There was such a profound silence that he thought she was gone. Then: “Who told you about the watch?”
“Your mother. She said I wasn’t worthy to hear it, but since you’ve bothered to return my call, Violette, perhaps you think I am?”
“Is she angry with me?”
“Why would she be angry with you?”
“Because of the talk about me and Crombie!” she said, as if Bish were an idiot for not working it out.
“You think your mum’s angry at you for having sex with Charlie Crombie?”
She made a sound of disbelief. “How would you react to Bee having sex with Charlie Crombie and everyone reading about it in the papers and on social media?”
He doubted that Noor LeBrac would appreciate him doing the fatherly thing with Violette and giving her a lecture on keeping away from the wrong guy, but he couldn’t resist. “I wouldn’t want Bee in love with someone who’s going to break her heart,” he said.
“Then you should have had that talk with her a while ago.”
He didn’t know what she meant by that. Had Bee fallen in love with someone who broke her heart? He was desperate to ask but had to focus on Violette.
“I think your mother is more angry with the media and the chaperones and me and Charlie Crombie,” he said. “You she’s worried about.”
“And Eddie.”
“How does your family know the Conlons?”
“That’s a long story and I’ve only got time for one today, so I’ll tell you about the watch.”
Bish wished Bee wasn’t just about to run her race. He needed to watch it, but he also needed to hear this story.
“Go on,” he said, keeping an eye on the marshaling area.
“It started sixty years ago, during the Algerian War of Independence. Just after the massacre of pro-French Muslims by the FLN. I assume you know about that, so I won’t go into the details.”
Bish noticed the change in the way she spoke. The intensity. He was hardly an expert on the Algerian War of Independence, but he offered a few hmms to cover his ignorance.
“The retaliation was vicious, and in a village outside the capital, hundreds of Algerians were killed. But it was one dead Algerian who would haunt a French soldier for the rest of his life. You see, it was a macabre French tradition for a soldier to take something from those he had killed, and this soldier took a watch from one of the dead. Not an expensive watch, or even particularly beautiful. But he wasn’t after anything more than acceptance among his own. It wasn’t until he arrived home in Le Havre that he looked at it properly, and found engraved on the back a message in Arabic. He asked a neighbor to translate. Beloved son. I love you. I love you. I love you. The words haunted the French soldier. He had a ten-year-old son, so the watch became a reminder of how much he had taken away from another man’s family. He gave the watch to his son as a token of love. Not just his love, but that of a supposed enemy’s father for his own child. The son grew up haunted by the words on that watch, and when his father drank himself to an early death he went on a journey. Despite the dangers for the French to be traveling in Algiers after independence, he knew he would drink himself into the same sort of grave if he didn’t return that watch to where it belonged.
“So he went to the village that had given his father nightmares over the years, and knocked on every door to tell them the story. Until one day he came across the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, who looked at the watch and wept. It had belonged to her father, who, all those years ago, had died at the hands of this Frenchman’s father.”
When Violette stopped, Bish wanted her to go on. He wanted to know more. Loved the tune of her lisp in the storytelling. “I need a happy ending for this, Violette,” Bish said with honesty.
“How can I possibly give you that? I come from a bloody history, on both sides of my family. That French soldier’s son is my grandfather, Christophe, and the Algerian’s daughter is my Henna Nasrene, and they have loved each other despite everything. It’s why they chose to immigrate to Australia after my father was born. They moved to the newest town in the country. It was a ballot system, the way they got their land. Out where I live, they could be anyone from anywhere, as long as they were willing to work hard. They did it for my dad, so he wouldn’t have to choose between being French or Algerian, Christian or Muslim. They wanted him to be all those things. And my father wore that watch every day of his life from the time he was ten until the day he died. Because history meant everything to him.”
It sounded as if she were crying but he couldn’t be sure. There weren’t stories like this in his family. Just ones of children being taken away from their father by imperialistic relatives who believed that the British knew how to raise their children better than others.
“That’s a good story, Violette. Best I’ve heard for a while.”
“You’re only saying that to make me surrender.”