“We’re already acquainted,” I interrupted. “The captain rescued me from falling into the Seine.”
“Mon Dieu,” Furlaud said. “How is your hand? I should have asked.”
I smiled. “Oh, it was just a scrape.”
Together the five of us walked the tiled floor of the airy cathedral; the stained glass windows had been removed for fear of damage, but we were able to admire the famous weeping angel, one elbow resting upon a skull, the other upon an hourglass. So realistic was the carving that I wanted to wrench the little marble child away from the horror.
Furlaud asked, “What does it mean, the way the cherub is positioned with an hourglass and skull?”
“The tragedy of mortality, I think,” I answered.
Victor added, “The cherub weeps that we have so short a time to make our lives mean anything.”
Furlaud nodded. “An anthem to this war, if ever there was one.”
Clearing her throat, as if very much not wishing to think about lives being cut short, my sister-in-law asked, “Captain Furlaud, won’t you join us for lunch?”
Furlaud gave a rueful shake of his head. “Thank you, but I am expected back soon.”
“Of course.” I nodded. “We won’t keep you from your duty.”
We said farewell and parted company, but a few minutes later, the captain doubled back again to speak with me privately. “Madame, my duty takes me to Paris rather frequently, where I liaise with the American Hospital and ambulance corps. When next I am there—if you are still there also—won’t you let me take you to dinner?”
I liked this man. I liked myself when I was with him. I’d encouraged this man’s attentions. Nevertheless, the reality of my husband’s family so near, and my fear of their reaction, was a cold dose of reality. I wasn’t free, no matter how much I wanted to be. “I’m afraid dinner would give rise to gossip.”
He flushed like a schoolboy. “Of course. I didn’t mean—” He straightened, then fixed upon me his clear blue eyes. “No. En réalité I did mean it.” He pressed a card into my gloved hand with instructions for how to reach him by telephone. “In case you change your mind.”
* * *
—
Having parted with Captain Furlaud, we took my nephew for an elegant meal of lobster in an oyster mushroom sauce, and Victor was grateful to feel civilized for a change. “I’ve spent so long outdoors exposed to the elements that after this war, if anyone asks me on a picnic, I shall never speak to them again!”
When we asked about his wound, Victor flexed his bicep. “You wouldn’t know a bullet went through it now, save for the scar. It was my own fault.” He put an elbow on the table, as if he’d been eating with unmannerly soldiers far too long. “In the trenches, the bullets sail harmlessly overhead all day long. Sing-g-g and whap whap! We go on boards between the trenches so we don’t sink in the mud, and I got careless attempting a shortcut. I had my tent cover under my arm, just like this.”
He tugged his coat off and bunched it under his arm. “The alcohol lamp and bottle were wrapped inside. All at once, pop! The bottle exploded and the bullet went clean through me. I’ve seen poor chaps shot dead midsentence and drop beside me in a puddle of blood, so I cannot complain.”
My sister-in-law paled and dropped her fork, at which my nephew sobered. “I’m sorry. I’m getting too calm and unfeeling. One has to take the horrors lightly, for otherwise life at war would be an unbearable nightmare.”
“Well, you’re muddling through,” I said, determined to keep his spirits up. “You’re looking well. Isn’t he looking well?”
His shaken parents agreed, and Victor grinned. “That’s because I’m clean for a change. The state of filth in the trenches is unbelievable. I only get to wash my face every two days or so. The rest of the time, my head is crusted with mud.” At hearing this, I presented him with a Lafayette kit, and Victor nearly cooed over the clean pair of socks, as trench foot was the bane of soldierly existence. “You’ve no idea how jealous this is going to make my friends, Aunt Bea.”
“Tell me if you can think of any other useful items to include,” I said.
“The soup cubes Uncle Willie sent have been appreciated and are small enough to ship.”
I sat in mute astonishment that my husband had sent his nephew a care package. The same man who couldn’t spare a letter for his own sons and was too intent on his trip to Switzerland to even help arrange this visit! Not that I begrudged Victor his uncle’s attentions—not at all—but the fact that Willie hadn’t mentioned it was yet another reminder of how much a stranger the man I married had become.