been: 'Shut up you stupid cow. Can't you see? She didn't love either of us. She never loved me and she never loved you 'cos you were a part of me. Get it. She ...never...loved...you... either.'

Madeleine remembered running to the grenier where she now hid, staying there until his anger subsided. Was it true? The question forever haunted her. Had her mother never loved her? And what was love anyway? Was it the soft caress of a hand on her hair, the gentle words, the cosy feeling as she snuggled against her mother? Or was it something deeper, something she had yet to experience?

'There's more to a man than looks, Minette,' Madeleine now instructed her cat, 'and violence is definitely out. And alcohol. Humans are like animals. You've got to pick the right strain. Some goats are good milkers, others make good meat. A man who loves his drink more than his woman isn’t for me.'

And every morning, every mid-day when she served his dinner, or during his evening meal, or even when their paths crossed during the working day, her father never failed to say his piece.

'Keep away from 'em. Don't want you going the way of yer mother.'

'Papa! Pas encore. I'll never leave here. Je promet.' What did he want from her? It certainly wasn’t love or even affection. Was it merely the work she did?
Still she continued to spy, and evaluate and plot. And, even though two weeks had passed - other than a quick 'Bonjour' when she bumped into the men as she went about her work - she’d spoken to none of them.