The First of July(119)

“Poor Madame Laporte. You remember Lucien? He was shot. For assaulting a woman. A French woman. And he was such a popular boy.” He looked puzzled. “A terrible thing.”

When Jean-Baptiste didn’t reply, he said “You had a bad time?” Then he added, rushing his words at the end of the sentence, “No need to speak of it if you’d rather not.”

Jean-Baptiste nodded. “I’m still here,” he said.

“Injured, you say? But not dead. Unlike so many of your schoolfellows. Unlike Lucien.”

Then, not knowing why he did it, Jean-Baptiste lifted his shirt, smelling his own body as he did so, revealing the broad, purple, puckered scar that curved untidily from near his spine to his loin. He was conscious of the stiff resistance of the scar tissue, saw the priest’s gaze slide away, and felt diminished.

“I’m sorry,” said Father Lefroy. Jean-Baptiste wasn’t sure whether he was sorry for the wound or for not believing him without proof.

“I was discharged because my kidneys are bad,” he said after he’d tucked himself in carefully, as much to ease the tension as to provide information. “It was Dr. Vignon who discharged me.”

“Vignon? He enlisted as a surgeon, of course.”

“He saved my life.”

“So you saw Vignon. I am glad to hear it. Not a perfect man, but a good doctor. He is all right, then?”

“No,” said Jean-Baptiste. “He’s dead.”

He said nothing more, thinking that if Vignon was not dead by now, he would be soon, and why should all Corbie know that a good man had died because he had told a lie a long time ago, a long time before the war? A good man and his brother’s father, he also thought, and made a decision.

The food came on a wooden platter. They ate; and when the woman returned to bring them a minute quantity of stewed apple, Father Lefroy indicated a little gristle he had left on his plate.

“For the cats,” he said.

She gave him something like a smile and her hand went up to her mouth, but not quite in time to hide the missing teeth. During the meal, Jean-Baptiste had gathered up bread and cheese and the remaining meat from his own plate, storing it in his roomy pockets. If Father Lefroy had noticed, he didn’t say.

“Are you tired now?” the priest asked, and Jean-Baptiste nodded. It was true; he was bone-tired.

The priest looked tired himself as he climbed the stairs to a room on the third floor. It faced away from the street, its view down a sloping roof, presumably with the kitchen below. The bed was not made up, but gray blankets were folded neatly on top.

“We weren’t expecting—” the priest began.

“No, thank you, thank you very much.”

“Thank you,” he said again when the door closed, though to what or whom he did not know. Despite his exhaustion, he doubted he would sleep but was glad to have some time to himself. Now he could lie on the bed, gazing at the eaves of this attic room and out to the sky, still light and under which, he knew, other men lay in agony or resignation or simply without hope.

His mother’s face, which for so long he had fought to not recall, was now lost to him when he wanted it. He had a powerful sense of her but, as with all ghosts, when he tried to grasp her, she was gone. Except her hands—he could recall her long fingers, her touch, the skin; unlike her face, her hands were older than her years. He experimented with thoughts of Godet, of Pierre Duval, of Marcel and young Pierre who had both died at Verdun, even of Lucien Laporte, and it was the same with them: he could easily remember the idea of them, but their faces and even the pitches of their voices had gone. Vignon was clearer, but no doubt he would slip away too. He thought again of his mother’s hands. Had she ever held her new baby son?

He slept for an hour or two and when he woke it was, finally, night and the new moon sharp as a wire in the clear sky. The shelling had died down, but the grumbling of lorries up the main street continued. After what seemed like a long time, the church bell started to chime. He was surprised that the bell had not long since been taken for melting down, but now it rang twelve peals almost in rhythm with the distant guns. He found he was clutching the edge of the blanket, but he forced himself to swing his legs out of bed and pick up the sabots.





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


Teddy, Eton,

July 2, 1916


TEDDY SYDENHAM SLEEPS RESTLESSLY IN his small school dormitory just a short distance from the Thames. It is just past midnight and his fourteenth birthday. He has been Sir Edward Sydenham for four hours, although it will be weeks before he will know this.

Teddy sleeps off and on, dreaming of boats, worrying about his Greek unseen, and hoping his mother has arranged for a birthday cake to be sent to school as he has boasted so confidently that she will.