The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (33 page)

I get up from my chair and stand beside Mireille, both of us very close to the fire. The heat pulses against my legs. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she looks straight into the fire. We stand like this for some time. Then she turns and holds me by the shoulders. She touches my hand and her fingers brush my wrist.

—So delicate, she whispers. Your wrists are probably smaller than mine.

I watch Mireille but her face is turned away.

—Tristan, why did you come to Picardie?

—You know why. To look for proof—

—
Mais oui
. Of course that’s why you’re here. And what will you do after this?

I hesitate. —I don’t know.

—Sooner or later you’ll have to go somewhere else.

I shake my head, looking at Mireille, but I don’t know what to tell her. I put my hand to her face but she turns away.

—I’ll drive you to La Calotterie in the morning, she whispers.

—
Merci
—

—
Mais écoute-moi
.

Mireille turns back to me, her face very close.

—I’m not just something you found while looking for something else.

She kisses me lightly on the forehead, then picks up the sheet of paper with the names of the villages. She throws it into the fire. The paper catches on the embers, flaring into a brilliant yellow that casts light on her face as she backs away. I ask Mireille why she burned the paper, but she only shakes her head, walking toward the stairs.

—The name of the village is La Calotterie, she says. You would never forget that, would you?

22 November 1916

Laviéville

Somme, France

Ashley reaches Laviéville late in the afternoon. He circles the outskirts of the town twice on the motorcycle before he sees the building, a two-story yellow farmhouse partly obscured by a row of beech trees along the road. He turns the motorcycle into the gravel yard before the house. Louchard has heard the engine and he comes out into the yard holding his cap between his palms. Ashley turns the motor off, swinging the motorcycle back onto its kickstand. Louchard jerks his chin toward Ashley.

—
Vous êtes l’officier anglais?

—Oui.

—
Vous êtes venu rendre visite à la mademoiselle?

—
Oui
.

Louchard pulls his cap on and Ashley follows him to the back of the house. They walk through what was once a vegetable garden, now cratered by shellholes, stepping around dried and rotting tomato vines until they approach a small cottage set in a beech grove. Louchard points to the cottage, motioning for Ashley to go on ahead.

—
Elle est là
.

Louchard walks back to the house and Ashley goes to the cottage
door. The curtains are drawn in the window. He hesitates for a moment, then knocks twice, not very loud. The door opens and she comes to him in a flash, her body pressed against his. He feels the softness of her cheek, the long sweep of neck, her scent of jasmine perfume. Her face is still pressed against his shoulder.

—Ashley.

—You’re a fool, he says. You’re mad.

He tries to pull her back to see her, but she holds fast.

—I can’t believe it, she says, it’s too much to look at you. Your voice sounds different—

—It is different.

She draws back and looks at him, her mouth pursed tight. Her fingers run over the delicate crease of his scar.

—Darling. Your neck—

—It’s all right, Ashley says. It’s all right.

He kisses her cheek and pulls her close. They kiss madly for long minutes, but when Ashley’s hand moves across her body, she grasps it and he can see the hesitation in her eyes.

—Ashley. Only wait a moment.

They sit at a small table on a pair of straw-seated wooden chairs. Columns of light pass through the linen curtains onto the table and a black iron stove. The rest is shadows. Ashley unbuttons the front of this tunic.

—Why have you come? I don’t even know how you managed it.

—It’s not so hard. If you say you’ve a dying husband in hospital, they’ll let you come this far. But I couldn’t get inside your hospital, because they knew you weren’t dying. Can you promise me something?

—No.

—It’s an easy promise to keep. I ask only that you listen to all I have to say before speaking. It’s important that I tell it in its entirety.

Ashley shakes his head.

—They’ve shelled here before. They’re expecting a Hun push any day now—

—It doesn’t matter. Will you listen now?

—It’s madness.

—Please, Ashley. Please listen.

Imogen takes his hand and begins to speak. Her words sound prepared and Ashley does not interrupt her.

—Even now I hardly believe you’re alive. I got the letter from your solicitor on a Friday. I didn’t get your telegram until the next Friday. For one week I lived in the certainty that you were gone, for all time. One week.

Imogen pulls back her hand. She looks at Ashley.

—You can’t know what that was to me. I was too ruined even to grieve. The first few days I wouldn’t believe it was true. Finally I believed in it and nothing else. I blamed everything for your death. The war. Their army. Ours. I wouldn’t go out for fear of seeing someone in uniform. I hated myself for having let you go. I knew I hadn’t tried hard enough to keep you.

She shakes her head, looking at the floor.

—And I blamed you for giving up our life for this war. For leaving me alone in this world. It was our fate to be together and you had thwarted that.

Imogen begins to turn the bracelet around her wrist.

—I nearly tore the paper from the walls. They kept Ellie with me always, she even slept beside me. I stopped speaking. I thought my whole being was gone, that it had been taken with you, that my mind and body were no longer my own.

Ashley loosens the knot of his tie without looking away from her. Imogen shakes her head again, her voice rueful.

—Ashley, you could not know what misery it was. How I envied you, not to live apart from all you cared for, for all decades to come.

—I sent you a postcard. Why did it take so long—

—They kept it from me. They didn’t believe it, that’s why Ellie wrote to you. I didn’t know you were alive until I saw the telegram. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to see you, because everything’s changed, darling.

Imogen puts her hand to Ashley’s cheek.

—I’m with child. Our child.

Ashley stares at her, his eyes wide, his mouth opening slightly. Finally he says, —You’re certain?

—Yes. Certain enough to come here.

Ashley looks at the candle on the table. He touches Imogen’s shoulder.

—It’s all right. It’s earlier than we may have liked, but we’ll make do. You know how I think of you. I’d have asked you in London, if I’d thought you’d have me—

—Please don’t ask me.

—Why?

—Because you’ll think I’m refusing you, when it isn’t that at all. Let me tell you something. When we were at the café in Piccadilly, and you were talking about the mountains and drawing on that napkin—I wanted to listen to you. But all I could think was that I knew with perfect certainty that we were made for one another, you and I, Ashley. Perhaps you felt as I did, and it made you wish for certain things for us, and it made me wish for other things, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less.

—What does it matter—

—Let me finish, darling. In that café, I thought of us having a child together. I thought of being with you every day for years, of what it would mean to have even one week together in a house, with no one to trouble us. I knew we were as lovely together as anything paired in this world. And as soon as I knew it, I knew it always. It’s never left me, not even when I thought you were dead. But I can’t go through another month like this.

—I don’t understand. You’ve come to France only to refuse me? Only to say—

—That I prize you, Imogen says, a thousand times more than myself. So I have come to say what cannot be put in a letter—

She puts her hand to his face, cradling his mouth so that he cannot speak.

—You can’t go back to the front, Ashley. You musn’t. Not now.

—Don’t be absurd.

Imogen shakes her head violently. —It’s absurd to go back. Can’t you see that? We’ve a child and I won’t have it grow up without a father, simply because I was too weak to say what I thought, and you were too blind to see—

—I’m not blind.

She throws her hands in the air.

—You aren’t? Look around you, Ashley. What’s happened to all the fellows from your OTC? Why are half the girls in Mayfair wearing black, looking as though they were struck by lightning? Because all of England is lying to themselves, saying they’ll be the ones to make it, or that their husbands will survive. And I did it too, Ashley, but after this month I can’t do it any longer. A year ago I wanted to save everyone, the Germans and the English, the French and the Austrians. Now I can’t bear to look at a newspaper. And do you know why?

—That isn’t the point—

—Because I know how selfish I am, for if you should have to kill a hundred men to survive, I’d want you to do it. It’s a dreadful thing to admit, but it’s true. Ashley, I’ve given up on principle. The war will go on and on until everyone’s dead, and I can’t save them all. But I can try to save the things that matter.

—I know what I’m doing. I’ve been careful out there.

Imogen stands up, pushing her palm against her forehead.

—Ashley, she gasps, you were nearly killed. What more can it take to convince you? Will you not believe me until you’re dead on the ground? You’re the reasonable one, so tell me why it’s reasonable to suppose that if one in ten lieutenants survive this war, you’ll be the one.

—I’ve lasted this long for a reason.

—Lasted, she repeats. Listen to yourself. It’s only been three months. Look at the awful scar on your neck, you can’t even speak as you used to. You’ve given them enough, must you give everything?

—It’s not my choice whether—

Imogen comes back to him, taking his hand and looking him in the eye.

—It is, darling, it is. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. I daresay you hate the war more than I ever could, but you won’t admit anything, because you’re blind to it. You’re inside the machine and you can’t see that there’s any way out, that a man can do anything but go on and die.

—Have you any idea what you’re talking about? Even if I wanted to leave, it would be impossible.

—Nothing’s impossible. There must be a way out, we need only find it. It means your life, Ashley. I’ve already left England, I don’t care if I ever go back. We could plan something and wait for the right moment—

Ashley shakes his head, his voice louder.

—Are you mad? You’re speaking of desertion.

—I’m speaking of saving your life. If you won’t leave, get transferred somewhere, away from the front. Get sent to a training camp, to any damned place where I’d know you were safe and I could sleep again. All the men you worry will look down on you will be long dead by then. What does it matter what anyone thinks if we have each other?

Ashley pulls off his necktie and puts it in his pocket. He stands up.

—You’re living in a fantasy. You imagine I can walk away from my men as if this were the Boy Scouts. You imagine we can simply forget about your people and my people, and have a child without ever getting married. They’ve a name for such children, Imogen, and they aren’t invited to the embassy ball.

Imogen backs toward the door, her face coloring as she feels for the doorknob behind her.

—I can’t listen to this.

She walks out of the cottage, the door swinging shut behind her. The candle’s flame is sucked out. Ashley stays at the table in the blackness, watching the smoke curl from the smoldering wick. He goes out the door.

Imogen stands in the beech grove beyond the cottage, the gray daylight now beginning to fail. It has stopped raining but the trees are shedding huge drops of water. Ashley walks up to her, but she does not turn around.

—Who knows about the child?

—A doctor in Kensington.

—Anyone else?