The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (31 page)

We are setting the table for breakfast. Mireille puts down two cups of coffee and begins to butter a long tartine of baguette. I stir milk into my coffee, shaking my head.

—She came all the way to France to see him. And whatever happened, whatever she told him was so bad it broke them up—

Mireille puts the bread on the table.

—Maybe it was what he told her.

—Maybe. But I bet it’s the key. I just don’t know how to get at it. I could go to every place the Berkshires went to, but there’s probably no point. I’m not allowed to ask anyone for help—

—You could ask the lawyers.

—They’ll just tell me to come back to England.

—Maybe they won’t. Or maybe you should talk to your family. The lawyers will never find out. Why don’t you call your father?

I shake my head.

—He’d just tell me to hire somebody.

Mireille sits across from me.

—Your stepbrother then. Why don’t you talk to him?

—He’s a scientist, he’d think the way I was doing this was crazy—

—What kind of scientist?

—Bioinformatics, he’s doing a PhD. I know what he’d say, I don’t even need to ask.

—What would he say?

I shrug. —Don’t trust people you don’t know. Especially not lawyers who promise you money.

—And what about the English couple?

—Adam thinks history’s pointless—

—So what would he say?

We start eating breakfast, chewing the bread and taking sips of coffee in silence. I look up at Mireille.

—Don’t worry about things that’ve already happened. They’re not your problem. Don’t worry about money that doesn’t belong to you and probably won’t make your life any better. Don’t think everything in Europe’s better, because you always liked Europe and it’s messing with your head. Don’t trust French girls you met in a bar.

Mireille smiles. —That’s good advice.

She cuts a pear and puts a few slices on my plate. I lift my cup and set it down again, shaking my head.

—Last year I was trying to decide if I should to move to LA after graduation. I talked to Adam about it for a couple hours. In the end all he said was that I always ask for advice so I can worry about it. Then I go and do the thing I was going to do anyway, because knowing it’s a bad idea never stopped me.

—It never stops anyone.

—You think staying here is a bad idea?

Mireille shrugs. —You have to follow your instincts. If you think the
evidence is around here, maybe it is. But you can’t expect it to fall in your lap. That may have worked before, but it won’t always work.

—Then what should I do?

We clear the table and Mireille fills the sink with hot water. She turns to me, holding the sponge in her hand.

—
C’est facile
. You decide what you’re looking for. Then you’ll find it.

19 November 1916

No. 17 Stationary Hospital Albert

Somme, France

It is the hour in the garden each day that makes life tolerable. There are no flowers, of course, for the planters are all empty, their contents long ago carted away and stored, whether for winter or for the whole duration of the war. But there is grass. There is a whole lawn of unkempt green grass, whitecapped with hoarfrost in the mornings when Ashley’s slippered feet crunch upon the field, or thawed and damp in the afternoon gloom under ominous skies. But Ashley seldom looks at the sky. It aches to raise his chin too high.

The doctors say Ashley’s recovery has been swift, but to him it feels interminable. A day confined to bed is an eternity. He gets through the nights only by his imagination. At eight o’clock each night, when the lights are switched off and the curtains drawn in the long gallery, Ashley shuts his eyes dutifully. Two hours later he is staring at the carved flowers in the coffered ceiling and following the stony ridgeline at dusk, the long descent down into valleys and pasture, Price asking for a drink from a herder who loans his wineskin, the wine cold and tasting of rawhide. They say they aren’t hungry, but the herder feeds them polenta from an iron pot and they sleep in a vast chalet with the herders and their
black cattle, Price curled under a railway rug, Ashley watching the stars through the open doorway. Somehow Ashley likes ordinary memories best. They seem the easiest to go back to. Other nights he might remember the needle point of the Aiguille du Dru, or the crystal water of the Seelisbergsee he dived under, kicking and sinking into the cold blue heart of the lake. All the while Ashley lies perfectly still in bed. If he shifts his head on the pillow, the pain will make him wince.

When he was admitted to the hospital Ashley could not raise his head two inches, nor utter a word, nor even swallow a sip of water. But by his second week he can speak in a hoarse whisper and is well enough to be wheeled into the garden for the ten minutes it does not rain that Sunday. The red-haired VAD puts Ashley under heavy woolen blankets, two over his lap and one pulled up to his chin. When they reach the garden doors the sky begins misting, but the VAD knows how badly Ashley wishes to be outside. She puts two fingers to her lips and smiles.

—I won’t tell if you won’t tell.

She props open the doors and pushes Ashley out in the wheelchair. The air dazzles him, brisk and fresh. The VAD wheels him into the paltry shelter of a leafless wych elm and they wait for the weather to break. Ten minutes later the sky begins to shed an icy rain.

—And I thought English weather was rubbish, the VAD says.

Soon Ashley is among the fittest men in the hospital. The doctors say a scar will remain on the interior of his trachea, but this does not seem to affect him negatively. One of the surgeons remarks that Ashley is a man of extraordinary regenerative power. Ashley supposes this means they will return him to the front sooner than he expected.

His voice has changed and this is obvious even to Ashley. It remains slightly hoarse and he speaks more softly out of a protective instinct, and in a tone he seldom used before. All his life Ashley never thought of his voice, never considered how it grew and matured with him since
boyhood, how the pitch and timbre told others that it was Ashley who was speaking to them, in words tender or vengeful. He realizes what it means only when it is gone.

—My old voice, Ashley asks the doctor. I shan’t get it back?

—I doubt it.

Ashley looks out the window. The doctor frowns, writing something on Ashley’s chart.

—You sound perfectly well and manly. You ought to take pride in your wounds, honorably acquired. A man who has held His Majesty’s commission in battle—he ought to sound different thereafter. For he is a different man. It’s rather fitting, isn’t it?

—Certainly.

He thinks of Imogen always. Over and over he replays the slim newsreel that is his memory of her, a set of gestures or sensations derived from less than a week together. He can remember the places well, how they felt—the field in Sutton Courtenay where she lay upon his chest, her body warm, the cool neck of the champagne bottle against his leg. But Ashley cannot picture her face. He knows what Imogen looks like, of course, as well as anyone can call back a face they have last seen two months ago. The photograph she sent him suffices for this, bent slightly but otherwise preserved by a waxed envelope inside his tunic. The picture is on his nightstand now.

But Ashley wants more than this photograph, a fixed image impossible to translate into a lover of flesh and spirit. He wants to remember how she had looked in particular moments, to bring back her scent and the sound of her voice, the feel of her voile skirt between his fingers. He wants to see her face in Regent’s Park, where they kissed in the darkness and his gaze went always beyond her shoulder. He wants to see her eyes the last time he saw her at Victoria, when all he can remember are her wet hands, clasping and unclasping in futile shapes.

She must have had a terrible time in the confusion of these last
weeks. Three days ago Ashley received a letter from Eleanor in response to his postcard, and although Ashley quickly telegrammed Imogen in reply, he received no answer. It all seemed very peculiar, and in weaker moments Ashley wondered if her affections had wavered or expired altogether with the news of his death. There could be many reasons for Imogen’s silence and Ashley wasted hours considering and dismissing them in turn. Finally he began a letter explaining everything—the battle, his wounds, the colonel’s mistake—but it took him several attempts to write anything coherent. He sent the letter yesterday. He has only to wait now, and to keep himself from speculating.

In truth he knows so little of her. He had fallen for Imogen so quickly that there had not been time to decide what he truly thought of her, as if it mattered. He’d had no choice. Ashley had felt powerless to resist her magnetism, her peculiar beauty, her pervasive sense of certainty about everything. That certainty had spread to Ashley too, until he believed in their destiny as much as she did.

Still it feels strange to know so few facts about one’s lover. For Imogen had spoken always in abstractions, talking of beliefs or sentiments and sending any questions back toward Ashley. He can describe her habits or her interests, but when the other officers in the ward look at her photograph and ask the most basic questions, Ashley falters. She mentioned reading English at Somerville next year if she passed the exams. Was it true? Ashley never quite grasped why she hadn’t passed the first time, for she certainly seems clever enough. She had lived abroad, he knows that. She plays the piano. She had printed a few poems in little magazines. Ashley has not seen these poems, and though Imogen mentioned people like Mallarmé or Debussy with great familiarity, he would not be able to describe her preferences in any detail. He is not even certain whether she is nineteen or twenty, but when the other fellows ask, he always says nineteen to be consistent.

So long as she cared for him, none of this mattered. In the first week
Ashley had eagerly watched the VAD distribute letters, his eyes following the envelopes and parcels as she handed them out from the mail cart, some of the men grinning, others not even turning to look, their faces swathed in white bandages. The post was usually distributed in the afternoon, but the VAD knew Ashley was eager for a letter and it seemed to him that she deliberately gave out the mail while he slept, for he often woke from naps to find the young lieutenant next to him reading a letter, his lips moving swiftly and silently.

By the second week Ashley ignored the distribution. He slept in the afternoons when he could, and if he heard the porcelain casters of the mail cart rolling down the hallway, he turned in bed and shut his eyes.