by Lizzie Page
‘Of course they’re bloody real, Louis…’
I had a short temper these days; I had no patience. I wished I didn’t, but frustration would pop out of me when you’d least expect it. You’d think, once the war was over, those of us who were there, those of us who’d survived – the Contemptibles, the Despicables, whatever – would spend our remaining days in unmitigated relief and gratitude. But it didn’t work like that: fear, horror, guilt and grief stay with you and sometimes they come out quite unpleasantly.
At parties, I overheard people complaining about such-and-such: ‘What a grumbler he was these days!’ Or so-and-so: ‘Did you ever know such a moaner?’ They seemed genuinely puzzled that so-and-so who had been a prisoner of war, or such-and-such who had been a sniper in the French Army, was no longer the life and soul of the party. I thought, don’t expect this of us: don’t expect that those of us who have suffered will become better because of our suffering. If anything, we’ll become worse.
‘I know, I’m sorry, I meant, Mr Bertram will have an idea…’
Louis was the only one who could pour balm on my troubled waters. He was a wonderfully patient man and very good with me.
It was a tiny shop on the Left Bank, set behind the second-hand book stalls, and it had bullet holes in the door. Louis hadn’t warned me that Mr Bertram looked like an English garden gnome, though. He was beardy and tiny. When I told him I had pictures to show him, he sighed heavily and then clambered off the stool he was standing on. I realised he was even smaller than I had first thought.
I unrolled the twin papers as he scowled, muttering under his breath. I gathered that a lot of people had come back from the war with doodles, expecting the moon. I wished Louis had perhaps directed me to the second- or even third-best framer in the whole of France; anywhere in fact where the service might have been more welcoming. Grumpily, Mr Bertram flattened the papers, studied them and then took his magnifying glass to them. The one of Bonnie looking extraordinary in her nurse’s outfit and the one of me, Percy’s surprising Christmas gift, were upside down and suddenly unfamiliar to me.
‘Percy Milhouse?’ Mr Bertram was so surprised that he dropped his glass onto the papers. He scooped it up quickly. ‘I didn’t know he did portraiture.’
‘He doesn’t normally.’
Mr Bertram was quite transformed. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Well, this is not what I expected at all…’
‘Any good?’ I asked nervously.
‘Fantastique!’ At last he smiled. ‘This is very, very valuable.’
I would send a telegram to Bonnie that evening. I hoped it would bring an even bigger smile to her face than her smile in the picture.
* * *
Elizabeth’s mother – who in all these years I had never met – asked me to visit her. It was an invitation, but it felt like a summons. I had a lump in my throat as I approached that lovely pale townhouse that no longer contained my lovely pale friend. I was frightened Elizabeth’s mother would blame me for her daughter’s going away, but if she did, she didn’t say.
‘The one good thing is we’ll never go to war again,’ Elizabeth’s mother – call-me-Helena – said grimly. ‘Humankind couldn’t be that stupid, could they, Winkle?’ Winkle blinked at her with his knowing eyes.
The macaroons didn’t taste as good as I’d anticipated, and I puzzled over whether I’d remembered them wrong. Or perhaps nothing would ever taste as lovely without Elizabeth there.
After a while, in the same straightforward way that her daughter had used to, Helena set down her cup and saucer, and said:
‘I met Harriet last week. A lovely young woman. Broken-hearted she was.’
I nodded, not sure what would be a good thing to say. I didn’t know what she knew – I didn’t know what I knew.
‘Tell me everything you remember about my daughter.’
I told her how Elizabeth had saved me from the blues: the story of my grabbing her kicking white feet made Helena smile ever so slightly. I said that every time I visited, she showered me with such kindness; that she taught me how to drive and lent me her car, and I talked about how I had always admired her ambition to swim the Channel very much, and how – my voice faltered – I had loved her very much. I could not continue for sobbing.
Helena, unlike me, was not a crier. When I next looked up, she was staring out that beautiful bay window to the back garden, where an elderly man was raking the lawn. She stood up and made some incomprehensible sign to him. I stroked Winkle, feeling useless. I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked after Delia. Tiggy was sleeping elegantly on the sofa arm, so I knew she was fine, but Delia was nowhere to be seen. I braced myself for more bad news.
‘Ah,’ said Helena as though she had been waiting for this. ‘Since you ask…’
Helena explained she could just about manage Tiggy and Winkle but Delia was just too much. She looked at me beseechingly, and reeled me in.
‘I’ll take her!’ I offered brightly.
‘Oh, you can’t, but really? You would do that?’ Helena responded and that was when I guessed I had been set up.
‘Elizabeth would be so pleased,’ Helena added. I thought, I don’t know if Elizabeth would be pleased as such, but she would certainly find it amusing.
* * *
A fun journey back to Paris that was, with the furry little lady scrabbling around in a cardboard box. I wrote FRAGILE on the top flaps but AGGRESSIVE or UNPREDICTABLE might have been a truer warning. I had made air holes in the box with hairgrips, but Delia wouldn’t rest until the sides were open.
Lots of people on the ship wanted to have a look at her. Servicemen and nurses, Scottish crew members and French ladies. Some were charmed. Some tried to stroke her, and she scratched at their wrists. She had an excellent aim. She drew blood on one gentle soldier and he jumped back. ‘Who taught her that? The Hun?’
Louis took one look at my surprise souvenir from England and laughed his head off. ‘Dear God, May, what have you done now? Must you rescue everything?’
* * *
Late autumn, President Woodrow Wilson, my president, came over to France. He addressed the crowds from the Hôtel de Ville. There was an incredible turnout, and as Louis and I moved among the cheering crowds, I felt as though I might burst with pride. It was not just pride at being American, being European and being a war nurse, but of this being our victory. Our hard-earned victory and our hard-earned peace. In my pocket, I had the tiny Stars and Stripes that dear Gordon had given me. I rolled it between my fingers. I had become superstitious in my dotage; this was a good luck token.
There was talk of naming one of the avenues or boulevards after Wilson, and I was agitating for that to everyone I met. It couldn’t come soon enough. For I had noticed how quickly people were forgetting the war had been a world war. How quickly they dismissed the contributions of their American, Canadian, Indian and Chinese allies. And I had noticed too how hardly anyone remembered what we nurses had done. Well, I would be here to remind them for as long as I lived.
The crowds were still cheering, we were still cheering, although our throats grew hoarse. You couldn’t hear much. I tried to tell Louis something, but he couldn’t catch it. I did occasionally suggest to him that he was growing deaf – so many soldiers suffered with hearing loss – but he merely shrugged and said, ‘How would I look with an ear trumpet?’
Absolutely gorgeous, probably.
In the end, I had to shout at the top of my voice.
‘We’d better get back. For the cat. She’s not used to it.’
‘Damn cat!’ Louis shouted back amiably.
* * *
Louis was climbing up the greasy pole at work. He was promoted to major general. And that made me proud too. He was a remarkable man and he so often said that I was a remarkable woman – albeit with a poor taste in pets – that I began to believe it too. At parties, people commented that we were made for each other. Louis was a good man, I was repeatedly reminded, he was the most loyal man
of them all.
I would never take it for granted that we were together, but gradually I was learning to relax. Louis was mine and I was his. We were in this for the long haul.
‘When’s the wedding?’ Winston wrote. ‘I need an excuse for an expensive cigar.’
‘Like he needs an excuse,’ snorted Louis.
Louis’ friends from the Dordogne came to visit. Mathilde looked around our apartment and at the pretty cafés and shops in the street beneath and claimed to be green with envy. I think she would have loved to live in the city again. Watching your husband drive tractors in the countryside is not for everyone. She liked Delia, who, recognising someone almost as elegant as herself, rolled onto her back and begged for tickles whenever Mathilde was in the room. In fact, Delia acted almost like a normal domesticated cat for the entire three days they stayed with us.
‘You’ve done well, Louis,’ Pierre said, patting him on the back. ‘The perfect life.’
It was. If you didn’t know what was missing.
* * *
One morning, over warm croissants and hot coffee – how different hot coffee tasted from the tepid stuff I had grown used to in the hospital – Louis told me he had heard that the new cinema on St Michel’s Boulevard – only fifteen minutes’ walk away – was showing The Battle of the Somme. We had talked about it before and I had said that one day in the future, I wouldn’t mind finding out what the film was about. Without any pressure, he asked would I like to go that evening. I couldn’t answer at first, I didn’t know if I was ready. When I had said ‘future’, I had meant in ten or twenty years. No time at all had passed since that terrible time. Not really. Two years was nothing. I remembered it like it was yesterday. What could be worse? To see our experiences turned into entertainment. Really entertaining, as George said.
Still, we went. I dressed up for it, because one did still dress for the cinema in Paris back then, in a crisp blouse that reminded me of one of Bonnie’s. I had started wearing trousers too. Not the old baggy work ones, but ones that a tailor made for me: slick, black and stylish. Louis was handsome as ever in his uniform – he didn’t need adornment.
The room was packed. A man in black tie was also pushing his way forward and everyone scowled at him. ‘I’m the pianist,’ he pleaded, ‘let me through.’
That room was so loud, I wondered: if they did manage to capture the horrendous sound of the Somme, would we even hear it over the din here? The man next to Louis, in seat 2C, had not dressed up. He took off his shoes and socks and proceeded to pick at his toes. Louis whispered to me, and I wasn’t quite sure what he said because of the cacophony, but I think it was: ‘Remind me never to come to the cinema in Paris again.’
But when the projector started up its crackling and whirring, and the hall was pitched into darkness except for plumes of cigarette smoke, silence finally fell in that room. Even our toe-picking neighbour let his foot fall to the floor.
It was so jolly at the beginning. Full of victorious plans and high hopes and everyone working together. English boys spiritedly waving their caps at the camera as they marched. French peasants throwing turnips at each other. But it went on. As I watched the screen, my defences came down. My tears flowed. The camera had not flinched. And I didn’t know if this was a good thing or not.
Agony it was to watch the suffering. Agony to watch men waiting for their turn to suffer or die. It showed the injuries. It showed the dying. It showed the dead. In the middle of one sequence, the pianist stopped playing. I think for a moment he forgot where he was and what he was supposed to do. A silhouetted arm reached out and pressed him on the shoulder and he started up again.
Louis gripped my hand. His palm grew clammy and he removed his hand to wipe it on his trouser leg. I couldn’t wait until he returned his hand to me. I gripped onto him for dear life. I had not expected this. It should not have been like I was there all over again, because it didn’t have that smell, the taste in your mouth, the fear in your stomach, but it was. I was as there all over again as I ever would be.
The audience were in shock. One woman a few rows along from us fainted. The man next to her called out for smelling salts, ‘s’il vous plaît’, and someone, surprisingly, had some and the bottle was passed from person to person along the line, as though they had been anticipating this all along. The barefoot man clasped one of his shoes to his heart.
At one particularly harrowing bit, a woman shouted from somewhere towards the back of the room, ‘Il n’est pas mort?’ He isn’t dead, is he? And somebody nearby shushed her and impatiently said, ‘Si, si, ils sont tous mort.’ They are all dead.
And someone else called out, ‘My boy! My boy! My boy!’ Three times, just like that.
Never again. Please.
56
I was preparing for our first Christmas in Paris when Elsie Knocker came. I had decorated the apartment with abandon. Fresh branches, berries, leaves, paper chains, everything. A house of red and green. I knew, and Louis knew, that I was driven by a kind of desperation: I was covering up all the holes where the people I loved should have been, but that didn’t stop me.
We had employed a housekeeper, Jeanne, a small mouse-like woman from the south of France. She was a young widow like so many, and she also supported her two brothers, who didn’t work; I wasn’t sure why, but I presumed war injuries. She helped me string up mistletoe from all the light fittings and I found her a box to take the remainder home in. At the time I imagined that I was a kind benefactor making a difference in her unhappy life, but afterwards, I wondered if she would have seen it as patronising. I fretted at my self-indulgence. This was one way the years at war hadn’t changed me at all.
The Christmas tree was so large, the top foot or so had to bend to fit in – and our ceilings were by no means low. To Jeanne’s consternation, I clambered onto chairs, placing bows and drapes on the higher branches and a golden star and ribbons on the top. I took a long time over it – I wanted everything to be right. It wasn’t just for Louis and me; we were entertaining a lot. We had dinner parties where we discussed punishing Germany or not punishing Germany; and which was better, London or Paris. The Christmas cards I set along the fireplace. The absence of a card from my mother, which used to hurt me, meant nothing to me this year. The lack of cards from my own children certainly did.
But I had a card and long letters from Kitty, who was having the time of her life at medical school in New York. And a comedy card from Gordon. He was now in a teaching hospital in Delhi, near where his beloved Karim had once lived. It helped him feel close to him, he said. He told me he was doing what he did best: cutting people open, taking out the bullets and sewing them back up. ‘People will always need trauma surgeons,’ he wrote, ‘so that’s nice.’
* * *
Elsie looked stunning as usual, even here in Paris where, to my eye, most everyone was stunning (even if, as Bonnie said, they were a little on the short side). The dress she was wearing, although dark grey, reminded me of the green dress I had first seen her in, back in Percy’s apartment, surveying his artwork with her knowing eye. She always was a woman who knew what suited her.
Jeanne didn’t live in – my choice. Louis didn’t quite understand it but accepted my need for privacy. I liked to wake and for it to be just the two of us in the apartment for a while. I was getting to know my way around the kitchen, and besides we ate out most nights. The day Elsie came was Jeanne’s day off, so we sat in the kitchen together. If Elsie felt it was inappropriate, she didn’t say.
We ate the pains aux raisins she had bought from the boulangerie at the end of the street. She picked out the dried fruit from hers and left most of the pastry too.
‘Waste not, want not,’ I said pertly.
‘Eat less bread,’ she parroted back, laughing. She could make a joke about anything. ‘Victory is in the kitchen.’
She petted Delia affectionately, then asked me about my life in Paris and life with Louis. I could tell from the fond way she said his name that she
approved of him, far more than she had of Percy – or perhaps she just thought we were a better match. It needn’t have, but it meant a lot.
I talked and talked. I was a long way into telling her about the hospital and the injuries we saw there and the people we met before I realised that I hadn’t asked her much about herself. So, I tried, but she batted questions away.
She was vague about Harold, she was vague about her plans as ‘a newly-wed’, she seemed shy even of the phrase. It occurred to me now how vague she had always been about everything. I thought of a game the girls and I used to play called ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’. You could pin nothing on Elsie, you wouldn’t be anywhere near the bottom.
She had friends to meet elsewhere, she said. Montparnasse later. Saint-Germain-en-Laye early tomorrow and then the ship home. I realised that she always left earlier than you’d think. I told her that.
‘I never like to outstay my welcome,’ she responded cryptically.
‘You could never do that with me.’
She smiled. ‘Always so kind, May.’
It struck me then that she was someone always on the run, always on the move. What, I wondered, was Elsie Knocker running from?
She asked about Leona and Joy and it gave me a warm flush that she remembered their names. I didn’t want to talk about my battle to see them though; it was a thing of extraordinary shame. It was the thing I woke up to, and the thing I went to sleep to. It was the thing I wore all day, like a hair shirt, under my clothes. Oh, I knew what people thought: a mother who can’t see her children – what has she done wrong? They thought, there is no smoke without fire. They thought, she must, deep down, be a nasty lady. I suppose this is what I would think were it happening to someone else.
I grunted that it was difficult and then I tried to make a fuss of Delia, but she swept away from me and gave me her disdainful look.