A Soldier's Love

01. Marguerite

Paris, France

11 November, 1919

One year post armistice

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The Bartelle family were lucky enough to have all survived the war intact, and their business had too. The Bartelle family grocery was at the heart of their little Parisian neighborhood and during the war they had given many families credit, and shared everything they had to make sure nobody went without. Prior to the Great War, the Bartelle family had been very well-off; now, they barely scraped by, but with the war over, treaties signed, and men returning home from the front, the government had begun to ease off of rations. The Bartelles and all the families in their neighborhood saw the forthcoming return of times of peace and plenty, and they gave accordingly. Mama Bartelle groused that Papa Bartelle would bankrupt them by giving groceries away on credit, or at a steep discount, or even for free, but Papa Bartelle would rather see an angry letter from his lessors than see his own neighbors go hungry.

The shelves were still scant, five months after the war had really, truly ended, and all the fighting ceased. Most of their stock were canned goods, with a trickle of fresh produce and bread. The bread was more plentiful every week but the loss of strong young men for labor, plus disease and fighting on the farmlands, had made vegetables and fruits more difficult to come by.

The Bartelles had a garden atop the roof of the grocery (where they lived in the upstairs in an apartment). Mama Bartelle had forbidden Papa Bartelle from selling or giving away anything she grew on the roof. It was for her family only, and Papa Bartelle could give away tinned beans all he liked, but if Mama Bartelle saw a single leaf of her prized chard in customers' bags, she had promised her husband divorce.

Of course, Marguerite knew her mother would never divorce her father. Even if Papa Bartelle gave away her entire harvest of chard, Mama Bartelle would harangue him about it for the next fifteen years, but she would never leave her husband's side. They often bickered but were really great partners, and loved each other very much.

Marguerite's mother had always been the keeper of the keys to the Bartelle kingdom. Ever since Marguerite could remember, their mother had been strict and precise, keeping ledgers for the household and the grocery down to the last centime. Mama had never been fond of loans or credit or any of that, but it wasn't until Yosef was sent to the front that Mama Bartelle became positively fanatical about keeping everything else to herself that was not rightly paid for. Even sometimes when the shelves were very bare, Mama Bartelle complained about customers buying everything. Even when they had plenty of money, because she couldn't stand to lose anything else. One of her children was now dead and gone and that was enough, as far as she was concerned, and she'd be damned if her own family went without anything else, ever, ever again.

Marguerite was now the glue holding their little family together. Papa Bartelle was buoyant and resilient; he had grieved his son's death, of course, what parent wouldn't. But he had taken it in stride, as much as a man can take anything so devastating in stride. Mama Bartelle had taken ill after that, keeping the books from her bed for months, and it was only with Marguerite pretending not to know how to save the chard from aphids that Mama Bartelle got up again, and let the sun shine on her face, and she found a way to carry on-- just barely-- without her baby boy.

Since the start of the war they'd been through fifteen delivery boys. All of them got drafted, or were needed at home, or they fell ill, one right after another, every few months, like clockwork. Of course, Yosef had done the job before the war, Yosef had done it since he was big enough to carry a full sack in his arms. Marguerite thought that seeing so many other boys doing Yosef's job hurt her mother's heart even more. Her father was a sociable man and enjoyed getting to know each delivery boy anew, but there were many times when Marguerite caught him looking haggard and sad after meeting yet another one.