The carriage of the train rocked back and forth with a slow, steady beat as it labored its way through the French countryside. Unlike the one from Bordeaux to Paris, this one was almost empty. Rosie and I were sharing a dingy compartment with only one French couple who were huddled in one corner, their heads averted, whispering between themselves. We had left the Gard du Nord hours later than expected, and even the conductor would not venture a guess as to when we would arrive at Issoudun. The trip was to take four hours, yet the train seemed to stop at every station, just to catch its breath. Papa would have considered this train unworthy of the name, but then Papa would never have been on it in the first place.
Issoudun. I finally knew the name of my post. The Third Aviation Instruction Center at Issoudun. I looked over at Rosie who, even in sleep, looked disgruntled and angry. It had taken a lot of talking to get her on the train. She had been ready to quit after our interview at Red Cross Headquarters.
Paris that morning had been bright under the cold winter sun. Bustling with traffic, it had seemed a different city than the one I had explored with Matthew the night before. However, the city had looked tired under the cold winter sun, and even more so when the clouds rolled in dropping the temperature. The cafes were still full, but it felt as if people were trying to keep up a lifestyle rather than enjoying one. The vivacity I remembered from previous trips was gone. The biggest change was the amount and variety of uniforms. In our ten-block walk to Red Cross Headquarters, in addition to French and British troops, we saw Scots in kilts, Indian troops in turbans, Zouaves in their bright, baggy pants, and most incredible of all, a group of French chasseurs haughtily riding down the middle of the street on horseback, red pants and blue jackets covered by a metal vest, crested helmets gleaming, looking like a throwback to medieval amour.
The interview at Headquarters had gone well. The personnel director had sat behind his big desk, a large map of France behind him with the Red Cross canteens marked with little flags. He had assigned us to the Third AIC at Issoudun praising the directrice, a Miss Farleigh, but hastening us on our way because she was without any help. It was what we overheard while picking up our travel clearances and vouchers that made my stomach feel hollow, and Rosie’s jaw tighten. We marched back through the crowded streets to the hotel each wrapped in our own thoughts, but once in our room Rosie exploded.
“This place they’re sending us to is a punishment camp.”
“Nobody said anything like that.”
“They might as well have. You heard. We are the seventh pair they have tried at that place in the last two months.”
“Maybe the other girls got sick or something,” I said, not believing it for a moment.
“You know they didn’t get sick,” scorn dripped from Rosie’s voice. “Not seven pairs of them. It’s that Miss Farleigh. The clerk said she was demanding. And I know what that means, even if you don’t with all your lady-of-the- manor airs.”
I looked at her angry, tight-lipped face. Lady of the manor? Well then, I would just act like one. In what I knew to be my most imperious tone I said, “We will just have to learn to get along.”
“Oh, Val, give it up. Why can’t you admit it? We are going to work for a hellish old dragon, and I didn’t leave home for this.” And then her old familiar tune. “We can quit. We’re volunteers and we can go any time we want to.”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe you can, but I can’t. I’ve burned all my bridges and there is no retreat for me. I worked too hard getting here to give it up. Besides, there is nothing for me to go back to. They will just have to find another partner for me. I’m going to Issoudun. Do what you like.” Surprisingly, I found myself wishing that this girl, who was so far from the girls I had grown up with, would not leave me now. There was a courage to her defiance which I admired in spite of myself. I might find my destruction in obeying the rules to a fault, but Rosie would go down in flames disobeying them. She had my reluctant admiration. All was quiet for a moment behind me, and then I heard the sounds of packing accompanied by a resigned sight. ”All right, all right, I’ll give it a try. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I breathed a secret sigh of relief.
The train lurched out of yet another station, and Rosie turned restlessly in her sleep. Her sleep deeper now, her face had lost its resentment and she looked young, vulnerable, and very pretty. It was the same delicate beauty that Trixie had had. Was I the cause of some of her resentment? It cost me a small battle to admit that I probably was. In our earliest hours I had pictured her in our silver-laden, thickly carpeted dining room, and had known she would have been at a loss in an atmosphere that I navigated with ease. I thought of Nanny fingering Matthew’s coat with dismissal, and to my shame realized I had fingered Rosie’s social standing and done the same thing to her.
Rosie moved again, and I was glad she was still asleep. I could still hear her sneering voice – ‘lady of the manor’. Was that how I appeared? It was a new thought to me. I had been so busy rebelling against my life that I had never realized how much of what I had become was ingrained by my upbringing. I may not have been a success in the ballroom, but I had learned how to move around the world into which I had been born which was not Rosie’s world. I could pour tea (useless), I could keep up my end of a conversation about the latest social event (even more useless), and I could sit a dinner table with a thousand forks and know which one to use when (most pointless of all). But I wanted something more and I hoped that I would find it at Issoudun, lady of the manor or no.
Beyond the window the landscape moved slowly past. Flat country, not many trees. The false bustle in Paris had hidden the fact that the country was locked in a grim struggle. Now in the countryside I could see it. There seemed to be almost no life in the villages and fields through which we were passing. The few people visible were mostly women, and they all were dressed in black. The black of mourning. By now almost every family in France must have lost at least one person in the grim conflict that raged in the trenches ahead of us.
Rosie moved again, and I looked at her
From the first she had made it clear that she was on a mission to find a man that would lift her out of a life she found distasteful, a man to marry. How could I fault her, when every woman of my acquaintance, had the same goal in mind. To marry well. Even Aunt Elizabeth, my brilliant and beloved aunt…..
After the cataclysmic evening of James fifteenth birthday, I had begun to really look at my family. The smooth routine of house, school, and social events had hidden the rifts that lay underneath family life as I had accepted it. I immediately thought of my Aunt Elizabeth, the spinner of tales which Trixie and I, when we sat at the top of stairs watching the pageant below in the foyer, had thought made-up. But then as I grew older, I discovered that all those tales were apparently true, and Aunt Margaret had put them, thinly disguised, into a book entitled, The Social Lion. Grandpapa had been horrified on many levels. First, was the fact that so young a girl, Margaret had been 19, had known about the demimonde world of the theater. Secondly, that a woman in his family had become the talk of society. He had bought up the whole first edition, even going so far as to have the plates destroyed, but not before enough copies had gotten out to cause a minor scandal among Chicago society.
She used to puzzle Trixie by announcing that she would never be married. Trixie would argue insisting that all women had to get married. Aunt Margaret would just smile. But I felt some relief that perhaps there was an alternate way of living, and I watched her closely to see what that might be. But then she seemed to have changed her mind, for she had been married for three years by now. I remembered the wedding mostly because of Trixie’s rapt attention to all the details. She had attended as many fittings for Aunt Elizabeth’s gown and trousseau as she could wheedle her way into. She agonized over the fact that at seven and eight we were too young to be in the wedding party which would have meant a new dress and much glory. I was just grateful. I had no desire to be stared at in something which would probably look beautiful on Trixie and ungainly on me.
But in spite of her marriage, Aunt Elizabeth had continued to write and be published at the rate of almost one book a year. I read them all avidly, my admiration for her growing with each book. Her recent books had all been historical novels which meant she had left her notoriety behind, and was now considered an author of some merit, her books reviewed not only in Chicago but in the prestigious New York Times.
But I sensed a reserve between Mamma and Papa and his younger sister as we did not see much of Aunt Elizabeth any more. She was now living with her husband in the elegant Chicago Beach Hotel which I overheard Mamma describe to Papa as “too fast, for a young matron.”
If I was going to talk to Aunt Elizabeth I would have to go to her, so I launched a quiet but determined attack on both Mamma and Nanny. Finally, I found myself one afternoon driving under the porte cochere of the Beach Hotel, the huge turreted red brick hotel facing the lake. Mamma and I had an engagement with Margaret for tea, and while I was looking forward to the afternoon, I could tell that Mamma was not. We entered the elegant lobby and were ushered by a uniformed doorman to the elevator where he pressed the button for the fifth floor before closing the filigreed gate on the elevator. As we slowly ascended Mamma commented only that she hoped Aunt Elizabeth would soon move, as living in a hotel, even one as gracious as this one, was not at all what she wished for her sister-in-law, thus telegraphing to me her disapproval.
I found the hotel apartment very cozy and tasteful, loving the small room with a desk and bookcases that was set aside for my aunt’s writing. The tea was served from the hotel kitchens and was as elegant as the surroundings. When Mamma left the room for a few moments I hastily turned to Aunt Elizabeth.
Emboldened by a sudden overwhelming need I said, “Can you invite me back? Just me? Please. I just need to talk to someone... to you … to someone. I just need ….” My voice trailed off, as I was not even sure what the basis of my desperation was.
The afternoon so far had been very brittle and correct. Mamma on her best remote behavior, and Aunt Elizabeth the very correct young matron, although I felt she was merely acting a part that she knew would please Mamma. Now Elizabeth reached across the remains of the tea table, taking my hand in hers, “I know Val, I know all about it. Don’t worry I will make it happen.”
Relief flooded over me. “But how … There’s Mamma and there’s also Nanny.”
My aunt broke in with her impish smile that reminded me for the first time that afternoon of the young woman who had woven stories for as on the stair landing at Grandpapa’s. “Remember, I write fiction. I can make it happen.”
And she did. Mamma’s fears had somehow been allayed by that very correct tea, and it became an excepted thing for me to visit my aunt. At first, Trixie accompanied me at Mamma’s insistence, but Trixie soon revolted, uninterested in all the talk of books, and finally Mamma let me go alone. Every few weeks John would drop me off at Aunt Elizabeth’s hotel, picking me up at a prearranged time. At first, after Trixie’s defection, it had been just the two of us, and I had reveled in hearing about her writing, her research, and her success as an author. She would let me read her current manuscript, and we would discuss it as if I were her equal and my opinions worth hearing. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. It seemed as if I was being shown a light at the end of what had been a long, dark tunnel. I began to think there might be a life other than the one that seemed proscribed for me at home.
It was during one of those long afternoons that I heard from her about her first book, and was given a copy to read, something which would have horrified everyone in the family. She laughed as she told me about the buying up of the first edition.
“What did Grandpapa do to you?” I asked, not even able to imagine what the scenes at home must have been like.
“Oh, not much he could do, but that was when I decided I would get married. I needed to get out on my own, and that was the only way to do it.” She leaned back in her chair, and her face suddenly seemed older than her twenty-four years. “So I found someone respectable, but weak, and they were just happy to get me off their hands.”
She gave me a copy of the forbidden book which I sneaked into the house like the contraband it was, and as I read I saw in its pages the stories she used to weave for her two nieces as we hid at the top of the stairs in my grandparents’ mansion, but no longer filtered for young girls. She showed me her favorite review of the book in the Boston Post which announced it was “140 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.” She giggled and said, “Just what I was aiming for. All that hypocrisy just drove me wild.”
After the first year or so of these visits, I would arrive at her hotel to find other guests. The tea table was then replaced by a bar from which something my aunt called cocktails were dispensed. I knew that no one in my family would approve of my aunt’s guests, whose laughter was too loud, and whose treatment of my aunt seemed too familiar, particularly since her newly collected husband never seemed to be present. Nor would they approve of the constantly refilled glass that was always in her hand. She would be gay and charming, but I always felt an edge of danger about these gatherings.
Then even when her apartment was blessedly free of her guests, I would still find her with that glass in hand. Sometimes she would even be cruel to me calling me “her very proper, boring niece.” It was always followed by an apology, but I felt she was slipping away from me somehow. But I hung on, and visited every time I was invited, as she seemed to hold some key to the future that I had yet to discover.
Then came the day of my fourteenth birthday. Mamma planned a lady’s luncheon in my honor. Trixie was there of course, and Mamma invited Aunt Sophie and Aunt Elizabeth. Both Trixie and I were grateful for Aunt Elizabeth’s presence as that made up for Aunt Sophie who would probably talk unendingly about Sonny and Buddy. Aunt Elizabeth was on my right and we talked and talked, and it was just like the first year I had visited her at her hotel. I felt alive, gay and witty as we talked about books, particularly her latest which had just arrived in the bookstores.
After lunch the three older women went to the sitting room to chat while Trixie and I went upstairs, Trixie to escape and me to get a book that Papa had given me for my birthday that I wanted to show Aunt Elizabeth. I was coming back down the heavily carpeted stairs and about to enter the room, when I overheard my name. I stopped outside the door undecided whether to enter or not.
“I don’t know what we will do about Valerie,” said Mamma.
“Trixie will be no problem. She is such a little beauty. She will marry whomever she wants,” said Aunt Sophie.
“Yes, and James will be able to go into the steel mill,” said Mamma.
“Along with Buddy and Sonny,” hurriedly added Aunt Sophie. “They are such intelligent boys. But Valerie is definitely your problem.”
Then, unbelievably, I heard Aunt Elizabeth say. “Yes, she is. But then since she will never be able to marry, she can be the one to stay at home with you and Arthur. She is very capable, and can manage the house for you, and take care of things when you get older.”
I did not stay to hear anything more, turning and rushing up the stairs. It was as if I had been shown a small window at the end of a long darkened room only to have it suddenly disappear as I approached it. The betrayal was so huge that I was almost breathless. The one person who I thought had been my ally… I was beyond tears, and crouched in misery in the corner of the third floor playroom as the afternoon darkened into evening, feeling as if the weight of my future would suffocate me. But, as always, the routine of the house bound me so that I was dressed as usual, and down at my place in the dining room at the appointed time. The evening passed as always, I being the only one who felt the world had changed beyond all fixing. And when the next invitation for an afternoon visit came from Aunt Elizabeth, I found an excuse to be busy, as I did every time until the invitations ceased to come.
But in the intervening three years, Aunt Elizabeth hovered around the edges of my life. I was too young to be told anything face-to-face but I overheard enough to know that after the publication of her tenth novel, my aunt had been committed to an insane asylum by her husband because of her “habitual drunkeness.” There was even talk of morphine addiction which was something I had never heard of before. And she no sooner left the asylum, than the twenty-nine year old novelist was divorced by her husband.
But I was to see Aunt Elizabeth just one more time, something that even now caused me to close my eyes in horror. It was a Friday night, about a year later, and Mamma and Papa were at my grandparents’ for dinner, and I was just heading up stairs to my room with a book when there was a loud knock at the door. I knew Josie could not hear it from the kitchen as the house was no longer geared for evening visitors. Against all rules I answered and found a strange man on the front steps, a colorful scarf around his neck and an unusual hat on his head. Without being told, I knew he had something to do with Aunt Elizabeth as he had the air of her cocktail party guests.
He looked me up and down for a moment and then said, “Are you Valerie?”
I nodded.
“Can you come with me?” He pointed to a for-hire carriage parked at the curb, the horses’ breath coming in white puffs in the evening air. “Your aunt wants to see you.” There was a long silence and then, “She is not well.”
I knew it was more than that. I had heard all the family gossip, and knew that all of the family had washed their hands of her.
I still hesitated, and he said once more. “You are the only one she is asking for. Can you come?” And then in a voice almost too low to hear, “There may not be another chance.”
I thought for a moment and then decided. I ran upstairs to get my purse, and then turned out the lights in my room and closed the door. Everyone would think I was in there asleep. I only hoped I would get back before the outside doors were closed and locked for the night.
At first our carriage went down the wide familiar streets I knew so well, but soon we were driving into dark streets and narrow alleyways. My discomfort grew with every turn as we sank into a Chicago I did not know. Eventually we stopped at a rundown hotel which had a saloon on one side and a tenement on the other, a far cry from the elegant hotel in which I had last seen my aunt.
I followed the stranger up three flights of stairs, down a narrow hall, and into a small room which was completely taken up with a bed. In it was a figure I could only vaguely recognize as Aunt Elizabeth. Her face was yellow and puffy, and she was turning restlessly in the bed, moaning under her breath. The room smelled of vomit and urine, and I had a hard time not gagging. As I approached the bed her eyes opened wide for a moment, and her whole body went rigid as she cried out in terror at something only she could see.
The stranger walked over to the bed and gently stroked the sweat-damp hair out of her face making soothing noises as he did so. His touch was gentle, and I wondered what relationship the two of them had. He looked up at me and said, “Just wait a while if you will. She will know you.”
Then followed a night I would never forget. A doctor came and went, shaking his head over the writhing form in the bed, as I sat unmoving in a chair beside her bed, watching her agony helplessly. Then as morning broke the undertakers came carrying a large coffin shaped basket into which they tried to put the body that was still at last. Her limbs were so contorted from her final convulsions that I could hear them straining as they broke her bones to get her into the basket.
During the night she had had one wakeful moment when her eyes cleared for a space and she knew me. I held her feverish and restless hand while she struggled to speak. “I thought I would escape home by getting married,” she rasped, “and then I thought I would escape marriage by drinking. Val don’t, don’t, don’t… ” And then she screamed, lost again in a world of her demons.
I hardly noticed when the strange man, tears streaking his face, gently led me to the carriage. We wound our way in reverse, leaving the unknown Chicago for the known until at last we were in front of the yellow brick house glowing faintly in the first light of dawn. The front of the house was dark, but I went around the back where a lamp shone from the kitchen. Nanny was there alone fixing herself an early morning cup of coffee. She opened the door as I gasped “Aunt Elizabeth,” and fell into her arms. Wordlessly she led me through the sleeping pre-dawn house to my bed. I fell asleep fully clothed with the sound of breaking bones in my ears.