Chapter 25 Millie & Gert
After bringing the car back to Ned’s hotel in Arras, Charlie awkwardly trailed after Ned into the lobby, wondering how to say goodbye. Thanks for showing me an excellent day in France? See you in another eight years?
“This is why I can’t turn my back for a minute,” Ned muttered as he looked at the pile of notes the hotel had waiting for him.
Before Charlie could give his goodbyes, Ned interrupted with a change of topic.
“Today was one of your better ideas.” A hint of a smile broke through his frown lines.
“As a thank you, may I buy you dinner tonight?”
“Shall we meet at seven?” Charlie responded without hesitation.
“Perfect.” Ned turned back to the papers, his mind already elsewhere.
With a smile to himself, Charlie strolled out of the hotel to figure out what to do with the rest of his afternoon.
???
The sun was bright in Amiens, enough to make Charlie shrug off his jacket and carry it over his shoulder. From a distance, he spotted Andrew and the rest of the 1st London Territorial veterans drinking outside one of the brasseries, but he still couldn’t bring himself to join them.
He wasn’t really one of them, was he? Not after the Scarpe, when Charlie had abandoned them.
Not wanting to turn his good mood dark, he forced himself to walk towards the shops selling tourist bric-a-brac.
He flipped through a postcard rack, dismissing photos of bombed-out churches and lines of graves.
Postcards should be happy windows of escape.
He stopped at a carousel with grinning horses. Would that make Ellie giggle?
He wondered what they were doing right now.
Probably playing on the beach with their cousins, daring each other to run into the bracing waves.
Last year he had taken Frank down the pier, and his boy’s eyes had been as large as the electric bulbs in the carnival booths.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in not insisting that they come with him.
Not that he wanted them to see the battlefields, but it would have been nice to build some happy memories in France.
Like today with Ned.
He was strolling over to the next shop when his eyes stopped on a car across the street.
A bad professional habit, always examining every vehicle in his field of vision.
This one was unexpected—a British car, a Cluley to be specific.
Never been a huge success, in part due to its propensity to break down.
A fact that the current drivers of this particular vehicle appeared to be discovering.
A woman in a severe tweed skirt leaned into the open hood while another woman sprawled across the back bench, her face to the sun and her blonde hair flowing loose across her back.
She was laughing, maybe teasing the woman in tweed?
“Bold choice, taking a Cluley so far from home,” Charlie called out.
The blonde in back flicked her eyes up, a flash of surprise at Charlie’s English, but she answered coolly. “Don’t believe women can fix their own cars?” She was a Brit alright, but not as posh as the car and the scarf would suggest.
“My wife would certainly disagree with that sentence.”
“Your wife fixes cars?” That had the blonde’s attention.
“There’s precious little about British cars that my Betty doesn’t know now.” Charlie gestured to the car. “If she were here, she would tell you that once a Cluley has stalled, there is not much you can do unless you get it to the garage and properly clean out the valves.”
“Never would have thought of that.” That voice came muffled from inside the engine, where the woman in tweed was leaning over.
She pulled herself upright, wrench in hand, and continued, “Except, I did. Several hours ago. Only to discover the only garage in this godforsaken town is at the top of the hill, and the owner thought he had better things to do with his morning than help ‘deux filles sans aucun sens.’”
“Who puts a garage at the top of a hill?” Charlie asked with an exasperated sigh.
The blonde giggled. “Our thoughts exactly. I’m Millie, by the way.” Leaning out from her seat, she extended her hand towards him. “And that’s Gert.”
Charlie properly approached the car and met the woman’s firm handshake. “Charlie, and the pleasure is all mine.”
Standing right in front of Millie, Charlie was a bit overwhelmed by how young she was, maybe only a smidge over twenty? He felt old enough to be her father. Well, maybe not her father, but he definitely had nieces about her age.
“So, what brings you to France, Charlie?”
There was no reason to lie, but he didn’t particularly want to tell the sombre truth either. “Holiday with some old friends.” Close enough. “What brings you, Gert, and the Cluley to Arras?”
“Now that’s a long story. We might need to get ice cream if I’m going to tell you the whole thing.
” Millie moved in the seat so she was half facing Charlie.
“We both were studying mathematics at Cambridge. I was on a scholarship. Gert, she is smart enough for a scholarship, except she didn’t need one. ”
“I’ve a friend who studied at Oxford,” he said. It was nice to think that Ned was his friend again.
“Cambridge was a magical place until, well, Gert and I got into a spot of trouble.”
“We got kicked out,” Gert cut in, her voice echoing from inside the vehicle.
“I was expelled. You chose to join me.” Millie corrected and dismissed the situation with a wave of the hand. “So I thought, we might as well drive to Paris. A bit impulsive, but it's now or never, right?”
“Sounds complicated,” Charlie said with more honesty than he had intended.
“Sometimes you need to follow your heart.” Millie was looking up to Gert, her round face full of affection for the woman who was up to her elbows in automotive grease.
“And the rest be damned,” finished Gert, lips twitching in what was almost a smile.
Charlie couldn’t help but wonder whether the friendship between the two women was in fact something more intimate than travelling companions.
He racked his brain about how to acknowledge what he suspected.
There had been a time when he had known all the slang, but he hadn’t used those references in years.
“What will you do when you get to Paris?”
“Bookkeeping? Secretarial work? Gert speaks a bit of French. We’ll figure it out. We’ve some friends there already.”
Dimly, Charlie remembered Ned saying once that Paris had more options for men such as themselves, perhaps that applied to women too.
Charlie could imagine Millie and Gert’s life, a flat together, evenings in cafes and bars where they could be as deviant as they wanted.
Would Gert wear trousers? Charlie would bet she preferred them.
Or maybe it would be a catastrophe. No work, no money. Too vulnerable. Their relationship burning down in the rubble of what they had left behind. Millie out in the cold—no degree, no scholarship, nothing except for scandal.
They were so incredibly brave.
Charlie wished he could offer them help somehow. A blessing of sorts. What they really needed was to get this car moving, and for that to happen they needed to get it to that blasted garage.
“I think we can get the Cluley to the garage.” He said before he realised it. Charlie didn’t know what it was about France that made him willing to try daft ideas, but there he was again.
Gert stared at the distressed engine for a minute before wiping her hands on a rag and shrugging. “We’re not paying you.”
That sounded like an agreement to him. “I’ll be back in a quick minute.”
Charlie dashed back across the Grand Place, where Andrew and the division were still getting happily sozzled in the sun.
“Charlie!” He didn’t have time to be surprised by the happy shouts.
“Listen, chaps. Any chance you want to play knights in shining armour this afternoon?”
???
In the end it took far more than a few minutes to corral his merry band, but he also ended up with a good deal more takers than anticipated.
Once they arrived at the car, Charlie introduced his old soldiers to Millie and Gert and explained the need to climb the hill.
Gert looked a touch overwhelmed by the fifteen or so men surrounding her car, but Millie was already in her element.
“I feel like Queen Mary waving from her royal carriage.”
Her eyes stopped on the man that Charlie had known as Private Gittins, grinning at his friends and propped against a lamp pole with his crutch. “Gert will drive, of course, but you must join me in the back, otherwise we shall look off balance.”
As Gittins leapt into the back, and Andrew organised everyone else around the car, Charlie took up a position against the boot, getting ready to brace himself.
“Spot for one more?” Charlie turned to face a man he both recognised immediately and had not thought about in over a decade. Smythe? He automatically moved to make space, but before he could figure out what to say, Gittins called out from the back seat, “Alright, lads. Push!”
With some groans and grunts, the former men of the 1st London Territorial began to move the car forward. Had it been downhill, or even flat, it would have been fairly easy-going, but every step was a fight against gravity.
They had advanced about twenty paces when someone on the left side said, groaning, “Is someone calling out steps? I can’t see a bloody thing, and someone keeps kicking my shin.”
Mille began calling out “Left! Right! Left! Right!” with such imperious gusto that they all started to laugh and nearly lost the progress they had made.
As they settled into a rhythm, Smythe audibly grumbled, “Trust Villiers to get us into trouble.”
An entirely different type of sweat beaded on Charlie’s brow. Was this to be a repeat of the fight with Pemberton in the pub?
“You should’ve been an officer, Villiers.” That was Andrew’s voice, from up near the front of the car, words all teasing kindness.
“Nah, Villiers was worse than an officer,” Smythe answered.