I turned off the ignition and sat in the car for a few minutes, staring out the window. How unbelievable to think and feel that tomorrow it would be exactly sixty-two years to the day when the 152 names on the memorial became just names, names to be etched in stone; long enough so that even anniversaries pass unnoticed, until one day perhaps the monument itself cracks and crumbles and is finally bulldozed to make way for an office building, like Indian graves in Manhattan.
It took three attempts to get out of the seat, which seemed ludicrously close to the ground. I closed the door quietly and then leaned against the car, wheezing. The air was damp and sweet, as after a rain, and the gravel beneath my feet crackled loudly as I made my way down the path to the monument, clutching my cane tightly in one hand.
After a few yards I paused to catch my breath again, uncertain whether I suddenly felt much too cold or much too hot. Looking up I squinted and saw a young woman kneeling next to the monument and trimming the grass with hand clippers. There was a basket of fresh flowers on the ledge behind her. I didn’t want to frighten her so I tapped my cane loudly on the ground as I approached. She turned to look at me, and her face quickly relaxed as she saw that I was far too feeble to pose a threat.
I waved my cane and continued toward the far side of the memorial, where I could look out across the field to the low ridgeline several hundred yards away. The woman, who appeared to be in her early twenties, stood and approached me.
“Bonjour,” she said.
“Hello,” I said, turning toward her just as I felt a series of sharp spasms in my abdomen. Her face was beautiful and I tried not to wince as I pushed down hard on my cane to keep my balance. With my left hand I felt for a bottle of painkillers in my coat pocket.
Oh but her face.
“You’re American?” she asked, in perfect English.
I nodded.
“You must be a veteran,” she said, walking closer.
“I am.” I tried to stand straight.
“Of this battle? Were you here?”
“Afraid so. It dates me a bit, doesn’t it?”
She put down her clippers and wiped her hands. “I was just tidying the place up a bit,” she said. “I come by every year… ”
“For the anniversary?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think anyone remembered anymore,” I said.
“You’re the only other person I’ve ever seen here.” She took a few steps toward me, staring.
“It’s kind of you to visit,” I said. “Do you live nearby?”
“I grew up near here but I live in Paris now. What about you?”
“I’m traveling.” Was that it?
“Have you been back often?” she asked.
“Only once before, many years ago.”
“Is it very different?”
“A lot of it, yes. But it feels the same, at least right here.”
“Do the changes bother you?”
I shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“I’m not sure I could. But I’m talking too much. Here, let me gather my things and leave you in peace.”
“No please, don’t mind me. I just want to sit for a while.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
She picked up her clippers and walked to the other side of the memorial. I listened to the sound of the shears slicing through the grass.
“There, that’s enough for today,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She put the clippers into her blue nylon backpack and then sat down near me.
“I love this time of day,” she said. “Just when it starts to get a little hard to see things.”
“Between night and day.” Then I laughed to myself.
“What is it?”
“I was just thinking how the war ruined dawn and dusk.”
“Ruined them?”
“That’s when attacks were most likely so we always had to stand-to with fixed bayonets for an hour at sunrise and sunset.”
“I see.”
“And the pity was that’s all we had, just a small slice of the sky to stare at when it changed colors.”
“God, I’ve never thought of that. From a trench you really couldn’t see much else, could you?”
“It was kind of like living in a tall box with the top open,” I said.
She kept staring at me. “You look familiar,” she said, leaning toward me.
“Old people tend to look alike,” I said, feeling flushed by her attention.
“No, there is something about your face, your eyes.” She peered at me as though I were on display in a museum.
“My God, you’re the man in the portrait, aren’t you?” She looked almost awed and I noticed how clear her eyes were, as though they’d just been made.
“The portrait?” I stood up and tightened my grip on my cane, taking fast and shallow breaths and struggling to maintain my balance.
“Yes, the portrait my grandmother painted years ago. It was in her living room for, God, forever.”
“Julia?” I leaned harder on my cane.
“Yes, Julia!”
I staggered toward her a few steps.
She talked quickly: “There was one portrait of Grandfather Daniel, he was walking across a field. There was a church steeple in the background and he looked so tired and dirty. Sad, really. And then there was another painting of a man—of you—standing here, right in front of this memorial, standing in an overcoat like it had just rained. She said you were the only two men she ever really loved. But I thought you were, well I thought you were dead, that she’d lost you too.”
She loved me. Julia always did love me. I looked up at the sky.
“You thought I was… ”
“Well, she didn’t exactly say dead. It was just the way she talked about you. How both you and Daniel were frozen in time for her. Forever young. Her young soldiers… ”
“What about her husband?” I asked.
“What husband?”
“The one she married, around 1929?”
“She never married.”
“What?”
“Oh no. We used to tease her about it. She was so beautiful.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. What makes you think she married?”
I looked at her but couldn’t say anything. What did that mean? Was the engagement called off? Why wouldn’t she have told me that? Or was there no engagement? The thought suddenly overwhelmed me: there was no other man. Not for Julia. Certainly not that quickly. No, the letter she sent was to protect me, to keep me from looking for her. That was it, wasn’t it? She couldn’t bear to pull me away from my wife and son, even if it meant spending the rest of her life alone. And yet I was alone too.
All those years.
The young woman was still staring at me, her bright green eyes studying my reaction. She waited a minute, then said, “Your portrait is quite handsome, really. It’s hanging in my apartment in Paris. You and Grandfather were on either side of the fireplace at her house for years.”
“Her house… ”
“Not five miles from here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, she came to visit in, let’s see, 1928 I think it was, and never left.”
So you stayed behind. Someone else must have mailed the letter for you from New York. All those years in France. Alone amongst the ruins.
“She sent for my mother… ”
“Robin?”
“Yes. Are you okay?”
“Tell me, Julia is… ” But your face just told me. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
“I’m so sorry. She died just last year.”
I sat down again quickly and she sat next to me, this time closer. “She did quite well for herself with her art gallery. I always admired her so much; her work in the underground during the Second World War, her independence, the long walks she’d take in the countryside right up until the end. I think the land held some sort of magic for her. And sh
e always took special care of this memorial. We scattered her ashes around it. After she died, I decided it was my turn.”
I glanced over at the basket of flowers, then rested my cane along my knees, unable to talk.
“I’ll leave you for a moment,” she said softly, backing away and walking toward the trees. I stared up at the sky and watched as a flock of birds flew by.
When she returned she stood, staring at me. That’s when I saw the necklace.
She put her hand on it. “You recognize this? It was Julia’s.” She took it off and handed it to me. I laid it gently in my palm, then ran my fingers along the length of it, stopping to rub the sapphire pendant.
“Did you give it to her?”
I nodded.
“Then keep it, please.”
“No, I want you to have it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I handed it back to her. She self-consciously clasped it around her neck.
“You look like her,” I said.
“Oh yes, everybody used to say that. I’m quite flattered, really.”
“You’re… ”
“Natalie. I’m studying art at the Sorbonne. Painting.”
“You’ve got the right ancestry.”
“It’s a start.”
“A good one.”
I looked closely at her hair and her hands and the slenderness of her face. Then I turned toward the open field that stretched from one ridgeline to another. “Onions,” I laughed. “There are onions growing in no-man’s-land.”
She followed my eyes toward the field, which was now cultivated, and smiled.
“Your grandfather hated onions,” I said.
“I don’t know very much about him, I’m afraid. But I’m very curious. He’s always seemed like sort of a hero to me, not just because of the war but because of the way he and Grandmother met and ran away. It always sounded so romantic, especially when I was a young girl.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, close enough to each other so that I could smell her hair.
“Would you like a drink?” I said, reaching into my leather bag.
“Oh, I’ve got some water, thanks.”
“Ah, but you don’t have Scotch.”
“Scotch?” She raised her eyebrows and her cheeks tugged playfully at the sides of her mouth.
“I’ve brought along a bottle of Scotch—if you don’t mind sharing a glass I purloined from my hotel.”
“Why sure, thank you.” She sat next to me and watched as I carefully removed the lid from the bottle and poured a glass, pausing to look at the signatures.
I watched her take a drink and made sure to sip from precisely where she sipped without her noticing. A slight breeze brought her perfume right up against me and into my chest.
“I’m sorry to stare but you bring back a lot of memories,” I said.
“That’s all right,” she said with almost a giggle. “I stared at your face for years.” She turned and traced her fingers along a name carved in the granite: John Giles. I thought of his dog and his dreams of opening a movie theater in Cleveland.
“I have to meet someone for dinner tonight. Can I offer you a ride back to your hotel?” she asked.
“Thanks, but that’s my car there,” I said. “Or at least I borrowed it from the concierge at my hotel. It’s just down the road. Did you know I’m too old to rent a car? A bad risk, it seems. Couldn’t convince them I could see my hands in front of my face, not that I can. Anyway, I’d like to sit here awhile.” I looked over at Jack Lawton’s name and thought of him lisping one of his dirty stories.
“Oh, I understand. But it must be rather sad, thinking about all those poor men.” She put her hand on my forearm. “I’ve always hated being somewhere where loved ones once were and now they are not and I still am. It’s haunting.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said, watching our arms together, hers white and smooth and mine gray and wrinkled.
She started to say something, stopped and then said, “May I paint you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, I’d come back tomorrow—if you’d meet me. Would you sit for me? Here, in front of the memorial?”
“You really want to paint an old codger like me?” I thought of Tometti and his Italian love songs and I wondered whether Teresa was still alive.
“I was going to come back anyway to paint. It’s something I always promised myself I’d do. And now with you here, well, to think that I could paint the same man my grandmother painted… ”
“Yes, of course.”
She stood up. “So it’s a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
“How’s noon?”
“Shouldn’t we catch the morning light?” I asked.
“Oh yes, you’re right. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. How’s seven a.m.?”
“That’s great. You mean it?”
“I’ll be here.”
“And you’ll tell me what happened to you and Julia? She was very tight-lipped about you and I’m dying to know more.”
“It’s not a long story.”
“Please, I’d love to hear it.”
“Then I shall tell it to you. I shall tell you the story.”
“Wonderful.” She studied my face for a moment as if wondering where she would begin, then shuffled her feet and said, “Well, good-bye, then.”
“Yes, see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” She took a few steps, then turned back toward me and waved and walked away with a remarkable lightness that made me smile. I watched as she faded into the dusk and I waved several times though I knew she could not see me.
As her car pulled down the gravel road and slid into the light gray mist I poured another half glass of Scotch and carefully placed the bottle on the ground. Then I pulled out my journal from my bag, opened it and placed it on my lap. After I took a sip of Scotch I took out my pen and started a letter to Julia, telling her that I had met her beautiful granddaughter and that she was going to paint my portrait in the morning. I also told her that I missed her terribly and that I was sorry I was too late and that I didn’t know how I was ever going to say good-bye.
When the rain started I closed the journal and tilted my head up and opened my mouth and let the drops fall on my tongue. Then I took another sip of the Scotch and raised my glass to the monument and squinted until I could read the names etched in stone out loud one by one from beginning to end, over and over again as loud as I could.
EPILOGUE
I had to paint him from memory. I put him just next to the memorial in the morning light, standing with his cane and that leather bag over his shoulder with the sun casting shadows in the names etched in stone behind him. I couldn’t finish it at first; maybe because it made me so sad, especially after I read his diary. Once I began to read it, I realized that it was the story he was going to tell me: the story of Patrick and Daniel and Julia.
The last thing he wrote was to Julia, telling her that he had just met her granddaughter here in France and how I looked just like her. What got to me were the last lines, where his beautiful handwriting suddenly comes apart. He wrote:
When did you know you’d never leave, Julia? When? Was it because you’d fallen too? Is that what you meant about the things that couldn’t be said, that you’d always love me, even if it meant being alone for the rest of your life? And that was you in the night, wasn’t it? You talking to me and listening and holding me. So maybe all those years we weren’t really alone. Maybe we had what other people will risk everything for, if only they get the chance: a place in our hearts we could always go, a place that was safe and hallowed and full of wonder; a place where love conquers loss.
I’ve come back, Julia. I’ve come home. The hardest part is being last. Such memories! The laughter. The screams. Your eyes. But it’s the right place for me. It’s where I belong.
And I’m ready now. After all these years I’m finally ready …
I sent his belong
ings to his children. We’ve written each other several times and they promise to visit soon. They also volunteered to say something to the people at Great Oaks, particularly Janet, Erica, Hanford, Robert, Sarah and Jeffrey.
One Saturday a few months after Patrick died, I was walking along a street in Paris and suddenly I realized what was wrong with my portrait. So I ran all the way back to my apartment and pulled it out and I worked on it for three days. When I finished I wept, not just because I was upset but because I knew I had gotten it right this time. Julia was there now, standing right next to Patrick so they were almost touching, with the morning dew just beginning to dry on the granite monument behind them and the light just coming through the trees.
Oh, and I put smiles on both of them, even though it’s a memorial. I just thought that if they were together, they’d be smiling. I don’t think Daniel would mind anymore. After all, I think of him as the sunlight.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My profound thanks to Ellen Levine and Leslie Schnur for their passionate and unwavering support, and to my friends and family for always believing.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Chatto & Windus for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Soldier’s Dream” by Wilfred Owen, from The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, C. Day Lewis (editor). Copyright Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission.
I would also like to mention a few of the many books that were helpful during my research. Excerpts on pages 13, 43, and 132 are taken from Privates’ Manual by Major Jas. A. Moss. The quote from Siegfried Sassoon on page 16 is taken from his book, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston. Excerpts from the diary of the German 57th Regiment on page 16, as well as quotes from Marie-Paul Rimbault on page 258 and an unnamed nurse on page 259, are taken from Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I by John Ellis. Quotes from Reginald Gill on page 33 and Harold Coulter on page 318 are taken from The Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front by Malcolm Brown. Excerpts from the marching song on page 39, as well as quotes from Joyce Lewis on page 113 and Maurice Griffin on page 245, are taken from Over There: The Story of America’s First Great Overseas Crusade by Frank Freidel. The quote from Albert Ettinger on page 84 is taken from A Doughboy with the Fighting 69th by Albert M. Ettinger and A. Churchill Ettinger.
Losing Julia Page 35