But as the week passed and Clara refused to soften toward him or even speak to him, his feelings hardened into anger at her intransigence. He has not been unfaithful to her. He has not had an affair. He is sorry for what happened, but damn it, it isn’t the worst thing that anyone has ever done, and it is not as if she is the easiest person in the world to be married to, with her temper tantrums and her suspicions.
It is spirals of thoughts like this that send him out with his camera first thing in the morning. He walks along the roads to discover what miseries the war has unearthed. These uprooted people have been driven from their homes by something so much more tangible than his own ridiculous difficulties. He hears their stories, and when he goes home each night for their stiffly awkward evening meal, he retells them, hoping that Clara will realize that there are bigger forces at work in the world than her own misconstrued jealousies. Hoping she will see her resentment in the proper perspective. But she will not turn toward him even briefly. And after a while he stops trying to reach her.
Marion is a different matter altogether. That same afternoon she had found him in his study. She knocked, then slipped inside and stood with her back to the door, and he remembers how sad she looked then.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
“I should leave. Tomorrow if possible. I just want enough time to try to talk to Clara and tell her …” She trailed off. “Actually, I don’t know what I’ll tell her.”
“Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s best. I suppose it’s best if you go.”
“Will you go to town and find out when there will be a train?”
“Yes.” He stood up and moved toward the door, and she moved away, skittish even to be in the same room with him now.
“She won’t forgive us, you know,” Marion said, not looking at him.
“What is there to forgive exactly? We didn’t do anything. She’ll see that in a while, just let her calm down and she’ll see reason. She’ll understand.”
“No,” Marion said, “I don’t think she will.” Her voice was low and he fought an overwhelming sense that the right thing to do was to go over to where she stood and put his arms around her.
“I’ll go and see when you can get a train to Paris,” he said, and went out.
THE DAY AFTER he sends the telegram, a reply comes from New York. ADVISE STRATEGIC RETREAT, it says, and Edward feels a momentary pang of annoyance that Alfred has taken this as an opportunity to display his wit. He supposes that is a luxury one has, being so far away. COME TO NY, the telegram continues. They do not only have to leave their house, but they must leave France: nowhere here is safe now.
He drives to town one more time and asks about trains. The stationmaster repeats that he doesn’t know, so Edward tells him he won’t leave the office without some idea of whether and when a westbound train might stop there. The man shrugs. If they want to leave, he says, they can wait to get on one of the trains that are heading back toward the coast after taking soldiers to the front, but it could be a day or more before one stopped at Esbly. They would have to come to the station and be ready to get on it when it arrived. He couldn’t say when that would be, but it was usually later, in the evening.
Edward drives home. When he arrives, it is just beginning to get dark, and the house is illuminated, the windows letting an orange glow out into the dusk. He can look in and see Mary and Kate sitting by a fire in the salon. Clara is across the room from them, seated at the piano. She is singing softly, and after a minute he recognizes the song. It’s one of the countess’s arias from Figaro: Dove sono i bei momenti, she sings. Where are the golden moments of tranquility? Why can’t I forget the joys that used to be? Upstairs there is a light in the bedroom that is Marion’s. Looking in at them like this, he feels that he is seeing a scene that is now inexorably part of the past and that will never exist in the present again, not even if the war were to end tomorrow. There is so much to leave behind here, in this house, in France. They will not even have time to stop and see Rose and Rodin before they leave. He has tried to think of a way to do this, to break up their journey, but he is worried that if they stop in Paris they will not make it to Marseilles and the boat that he hopes will take them from there back to America.
For a minute he stands outside in the dark, watching them, listening. Then he opens the door and goes in.
THEY CAN ONLY take with them what they can carry, so each of them must choose carefully what to put in their suitcases. Clara tells the girls that they can each take one thing from the house besides their clothing and personal belongings. Kate immediately chooses the piano.
“You can’t take the piano, Catkin,” Edward tells her. “It’s too big. Choose something else.”
“But what will Mama play if we leave it behind?”
“I promise there will be pianos where we are going, and Mama can play on those.”
“Where are we going?”
“To New York.”
“Have I ever been there before?”
“No, my darling, but you’ll like it. It is a big city with very tall buildings and lots of people, like Paris.”
“I don’t want to go,” Kate says. “You go and I’ll stay here and look after things until you get back.”
“You can’t stay here on your own. Your mama and papa would miss you too much, and besides, it won’t be safe here. We have to leave to make sure that we keep safe. Now go on upstairs to your room and start to get packed. And choose something else to bring with you.” Kate nods her head and begins to climb the stairs, but midway up she stops.
“Papa?” She is looking down at him through the banisters.
“Yes, Catkin?”
“If it isn’t safe, why aren’t we taking François and Louisa with us when we go away?”
THE NEXT DAY is consumed with packing and readying the house for their departure. Edward ferries his paintings inside from his studio and locks them up in the attic, along with the silver, and Clara’s dresses and jewelry that they won’t be able to take with them. His photographs and negatives are already stored inside a big closet in the study. He looks through them and decides that he can probably manage to take only one small case. He leaves the task of choosing which ones will go into it until after he has finished the other things he needs to do.
Marion has only a little to pack for herself. She offers her help tentatively to Clara, and it is accepted tentatively. On his trips to and from his studio, Edward sees the two women sorting through the food in the pantry, seeing what can be taken to neighbors and what must simply be thrown away. They seem to be speaking only a little, when it is necessary to the work they are doing. He watches the kitchen emptied of its life.
Clara rides over to Huiry to tell Mildred that they are leaving and ask her to come with them, but again, Mildred refuses. She will stay and wait it out, she says. Without children, she doesn’t see any reason why she should remove herself.
“I just arrived last year,” she tells Clara. “I intended to retire here, and I don’t see that the war is necessarily a reason to change all my plans.” Clara tries to persuade her but eventually gives up and comes home. Edward cannot believe it when she first relates this to him, but then he thinks that this stoicism is just what he would have expected.
By the evening they are ready to leave. Clara brings the girls’ bags downstairs and sets them near the front door. Mary has chosen some books to bring with her; Kate has decided on her favorite blue teddy bear instead of the piano, and this now perches on top of the luggage, a wall-eyed lookout, its lumpy limbs straddling the top of a suitcase. Edward and Clara put Kate to bed when she starts to yawn. He stands in the doorway of her room, watching Clara pull the sheets up to Kate’s chin; this is the first moment of peace they have had together in weeks. Clara stands up and rubs her eyes.
“I’m going to go to bed,” she says and makes her way down the hall to their room.
“I’ll be in soon,” he says, but
she has already gone.
Edward isn’t sleepy, and anyway, he still has one last thing to pack: his photographs. He has left them until now because he doesn’t want to have to make this choice. It is too daunting to go through the files upon files of prints and plates and choose a handful to save. The others, the ones he leaves behind, might be fine when he comes back, whenever that turns out to be. But he is thinking of the stories of burning towns and houses reduced to rubble that he has been hearing all week, and he knows this is not something he should count on.
What, then, is it necessary to save? He takes the first few files from his closet—they are all ordered by date and series. He sits on the floor of his study and begins to spread them out in front of him, spaced like Tarot cards. These are pictures of a wood in winter, near his parents’ house in Wisconsin. Some of them have been sold, but not all. They are several years old, silver chloride, the blacks soft as charcoal. He absolutely must save this file for certain. He puts it into the case.
But it turns out that he feels the same way about the next file, too, and the one after that and the one after that. In fact, he can’t bear to leave a single one of them behind. He makes choices and then changes his mind. He is paralyzed, unable to even begin to sort them out.
Just when he is about to give up completely, the door creaks and then opens a little. Clara steps into the room.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says. She looks at the uneven stacks of photographs around him on the floor. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to choose which ones to bring with me. I can only take a few. Just enough to fill this.” He holds up the small, square-edged case for her to see.
“That is not very many.” She comes and sits beside him on the floor and starts to sift through the piles of photographs. He is about to object, but then he feels too tired to bother. She begins to pull individual prints from among the hundreds that are there.
“This one,” she says. “And this one.” She holds them up for him to see. He nods, and puts her choices into the case. She picks up another sheaf of photographs. “This, this and this.” She is going through and pulling out what seem to him to be not necessarily his best work, but rather the most important moments from his life, from their life together. He wonders for a moment how she is able to know this so automatically; but, then, this strange insight of hers seems wonderful after the absurd nightmare of the past weeks, and he does not want to question it too much. He is grateful for any evidence of human understanding. Before long they have filled the case with photographs and plates. Clara puts the rest of the pictures away in the closet and locks it.
“What should I do with the key?” she asks. “Should we bring it with us?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think we need to do that.” She opens the top drawer of the desk and puts the key inside, where he always keeps it. She pauses before she slides it closed. “Just as though we weren’t leaving,” she says.
When Edward wakes up the next morning, it is not yet fully light, and he stares around the dim room, unsure of what has woken him. Clara is asleep beside him, her dark hair visible against the white pillow beneath. Then he hears it: low and distant, booming, repeated in uneven staccato. Like a drum, he thinks. Like thunder. He lies in the dark, listening, until dawn.
FRANÇOIS DRIVES THEM to the station in the afternoon. From the top of the hill that leads down to the railway line through Esbly, they can see that they are not alone: the street outside the station is crowded with carts and people waiting with their luggage. They look like the things that wash up on a beach, gathered around the entrance to the station house with an air of not quite knowing how they got there. They are all hoping for a train that will stop and carry them west.
They wait. François sits up front and smokes his pipe. All of the trains that pass are going east and none of them stop. The sun begins to sink and the light turns golden. They are quiet mostly; none of them have slept well. Edward sees the effects of weariness on the faces around him, the drawn mouths and sunken eyes, and knows his own must look much the same. Only Kate is restless.
“When will the train come?”
“Kate, Papa doesn’t know,” Mary says.
“Why not?”
“Because nobody knows, Catkin. We just have to be patient and wait.”
“OK. But can Mary and I walk into town, just while we are waiting? We can buy some licorice for the journey.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we have to be ready when the train does come, because it might not stop for very long and we don’t know when there will be another one.”
“I see.” She settles down and begins explaining this to her blue bear. Edward sees her wagging her finger at it, her face serious. “We have to be ready because there might not ever be another train. Not ever.”
“That’s not right, is it, Papa?” Mary asks. “There will be another train eventually.”
“Yes, I promise. This will not be the last train. They just aren’t coming very often at the moment.”
“Katie, come here and I’ll read to you,” says Clara. She lets the little girl snuggle up beside her. She opens the copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that she has been reading to Kate.
Edward listens to Clara’s voice, not really hearing the words, only the gentle up-and-down of its cadences. Kate puts her head down in her mother’s lap and is soon dozing, and Clara closes the book and begins to put it away in her portmanteau.
“Wait,” Edward says. “Keep going. Would you?”
Clara nods and opens the book again. When she gets tired, she passes it to Marion, seated opposite, and she takes over. They hear about Huck and Jim on the raft, about the cruelty and vicissitudes of Huck’s father, the freedom of the river. Around them the light is going.
Then, from far away comes a high, sustained whistle. Edward stands up on the front seat, trying to see down the tracks. Gradually, the noise of the locomotive detaches from the gloom; the rails shake; they can see its single headlight. Around them, people are standing up and stretching or clambering to the pavement. They pass trunks and cases down, carry or drag them toward the platform. As the train approaches, an urgency catches among them and spreads quickly. They shout instructions to each other. The platform is soon filled with people; they jostle to get up the steps.
“Let’s go,” François says, and Edward jumps down to take the bags he hands over the side of the cart. Marion and Clara each pick up a suitcase and join the stream of people. Edward takes another and follows them. To their left there is a crash and swearing. Two women bend over a trunk that has come open, throwing something white onto the damp cobbles: when he gets a little closer, he sees it is a wedding dress. The women scoop it up and stuff it back inside the trunk, leaning on the lid to get it closed. Then they set off again, half-lifting, half-dragging, the trunk between them.
It takes three trips to get all the bags to the platform. By now the train has pulled in, hissing steam. It is a cattle train, and the wooden carriages are windowless except for a long slit about two thirds of the way up their sides. People have already flung open the heavy doors, and they are loading children and belongings inside, helping the elderly climb aboard. A company of Territorials have come out of the first carriage and are stretching their legs and helping people put their baggage into the cars. Edward tells Mary to wait by the bags and goes back to get the last things he has left: a small box of Clara’s, and his case of photographs.
When he reaches the cart, he finds François standing beside it looking distressed.
“I didn’t notice,” he says. “I didn’t see that she was gone.”
Kate is nowhere to be found. Edward looks toward the station, but the crowd is now so dense that he couldn’t see Kate even if she were there. Marion and Clara appear out of the throng.
“Where is Kate?” Clara asks.
“I don’t know,” says François miserably. Clara shrieks and turns to Edward.
“I thought you had her. I thought you were keeping an eye on her.” She starts across the yard and then goes out into the street, calling Kate’s name. Edward stands there as though frozen to the spot. He has no idea what to do now. Marion steps forward and puts a hand on his arm.
“I’ll take Clara up and we’ll put the luggage onto the train.” Her voice is calm and steady. “You and François go and look for Kate. Clara will never find her when she is this upset.”
Edward nods, and before he has time to say anything Marion has set off after Clara. He sees her guide Clara back toward the station. The two women climb the steps and disappear into the crowd.
Edward and François split up and make their way around the periphery of the station yard. They shout for Kate, but there is no reply, no sign of her anywhere. Edward stops the few stragglers still making their way to the train.
“Have you seen a little girl?” he asks them. “About six. Dark hair. Carrying a blue bear …” But they shake their heads: no one has seen her. François goes out into the street and begins searching the gardens of the houses that line the road. But how far can she have gone in so little time? Edward takes one more turn around the station yard. He is just about to give up and follow François when he sees something move beside the station house. Peering into the dark, he can make out the form of a small child, crouched in the building’s shadow. He bounds over and scoops her up into his arms.
“I hid,” she says. “From the soldiers.”
“I can see that. Never, never do that again. Do you hear me?” He is too relieved to be angry. He carries her across the yard. They move through the confusion of the platform until they find Clara and Marion handing the last of their bags up to Mary, who is already on board the train. He passes Kate into her mother’s arms.
“You’d better get on board,” François says. “It will be leaving soon. Here.” He offers Clara his arm so that she can climb up. She puts Kate inside next to Mary.
The Last Summer of the World Page 27