Chapter Forty-One
Forty-one
It was Iso’s idea to meet in town for tea.
It was another of those rare days when we all had a few hours off at the same time, but the August sun was punishing.
It was too hot for walking, too hot to trek through the dunes even for the relief of wetting our feet in the Canche, too hot to stay in the camp, where the men still marched to and from the Bull Ring in full kit, where they were still drilled and trained and conditioned for the front.
That’s how they described the brutality of that place, conditioning.
I look the word up now in the dictionary and find it means To make agreeable; To prepare something for use.
It was market day and stalls were set up around the square, some with tables, some with makeshift awnings to protect their produce, others on old rugs with baskets of live poultry and whatever they could spare from their gardens.
Others still, on the bare stone ground, the last of their valuables displayed on a cloth in front of them.
I had been visiting the market regularly since arriving in étaples and as the produce sellers had diminished, these others had increased.
I had a growing collection of trinkets I neither liked nor had any use for.
We walked among the stalls and I chose the most forlorn of the sellers.
She had one breast uncovered but the child in her lap had fallen asleep and the long nipple hung limp from its empty sack of skin.
I bent to the belongings spread out in front of her.
Anything of monetary value was long gone and now she was selling her memories.
I chose a small book, hardly bigger than my hand and missing a corner of its cover.
Les Feuilles d’automne, by Victor Hugo. I took a few francs from my purse and put them in the woman’s hand; it was far more than the book was worth.
Then I straightened and stood in just the right place to provide her a moment of shade.
I flicked through the book as if I could read the French.
I stopped now and then to scan a few lines and make the performance more convincing.
It was poetry, that much I could tell. When I saw a handwritten inscription beside one of the poems, I stopped.
I understood: Amour Angelique. I looked at the woman, exhausted and withered. She did not look angelic.
I’ve often wondered if I should have given the book back, but I knew she’d try to sell it again. Bread and milk were more important than sentiment. I gave her a few more francs and walked away.
The cafe at Hotel Ioos was crowded, as usual.
It was one of the few cafes where our reputations and health were apparently not at risk, and so it was a popular escape from camp life.
As usual, the terrace tables were taken by young men in uniform or old men wearing boaters and an expression of restrained disdain for the soldiers they were forced to share their idle hours with.
There were no women taking tea outside: that was unseemly, a fact made clear when I’d sat at a table on the terrace soon after arriving at étaples.
Back then, I was wearing my apricot dress, impractical shoes and lipstick I described as plum, though others may have called it red.
Perhaps you are looking for Le Petit Estaminet, the manager suggested, in French.
I recognised the name from the Red Cross list of prohibited establishments, and if I had been anyone other than me I would have been offended.
But he thought I was French, which pleased me.
The fact he also thought I was a girl of joy stroked my ego for some perverse reason (my looks still had value, perhaps).
It gave me reason to smile, which I hadn’t done since arriving in that godforsaken place.
The smile confirmed his suspicion and he bowed, pulled back my chair and held my coat so I could slide one arm in and then the other.
I did not shy from the sudden attention of others on the terrace, and he did not rush me. I’d played this part, more than once.
‘Merci,’ I said, when I had tied the belt of my coat tighter than was comfortable.
He tilted his head. ‘De rien, madame.’
I made my way to Le Petit Estaminet and noticed the looks I received from the men and women I passed.
I played the role I had dressed for (my coat cinched tight, the neckline of my apricot dress clearly visible and designed for cocktails rather than tea), and I enjoyed every moment.
When I arrived at the little cafe I saw two outdoor tables.
One was full of enlisted men, so I sat at the other.
They behaved as enlisted men do and I behaved as if I was used to it, as if I went there every day.
I ordered whiskey. There’s no harm in them looking, I thought, as I sipped.
In those first weeks, these games still amused me.
I hadn’t sat at an outdoor table since, and as Alison, Iso and I crossed the terrace, walking between a table of officers and a table of old men, I envied their access to the light breeze that would occasionally play at the corners of their napkins and newspapers.
Inside, the cafe was a little dark, a little close.
It took a moment for our eyes to adjust.
As on the terrace, the tables were full. Officers sat with officers, sisters with sisters, a table of Australian recruits were trying to remember their manners, or learn them, with frequent glances at a neighbouring table of female ambulance drivers and the occasional clumsy flirtation.
Iso watched the Australians and I wondered if she missed the unfiltered character of her countrymen, or if she was intimidated by it, unused to it after so long away.
Couples sat in the dim corners of the room, under the gallery of artworks that covered every wall.
Young medical officers, mainly, with nurses or VADs.
They shared pots of tea and plates of sandwiches.
I recognised one of the VADs from St John’s, a pretty woman, full of verve.
It didn’t surprise me that she was being courted but I felt for her chaperone, another VAD.
She had a book open but her eyes did not move across the page.
Had she noticed, as I just had, the officer’s hand on her friend’s knee?
It had been a while since I’d sat in the corner of a cafe with a man.
I watched the officer’s hand move slightly higher and imagined the knee was mine and the hand Hugo’s.
No one had ever suggested I needed a chaperone (no one had dared) so a hand on my knee could have led anywhere. It was an agitating thought.
Alison was less interested in the patrons than in acquiring a table.
‘We shall sit by a window,’ I heard her say to no one and everyone.
‘We’ll be lucky,’ I said.
‘Not luck, Tilda.’ She assessed the tables by each of the windows. ‘Determination and entitlement – both must be convincing.’
And so it was that Alison determined the Australians were easy prey. Five of them were squashed around a small table by a window with a view onto the square. Alison approached, standing between them and the table of ambulance drivers.
‘Your plates and teacups are empty, gentlemen.’ She stressed this last word, making it clear how she wanted them to behave.
‘I assume you will be vacating this table?’ It was a rhetorical question and everyone within earshot knew it.
One of the ambulance drivers giggled, the others fell silent and leaned forward.
The Australian who’d been flirting the hardest was yet to be convinced of Alison’s entitlement.
Without her uniform she looked like an ordinary woman, though taller and broader.
‘We were just about to order another round of’ – he glanced at the menu – ‘Dar-jelling tea.’ He smiled at his friends, then looking beyond Alison, at the ambulance drivers, hoping for something he didn’t get.
I felt for him. Iso did too. I saw her check to see if another table had become free, a reason to leave the boys to what might be their final flirtations and avoid the humiliation that was coming.
Alison’s eyebrows had shot up, not in shock, but in that way they did when she was bemused by someone’s stupidity.
‘Young man, has no one ever told you that it is better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt?’ she said. ‘It’s Darjeeling tea and its subtlety would be wasted on you.’
The men shifted in their seats, played with their slouch hats.
‘Damned if they speak, damned if they don’t,’ I whispered to Iso.
But Alison wasn’t finished. ‘If your command of soldiering is as good as your command of English, we might as well surrender to the Kaiser now.’ She turned and signalled the waiter. ‘Be so kind and clear this table, monsieur. I believe these boys are leaving.’
The Australians watched in stunned silence as the waiter cleared their table.
‘Off you go,’ Alison said to them when it was done. They stood, obediently, and one by one filed out of the cafe. But just as Alison sat down, her nemesis stuck his head back inside the door.
His slouch hat was on his head now and a wide grin had returned to his face. ‘It’s Indian, you know? The tea, and the word. Not bloody English.’ He paused, and I thought he was giving Alison a moment to reply, but he was just shifting his focus. ‘Wish us luck,’ he said to the ambulance drivers.
‘Don’t reckon you’ll need it, Charlie,’ one of them replied.
He blew her a kiss, then turned back to Alison and blew her a kiss too. He was gone before she could react.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ Alison said, without any effort to control her smile. ‘Now, what shall we have?’
‘A pot of Dar-jelling,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she replied.
Alison opened the window but there was little relief from the heat.