by Phillip Rock
Clickety-click . . . clickety-click. The wheels sang to the rails . . . the whistle blew sharply . . . the outskirts of Paris whipped past the window, the scattered fields and dingy houses of Vanves and Malakoff. And then the great sprawling city itself. She had been to Paris many times as a girl—to visit the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the shops on the rue St. Honoré with Mama. Now she was coming to Paris alone to confront a man—a married man thirteen years older than she! Her heart sank and a fine dew of icy sweat formed on her upper lip.
She felt like a sleepwalker as the crowd of passengers propelled her along the platform. And then she saw him. He stood with his back to a kiosk, anxiously watching the flow of people, and she knew, watching him, that she had been right in coming. What would he have done if she had not been on the train? If he had stood there until the last passenger had walked down the platform, leaving nothing in view but open carriage doors and bits of scuffed newspaper drifting in the wind?
“Good afternoon, Major Mackendric.”
He had not seen her approach. He looked at her, startled, and then let out a sigh and pushed his cap to the back of his head.
“And a very good afternoon to you. I was starting to give you up.”
“I was a bit wedged in. The train was terribly crowded.”
“Yes, I could see that.”
She was wearing a pale blue uniform with a short, darker blue cape trimmed in red. One of the gowns made for her by Ferris. It made her look like a stage actress playing the role of a nurse.
“How nice you look,” he said. “May I carry your suitcase?”
She handed him her small leather overnight bag. “Are you somewhat surprised that I came?”
“A bit . . . yes. But delighted.”
“I debated about it, but then I had a long talk with your brother.”
“Ah. And what did Dennis tell you about me?”
“That you’re married . . . among other things.”
His eyes had a vacant look. “Yes. Been married for several years.”
“Dennis is quite concerned about you. He has the feeling that you’re . . . well, reaching the end of your rope, so to speak. That was the impression I had when we first met. You made me think of a man clinging to a cliff by his fingertips.”
“What picturesque imagery.”
“I think you’re just horribly lonely and need companionship . . . someone to talk to, to share a good meal with.”
“A chum, in other words.”
“Yes . . . something like that.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“It’s really no trouble at all. We can be together until Sunday evening . . . visit the Louvre . . . go out to Versailles. I can stay at the YWCA.”
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “I suppose you could, at that.”
She had been rehearsing what she would say all the way up from Chartres, going over and over her lines and trying to anticipate his response. She had expected a more volatile reaction—disappointment at least, possibly even anger. His bland acceptance threw her a little off balance. She felt vaguely nauseated.
“Is it terribly hot? Or do I have a fever?”
He placed a hand on her brow, then sought her wrist, his fingers pressing softly against the pulse.
“A bit rapid, but you’re not feverish. It’s very humid today . . . chance of rain.”
“Perhaps if I walk for a bit . . . get some fresh air.”
“Just the ticket. Hold on to my arm if you feel the least bit faint. You need a cold glass of Chablis with a splash of soda in it. I know just the place.”
She went with him meekly, holding his arm lightly. He seemed taller than she remembered. Slightly stoop-shouldered. Surgeon’s stoop, Matron called it. All doctors seemed to have it. It came from bending over things for years—books, cadavers, patients in operating theaters. His uniform hung loosely on his thin frame, and his Sam Browne belt was unpolished, his cap visor slightly cracked. An officer in name only, but two English sergeants striding briskly along the boulevard Pasteur snapped him stiff-handed salutes, their eyes fixed not on the crown emblems of his rank but on the RAMC badges of his worth.
There was a sidewalk café on the rue de Vaugirard, with green-painted iron tables and chairs under brightly striped umbrellas. The place was crowded, but three young men wearing soiled white jackets over their shirts stood up with their glasses of beer and empty saucers.
“Kindly take our table, Docteur,” one of them said in halting English.
“Merci.” He watched them stroll off into the crowd, table hopping. “Students. There’s a first-rate training hospital around the corner on the rue de Sèvres. I attended a seminar there. Your Dr. Jary conducted it.”
“How interesting.”
“He was a professor of orthopedics. That would have been in the spring of nineteen ten.”
That comment made her painfully aware of the difference in their ages. She had been a plump schoolgirl in the spring of 1910, struggling with Latin verbs. He had been a doctor attending a seminar.
“Did you visit this café then?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“Rather like going back in time, isn’t it?”
He watched the students impassively. “A bit, but from the wrong side of the looking glass.”
The Chablis and soda was icily effervescent and she drank her glass quickly.
“It’s mostly wine, you know,” he cautioned.
“I don’t care. A moderate amount of alcohol can be a boon to the spirits. That’s a rather silly pun by my brother Charles. Do you enjoy puns?”
“Not particularly.”
“Neither do I.” She rolled the cool glass between her palms. “Why are you so reluctant to go on leave? Your brother’s afraid you’ll work yourself to death.”
“I’m reluctant because there are far more wounded up the line than there are surgeons to care for them.”
“No one man is indispensable, Major.”
“I am.”
A gendarme strolling past the café told them that the YWCA hotel was in the rue Poliveau near the Gare d’Austerlitz.
“Oh, dear,” Alexandra said. “That’s quite a long way from here, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Major Mackendric said. “But we can take a taxi.”
“It’s so pleasant now, I thought we might go for a walk. Do you mind awfully carrying my bag?”
“Not at all. It isn’t heavy.”
“Could we go to the Eiffel Tower?”
“If you’d like.”
“I always loved watching the sunset from the observation deck when I was a child. You see, one is quite capable of going back in time.”
He was so unlike any man she had ever known that it was pointless to even try to find points of similarity. To begin with, he didn’t try to impress her. No stories of great deeds done on the cricket field, of point-to-point races or rowing against Cambridge, or Oxford, as the case might be. And no funny stories to make her laugh or conjuring tricks or riddles. He was simply . . . himself. Moody, introspective—and yet capable of breaking out of his thoughts from time to time to tell her one thing or another. The history of that building, how such and such a street they crossed had received its name. He had a student’s knowledge of Paris and spoke French flawlessly, but with a hideous accent that made Frenchmen smile. He knew a great deal about architecture, engineering, music, literature, and botany, and touched on all of those subjects as they walked slowly through the gardens of the Champ de Mars before and after visiting the tower. It was dark by then, and he took her to a restaurant by the Seine near the Pont de l’Alma.
“One thing you have not talked about,” she said, as she sat thoughtfully spearing a truffle with her fork, “is medicine. One has the feeling that you’re ashamed of being a doctor.”
“I’m ashamed of our limitations. I’m ashamed at the burden mankind has thrust upon us during the past year. No. Let me retract that. Not ashamed . . . angry.”
Yes, she t
hought, studying his face across the table in the glow of the candles, it wasn’t pain that she had noticed in his eyes at all, but anger—deep, smoldering fury. The realization shocked and puzzled her, and she was unable to finish her meal.
“You don’t eat very much, do you, Miss Alexandra Greville?”
She stared at his eyes. The brooding rage was gone for a moment. She recalled her own comment to him at the inn by the river in Chartres.
“Tit for tat.” She looked down at her plate. “I feel a bit tired all of a sudden.”
“Let’s go then. I’ll call for a taxi.”
“Is a taxi necessary?”
“Lord, yes. The rue Poliveau is miles from here . . . the other side of Paris.”
She prodded a sautéed tomato with her fork, moving it from one side of her plate to the other. “I don’t think I wish to stay at the YWCA hotel. No . . . I don’t want to at all. I . . . I’m certain that where you are staying is far more pleasant. Is it?”
“It’s . . . a nice old hotel, yes.”
“Can we walk there?”
“I suppose so. It’s on the Right Bank . . . rue Tronchet. But are you sure you want to walk? Are you . . . absolutely sure you want to go at all?”
She nodded and looked up, meeting his eyes, holding her gaze without flinching. “Yes. Quite sure. But not in a taxi. There’s something rather . . . sordid about going to an assignation in a taxicab.”
His smile was slight, almost sad. “It’s not an ‘assignation’ if we go together.”
Her face was burning and the realization made her angry. She hated to appear so disgustingly virginal.
“Oh, very well, call a taxi if you wish.”
“No. We’ll walk. A quiet, leisurely, ‘unsordid’ stroll.”
She had no possible way of knowing what to expect. Every novel she had ever read had concluded the seduction scene with a series of dots. At school she had pooled her ignorance with that of the other girls. Once she had seen a drawing in Gray’s Anatomy of a penis—a tubular thing, reminiscent of a flayed eel. She had always suspected that Lydia knew, but Lydia had never told her anything except, “You’ll find out in time.” The time was now. She lay naked in a wide bed on the fourth floor of a hotel in the very shadow of the Madeleine. Naked, vulnerable to violent assault by a man as naked as herself. But of course she wasn’t being assaulted, and had known that she wouldn’t be the moment they entered the room. He hadn’t “pulled her passionately into his arms” the way Elinor Glyn would have described it; he had simply looked at her after closing the door and said, “Well, this is my room . . . and I’m overwhelmingly happy you’re in it.”
His hand moved slowly over her body in the darkness, fingers stroking the hollow of her throat, straying across her breasts, abdomen, the petal softness between her thighs.
“How lovely you are, Alexandra,” he said in quiet wonder. “A miracle.”
She wanted to tell him that she loved him for his gentleness and for the pleasure he was giving her with his firm, sure touch, but she was incapable of speech. Nothing emerged from her throat but low moans and tiny whimpers. She moved her hands and touched her breasts. They seemed to be larger, swollen, the nipples thick and taut. She touched his body, clinging to him, pulling him closer to her, legs parting to embrace him totally.
“I shan’t hurt you,” he whispered.
She didn’t care, barely was aware of the sharp stab of pain as he entered her. The pain flowed upward, dissolved, ended . . . replaced by an agony that was beyond her powers to describe. She dug her fingers into his heaving back and smothered her gasps against his shoulder. She felt consumed, every nerve drawn out in fiery tendrils, molten wax coursing under her flesh. It was a torture so exquisite that she felt she must scream if it continued for another second, and then the fever peaked . . . subsided . . . and she felt limp, drowsily exhausted. Normal senses returned. She noticed the patch of light on the ceiling, heard the trumpeting Klaxon horns from the street below. Her hands lingered on Major Mackendric’s long body.
“Robbie,” she murmured. “Robbie.”
The thought of leaving him filled her with dread. The world seemed bleak on Sunday morning despite the sunlight flooding the room. She wouldn’t allow him to leave the bed, clinging wantonly to him; the frothy silk, outrageously seductive nightgown she had bought Saturday afternoon slid provocatively off one shoulder.
“Take me with you.”
“No,” he said, kissing her breasts through the silk, “quite impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?” she pouted. “I’m a nurse . . . I can work by your side.”
“You’re a volunteer girl . . . fluffing pillows and sponging fevered brows.”
“And bedpans . . . and working the autoclave machine. I’d be useful.” She kissed the top of his head and ruffled his hair with her fingers. “And there would be nights when we could be together . . . in some charming country inn.”
He moved away from her and sat with his back against the headboard.
“There are no charming country inns in the salient. Nothing up there but shelled-out villages, shelled-out woods, shelled-out roads. And troops . . . troops everywhere. Coming up to the line . . . moving back. There’s no privacy at all, not for anyone. No, you’ll go back to Chartres and I’ll take the night train to Saint-Omer.” He cupped her chin in both hands and bent forward to kiss her softly on the lips. “I shall miss you, Alex. These have been the most wondrous two days of my life. When things get too bad, I’ll hold on to my sanity by remembering you.”
It was over. She had known it would have to end. The realization of it had struck her on Saturday when they had left the hotel for a few hours. She had walked with a singular sense of pride, head back, chin up, telling the world by the jauntiness of her step that she was no longer a virgin. Her buying of the nightgown in a small, elegant shop on the Petits Champs—Major Mackendric waiting patiently outside—had been no more than a gesture, the acquiring of a talisman that, through its magic of silk and lace, might bind him to her. But as the salesgirl had folded the flimsy garment into a box, she knew that she would have only that one night to wear it, that on Sunday they would part, most probably forever.
“May I write to you? I write marvelous letters.”
“I can’t stop you, Alex, but do you think it’s wise?” He took both of her hands into his and pressed them gently. “Alex . . . you’re a beautiful, passionate nineteen-year-old woman. When you step off the train in Chartres, you will probably meet a handsome, gallant twenty-year-old man. You’ll be married in a church and forget all about me. That’s as it should be. You shared two days of your life with me and you could never comprehend how much it’s meant to me. I said that one can’t go back. I was wrong. For just a little while I was back in a time where there were no unending horrors, and for that I shall always be grateful.”
“Oh, Robbie,” she whispered, kissing his hands. “We must see each other again.”
“That would be next to impossible. It might be months before I could manage even a few days’ leave.”
“Oh, damn this silly war! Maybe it will end tomorrow.”
“Yes,” he said tonelessly, “maybe it will.”
She found it impossible to get him out of her mind. If there had been someone to confide in, someone to share her thoughts with, it might have been halfway bearable. But there was no one. Even her only link with him was gone—Dennis Mackendric, moved to number 11 Stationary Hospital in Rouen. The days dragged and the nights became eternities. She yearned to plunge herself in work, to drown the image of Robin Mackendric in scrub water and mountains of rolled bandages, but the hospital was half empty now, entire wards barren, and the staff increased by the arrival of seven more VAD girls from England and three French nurses. The great offensive was beginning in this last week of September, the British striking from Ypres to Loos, the French attacking in Champagne with thirty-five divisions.
“It will take a little time before the blessés filter do
wn to us,” Dr. Jary told the staff. “From aid posts to casualty clearing stations, corps dressing stations, base hospitals . . . But we shall get our share, never fear.”
She took French leave, made an impulsive departure, catching the train at five in the morning for Paris and then the train to Saint-Omer. A British military policeman walked up to her when she stepped off the train and asked to see her papers. She was wearing her heavy winter cape because the weather had turned sour and she looked suitably like an army nurse. The man barely glanced at her identity papers and handed them back.
“Going to number fourteen General, Sister?”
“No . . . number twenty CCS . . . near Kemmel.”
He whistled softly through his teeth. “Been up there before, have you?”
“No . . . I haven’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Well . . . might be a bit difficult. Terrible amount of traffic on the roads. There’ll be a hospital train leaving in the morning as far as Bailleul, or you could try your luck with the ambulance transport officer.” He pointed his baton in the general direction of the town. “He’s in the rue Hericat. Little whitewashed stone house . . . can’t miss it.”
The narrow, dingy streets were clogged with British soldiers marching through on their way from Calais to the front. Silent streams of rain-darkened khaki, the men hunched under their heavy packs. They reminded her of cattle plodding wearily through a market town.
There was a convoy of thirty empty ambulances leaving for Flanders, six of them marked for the Kemmel CCS. The ambulance transport officer, an elderly hollow-cheeked captain, didn’t question her right to go there and rubber-stamped her papers without saying so much as one word to her. The ambulance she got into reeked of carbolic, and the driver, a dour little Welshman, compounded the vile odor by smoking one cheap cigar after another.