The Daughters of Mars (57 page)

From the belfry she crossed the canal again to get to Carradine’s place. It seemed to her that old men and women, harried-looking mothers with urchins, café owners, and one or two priests had stayed in town amongst the soldiers of many nations. She found the Rue St. Germain, of whose convenience to the hospital Carradine had boasted in a letter.

Sally rose up the stairwell beside apartments that had the look somehow of being shut up, and found the right number on the second floor. After she knocked, she heard Carradine tell her to come in.

Elsie was advancing across the living room in an apron tied over the azure dress of the Red Cross volunteer nurses. On the couch, to Sally’s surprise, sat a drowsy Lieutenant Carradine—although he would now prove to be a major. He was wearing an army shirt and pullover and unheroic pyjama pants. His face looked thinner even than when they had visited him in England.

After Sally and Carradine had kissed and hugged—Carradine exerting a greater pressure than Sally could find it in herself to apply—Elsie stood back and said to her frowning husband, You remember Sally Durance, darling? She visited you in Sudbury.

And there it was—the bewilderment on his face. He did not remember.

Of course, he said. He was used to faking knowledge which the wound and its malign afterhistory had taken from him.

We were just about to eat. I was making shepherd’s pie—with a dash of bully beef I’m afraid. You must be hungry after the trip.

Sally admitted she was.

And what a wonderful accident that you’re both here at the same time.

Carradine put her arm through her husband’s elbow. Come on, let’s all continue this at the table. A separate dining room. Did you notice that, Sally? Wouldn’t get a flat like this in normal times.

In the dining room, Sally and Major Carradine sat down at the table. While Elsie was fetching the meal from the oven, the major looked at Sally a second with eyes that were vacant of interest and recognition.

Was it hard to find this place? she asked.

Oh, we’re subletting it from a notary’s family, said Elsie from the kitchen. They wanted to go down south because everyone believes the Germans will take this city.

Do you?

Well, everyone thought they’d capture Paris once. But they didn’t. Eric and the boys will keep them out.

Eric grunted.

The two women talked about each other’s work while Major Carradine looked at his plate as if trying to work out what was sitting on it. Carradine shot him glances as she discussed her fracture ward a few kilometers away. At least with fractures you’re not waiting for people to die. And the new splints and the traction . . . much better than the old ways. But I think it’s the busiest work I’ve ever done. Do you have a headache, darling?

Eric said in a narrowed-down voice, Why does a man always have to have a bloody headache if he keeps quiet a second?

Now come on, she said, with the fixed smile of a woman who had had her hopes, but now couldn’t predict anything. I’m just worried your dinner will get cold.

He picked up the wine and drank half a glass. If it were to get cold,
he told her, it would not hurt it very much. Then he looked away and said almost as if he were disappointed with himself, Oh damn! I’ve done it again.

He got up, set down but did not fold the laundered linen serviette his wife had somehow provided, and left the room saying, Well, sorry, sorry, Elsie. Done it again. Any whisky in the living room?

Yes, she called. The usual place.

Carradine said, He’s actually better after whisky. Can you believe that? They do everything on whisky and rum up there. Whether they’re breeding a race of drunkards we’ll know when this is all over.

Sally said, If you want to go and . . .

No. I shouldn’t follow him straightaway. He’ll get angry again. I know all the rules by now. But can you believe he passes muster at the front? He must be a different person there. The question is, will he ever pass muster anywhere else?

She put her elbows on the table, made fists and lowered her forehead on to her knuckles. She grieved for ten seconds but there were no tears. Sally got up and put her hand on Carradine’s shoulder.

I’ve sent the longest telegram of my life to his father, said Carradine. If he was to get attention, he’d have to be forced into it by burly orderlies. But they have to take him home, I told his father. England’s no solution. If we put him there, he’ll be back across that Channel in no time, trying to go to the trenches. I know Mr. Carradine the elder will help—he’s coming to England, you know. On a ministerial visit. The trouble is, Eric’s going back to his battalion tomorrow. Surely his colonel sees that something is wrong? Eric’s his adjutant, for God’s sake.

Perhaps he seems normal up there, Sally suggested. Everyone’s temper must be pretty edgy there.

And his colonel’s a man of about twenty-four. In times of peace a soldier was lucky to command a battalion by the wise age of fifty. Now it’s infants with little knowledge of the world. Look, I’ll go and see him now.

Carradine rose. Her food was untouched. Her thinness was more apparent to Sally. She was not long gone.

He’s asleep, she said—relieved—when she returned. Her voice was more like the normal Carradine.

There might be something pressing on his brain, said Sally.

Maybe. His temperature is normal. He doesn’t have encephalitis.

Carradine was captured by a thought then, and said, as millions did, This bloody war! Surely it must be over within two years.

Earlier, Sally lied.

But Elsie returned directly to the subject of Eric. We went to Paris last month. Had a room looking out on the Tuileries. It should have been perfect. But there were headaches, there was anger. “I don’t want to go and see those stupid tarts and their dogs in the gardens!” There was a scene in the bar with a British officer . . . A little hidden alcove in the dining room was the only place he felt safe enough to break his bread. Oh, if that bloody conscription vote had been passed, we’d have plentiful new drafts coming in. It would be easy to get fellows like Eric out of the line.

Perhaps, Sally ventured, though because they’d be conscripts, he might have to stay with them to hold their hands or keep them in place.

There was a slight flare of anger in Carradine. You sound like all those Labour people. They say even the ordinary soldiers voted against it—they didn’t want their battalions sullied by conscripts. Well, that’s all right, but they’re all dying, that’s the thing. Some battalions are so small now they have to be squeezed into others. I’m sorry if I sound cross. I’m bewildered. But not as badly as him.

They looked to the door which led to the bedroom.

Look, said Carradine, tonight’s been dismal. But you don’t have to go yet.

I won’t, Sally assented. Let’s have some of the wine.

• • •

Now, at Carradine’s table on the edge of the spring of 1918, Carradine poured another measure of wine into both their glasses and uttered an opinion she could not have even given respect to a few years past.

Valor is complicated, she said. Sometimes I think the only brave ones are the ones who flee.

Yes, said Sally. Sometimes I’ve thought that too.

I hope tomorrow morning, Carradine whispered, there’ll be a soft-speaking officer and some orderlies and provosts at our door to help him away to more treatment. Eric will scream at me if it happens. And hate me.

She shrugged.

Carradine was nervous about Sally walking back to her hostel in that town so on edge and full of soldiers. But Sally went downstairs and began the journey with relief and in a fever of anticipation for the meeting at the belfry.

T
he next morning at nine o’clock Charlie was a sudden apparition outside the door of the bell tower. She saw him before he saw her. His overcoat was undone, he had one glove off and was smoking anxiously. She could tell somehow—even by his movements—that he was nervous both about the chance of her arrival and the opposite. His skin was as harsh as a stockrider’s, his face thinner and his features even more prominent. But he was clearly the same Charlie who had taught her about light and harbored doctrinal reservations about color.

As she got nearer he saw her and his body loosened, then he walked forward. He put out his arm swiftly and gave her an economic hug. Neither he nor she wanted notice to be taken here, with soldiers and officers coming and going. They both wanted to know about time. When was she due back at Mellicourt? When was he due back up there? It was little more than a day and a half in either case.

What will you show me today then? she asked.

But it’s time I asked you. What do you want to show me?

Well, she said, if you would care to look up you will see a magnificent leaden sky.

Oh, he said, I’ve seen one or two of those recently. They’re tending to proliferate.

Well, that’s about my limit. I’m still learning.

You’ll get talkative enough. After a time.

She liked that phrase, “After a time.”

Haven’t you noticed, he went on, that I always choose subjects on which I can be a know-all, and studiously avoid those on which I am ignorant? Viticulture, say, or stamps, or the workings of the internal combustion engine. I am not a Renaissance man. I play my limited strengths, that’s all.

That’s enough for me.

They both became aware that men were looking across the square at them—ravenous for a gram of their shared fervor.

There will be a great outbreak by the enemy, he murmured, and half the men we see here . . .

But not you.

Certainly not me. I’ve been sent down here to reconnoiter. In case we have to move when the Germans come. Now, I admit I’ve been studying up the cathedral
here
just to impress you. But it’ll be damned cold in there. First let’s find a café.

They walked across the square. Her distress rose all at once—with a sort of heat.

This coming onslaught . . .?

Don’t concern yourself, he said. We’re in reserve for now. In any case, up there or down here, they won’t hit us first off.

How do you know?

Because we’re too good for them, he said simply, without a hint of bravado. They won’t hit the Canadians or the British veterans, he went on. They will hit some poor, hapless British army of conscripts—kids just moved up, eighteen-year-olds with a few good old NCOs. That’s one of the flaws of conscription, you see—men undertrained. Divisions that don’t know themselves.

It was surprising to hear him talk like that—as a military analyst, a role he had never adopted before.

The likelihood of coming assaults was far from being the only cause of her fretfulness. There was as they crossed the square the gravitation of their two bodies. She knew he was aware of it as well—if he hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have been gravitation. They sat a little
discontentedly in a café—a pause in their ferocious rapport that had to be gone through. He ordered brandy and drank it without coughing—the coughing at cognac was far in his past. Gone with the choirboy features. She drank the light-colored stuff the French called
thé
. He reached an ungloved hand across the table, and she took it in her open palm and felt the cold rasp of his. Again, the holding of a hand did not attract the attention of the deity here like it did in the Macleay.

You are the best of companions, he said. Do you
want
to see the cathedral? I mean, for your own sake. Not so that I can blather on . . .

There was something dizzying about cathedrals, something cleansing too. They were a sort of Gothic autoclave. But she had seen enough for now. She wanted to be with him in a way that did not have to do with architecture.

Charlie, it’s a wonderful big shape. I don’t know what to say.

Look, he told her, there’s one thing I want to see in case it’s pounded to rubble. Could you stand that? It’s called the Beau Dieu—the handsome God. It’s in the doorway. Do you mind . . .?

So, she thought, he still has a fascination outside of the larger issue. Or was he nervous and the handsome God a means of delay? She told him, Of course not. I’d like to see it too.

They walked up to the cathedral of mismatched towers and found—between the doors—the smiling stone Christ trying to bring mercy to naked sinners who entered the maw of hell on the inner fluting of that great stone entry. Christ stood benignly between the doors, hand raised in the calmest compassion but also regret. It was not a god of omnipotence but of grief for his children.

And then inevitably they went in. She insisted by instinct—as if to let a kind of longing accumulate—that having seen the Beau Dieu they might as well finish the business.

It was not the exquisite experience of their tour of Rouen Cathedral. But that was not
this
cathedral’s fault. Their minds were on a different order of meeting. They proceeded down the sandbagged nave and saw fire marks on some of the walls. All the stained glass had been
removed. So too had many of the statues from the side chapels. But the altar pieces were still ornate. They both worked at being engrossed by this. But all this huge piling of artful stone, all this steepling, all those vaultings which had resisted the temptation of gravity for so long—these did nothing but delay the aims of this meeting.

In one of the side alcoves—made deeper and more shadowy by the extra heaped sandbags against the main wall—they seized on each other so instantaneously that neither of them could have sworn who was the instigator. There was as profound and languorous a kiss as the place would permit. She could smell the sugary potency of brandy in his mouth. Feeling she had passed through into unfamiliar country where the currency of normal self was not recognized, she said after a while, I was speculating on how long it would take before we reached this point.

He laughed low and close to her face. Not only did I wonder how long, he said, but I made provision, should you wish . . . I don’t know how to say this. There’s a place north of here. Few soldiers, if any, there . . . in Ailly-sur-Somme. There’s a decent enough little hotel on the western bank. I’ve booked two rooms and have a driver bribed to take us out there—he thinks it’s just for a dinner in the country. And indeed we’ll have dinner. And then we can come back afterwards or we can stay there.