The First of July (31 page)

Jean-Baptiste, France,
July 1–2, 1916

T
HE LITTLE BOY HAD BEEN
in a cot in a small room with four or five other infants. Most were small bundles and asleep. One wailed—a thin animal sound. The room was on the ground floor along a gloomy corridor. It had a small empty fireplace, two windows and narrow glazed doors to the outside, and a small courtyard. None of the windows was open and the room was airless. A fly buzzed against a pane. A young nun was reading her breviary, sitting on a hard chair in the corner. She stood up as they entered and brushed down her apron. She looked nervous but said nothing.

“We’ve come to see Leo,” Mother Superior said. There were two older children as well as the tiny babies, but Jean-Baptiste knew which one was his mother’s child immediately. The little boy, dressed in a faded frock, was sitting up and looked at the newcomers but did not cry. The crumpled sheets around him were gray.

The three of them walked toward the cot, with the younger sister behind them. The priest made some strange clucking noises, and the child continued to gaze at them.

“You may pick him up,” said Mother Superior to the sister and the young nun passed them, leaned over the chipped metal bars, untied what looked like a bandage from the little boy’s wrist, and swung him onto her hip. His legs and arms were thin and his head seemed large; he had dark hair, which had, Jean-Baptiste thought, been shaved to the scalp, a very pale face, and a rash around his mouth. He clung to the sister’s habit.

“He can stand,” said the young nun. “Even walk a little. And he can say ‘amen’ and ‘thank you.’ He’s no trouble.”

“He seems a little thin, perhaps?” the priest said, hesitantly.

“We’re
all
a little thin, Father,” said Mother Superior. “There’s not enough for the sisters to eat, let alone feed the children. It’s not safe here. The Germans could come any day. We have petitioned to have the children moved to our mother house in Paris. There are promises, plans. But these things take time and travel is difficult and nobody wants the babies. Their care is too onerous. God will provide, no doubt.” Her tone, however, suggested doubt.

The priest nodded, apologetically, as if it had been rude of him to ask.

Mother Superior gestured across the room. “That one”—she nodded to the crying baby, whom nobody seemed inclined to soothe. “A decent family.” The priest’s head bobbed in agreement, his mouth pursed. “It’s a mercy the grandfather is dead,” she said, “and the child like to follow him. It won’t eat. And the mother? Run off to Paris. These girls, they see a soldier, and all their modesty and decency is put aside. Then they expect us to pick up the cost of their shame.”

Jean-Baptiste wasn’t sure if the look she gave him was because he was a soldier or because his mother had set aside her decency and had not had time to settle her account.

“We’re turning them all away from now on,” she said sharply. “If they can’t pay, they can’t leave their fatherless children here. We’ll take good Catholic orphans from respectable families and that is all.”

Jean-Baptiste could hardly take his eyes off the little boy. He was watching them, but he didn’t respond to the priest’s smiles, nor to the young nun jiggling him on her hip. His linen dress was crumpled around his hips and his small legs hung free. Jean-Baptiste held out his arms and the child turned his head, briefly, to the nun. But he let himself be taken, without a murmur. He was heavier than Jean-Baptiste had expected, but felt like a small animal in his arms.

“Hello,” he said, self-consciously. The boy smelled slightly of urine and there was a warm dampness where he was pressed against him. Jean-Baptiste smiled, and just when he thought the baby would not react at all, the child put out a small hand and reached toward his face.

He sensed Mother Superior signal to the priest and heard his cough. “I fear we’ve intruded too long,” he said.

“What will happen to him?” Jean-Baptiste said, turning around to face the older woman. “To Leo?”

There was a moment’s silence. “He’s a pretty child” she said, almost grudgingly. “In normal times he might be placed with a good, devout family. But now … too many men are away. Too many families have orphans related by blood.”

“So he stays here?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Until he goes to Paris.”

“I could have him. I’d like to have him.” He found himself holding tight to the small body, the child who was his. Who was all that was left of his mother’s life and of Vignon.

“You?” The Mother Superior’s voice was loud in surprise.

“It’s impossible …” the priest began. “Quite unsuitable. You’re an unmarried man. . . .”

“And neglecting your duties,” the Mother Superior said, bitterly, with all the implications that carried.

The priest looked at her apologetically. “The British are sorting it out,” he said. “They will return him to our army as soon as it’s safe.”

“I’m not a deserter,” Jean-Baptiste said; and at his raised voice, the boy clung harder, but began to whimper.

“Take the child,” Mother Superior said to the young sister and then almost hissed at Jean-Baptiste: “You have no idea how to handle a baby. How could you? You’re a childless man. You need patience, discipline.”

Jean-Baptiste resisted the sister for a minute but, seeing the anxiety in the younger nun’s gray eyes, released his brother. The little boy began to wail.

“See, you’ve upset him,” said Mother Superior.

Father Lefroy cleared his throat. “It seemed only fair that he should see the child. He will be gone in days and, with his mother dead, is unlikely to return.”

Jean-Baptiste looked at the priest, the reality of his position suddenly hitting him. Where would he go? All his plans had been of return, of seeing his mother, of explaining. Telling her about Vignon. Perhaps she would have explained things to him too. He would give her his back pay, she would take care of him, he would get strong again, he would work and look after her. The question had only ever been of his own survival; he had never considered that his mother, so healthy, not old, would die and he would live.

Mother Superior opened the door and stood back as if to ensure that he left. He looked at her. “I have a little money. My pay, saved while I was in the hospital. I shall let you have it for my brother.”

Mother Superior inclined her head. She seemed interested though unconvinced. Then, as if deciding he might be in a position to make good his offer, her features softened a little.

“Once this war is finished, we may find a home for the boy. Who knows. He is a good child.”

“That would be the best possible outcome,” said the priest, who had been nodding as she spoke. “A good home with a good Catholic family.”

Jean-Baptiste found himself unable to speak and left the room quickly, his brother’s thin cries following him down the corridor.

In the street, a convoy of Army ambulances was coming slowly from the marketplace. He could see stretchers of immobile figures being unloaded, as well as seated, less badly injured men but bloody and desolate-looking, drawing on cigarettes. Nothing surprised him. Not the ease with which men died, apparently untouched, nor their extraordinary capacity for lingering with limbs missing or a crater in their skulls or bicycles blown into their flesh. Nor losing a mother and finding a brother on the same day.

The priest stared about him, as if disoriented. “This is the worst,” he said, “the worst it’s been. This must be a bad day.” His expression was grave, his mouth turned down. “All we can do is pray. God understands his plan for us.”

Jean-Baptiste thought back to the massive explosion that had rocked the banks of the river and the dark plume of fast-moving darkness and debris he had seen pushing up into the blue dawn sky toward the north. Was this carnage the result of that? They had finally blown apart everything they were fighting for, he’d thought. Who cared if the Germans took what was left.

“You had better stay with me tonight,” the priest said, and they started the slow walk back to the presbytery. The sky was turning violet as the presbytery loomed, as dark and forbidding as he remembered it.

Father Lefroy poured them both a brandy. Having seen the nuns, he clearly felt there was no further need to speak of the misfortune. After a while, a stick-thin woman came in, but not the housekeeper who’d been in residence when Jean-Baptiste was last in Corbie. That one had been considered too young and too pretty, first by the townsfolk and then by the bishop. Or so his mother had said, laughing.

“Do we have any potted meat left?” Father Lefroy said.

She nodded.

“Bring some through, then, there’s a good girl.” She turned to go, and Jean-Baptiste noticed she had a twisted spine.

After a few seconds, the priest said “She doesn’t speak. She’s not a mute; she chooses not to. Except to cats.”

Jean-Baptiste put on what he hoped was an interested expression. “She was a convent child,” said the priest. “An orphan.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The sounds of war entered the room, accompanied by a single shaft of gold-pink light. The sun was sinking. Would the shelling stop at nightfall?

“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.

Teddy, Eton,
July 2, 1916

T
EDDY 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.

The dark river, midway on its journey from a muddy field in the Cotswold hills to the cold estuary in the North Sea, fed by twenty tributaries and interrupted by more than eighty islands, is peaceful. Punts are drawn up on the bank, pleasure boats are moored on both sides; some have remained there, without once making a trip to Oxford or Maidenhead, since the outbreak of war. Away from the lights of Windsor and Eton, the new moon casts much of the scene into darkness, but a careful listener might hear the watery noises of nighttime: water rats, jostling ducks, a soldier on leave with his giggling girl crossing the Brocas. Deadwater Ait, a green islet by day, is a crouching monster by night.

It is hot and stuffy and he has kicked off the tartan blanket that has fallen across his trunk on which his initials have been painted over those of his brother Harry. Harry’s picture, with Harry in uniform, is by his bed, next to the one of Mama and his father. The house dame had commented approvingly how alike the two brothers were. Teddy has kept to himself the fact that he doubts he would recognize Harry easily in a Windsor street and certainly not in uniform.