The corporal mentally shook his head, recapping the ink bottle and storing it in a closet. The commandant’s chosen companions were none of his business, and poking into the private affairs of officers was one sure way to get into trouble. He left the office and scanned the lobby, looking around for the courier from the Chancellery in Berlin, due to arrive that day with Becker’s mail. Like the good soldier he was, he squelched his curiosity and tended to his assigned task, putting the matter of Becker’s penchant for Lysette Remy out of his mind.
Hesse turned and looked up the side corridors, still searching for the overdue mailman. He was hoping for a letter from his mother back in the Ruhr Valley. He missed his home and large family and spent most of his off duty time writing to them. He’d had a girl back in Vitten, but she hadn’t answered his mail recently. His brother had written that she’d been seeing someone else, a wealthy widower with children who had avoided military service.
That’s what happened sometimes when you left, Hesse thought philosophically and without much regret, they turned to someone who was there.
There was no sign of his quarry, but as he swung around to scan the entrance once again he caught sight of something else that gave him pause. Near the front door a student nurse was loading a supply cart with bandages from one of the linen rooms. A white-coated orderly hovered at her side, obviously pressing his attentions on the girl, who continued to work while trying, politely but firmly, to get rid of him.
Hesse observed the scene in pantomime for a few moments until he could stand it no longer. Approaching the pair, he called out in his pidgin French, “You, there, you have work to do?”
The man jumped and turned, alarmed by the German voice.
“Yes, sir,” he stammered, almost afraid to look at the corporal addressing him.
“Then go do it. Now,” Hesse said harshly, and the man hurried away, shooting one backward glance at his former prey.
Brigitte Duclos stood uncertainly next to the loaded cart, relieved and at the same time annoyed that she was now in debt to this foreigner, this intruder. Hesse faced her, his light eyes searching her face.
“Are you all right, mademoiselle?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she replied coldly. “He was only talking.” She was a sweet faced, delicate blonde, her soft pastel coloring enhanced by the striped pinafore she wore. Her gaze was level, with no hint of servility, and he observed that her answer conveyed the impression that he had overreacted.
“It seemed that he was interfering,” Hesse said stiffly. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you unnecessarily.”
His French, while far less sophisticated than Becker’s, got the message across and Brigitte felt churlish. Whatever their relative positions, this boy had been trying to help her.
“You didn’t alarm me,” she said civilly. “Thank you for the assistance, he can be an awful pest.” She used the word for housefly, mouche, to describe her antagonist. The tension broken, Hesse grinned at her. She did not smile back.
“You are a student here?” he asked, undaunted, gesturing to her apron and her plain white cap, unbanded to indicate her undergraduate status.
“Yes.” She closed the door of the linen closet and turned the cart to face the hall.
His eyes moved to the name tag pinned to her breast pocket. “Duclos,” he said. “Your father is the mayor of Fains, the village just south of here?”
“That’s right,” she responded, mentally counting the stacks of bandages she’d assembled, not looking at him.
Hesse’s thoughts raced. Her father was a collaborator, yet she had been noticeably distant throughout their exchange. Perhaps she didn’t share her father’s pro-German leanings. He suddenly realized that her feelings on that subject interested him very much.
“May I go, Corporal?” she asked quietly. “These things are needed on the ward.” She began to push the cart ahead, and he put out his hand to stop its movement. She looked up, startled, and their eyes locked.
“So you are in the hospital every day?” he persisted.
“Not every day,” Brigitte answered, her face growing warm in spite of herself under his intense inspection. “I have a duty rotation, like all the other students, some nights, some weekends, some days off.” She knew she shouldn’t be giving him this information, but he could find it out for himself by asking a few questions and she thought it best not to antagonize him.
He nodded. “So perhaps we will meet again,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Brigitte replied neutrally, moving forward as he finally stepped aside. Hesse watched as she walked away, pushing the little trolley in front of her. Even the long pale blue uniform skirt and thick soled white shoes could not disguise her slim hips and shapely legs.
It was easy enough to check schedules and assignments in the hospital; in his capacity as Becker’s aide Hesse had access to almost everything.
He would make sure that he saw her again.
* * *
Laura paused in the doorway of the library and stuck her head into the room.
“No customers?” she said to Lysette Remy, who was standing behind her massive desk, sorting through a pile of volumes and marking them with a rubber stamp. The book-lined chamber was empty.
Lysette looked up. “No,” she said, glancing into the hall behind Laura before she added quietly, “we won’t see the kids again until the fall term begins. The school is right across the street from the German headquarters so their parents are keeping them home. I don’t think they want them to be around here until it’s necessary.”
“Can you blame them?” Laura said tartly. She held up a stack of report forms and said, “I’m filling these out with the final marks for the summer session and then taking the rest of the day off. You might as well do the same.”
“Maybe I will,” Lysette said, brushing back a wayward strand of hair which had escaped her customary bun.
“I’ll be down in the office if you need me,” Laura said, turning toward the corridor. Then she stopped short as she confronted Becker, who had come up silently behind her.
Becker took a step backward and clicked his heels, bowing his head. “Madame Duclos,” he murmured.
“Colonel,” Laura replied icily, breezing past him. She wondered what he was doing there, and why he was alone, without the young corporal who followed him around like a faithful shepherd dog. She fled down the hall, putting as much distance between herself and the German as fast as she could. Once she rounded the corner of the corridor she halted to catch her breath. Relax, she told herself. The man is unnerving but he isn’t psychic. He can’t tell by looking at you that you’re hiding an American marine in Pierre Langtot’s barn.
That reminded her of the errands she had to run that day and she hurried off again to post her grades.
Becker walked into the library and stopped before Lysette, who had witnessed the little scene in the doorway.
“Your friend hates me,” he said bluntly.
Surprised by his candor, Lysette replied in kind. “She would like to see you marching out of France.”
“She would like to see me roasting on a spit,” Becker countered wearily, removing his cap and smoothing his hair with his other hand.
Lysette covered her mouth with her fist, and it was a moment before he realized that she was trying not to giggle.
“You find that amusing?” he said, smiling slightly as he deposited his books on the table before her.
“No,” she said quickly, and then added, “I mean, yes, but...”
He smiled wider at her confusion.
Lysette grabbed the books and said quickly, “Did you enjoy these?” He had returned Therese Raquin and Madame Bovary.
He made a dismissive gesture. “I think I’ve read enough about unhappily married Frenchwomen for the moment. It’s not a subject which particularly interests me.”
He was glancing around the room and missed her change of expression.
“I’m sorry you found them dull,” she mur
mured, turning to place the books on a shelf behind her.
“I didn’t say that,” Becker replied, looking back at her.
She shelved the books and turned to him. She glanced up and their eyes met.
“How did you come to work here?” he asked softly, as if he had the right to know, and she answered promptly.
“The man I cleaned for sent me to school.”
“The man you cleaned for?”
“Yes, I was raised in an orphanage and he was a patron of the nuns who ran it. They sent me to him as a maid.”
“What happened to your parents?” Becker said.
“My mother died when I was born, and my father went back to Poland. He left me with the Sisters.”
“So your father was Polish,” Becker said, putting his hands behind his back and striding to the wall of windows on their left.
“Yes.”
He turned to face her. The sun streaming through the dusty glass behind him made an ebony helmet of his rich black hair. “During the fall of Warsaw I saw Poles on horseback charge tanks.”
“That was foolish, I suppose,” Lysette murmured carefully, unsure why he was telling her about it.
“‘It is magnificent, but it is not war’”, Becker said thoughtfully, looking over her head, his eyes fixed on nothing.
“I beg your pardon?” Lysette said, bewildered.
His gaze returned to hers. “That was said about the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about and looked it.
“It was very brave, but useless, like the Poles I saw charging tanks,” Becker clarified.
“Oh. I see. But maybe the Poles felt that if they were going to die anyway, they might was well die fighting.”
Becker nodded, studying her face. “Yes. I think they felt that way,” he replied quietly. Then, as if he hadn’t digressed he put his cap on the wooden window seat and inquired, “Were the sisters in the orphanage kind to you?”
“Yes, but...” she said, and stopped, as if afraid to reveal too much.
His dark eyes narrowed. “But?”
Lysette shrugged eloquently. “They were kind in their own way. But when they did something for you, they were really doing it for God, not for you, and you felt that, if you know what I mean. There was always that... distance.”
Becker nodded again, slowly. “I understand.” He walked toward her once more, and this time moved behind the desk, removing that obstacle between them. He paused in front of her and she looked up at him.
“How did you meet your husband?” he asked quietly.
“He was the son of the man who sent me to school.”
“Ah. So you grew up with him.”
“In a way. I met him when I was twelve.”
“Childhood sweethearts, then.”
Lysette said nothing, watching him warily. She didn’t resent the personal turn of the conversation; she was too surprised by his curiosity to be offended. But the impression he was getting was so far from the truth that she didn’t know how to respond.
He misinterpreted her silence and changed the subject. “Did you organize this system?” he asked, gesturing to the banks of drawers, the rows of bookshelves.
“Yes. I put it all together when I came here.”
“Explain it to me,” he said, in that voice of command which demanded instant obedience. Lysette couldn’t believe he was actually interested but he listened attentively while she described the numerical coding of the books and their placement on the shelves, as well as the card catalogs, which were indexed by title, author, and subject matter. He stopped her a few times to ask pertinent questions, and when she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, he said, “You love books, don’t you?”
She nodded. “They’re great friends, I think.”
“I think so too.”
“They’re not fickle like people, they’re always there when you want them and they never change,” Lysette added softly.
Brown eyes met blue, and for a moment she could sense the loneliness in him, which echoed hers.
He looked away from her abruptly, breaking the connection. “Very true.” His gaze returned to her face. “Please go on.”
Lysette hesitated. This man was the top ranking officer in the whole German garrison, and he wanted to spend his morning talking to her about a library, and not a very good one at that? But he was waiting patiently, his arms folded, his dark head tilted to one side, and she saw no alternative but to comply with his request.
Anyway, she didn’t want him to leave. So she went on talking, hoping she had enough gold in her mine of information to hold his attention for a while longer.
And she did.
* * *
Laura walked her bicycle down the main street of Bar-le-Duc, steadying the packages in the basket on the back. The general store in Fains, which also served as the post office and the repository of the village’s single telephone, had a limited supply of fresh produce so she bought food in Bar-le-Duc as often as she could. Today she had gotten some special items to prepare a dinner for Harris, including the fruit preserves for which the town was famous; the least she could do was feed the man. She could see after only one meeting that he would rather smoke than eat, and while he was with them she felt it her duty to make sure he had regular meals.
She had managed to put the marine out of her mind until now, concentrating on the morning’s tasks. But as she crossed the road and slid her bike into the rack in front of the hospital, she allowed him to fill her thoughts, remembering the previous night.
She’d decided within an hour or so that his superiors had picked the right man for the job. And that she had to be very careful around him.
Her reaction was purely emotional and the reason for it was clear. Even in his ridiculous borrowed clothes Harris had been so American that it hurt. She could easily picture him at a baseball game, sunstruck in a tennis shirt with a hot dog in his hand, yelling at the umpire. Or playing touch football in the chill October dusk, calling for a pass on a leaf strewn field redolent of wood smoke and fallen apples. He reminded her of every boy she had ever known in school, in her early life; Bobby Hicks who’d taught her to shoot marbles in the fourth grade, Scott Marston who’d sat behind her in junior high and whispered jokes in her ear during social studies, Dave Wincote who’d taken her to the prom. Harris was the great Midwest, the City of Big Shoulders; he was Huck Finn and Andy Hardy, he was home.
You’re just lonely, she told herself severely. Thierry’s dead, his village is full of Germans, there’s a war on, and you’re lonely. That’s all it is.
But that wasn’t all and she knew it.
She had loved Thierry partly because he was exotic, different, a distinct departure from the men she’d known in America. She enjoyed his continental ways, his delightful accent when he spoke English, his European outlook. But now she was drawn to Harris for exactly the opposite reasons and in her present situation that allure was very strong.
Laura locked the bike and took her packages out of the basket, carrying them with her. Everybody stole these days, theft had become a way of life. She mounted the broad front steps of the hospital, avoiding the glances of the German soldiers she encountered on the way, and passed through the lobby, heading for the surgical ward to look for Brigitte.
Laura walked by Becker’s office. The door was open and she saw that the colonel was absent, but his aide was inside, setting up what looked like a meal tray. She hesitated for a second, and the boy looked up, meeting her gaze.
My enemy, Laura thought. Yet if you discounted the uniform, put him in ordinary clothes, he would look like any other village boy, too young to be occupied with the serious business of war.
Becker’s aide dropped his gaze and Laura walked on. It wouldn’t do to entertain such thoughts. If she started thinking of them as anything other than a foe to be conquered, she was lost.
Laura stopped at the nurse’s station on the ward to ask for Brig
itte. A white draped nursing nun glided by, moving with a whisper of cloth and swish of clicking beads, leaving behind the clean, wholesome scent of lemon verbena. Laura shifted her packages to her left arm. Above her head loomed a statue of the Sacred Heart for which the hospital was named. It overlooked the corridor, the figure’s pale eyes raised heavenward, one hand held to its breast. The other hand, pierced and bleeding, was outstretched, shedding yellow rays from the palm. A votive light flickered redly at its feet, kept burning continually by the nuns.
Laura turned to look across the ward’s ocean of white tile, and saw Brigitte coming down the aisle between the facing rows of wrought iron beds. They lined either side of the large, antiseptically scrubbed room. She was carrying a pan containing soiled linen and a pair of forceps in one hand, and a brown bottle of carbolic disinfectant in the other. A set of yellow rubber gloves protruded from her uniform pocket.
Laura waved. Brigitte indicated that she would just be a moment and disappeared into one of the side chambers with her burdens. She emerged a few moments later, straightening her cap.
“Have you got a minute?” Laura asked as the younger woman walked up to her, exuding the odor of liquid soap. They both glanced at the German soldier who stood at attention across from the desk. He wore the same stone face as the rest of them: bland and expressionless, like a wax doll.
Brigitte nodded. “I’ll see if I can take my break,” she said, moving to speak to the head nurse. When she got permission she led Laura to a room behind the station, a bare cell with a large scarred table and a few scattered chairs that served as the staff lounge.
“Do they come into the operating room, too?” Laura asked when they were out of earshot, nodding in the direction of the guard.
Brigitte rolled her eyes. “No, but they stand just outside it, like Cerberus at the gates of Hades.” She unbuttoned the top of her blouse, removing the detachable starched collar. “And that’s exactly what it’s like inside sometimes…hell.”
They both sat, Laura putting down her packages, Brigitte stretching out her legs gratefully.
Clash by Night (A World War II Romantic Drama) Page 7
