Adieu et bonne chance; mais certains voyages que vous devez faire seul

Phil Danté wondered again and again where the time had gone.

Yes, every person his age had thought the same thought, but Phil would then remember his Auntie's criticism,

'Never let time get by you! Time is as precious as gold! Attrape l'instant! Carpe Diem! Seize the day!'

His parents had once explained to him that time never went by so fast as when you became a parent, and he now knew that they were right. Once he and Francesca had their only child, their daughter 'Mish', the time did shoot by. However, as his Auntie had advised him, they took time to appreciate every day that they were together. Mish was short for Micheline, the name of Phil's favourite Auntie who they named her after.

La famille Danté had emigrated from Provence to Cornwall around the time of the Great Depression. Micheline was the oldest child who looked after her younger brother like a second father. Pierre, who soon changed his name to Peter upon the family's arrival in Cornwall, remained in England when the eighteen-year-old Micheline returned to Provence. Peter had endeavoured to become more English than the English, but Micheline loved the South of France and the Côte d'Azur.

When the war came, though she lived in what was called Vichy France, she did her best to fight the Italian and German invaders. That led her back to England to enlist into the British Special Operations Executive where she was parachuted back into her home to lead resistance fighters and engage in a variety of hazardous kill-or-be-killed operations. After her war, she continued to fight for France métropolitaine et France d'outre-mer in Indochina, Morocco and what later became Algeria.

Phil had never forgotten the first time that he met what was to be his favourite Aunt. His parents communicated their excitement that they were going to bring his Auntie from the airport as she was visiting from Indochina.

The four-year-old Phil was on the floor of the family's living room in Sydney where he was playing with his Britains Foot Guardsmen toy soldiers. He looked up to see what he regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world wearing a beret and a grey suit with a maroon scarf. He sprang to his feet, she radiantly smiled and said,

'As you were, mon général! Prepare your soldiers for inspection.'

She lay down on the floor with him as he put the red coated guardsmen in orderly ranks for her.

Aunt Micheline had visited infrequently over the years, but in 1963 she had come to Australia to stay where she became a schoolteacher. On one memorable day she had confided to him alone, the real reason why she could never return to what the Australians and English sarcastically called La Belle France as she had carried out another war against the De Gaulle regime as a member of the Organisation Armée Secrète.

Phil was in high school and didn't have many friends, but as she had minded his father when he was young, she minded him in a combination of governess, confidante, and best friend and taught him to be a gentleman. She had never married, and when there were films she wanted to see, either a French film, or a Western, she'd explain that a lady never went to a cinema alone. They would go to the cinema together and dine and discuss the film afterwards, either historically or sociologically that educated him in many ways. She gave him wonderful hugs and kisses that made many Anglo-Celtic Australians say 'Ooo lah lah', but at times, she would discipline him when required.

Like Edward Everett Hale's The Man Without a Country, she was an extreme Francophile with the exception of DeGaulle that would send her into what Phil regarded as an amusing tirade similar to Abbott and Costello's Pokomoko or the Three Stooges' Niagara Falls. She admitted to Phil that she was really a French monarchist, though she admired Napoleon I.

One afternoon at her flat, Phil had his first experience of her discipline extrême en privé when he asked her whether French lunatics imagined themselves to be the Duke of Wellington? He was unprepared for her sudden and savage retaliation.

Later that afternoon she apologised to him and asked if she had treated him cruelly. He apologised back to her and said that she hadn't, he had deserved his punishment, for though he hadn't meant to have hurt her, he inadvertently did. She broke out laughing and said that he did make a very funny remark. The pair laughed, hugged and became closer.

Though they had first met when he was playing with his toy soldiers, she only began to call him mon petit soldat after one of their art house cinema 'dates' where they had seen a 1948 French cartoon of that title. Phil had never forgotten the cartoon because of the beautiful Joseph Kosma music at the end that made his Aunt cry.

His family had all known that Phil had always wanted to be a soldier. However, when he was old enough to enlist in the Regular Australian Army, the Vietnam War was raging. His father had been conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and fought throughout the Second World War, but called Phil a mug for volunteering for both the Army and Vietnam.

On the day of his departure, his gallant Aunt was the mediator between his hysterically crying mother and his angry father who would only give him a handshake and a sarcastic 'Best of British luck' remark. She whispered something into his father's ear that made him hug Phil and begin to sob. His father only told him years later that she had whispered,

'Will you be able to you live with yourself if this will be the last time you will see him alive?'

She held Phil's head in both of her hands and passionately kissed him goodbye on his mouth as if she were his lover. He was shocked, thrilled, and speechless. Her brown eyes then bored into his eyes and into his very soul,

'Au Revoir, mon petit soldat, but you will return to me. That is an order! There are some journeys you have to make alone.'

When he was away in Vietnam his Aunt made the news and became the Heroine of the Forces, though no one knew who she was. During a filmed Vietnam war protest, Micheline had run out to the crowd and grabbed a Viet Cong flag out of the hands of one of the lead protestors and slapped him then verbally abused him. The news cameras kept filming when two burly commo wharfies who acted as bouncers for the protesters went up to the well-dressed woman in a business suit and beret, with one of them sneering the nearly fatal remark,

'Do ya wanna see what happens if you slap me, girlie?'

Everyone did.

The results were better than Bad Day at Black Rock, because she brought two Ernest Borgnines to the ground.

One of his SAS trained Warrant Officers who had watched the film clip said she had used a cupped palm utilised in the Russian martial art of Sambo that looked like a slap, but had devastating results with the increased power of her snapping her wrist that sent him down. The second wharf rat grabbed her wrist that made her spin and sent him flying face first into the pavement. What looked like a series of slaps were actually karate chops to the throat or quick punches with her finger joint to their solar plexus that placed them on the ground gasping for air like fish out of water. She vanished into the streets carrying her trophy of the Viet Cong flag. She later said she felt wonderful as she hated the Irish who she called 'cowards and collaborators' for not joining the Allies to allow air bases in Eire to fight the U-Boats.

When Phil brought his wife Francesca and her mother or 'Grand Mama' as they called her, to Australia, she was a frequent visitor. Francesca had feared anyone finding out her previous occupation in the extreme hospitality industry, but she and Great Auntie Micheline became the best and closest of friends, as she was to her husband. She gained a new lease on life when she became Mish's governess, confidante, and best friend.

As time went by, Phil and Francesca moved to a beautiful coastal town. Mish went to university and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Air Force. Sadly, Grandmama and his parents had died as Mish grew into womanhood.

Once Mish left, Micheline, so proud of 'mon ange in bleu' seemed to age rapidly.

She had regarded nursing homes as similar to the concentration camps where her captured SOE peers were taken to, but the torture and execution was prolonged, rather than quick; she refused to give up her independence.

One day she summoned Phil to be with her.

'Carry me out into the sun, mon petit soldat.'

He had killed enough people and had seen others die so he instinctively knew what was going to happen. She was as light as a feather due to her body wasting away.

He placed her into a chair, she smiled and said,

'Adieu et bonne chance; mais certains voyages que vous devez faire seul...'

'I love you', proclaimed Phil.

She held his hand, smiled and closed her eyes. It was the journey that she had to take alone, but he was with her until the end.

It was a small funeral, Phil told Mish how proud her great Auntie had been to see her in her RAAF uniform, that she was wearing.

Mish put her arms around her father and sobbed on his chest as he held her. Francesca had held Phil's hand throughout the service and looked at the pair of them.

The memory flashed back when she had once taken him to the cinema, and they had watched the French short subject The Red Balloon. He had thought it beautiful at the ending with all the toy balloons of Paris taking the little boy through the skies accompanied by the music of Maurice Le Roux. He looked up at his Auntie who began hysterically crying and he put his arms around her as she put his head on his chest as Mish was doing now.

* * *

Sometime after, somewhere outside of Villefranche-sur-Mer

Auntie's ashes did not seem to belong in their home. Mish's tears and embrace brought back not only the memory of his Aunt being with him in the cinema, but just where the ashes should go.

After flying to France, then arriving in Nice, they journeyed to Villefranche-sur-Mer where he acquired a helium filled red balloon that he had placed her ashes inside of before it was inflated. The three of them stood and thought their final thoughts...

Would she go into the Mediterranean for a swim, over the countryside for a pique-nique, or would she take a trip to the casino in Monaco? Phil released the balloon and wistfully said,

'Adieu et bonne chance; mais certains voyages que vous devez faire seul...'

Joseph Kosma's final triumphant music from the Le petit soldat cartoon filled his mind as he and Flying Officer Micheline Danté saluted. As the red balloon sailed into the blue sky with the clouds of white, the colours of the flag of France, it seemed every tear inside Phillipe Jeanpierre Danté's body came out of him like all the balloons came out of the Paris of 1956.

One by one, Frenchmen and women walked up to the sobbing old man who looked like he had lost his balloon and was embraced by his beautiful daughter. His wife explained the history of what they were now seeing.

Every one of them remained with them to cry their own tears.

FIN

Author Notes: I am the author of three Extra Dimensional/Ultraterrestial military science fiction novels MERCENARY EXOTIQUE, OPERATION CHUPACABRA and WORK IN OTHER WORLDS FROM YOUR OWN HOME! as well as two travel books THE MAN FROM WAUKEGAN and TWO AUSTRALIANS IN SCOTLAND (all from Lulu.com). I live happily ever after with my wife in paradise (coastal Kiama, NSW Australia).

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