The House on Ellis Avenue --- Chapter 24

     I looked around the canteen and wondered with dull amazement what I had become use to.  Already it seemed normal to be standing in a tent pitched over mud --- mud that had dried and hardened in the middle but was treacherously wet and slippery around the edges where the rain leaked in.  The canteen fire burned continuously in a field range in one corner.  The canteen marmite sat on the range.  It was filled with a dark fluid made of a lot of French water and whatever American cocoa I had on hand.  Canned milk and sugar were added as supply permitted.  It was not much, but it was hot.  It was something to give the lines of exhausted men that came flooding through the tent flap.

     The cups lay on a rough counter.  They were never washed.  I had no time for that and, anyway, it did not matter.  No one cared.  No one was even remotely clean themselves anymore, including me.

     I was the only worker in the canteen.  It was hard to believe that at one time I had belonged to a life where people sat at table being waited upon, gathered in the drawing room for tea, and had their lights turned off for them when they went to bed.  Kneeling before the field range on a small section of duckboard trying to make wet wood burn, I knew I did not look as though I had ever been in a drawing room.  But it did not make any difference to anyone that my hands were rough and bleeding, that my stomach knotted from too little food, poorly cooked, that my eyes were red rimmed from a fire that smoked and too little sleep, that my clothes were grey splatterings of mud and cocoa.  The important thing was that I was strong enough for the work, and that I could keep on doing it. 

     A very subdued Rosie was up and around, but Doctor Murphy was being careful of her.  He made her duty as light as possible under the circumstances.  She worked in the hospital serving the men and writing letters.  She did not have much to say anymore, but I knew that she was glad to be up rather than lying alone in the dim tent listening to the incessant thudding of guns and watching the wet misty rain drift past the doorway.

     We seldom met now that she no longer lay on the cot in our tent.  In fact, I seldom even saw the other two girls with whom we shared the tent.  Days and nights ran together in a grey stream.  There were no scheduled stops for food or for sleep.  I grabbed them when there was no possibility of doing anything else.  The weeks blurred by and became months.  It had been September when the guns of the AEF had begun to pound.  And then one day I heard someone say it was October.  Not that being October made any difference.  There was the same grey sky, the same rain and mud and cold, the same noise, the same unending stream of trucks going up with munitions and returning with men or what was left of them.

     In this sort of life some people went mad, but I found there was no need of that.  All I had to do was keep telling myself that this was just what I had expected.  I had to push the girl in the playroom in Chicago wielding her pins to the back of my mind and keep telling myself that this was what I had really expected.  This was war and in war there was noise, and people died, and there was blood, and there was horror in men’s faces.  I had not expected anything else, had I?  So, I went on as though I did not mind any of it – not even the abrupt and final ending of so much youth.

     “Ca manqué,” said the French.  “It is lacking.”  They were right.  I rarely had any soap for scrubbing.  I substituted sand.  Fuel was scarce.  I never had all the cocoa I needed or all the milk or sugar or, in fact, enough of anything.  One shrugged and said, “Ca manqué.  C’est la guerre,” and went on.

     There may have been shortages, but I remembered the early days at Issoudun and had brought with me the most essential tool of my calling---a dishrag.  All of my waking hours I worked with it or guarded it ---a folded damp square in my pocket.  When I went to the cold tent for whatever sleep I could get, the rag, like Matthew’s silver belt, went under the mattress.  I often thought of the cooks in the kitchen at home who had many dishrags, and always knew there were more.  Nowadays, I could not afford to waste –even a dishrag.

     Now.  Was it time that made the difference between things or was it place?  Issoudun had been a new world, and this was still another.  The people in it were the same, and yet a change had come over them.  They were dulled.  They no longer laughed.  They were not sullen, just serious.  They were attuned to things that had nothing to do with laughter.  Hunger and cold and weariness and the question, “How will it be to die before I have lived?”  Each face seemed to become more greedy for life as it turned towards the front. 

     Did one always have to be taken to the very tag end of life to begin to appreciate it?  Alone in this God-forsaken spot, in the middle of a cold bleak hell, I began to look at my life.  In the moments before sleep at night I would think about Papa and Mamma, Trixie and James and Matthew.

     Trixie’s death had rocked me to the core.  The nurse standing behind us, Nanny and me turning slowly around.  There had been silence and then Nanny had just stood up and said, “I will tell her parents.”  I was so torn I could not even cry.  I just went into the old playroom and sat in a chair hearing Trixie’s voice all around me.  It had all been my fault.  Matthew had been so right.  We were all human and I was the most human of all.  If I had stayed with her, guarded her, instead of trying to escape from her world.  If I had gone to the doctor with her instead of waiting at home.  If only I had not been so sheltered, so stupid.  Did she really know that it did not matter to me?  That I would have loved her no matter what?  My fault.  My fault.  I had loved Trixie and I had failed her.  I should have brushed aside doctors and nurses and gone to her side and made her live.  She might not have given up if I had been at her side fighting with her.

     What had happened to us all, that family that had sat around the dining room table the day of the fateful fire?   Mamma never again left her bed after Trixie died, growing fainter and fainter and more removed every day.  Papa stopped having his music friends in, and sequestered himself for hours in his study, emerging only to eat meals.  James had turned into a resentful, self-important man.  And I had not been able to leave my past behind me for long enough to embrace the love of someone who, for the first time in my life, saw me as I wanted to be seen.   

     I looked up.  A man stumbled in.  I went back to the counter to get him a cup of cocoa.  He was a tall man, limping slightly.  He did not see the puddle at the door and almost slipped, righting himself at the last moment.  He came forward and leaned on the counter, his head resting on his hands ---waiting.  I noticed that there was mud not only on his boots, but on his uniform.  He must have been down in it somewhere out there.  He must be cold.  I filled a cup and held it out to him.  He did not move.

     “Here’s your drink.”

     He raised his head.  “Thanks, Val.”  He lifted his cup as if in a toast to me, the steam of the cocoa mingling with his breath in a rising spiral. 

     Matthew. My heart began to pound, my face felt hot.  I had to struggle not to cry.  I tried to say something, but nothing came.  I stood staring at him as he tipped back his head and emptied the cup.  I searched his face and could find nothing to remind me of that night in August.  Yet, I could feel the ring around my neck. It seemed to grow heavier, until I almost felt as if I could not hold my head up.

     I took a deep breath.  “What---what are you doing here?  Matthew what happened to you?  Your leg?  Where is your squadron?”

     The eyes that had been merely neutral turned bitter.  “My squadron.  Hardy has it.  That’s who.  Hardy.  The man who couldn’t do the job I had to do for him.  So, they gave him my squadron as a reward for his lack of effort.  My squadron.”

     “Then what happened?”

     “I’m hungry.  That’s what happened.  Have you got anything to eat?”

     I quickly got a piece of bread from my basket and gave it to this man who seemed a stranger.  He was keeping me away, holding me off.  He seemed content to eat his bread in silence and I could think of nothing to say in the face of his bitterness.  I wanted to help him, but I could not bridge the wall that he had built around himself.  He finished his bread and cocoa and carefully put the cup down on the counter.

     “Can I give you some more?”

     “No.  I’ve had my one cup.  Let’s stick to the proper ration.  Let’s all do the right thing.  It pays ---for someone somewhere, I’m sure.”

     I made one final desperate try.  “Please, please tell me what happened.” 

    There was a long silence and then he said, “Why the hell not.” And then there was silence again.

     I said into the silence, “You were going to Toul.”

     “Toul.  Yes.  Headquarters.”  His eyes wandered resting finally on the steaming marmite in the corner.  The edge had left his voice and he fumbled with a button on his coat, twisting it viciously.  “Plans for the offensive were in the final stage.  They talked about a squadron.  I waited.  No orders.”

     The button would fall off pretty soon, and there would be no way to put it on again.

     “Orders came---for Hardy.  A squadron.”

     The button fell --- out of sight.  But I had no thread anyway.

     “Then orders came for me.”  His hand gripped the edge of the counter.  “I was to go back to another training center and straighten out another mess.”

    I felt his pain as if it had been my own.  I hurt for him and there was nothing I could do.  I tried to think of some words that would give him some comfort, but there were none.  I felt tears trickle down my cheeks and fought them back.

     “I offered to forfeit my rank if they would let me go as a pilot to fly over the front.  No.  But they would give me ten days leave and a promotion --- a lieutenant colonel who would be used only for looking after naughty little boys.  Now I said no.  I marched over to infantry headquarters and was at the front before anyone knew what I was doing. I may never fly another plane, but at least I’m being used.”

     Then a new expression came over his face.  “I found a place there in spite of wishing I was up in the sky.  I might have a major’s insignia on my uniform, but the farm boy is not buried very deep.  I understood those boys in the trenches in a way that many of the other officers didn’t.  And they recognized and trusted me.  We faced the mud and the rain and the booming guns and the German snipers together.  We were there to see each other through this hell.  These were not the spoiled children of Issoudun, but the backbone of the country who knew what it was like to work hard, and go without, and face whatever came their way with courage.”  There was suddenly a light in his eyes, dim but a light. 

    “Where are you going now?”

     His eyes focused on me once more.  “I was in a division that lost contact with the Germans.  We were heavily attacked, and two regiments were badly mauled.  I’m on my way back now to bring up reinforcements.  As soon as a truck arrives, I’ll catch a ride to the rear.”

    Just then the guns in the distance lulled for a moment and coming over the top of the canteen I could hear the sound of a plane.  Matthew heard it too.  He turned, an intent look on his face.  “That must be a Jenny.  God what a waste.  What a damnable waste.  I should be flying.”

     We stood there in the same room but each in our own worlds.  I was unbathed, my hands cracked and bleeding as were my lips in the never ending rain and cold.  My uniform was stained, and I had lost so much weight it hung on me in folds. I knew my eyes had dark circles under them, and deep lines of tiredness were etched on my face.  The naïve girl of the troop ship in her brand-new wool uniform was a million miles away.  As was the major sitting at a head table, assured of his role as a pilot. 

     But stripped bare as we were, we were each down to our essential elements.  I now understood what made the bond between men and women.  It was not social standing or wealth or the ability to navigate complex social occasions or the strictures of a rigid society.  It was when hearts met hearts that understood and accepted what each one was.  My heart was truly his, even if my actions had turned him away forever.  This had been my one true chance to find a real partner for life and I had not understood what that meant any more than Trixie had. She had tried to avoid the life her parents had and I had been afraid to giving up my autonomy for any man.  

     Quietly I reached under my uniform and took out the chain with his ring hanging from it.  “This has not left me for one minute since we parted.”  I stood there, still as a statue, while he slowly turned and looked at me.

     He stood there unmoving while I looked steadfastly at him.  There was no turning or shying away from what was between us.  He studied me for a moment before moving in close.  He put his hands on either side of my face, his hands shaking slightly, but his breathing steady and calm.  Outside the dull light of dawn was lifting the darkness.  I looked into his face, grey with fatigue, as dirty as mine.  I could really see now --- his eyes, the color of a summer sky, the lines of weariness about his mouth, and then the voice I remembered from a garden of struggling poppies.

     “Valerie ---Valerie my dearest.”

     Then we both heard the roar of a truck as it drove up to the canteen.  His hands left my face, and he was gone, the tent flap swinging for a moment aa he passed through it.  I slowly put the ring back under my uniform, but I was transformed. It had been enough. 

     Soon enough the empty canteen was full, long lines of men waiting for a drink and some bread. This was reality, these long lines, the fires, the cocoa, the guns, the rain, and the dishrag.  Sometimes I had a hard time believing that our brief encounter had not been a dream, but then I would finger the ring where it lay hidden on my chest and continue on with the never-ending routine.

     The days flowed by in a dull stream.  I steeled myself to face each one as it came.  One day I was brought word of a roadblock half a mile up the road.  Trucks loaded with wounded were unable to get to the hospital.  Trucks filled with men in pain, sitting in the cold and mud, not moving.  I stoked the fire, filled two pitchers with hot chocolate and a basket with cups.  I pulled my cape tightly around me and headed out of the canteen and up the road.

     The weight of the pitchers and cups pushed me into the mud, my feet making little sucking noises at each step.  After a while I heard voices and made out an overturned truck and another and perhaps a third.  I did not stop to count but went beyond the jumble of steel to the first in a line of vehicles.  As I approached a driver came from behind the truck.

     “I just looked in to check,” he said, “and one of ‘ems dead.  You’re a nurse aren’t you? He asked peering at my white coif.

     “No, but I have some hot cocoa for you and ---“

     “That’s great.  I’ve got only two left, but they’d appreciate it.”

     I set my pitcher on the running board.  With my free hand I took a cup from the basket and poured a drink. 

     “One of these boys is shrapnel, the other blind from gas.  Here, Buddy, cocoa coming up.”

     I walked through the night and the mud, stopping at each vehicle to pour drinks.  I knew as I went that once more, it was not the drink but the knowledge that I had made the effort to come to them.  The greater my effort, the more it was worth. 

     I drained the last pitcher and headed back.  I found the canteen empty, the fire almost out.  I stoked it quickly wondering if the division that had lost contact had recovered.  The guns were beating against the horizon as though they would burst through an out into space.

     I thought about the men in the trucks, the men I had just seen.  The living lying beside the dead.  Soon they would be brought back here to Triage, to be sorted and often in the sorting the best went to death, the worst to life.  There was no reason for it.  Or perhaps, I had ceased to know how to reason.  It was better just to keep my mind on mechanical things.  I poured milk into the marmite and took the dishrag out of my pocket and gave the counter a wipe. 

     I was beyond surprise when I looked up and saw Basil Carter standing in front of me.

     “Hi, Val.”  His greeting was casual as if had just parted yesterday.  But there was a strained look in his eyes that had not been there before.  Even Basil Carter could not remain untouched by the death and destruction that surrounded us.

     He looked around the tent, a little of his old arrogance showing for a moment.  “Not the best working conditions, are they?”

     “Not for any of us.”  I stood there looking steadily waiting for what he might say next.  Not only was the girl in the playroom gone, but the girl in Issoudun as well.

     In spite of himself Bazz looked uncomfortable, tentative, stripped of his self-assurance.  “Look, I’m sorry about that mess the last time I saw you.  I was just so damn angry at everything, and I don’t know….”  He trailed off and I remained silent. 

     He finally said, “Well, I have had time to think and---“

     I broke in as I did not want to hear any more.  The past seemed lost in the rainy mists, the ever-present mud, and the pounding guns.  I did not want to hear Bazz’s version of anything. “Something like that does not seem very important here.”  I turned to stir whatever was in the marmite.

     “Heard anything from Major Brandt?”  Bazz’s voice was overly casual as he played with a cup on the counter.

     “He was though here.”

     “I heard he was on the ground.  Didn’t get a squadron.”

     I kept stirring, my back to him.  “No, he didn’t”

     “Too bad.  Old Branding Iron would have done a good job.”  I whipped around in surprise.  Bazz continued.  “I know.  I’ve done a little growing up in this war.  Guess it was long overdue.  Listen, Val.  I don’t ---I don’t know how to say this.  I found out about it a few days ago, and I have been moving heaven and earth to find you.  Luckily, I know someone at Red Cross Headquarters who was willing to tell me where you were.  Val, Major Brandt was killed.  He was leading an attack on a German position.  They think the machine guns got him.  He lay in no-man’s-land for a night before they could get him back to the hospital.  They got him there, but he did of his wounds a few days later.”

     Bazz’s words swirled around my head but had no meaning.  This was just one more thing I would have to stand.  Matthew was gone, and I would never again feel his callused hands on my face   We would never have the chance for our hearts to grow and prosper together.  But he had loved me, of that I was sure, and in all the lonely years to come, I would have that treasure, to keep.

     Bass leaned over the counter.  “Is there anything I can do?  I can’t stay long.  Have to get back to base, but I felt somehow, I should be the one to tell you.  I am not sure why, but I felt I owed both of you that.” 

     I shook my head.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ll ---I’ll be all right.  I just need a little time.”

     A line was forming at the counter and the marmite was boiling.  Bazz walked around and picked up a pitcher and started filling the cups.  “I can stay around for a while.”

     We stood side by side for the next hour pouring chocolate and handing out bread.  We didn’t talk, but I found comfort in his presence.  At the end of the hour, he gave me a long searching look, squeezed my hand, and put his cap on his head with some of his old panache, and left pushing through the tent flap --- the same tent flap through which Matthew had left me for the last time. 

     It was midnight when I finally crawled into my army cot.  I lay on my back, rigid, looking up at the dim ceiling.  My body felt as though it would never relax again.  I wished I could bring back so much of my life, but it was all gone.  Arthur, Trixie, and now the best of them all --- Matthew.

     There was nothing I could do to bring any of it back or change any of the choices I had made.  But Matthew had given me his ring, his promise of a future and I had that to live up to.  I thought of the house on Ellis Avenue in the months that had followed Trixie’s death.  I would not ruin my memories of Matthew with the kind of grief that had subsumed that house.  It had been like a smothering pall over everything.  Each of us was alone with our sorrow as the cause of Trixie’s death could not be mentioned, nor could her name be brought up.  It was as if a candle had not only been extinguished, but that it had also been removed from the room. Papa spent his days between the library and the piano, not even seeing his musician friends.  Each evening after dinner, he made a pilgrimage to Mamma’s room, sat beside her bed for exactly half an hour, saying nothing.  They looked like ghosts or something that might have been.  There they sat both yearning for comfort, and yet unable to give or receive it.  And yet even now one or the other of them might have rallied, but by now neither one knew how. 

     There were no plans for that summer.  Mamma and Papa were incapable of making them.  Never-the-less, the summer came.  The servants, faithful to their training, took down the draperies, rolled up rugs, swathed furniture in white linen covers, kept dark shades drawn down against the sun.  I had never seen the house like this.  It became the servants’ house, and I was spending the summer with them.  Josie tiptoed apologetically over the bare floors.  Emma served the roasts cold and fretted that baking them might overhear the house. 

      When fall and winter came and went, Mamma, with the quietness of one day merging into another, ceased to breathe.  The doctor shook his head.  Her going was as unexplainable as the onward movement of time.  There was nothing wrong with her body, she was just tired of living.  I felt no surprise that it should happen.  Only a numbing grief for what might have been.  Papa withdrew still further into himself, and James absented himself from the house as much as he could.  The house became like a dead thing that had closed up on itself stifling everything inside. 

      But I would not give up like that because Matthew was gone.  That would not be a fitting way to remember what we had shared, and the potential that lay in the future we would never have.  I would never be free of the longing I had when I thought of him, but somehow, I would go out and meet life and see what it had to bring.  I had a life to live, not just for me but for the two of us.