Read Somewhere in France: A Novel of the Great War Online
Authors: Jennifer Robson
T
he contrast between the bed Lilly would sleep in tonight and the bed waiting for her back at the 51st could not have been more extreme. Last night, she had slept on a narrow metal cot. Her head had rested on a thin, musty pillow, she had slept in her clothes, and she had kept herself warm by piling her greatcoat and uniform jacket on top of her pitifully thin regulation blankets.
Tonight, however, she would sleep in a huge brass bedstead that could easily accommodate four or five people. She approached it, feeling oddly nervous, and drew back the pale pink counterpane. Underneath were a feather bed, snow-white linens, and six impossibly fluffy down-filled pillows. She replaced the counterpane, smoothing it carefully, and turned to survey the rest of the room.
Intricate tapestry hangings covered the walls, while shell-pink silk draperies, as sumptuous as a ball gown, flanked the windows. A set of French doors, set in the center of the longest wall, gave onto a small balcony with wrought-iron railings and a view of the formal gardens beyond.
The bathroom was just as impressive. One wall was almost entirely taken up with an enormous bathtub, which was fitted with golden taps shaped like swans. A chromed towel rail, warm to the touch, was draped with towels that had been embroidered with the hotel’s crest in gold thread. On the walnut vanity, a posy of spring bulbs sat to the left of the sink, while a flight of stoppered glass bottles were arranged to its right.
Lilly approached the vanity and saw that the bottles contained a variety of shampoos, bath essences, and lotions. She made several selections, hardly able to contain her excitement at the prospect of her first hot bath in months. A little gilded chair sat next to the tub, and on it she placed a bar of soap, wrapped in pretty Florentine paper, and two bottles: one of shampoo and one of lily-of-the-valley bath essence. She turned on the taps, tested the water to ensure it was warm enough, and dribbled the scented oil into the stream from the faucet.
It would take an age for the bath to fill, so she wandered back into the bedroom to look for a dressing gown. As she had hoped, there was one in the closet, and she eagerly exchanged it for her smelly, grimy uniform and underclothes. These she folded neatly, tucking her combinations and stockings out of sight, and set the bundle at the end of the bed. She wore no jewelry, apart from her wristwatch, and that she left on the bedside table.
It occurred to her that although she’d lived amid this kind of luxury for most of her life, she’d never truly appreciated it. Certainly she’d never been grateful for it.
Well, she was grateful now.
She returned to the bathroom, where the tub was nearly full. Shedding her dressing gown, she stepped into the tub and sank shoulder-deep into the fragrant water. Then she rested her head against the lip of the tub, where a towel had been placed for just such a purpose, and gave herself up to the bliss of the moment.
Long minutes passed, minutes during which Lilly forced herself to think of nothing. Not Edward, not Robbie, not the war. Only the sensation of being immersed in clean, hot, beautifully scented water.
But she couldn’t stop the tears that welled up, unbidden, and carried away what little peace of mind she had left. Robbie had told her to believe, but how could she believe when she knew so well what happened to soldiers lost in no-man’s-land? A quick death was the least terrible way in which Edward’s life might end: a bullet through the head, or a shell delivering instant oblivion. But what if he were wounded and unable to call for help? What if he did call for help and instead was greeted by an enemy bayonet?
She cried silently, letting her tears fall into the bathwater, willing the panic and dread to leave her in peace, if only for one night. Just one night.
The water cooled a degree or two, prompting her to reach out with one foot and twist on the hot water tap with her toes. As if from a great distance, she heard a knock on the front door of the suite, and the muffled sounds of Robbie speaking to the maid. Her bag must have arrived from downstairs.
With the utmost reluctance she sat up and removed the pins from her hair. It was late in the day to be washing it, for she wouldn’t be able to dry it completely before they went out, but the urge to be clean from top to bottom won out.
She knelt in the bath, ducked her head under the water, worked shampoo through her hair, and scrubbed until her scalp was nearly raw. She rinsed it in the bathwater, rubbed in more shampoo, and rinsed again, then reluctantly pulled the stopper from the drain and stepped out of the tub.
She wrapped her hair in a towel, the rest of her in the hotel’s dressing gown, and crossed the room to the vanity. It had been ages since she had seen her own reflection: the wash hut in camp had no mirror, and Lilly rarely bothered to borrow the hand mirror that Bridget and Annie shared.
How her mother would despair if she were to see Lilly now. Freckles were sprinkled across her nose and cheekbones, and her complexion still bore faint traces of sun from the summer. Her eyes were a little swollen, but luckily her nose hadn’t gone red from all her tears.
She brushed out her hair, using the towel to squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Rather than plait it, she twisted it into a figure eight, which she then secured at the nape of her neck.
Lilly opened the bathroom door and peered out, a little nervous that the maid might have left open the door from the bedroom to the sitting room. It was shut, fortunately, and her bag had indeed been delivered. Not only had it been retrieved from downstairs, but the maid had also unpacked its contents for her. All of its contents.
Her dress hung, neatly pressed, on the closet door. Her underclothes had also been pressed, and were laid out across the foot of the bed. Her small bag of toiletries, little more than her comb and toothbrush, sat on a bedside table next to her wristwatch and Annie’s pearls.
And Bridget’s tin? It had been placed on the other bedside table.
If it were possible to die of embarrassment, then Lilly would have expired on the spot. At least Robbie hadn’t seen the tin. She snatched it up and stuffed it in the desk drawer, praying she would remember to retrieve it in the morning.
She put on her wristwatch and saw that it was already a quarter past six. Robbie would be wondering what had happened to her. She dressed hurriedly, her fingers fumbling with the buttons that secured the front placket of her dress, then slipped on her shoes. Compared to her boots, they felt like bedroom slippers.
The pearls were one long strand, too low for the middy collar of her gown, so she looped them around her neck several times until they sat nicely. They were artificial pearls, chipped and worn, but they made her feel like a queen all the same. Last of all, she drew on her lace gloves that Nanny Gee had knitted for her years before. They would do a fine job of covering her work-worn hands.
Robbie stood as she walked into the sitting room. “Did you enjoy your bath?” he asked, apparently unconcerned by her lengthy absence.
“You know very well I did,” she replied. “Though I apologize for having taken so long.”
“I don’t mind at all. But you must be ravenous. When did you last eat?”
“This morning, I think. Some coffee and bread.”
“So let us find somewhere to eat. Do you want to go downstairs, to the restaurant here? Or would you like to venture farther afield?”
“Would you mind if we found somewhere else to eat? The restaurant here is sure to be very grand. I’d much rather go somewhere more modest.”
“I agree,” he said. “And it would be a shame for you to see so little of Paris. We’ll just have to hope that the air-raid sirens don’t sound, otherwise we’ll end up spending the evening in someone’s cellar.”
“I’m ready to go, but my coat and hat aren’t where I left them.”
“They’re here. The maid brought them back a few minutes ago.” He indicated a closet door, left ajar, by the entrance to the suite. The woman’s coat hanging next to Robbie’s greatcoat bore no resemblance to the mud-stained, blood-spattered, embarrassingly scruffy garment that Lilly had shrugged out of less than an hour earlier.
“The staff here are miracle workers,” she said, admiring their work. “And the maid rescued my poor hat from the bottom of my bag. It looks quite respectable now.”
They walked down the hall to the lift, side by side but never quite touching. Lilly was reminded of the night of the ceilidh, when they had walked away from the reception marquee, its music and its lights, and into the unknowable darkness beyond.
She hadn’t dared to reach for his hand that evening, not if there were a chance of anyone seeing. So they’d walked together, yet apart, though she’d longed to take his hand in hers.
The elevator arrived. They were the only passengers, apart from the liveried attendant.
“Rez-de-chaussée, s’il vous plaît,”
Lilly requested.
There was something rather ridiculous about the way people behaved in lifts, she thought. As if the only way to manage being so closely confined were to pretend the person next to you didn’t exist.
Was that what Robbie did now? Was he staring at the doors, or the back of the attendant’s head? Or did he look at her, and ask himself if she would welcome his arm in hers?
Lilly knew she didn’t lack for courage. She could even be bold, when occasion demanded. As it did now.
Her eyes still fixed on the lift’s doors, she reached out and took his arm, as easily and naturally as if they were a couple married these many years.
But he didn’t respond, didn’t draw her close as she’d expected. An icicle of despair piercing her through, she began to withdraw her arm, certain she’d ruined their evening before it had properly started.
Only then did his arm tighten around hers. He drew her near, pulling her a little off balance, and she found herself holding her breath, wondering what would follow.
Her answer was the chime of the lift as it reached the main floor, and the serene voice of the attendant.
“Rez-de-chaussée, monsieur, dame.”
A
s they strolled along the rue de Castiglione, arm in arm, Robbie reflected that he had never in his life been so content. It was absurd, given what had happened to Edward and the general misery of his and Lilly’s lives. But he would enjoy the feeling as long as it lasted.
He could see very little of her from this angle, not much more, really, than the sweep of her shoulder in her heavy WAAC overcoat and the indigo-dark velvet of her simple hat. She wore no scarf, so her throat was bare, apart from a triple strand of pearls and a solitary ringlet that had escaped the mass of hair at the nape of her neck. So many women cut their hair, but Lilly had kept hers long, not even adopting a short fringe.
If only he were free to grasp that single curl, encourage it to coil around his finger, let it bounce free again. The night of the ceilidh, her hair had been so soft, and had smelled sweetly of the perfumed soap she used.
He was glad she’d enjoyed her bath, though it had been a long hour indeed for him. His book, a worn copy of
Middlemarch
that he’d already read half a dozen times, hadn’t held his attention, and the faint sounds emerging from her bathroom had only served to inflame his beleaguered imagination.
He had tried, sincerely, not to think of Lilly in the bathtub, her hair piled on her head, her skin pink from the water’s heat. Yet the image would not budge from his head.
He’d tried desperately not to picture her as she dressed, yet his thoughts had been filled with tantalizing pictures of Lilly in her stockings and combinations, Lilly struggling to button her dress, Lilly brushing and plaiting her hair.
Edward. He had to think of Edward and what he had suffered. Was suffering. If that didn’t clear the lascivious images of Lilly from his head, nothing would.
His imaginings, at length suppressed, had been as nothing compared to the reality of the woman who had eventually joined him in the sitting room. She’d abandoned her uniform for a simple dress that buttoned up the front. The color suited her, some pretty shade of blue, that women likely had a name for, but men simply admired. Azure? Cornflower?
The dress, at least to his unschooled eyes, suited her beautifully, not least of all because the neckline dipped low enough in front that he could glimpse the swell of her breasts and the merest shadow of cleavage. The skirt of the dress, drawn close by a buttoned sash, was fitted at the small of her back in such a way that it emphasized the curve of her bottom, and it was all he could do to keep his hands clenched at his sides.
He’d held himself in check, behaved like a gentleman, somehow managed to rein in his baser instincts, and then she had reached for his arm as they stood in the lift.
It had nearly finished him off. Even now, a good ten minutes after they had left the hotel, he was still hard-pressed to come up with anything intelligible to say to her.
“If you’re not going to break this silence, then I will,” she said, squeezing his arm playfully. “Although I’m not sure what I ought to say.”
“It is rather awkward,” he admitted.
“No bright ideas?”
“Afraid not. I’m the rustic Scot, after all. You’re the one who spent all that time in the drawing rooms of High Society. If anyone can make small talk, it’s you.”
“Very well,” she countered, a slightly artificial note of cheer in her voice. “Tell me about the first time you met Edward.”
Memories washed over him, and a grin broke upon his face before he could smooth it away. “I’d arrived at the beginning of Nought Week, before the start of my first term at Oxford, keen as mustard to get started. That’s when I learned I’d been assigned to share a set of rooms with the son of an earl. I remember wondering if one of the college officials was a closet socialist and was conducting an experiment on us.”
“When did Edward arrive?”
“Oh, well into First Week, I think. Because we shared a set—we each had a bedroom, with a shared sitting room—that meant we also shared a scout. I was terrified of the man at first.”
“You, terrified?” she asked, laughing.
“I swear it. Webb had been with the college for nearly forty years, and he was not best pleased to be saddled with the son of a dustman. He told me as much, my first day.”
“How uncivil.”
“According to him, Lord Edward hailed from the most exalted levels of society. A paragon of aristocratic virtue in every way. My superior in every way. By the time Edward showed up, I was certain I would detest him.”
“And yet you didn’t.”
“Of course not. He shook my hand, looked me in the eye, asked me to call him Edward, and that was that. How could I dislike him? And he was always so much fun.”
“I remember, the weekend you visited us in Cumbria, how he kept trying to pull you away from your books.”
“It was incessant. And the maddening part was that he always sailed through his exams, though I hardly ever saw him open a book or attend a lecture. I did my best not to envy him, but it was hard at times. I had to work so hard, just to keep my head above water—”
“While he sailed through life. I know.” She frowned and looked away. “Did he ever tell you of his troubles?”
“Aye, he did. Not at the time. Later, in a letter to me last year. He told me of the arrangement he’d made with your parents. He appeared resigned to it, but I worried about him. Helena seemed like a pleasant enough girl, but he hardly knew her.”
“He still doesn’t. And perhaps he never—”
“Don’t say it, Lilly. You agreed to hope, until all hope is lost. And I will hold you to it, for tonight at least.”
They’d arrived at the end of the rue de Castiglione, so Robbie steered them to the left, along the rue de Rivoli. Flickering gaslight was their only illumination, for few lights shone from the buildings they passed, and the Jardin des Tuileries, just to the south, had faded into darkness.
As the sun had waned, so too, had the temperature. Robbie found himself longing for the convivial warmth of a restaurant and the restorative powers of food and wine. Lilly seemed warm enough in her coat, but her gloves were thin and her neck was bare.
“Shall we look for somewhere to eat?” he asked.
“Yes, please. I’m famished.”
They turned north, onto rue de l’Échelle, then doubled back the way they had come, this time walking along rue Saint-Honoré. But it proved to be a wasteland, gastronomically speaking, though the street itself was pretty enough.
And then they smelled it: the unmistakable aroma of fried onions and roast chicken. Following their noses, they turned onto rue de la Sourdière and discovered a tiny brasserie, its sign so discreet and the lights from its foyer so dim that, if not for the appetizing scents wafting into the street, they would surely have walked past.
Robbie opened the front door for Lilly, ushering her inside. The brasserie’s interior was just as it ought to be. The dining room, long and narrow, was brightly lit by burnished brass wall sconces. A buttoned leather banquette stretched the length of one wall, with gilt-framed mirrors hanging above in lieu of artwork. He counted a dozen tables, no more; all full except one. A good sign, he thought.
The lone waiter hurried over, a welcoming smile on his face.
“Bonsoir, monsieur, dame. Bienvenue à Chez Arnaud.”
“Thank you,” Robbie replied. “Can you accommodate us for dinner?”
“Of course. Anything for our esteemed allies.”
He led them to the free table Robbie had noticed, took their coats, and promised to return in a moment with some wine. “I am very sorry but we have not the bread tonight. Because of the new controls, you see.”
“The rationing?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, madame. If you have the ration books, I can offer you the bread, but if not . . .”
“Unfortunately, no. We are both working at the Front, with one of the field hospitals,” she explained. Her admission had a remarkable effect upon the waiter.
“Vous êtes une Tommette? Vous travaillez à l’un des hôpitaux pour les soldats blessés? Veuillez attendre un moment.”
He scurried back to the kitchens, leaving Robbie to wonder what on earth Lilly had said to the man.
She answered before he could ask. “He called me a ‘Tommette.’ That’s what the French call the WAACs, and I suppose any other British woman in uniform. He told us to wait—”
Just then, the waiter emerged from the kitchen, followed closely by a man wearing a long white apron and a chef’s toque.
“Monsieur Jérôme would like to thank you for your efforts on behalf of France. He has offered to make you whatever you wish, providing, of course, we have the ingredients.” The waiter was beaming from ear to ear; clearly this little brasserie received few visits from foreign soldiers.
Lilly took it upon herself to respond.
“Je vous remercie sincèrement, Monsieur Jérôme. Il y a bien longtemps que nous travaillons très proche au front occidental, et nous n’avons que ce soir à Paris. Je suis certaine que tous vos plats sont délicieux. Je l’aimerais bien si vous nous surpreniez ce soir.”
The chef, evidently astonished by Lilly’s command of French, took her hand in his, bestowed a kiss upon it, and rushed back to his kitchens.
“Would you mind letting me know what just happened?” Robbie asked.
“I told them we’ve both been serving near the Front for a long time, that we only have this one night in Paris, and that we would be delighted with whatever the chef chooses to cook for us. I asked him to surprise us.”
“But what if he brings out something exotic?”
“Like what? Escargots or frogs’ legs? I doubt it. I’ll wager you it will be chicken. Most likely a rather elderly chicken.”
He had to laugh. “Do you have any idea how much you’ve changed? From someone who once looked as if she’d jump at the sight of her own shadow, to . . .”
“To what, Robbie?”
“To a woman who knows her own mind. Who is confident enough to speak to the chef in French. And mean-spirited enough to threaten me with snails for dinner.”
“See? You do know some French. Now try this:
‘Merci bien pour un repas merveilleux.’
”