Stella Bain (11 page)

“You got caught in the bombardment,” Jerome says, addressing Etna.

“I did, yes.”

“The way I heard it,” he says to the table, “she executed a perfect shortcut through the fields.”

“Just for a minute or two.”

“You saved your wounded. That’s the kind of thing they give medals for.”

“They give medals to ambulance drivers?” she asks unthinkingly, and then covers her blunder by saying, “I should hope they’d give a medal to the ambulance driver who stayed on the road and made it safely to camp.”

“I don’t know,” says Jerome, determined to give her a compliment. “Quick wits on your part.”

Merely the will to live, she wants to say.

Phillip puts his arm around her shoulders, and she understands it as a protective gesture.

A meal arrives of unidentifiable fish in a white sauce. Bottles of wine appear on the table. Ruth seems to have fallen asleep.

“Is she all right?” Etna asks.

“She shouldn’t drink,” Everett says. “In fact, I ought to drive her back.”

“You can’t take her back in that condition,” protests Marjorie. “Besides, I would have to leave, too, and I’m not ready. Find some of that brew they’re calling coffee now, get it into her, and walk her around outside. She’s got to be able to walk into her tent. I can’t very well carry her.”

Everett does as he is told, which leaves only the four of them. Marjorie shows no sign of tiring. She asks Phillip to dance. He hesitates, perhaps not wanting to leave Etna alone. Can Marjorie be the person to whom Phillip was referring when he said he had known love?

Well mannered, Jerome asks Etna if she would like to dance.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather sit a moment.”

“Me, too,” Jerome says with relief. “She’s wearing me out.”

Etna smiles.

“We’re all a bit in awe of you,” Jerome confesses.

“Why so?”

“You’ve taken on the double role of VAD and ambulance driver. Not sure I’ve ever met anyone who answers to that description.”

“The war has caused all of us to be people we didn’t used to be.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” Jerome picks up a bottle of wine and offers to pour some into her glass. She shakes her head no.

“What were you before the war?” she asks.

“Librarian.”

“You must miss your books,” she says.

“I’ve got a copy of
Paradise Lost
on onionskin in tiny print. My mother gave it to me before I left. I’ve read it nine times.”

“You should have a new book.”

“Most of the men in the corps don’t care much for reading.”

“Surely Phillip—”

“No, that’s odd, he being an academic and all. He seems to have no interest in books.”

“I’m very surprised,” Etna says.

Phillip appears with Marjorie, who clings to him. Etna has forgotten to watch the pair dancing.

“I’d best be getting you back,” Phillip says to Etna.

“Must you?” A whine from Marjorie.

“I have to get up early,” Etna says.

“Lovely to meet you,” Marjorie offers in a bored voice, not even bothering to look at Etna. A languid dismissal.

“Was that so terrible?” Phillip asks when they have found his vehicle.

“Oh, not at all. I quite enjoyed the dancing and even talking to Jerome.”

“He’s lost two brothers already. He’s the only son left. They ought to send him home.”

“But they won’t?”

“Don’t think so.”

Etna can see the mother: benumbed, quiet, getting on with life for the sake of Jerome. Not for her husband, whom she barely notices. He with his own grief. Two sons, two extreme sacrifices, too much for anyone to bear.

“The attrition is beyond anything the generals can have imagined,” Phillip points out. “Certainly they couldn’t have anticipated such large numbers of British dead.”

“Jerome and I got into the subject of books,” Etna says. “He mentioned that you no longer read.”

“No. Not at the moment.”

When they reach the stone barn, Phillip turns in his seat to face her. “You’ll never guess what I’ve found.”

He smiles, and she can’t help but smile with him. “What?”

“A tennis court.”

“Never.”

“I did. A clay court belonging to an abandoned château.”

“It’s February.”

“Almost March. We’ll get a dry spell.”

“Where will you find a tennis ball and rackets?”

“I don’t know, but I will,” he says. “I have to restore my reputation.”

He hops down from the truck and comes around to Etna’s side.

“I had a lovely evening,” she says as he opens the door.

“So did I.” He takes her hand.

For a moment, she thinks he will pull her into a dance move. He bends and kisses her hand instead, a courtly gesture. Impulsively, she embraces him.

She stands back. “Was that all right?”

“I adore you, Etna. I always have.”

She slips her hand from his and walks away from the truck.

The quest for beautiful moments challenges Etna as February moves closer to March. The relentless rain turns everything unpaved into a pool of mud. During the months Etna has been driving an ambulance, she has learned basic maintenance. She can change a tire, check the oil, fill a radiator, and adjust a clutch. Despite this additional knowledge, the actual managing of the truck has become more difficult. The mud sucks in anything with weight. She uses thin metal wedges to dig into the muck under the front of the rear tires. With the wedges, an orderly pushing, and a gentle rocking motion, Etna learns how to gun her ambulance out of the bog. She invents grassy routes and even routes that traverse tufts in fields. With careful steering, she can maneuver the truck onto drier land, a process not unlike stepping across stones to reach the other side of a rushing stream.

Etna finds a lost brooch near the Regimental Aid Post. It puzzles her, even after she turns it in. What is a ruby-and-gold pin doing in a world peopled entirely by men? Can another female driver have had it pinned to her underthings? Can a soldier have lost a prized gift from his sweetheart? When she turns it in to an officer, neither he nor anyone else seems to have much use for it, rubies being of little currency in the trenches. In the end, she decides she cannot count the brooch, though attractive, as something beautiful.

She does see, however, a gold cross on a gold chain tucked into the hollow of a man’s clavicle. The bright gold on the soldier’s white skin, the muscles beneath it smooth and broad, moves her. A mother, a sister, a wife gave the man the cross, believing that the religious symbol would protect him. But before the aides have finished undressing him, a priest has to be summoned.

One afternoon, following heavy rain and a brief clearing, a rainbow appears. It seems to start south of Camiers and end somewhere near the front, where surely no pot of gold awaits. An illusion, and a common one at that, the rainbow summons grown men from the tents. They watch in silence as the rainbow disappears.

Phillip picks her up at the stone barn in early March. Each of them has time only for a quick drink and perhaps a bite of bread before they have to return to duty.

“You go first,” she says, staring at his face as he backs up his ambulance. He executes the turn and bounces off the road. He, too, has invented his own grassy route to the village.

“I came across a driver who had made for himself a sort of tea service that he kept in his kit,” he began. “One day, when we were bored, he showed it to me. He’d invented a collapsible tin cup with sliding sides and a partially detachable bottom. His teapot was made of tin also, and when I first saw it, it looked like a flat disk with two other disks attached. It worked like the cup, except that it had a sealed top with a small hole in it. He had tea in tiny hand-sewn silk bags and small paper packets of dried milk. No sugar, of course. I asked if he could make me a cup, and he said he would. He had with him a short flat candle with a wick. When the small teapot was held against the flame, the water heated surprisingly quickly. Of course, it produced only the one cup, which was hard to touch without gloves, but I have to say it was the best cup of tea I think I’ve ever had.”

“Ingenious,” Etna says. “I think we’ll have to let that count as two beautiful things. The design of the equipment and the taste of the tea. Anything beautiful counts, yes? Taste? Scent?”

“And you?”

Etna tells him of the rainbow and the cross. “I haven’t ruined it for you, have I? Making your pastime a game?”

“Not at all. I’m highly competitive.”

The owner nods as they enter the café. Once again, they find themselves alone because of the hour, four o’clock in the afternoon. Phillip speaks to the waiter, who brings two delicate glasses of transparent gold liquid and, with them, a pitcher of water, a packet containing a few miraculous grains of sugar, and two cups of tea.

“I was famished for tea after my story,” Phillip says. “The drink is Pernod. You put some water in—like this—and a little sugar.” Etna watches as the drink turns a milky custard yellow. “Tastes a bit like aniseed. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me, and I imagine for you, too. This muck is much worse than the ice.”

She takes a sip of the yellow liquid. “Phillip, we’d better see to that tennis game fairly soon.”

“In this mess?”

“I’ve got a week’s leave March thirteenth.”

He must have known it was coming, but still he seems startled by the news.

“I’m happy for you,” he says after a time. “You’ll go to London first?”

“Yes, and I will look Samuel up. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to help. He owes you.”

“No, no, he doesn’t, Phillip. From his point of view, he did the only possible thing. He has a wife and children now. I assume he’s happy.”

“With the children, yes. I can’t say the marriage is a happy one.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Etna says.

“So was I. We didn’t speak for years, but I never wished him an unhappy life. I think it’s why he was so willing to go to London.”

“Wasn’t he ordered to?”

“He was invited to. It’s a little different. He could have found commensurate work in Halifax. I went to see him when I first got to London. He was furious with me for having left America and even angrier when I told him I intended to go to France. We had a row. A big one. I tell you this because you might not want to mention me.”

“Phillip, are you unhappy?” Etna asks.

He seems surprised by the question. “Not particularly.”

“Sometimes you seem…I don’t know if
remote
is the word.
Guarded,
I would say.”

His gray eyes meet hers. He shrugs. “If we get four good days in a row, I’ll come get you.”

Etna backtracks as well. “Did you find rackets and a ball?”

“I did. In Étaples. I asked a boy if he knew where I could get hold of the equipment, and the next day he sold me his. I suspect it may have belonged to his father. Are you sorry you came here?”

“I may be in the future,” she says. “But I’m not now. I know I’ve done something good, and I’ve learned a little about myself.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m useful here.”

On the fifth of March, the sun finally emerges and seems likely to stay. The sight of it, the warmth of it, raises everyone’s spirits, even those of the wounded. Etna, who used to find sunny days painful, revels in the light. She begins to count the days.

On the fourth successive good day, she waits for a message. When none comes, she begins to wonder if Phillip has forgotten his promise. But in the first post of the fifth day, there is a letter.

Find a way. I’ll be there at twelve thirty. P.

T
he grippe, she tells the ward sister, who looks her over and then dismisses her with a wave. Etna must stay in uniform, lest she be seen walking from the tent or coming back later in the afternoon in civilian clothes. At the appointed time, she follows her usual route. Most days, the nurses do not have time to check on one of their own until after the evening meal. If they find Etna missing, she will simply say that the symptoms of her illness kept her in the privy most of the day.

Phillip is waiting for her. She climbs quickly into the passenger seat.

“That was nerve-racking,” she says.

“What did you say to get the time off?”

“I’m sick with the grippe.”

“Don’t give it to me.”

Because the road is full of dried ruts, the truck bounces violently from side to side. Still, ruts are better than muck. When they are half a mile from the field hospital, Etna relaxes into the pure pleasure of escaping the camp with an entire afternoon of warm sunshine ahead of her. She whips off her cap, takes out her pins, and lets her hair go free in the wind made by the truck. “Phillip, this is just the best present.”

“Present? I intend to wallop you.”

As they drive, Etna notices red veils of buds in the forest. She inhales the clean air. They take a turn and seem to be driving inland. From the nature of the roads, not rutted, she guesses they have not been traveled much.

“Do you do this often? Go for rides in the afternoon?”

“Not often. The ambulances are always needed, and I have to be careful about petrol. On the day I found the château, I was on a supply mission.”

The woods open up to vast fields. When they pass an orchard, Etna marvels at the dark pink cherry buds. Acres of them. “How have these survived?” she asks Phillip.

“Oh, they’ll be decimated, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Hopefully not before they bear fruit.”

“What will happen to us if we’re caught?”

“Well, if we’re caught by our side, I might get some lashes, hard labor.” He does not mention what would happen if they were to be caught by the Germans. “What about you?”

“I have no idea. A severe reprimand. But no punishment, I think. What on earth would they punish me with? The head nurse needs my hands too much.”

“I suppose I could be sent to the front line. Make an example of the conchie.”

“They wouldn’t.”

The top of a stone structure rises above the trees in the distance. “Is that it?” Etna asks.