Dark Angel (72 page)

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Wexton gave a sidelong smile. “I’m mad about her. Étaples was my first posting. Winnie took me under her wing—which, as you can see, is a pretty large wing. I knew, if I wrote, that she’d fix it. Winnie can fix anything.”

“I’ve never met a WAAC before,” Jane said in a faint voice, trying to keep pace.

“Well, they’re new, of course. But Winnie’s not simply a WAAC. Right now, Winnie’s running the war. In my opinion. Hers too.”

“She’s very …” Jane stopped. It was difficult to think of an adequate word.

“English?
Isn’t
she? What do you think of the voice?” Jane hesitated. The voice, indeed, was formidable. The ring of the English hunting shires, overlaid with tones of the parade ground. “It’s loud. I suppose you could say … commanding.”

“It’s ridiculous.” Wexton gave her a delighted glance. “It’s ridiculous. And wonderful. I also love her moustache. In fact, I love everything about her. Oh, hang on …”

Ahead of them, Winnie had come to an abrupt halt on a small rise of ground.

“Look lively, you two.” She turned. “Now, guided tour coming up. Pay attention, Conyngham, or you’ll get lost. Right, behind us is the station …”

“We kind of noticed that, Winnie. We got off the train there.”

“No lip from you, Wexton.” Winnie shot him a fond glance. She pointed. “Now, there’s the village—full of Frenchies. Watch out for them, Conyngham. Lot of old lechers, and they all chew garlic. Over there’s the camp—mostly Tommies, some Aussies, a few Kiwi infantry at present. Rumors we
may
see the Americans, if they come in. Colonel Hunter-Coote says they will. We’re still waiting, and my girls are
very
impatient. That’s the hospital, over there—Conyngham, you see that big gray building beyond the perimeter? And the ambulance billets are just beyond that, so Wexton will be nice and close.” She looked from Wexton to Jane as she said this, and smiled in a meaningful way. “Now look, over there—you see that building there, just past the parade ground? That’s my depot, and that’s where you’ll find me. You’ll both need a pass for the camp, but that’s all taken care of. Meanwhile,
that
”—she stabbed the air with a large finger, and a note of pride entered her voice—“that little hut is our YWCA. We’re setting up our own little club there. I fixed it with Hunter-Coote. I told him, straight from the shoulder: My girls are going to need a place to go to in the evenings. ‘Cootie,’ I said—I call him Cootie, by the way—‘Cootie, my girls need a home away from home. You have the mess. What do we have?’ So he put in a chit. Tablecloths, and china cups, too—none of that tin-mug nonsense, not for my girls. They won’t stand for it. Everything tiptop quality, Army and Navy Stores, you know—I insisted. Fraternization with the men allowed.” She fixed Jane with her eyes in a stern way. “My girls wanted that, so I hope you won’t mind, Conyngham. All right by you, is it? By the way, there’s a piano.”

“Oh, of course. How nice …”

“We have singsongs. Of an evening. Then cocoa. Right. Off we go again. Come on, Wexton—what are you staring at?”

“That.”

Wexton had put down his bag and was staring in the direction of the river below. The village of Étaples was set back between the river and hills so steep they were almost cliffs; the river continued down the valley toward the sea.

“That?” Winnie seemed reluctant to follow the direction of Wexton’s eyes. “That’s the river Canche. Over there, Conyngham, where the roofs are, that’s Le Touquet. Nice beaches. Only one stop on the train. We go down on Sundays sometimes, for a swim. Hope you brought a bathing suit, Conyngham. If not, don’t worry. I’ll put in a requisition to Stores—”

“I didn’t mean the river, Winnie.” Wexton had not moved. “What’s that?”

“Where those men are digging?” Wexton was now pointing, but Winnie still seemed reluctant to look in the right place. “That’s the extension to the trenches. In case of air attack. Happened once or twice.” Winnie sounded dismissive. “Didn’t do a lot of damage. But you have to think ahead. Be prepared. Another week and the trenches will go all the way from the camp to the caves—”

“Caves?” Jane turned.

“Over there. In the cliffs behind the village. They’re huge. Best possible shelter. It was Cootie’s idea, actually. Evacuate through the trenches and into the caves. Put up the proposal weeks ago, but of course no one did a damn thing. Red tape, as per usual. Now—”

“I didn’t mean the trenches, Winnie. Or the caves. I know about those.” Wexton turned to face her. “I meant that. That yacht.”

“Which yacht?” Winnie sounded irritable.

“There is only one yacht, Winnie. The large one, moored downriver. What’s that? It wasn’t here before.”

“Evacuation yacht.” Winnie sniffed. “Evacuation yacht, if you must know. For the VIPs. If the Allies have to evacuate northern France.”

There was a silence.

“Evacuate? Surely not?” Jane said in a small tight voice.

“Lot of damn nonsense.” Winnie shouldered Jane’s case once more. “Alarmists in Whitehall. Now, shall we get a move on?” She set off; Jane and Wexton looked at each other.

“Oh, great.” He bent and picked up his case. “That’s the VIPs taken care of.”

“It’s just a precaution, Wexton.” Jane looked back at the yacht. It was large and stately. For the first time it occurred to Jane that the Allies could lose this war. She began to walk, then quickened her pace; after some minutes Wexton caught up with her. Winnie, marching ahead, occasionally looked back. She appeared to have recovered her temper, for several times she gave them an approving nod.

“Why is she looking at us like that, Wexton?” Jane said when this had happened for the third time.

“She thinks you’re my girlfriend.” Wexton sounded nonchalant.

“She thinks
what
?”

“Well, I didn’t actually say so. Not in so many words. She just kind of jumped to that conclusion. When I wrote. I didn’t want to disappoint her. After all, you did want to come here. Of course, Winnie doesn’t know about me. And I don’t think she would understand if I explained. Winnie’s led a very sheltered life—and besides, she’s a romantic. She’s madly in love herself.”

“Winnie?”

“With Cootie. Didn’t you gather that? And he with her. That’s why she wouldn’t look at the yacht, you see, and didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because if the balloon goes up, Cootie will be on the yacht and Winnie won’t. Hunter-Coote is a VIP. Winnie, who damn near runs this place, isn’t.”

“I see.”

Jane stopped, one last time. They had almost reached the camp. A group of men in Australian uniform were laying sheets of corrugated iron over the newly dug sections of the trenches.

Étaples. Acland had been here. He had stood, perhaps, where she stood now.

“So. If the balloon does go up”—she began to walk again—“if it does, where will Winnie be?”

Wexton gave her a gentle and ironic smile.

“Winnie? In the caves, I guess. Along with you and me and about a thousand others.”

Wexton and my mother arrived at Étaples in late March 1917. It was the beginning of spring, after the most notorious winter of the first war.

Shortly after they reached Étaples, America declared war on Germany. Not long after that, Canadian troops, including the survivors of William Barkham’s regiment, took Vimy Ridge. The third battle of Ypres, and Passchendaele, lay some months ahead.

Terrible battles, a year that marked the turning point in the war. I grew up with those names. They would come to me from the murmurings of grown-ups, when Wexton visited Winterscombe, or Winnie (who had by then married Colonel Hunter-Coote). It was years before I understood that these graceful, mysterious foreign words referred to battles. Passchendaele: I thought the word was
Passion Dale,
and I imagined a valley like Winterscombe, through which flowed the River Passion.

Wexton and my mother were to stay at Étaples only one month. It was there that Wexton completed the poems
Shells,
which he would dedicate to Steenie. It was from there that he wrote to Steenie, letter after patient letter to someone he still loved but was already losing.

Those letters haunted Steenie. Half a century later, when he was dying at Winterscombe, he would wait for a day when Wexton was absent; then he would read them aloud to me.

“Look,” he would say at the end of a letter. “Look what I lost. Look what I threw away. Don’t you ever do that, Victoria.”

To two of those letters in particular, Steenie returned again and again. One concerned the caves at Étaples, and the curious event that would take place there. The other (with an earlier date) described the day in April when Wexton and my mother finally gave in to Winnie’s invitations. They joined her and Colonel Hunter-Coote on an expedition to the beaches at Le Touquet—or, as they called it then, Paris-Plage.

It was a Sunday when they went by train to Paris-Plage. They had lunch outside, on the
terrasse fleurie
of the café Belvedere. Wexton sat at a round table under a striped awning, overlooking the sea; it was the first warm day of spring; the sea glinted.

Next to him sat Colonel Hunter-Coote. Across the table, wearing civilian clothes that day, and a straw hat that shaded her eyes, was Jane. The air was a dusty gold. Wexton felt warm and well fed; he had the pleasant sensation that he had strayed into an Impressionist painting, and that the
joie de vivre
he experienced was not his but Renoir’s. The war felt far away.

Below them on the beach, Winnie, with a group of her “gels,” was preparing to swim. They were enduring what Winnie described as “the warming-up process.” This procedure (Wexton felt sure it would be necessary; the weather might be warm but the water would be icy) involved the throwing to-and-fro of a large striped beach ball. Winnie, mountainous in a black woolen bathing suit that reached from neck to knees, worn with a frilled bathing cap that reminded Wexton of dairymaids, led this warm-up.

“
Jump,
Clissold,” he heard her call in a commanding voice. “Oh, you silly gel. Not like that.
Higher
.”

Colonel Hunter-Coote, a very small neat man with birdlike bones who, when next to Winnie, resembled an anxious sparrow, watched this performance with an air of pride. Only when the waiter approached did he turn. He then tried to interest Jane in the prospect of what he called pudding.

“Oh, but you must,” he said. “One of those sort of cake things they have here. Winnie likes them.” He eyed the approaching tea cart. “Why don’t you let me choose for you? Now those, for instance. I can definitely recommend those.
Oui, garçon.
You’re sure you won’t, Wexton?
Deux
—
ex—pâtisseries, s’il vous plâit, monsieur.
No, no, not the cakes. Those. That’s it. Oh, jolly good.
Merci beaucoup.
”

Jane, catching Wexton’s eye, smiled. Her own French was fluent, as Wexton knew; Hunter-Coote’s was execrable. He spoke it in a very loud voice, with an expression of profound embarrassment. It had obviously never occurred to him that Jane might speak French; she and Wexton had an unspoken pact not to disillusion him.

Jane ate the pastry, then, when the coffee was brought, accepted a cigarette from Wexton. She smoked occasionally now—something that would have horrified her a year before—but she smoked in the manner of a novice, taking small puffs, then letting the tube of tobacco lie between her fingers. She gazed out to sea. Wexton thought she was daydreaming.

She looked peaceful, contented; she was greatly changed, Wexton thought. When he had first met her, he had thought her more tense, more striving, more pent-up than almost anyone he had ever known—and this had interested him. Her nervous mannerisms had almost disappeared; this had interested him too. He liked Jane, had liked her even when he met her in London. He thought her … good. Or if not good yet, at least trying to be good. And that was interesting. Not many people bothered.

Jane had removed her straw hat now and was fanning her face with it; she turned in the direction of the promenade. From beneath the awning, one band of sunlight lit her hair. In this light it was as red as maples in the fall; the pallor of her skin against the flame of this hair was remarkable. Across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose there was a dusting of freckles; Wexton found these, in their symmetry, pleasing. They drew attention to her eyes, whose beauty lay less in their formation than in their tranquil expression.

Jane possessed a quality he found difficult to define, but which was most apparent when she nursed. Now, she no longer used that quick bright blank voice they had taught her at Guy’s; she did not need it. She might lay her hand on a man’s arm, and Wexton could see a mysterious process of transference take place: From Jane to the man, there was an intense outflowing of energy. This energy calmed. And yet
energy,
too, seemed the wrong word for something so serene. For want of a better word, Wexton would have said Jane possessed
grace.

That term, a hangover from his Episcopalian upbringing, fretted him a little.

He leaned forward in his seat so that he might also see what had caught her eye on the promenade at Paris-Plage. Not Winnie and her gels—though they had the loyal attention of Colonel Hunter-Coote, and Winnie seemed to be preparing to swim. Jane looked away from the beach. She looked toward a now-familiar sight.

There, on the promenade below them, was a group of Red Cross nurses pushing wheelchairs; they lined the chairs in a neat row, so that their occupants faced out to sea and the warmth of the sun was on their faces. The nurses arranged red blankets across their knees; they fussed over them briefly; they withdrew.

Such expeditions were judged remedial for these special patients, whose wounds were invisible. These men were explained by various euphemisms: They had “neurasthenia”; they had “battle fatigue.” At the camp they were restricted to a certain wing of the hospital and were nursed only by the most experienced of the Red Cross. There, too, they were brought out into the sun; someone presumably had faith that fresh air and sunlight might heal them.

Wexton, who had carried some of these patients in his ambulance, doubted that. If they had damage to their bodies—and some did—that might be cured; he doubted even time would heal the damage to their minds.