An hour later she was on the train north.
*
Robin was sitting on the dining-room table when Isa welcomed Lucy home. She jumped from the table into Lucy’s arms.
‘Ladies do not sit on dining-room tables,’ said Lucy, kissing the child’s tumbled curls.
‘Isa has told me all day that I am not a lady.’
‘And so, you decided to prove that she was right. You are a naughty girl and should not be given the parcel that’s at the bottom of my bag.’
It was good to be home. Already it felt as if she had never been away.
The brooch caught in Robin’s hair as she slid out of Lucy’s arms.
‘Pretty,’ she said.
‘Robin, I almost forgot. The friend who gave me this brooch knew Mummy in the war. He said she was beautiful and brave and saved the lives of lots and lots of soldiers.’
Robin forgot about the parcel waiting for her in Lucy’s bag while she heard over and over again about the meeting of Dr Rose Nesbitt and an American senator. Some things Lucy had to realistically invent. ‘What was Mummy wearing? How many British soldiers did she save? Did she save German soldiers too? I hope she didn’t.’
‘But of course she did, Robin, for Mummy was a doctor and the poor German soldiers didn’t want to fight any more than the Scottish ones did.’
‘That’s stupid. If no one wanted to fight, then why was there a war?’
Lucy looked down at the five-year-old child who had lost both her parents to a war neither had wanted. She did not know the answer and so avoided the question. ‘It was so awful, Robin, that there will never ever be a war again.’
‘Good. Did you bring me a book?’
‘I thought little girls liked dolls.’
‘Not so much as books.’
‘Wherever I go from now on, I shall buy you a book.’
Robin nodded emphatically. ‘Good.’
‘Time for bed. I’ll bath you.’
‘I haven’t done my homework and you haven’t sharpened my pencils. Get a scalpel. Mine have to be the very, very sharpest. Miss Blair likes Fiona best ’cause she has the best pencils.’
Lucy sighed. Robin adored her teacher, an ironclad maiden lady, and wanted to please her in every way. Miss Blair demanded four sharp pencils every day, and so every evening they went through the ritual of sharpening Robin’s pencils to danger point.
‘You are trying to make me forget that you have not yet done your homework, madam.’
‘It’s just to read, Aunt Lucy, and to learn three words and I already know them anyway, but if you hear me say them, then you can sign my jotter and Miss Blair will love me as much as she loves Fiona.’
Was it her lack of parents that made Robin so insecure, or did all little girls want to be loved by their first teacher? Lucy could not remember, but vowed to have a word with the, to her, formidable Miss Blair. She listened to Robin read, signed the jotter to show that BELL, WELL, and SPELL could be correctly spelled by Miss Anderson-Howard, and an hour later managed to sit down to go over the accumulated letters.
‘A doctor should ken not to read while she’s eating,’ fussed Isa. ‘It’s very bad for the digestion and not a good example for Miss Robin.’
‘She’s sound asleep, Isa, and this halibut is wonderful.’
Somewhat mollified, Isa went off and Lucy finished her meal and went through her letters. She went into her office and began to go through her notes on birth control and then somehow, all by itself, the pencil wrote ‘Merry Christmas past’. She had promised to write to him, once a year at Christmas. She would send it once a year, but there could be no harm in writing little bits all year round. Having no real idea of the length of time it would take for a letter posted in Dundee to reach Washington, D.C., she posted her first letter to Max on the 1st of October 1921.
Max laughed with pleasure when the strange letter arrived a full month before Christmas and sat down to answer it immediately. He had never been to Dundee and he had certainly never seen her home, but he imagined her fairly accurately as she sat before a roaring fire in her elegantly furnished sitting room, scribbling away everything except what was really in her heart. He took his tone from her letter. Brook was a joy. Ammabelle was rather unwell – he did not give her illness a name and Lucy sighed for him. He had hoped that the trip to Europe, new sights, new sounds, would help, but if anything it seemed to have made things worse. She could not bear to have Brook near her and was somewhat less fond of his father.
I refuse to leave her though, for I feel that she does draw some strength from my presence although she denies it and says my very size tires her. The doctors agree with me but suggest I do send Brook to a board school. It is not merely with my own interests at heart that I have decided on one of your fine Scottish institutions.
In August 1922 Brook du Pay arrived at Lucy’s front door just as she drove up with Robin. Lucy’s heart leaped like a spawning salmon trying to jump up a waterfall and then settled somewhere at the bottom of her stomach. At thirteen the boy was tall and slim; it was Max she saw there, Max. ‘Brook!’ Her voice whispered and then recovered. ‘Brook!’ Her voice was much stronger. ‘How lovely to see you.’
‘I guess the letter didn’t reach you.’ His voice had changed in a year; low and strong, it uncannily resembled the mellow tones of his father. ‘Dad sent me over with a tutor. Mother is . . . well, she’s kinda sick, Doctor Lucy, and I really get in her hair.’ He broke off and looked at Robin who was staring at them with both her eyes and mouth wide. Lucy laughed. ‘Brook, this is my goddaughter Robin Anderson-Howard.’
‘How do you do, Miss Robin Anderson-Howard,’ said Brook and held out his hand.
Robin shook hands formally and Lucy was proud of her training. Then the child spoiled the effect by adding, ‘You are a very pretty boy.’
‘Robin, “how do you do” is enough.’
‘Heck no, Doctor Lucy, no one ever told me I was pretty before.’
‘Where are your cases,’ – no, what did Americans say? – ‘your bags, Brook?’
‘Oh, we checked into a hotel and Mr Van Doeren let me take a cab over. We’re only here a few days. I have to get to Edinburgh to buy the outfit.’
Isa had opened the door and was standing waiting. ‘Are you coming in or are you going to stay out there all night?’
‘We have a guest for tea, Isa.’ For the moment Lucy had forgotten that Isa had been with her in Venice, with her in Tuscany.
‘Oh, no,’ breathed Isa as she looked at the boy’s face, so like that of his father. ‘It can’t be.’
‘This is Brook du Pay, Isa.’
‘I’ll get the tea,’ Isa muttered, ignoring Brook’s outstretched hands.
‘Please forgive her, Brook,’ said Lucy angrily. ‘She’s a rude, bad-tempered old woman.’
‘She isn’t usually,’ said Robin, ‘but it doesn’t matter. She makes lovely biscuits.’
There was no opportunity to talk to Brook until he was seated beside her in the car driving back to his hotel. Robin had demanded his full attention to her school-books and Lucy had enjoyed watching them. They were very alike, tall for their ages, slender and dark-haired, ‘almost brother and sister’, she thought and tore her mind away from that path.
‘I’m sorry that your mother is no better, Brook.’ She did not want to pry, to make the boy unhappy by forcing him to face a situation that his father had obviously encouraged him, in public at least, to avoid.
‘She’s never been very strong, Doctor Lucy, and she gets real exhausted when there’s any kind of pressure, I guess you’d say. She used to love our house in Washington and all the parties, but now she never goes and Dad has to go himself . . . but this year he has decided to stay in Georgia, just until she gets a little better.’
‘And he has decided to send his much-loved son away from him,’ thought Lucy. She had been a doctor for a long time; she had many patients who shared Ammabelle’s symptoms, but she could not tell the fragile boy
that she knew. She muttered something encouraging and then talked of the adventure of going to a new school in a new country.
‘And you can come to me for exeats, Brook. You must never stay in school when you have permission to have a weekend away.’
Later, in her bedroom as she sat at the mirror, she regretted those words.
‘Oh, Max, am I to be content with being a surrogate mother for your child as well as Kier’s? I should be content; my child-bearing years are over. I should have forgotten the anticipation, the uncontrollable leaping passion. I should have forgotten Italy, forgotten those desperate words in London. Better far to say you never meant it, to hate you, to put you out of my mind. Better not to encourage your son, Ammabelle’s son, to make himself welcome in my retreat. This house is for Robin. And it’s a doctor’s house, a place where people come to get well, to find hope and joy and courage in despair.’
She glared in the mirror at the dark eyes, the tumbling brown hair that had – yes, it did – flecks of grey. ‘You’re too old to still want Max, too old to have your heart dance with joy at the sound of his name, at a glance from his son that reminds you of Washington and, oh, dear God, how he reminds you of Tuscany. Why do I torture myself with longing? Max belongs to Ammabelle and I can’t hope, can’t . . . must not pray.’
24
1923
ALTHOUGH LUCY HAD sent her yearly letter, she received no Christmas letter from Max, but in early December a card arrived from Brook. He was on his way home for Christmas: he hoped to resume his studies in the New Year. What did it mean? Lucy refused to speculate – she could not, must not. A few days later a small packet arrived for Miss Anderson-Howard and, when opened on Christmas morning, was found to contain a silver propelling pencil . . . ‘to make your jotters tidier . . .’ Robin practised all day.
‘When he comes he’ll see I’m neater than Fiona.’
Lucy tried delicately to prepare her to be hurt. ‘He might not be able to come back for a while. America is a long way away.’
Robin wrote a superbly beautiful ‘B’ on her paper. She decorated it with flowers. ‘He’ll be back, Auntie Lucy.’
The New Year came. The spring followed, but there was no communication from Georgia or Washington, D.C. Lucy accepted an invitation to a conference in Paris.
‘Paris? Can I come?’
‘Not this time, Robin. I’m working. One day, I promise.’
‘But you will go, won’t you? You’ll go to see my father’s grave?’
Lucy faced that that was what had been in the back of her mind since she heard about the conference. The first war graves had been officially prepared in 1920. Why had she not gone then? ‘Robin was too small,’ she answered herself. Now there was no excuse, no excuse not to find and visit both graves.
‘I’ll go, sweetheart, and I’ll put some flowers there.’
‘I’ll pay for them,’ said Robin, and fished a rather sticky sixpence out of the pocket in her knickers.
*
The conference in Paris went very well. On the first Friday evening Lucy took the train to Amiens, which was relatively close to everywhere she wanted to go and where she could at least find taxis, if not a car for hire. It was late and dark when she arrived, and so she went straight to her hotel. Even on the trains she had been aware of the cemeteries; it was impossible not to be aware of them. They stretched, in silent witness to the stupidity of man, for miles into the distance. She had Robin’s sixpence. Tomorrow she would take the equivalent amount in francs and see what flowers a little girl could buy for the father she had never known and who had probably never even known of her existence.
The hotel was comfortable and clean and, thanks both to Herr Colner and to her year in Rouen, she was able to order a delicious meal.
‘I’ll bring Robin here one day,’ she thought.
There were few other guests in the hotel, and the others in the dining room were obviously local people who appreciated Madame Viseux’s superb cooking. Madame took pity on her foreign guest – perhaps because that foreigner had enough sense to try the local speciality of Queues de Boeufs aux Olives Noirs and not to stick to the familiar Coq au Vin that all other foreigners ordered – and stood beside her while she drank her second cup of excellent coffee.
‘You are on holiday, madame?’
‘No. I was in Paris on business . . .’
Madame Viseux was interested. A woman alone and on business.
‘Business, madame?’
‘I am a doctor and I am attending a conference.’ Lucy realized there was no reason not to tell her; the woman was interested, not nosy.
‘Médecin. This is undoubtedly an honour, madame.’
‘You are a superb cook, madame.’ It was time to share the glory.
Madame was complacent. She shrugged, a typically Gallic shrug, and Lucy smiled to see it. ‘We all use the talents le bon Dieu gives us, Madame Medecin. You have come for the graves?’
‘Yes.’
‘Few come but we are thinking, Jean Luc and I, we are thinking that a trickle is becoming a tide and we should expand our hotel.’
‘Very wise, Madame.’
‘The good food eases the heartache, no?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Your husband, madame?’
‘A friend.’
Well satisfied, Madame Viseux took herself off to the kitchen where Lucy became a woman who had lost her lover to war and who had become a doctor to cure the ills of the surviving world. Unaware of the halo she was wearing, Lucy went to her comfortable room to write to Robin and to sleep.
. . . Now I am in Amiens and tomorrow I will find Daddy’s grave in Louvencourt. The War Graves Commission have worked so hard to make a list of where every brave soldier is buried. It is very beautiful and peaceful. I have your sixpence, dear Robin, and I am sure I will find some lovely flowers.
This hotel is small, very comfortable, and the food is, you will be glad to hear, absolutely superb. It is a perfect place for a little girl to practise her French, and one day soon, we shall have a holiday, a vacance, here.
The next morning a solicitous and sympathetic maid brought croissants light as air and the coffee Lucy had ordered although she had been offered tea. The tea in Paris had cured her of ever making that mistake again.
‘No doubt madame could make a decent cup of tea, but in Rome etc. etc.,’ she told herself. ‘Who knows, tomorrow I may be brave enough to try chocolate in the morning.’ She could imagine Annie as clearly as if she were in the room. ‘Chocolate, for breakfast? You have your cocoa afore you go to your bed.’
But Annie was dead, had been dead for years. Lucy shivered. She had not thought much about it before but, apart from Isa, only Robin was left, a tiny thread connecting her to everyone who had gone before.
She left the hotel and her taxi driver escorted her to the cemeteries.
‘You should have seen them just a few years ago, madame: wild flowers everywhere, scarlet poppies, blue cornflowers, white camomile, perfect for French and English dead, no? But, like you English we French are good gardeners and we have worked hard to grow the flowers of the countries these children left behind. Unfortunately the giant maples of Canada do not grow well here, or some of the flowers of India. You have forget-me-nots for your husband, Madame?’
‘No.’
‘Your king came in 1922 . . . to Passchendaele. At Etaples he asked the gardener to take him to a grave, not one of the ones he was being shown. The King of England, madame, he stood by this little grave and he took an envelope from his pocket. There were forget-me-nots in it, sent by the soldier’s mother, a simple woman, to the queen. He bent over the grave and carefully put the little bouquet upon it. Then he turned to the gardener: “See you keep them watered as long as possible,” he said. I hope his maman knows how hard we try.’
Her heart too full for speech, Lucy lay back and watched the rows and rows of headstones go by. How many mothers would be unable to put flowers on th
ese graves? They reached Louvencourt and she asked the driver to wait. She would not be long.
She had already contacted the authorities and knew the number of the cross and the line it was in. Her arms were full of the flowers for which France was justly famous. She stopped on a path and looked around and remembered Wordsworth’s poem about the daffodils. But it was not gaily dancing flowers that stretched as far as the eye could see here, but little headstones marching in solemn witness towards Blomfield’s magnificent cross of remembrance. The silence crushed her eardrums, her brain. Thousands and thousands of mute appeals. Lucy knew the figures. She had read them every day in the newspapers but eight thousand, eleven thousand, nineteen thousand in one day meant nothing, nothing until now.
Her eyes misty with unshed tears, she started walking again to the section that sheltered Major Kier Anderson-Howard. Private _________ aged nineteen; Gunner _________ aged seventeen, Fusilier _________ aged nineteen. ‘My God, they are children. We fought a war with children.’
No, not all were children. Here lay husbands and fathers. How many, like Kier, had never known that they were to live on in the gift of an unborn child?
Her feet had found his grave, but her knees refused to support her legs and she sank down on the neatly mown grass.
Almost four years. Did it make it easier to accept death if one could take part in its rituals? Had she really realized the finality of death? ‘The War Office regrets . . .’ Had they really accepted it? Now she saw with painful lucidity that it had taken seeing this plain little white stone with his name and rank and the simple cross carved on it and the date of his death. She looked around again. How many of the wives, mothers, sweethearts of all the men buried under these crosses could ever afford the luxury of seeing the grave, of attending it as she was doing, of putting a floral tribute on the sad mound? The war was not over – the fighting perhaps, but for too many women the war would never end.
Lucy looked in her handbag and found her nail file; it was all she could find with a sharp point. She began to dig, and when she had a little hole she dropped Robin’s sixpence in it and covered it up.
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