by Julie Berry
James was a gentleman, and his thoughts were pure.
“Not even,” he said. “I want to do everything. See everything. With you.” He pressed a hand over his belly. “Eat everything too.”
“Come on, then.” Hazel threaded her fingers through his. “Let’s get started.”
He set off to keep pace with her, then halted and drew her close.
“You came,” he whispered. “You really came.”
What does a girl say in response to so much feeling? The wrong thing, of course.
“Well, you asked me to.” Her eyes sparkled.
There was no wrong thing she could say.
“Hello, Hazel.”
She blushed. “Right. Hello, James.” She grinned. “I got it a bit out of order, didn’t I?”
“No.” James couldn’t help smiling. He’d almost forgotten how. “Not at all.”
“Food,” she said. “Time won’t keep.”
We’d see about that.
APHRODITE
Café du Nord—February 13, 1918
AT A TABLE near the window of La Café du Nord, directly across Rue de Dunkerque from the train station, sat Colette. A server brought her a cup of chocolat, set it next to her unopened book, and asked what she was doing later on. She answered with a vague smile and took a sip. Not bad.
She watched the train station. It was too soon, no doubt, for Hazel to have found her beau yet. Trains had become wildly unpredictable ever since the war had begun. She should start reading.
Et voilà. There, exiting the station, were Hazel and a young man, arm in arm. He was tall, dressed in a British soldier’s uniform, and he had no eyes whatsoever for the charms of Paris, even as it began to light its evening lamps. He focused entirely upon Hazel.
Bon, she thought. Hazel a trouvé son Jacques.
She finished her chocolate, read a page, and found her attention refused to comply. So she left a few coins and headed for her aunt’s flat.
If only Aubrey were here with her tonight, she thought. Even a citizen of the grand New York metropolis would find much to enjoy in la Ville Lumière. Paris was made for two.
Almost, Colette Fournier envied her charming English friend that night. But, she considered, tomorrow Hazel would need to bid her Jacques goodbye, whereas in a few day’s time she could return to Aubrey. She would need to offer Hazel comfort when the time came.
APHRODITE
Saint-Vincent-de-Paul—February 13, 1918
GREETINGS ACCOMPLISHED, love and longing gave way to the awkward business of making a plan.
They exited the train station, and James got his first glimpse of Paris. Even after four years of war, its hardships, its labor shortages, the city was a sight to see.
People were everywhere. Soldiers and officers in uniform. Buses full of wounded, headed to hospitals. Couples arm in arm, and older men smoking in doorways. Everywhere, lights twinkled. Music could be heard wafting from somewhere.
“Do you want to go walking?” asked James. “See a show? Maybe there’s a concert?”
“We need to feed you,” Hazel said.
James glanced back at the train station clock. “Supper? Now? It’s not even five o’clock.”
She steered him across the street. “There’s a covered market,” she said. “Let’s get something and call it tea. Later we’ll find a restaurant. Colette’s aunt made a list.”
“So, you’re staying with Colette and her aunt?”
Hazel nodded. “You are too.” She gave him a nudge. “I’m a guest, but you’ll have to pay rent.”
The same place as Hazel! “Are you sure? I figured on a hotel.”
“I had to assure Colette’s aunt that you were a gentleman,” Hazel teased, “so you’d better not prove me wrong.”
They reached the food market, Marché Couvert Saint-Quentin, and explored the stalls. They settled on warm rolls and a bag of roasted nuts. Poor James didn’t realize, quite, how eagerly he inhaled his food. Manners died in the trenches. But Hazel was glad to see him eat.
She studied the map. When she looked up, he presented her with a bouquet of pink roses.
“What’s this?” she cried. Behind him, a flower cart with signs reminded les hommes not to forget la Saint-Valentin. A stout, aproned vendor was grinning at her.
“Will you be my valentine, Miss Hazel Windicott?”
She inhaled the perfume of the roses. “Well,” she said, “only because no one else appears willing to take the post.”
This girl. James wanted to laugh out loud. He’d been so worried, that somehow the easiness he’d felt with her in London couldn’t survive their time apart. He couldn’t get enough of her.
Would she feel the same, when she knew his deeds of war?
At least, he thought, he could enjoy these moments now.
The sun had set by the time they headed northwest on Boulevard de Magenta. James carried his duffel bag and the sack of rolls. Hazel cradled her roses like a kitten in her arms.
They turned onto Rue la Fayette and soon came to a square containing a grand church. It dwarfed the buildings around it. Situated on a rise of ground, the gray stone basilica was flanked by two grand clock towers. Carved saints, beggars, and angels looked down upon them. In terraced gardens, the stalks of last year’s weeds shivered in the wind. The war. Everything nonessential was neglected.
Hazel watched James thoughtfully. “You need to come back to Paris,” she said, “and spend a year looking at buildings, don’t you?”
The thought of becoming an architect seemed buried in the trenches with the war dead.
“That’d be brilliant,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be any fun if you weren’t there too.”
That caught my notice. When Forever Talk enters into the conversation, I’m all ears. Or even Long-Term Talk. Things were moving along swimmingly.
Two blushing young people climbed the steps up to l’Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
“Colette says,” said Hazel, feeling a change in subject might be needed, “this church is well worth seeing. Some fine artwork inside, and a splendid organ.”
“Will you play the organ?”
She gave him a look. “You don’t just waltz in and play the organ anytime you please.”
They passed through the portico and entered the sanctuary.
“Oh my,” whispered Hazel.
By the soft light of hanging lamps, they beheld the grandeur of l’Église de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
Two rows of grand columns ran on either side of the length of the vast sanctuary, and a second level of columns from an upper gallery extended to the beautifully carved ceiling. Gorgeous paintings adorned the walls and the domed apse. The paintings, heavily gilded, gleamed in the lamplight, suffusing the space with a somber glow.
They strolled along the corridor that led behind the nave to a secluded chapel. Chapelle de la Vierge. The Virgin Mary’s chapel. A private place one might go to pray.
James dropped his duffel bag and sat. He watched Hazel curiously examine the sculptures and stained glass, and smiled. Then she realized he’d sat down and returned to sit beside him.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Magnificent.”
She watched his face earnestly. “I thought, maybe, after your time at the Front, in all that dirt and smoke, that something very beautiful might be just what you needed to see.”
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. “You were right.”
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment,” she said indignantly.
“You’ll have to take it, all the same.”
“Hmph.”
The windows darkened as night settled over Paris. It made the lamplight both brighter and smaller, as the upper echelon of the sanctuary slid into darkness.
“It’s good t
o see something that was lovingly and carefully made,” he said at length. “The war makes it feel as though all humans have ever done is destroy.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “Is it quite terrible?”
All he wanted to think about was her. Not the trenches.
“It is,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ve seen the worst of it yet.”
She turned to look him in the eye. “I hope you have.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s you not go back to Saint-Nazaire, and me not go back to the Front. Let’s just stay here, looking at things. All right? Let’s not let this end.”
She smiled. “All right.”
He laughed. “You only say that because you know I don’t mean it.”
“You can’t mean it,” she said. “But you would if you could.”
She understood him so quickly, so completely, so naturally. It almost frightened him. If she understood all that he felt for her, would it frighten her?
“Do you know,” he said, his words tumbling out, “I was afraid to come see you.”
She watched him with eyes brimming with concern.
“I didn’t know how it would be,” he said quickly. “I didn’t know if what we felt—what you felt—what I hoped you had—could survive. If it had even been real, or if I’d imagined it.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“But here you are. It’s as if we’ve been together every day.”
Something, Hazel knew, pressed heavily upon him.
“There hasn’t been a day,” she said, “when I haven’t thought of you.”
His eyes searched her face. The time was now. Please, God, not now, but it was now.
“Hazel,” he said. “I’m a sharpshooter.”
Those wide eyes, with their long, dark lashes, swept open and shut, open and shut.
Concealment was past. He’d ripped a hole in her picture of him. She would leave. She might as well know all the reasons why.
“I’ve killed six Germans,” he said. “That I know of for certain. Shot them in cold blood.”
Now she would recoil in horror.
Might as well hurry her along the path she must unavoidably follow. “Left wives widowed,” he said quickly. “Children orphaned. Parents brokenhearted. Shot them as they mended fences or cooked their dinner.”
Speak. Tell me you never want to see me again. But say it quickly.
This wasn’t how he had intended to tell her. He knew he must, but at least, he could’ve enjoyed a bit more of her company, selfishly and unapologetically, before ruining everything.
And Hazel?
What did she see?
Her beautiful James, more beautiful than ever in the golden light, grief-stricken by what duty demanded of him. What war demanded. Should war or duty have such power? The war, she saw, killed more than those whose families received telegrams.
Six lives taken. Nothing, she knew, that she could do or say to offer comfort would erase that pain. It would never leave him. And he, so young.
She rose and walked slowly back toward the corridor leading toward the church offices, leaving her roses behind.
There she goes. James closed his eyes. Then opened them again, because he would rather hurt than not watch her walk away.
But she didn’t leave, not yet. She stopped near an office door and spoke to a black-robed cleric. She took some coins from her pocketbook and gave one to the cleric. A donation on the way out. But then the cleric gave her something, and she returned to James.
Hope and despair choked him. He didn’t know how to look at her.
She held out her hand. “Come with me.”
He took her hand and followed her. She led him toward a rack of glass votive jars at the front of Mary’s chapel. The glass jars were red, and candles flickered in a few of them. She opened her parcel and a book of matches. From the parcel she took one candle, which she handed to James.
“For the first German.” She gave him the matches. He hesitated, and she nudged him. “Light it.”
With shaking hands he struck the paper match. It took two or three tries before orange flame overtook its woven threads. He carefully lowered the candle into an empty jar and placed it on the rack. As the little flame grew more self-assured, the red glass began to glow.
Hazel handed him another candle. “For the second German.”
He struck another match and lit the candle. Hazel stayed by him. He placed his second candle beside the first, already burning brightly, its filament of smoke rising like a soul to God.
The rack of candles swam before his eyes, a sea of bobbing golden lights in a field of red.
“For the third German.”
He scrubbed the tears off his cheeks with his fingers, and they ruined the next match. He had to try another. He lit the third candle and set it beside its brothers.
He lit the fourth candle, and the fifth. For each, a life. For each, a light. He filled an entire shelf in the candle rack with flickering flame. He saw his hands strike the matches and remembered: these hands pulled the trigger. He knew he was openly weeping now, and that Hazel saw him, but it didn’t matter; nothing mattered; he didn’t matter.
He covered his eyes with his hands.
“There will be more,” he whispered, “before I’m through. How many candles will I need to light, if I ever make it home?”
She took the book of matches from his pocket, struck one, and lit the last candle, then gently peeled his right hand off his face and placed the candle in his palm.
“For the sixth German.”
He placed the candle in a jar, set it on the rack, and watched them all burn. Slow currents of air bent the flames to the left, to the right. Gracefully, like a flock of starlings in flight.
APHRODITE
Le Bouillon Chartier—February 13, 1918
POOR MORTALS. I feel for them. That evening in Paris couldn’t be described in its full richness, its second-by-split-second splendor, not if they spent decades trying to tell it. And that’s just one of their nights. They rack them up by the thousands, yet they still get up each morning and tie their shoes. You have to admire them. They are so very brave to keep on living.
Take a kiss, for instance—
But wait; I’m getting ahead of myself.
Hazel managed to lead James, with her map, on a long ramble through the city. Eventually they arrived at le Bouillon Chartier, a restaurant Colette’s aunt had recommended. Red tablecloths, warm light, ample food, no royal pedigree required, and generous patience for les anglais. The waiter situated them in a corner booth in the upper deck, took their order, and left them, knowingly, in peace. I rarely need to intervene with French waitstaff. They’re my people.
Hazel scooted over next to James and sat close to him. He was left with no choice but to drape his arm over her shoulder, and of course he didn’t mind.
“It wasn’t you,” she said. “You didn’t kill those poor soldiers any more than I did.”
How could he be plucked from the trenches and whisked to this warm Paris restaurant with the dearest, kindest girl close beside him, offering balm for his wounds?
“The world’s gone mad,” she said. “It’s as if the nations of Europe are . . . I don’t know . . . lions, or dragons, savage beasts with cruel intentions of their own. It’s not you, and it’s not me. It’s the dragon, locked in combat with the other dragons. And all we can do is watch, and try not to be stepped on or burned.”
“I’m not merely watching,” he said.
“This analogy is pretty shabby, come to think of it,” she admitted. “I was never good at metaphors in composition.” She tapped her chin. “You are the, um, you are one of the dragon’s claws. Which you have to be, or else they will throw you in jail for not being a claw. . . .” She sighed. “Maybe you’d have to be a fire-breathing nost
ril. I give up. But it’s still not your fault.”
“A nostril,” he said. “I’ve been called worse.”
“If you had to be a nostril,” she said, “I think a dragon’s would have a certain clout.”
“A certain snout?”
She made a face at him. “Did you know your jokes are terrible?”
He nodded. “That’s how I like them.”
She laughed. “Me too.”
Oh, but he wanted to hold this girl and never let go.
A couple caught James’s eye. They kissed in their booth as though they had the room to themselves. He gulped.
“You say what the chaplains say,” he said. “‘It’s not you. Don’t take it personally.’ You’d have to be a monster not to take it personally. But that’s what you become out there. A monster. Someone who laughs at dead bodies. Or you don’t survive.”
She took his face in her hands. He’d had a shave in her honor, and she’d been dying to feel his cheeks ever since she first saw him in the train station.
“Then be a monster,” she said. “Do you must to survive, so you can come back to me.”
He took her hands and kissed them. “Hazel Windicott,” he said, “if there’s anything left of me after the war, nothing would keep it from finding its way back to you.”
The words Hazel had wondered and fretted about fell down so naturally, she wondered what she’d been afraid of. They were true, and the truth should never make you afraid.
“You have to come back,” she said. “I love you, you know that?”
All the knots melted from James’s weary body and mind. “I do know that,” he said, marveling in the discovery. He did know. So this was how it felt, being loved.
As for himself, he’d known for a long time. “I love you too.”
* * *
There’s no telling what might’ve happened next if the waiter hadn’t appeared just then with two steaming plates of duck confit and potatoes. The first course. He had waited a moment, discreetly, sensing that important words were being spoken, but when a pause occurred, he seized it. If they have a deep understanding of love, the French have an even deeper understanding of food and when it is to be eaten. That is precisely when it’s ready and not a moment later.