At the Edge of Summer - Jessica Brockmole

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

14 August 1912

Dear Luc,

We’ve moved again. That Berber dialect. You were right in your guess of Africa, as now we are in Marrakesh.

Oh, Luc, all of the languages swirling in the marketplace, the stacks of warm clay jars, the smell of spices in the air! Rugs woven in reds and oranges and deep nighttime blues. Women swathed in white, edging through the streets with baskets on their head. Melons as big as fairy tales. Rows of pointed leather shoes, every color on the palette. Streets tented by billowing sheets of cotton, freshly dyed and drying in the hot breeze. I try to paint the way your father explained, to capture all the quickness and light of the souks, but my colors run together. There’s too much here to take in. Grandfather had an easel made for me by a man in the Carpenter’s Souk. It’s flimsy, but it stands straight and folds when I want it to and smells wonderfully of cedar.

I read your letter from Sweden, knowing that you understood. I’m in the clouds and, Luc, I can’t feel the ground beneath me. I feel the way I did that time in the steam of Marthe’s kitchen when we confessed our passions. You doubted yours then, but now, hearing you claim it, hearing you want it, I feel we can conquer the world. I won’t let anything weigh me down. I can’t imagine stagnating away in that house in Scotland the way my mother did for so many years, rather than being here, where everything is warm with life and possibility. I can’t imagine trading all of this for a quiet domestic life. At this moment, I’m standing at the path to my own Something Important. I just have to trust myself to take the first step.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Lundi, le 9 septembre 1912

Dear Clare,

He’s gone and done it. Poor Uncle Jules has gone to the great dueling ground in the sky.

The other night he was as drunk as a marquis and, at intermission, challenged a playgoer who made some uncomplimentary remarks about Véronique’s legs. Uncle Jules’s secret shame was that he’d grown nearsighted and so his shot missed by a kilometer. The other gentleman was just as nearsighted and, unfortunately, hit my uncle square in the chest. He’d planned to delope, as he was Uncle Jules’s next-door neighbor and oldest friend, but didn’t miss the shot as he intended. We are sad, of course, but Jules always said that it was the way he wanted to go. Either that, or on the field in glorious battle. He’ll have to settle for a somewhat blind and botched duel.

Véronique has draped the apartment in meters of black crepe, even down to the birds’ cages. She goes around dabbing at her eyes and murmuring about what a “good run” they had. She’s vowed to not drink Champagne until after the funeral. Uncle Théophile is measuring how long before he can evict her and sell the apartment to cover Jules’s latest round of debts. In the week before his death, he bought seven new pairs of shoes. Jules, that is; Théophile has worn the same pair for a decade. The apartment, though, is in Véronique’s name, and she won’t budge a centimeter. Papa spends his time sniffling around the black-draped salon and leaving all the arrangements to his older brother.

The amazing thing is that I was in Uncle Jules’s will, too. He left me a sizable amount, to be held in trust until I turn twenty-one, only a year off. It will come in handy when I’m in the army, I’m sure. I’ve heard that recruits are willing to be bribed in wine. He also left me Demetrius and Lysander, though two foul-mouthed parrots are less of an asset in the army. Véronique has said she’ll care for them when I leave next fall and has invited me to come visit the parrots, and her, whenever I happen to be in Paris.

Life moves on in its grand march. Though some companions only walk along with us for part of the journey, we’ll always hear the echo of their footsteps.

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

1 October 1912

Dear Luc,

Things are as usual here. Grandfather’s widow friend brought over a tagine again. It’s disgusting, how he’ll smile and simper and eat around the pieces of mutton so that he doesn’t have to admit that he follows a Pythagorean diet. With as often as she comes around, I don’t imagine she’ll stop if she finds out that he doesn’t eat meat.

When she started making camel eyes at him (and she always does), I escaped to the Djemma el Fna. Grandfather thinks it’s too crowded and no place for a girl, but I wear a robe and scarf and, anyway, I have a bicycle now. I’m faster than I used to be. And besides, I can’t resist going. All of the snake charmers and storytellers and dancers in their horned hats. The square is so full of life.

With that heavy paper you sent, I’ve taken to sketching the water sellers. They’re usually young boys in tattered robes, bent under the water skins on their backs and the strings of tin bowls around their necks. If I keep buying bowls of water, they’ll patiently ignore me while I draw. There’s one, a boy with a limp, who reminds me of you. He’s always on the edges of the group, looking like he’s waiting to begin life. But his eyes watch me. Though he’s afraid to say a word to me—a girl, and a Western girl at that—he looks as though, more than anything, he needs someone to listen. It still amazes me that, after so many years, you let me listen to you. As long as I can, I’ll walk with you on your “grand march.”

I love it here, the swirl and commotion of the markets, the color-drenched scarves and robes, the aching warmth of the clay walls. I speak Moroccan French now, and a spattering of Arabic, and I can bargain like a camel trader. Everything is so alive. And yet, all someone has to do is mention the word “Scotland,” and I’m suddenly hungry for it. I can smell gorse in the air, hear the Tummel rippling past, feel the breath from the Highlands. In those moments, I want to be there, too.

Grandfather doesn’t understand. Whenever I mention Perthshire to him, he just laughs and waves a hand and says, “Isn’t it better to be away from there?” I know Grandfather and why he’s been away so long. It was my grandmother’s death and all of the things that remind him of her. For him, memories haunt the halls of Fairbridge, though they are memories softened by distance. It has been too long since he’s known the word “home.” These days, the whole world is his home.

Distance has softened my memories, too. Instead of a cold, echoing, lonely place, I can’t help but think of Fairbridge with a warmth not warranted. I remember my old nursery, with my collection of china dolls tucked high on a shelf. Father used to buy those for me, you know, every time he finished a commission. The curiosity room, packed full of things Grandfather sent from his travels. Even when I felt alone and adrift, there was someone in the world who loved me. Even the way Mother’s room used to always smell like lilacs. I miss her, Luc. I know now that she’s never coming back, but I miss her still the same.

Maybe it’s because, out here, I understand her a little more. I know why she couldn’t wait quietly in one place when the world is so full of possibility. I wouldn’t trade my travels for anything. But, even so, I don’t understand why she left. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her that. She chose the world over me. She couldn’t have both.

I know you’re like me. Adventure is adventure, but there’s something about home. Maybe it’s because it makes us feel like children. Maybe it’s because it reminds us of summer. When I talk about the river, the grass, the flowers on the air, you understand. Because you’re thinking about Mille Mots.

I do, too. Think of Mille Mots, that is. It’s not my home, but sometimes, during that one summer, I’d pretend it was. Before my grandfather came, I’d pretend that your home was mine. I wanted to have a place to belong. That’s why I was always outside drawing the château, you know. I wanted to be able to capture Mille Mots down to every blade of grass, every ripple in the Aisne, every crumble of white stone, so that if I were ever to leave one day, I could bring the château away with me. I didn’t know that once you fall in love with something, it never really leaves you. Does it? I’ve even found a sweet chestnut tree here that reminds me of ours, though it’s lonely beneath it all by myself. I’ve sent you a leaf, pressed flat. Remember?

Yearning for home, yearning for those warm, safe days of childhood, that doesn’t halt our steps forward. It doesn’t mean we regret or fear. It means that we’re built of so much more than our future. We have the past to stand on. And we’re stronger for it.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Mardi, le 29 octobre 1912

Dear Clare,

This time of year is so melancholy. Rainy and gray, as the world slips into winter. I read your letter and it made me wonder, what does “home” mean to me?

Autumn at Mille Mots is just as gray, of course, but warmed by the fireplace in the drawing room and by stands of goldenrod around the edges of the garden. Stacks of books read on the sofa in my room, fresh honey for my bread, all of the apples, grapes, and medlars I can eat. In Paris, I can still find all of the fruit, if I’m willing to go to the market at Les Halles. But everyone rushes past me. Unless you are Uncle Jules (rest in peace) or an English tourist, you are not in Paris to savor it. You’re here to work or to study, like I am. You’re living in a borrowed space, like I am. In a year I’ll be gone.

Perhaps it’s disillusionment, what with this time of year and with my military days looming. I wish I felt settled enough to savor. But I can’t help but think of months ahead and wonder where I’ll be.

Do you know my favorite spot in Paris? The Île de la Cité is a little island in the middle of the Seine, the same island that the great Notre Dame de Paris sits on. At the other end is a tiny triangle of land called the Square du Vert-Galant. I’ll go stand on the edge, point my feet to match the angle of the land, and close my eyes. When the wind from the Seine, smelling of fish and of stone and of history, blows across my face, I have a moment where I feel that I’m at home.

Those days, I remember why I first fell in love with the city. I remember my first puppet show at the little Guignol Theatre on the Champs-Élysées, my first ride on an omnibus down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, the first time I caught the brass ring on the carousel at the Luxembourg Garden, my first taste of Maman’s rum baba, my first boat on the Grand Basin, my first run across the teetering bridge in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Writing this, pinning each of those memories to the page, makes me content. For all its gray, that golden Paris still lurks beneath. Maybe when all this is over, maybe Paris will be the place I call home.

Lately I’ve felt like drawing more often. I’ll go and sit by the Seine, in the Square du Vert-Galant, and sketch until I can’t feel my fingers. I draw the river and the barges, yes, but my pencil also turns to the things I can’t see. I draw Papa’s queens and knights and fairy-tale ogres. I draw the château and the gargoyles above the courtyard chapel. I draw the Aisne, Enété, and the caves around Brindeau. Would you be angry if I told you I also drew you?