No Regrets a story by Jeremy Patton

 No Regrets

A Story by Jeremy Patton

(Edith Piaf was born in December 1915 on, according to her autobiography, a gendarme’s cape. This is his story.)

I love Babette, of course I do, we are married after all, and I have no regrets about that. 

And she loves me too, but sometimes she shocks me. Where did she learn to swear like that? She isn’t a fish wife, her father was a well respected policeman, but when she’s angry, nothing holds her back. 

Last night is a fine example. 

I got in from my shift at midnight, an hour later than I should have, and before she could start, I handed her my cape and told her to wash it. Yes “told”. Why would I “ask” her? She’s my wife for goodness sake, I don’t walk the streets of Paris to do my own washing. The guys at the gendarmerie would have a good laugh at that. 

Anyway, it wasn’t being told what to do that set her off, it was the state of my cape. It was slimy, bloody and shitty.

I didn’t help matters, she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t stop smiling. Nothing annoys Babette like my smile. It’s alright when she’s happy, but when she’s angry, she wants me to suffer, not smile. 

I tried to explain but she was having none of it, and in the end, of course, I just had to slap her. Not hard, I wasn’t still at work, but just hard enough to remind her who’s master in the house. 

It was only later, in bed, after she’d stopped her silly weeping, that she finally asked me what had happened to the cape. My clean cape now, I should add. Her hands were frozen from scrubbing in the icy water in the yard.  

I explained that Jean-Luc and I had come across a body lying on the pavement in Rue de Belleville.

From a distance we thought it was a child’s corpse, but then it screamed, and our next thought was that she was drunk. 

Which, of course, she was, but she was also in pain and about to give birth on the filthy flag-stones. 

I put my cape down on the steps of No. 72 and we scooped her up just in time.  Jean-Luc caught the baby as it popped out, more goalkeeper than midwife. 

He wrapped the tiny girl in his cape to keep her warm. 

Suddenly Babette was crying again, but these were tears of pride over her hero husband, and joy at a new life, and now she understood why I couldn’t stop smiling. 

It was a magical experience. Of course, there were the other tears too, she wants a baby more than anything, it’s been 10 long years of miscarriages and heartbreak. 

After Babette dropped off, I lay awake remembering. 

Of course, I had recognised Annetta immediately, and I remembered the first time I had wrapped her in my cape. How I’d taken her under the spring moon. She’d fought like a cat at first, and I left her sobbing in the gutter,  but I have no regrets.