A week later I was still struggling with the aftereffects of James’ visit. Tremendous feelings of regret would wash over me as I once again pictured the bitter, self-satisfied man that my brother had become. I would think of our childhood --- James’ playing Roland at the pass in one of our plays in the nursery or grabbing the last cookie at teatime from under Trixie’s reaching hand, or pulling surreptitiously on one of my braids in church to get me in trouble for making a noise. As a young boy he had been carefree, and open faced, and filled with life. Would one comment from me really have made the difference? Probably not. The layers of resentment, regret, and pride seemed to have almost silted over the boy I had known as a child. He had not been able to fight against his fate, and now was a captive of it.
I finished scrubbing the last marmite and slipped into the garden that still straggled with tufts of grass and scattered poppies under the starless but warm August night. Meeting Matthew here for a few captured moments had become an important part of my day. I could see two chairs placed in the shadow of the canteen. From the inside came the sound of men’s voices as Gil played the piano. A row of high square windows let the music out and threw loops of light down on the grass. Some of the loops caught the poppies exposing them as they lay closed for the night.
The world seemed full of pain, a pain I could not stop feeling since James had left. I could hear it in the music, the words, and in the voices that sang ---singing that was not happy, but a frantic desire to forget. I too sought forgetfulness for the heartache that seemed to overwhelm me. The sadness might as well have been an anthem for my whole family. Papa forced into a life he did not want, and then despised by father and wife when he followed the life he wanted, but doing it in a way that excluded us all. Mamma, leaving that shadowy love behind in Paris and marrying for social position and all that came with it, fading into bitterness when it was taken away from her. James, unable to reach for the life he wanted when the protecting presence of Arthur was gone. And then there was Trixie, and at the thought of her the hurt seemed almost to suffocate me. At the end there had been more between us that just that year. What had lain hidden in that solitary year had been Trixie’s romanticized dreams, and my abysmal ignorance. And it had proved fatal.
I sat down next to Matthew with a sigh. He looked at me questioningly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight. I can’t seem to …” I struggled to find the words. “I just can’t seem to get over James and what he has become. It just makes me hurt to think of us all the way we used to be. Have you ever felt that way?”
He was quiet for a moment thinking. I loved the way he took my thoughts which had always been outlandish to my family and considered them. He finally said, “Well----maybe. Yes---once a long time ago. But it was about something pretty concrete.”
“What was it?” I longed to be drawn into his life, to find help in a life that was so different from mine.
His eyes became far away. “Once when I was little, I had a chance to help an old shepherd bring a bunch of sheep out of the hills. It took two days of hard work, and as a reward the man gave me a silver belt, the kind cowboys would ransom their souls for. I remember holding it up to the sun so that it flashed like a trout jumping. I tried wearing it, but everyone teased me for wearing a million-dollar belt to hold up a dollar and a quarter pants. So, after that I kept it under my mattress, and every night I would take it out and look at it. I would light a candle after everyone else was in bed and look at it. I felt the world was mine as long as I had the belt. Then one night I went to bed and couldn’t find it. I tore the bed apart looking for it, but it was just gone. I thought my heart was actually broken. It was the only thing that had ever really been mine. I learned years later that my father had taken it and sold it. Probably at the bar in town for a few drinks.”
My throat ached for that little boy, and I thought about my own childhood ---fat with security and ease. But all the servants, and silver and framed pictures and gleaming furniture did not change what went on underneath. The stifling presence of lost dreams, dashed hopes and then encompassing silence. It was the silence that had doomed us more than anything else. Even Nanny could not make that go away.
I tried to change the subject. “How lucky we met again.”
“Yes, Bordeaux and then Paris. What a night that was with St. Maixant facing me. I was drowning in self-pity. I thought I was coming to Paris to get a fighting squadron, but instead was going to be handed a misbehaving bunch of spoiled children. My moral was at rock bottom. Everyone knew what hotel the Red Cross girls stayed in, and I just loitered around in front hoping for a glimpse of the redhead from the train. And as if I had wished you up, you came looming up out of the dark. The memory of you on that platform was the only bright thing on my horizon and I grabbed it. As we marched around Paris, about which I cared very little at the time by the way, I felt I had finally found someone special.”
I could not believe my ears. I was the ugly duckling, the one that never did what everyone else thought was right. I had never fit into my life and now someone I cared for more than I would admit even to myself had said I was special. I tried to find words, but they only came out in pieces.
“I felt something.. I felt … I felt…”
Matthew then looked at me with a bitter smile. “Yes, you did but not in the way I mean. Val, you are looking for Sir Galahad, and he does not exist. You have given me a suit of armor and put me on a white charger. You do that to everyone. If you like them, you expect them to be perfect, but as you define that perfection. All of us are only human, Val ---even you. I’m no knight. The armor doesn’t fit. I’m just like all those other guys in the canteen ---no better, no worse.”
I fought against him. “No, no you’re not. You are not like my brother or Bazz or my father.”
“Maybe not like them, but I have my faults just like they do. And so do you. And perhaps you would hurt less if you could forgive your own imperfections. Then you might be able to let go of theirs. Your family has the right to live on the course they have charted, and you have the right to decide your own course. Only you need to do it with your eyes wide open. You need to leave that girl in the blue sash behind. You are no longer fighting for me, but for yourself. I don’t know what demons lie in your past, but you must come to terms with them, or you will be as bitter and disappointed as your brother.
“That is not fair. You have no idea. I have learned plenty in the last few years.” I felt my face flush in anger.
“You may have learned things, but I don’t think you understand them. For instance, I’d like to take you in my arms, just as Bazz wanted to, and kiss you. And if I did you would hate me.”
“But – but I hate Bazz because he tried. You’re different.”
“Only because I haven’t tried. Only because you are pretending I am something I’m not.”
I was desperate. He had to understand. “No, no I’m not pretending. I’ve thought things out and.. and. I….” there was a long pause as I struggled to say it. “I love you.”
He just looked at me sadly. “No you don’t. Not really. You don’t know the first thing about it. Love isn’t just sitting across a table sharing an omelet or looking at one another in a garden.”
He reached for my hand, searching my face. A warmth crept through me, my heart sang. It would be all right. He would understand. But then I heard all the voices from my youth. Trixie saying ‘He made it seem all right.’ And then Mamma from the depths of her bedroom saying, ‘The men love it all, the women do not.’ And then a last picture flashed across my mind of Trixie in her final hours, a distant waxy person lying with the stillness of death on her bed. I had fought so hard for control over my life. I had fought the limiting expectations, the suffocating yellow brick house, the ability of men to deny me the right to vote, the choice to serve in a war, the right to an education. How could I give it all away ---- even to Matthew? I pulled my hand away from his without really realizing what I was doing.
He leaned back in his chair. “See, you light up like a Christmas tree at the press of a button, and then when someone reaches out a hand to the warmth, bingo, the lights go out. I loved that gallant woman striding up the Champs Elysee, the intelligent woman who knew all about French history, but I don’t want them without the body for that makes up the whole. And you can’t give that.”
I sat in the chair, struck dumb by his words and unable to arrange my thoughts to meet his. All I could stammer was “I’m sorry. The next…..”
He stood up. “No chance of that Val. I’ve got orders to the Zone of Advance. It’ll mean getting a squadron for sure. I’ll be commanding a squadron in action. No more eating my heart out on the sidelines. I’m just like the rest of these good-for-nothings. I want to cock my hat at the moon and go where the fight is.”
He moved down the path, walking away from me mentally as well as physically. I sat rigid in my chair as the bugle sounded taps.
He turned. “Yes, taps and this time it’s not just goodnight, but goodbye. I’m leaving early in the morning. I will not see you again unless…. He paused a turned around at the edge of the canteen. “Unless I get through this scrap with a whole skin and you --- unless you learn to want what I want to give. Goodbye, Valerie.” And he was gone.
I walked slowly alone, back to my barracks where I lay in the darkness on my bed. The hard narrow cot was the cot of a prisoner, the high window was the opening in a cell. I was in prison. One of my own making. Why had I not been more inquisitive about the relations of men and women? My mother made it seem it was only about being beautiful, and attending parties, and dancing in sparkling dresses and jewels. Trixie had sensed something wrong with this, but her solution had been to attract the boys without realizing what the result might be. Did she even know how babies arrived in the world? I certainly had not. And I cannot have been the only female of my generation not to know what was waiting for her on her wedding night. Matthew had told me what I most wanted to hear, and I could do nothing about it. The house on Ellis Avenue was still closing in around me, even here on this air base in France. James, Trixie and I had all been unable to leave it behind. And we had all paid a price for it. I had fought so hard for control over my life that I could not relinquish any part of myself to anyone. It seemed a betrayal of all I had fought so hard to gain.
I had thought I had made myself exempt from the stifling confines of that house, and was the one of us who had escaped, but it was not true. It still held me in its grip. He was going away tomorrow, and I would never see him again. I had been given a second chance, and I had given him nothing. I had just sat in that chair frozen like a statue.
I just could not let him go like this. I had to fight for this last thing in my life. I had to explain myself to him, make him understand that I wanted what he said to be true. Ask him to help me to the thing I now wanted most in the world. But it was two in the morning and nothing I could do about it. Unless…….
I got into my uniform and coif, slipping out of the barracks leaving everyone sleeping behind me. Outside the world was sleeping too and seemed enormous in the stillness. I walked in the dirt road for fear of the clatter my heavy boots would make on the duckboard. I knew that Matthew slept in a room off his office in the headquarters building. Without thinking of the hour or the questions I would raise, I headed for the building. As I neared his office a sentry stepped out of the shadow and challenged me.
“Red Cross worker,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Advance and be recognized.”
I stepped up. The soldier peered at me, unbelieving.
“I have a message for Major Brandt.”
“Major Brandt? Its night. He’s asleep.”
“He’s leaving at dawn. It’s almost that now. I’ve got to give him a message.”
The sentry shifted his rifle in his reluctance and then said, “All right. Pass.”
As I walked past him and up the steps, I could feel his eyes boring into by back with avid curiosity. I opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind me.
An orderly, seated at a desk under a doused light, sprang to his feet and stood staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.
“I have a message for Major Brandt.”
“Does he expect you?”
“No.”
“Is it important?”
“Very.”
“He’s asleep. In there.” He nodded towards a door at the right.
I stepped towards it, but the man moved quickly to intercept me and held out his hand.
”I’ll take it.”
Suddenly the enormity of what I had done swept over me. What was I doing here? What did I hope to accomplish. What had processed me?
“The message, I’ll take it.”
What could I do? I fought back rising panic and I struggled for words. Just then the door opened, and Matthew stood blinking in the light, his coat unbuttoned, belt hanging.
“Val ---Miss Ward, for God’s sake what are you doing here?”
What could I say to him with the orderly looking at us avidly? “I came because ---because---“ Matthew suddenly smiled. “For the papers, of course. How stupid of me to forget. Tell Miss Fairleigh I appreciate very much her cooperation in this matter. I could have had it all attended to if my own plans hadn’t changed so suddenly.”
His words beat on my ears, my mind was in a turmoil. I could hear him going on about Miss Fairleigh, papers, records, meaningless jargon. I stood rigid, staring at a scarred metal trunk with red, white and blue stripes painted around it and tall letters reading, Major Matthew S. Brandt, A.S.S.C.
“Now, Miss Ward if you will just step over here, we’ll get the papers.”
He picked up a bunch of papers and turned to me with a frown.
“You came alone?”
“Yes.”
He tapped the papers under this arm. “This isn’t all, you know. I told Miss Farleigh it would take two of you at least. Marvin, get me the Directrice at Red Cross Headquarters.”
“It’s awful early, sir.”
“Not for the Red Cross. These ladies don’t know night from day.” He grinned over at me, looking like a boy of twelve.
A flood of color rushed up my face, flushing my cheeks. I was glad Marvin was busy with the telephone. Apparently, Miss Fairleigh did not wake easily. Matthew continued to go through drawer after drawer, taking out piles of papers and stacking them on top of each other.
“Miss Fairleigh, sir.” Marvin said.
Mathew took telephone. “Miss Fairleigh ---no, no nothing like that. It’s about the records you wanted. Miss Ward is here --- yes, here --- Miss Ward is here. But, as I warned you, this stuff makes too big a load for one person. No—no. Miss Ward will explain all that. In the meantime, will you please send another of your young ladies to help? At once, Miss Fairleigh. Yes, right to headquarters. Thank you.”
He hung up the receiver slowly, thoughtfully. “By the way,” he said, “you must have been challenged on your way in, Miss Ward.”
Still stunned at what I had done, I managed to nod my head.
“Marvin, tell the sentry that other young lady from the Red Cross will be here in a few minutes. He’s to let her through.”
When the orderly had gone out and the door closed, we looked at each other. I wished the floor would open up and swallow me. What had I been thinking of, coming here? Everything I had wanted to say had just dried up in my throat.
“I think we’ve got it under control. Only Marvin and the sentry saw you. I am sorry to have to make you my trash disposal, but it had to be realistic to convince. Men in camp have no illusions, and they gossip about everything. When you get these papers back to the canteen, you can use them to light fires. They’ll make lots of coffee for those cadets at five-thirty.”
I finally found my voice and could only say, “I’m sorry, Matthew. What have I done?”
“Well, I’m not sorry. It was a big shock finding you here in the middle of the night, but then you always are full of surprises.”
He peered through the half open door. “My God. General Farleigh has let us down.” But his greeting sounded as though he were very pleased.
“Miss Bennett. Good morning. I’m sorry my early takeoff is robbing you ladies of sleep.”
Rosie looked around the room and her eyes landed on me. I had expected anything but the tired and worn look she gave back at me. Her eyes were dull and her face pale. Perhaps it was the time of the morning, but there was no time to think about it, as we were loaded up with the useless papers.
While Mavin stacked papers under Rosie’s unresisting arms, Matthew came to me with two neat bundles. As he stooped to pick up a sheet of paper that had slipped from my grasp, his voice reached me in a whisper so light I thought maybe I only imagined it.
“Valerie, you are one in a million.”
His eyes met mine and held. He fumbled with his left hand for a moment. Then he reached for my hand, pressing something into it and closing my fingers around it. It was still warm from his finger, hard metal, smooth stone. His ring.