A Star for Mrs. Blake (29 page)

“That’s good,” Minnie murmured sleepily. “I’m glad for you.”

Every night at ten o’clock Katie’s family in Ballinlough, Ireland, would gather on their knees on the dirt floor of the cottage and say their beads. Katie waited until Minnie was snoring, and at the hour of ten, kneeling on a poor rug over the rough planks of the Hôtel Nouvel, she did the same, praying for the eternal souls of her sons. Then she fingered the beads all over again, in penance for having just told her friend Mrs. Seibert an out-and-out lie about the reason Tim and Dolan had been laid together in France; asking for forgiveness because she was too mortal and weak to admit the truth.

Minnie kept up her watch for the bus outside, while the others were still in the hotel breakfast room. Bobbie was complaining of heartburn, which required bicarbonate of soda, and Cora had an upset stomach, for which she was given spirit of chloroform—all of which would be duly noted by Hammond and Lily in their daily reports—and Katie, for the first time anyone on the pilgrimage could remember, began to cry, for which there seemed to be no cure except the understanding arm of the young nurse around her shoulders. When Minnie appeared at the doorway in a frenzy, announcing that their bus had arrived, there was a good deal of primping and last-minute running upstairs to change sweaters and hats, because it was important to look good for their sons.

The army had leased a tiny regional bus, like a blue breadbox on
wheels. At this time of day it would normally have been transporting housewives between the outlying villages and the shops in Verdun, which had given the driver, Émile, the hard-earned patience of a wagon mule. He took each lady’s hand, bowed, and helped her on board. His crinkled smile, huge brush mustache, and sad brown eyes beneath a workman’s cap were reassuring.

Although Lily had worried that the extent of devastation when they drove through the city would be a shock, there was no way to avoid it. Ahead of them was a two-wheeled cart transporting a wine barrel and there was no place to pass. They were forced to go at a snail’s pace along a street that had been totally flattened, nothing left but chimney stacks in mounds of ash. Turning the corner, they passed a block where the buildings had been sliced in half. Between the walls of cascading plaster, they could look straight into the rooms. Even the structures that had remained whole were pitted by shells, and the narrow shutters blasted into piles of slats. Someone had once opened those windows, glad to see the day.

“Look at that poor house,” said Bobbie. “On its last legs.”

“Just like us,” Minnie sighed.

“Speak for yourself,” Katie said indignantly.

Bobbie and Cora, again sitting together, raised eyebrows and smiled.

“Why not laugh?” Bobbie said.

“Why not?” Cora agreed.

But there was still a knot in Cora’s stomach from this morning, when she’d unwrapped the tissue from the dress she’d sewn to wear this day—the one of light heather-gray wool with a white collar. She’d worried that wool might be too hot for France in June, but knew that later it would still be a practical piece of clothing for autumn in Maine. As it turned out, the day was sunny but cool and the dress was just right. The red beret and black pumps she’d bought for this moment topped it off perfectly.

Everything else was quickly becoming unreal. Just outside the window of the bus the remains of Verdun seemed distant, like looking at a newsreel of a far-off war. Strange how all destroyed cities look the
same. Although the proof was right before her eyes, it was impossible to believe that people really did these things to each other. She was grateful to have raised Sammy in the safest place on earth. Because it had been just the two of them, Sammy was all she had when the situation demanded the strength of blood ties, and he’d stood up to it like a man.

He had been just shy of sixteen, too old to hold his mother’s hand, but he staunchly did so, as they walked unsteadily down the narrow drafty mortuary room to view her father home from the sea for the last time. Sammy’s grip was stronger. His tears waited for hers. Cora’s mother was sitting in a chair weeping into her palms, surrounded by neighbors and friends. Her father, wearing his best jacket and tie, looked small in his coffin. His eyes were unnaturally shut as if being forced to look down in deference to something, which was very unlike him, as Captain Frederick Harding had been outspoken in his views, and never backed off from his broad-minded opinions in that conservative town. She touched his forehead, hard and cold as ice, and tried to comprehend that he would never move, never speak. She wondered how it was possible to live for the first time in a world without her father’s presence, while Sammy stood beside her, casually and exquisitely alive.

The road broke from the ruined city and ran across a vista of spacious fields, bringing with it sweet summer smells of fresh manure and flowering weeds. The farmland would have felt like home to Sammy, but when he was here, she knew, it didn’t look like this, quiet in the distance, scattered with red poppies. The open plain would have been crawling with weapons and men and a slew of animals drafted into service—mules and horses to pull the guns, pigeons and dogs to carry messages. There would be pockets of fire and exploding shells. Squadrons felled by poison gas.

Lieutenant Hammond got up in the front of the bus and began to describe the Battle of Verdun with the enthusiasm of a radio announcer, and that’s when the foreignness of everything hit. Cora felt detached from reality, as if the little blue bus were time-traveling in the bubble of war, viewing the world as if the flamethrowers and
artillery were still grappling to no end—as if nothing had changed, or would ever change, but only they, the mothers, could see it.

“Those are the three hills defending Verdun,” Hammond said. “If the Germans had taken the last hill, Verdun would have fallen. It wasn’t a crucial military target, but it would have gutted the French spirit. That’s why a lot of monuments around here show soldiers defiantly planting their swords in the earth down to the hilt. The French motto was, This far and no farther.
‘Ils ne passeront pas!’
—They shall not pass.”

Wilhelmina raised her hand. “Is this where they died?”

“Well, yes, you see the Germans lost over four hundred thousand, and the Allies—”

Bobbie spoke up. “She means our sons.”

“Is that what you’re asking?”

Wilhelmina nodded.

“No, ma’am,” Hammond said awkwardly, trying to meet the flat yellow eyes that were staring at him like a cat. “That would be farther along the Meuse River. We’ll visit that battleground tomorrow. In fact”—his voice picked up—“you’ll get to walk where they walked.”

“Okay,” said Wilhelmina and resumed twisting the button on her blouse.

The bus bumped along in silence. Hammond glanced at Lily, who nodded at him to go on.

“The Germans mounted a mammoth offensive, and the Allies fought back with everything they had. This whole area was an epic battle of artillery, using every scrap of wood available to give cover to the guns. The French had the big stuff—six-inchers—which they lent to the Americans. We had railway guns that were sixteen inches across, taken off navy ships, but they could only fire every fifteen minutes. Not a big effect on the battle. If you miss, you get a big hole and a few dead cows.”

At the crossroads at Madeleine Farm, they took a rest stop and then switched from the little blue breadbox to a
charabanc
, an open bus with a roof made of canvas, which could navigate the rough roads better, and would carry them the rest of the way.

…

From there it was a bumpy ride in the open-air coach. No longer separated from the countryside even by window glass, they were at once immersed in warm air, green smells, and birdsong, as if every sense had been sharpened. Now that they had come so close, the careful layers of security laid down by the army were losing their protective magic—the chaperoned travel, prepared meals, all the amenities, and medical attention night and day. Like true pilgrims, they’d reached the point where they had to leave behind everything they had known. As if stripped of possessions, barefoot, and dressed in sackcloth, they were defenseless, except for a flimsy canvas roof, which left them vulnerable to heat, and insect-laden updrafts expelled by the forest, subtle waves of pollen, and gut-churning anticipation.

The road had been rutted by spring rains. As they lurched along, it was easy to understand why it had taken an army to move the army, when Hammond described La Voie Sacrée, the Sacred Way, a stretch of road to the south that moved 3,500 trucks a day between a town called Bar-le-Duc and Verdun, the lifeline of supply to the French who were defending the city.

“A truck would pass every fourteen seconds,” he shouted over the grinding of their own tires. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Even more amazing, they first had to
quarry
the stone to
build
the road, and then a dozen battalions were needed to work night and day just to maintain it!”

They nodded absently, staring at the peaceful fields where locals were collecting armfuls of blue cornflowers.

“Isn’t it a lovely habit of the French?” Bobbie said. “Letting wildflowers grow? I can’t wait until they let us loose so we can get a closer look.”

They finally turned onto a paved road. The ride became smooth and the clatter of rocks hitting the underside of the coach quit the moment they entered the gates of the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. They passed between two white stone towers topped with spread-winged eagles, and followed the driveway to a large oval pond,
where they parked. All that time the silence in the bus had been twisting tighter. In fact, Cora had been holding her breath. As she stepped down from the coach, there was an overwhelming sense of disorientation. They were here. But where? Someone guided her into the shade, where she stood numbly with the others. She felt weak and wanted to sit down. The sun was steamy; her heels sank into the soft grass.

A tall thin man in a dark suit was coming toward them, followed by two ladies, also wearing suits. He was the superintendent of the cemetery; they were the hostesses. The superintendent shook hands with Lieutenant Hammond, and the hostesses maneuvered the hesitant visitors around the pond. The same ominous feeling she’d had leaving the island now welled up in Cora. At this time in June, the Lily Pond back home would be carpeted with waxy white blooms, surrounded by daisies and lupine, and children knee-deep in mud trying to catch frogs. Here there were naked stalks and scummy green water in a concrete pool. The main reception building on the hill looked like any other suburban American house, vaguely Colonial with a red roof. The lawn had not been planted yet; it was just brown dirt. Her legs resisted going up the flagstone path but she forced herself to follow the others around the pool and up the steps.

It was cooler inside. Lemonade and sandwiches were waiting on silver trays in the foyer. The floor and windows were spotlessly clean and sunshiny bright. A white staircase led upstairs to the superintendent’s residence, and there were rooms to either side on the ground floor. The navy blue decor, the flags and certificates, and the friendliness of the hostesses shouted U.S.A., but the pilgrims behaved as if this place didn’t really belong to them, speaking in soft tones, as they would in someone else’s fancy home. It reminded Cora of cake and punch in the office of the dean of English at Colby College. Everyone afraid to break a glass.

The staff presented maps indicating the location of each of their son’s graves. Chairs were available for resting throughout the grounds, they were told, and they were encouraged to spend as much time as they wished. Tea would be served from three to five.

Bobbie Olsen was first out of the door, armed with directions,
head up, marching into the light. She walked past the circular pool and down the steps to the mall, which was divided into rectangular grassy areas filled with parallel rows of white headstones. She headed to a colonnade of trees to the left, noting that they were square-cut lindens, and found Henry’s grave a few steps in, which was convenient, because by then she was alarmingly short of breath, almost as much as at Notre-Dame. Luckily there was a folding chair nearby, which she moved into the shade several yards from the stone.

She sat there gazing at it until her body settled down. Henry seemed away, but at a comfortable distance, as he had been, many times, at the other end of a long table filled with happy guests. They’d pepper him with incessant questions about their health but he would answer genially. She’d admire his aristocratic profile, the dark gloss of his hair, and round glasses flashing in the glow of multiple candelabras—proud of his youthful authority in the midst of such accomplished people.

A fresh breeze swept the Meuse-Argonne cemetery. Shadows moving through the grass reminded Bobbie of the telephone call she’d received from General Skip Reilly, Retired, a dear friend who served with her on the board of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and was also involved in building the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., who’d been asked by a mutual friend in the War Department to personally deliver the devastating news that Dr. Olsen had been killed in a bombing raid. She’d thanked Skip, hung up the phone, gone to the vestibule for her hat and coat, ignored the concern of the maid, and walked through the gate of her Cambridge mansion and down a short leafy street that led to the river.

She had to keep walking. She followed the route she always did, north along the banks of the Charles toward Harvard Bridge, through dancing autumn leaves, past students in pairs and bicyclists, barely aware of the cars along Memorial Drive. She had a favorite bench with a view of the three arches of the bridge, and the gentle circular reflections in the water were always soothing. She passed an older woman seated there, contentedly reading a book. That used to be Bobbie, but no longer.

No matter how fast she walked on that cold fall afternoon, she could not escape the sharp-edged shadows of the bare sycamores that grated against the stone apartment buildings fronting the water. The shadows haunted her with their precise renderings of the real live trees. She felt them wrap around the corners of the buildings like a hand around her neck, ephemeral and nonexistent, but with terrible power. A trick of light had fleetingly transformed the placid façades into something that seemed alive, but was not. Like her son. How can you touch a shadow?