A Star for Mrs. Blake (42 page)

She gave him his train tickets. “Hurry up then.”

Reed made sure he had his pocket notebook, then headed for the door. When he was gone, a whirlwind seemed to settle down in the lobby.

“Well, he’s excited,” the general observed.

Florence made a wry face. “He’s the most selfish man in the world. Get him on a
story
and he can’t think of anything or anyone else.”

She rolled her eyes and asked the deskman to call a second cab.

“Let me give you a lift,” Perkins offered.

“Thanks, but the train station isn’t far. I’d hate to put you out.”

“The hell with that. I’m done here anyway, on my way back to Paris. Let’s take a drive.”

“Sounds like fun,” Florence agreed with a smile in her eyes.

He offered his arm. “My car is outside.”

It was an immaculate black cabriolet with two American flags flying from the windshield. The bellboy loaded their bags and opened the door. Florence gracefully stepped on the running board and eased in beside the general, who explained that he liked to do his own driving. They had a short wait while a policeman directed traffic that had stalled at the end of the street. Verdun was finally rebuilding itself. Dust, tar fumes, and exhaust from heavy trucks permeated the air over the open car. Ahead of them they could see men swinging pickaxes and blocking the road. Finally the policeman waved them forward and the glorious automobile sailed past the ruins on fat whitewalls.

From the window of her hotel room, where she was packing her bags, Lily Barnett watched it go.

…

She was waiting in the lobby when Major Wistosky brought the group back from the field and they dispersed to rest in their rooms. Hammond saw that Lily was in civilian clothes with a suitcase at her feet, and thought for a crazy moment she’d been given leave for a job well done.

“I didn’t want to go without saying goodbye,” she said.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?”

“I was fired.”

“What on earth happened?”

“That hypocrite is blaming me. He’s sending me home.”

“Perkins? Blaming you for what?”

“That Mrs. Olsen died.”

She was composed but her eyes were red and swollen.

Hammond drew up an ottoman and they sat knee to knee. “What did he do to you?”

“He called me in and said he had proof that I didn’t take care of her right. But I did.”

“Of course you did. How’d he get that idea?”

“From the liaison reports.”

“
My
liaison reports?”

“Oh, he had it all.” She counted on her fingers. “
One
, I said it was okay for her to have clam water—”

“What the hell is clam water?”

“It’s a remedy for seasickness; it came from Mrs. Blake on the ship.”

“That seems a lifetime ago.”

“Believe me, clam water can’t hurt you. In fact, it’s good for you. But never mind. Number
two
, going back to what happened at Notre-Dame when that horrible man attacked us and Mrs. Olsen felt faint. But she was fine—”

“Absolutely fine!” Hammond agreed.

“You said I gave her a bromide.”

“Well, you did, and there wasn’t any harm in that. Was there?”

“Not unless you think someone has a heart condition and should be sent straight to the hospital.” Her voice shook with sarcasm. “
Three strikes, you’re out
—she received
bicarbonate of soda
for heartburn! Instead of me performing surgery on the spot, I suppose.”

“This is all bogus horseshit. I don’t know what he’s up to, shifting the blame onto you, but I never meant to imply you did anything wrong. Let me talk to him—”

“He’s already left for Paris. He took that woman who came with the American journalist with the facial wounds.”

“Florence Dean Powell?”

“I guess. Perkins says it was on Mrs. Olsen’s medical record the whole time. That she had congenital heart failure and was supposed to take her pills. He’s accusing me of negligence because according to him everything that seemed like indigestion was a heart attack about to happen. So you see, it’s all my fault.”

“That’s grossly unfair.”

“He gave me a choice—sign a statement that I take full responsibility and go home or face a disciplinary board.”

“But—is it true? Was it on her record?”

“I said to him, it’s not on her record. And there’s no prescription for heart pills. I’ve been caring for this lady for weeks! He showed it to me. There was an X in the box for heart disease. But it wasn’t there before, I swear it wasn’t. I would not have missed something like that. I’m a good nurse!”

“Then he’s a forger and an out-and-out liar, and you should take your chances with the board.”

She wiped a strand of hair from her damp cheek. “He said it would be his word against mine.”

“I’ll back you up a hundred percent,” Hammond said.

“It won’t help.”

“Why not?”

Their faces were close; close as brother and sister, urgently whispering about their murderous parents. Still, she could not confess the kiss. Perkins hadn’t threatened her with it, but he hadn’t needed to. The implication was clear that if she didn’t take the blame, he would
tell the board she’d seduced him. They’d see it as part of her unworthy character. What chance did she have against a military panel of Perkins’s buddies? But that’s not why she’d given up the fight. It was because she couldn’t fight alone, and who would stand up for her? If she had to go before the nursing board, they’d be even more disapproving than the men. The only shelter in this unforgiving world was David. More than anything right now she craved his steady company and the security of being in his arms, valued and protected.

“It won’t work. Don’t get mud all over your shoes because of me, Thomas.”

“He can’t do this—”

“He can do anything he likes.”

“He’s a coward.” Hammond spit the words. “He’s not covering his ass, he’s covering his fear.”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Lily sighed.

“What about the pilgrims? They need you.”

“The official reason is that I had to go back for a family emergency—and please don’t upset them with the truth. An army nurse will meet you in Paris for the trip home.”

“Well, that’s just swell—”

“I’m quitting the army,” Lily said. “I don’t want any part of it.”

“I’m ashamed of the army,” Hammond said. “I really am.”

“I’m quitting nursing, too.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re mad.”

“I mean it. You can’t have it both ways.”

“Bull. You can do anything you want, too. You’re a terrific nurse, Lily. Don’t give it up.”

“You’re a nice kid, Thomas, but you’re hopelessly naïve.”

“Thanks a lot, pal—”

“Can’t you see how it works? The hospital has a rule that married women can’t work there. You can either be a nurse or a wife. Not both.”

He didn’t know. He’d never heard about such things. His own mother had always been a housewife and his father had gone to his job.

“That’s tough,” he said slowly. “What are you going to do?”

“What would you do?”

“Kill the bastard.”

“Besides that.”

Hammond was at a loss. She waited, seeing that he finally understood her position.

“I’m going back to Chicago to marry David. I’m going to be a doctor’s wife and keep house and make sure he has everything he needs to do his work. It’s too late for me, but you can still follow your ideals,” she said earnestly. “Your principles in life, like we talked about.”

“Remind me what they are again?” he asked ironically.

“Change the world for the better, remember?”

“Oh, yes. Fight for democracy.”

“It’s a good fight. You go on, Thomas. And when you look back, remember I said you could do it.”

“Sure,” he said, but it was as if a trapdoor had opened and his soul had fallen out. Is this what so-called honorable men did every day, let alone what they did under fire? His belief in “the right” seemed flimsy. Questionable. The whole undertaking was questionable. When Lily said she would quit nursing, his first thought was to quit the army, too. It was not his father’s army. Not when you had petty minds like Reginald Perkins’s running things—and if he stayed, that’s the way it would be. His father was legend. Perkins was real.

Lily stood and picked up the suitcase. He took it from her and set it back on the ground and for a long time they clung to each other like abandoned children.

Griffin Reed read the address of the house out loud for the second or third time. It was frustrating beyond endurance that the shaven-headed taxi driver from Verdun with the neck of a bull and the brain of a pea had promised,
“Pas de problème”
when Reed questioned whether he knew the town of Bar-le-Duc, and of course, the moment they arrived they became lost. The result was a maddening tour of tangled streets, back and forth over several bridges and up and down hills, looking for 19½ rue du Port, the return address on the letter from
Mademoiselle Champaux. There was no listing for a telephone under that name, but Reed had a strong hunch he could find her, because in some inexplicable way he believed she had been waiting for him all these years.

He’d adapted to the rhythm of pain in the gut and swings of relief provided by the shots, but the physical ailments that had been growing worse seemed pushed back by the force of the letter in his hand. His instincts said the French lady was sharing what she’d seen of Sammy Blake thirteen years ago because she felt for his American mother, plain and simple. He wasn’t watching the street signs or haranguing the driver, he was drawing pieces of the picture together according to a shape in his mind. Writing questions to ask in his notebook. The editor had been hopeful they could get the two-part series syndicated in the English-speaking press. Reed also didn’t mind that a major piece of reporting like that would be a spit in the eye for Clancy Hayes and his kind.

The taxi stopped at the dead end of rue Saint-François. Reed had been so engrossed in fantasies of triumph and revenge that he no idea how or why they’d gotten there. The driver was explaining that a passerby had told him to turn right. They were overlooking a stretch of still water that showed the reflection of two-story salmon-colored houses on the opposite bank with flat red roofs and sky-blue shutters. There was no one in sight except two young girls leading a goat. Reed told the driver to catch up and ask again for 19½ rue du Port. Politely. They stopped and obligingly pointed behind the houses and offered to show them how to get across, but there was no way for all of them to fit in the taxi, and so Reed had to endure an agonizingly slow procession of the girls, the goat, and the taxi inching along banks of weeds until they came to a footbridge.

He jumped out of the cab and ordered the driver to wait. The footbridge led over the water into a hidden alley between the houses, and from there to a second bridge over a narrow canal. Bar-le-Duc had been spared from shelling during the war, and this maze of half-sunk buildings must have dated from the fifteenth century. Number 19½ was on a canal, one step up from the water, a weathered stone
façade with a heavy wooden door half covered in peeling green paint. It was opened by an attractive woman in her early thirties, wearing an apron over a brown cotton peasant dress with a handmade lace collar. From the doorway Reed could see an elderly man at the kitchen table sorting through a bowl of red currants and beside him an aged woman using the traditional method of removing the seeds by piercing them with a goose quill. The whitewashed walls had been aged by the soot of the fireplace to the sheen of an old meerschaum pipe.

“Good afternoon,” said the young woman in French. The morning light crossed her face. She was fair-skinned and unflinching even when she saw the mask.

Reed continued in her language: “War wound. I hope I didn’t frighten you. Are you Mademoiselle Champaux?”

The woman nodded. “Can I help you?”

“I’m an American. My name is Griffin Reed.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Griffin Reed, the writer?”

“I received your letter about a soldier named Samuel Blake. Is it true that you knew him?”

“I knew him briefly.”

“Can I have a moment of your time?”

She repeated the information to the elderly couple, who replied that Monsieur Reed should come in and be offered coffee and croissants with currant jelly, the specialty of the region. He sat with them and ate their croissant and swallowed their coffee, and when he had enough to write something, he got up from the table.

“Thank you for your kindness. I’m sorry but I have to go—”

Mademoiselle Champaux, who had been easy and cooperative, became insistent.

“Excuse me, but it said in the newspaper the American mothers are visiting this area—”

“Yes.”

The young woman untied the apron.

“Take me to meet Madame Blake.”

“I can’t do that. My car is waiting and I have to make a train.”

As he folded his notebook, a young man came through the front
door; muddy clothes, trailing straw, hauling a basket of currants. He had dark hair and languorous limbs. Reed recognized him instantly and the heart inside the tin man broke.

“Is this your son?”

She nodded, the apron still in her hands.

Reed determined how long it would take to get to the cemetery and back to Verdun in order to make the afternoon train to Paris. He believed he could beat the clock. He said he would take her. The woman told the boy he’d better change his clothes.

They found Cora at Sammy’s stone, planting the shaft of the American flag she had been given firmly in the grass. She was dry-eyed and, in a way, almost at home.

“Grif!” she said in surprise. “What on earth are you doing here? I thought you’d be gone.”

“I’m on my way, but there’s somebody you have to meet.”

Cora straightened and found herself facing a woman she’d never seen before, wearing an oddly old-fashioned brown dress with a lace collar.

“This is Mademoiselle Lucienne Champaux.”

She was good-looking, obviously French, and Cora assumed she had something to do with the cemetery.

“Pleased to meet you,” Cora said.