The Passing Bells (42 page)

“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 thought, 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 down 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.

She began to experience a growing sense of dread, a cold feeling that settled in her stomach and became more pervasive the closer they came to the low, treeless hills of the Messines ridge. The countryside was gray, waterlogged, and squalid. On the crest of a hill that evening she could see stabs and flickers of flame, the distant skyline of the front, and when they stopped in a village for tea and cold bully beef sandwiches, she could hear the continuous thumping of the artillery. They were only a few miles from Kemmel, but a Royal Engineer officer sloshed through the muddy village street to tell the drivers that the road to Kemmel and Ypres had been heavily shelled that morning and would be impassable until daybreak. She huddled in the ambulance, not able to sleep, listening to the Welshman snore and the muttering thunder of the guns. Her depression deepened with the night.

It was eight in the morning when the ambulances pulled into the CCS compound. “I do my work in a tent,” he had told her, and she had envisioned him standing under white canvas, perhaps in a wood or a meadow. What she now gazed at were long rows of clapboard buildings with dirty brown canvas roofs, half an acre of dismal sheds connected one to the other by duckboards laid across a sea of mud. Beyond a sagging barbed-wire fence lay the remains of an orchard, a few stumps of shattered trees amid interlocking craters. A landscape of misery.