Fall of Poppies

by Heather Webb

  “My father?” She froze.

  “You said he’s a teacher. You said he is . . .” But I caught myself. With four years of war in France, is had so often become was.

  The waitress came by with a bowl of mussels, garlicky and hot, and Victoire was saved from having to answer right away. I didn’t remember her ordering them and wondered if I was expected to pay.

  She leaned in to inhale the garlic and herbs. “I would be welcome at home, that I know. But not with a bastard child.”

  “Times are different,” I said.

  “Not different enough to shatter expectations.” She offered me the bowl. “I would much rather prove ­people wrong than prove them right.”

  “Well, I understand expectations. My brother was a pilot. He was over here years before the U.S., in the Lafayette Flying Corps. Father was so proud he could’ve burst and Mother never stopped reminding me how much more useful Val was being. I was at college, but Val was at war.” I took a mussel with my fork. “When he went west, everyone just waited for me to go take his place.”

  She took my discarded shell and used it to pluck up a mussel of her own. “Went west?”

  I dug the tines of the fork into the scratched wood of the table. “Fell. Crashed. Flew himself into an early grave.”

  Two years later and it still stung. Despite everything else, he was my brother. And here at Romorantin, with the roar of airplanes coming in for repairs and out for delivery, with the uniforms, with the swagger of the ferry pilots in the barracks, it stung even more. The most unexpected things made me think of Val.

  As if I didn’t have enough of that with the rare letters from back home. Father never wrote, just Mother. Brief, perfumed notes that reminded me I’d never live up to the memory of Val. I’d never fly as high as he had.

  Victoire pushed the bowl of mussels to the side. “Monsieur Ward, I am sorry.”

  “Isn’t the war full of things to be sorry about?” I shrugged. “Anyway, I always do what’s expected of me.”

  “You became a pilot.”

  “Halfway.” We’d arrived in France to find more cadets than airplanes. So the air ser­vice put its excess men building more planes and overhauling the old things the RFC and Aéronautique Militaire didn’t want any longer. My squadron had been at Romorantin on fatigue. “But the doc called me in today. I’m finally being sent up.”

  She watched me carefully. “You must be happy.”

  Maybe it was the wine, maybe the loneliness, maybe the strange intimacy of this shared bowl of mussels and conversation. Maybe it was because I’d seen her cry. I took a deep breath. “Truth be told, I’m scared to death.”

  Victoire reached across the table, not quite meeting my hand, but laying her fingers close. “Perhaps, then, our problems are not so different.”

  “What do you have to be scared of? You’re not flying straight into combat.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “we carry the battles right along with us.” With her other hand, she brushed her stomach. “I am afraid to go home. I am afraid to stay here.” For the first time since that morning, she blinked away tears. “I do not know where I . . . where we . . . belong.”

  I knew she was talking about the baby, but, if I listened sideways, I could pretend she was talking about me. I’d never felt like I belonged, not at college, not in the army, not in my own family. But, for a half hour over a bowl of mussels, I had found someone who understood.

  “What if you had a husband?” I blurted out.

  It wasn’t what I intended to say, and I peered down into my mug of wine.

  But, intended or not, her eyes stopped filling with tears. “Pardon?”

  I had spoken without thinking, swept up in the moment and in her blue eyes. Was I really suggesting what it sounded like I was suggesting?

  “Well . . .” I fumbled. “I meant . . .”

  It was a completely crazy idea. Wasn’t it? Kindness and understanding did not a marriage make. Though, thinking of my parents, relationships had been built on less.

  “It isn’t much, but will you marry me?” It was quick and breathless, the boldest thing I’d probably ever said in my life. “And not just because you’re the first girl who’s ever been nice to me.”

  She could’ve laughed and sent me on my way. For a split second I thought she would. I was used to it. But instead she inhaled and said, “You’d . . . do that?”

  I took this as an encouraging sign. “I’m probably going the way of Val. Pilots don’t last more than a few weeks. But you’d have my name and a ring to take back home. Widows’ pay after I go.” I spoke in a rush, not wanting to give her a chance to say no. “It isn’t much,” I said again. “But maybe I can help.”

  She thought about it as she finished the mussels. I watched her face, wondering if that crease in her brow was concern or indigestion. Maybe both. I thought I should offer her a glass of water and an apology. Nothing said that the indigestion wasn’t due to my proposal.

  Only after she’d drunk the broth and wiped the bowl with a crust of bread did she speak. “And what do you gain, John Wesley Ward?”

  It was a fair question. I hadn’t thought through my end of the arrangement. Certainly not a kiss good-­bye. I already knew I wouldn’t ask that of her. And a warm glow at helping someone sounded obnoxious and somehow more Val than me.

  Tomorrow I’d be flying out. Loneliness stretched like a horizon. “Knowing that someone is thinking of me,” I said simply.

  She looked up at me from under her lashes.

  “If you were my wife, would you write to me? Every day. Every week, if I last as long as that.” I twisted fingers around my mug. “Somehow tonight, I don’t feel so alone.”

  I counted thirty seconds as she thought, thirty seconds of the waitress complaining to the barkeep, of the piano playing, of the padre proselytizing.

  “I agree,” she finally said. “Thank you. I will marry you.”

  GETTING MARRIED, IT turned out, was quite easy if you had a tipsy priest.

  The padre was delighted at being asked to officiate. “I’ve done more last rites than marriages. And the confessions that I hear . . .” He shuddered. “Anyway, a marriage! How marvelous!”

  By my side, Victoire looked as nervous as a cat. If I knew her better, I’d have tried to take her hand. As it was, I nodded at the padre. I was just as nervous.

  “So when is the happy day?” The padre picked up his tumbler of wine. “Spring weddings are full of hope.”

  “Well, we were thinking of maybe, uh, right now?”

  He coughed on the wine. Victoire jumped and I clapped him on the back.

  “Right now?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.” I tried to sound polite.

  “Trouble?” He coughed again and washed it down with a swallow. “To marry with no preparation or prayer, that’s trouble. My son, I am happy to officiate, but these things must be done with a clear conscience and a pure heart.”

  “You’ll never find a purer heart than Victoire’s,” I said, hoping I wasn’t mangling her name too badly.

  She tugged at my sleeve. “Monsieur.”

  “Wes.”

  “Wes, this won’t work,” she whispered. “It was a terrible idea.”

  Given that it was my terrible idea, her words stung. “It can work. We just need to be more convincing.”

  She shook her head. “Never mind.” She shrugged. “My problems are small in the middle of such a war. I shouldn’t think that my fears are bigger than anyone else’s.”

  She turned to go, but I caught her arm. If there’s one thing I knew, it was that fears were exactly as big as they wanted to be. “Wait another minute. Please?”

  She hesitated, but stopped. I let go of her arm and went up to the bar to retrieve the carafe.

  “More wine?” I didn’t wait for the padre’s
answer before filling up his glass. “See,” I said, sliding into the chair across from him, “I’m leaving tomorrow. Moving from building airplanes to flying them. It’s risky business, I know, and Victoire here has enough to worry about without adding me to the list. But it gives me a comfort to know there’s someone thinking of me down here on the ground.” I looked over at her, still standing in the doorway, listening. “And I hope she thinks the same thing. With all her worrying, I hope she takes comfort knowing that there’s someone trying to make the skies safe for her and hers.”

  Maybe it was the dim light of the tavern, but I almost thought she might cry again. The padre, that sentimental goat, was unashamedly misty-­eyed. He emptied his glass and smacked it down on the table. “I’ll do it.”

  “You mean it?” Victoire came over to the table, fists clenched tight against her sides. “You’ll marry us? Tonight?”

  “Oh, why not.” He peered into his now-­empty glass. “It’s been a good night.”

  She exhaled. Her “never mind” had come with a held breath.

  The padre plucked the carafe from my hand. “Tonight, a wedding. Tomorrow, a marriage!”

  An hour later, a missal in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, the padre married Victoire and me at the bar of the little Pruniers tavern. I slipped my class ring onto her thumb and, for the first time that evening, she smiled.

  WE HAD WHAT was likely the shortest and least indelicate honeymoon in the history of time. It lasted, from “I do” to farewell, about an hour and a half.

  After our quick little ceremony, there were many rounds of drinks, paid for, I think, by me. The padre offered an excessively long toast that managed to reference Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Tarzan of the Apes. It was quite a feat. I played “Grand Old Flag” on my harmonica. The waitress took off her apron and sang in French. From the roars of laughter and the padre’s red cheeks, I was sure it was bawdy.

  As the song was followed by a second, and then a third and fourth that had the waitress crying with laughter, Victoire got quieter and quieter. I could guess what she was thinking. Businesslike marriage or not, it was technically our wedding night and my increasing drunkenness probably didn’t inspire much confidence. We hadn’t so much as held hands during the wedding ceremony, and the padre, who forgot half of the words despite the missal in his hands, never quite got to the “kiss the bride” part. Of course an insistent part of me had very high hopes for the rest of the evening, but my pickled brain remembered, somewhat regretfully, that I was a nicer guy than that.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to her, leaning in. She had, I noticed, exceptional eyebrows. “All I ask is for a handshake to seal the deal.”

  “Really?” she asked, with such a note of relief that I felt like a clod for my thoughts only seconds ago.

  I swallowed. “Really.”

  The padre came up behind us and slung an arm companionably over my shoulders. “May your marriage last longer than the wedding.”

  “It happened so quickly it hardly seems real,” Victoire murmured.

  “Oh, it isn’t,” the padre reassured her. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t reassuring at all.

  “What?” I blinked and slid out from under his arm. “Wait, you are a real priest, aren’t you?”

  He swayed on his feet, but he nodded.

  “Then why did you say it isn’t real?”

  He hiccupped. “Well, in the eyes of that guy up there”—­he pointed a wavering finger up at the ceiling—­“you’re as married as two geese.”

  Victoire frowned. “But geese don’t get married.”

  “Shh! Don’t interrupt.” He licked his lips. “Where was I?”

  “Not really married,” I reminded, somewhat more forcefully than necessary.

  “Ah, yes. Eyes of God . . . married as geese . . . but, you see, the French government has a very different opinion.” He helped himself to more wine. “God may have more commandments, but the French, they have more paperwork.”

  Victoire steadied herself on the edge of the table.

  “Well, then,” I said, “show me where to sign.” Though I likely couldn’t draw a straight line in my current state, I would damned well try.

  “Ha! Sign. There’s more to it than that.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and held up a finger to start a count. “Four things. You must have banns called three times in your home parish.” He ticked off the next finger. “You must have a contract signed by a notary.” Two more fingers, stuck together. “You must present the notarized contract to the town registrar so that the marriage can be recorded.” He paused and squinted at his fingers. “That was four right there, wasn’t it?”

  I didn’t argue. “Then this was all for nothing.”

  “So,” Victoire said slowly, “if we do all of that, we will make the marriage legal?”

  He blinked. “Well, I suppose so.”

  She turned to me, and said, soft and low, “This can work.”

  “But I’ll be leaving.”

  “I will take care of it all. The banns, the contract, the registration. I can get it.”

  Until now, Victoire had seemed almost apathetic about the whole marriage thing. “You would do that?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Two weeks, it will take. Two weeks for you to decide if you really want this or if it was a regrettable impulse.”

  I was a few hours and many glasses into the evening and didn’t regret a thing. “You’re giving me an out?”

  “An out?”

  “If it doesn’t work, or if I . . . change my mind . . . well, you’ll be no better off than you were this morning.”

  “Oui,” she said. “But also no worse than this morning.”

  She held out her hand.

  “And in that two weeks, you’ll write to me?” I asked.

  “Every day.”

  I took her hand.

  But she didn’t shake it right away. She stood for a moment, holding it.

  “Will you promise me something?” she asked.

  Her hand was warm. “Anything,” I said.

  She hesitated, her hand in mine. “Will you promise not to write in return?”

  “Not?” Surely I didn’t hear that right. “Wait, you don’t want me to reply?”

  “You said yours was a dangerous job. You said you didn’t expect to come home.” She licked her lower lip. “For me, the danger is losing my heart.”

  Something about her request made my face feel warm. I never thought my bumbling words could make a woman fall for me. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to send her piles of letters.

  But of course, I said, “Sure.” I said, “Not a single reply.” And she looked so relieved that I knew it was the right answer.

  She shook my hand, more firmly than any handshake I’d ever received. I supposed, though, that this was the most important business contract I’d ever entered into. It deserved a serious handshake. My class ring—­hers now—­was cold against my palm.

  I thought that would be it, the hearty handshake and a tipped hat in farewell. But halfway out the door, she suddenly spun on her heel and ran back to me. Pushing herself up on her tiptoes, she kissed me.

  A guy isn’t supposed to admit this, not when he’s twenty-­two years old and the brother of a confirmed playboy, but it was my very first kiss. I didn’t know if they were supposed to be that quick or that weightless but I felt a little tight in my chest as she stepped back.

  “Thank you,” she said. My very new wife then walked out the door, leaving me with a pounding heart and the beginnings of a headache.

  ON THE RIDE from Pruniers the next morning, my heart was still pounding. This time, though, with dawn breaking through the window of the train, it was due to planes and not girls.

  I’d told Victoire that I was afraid, and I wasn’t lying. We’d learned to rebuild Curti
ss Jennys in Texas, S.E.5s in England, Sopwiths and SPADs in Scotland. We knew our way around engines and we knew how to rig a plane, but could count flying hours on our fingers. We were pilots, but pilots who spent more time under planes than in them. And even that time in the air, gliding over Texas deserts or the Firth of Clyde, I knew it wasn’t the same. Not the same as here, where the sky lit up with shells, where smoke clung to everything, where ambulances bounced past, taking the dead and the living. To fly up over cannon fire with nothing much more than canvas and wood between me and two miles of air. Val hadn’t lasted a month out here on the front. I had no reason to think I would last even that long.

  The throbbing hangover I brought along from Pruniers didn’t help, nor did the blushing recollection that I’d somehow managed to get married last night. Both Victoire and wine had let me forget, for an evening, that I was going to be, at last, a real live pilot. Emphasis, I hoped, on “live.” My stomach lurched and I convinced myself that it was the lingering wine in my veins. Somewhere up there, Val was playing the lute and shaking his beautiful head at me.

  I wanted to do nothing more than sleep for a week. As it was I got a jostled and icy cold nap on the train. My hangover didn’t ease up, but I didn’t mind. The longer the train ride, the better, in my opinion. I was probably the only one in my squadron who would’ve been happy as a hound dog to stay back tinkering with engines and unloading train cars rather than heading to the front. Of course I couldn’t let any of them know. I cheered with the rest of the squadron and laced up my flying boots, all the while trying to not let anyone see how I was quaking in them.

  I didn’t know Victoire, yet I’d dragged her into the mess of my life. All she’d wanted was to cry in peace in the hallway outside of the medical department, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone. A drunken priest and a desperate proposal later, and she was halfway married to a fraud. She thought I was a pilot. Little did she know I was only pretending. Good thing the padre gave her an out.

  I’d begun to feel marginally better, until we rattled to a stop in Toul and climbed stiffly out of the train for the freezing walk to the aerodrome. As it loomed near and I saw the SPADs all lined up on the airfield, my heart started pounding again.