The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (34 page)

—Ellie. That’s all.

Ashley looks down at the wet leaves.

—For God’s sake Imogen, be sensible and take me as I am, even if all this is less than perfect. Tell me you’re not afraid to spend your life with me, as I’m not—

—I’m not afraid.

—Then marry me.

Imogen turns and touches his shoulder, her fingers running over the golden Bath Star stitched onto his epaulet. She bites her lip.

—Darling. I can’t. Least of all when I hardly know if I’ll ever see you again. You have to get away—

Ashley shakes his head, looking at her and speaking gently.

—I can’t leave the army. Even if you are with child. It simply isn’t possible.

—It must be possible. It’s our only chance.

—I wouldn’t go even if it were possible. Imogen, I’ve led men to their deaths. Men who went willingly because I pushed them forward. Men with families of their own—

—Getting killed won’t bring them back.

—It won’t. But I’ve a duty—

—You haven’t a duty to me? Or our child?

—I do.

—Then which is more important?

—I have to see this through.

Imogen’s voice breaks. She shakes her head, her eyes shining.

—But you’ll never see it through. Can’t you understand that? And I can’t
spend another week waking three times in the night, knowing you’ll be cold and dead before I’d even get a message. Ashley if you go back, I’ll never see you again, I know it. I’ve seen it in nightmares a dozen times, where I look for you, but you haven’t even a grave to mark—

—You’re only frightened, Ashley interrupts. You’re frightened and so you imagine things, but that doesn’t make them true. We’re all scared sometimes. But I’m an officer. I can’t abandon my men because it’s dangerous.

—You’re a man. You’re a man with one life to live and you’ll lose it. Have them send you somewhere safe, anywhere but the front. You’ve been wounded, get the doctors to say you’re unfit for active service. I know you could do it, other men have—

—I can’t do that. I shan’t.

—You won’t do it for me? For our child, Ashley?

—I can’t.

Imogen throws her arms in the air.

—And you expect me just to wait? To stay up each night, carrying your child, knowing you might never see it, because you weren’t willing—

—I can’t leave the army.

—Then I can’t wait for you.

Imogen swallows hard. She looks at Ashley, her eyes large and wet, her cheeks flushed as she turns her face slightly from side to side, her mouth open without any words. No one speaks. Still looking at Ashley, Imogen turns and goes back to the cottage. Ashley does not follow her.

There is the taste of iron in his mouth and he spits into the ground, but the taste does not go away. He stands under the dripping trees for a few minutes. Then he goes back to the cottage door and knocks, but the lock is drawn and she does not answer. He puts his ear to the door and he thinks he hears her weeping, but the rain has started again and it is hard to tell. The sky has turned from slate to black. In Louchard’s farmhouse there is a lantern lit, a figure watching in the window.

—Imogen, he pleads. Open the door.

There is no answer. Ashley kicks at the door and curses. Still no answer. He walks back through the garden to the driveway and tries to start the motorcycle, the figure still watching him through the window. Ashley goes through the cycle of steps—spark, choke, throttle, compression, starter—but he cannot start the engine. On the fourth try he finally brings the motorcycle to life. He lets the engine idle, waiting to see if she will come out when she hears the noise. Nothing happens.

Ashley puts the motorcycle in gear. He begins riding to the north.

The bombardment begins eighteen minutes later.

At eight o’clock last night, as the red-haired VAD flipped the row of switches that controlled the electric lights in Ashley’s hospital ward, several miles to the east a German dispatch runner waded down a communication trench flooded with blue-gray sludge. The runner made his way westward until he found the dugout entrance, a crooked door frame signposted with a plank nailed into the clay trench wall. He wiped the mud from the plank and read the sign under the fluttering light of a descending flare. He let out a gasp of relief.

The runner went down the slick dugout steps and handed a sealed envelope to an artillery officer at his supper. The envelope was damp and tore open easily. Inside there was a card bearing typed orders from division headquarters, the card spotted with something dark. The officer glanced up at the dispatch runner. Deferentially the runner averted his gaze from the card. The officer grunted. He signed for the orders on the wet envelope and handed it back to the runner.

The artillery went to work within the hour. As Ashley turned in bed in his last night in the hospital, across the line men in field-gray uniforms whipped horse and mule teams to a start, jerking wheeled guns from their resting places and dragging them through tracts of sinking mud. The enemy faces were hidden beneath steel helmets or the long cowls of waterproof capes, mouths and chins lit only by erratic flares or the sparks of an incoming shell. It was damp and freezing.

The artillery trawled on through acres of sludge. The wheels of guns and wagons stuck. The spokes and axles were gummed and coated with mud, the undercarriages dragging and catching on the black morass. The enemy cursed and raised dumb horsewhips in the darkness, flailing for any bestial hide to punish. They pushed on through traps of sucking clay, whipping their animals onward, shifting the cannons one inch at a time.

At last the guns reached their appointed places, slightly after the appointed hour. The artillery officer sent two words of explanation to his superiors:
Widrige Umstände
. Adverse conditions.

When the bombardment begins Ashley is riding north on the road to Louvencourt. He does not have a map with him and he has become lost in the backroads above Laviéville, the roads all the same in the darkness. Then the shelling starts. At first Ashley hears the faint singing of whiz-bangs, then the barrage opens into a pounding rhythm, a whole thudding sky.

Ashley pulls the front brake lever and pushes the rear brake pedal, the tires skidding over the slick ground as the motorcycle squirms to a halt. He wipes his goggles and looks at the horizon to the east. In the direction of Thiepval, white flashes are breaking across the clouds, beneath these the arcing red and orange sparks of high-explosive shells. The silhouettes of trees and buildings seemed to waver and crumble under fire.

Ashley turns the motorcycle in the mud and starts back toward the cottage.

He is riding fast now. Above the throttling engine there is the crash of approaching German five-nines, singing faintly in the air and cracking like thunder close by. He swipes the water from the lenses of his goggles, his fingers clumsy in their gloves. The road climbs uphill and he pumps a lever to feed the engine more oil. In the distance a Very light soars and bursts above the trees; under the flare’s white brilliance, a group of figures is silhouetted on the road ahead. Ashley eases off the throttle.

He reaches the group of retreating civilians, a few families in wagons and on foot. They must have been warned before the bombardment started. Ashley coasts past the drenched civilians, then he opens the throttle again, engaging second gear. He knows it is foolish to ride this fast. Even in the daytime he isn’t much of a motorcyclist, and now it is very wet and there is little visibility.

The road bends and rises until Ashley reaches Laviéville, the familiar town square with the small church and the white stone building of the
mairie
. Riding slowly and squinting into the rain, Ashley circles back to Louchard’s yellow farmhouse. He parks the motorcycle before Imogen’s cottage and throws open the door, shining his torch inside. It is empty. The girl’s portmanteau is gone, only a tangle of disturbed sheets on the bed.

Ashley goes to the farmhouse door and knocks. There is no answer. He pounds on the door, yelling for Louchard, but he knows the man is gone. He swings the motorcycle off the kickstand and turns onto the main road to Amiens, traveling westward now. He approaches a pair of French gendarmes smoking cigarettes in the rain. They watch him pass without expression. Farther up there are more civilians going westward, a longer convoy that stretches into the distance. Ashley reaches a blockage in the road. He stops the motorcycle behind the crowd.

The civilians are gathered around a toppled wagon with a broken axle, its load dumped into the thick mud. An armoire reclines half-submerged in the morass, a few of its drawers open as if to collect the brimming rainwater. A fat gendarme is barking at a pair of civilians. Ashley pushes the motorcycle through the forest along the side of the road. He remounts and rides on.

A mile farther Ashley reaches another ragged convoy of civilians, Louchard near the front driving a wagon with a pair of mismatched horses. Ashley slows the motorcycle and calls to Louchard, who pulls his wagon to the side of the road and steps down, standing in the mud with his horsewhip in hand, the rainwater dripping off his cap. Ashley asks him where the girl has gone. Louchard shrugs.

—
Je ne sais pas.
She left right after you did.

—Where did she go? Which road did she take?

Louchard squints at Ashley through the rain. He repeats that the girl left this afternoon, but he does not know where she went. Ashley pulls a roll of francs from his pocket and shows it to Louchard.

—
Dites-moi
.

Louchard spits into the mud. He shakes his head ruefully and asks what reason the girl would have to tell him her destination. Ashley throws the money at Louchard’s feet and shines the torch in his eyes, the air now thick with icy sleet. Along the road a crowd has gathered to watch. A shell explodes at some distance and they all crouch to the earth. Ashley rises, drawing his revolver.

—
Vous êtes fou
, Louchard says. You’re mad.

Ashley swings the torch across the dripping faces of the crowd and they look away as the light strikes them. The bills at Louchard’s feet sink into the mud. Someone in the crowd curses the Englishman. Ashley backs away toward the motorcycle. He holsters his revolver and starts the engine on the second attempt, the crowd watching him in silence.

Ashley threads the motorcycle through the crowd and rides on toward the west.

It rains the whole drive to La Calotterie. Mireille drives as I try to guide us by an old Michelin map from the glove box. We see the water tower as we approach the village, a circle of Romanesque arches in brick with a basin at the top. It lies on a treeless brown field on the far side of town. Mireille navigates to it by sight, zigzagging on paved and gravel roads until we find the fenced-in plot of land that borders the tower. We follow a dirt driveway up to the house and see the name glued in metal letters onto the mailbox:
DESMARAIS
.

Mireille looks at me.

—You still want to go?

—I don’t know. It can’t hurt to ask.

We park in front of the two-story stone farmhouse. I ask Mireille if she will do the talking. As we get out of the car, the front door of the house swings open and an elderly man looks at us. He wears a checked shirt and his pants are clasped high above a sagging paunch by a leather belt. Behind him a television blares from the living room, something about cigarette price increases in France.