The Passing Bells (59 page)

“You didn't leave the hospital too soon, did you?”

“No. And, anyway, they needed the bed. They had cases in the hallways . . . on cots.”

She stood up and held out her hands to him. “Come on, up you get. I want you on the bed with your trousers down.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I want to take a look at your wound.”

“It's okay,” he protested. “Coming along just fine. A surgeon from Harvard—American volunteer group—did the operation. Good man.”

“Well, he's not here to examine it, is he? Do as you're told, please.”

He led the way into the bedroom, lay on the bed, and glowered at the ceiling as Ivy took down his pants. The red weal traversed the right hip and dipped down across the upper thigh so there was no question of trying to cover anything. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw as her gentle fingers traced the scar.

“No inflammation,” she said. “You're a lucky man, Martin. You missed emasculation by an inch.”

“I know,” he said thickly.

“Do you have any unguent? It looks puckered and must itch badly.”

“I itch all over.”

“You do?” She ran her hand with professional sureness across his belly. “Odd. Your skin doesn't feel dry.”

“It's not my skin, Ivy. I sort of itch inside. A visceral burning. It's called ‘yearning for Ivy Thaxton disease' and it's curable.”

“Where's the unguent?” she asked crisply. He told her where to find it, and she rubbed the yellow ointment into the edges of the scar and then stepped back. “You can pull up your trousers now.”

He did so gratefully, letting his breath out through his mouth.

“This is a hell of a time to propose, Ivy, but I wish you'd reconsider the whole thing . . . look at it from my point of view. I wouldn't expect you to quit the nurse corps any more than you'd expect me to give up reporting the war, but, I mean, you do have two weeks of leave, and two weeks of happiness isn't a bad deal in these times. Anyway, I only ask you to give it some thought . . . weigh it up . . . examine all the angles.”

“I made up my mind when I wrote you last week. It wasn't an easy decision to reach.”

“Oh,” he said, his tone hollow, “I guess not.”

“But if you really
want
to take on the obligation of having a wife—”

The trapeze bar clanged as his hands gripped it. “Oh, boy, do I!” He pulled himself upward, shouting for Jacob.

“What's the commotion?” Jacob asked, peering around the edge of the door. “The girl assaulting you?”

“Call for a taxi! Alert the mayor that he's got a wedding to perform!”

“Congratulations. And now you know what ‘ah' means. I'll walk down to the inn and see if there's a car there. The telephone's on the fritz.”

“We'll all go,” Martin said, easing his legs off the bed. “There's a wheelchair in the hall closet and it's downhill all the way. Come on, Jacob, don't just stand there!”

“Impetuous rascal, aren't you?”

“Will it be legal?” Ivy asked, looking worried.

“Of course it's legal! What kind of a guy do you take me for? Monsieur le Maire can marry anyone . . . like a ship's captain. We can always have a church ceremony one day, Ivy, if you'd like that.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I don't care, Martin . . . just so long as I can write Mum and Da with a clear conscience.”

There was no car at the inn, but there was also no lack of strong backs willing to push
le bon Américain
into St. Germain, especially for such a purpose. Bride and best man walked beside the chair as two stable hands pushed Martin at a brisk pace down the center of the road and into town. After a brief ceremony in the lobby of the city hall, the mayor drove them back to the house in his wheezing Renault.

“I am happy.” Martin sighed. “Drunk with joy.”

“And champagne.”

“ ‘Fill every glass, for wine inspires us . . . and fires us with courage, love and joy. . . . '
The Beggar's Opera.
There's more to it—something about women being the most desirable things on earth. But only one woman, Ivy.”

Later, after they had all gone, she sat beside him on the bed in her army-issue nightgown, plaiting her hair into braids. He reached out, brushed her hands away, and began to loosen the neat coils.

“I like your hair long and loose. You're very beautiful, Mrs. Rilke.”

“And a bit drab-looking. I never imagined I'd spend my wedding night in a flannel shift with the initials of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service embroidered on the hem.”

“I'll buy you a dozen silk gowns tomorrow. They say there are some fine shops in Saint Germain. . . . Or we'll go into Paris—shop, then spend the night in the best suite at the Crillon.”

“Hush now. We're in our own house. What could be better than that?”

She stood up and blew out the lamps.

“Sorry about the electricity,” he said, “but we get none after eight at night. Power shortage.”

“There was a permanent power shortage in my home. I like lamps.”

She moved around the bed in the darkness and after a moment slipped in beside him. The flannel gown was gone and her body was cool and fragrant beside him. He attempted to turn toward her, but let out a groan and lay back.

“Damn the Boche,” he muttered.

“Shush,” she whispered. “No bad thoughts. If you hadn't been hit by a shell, you might be in China now, or Mesopotamia, or some other far-off place, and not lying beside me.” She undid his pajamas and rested her head against his chest. “Your heart's a trifle fast.”

“A trifle? It's trying to hammer its way through my ribs.”

“And your breath is shallow.”

“It's a wonder I can breathe at all. If you only knew what I'm going through right now. I was a fool to marry you until I was capable of doing handstands . . . and jumping fences . . . and . . . Well . . . lots of other things.”

She burrowed closer to him.

“You can hold me, Martin. Hold me very tightly.”

“Sure,” he said thickly. “Sure can.” He folded his arms about her, his hands gliding up and down. “Velvet, pure velvet . . . the most wonderful body on earth.”

“All Norfolk girls have good bodies.”

“Gosh,” he whispered, “what a place that must be if they're half as wonderful as yours.”

“Oh,” she said, “I didn't measure up, that's why they chucked me out. I shall never take you there to see the women they kept.”

“God, but I love you, Ivy.”

She sat up, her body slender and pale as ivory in the moonlight.

“Will you mind terribly if I discard maidenly modesty, but there's no point in our pining away if we don't have to. I mean to say, I
am
a nurse, so if you will just move your good leg—your left leg—as far to the side as you can. . . .”

“Is this going to hurt?”

“I'm supposed to ask that, Martin, not you. . . . No . . . it won't hurt a bit if you keep your right leg very, very still. . . . And I shall just . . . shift my left leg . . . like this . . . and . . . raise up a bit . . . and . . . and . . .”

“Oh, Ivy! God! You're a wonder. . . . You're—”

“No . . . ! Please, Martin . . . don't say anything. . . . Don't say a word.”

Jacob cut a small pine tree and dragged it through the snow. It had been the first real snowfall of the winter—soft, wet flakes drifting from the gray sky. Ivy helped him to get the tree into the house and set the sap-dripping trunk into a wood keg filled with sandy soil. They decorated the branches with whatever bright ornaments they could find—strips of red and yellow cloth, tiny silver teaspoons tied on with thread, holly berries from a bush in the garden, tin foil from cigarettes.

“A quite acceptable tree,” Jacob said.

“I think it's beautiful. If we had some tiny candles to place on the branches . . .”

“We could burn the house down.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “I suppose you're right.” She glanced at the mantel clock. “I'll wake Martin from his nap. He'll be ever so surprised.”

“Let him sleep a bit longer. He's a lucky man having you to wake up to.”

“Thank you, Jacob. That was a nice thing to say.”

“I mean it sincerely. Tell me, Ivy, do you know about me?”

“Your being a pacifist, you mean? Yes, Martin told me.”

“I hope you don't despise me for it.”

“Despise you?” She smiled bitterly. “I've had two full years of seeing what war does to men. There are no saber rattlers in the medical services, Jacob . . . and no enemies. We treat a German's pain the same as an Englishman's. There hasn't been a night when I haven't prayed that the war would be over when I woke in the morning. I don't know very much about politics . . . or the balance of power . . . or any of those things. . . . But I do know the terror a man feels when he comes out of the ether and realizes his legs are gone. God in heaven, Jacob . . . how could I despise you?”

“Thank you.” He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Merry Christmas, Ivy.”

The House, January 2, 1917

Observations and Reflections. The House—
our
House. My present to Ivy. Gerard Dupont drove out from Paris in his limousine and we signed the papers in the drawing room. M. Dupont casting uneasy glances toward the windows, expecting to see German infantry emerge from the woods before he had my check in hand. The price for house and two acres of land is ridiculously low, but Dupont is more than happy at the deal. He views the Allied line from Arras to Reims as a sheet of glass about to be hit by an iron Teuton fist. Snow is thick on the ground, but M. Dupont remembers that the German hordes struck at Verdun in the dead of winter. “I shall be leaving for Geneva in a day or two,” M. Dupont says. “For my health.” I feel sure that, win or lose, M. Dupont will survive the war with all his assets intact.

January 3.

I was able today to mount the stairs with no problem—except spasms of intense pain, which I stoically ignored. Two fine bedrooms upstairs, one room empty, the other partially furnished. I sat down on the bed to ease my leg and Ivy sat beside me. We made love, she protesting at first that making love in the middle of the day is wicked. Pale sun through large windows. Is there anything more lovely than her body tinged with such a light? If there is, I'll take an option on it, as Uncle Paul would say. Silent, reflective exhaustion afterward. How fragile we are naked. Distant thunder growled and bumped along the horizon, making us both think of the Somme barrage. Had we been lying here between July and November, it might well have been the guns we heard, but the Somme battles are bogged down in mud, snow, and freezing rain, the armies more exhausted than spent lovers could ever hope to be. Still, the sound was sobering. She goes back to Rouen tomorrow for reassignment, most probably to All Souls in London—which is how my luck runs. Still, I'll be able to wangle a trip to Blighty every month or so and we can use Jacob's flat. I know now what Sherman meant when he said war was hell.

Major Charles Greville studied the list placed on his desk by the adjutant. The names of the living and the names of the dead. Few of the names were familiar to him—the battalion had received far too many replacements for that. Names without faces: Jenkins, A. P.; Johns, D. R.; Johns, L.; Johnson, R.

Roster—2nd Royal Windsor Fusiliers

Duty strength: 18 July, 1916

Officers 36           Other ranks 1005

Duty strength to date: 3 January, 1917

Officers 8             Other ranks 325

He signed his name on the bottom of the typewritten sheet: Maj. Chas. Greville (Acting Colonel).

“And that's that, I suppose.”

“All correct and properly executed,” the adjutant said as he retrieved the lists.

“What happens now?”

“I send this to Brigade, who will send it to Corps, who will pop it up to Fourth Army, who will in turn flip it along to the War Office. Sometime between now and spring we'll be fleshed out. Rather like ordering so many links of sausage from the butcher shop.”

The allusion seemed appropriate. Sausages to be fed into some future sausage grinder. Charles stood up and looked out the window. The village of Guyencourt-sur-Noye lay beyond the ice-rimed glass, its narrow cobblestoned street meandering down to the frozen river and a wooden bridge. What was left of the 2nd Battalion was billeted in the houses and barns. An exhausted unit licking its wounds and waiting for replacements before being sent back up the line. The barns where most of the men had their billets were far from warm, but they were infinitely cozier than the freezing mud of the Somme trenches. Food was good and plentiful, and there was an
estaminet
in the village that served wine and beer at a fair price. For the officers, Amiens, with its bars, restaurants, and brothels, was only ten miles up the road. Yes, life was sweet in Guyencourt-sur-Noye—not that it mattered to Charles. His leave papers were in his pocket. The signing of the roster was his last official act. The new battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, would be arriving from Saint-Omer in a day or two.

“Well, Charles,” the adjutant said, holding out his hand, “you did a bloody fine job.”

And that was that. He took a train to Rouen, then a leave boat to Southampton, and finally a train to London. Twenty-four hours after shaking the adjutant's hand, he was walking through Victoria Station with a thousand other men, back in Blighty on leave, carrying his own kit bag, just one with the khaki mob.

“Charles . . . ! Charles . . . !”

Her voice was thin against the clatter of hobnail boots. He had almost forgotten that he had written to her, certainly hadn't expected her to meet him at the station, but there she was, beautiful in dark furs, waving to him from the far end of the platform.