‘Sylvie? You do believe me, don’t you?’
She smiled across the table at him, gazing into his beautiful eyes, the colour of the sea in winter. ‘I do. And you believe me, too, don’t you, when I tell you that nothing has ever been like this for me, too? Nothing, Robbie. Do you believe me?’
‘I do,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I really do.’
Chapter Eight
Robbie lay awake, watching the dawn light filter in through the thin curtains. Sylvie was sleeping on her side, her delightfully curved rear brushing his thighs. He had dozed, but had not dared sleep for fear of dreaming. They came to him in dreams, the men he had lost, and the friends, too, a long line of them, snaking on and on into the distance. He could never see their faces, had only a blurred sense of their presence as they solemnly filed past him, rather horribly like one of the parades they used to have at school in honour of some visiting dignitary. He didn’t know if he cried out during those dreams. So commonplace, disturbed nights were, that no one ever mentioned them until they got to the stage when the poor lad had to be carted off. Shell shock. Not that they were allowed to call it that these days.
Only another twelve hours or so and he’d be on the train back there. He didn’t want to think about it. He hadn’t thought about it once since he got here, but now he couldn’t stop. It was a habit with him, with all the officers, to be matter-of-fact about the prospect of death. He never thought about surviving the war. Never thought about the things he would never have. A wife. Children. And now, in a moment of horrible clarity, which struck him not like a blinding light but like a sharp blade, he knew that it was this woman sleeping beside him he wanted to be their mother. This was the woman he wanted to marry. This woman that he loved so deeply he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t realised it before now.
He allowed himself a few more brief moments of dreaming. Sylvie beside him at the altar. Sylvie at Glen Massan as it was before the war. Sylvie in his bed in his flat in London. Sylvie in five years’ time, in ten years’ time, twenty. Smiling at him lovingly. Holding his hand. Telling him that there was no one like him, nothing like this. Nothing.
He roused himself when it became unimaginably painful. Determined to make the most of the day and escape these melancholy thoughts, he suggested they take a trip to Versailles.
* * *
It was cold, but bright and sunny. The famous fountains were still, the gardens rather sad and bare with little sign of foliage, but they spent a pleasant few hours wandering hand in hand around the grounds before lunching at a café in the town, talking of anything but the fact that he had to go back to the trenches. Time played games, co-operatively dragging its heels for a while before leaping forwards, two hours in a single bound.
It was late afternoon when they returned to Paris. As the light began to fade, it became impossible to cling to the illusion that the clock was not ticking inexorably towards that last hour.
They arrived back at the Rue des Martyrs in a subdued mood. The two days that had once seemed to stretch before them endlessly were almost at an end, and the things they had not said hung over them like a leaden cloud. ‘When do you have to leave?’ Sylvie asked.
Robbie looked at his watch. ‘Soon.’ He drew her into his arms, breathing in the scent of her. It would be a mistake, to make love to her again. It meant too much now. How had it crept up on him, this sudden all-enveloping significance? It would be best if he left now. Yet his lips sought hers hungrily, and she pressed herself against him urgently, and his body responded, blood rushing to his groin, pulses quickening in anticipation as she ran her fingers through his hair. She tasted so sweet and he wanted her so much. Once more. Just once more.
He picked her up and carried her through to the bedroom. They undressed each other reverently, made love slowly, looking into each other’s eyes, tenderly touching, rocking into a climax together, holding each other so tightly he could have sworn there was no skin between them.
Afterwards, a terrible melancholy gripped him. He wanted to stay here, holding her like this forever. Was Flora right after all? He had been so sure she was wrong, so sure that it was much better not to have so much at risk, but now? Doubts assailed him. Hope gripped him. He loved this woman. Oh, how he loved this woman. Did that really mean he had to say goodbye? He needed to think. Edging out of bed, he scooped up his clothes and headed for the bathroom.
* * *
Sylvie opened her eyes as the door closed softly on Robbie. It had been almost too much this time, but the need to make love to him, to touch him, to tell him without words how she felt for him had been overpowering. Now it was over. Truly over. From that moment last night, when she’d realised she loved him, she had known it. All through the night and today, she had managed to ignore it, wanting to eke out every single precious moment. But there could be no more.
She lurched out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, heading through to the other room to light the fire. It took three attempts to strike a match, her hands were shaking so much. She mustn’t let him see her like this. She mustn’t let him know just how much she cared. She was fairly certain he was going to end it, anyway. Pointless to wish there was another way. Heartbreakingly pointless. She could not survive another loss, and the plain fact was that Robbie was almost inevitably going to become another statistic. His luck couldn’t hold forever. She couldn’t cope with the loss and he couldn’t cope with the hope. It was this, telling herself that it was for him, that brought her some element of self-control.
* * *
By the time he emerged, dressed in trousers and undershirt, she was setting a pot of water to boil.
‘Coffee?’
He shook his head.
‘Wine?’
‘Sylvie, we need to talk.’
‘Yes.’ She sat down beside him on the sofa, careful not to touch him, aching to touch him. ‘I will spare you,’ she said gently. ‘I know what you are going to say. It is au revoir. Not adieu, but goodbye.’
For a moment, she thought he was about to deny it. He flinched, paled, struggled for words. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked eventually.
Sylvie wrapped the tasselled sash of her dressing grown around her hand. ‘Because it matters too much now, Robbie.’
He looked at her searchingly. ‘Does it?’
She nodded.
‘Is that really a reason for us to say goodbye?’
She tightened the sash, because he sounded as if he needed to be persuaded, and she knew that he didn’t really, that it was simply her own desperate desire making her imagine it so. ‘You told me, when we first met, you told me that you survived because you didn’t have anything to lose.’
‘I was wrong about that. I was wrong about a lot of things. I see things differently now. I don’t know what it is that I’ve got back, but you’ve given me it.’
‘L’humanité?’
He smiled briefly. ‘I would settle for that.’
She touched his hand fleetingly, but even such a slight contact threatened to overset her. ‘It was the same for me, Robbie. Since I met you, I feel as if I have clawed myself out of a very black tunnel. I will never be the same, but I am better. I have my brother back—a little. I am teaching. But I don’t think I could cope with another loss. One that would mean so much.’
‘Because I’m living on borrowed time,’ Robbie said, his voice flat. His fingers strayed to the long-healed scar on his skull, a habit he thought he’d outgrown. ‘We’re going up to the front as soon as I return to duty. My luck can’t hold out forever. You’re right.’ He looked at her as he had that first night in the club—haunted, hopeless. ‘Fear and caution are a fatal combination.’
A chill ran through her. She would have given anything not to be having this conversation. ‘What do you mean?’ Sylvie asked.
‘Worrying about what you’ve got to lose makes you cautious, and that makes it more likely that you’ll be killed,’ Robbie said brutally. ‘It’s how it works, it’s one of the unwritten
rules of war. When you go over the top, you can’t think of anything but what you have to do. It’s how you survive. But now I’ve got the most precious thing of all to lose. You’ve come so far, endured so much. I don’t want to be the one responsible for sending you back into that pit of despair.’
‘There really is no way, is there, for us?’
Again, she was unable to keep the glimmer of hope from her voice, but again he shook his head.
‘Can we at least write?’
‘Do you really want to be one of those women who live for the post? My father can’t bear to open the telegrams anymore, my mother tells me.’
‘But I won’t know what’s happening to you.’
His self-control was back in place, and hers was crumbling. Her voice sounded pitiful. Robbie pulled her close. He smelled so familiar and so unique. ‘Isn’t that best?’ he asked softly.
She shook her head, but he ignored her, kissing her gently, achingly. She wanted it to go on forever, that kiss. She clung to him, tasting her tears, his tongue, clinging to him desperately until he gently disengaged himself. ‘I have to go,’ he said, disappearing into the bedroom.
Numbly, she listened to the sounds of him dressing, packing up his kitbag. A few more minutes and he would be gone forever. She could not believe it. It was not possible. Yet it was the only thing possible. He was there, in his greatcoat, wearing his cap, and she really thought he must have heard the sound of her heart breaking as she got to her feet, pressed herself up against him for one last kiss, forced herself to step back, because she would not have him remember her crying.
He tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Au revoir, ma belle,’ he said.
‘Don’t look back,’ she said. ‘Je t’aime,’ she added as the door closed behind him.
16th April 1917
‘We’ll have to survive with what rations we have for now. Looks like we’ll be here for a few days at least. Keep a close eye on McNair, Sergeant.’
‘Funked it, didn’t he? Lucky I was watching his back, or he’d be a goner.’
Robbie shook his head. ‘He’s had a long war. Between you and me, if there’s any chance at all of having him sent back up the line, I’ll do it. But keep an eye, I don’t want him doing himself damage. You know where to find me if you need me.’
Robbie made his way back down the straggling line of his men, currently camped out in craters and what was left of the German defences. So much for the promise that it would all be over in forty-eight hours. First the delay because the French didn’t want to fight on Easter Sunday, and then the snow. And now, though they’d taken Observation Ridge and Feuchy and had even moved on to Monchy-le-Preux as planned, their supply lines were struggling to keep up. ‘Which makes you wonder if they ever really believed we’d get this far so quickly,’ Robbie muttered to himself. The CO was claiming a victory, but the casualties had been appalling. And though the Canadians had been successful at Vimy Ridge, word was that farther south in the French sector things weren’t going so well. He wondered if Sylvie’s brother was part of that battle. He missed her appallingly. They hadn’t written, as they’d agreed.
‘Ah, Carmichael, CO wants to see us. Orders.’ Captain Hartigan smiled wearily. ‘Blasted mail! I’m on tenterhooks. My wife’s expecting. Our first. Can’t help but worry, you know.’
‘I expect you’d have heard if something was wrong.’
‘Yes. Of course, quite right,’ the younger man said, looking marginally relieved.
‘Do you mind if I ask you something, Hartigan?
‘No, old chap. Fire away.’
‘How do you cope? Knowing that your wife and child are back in England, I mean, and you’re stuck out here.’
‘That’s precisely how I cope. Knowing that they’re waiting for me is enough to sustain me. It’s quite simple, really. Why are you looking at me like that, Carmichael?’
* * *
After the briefing, on which he was quite unable to concentrate, Robbie walked into what was left of the village of Monchy-le-Preux. The cavalry’s horses were tethered in the open. Some of the wounded were still on stretchers at the advanced dressing stations, for the ambulances were having a hard time getting through.
He sat down on a wall beside the ruins of a house, and wished that he smoked. Hartigan’s simple certainty had rocked him to the core. How he missed Sylvie. He missed talking to her—for their letters had become a conversation. Without them, he’d lapsed into that netherworld, where everything was in shades of grey. It would be easier, he’d said, for her not to know. But it wasn’t easier for him. Had he been selfish? Was it as bad for her, or worse? Was she coping? Did she miss him? Was Henri alive? Had she managed to persuade that traumatised little girl at the school to speak yet? Had they managed to persuade the authorities to provide the children with a meal? He wondered if Flora could help there. He should have thought of that. Flora would like Sylvie. Flora, who said that every second she spent with her husband was worth any sacrifice.
And she was right. Robbie picked up a stone and hurled it at the nearest crater. ‘Face it,’ he said to himself angrily, ‘you were wrong on all counts.’ Waiting to go into battle in the cold light of dawn on Easter Monday, his Webley service revolver in his hand, he had thought of Sylvie. He’d tried not to, but she was there with him. Now that he was safe—at least alive, relatively unscathed—he could face another fact. He was going to make damned sure he stayed alive, because the first thing he would do when this battle was fought was find her and tell her he how he felt, and the second thing he was going to do was persuade her to marry him, because his little sister was right. Every second was too precious to waste.
Paris—10th May 1917
The nightclub was quiet tonight. The temporary jubilation that had restored Paris almost to its hedonistic self when the Americans joined the war had abated as the casualty lists had started to come through from the latest offensive on the Western Front. Today, the newspapers were full of the fact that Nivelle had been replaced as commander-in-chief by Pétain, a move that rather contradicted the claims of victory.
At least Henri was out of it for the moment, Sylvie thought. A chest wound, sustained near the village of Soupir. Not serious, he had insisted in the postcard from the field hospital. She hoped he would have the sense to make his recovery slow. How strange that after almost three years of fighting, he’d ended up not much more than one hundred kilometres from home.
She picked up her tray and began to collect glasses, ignoring the half-hearted attempts to engage her in conversation. The British, too, had been fighting hard. The newspapers claimed victories for them alongside heavy casualties. Was Robbie still alive? Was he wounded? So many times she had written to him only to burn the letters, but her resolve was weakening. He’d said it would be better not to know, but not knowing was so much worse. She told herself that she would sense if something had happened to him, but she didn’t really believe it. Without him in her life it was so much harder to carry on. He had been wrong about that.
And she had been wrong, too. She placed the empty wine bottles in the back room and began to wash the glasses. She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to bear losing him, but by trying to keep them both safe, she had already lost him. Another day, another letter even, would have helped. Just telling him how she felt would have helped. She’d thought that an honourable sacrifice. Now she thought she’d been a fool.
‘Sylvie, what is wrong with you these days?’ Monsieur le patron glowered at her. ‘I’ve more chance of being rewarded with a smile from my mother-in-law than you. Didn’t you hear me? Get a bottle of the vintage burgundy from the cellar. Take it over to the officer sitting at the table in the far corner, but make sure you tell him how much it costs before you open it.’
‘Sorry.’ It was the same at the school. Only this morning, little Thomas had asked her why she was so sad. Petit Thomas, who had so much more to be sad about than she did.
Sylvie wiped the dust off the bottle and set it on
a tray with two glasses. ‘Bonsoir. Monsieur says to tell you...’ He caught the bottle as it fell from her nerveless fingers. ‘Robbie!’
Tears, sudden and uncontrollable, streamed down her face. ‘You’re alive,’ she said, gazing up at him in wonder. He looked exhausted. He’d lost weight. His hair had grown. ‘You’re here. Oh, God, you’re really here. I have been so— I can’t tell you— It has been so— I can’t believe you’re here.’ She scanned every inch of him anxiously. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘A few minor scratches.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m fine, I promise. What about Henri?’
‘He’s wounded, but he says only lightly. What are you doing here?’
‘My love, don’t cry. Darling Sylvie, please don’t cry.’
‘I’m not. I’m— What did you call me?’
‘Darling Sylvie. I’m here because I think about you every waking moment. I’m here because I needed to tell you I’m so sorry for being so blind and so stupid. Most important, I’m here to tell you I love you so very, very much.’
She stared at him, unable to comprehend what he’d said. ‘But you can’t,’ she said. ‘You said...’
‘I know what I said, but I was wrong. Utterly wrong. I felt your presence with me when I went over the top the last time. You give me something to fight for, Sylvie, a reason to keep going. I see that now.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘You love me? You really love me?’
‘Desperately. Completely. I haven’t been able to bear it, not knowing how you are, what you’re doing. I kept thinking, is it the same for you?’
‘Yes. Oh, Robbie, yes, but we said...’
‘That it would be too painful to lose each other, I know. Sylvie, I...’ He stopped suddenly, staring down at her intently. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve just blindly rushed in and I haven’t given you a chance to speak. Do you still think the same—that it’s too big a risk?’
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