I sank gratefully into the armchair by my bedroom window, kicking off my shoes and removing my long gloves. A month in the house, and it had gone by with surprising ease. I had fallen into the schedule as into a long-forgotten play. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, arrangements with John for the car, chats with Emma about how many and what for dinner. I felt as if I were suspended in time waiting for life to begin again. This interim would soon be over, however. I had cabled my acceptance to Mr. LaFranc and had been given six weeks until I was due to start my translating job.
I rubbed my aching feet. All that standing in the church as one of Florrie’s maids of honor, and then again in the reception line afterwards. I had not wanted to be part of the wedding and knew that Florrie had not really wanted me in it. Certainly, the fluffy pink creations she had picked for her wedding party to wear did not suit me in any way. Yet, we both had to act delighted with the invitation and the acceptance. James remained remote and distant and did not even talk to me on his wedding day.
One after another the guests had come down the receiving line, congratulating James, complimenting Florrie, and telling me how lucky I was to be home in time for my brother’s wedding. Florrie had received her compliments with the air of one who knew they were well deserved. James had looked as if he were in a cocoon, beyond human contact. My face had been fixed in my social smile, the mask I had worn for years, although a bit rusty from lack of use. My mind, however, was on the last wedding I had been to. It had been Rosie’s and how different it had been from this one. All the guests and the groom had been in uniform. Only Rosie was in a hastily purchased dress, looking lovely and very vulnerable. It had taken place in Paris after the Armistice.
Armistice. November 11, 1918. I would never forget that day. At eleven in the morning the sun had appeared over the front for the first time in weeks. It had been pale and meager as if from disuse. The guns had boomed under the feeble sun until the clock struck eleven and then silence had reigned. It was as if a wild animal had been stopped in mid-leap. One day the guns were pounding and pounding, the men were dying in their thousands, and the wounded were lying in tents in pain and the next moment all was silent. The gutted earth still remained --- pitted by bomb craters, furrowed by trenches, littered with the waste of battle and human suffering. It all lay quiet.
Almost as abruptly the work that had consumed my thoughts and hours began coming to a close. As December moved towards Christmas, the hospital activity diminished and the staff packed, one by one, joining the rivers of people flowing from the front. I found myself clinging to the hours as though I could hold them back. When the river ran dry there would be no more hospital or canteen and no more need for me, here or anywhere else.
Then on Christmas day a message arrived at the canteen. The Red Cross was calling urgently for volunteers to work with the Army of Occupation in Germany. It was a new lease on life, a postponement of the end and what I knew as the inevitable. I was overjoyed.
“I’m going to volunteer,” I told Rosie. “I want to do it.”
I had come on shift in the early evening to relieve her and we stood over the field range exchanging news. Since the end of hostilities and the easing of the work in the hospital, we had shared the canteen duty, Rosie taking the day and I the night shift, feeding stragglers and casuals from the endless columns of marching men.
Rosie’s face, highlighted by the fire, looked calm and somehow at peace. “I won’t go with you this time Val. The war is over. My time here is over. I am going to be married.”
I was startled. I had no inkling that there was anyone in Rosie’s life since we had come here. We had been comfortable companions since Rosie had resumed work, which had suited both of us. Neither rubbed against the other and at least I, on the one hand, could appreciate more what Rosie had been through from her upraising to her miscarriage. All she had wanted was the same thing I had wanted afterall --- out. But this announcement had taken me by surprise. I blurted out, “Married? But to whom.”
“Bob Michaelson.”
“Bob? But you haven’t seen him since we left----“
“The mails still run.” Rosie smiled over at me, some of her old self peeking through. “He proposed in a letter yesterday and I wrote right back to say yes.”
I felt a real sense of joy run through me which made me glad. I reached over and gave Rosie a hug. “He’s a wonderful person and I know you will both be very happy.”
“I always liked him and after we left Issoudun I started writing to him. I’m glad I did. He needed sympathy.”
“Sympathy?”
“He wanted to go to the front and he said Major Brandt would have let him go. But the officer who came in Major Brandt’s place was lazy and put all the responsibility for running things on Bob. He kept flattering him and telling him he was too valuable to replace, and it got so that the only thing Bob cared about was my letters.”
There was silence as Rosie played absently with her coif and then rubbed at a counter she had already cleaned. Then she faced me, the glow of the firelight lighting her face. “I know what you’re really thinking, but it won’t be like that. I know when I’m lucky. Bob’s a fine man. I never thought --- Val, I’ll make him a good wife. You’ll see. He won’t have anything to be sorry for.”
My heart went out to her. If only Trixie had been able to move beyond her problems, but she had died from them, and I had been no help. Impulsively, I took Rosie’s hand, “You’ll both be very happy. I’m sure you will.”
But still Rosie stood there, gently removing her hands from mine. Then she came close, her eyes pleading. “I want to get away from here and go to Paris. As soon as Bob can get leave, he’ll meet me there. We’ll be married right away. As soon as possible.”
“You want this very much, don’t you?”
“Yes, Val, I do. And if I don’t do it this way it won’t come off. Bob thinks I’m all the things I’d really like to be. I really would, Val. If I get to be Bob’s wife, I’ll get to be like that. He’ll never know, will he?”
It was a direct question. I turned from Rosie’s pleading face to the flicker of the firelight --- shapes and images coming and going, leaving nothing to remind of there having been.
“There’s nothing for him to know,” I said. “A man like Bob wouldn’t even hear rumor. There’s nothing else you know, Rosie.”
“Thank you, Val.” There was a long pause. “I wasn’t really worried about you, not after what we have been through here. I was thinking of ---- well, I was thinking of others.”
“Don’t think about it again, Rosie. I don’t think anyone would want to hurt you now. There has been too much pain and suffering as it is. No one wants anything now but happy endings if they are possible. And I think you have found one.”
Rosie looked more than ready for her bed, but she did not leave. After a while she moved around the counter and started rearranging the cups.
“Why don’t you go,” I urged her.
She rattled the cups a bit and then blurted out, “What about you, Val?”
I stooped quickly to stoke the fire so that she couldn’t see the tears that sprang to my eyes. “I don’t know what I am going to do. Go home, I guess.”
“Would you be in my wedding before you go? I know that we weren’t ----That --- Oh, Val. I would just like you there. It’s different now, isn’t it?” She paused and then with a half-smile, “We’re partners remember?”
I replied back, “At least until your new assignment with Bob.”
Rosie left the canteen with a smile on her face, leaving me with the feeling that our unlikely partnership had ended well. In spite of ourselves we had each learned something from the other one. I had matured enough to understand things my upbringing would never have countenanced. I had learned it too late to help my sister, but I could support and be happy for my Red Cross partner.
The late afternoon sun slanted into the bedroom window. I was on my knees in front of the bureau sorting all my clothes and possessions, discarding some and packing others to take with me to Europe. Tomorrow I would catch the train to New York and in five days I would be sailing out of the harbor bound for a new life. I would leave behind me my dependence on this house, this room, the people who had served and restricted me and in their own fashion loved me.
The room darkened, and I walked over to the window and pulled down the shades and closed the curtains. Downstairs Josie would also be pulling shades and turning on lights. Soon she would announce dinner.
All over the city people would be gathering to eat their dinner, banding together against the darkness. And if Matthew had lived, where would he be now? Would he be in Europe where the night was already advanced or would he be home riding his horse in from the hills in the western twilight. My heart would always be his.
I went back to the bottom drawer and was pulling out old letters when Nanny came in. She stood looking at me for a long time and then said, “Josie tells me there’s company to dinner.”
“Who is it?”
“A gentleman. Josie said he came about an hour ago to see your father, and they’ve been talking in the library ever since.”
“Probably someone to see about Papa’s new manuscript.” I sighed. “They will probably talk music for the whole dinner.”
“No, I don’t think so. This one is a young man ---in uniform---with a cane.”
My stomach knotted. I turned from Nanny and tried to continue sorting my clothes. But my hands wouldn’t seem to work as I tried to stem the surge of hope that boiled up inside. I could feel the fire rushing to my face while my hands turned to ice. I had stayed on after the armistice and knew the utter confusion of that time. People who were supposed to be whole turned out to be wounded or gone in the mud of no-man’s-land. Others whom family thought they had lost had suddenly appeared from some hospital covered in bandages but alive. But Bazz had been so sure, and I had believed his surety. I closed my eyes chanting in my head. I will not hope, I will not hope. I will not…..
It took a tremendous effort to find my voice and ask Nanny, “Did he leave a card?”
“Yes, Josie says he is a major, Major Brandt.”
In a dream I got to my feet, my hand reaching for the shoelace and ring under my dress.
Josie’s voice came through my ringing ears, “Dinner in ten minutes, Miss Val. And Major Brandt is in the library.”
My heart bounced into my throat and fell back again hammering as though it would shake me to pieces. Josie vanished down the back stairs. As in a dream I went towards the front stairs, paused at the top then took the steps one by one. One flight. Part of another. I could see the hall and the bar of light shining around it from the half open library door. I was not a child anymore in a dotted swiss with a blue sash. I was a grown woman who had gone to war and come home.
The house seemed to be holding its breath, expectant. I knew that Papa was in his study, Josie in the dining room and Nanny upstairs ---and Matthew in the library.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the room. He was standing in front of the fire, his fine blond hair glinting, his blue eyes clear, his figure straight in the uniform, his hand resting lightly on a cane. Without knowing how, I was in his arms – the stiff wool of his uniform, the hard buttons, the feel of his arms around me, his lips against mine. I felt as if I had finally come home.
Gently he pulled away from me. His gesturing arm included not only the library but all of the house, the ornate furniture, gilt frames silver, damask, three stories of layered comforts. “Val, can you really leave all of this?”
“I was going to anyway.”
“So your father says. I am not sure who he thinks is worse, the League of Nations or me.” His smile looked rueful. “I am a soldier Val and I am going to stay one. It’s not much of a life I can offer you, a soldier’s wife.”
“And I may not be the most biddable of wives.”
This time Matthew grinned as he reached for me saying only. “Don’t I know it.”
As we kissed, I felt as if the house were suddenly opening up --- as if the roof were lifting and all the windows were opening, and fresh air and sunshine were pouring in blowing away the dust and darkness.
Josie had to call us twice for dinner.
