I was no better with the male students. All Iād had for comparison was Luc. Well, Luc and my grandfather. Both quiet, introspective, absorbed. I didnāt find that here. The few male students left in Glasgow were boysārestless, impatient boys. They always kept half a watch out for the news, waiting to see if theyād be called for their turn. I couldnāt blame them, I suppose. With nearly everyone else over the age of eighteen in the army, they wanted to be next. The older students were those turned down at the recruitment bureau, and they kept their heads down, hiding a weak heart or spirit. I couldnāt talk to them, any of them, not when they made me think of someone else, someone who hadnāt escaped the army.
I wrote to Madame when I arrived in Glasgow. I knew sheād be proud, and of course I wanted news of Luc. I tried to sound casual, as though Iād simply misplaced Luc like an errant glove, not that I was so wracked with worry every night that I fell asleep praying for him. I asked where I could write to him, as I had so much to tell.
But she never wrote back, though I tried and tried. I kept watching that map Iād cut out of that newspaper in Saint-Louis, watching the blots of ink march across the landscape, far too near to Mille Mots. Was she even receiving my letters? Was I receiving hers?
While I sat in the still life studio one day, early for class and tracing the lines on my crumpled map, a girl came up behind. āHave a sweetheart over there?ā she asked.
I could hardly remember how his voice sounded and, while I had no trouble sketching out the boyish face I knewāall angles and dark curlsāI didnāt know how the older Luc looked, hardened by war. āA sweetheart?ā I folded the newspaper clipping. āNo, a friend. A friend I miss very much.ā
I wanted him to be there. I wanted him to be on the other end of an envelope to share this with me, the way he had been. This, art school, was something heād always wanted for me, harder than he ever wanted something for himself. This was ours, and I wanted, more than anything, to write to him all about it.
Iād tell Luc how hard it was. Not just the lonelinessāthat, I knew heād understandābut the lessons.
I thought it would be easy. Really, I did. I had training, right there at the table of Monsieur Claude CrĆ©pet. Iād had further lectures via letter, once every few months, on my technique. Iād sketched and painted across continents. Iād spent years feeling my way through the learning. Iād had a mother who could turn tables into fairy tales, a father who could make buildings rise with pencils and measurements, and a grandmother who had captured a marriage on canvas. Art was in my blood and in my fingertips.
Half of the young women here were like me, experienced, taught at art academies or under private drawing masters. They also carried well-worn cases. The others, hopeful and untutored, their pencils freshly sharpened, their brushes new, I was sure would be the ones fumbling. Little did I know that Iād fumble, too.
Miss Ross, you cannot hold the pencil as though you were writing, or, When you insist on keeping your paper at that angle, you smudge with your palm, every time, or, While arranging your palette, you mustnāt put raw sienna beside raw umber. There is an order to these things, Miss Ross. The well-trained students never made these errors. The untrained were taught from the start how not to. But Iād had one summer of proper lessons and then years of filling in the rest by myself. I had to be corrected and instructed all over again. I hated it.
If Iād had an address, I couldāve written to Luc about all of that. The embarrassment of being told that, yet again, I was doing it wrong. The frustration of learning a second time what Iād already learned once. The isolation of being the only one so singled out.
Or I could have written to him about the parts that werenāt all that bad. Of sketching a live model for the first time, and then a live nude model. Of learning modeling in the dusty, clay-streaked sculpture studio. Of putting on that crisp white artistsā smock the very first time and seeing it satisfyingly spotted with paint at the end of the lesson. Of being, every single day, surrounded by art. Luc was right; that, I loved.
Until I could find him, until I could write to him, Iād keep all of that tight against my chest. I didnāt want anyone else to see these little joys before Luc did. If he did. So I tucked away my disappointments and I tucked away each scrap of happiness as I found it. I focused on my hard-earned place at the School of Art, a place I knew Luc wouldāve envied. Every picture I drew, every sculpture I smoothed, I did it for him. Even without being there, Luc was always my muse.
I couldnāt much smile anymore. Not that I had a reason to. Months from that night in the rain-dripped cellar, and my torn face still ached. Months from that night when Bauer turned my own bayonet on Chaffre, and my torn soul was still numb.
After Martel dragged me, bleeding, to the poste de secours, I didnāt remember much. I was bandaged and loaded into an ambulance and jolted farther and farther back along the line, from dressing station to dressing station, hospital to hospital. It passed in a fog of morphine and needles and cold bandages. Something stinging was poured into my wounds. I was stitched. I slept wrapped in agony. I remember throwing a bedpan late one night. Someone in the ward was screaming. I didnāt know if it was me.
I knew I was slipping towards the edge. Out on the battlefield, I was determined. But here, in these crowded, desperate hospital wards, in this haze of pain and regret, I was willing to go. It certainly was better than remembering.
When I arrived at Royaumont, I was scorched with a fever. They carried me on a stretcher and I felt every bump. Sticky rain fell on my face. Inside, it was bright lights, soft hands, murmurs. I swore I heard the sound of singing, like angels. They gave me something bitter in a cup, something that made me shudder and retch. And then I slept.
I woke to the sound of Scottish voices. Women teasing, scolding, reassuring. Before I opened my eyes, I was weeping.
One of those voices bent near and a cool hand cupped the side of my forehead. āMonsieur, tu as de la douleur? Pouvez-vous me dire oĆ¹ se faire mal?ā Her fingers trailed my left cheek. āAh, his fever is down.ā
āPlease, I speak English.ā I opened my eyes. Not Clare, of course not, but her lilt made me feel a sudden peace. The nurse was young, dressed all in gray. āYou look like a dove.ā
She smiled ruefully. āA partridge. Little gray partridges are what they call us.ā
āNo, a dove.ā
āYou wonāt think as kindly of me in a moment.ā She carefully lifted bandages from my cheek. āYou had an infection in your wounds. Iām sorry, but we had to cut your stitches open to drain them. We may have to remove more tissue.ā She touched my ruined faced gently, from my nose down to my jaw. āBoth your shoulder and your nose are coming along nicely, but I think there is still debris in your cheek, right here.ā I winced. āWill you mind if I clean it?ā
āAs long as you keep talking, you can do whatever you like to me.ā
Her name was Mabel and she was my savior. She brought me back from the edge and kept me from slipping too close again. She held my hand while they restitched me, like a worn pair of trousers, and sponged off the mud of the trenches. She spooned broth into my aching jaw. She helped me with my buttons, with my socks, with all of the little things I couldnāt do with my shoulder the way it was. She told me about a lazy childhood in Kirkcaldy, until her words washed me clean.
But then I was patched up and was left with the waiting and the healing.
The hospital at Royaumont was built in a medieval abbey. The Scottish hospital unit that had moved onto the grounds had added electric lights and running water, had assembled rows of beds, dragged in grass-stuffed mattresses, scrubbed up operating theaters, yet traces of the old abbey remained. Vaulted ceilings, wide windows overlooking a courtyard, the ghosts of hymns in the stones. The doctors and gray-uniformed nurses and orderliesāall Scottish, all womenāmoved between the beds, quietly checking dressings, administering medicine, smoothing red blankets. In that peace, we recovered.
But the peace only lasted so long. Eventually, in the quiet, my thoughts returned. I was restless, yet had no energy to move. I didnāt eat, at least not often. Some broth, soft eggs, bread soaked in milk. I slept, far too many hours, because it was easier than lying awake, thinking. That last conversation with Bauer, the narrowing of his eyes as he pushed the bayonet in, the final kick as they all left me there on the floor, played in my head again and again. His comment about Clare and Paris echoed. The glint of his eyes as I realized what heād probably done and what sheād kept from me all those years. How heād hurt two people I cared about. One night, I dreamed about Chaffre, about the press of his lips to my knuckles, about the smell of blood and wet wool in that little cellar. The nightmares came more often after that.
Mabel knew. Sheād bring me a warm draught and sit by me until I fell back asleep. Once she said, āYou were betrayed by a friend, werenāt you?ā I mustāve looked startled, as she laid a hand on my arm. āYou talk in your sleep.ā
āI was.ā I automatically put a hand to my front pocket, though my uniform was in the VĆŖtement Department and I was in red pajamas. That copy of Tales of Passed Times was gone. āI was just bringing him paper to write to his maman.ā
āYou should do the same.ā She smoothed her apron. āIt might help if you had your own mam here.ā
āNot now.ā I touched my bandaged face. āWhen I look like a man again.ā
Mabel bit her lower lip. Once, while she was changing my dressings, Iād caught an unexpected glimpse of myself reflected in the side of her tin basin. Only half a face left. The rest was all stitches and swells.
āIāve heard you say that before,ā she said. āIs that why you donāt write to her?ā
āI have written. I dictated a letter to you, right after I arrived.ā Iād been as blithe as always in letters to Maman. āBut I didnāt tell her I was writing from a hospital. She doesnāt want to worry.ā I remembered that spring afternoon up in Papaās studio, where she pretended not to cringe over the splinters up and down my back. I remembered her desperate, false front of cheerfulness.
The days stretched. My stitches were removed, leaving behind raw pink scars. My shoulder had mended enough for me to see a masseuse and learn exercises to gain strength. As much as I tried, though, I still couldnāt wield a spoon with that arm, much less a rifle. I was declared unfit for duty.
The pronouncement left me surprisingly adrift. Yesterday Iād been a soldier recovering, yet now I was just a broken man taking up space in an abbey.
Mabel assured me that wasnāt true, but soon she started encouraging me to get up out of bed more often, and dress, and walk. āThis will all be good for you, Luc,ā she promised. She walked with me to the refectory, where the women ate at long tables. She led me to the courtyard and to the gardens, covered over with the first snowfall. I carried Chaffreās little Madonna in the pocket of my dressing gown. Around my wrist, I still wore that tattered ribbon. More and more, Mabel left me to struggle alone with my buttons and socks. āAh, but you canāt stay here forever.ā
And I didnāt. There came a day when I put on my uniform again, hating every centimeter of wool. Where I tightened a scarf around my chin to cover as much as I could. Where I left behind all of those Scottish voices and boarded a train to Paris.
Not knowing where else to go, I went to Uncle Julesās apartment. VĆ©ronique had a new paramour, a poet with delicate hands and an unpredictable temper, but she had me wait down across the street while she sent him away for the night.
āYou canāt stay, mon petit,ā she kept saying as she fluttered around me. āMy life is different now. Edgar, I think he will marry me.ā But she made me a bath and warmed a bowl of spicy cassoulet.
I ate by the fire in a brocade dressing gown. The heat on my bare toes, the silk sliding on my arms, the curve of the painted bowl, all was almost too comfortable.
VĆ©ronique sat by me with a bottle of ChĆ¢teau Margaux from Uncle Julesās secret store. āYou look as though you could use a rest.ā She poured me wine, which warmed me down to my fingers. I hadnāt had a drink in months. āI wasnāt sure if Iād see you again, Luc.ā
The last time Iād seen her had been early in the war, on a rare leave to Paris. Iād been in my uniform and had stopped to bring her a bag of medlars from the trees at Mille Mots. Sheād brushed aside the bag of fruit and exclaimed over me instead. Her petit Luc, all grown. She called me āstrongā and ābrave,ā then shut the apartment door tight. For one night she taught me all the things she said a man needed to know.
My skin ached beneath the silk of the borrowed dressing gown and I wondered if sheād do the same again tonight. But she said, āHow Jules would fret over you. Does it hurt much?ā and I knew she only saw my torn face. While she kept my wineglass refilled, she stayed on the sofa and didnāt invite meĀ up.
I finished eating and dressed. I would rather walk the streets than spend the night on her rug, feeling pitied.
āWhen youāve settled, you can come for Demetrius and Lysander. Feathers make Edgar sneeze.ā She pressed on me one of Edgarās old suits, a bottle of wine, and Uncle Julesās wristwatch. It was a Santos-Dumont, something sheād bought him for his fiftieth birthday in a flurry of making him a āman of the age.ā My wrists had grown thin, but I tightened the band as best I could and thanked her with a kiss on the cheek. She pushed a handful of change into my pocket. āIt isnāt much, but if you come in the morning, after Edgar has left for the cafĆ©, I can give you more.ā For all her shallowness, VĆ©ronique was generous.
That night I moved from park to park, from doorway to doorway, drinking straight from my bottle of too-expensive wine. Bleary, cold, I realized halfway through the night that it was my birthday.
The next morning, with head aching, I stood again in front of VĆ©roniqueās building, unsure whether her poet friend was still in, unsure whether I wanted her pity. As I paced the distance between pavement and door, Maman found me.