I wrote to Madame when I arrived in Glasgow. I knew she’d be proud, and of course I wanted news of Luc. I tried to sound casual, as though I’d simply misplaced Luc like an errant glove, not that I was so wracked with worry every night that I fell asleep praying for him. I asked where I could write to him, as I had so much to tell.
But she never wrote back, though I tried and tried. I kept watching that map I’d cut out of that newspaper in Saint-Louis, watching the blots of ink march across the landscape, far too near to Mille Mots. Was she even receiving my letters? Was I receiving hers?
While I sat in the still life studio one day, early for class and tracing the lines on my crumpled map, a girl came up behind. “Have a sweetheart over there?” she asked.
I could hardly remember how his voice sounded and, while I had no trouble sketching out the boyish face I knew—all angles and dark curls—I didn’t know how the older Luc looked, hardened by war. “A sweetheart?” I folded the newspaper clipping. “No, a friend. A friend I miss very much.”
I wanted him to be there. I wanted him to be on the other end of an envelope to share this with me, the way he had been. This, art school, was something he’d always wanted for me, harder than he ever wanted something for himself. This was ours, and I wanted, more than anything, to write to him all about it.
I’d tell Luc how hard it was. Not just the loneliness—that, I knew he’d understand—but the lessons.
I thought it would be easy. Really, I did. I had training, right there at the table of Monsieur Claude Crépet. I’d had further lectures via letter, once every few months, on my technique. I’d sketched and painted across continents. I’d spent years feeling my way through the learning. I’d had a mother who could turn tables into fairy tales, a father who could make buildings rise with pencils and measurements, and a grandmother who had captured a marriage on canvas. Art was in my blood and in my fingertips.
Half of the young women here were like me, experienced, taught at art academies or under private drawing masters. They also carried well-worn cases. The others, hopeful and untutored, their pencils freshly sharpened, their brushes new, I was sure would be the ones fumbling. Little did I know that I’d fumble, too.
Miss Ross, you cannot hold the pencil as though you were writing, or, When you insist on keeping your paper at that angle, you smudge with your palm, every time, or, While arranging your palette, you mustn’t put raw sienna beside raw umber. There is an order to these things, Miss Ross. The well-trained students never made these errors. The untrained were taught from the start how not to. But I’d had one summer of proper lessons and then years of filling in the rest by myself. I had to be corrected and instructed all over again. I hated it.
If I’d had an address, I could’ve written to Luc about all of that. The embarrassment of being told that, yet again, I was doing it wrong. The frustration of learning a second time what I’d already learned once. The isolation of being the only one so singled out.
Or I could have written to him about the parts that weren’t all that bad. Of sketching a live model for the first time, and then a live nude model. Of learning modeling in the dusty, clay-streaked sculpture studio. Of putting on that crisp white artists’ smock the very first time and seeing it satisfyingly spotted with paint at the end of the lesson. Of being, every single day, surrounded by art. Luc was right; that, I loved.
Until I could find him, until I could write to him, I’d keep all of that tight against my chest. I didn’t want anyone else to see these little joys before Luc did. If he did. So I tucked away my disappointments and I tucked away each scrap of happiness as I found it. I focused on my hard-earned place at the School of Art, a place I knew Luc would’ve envied. Every picture I drew, every sculpture I smoothed, I did it for him. Even without being there, Luc was always my muse.
I couldn’t much smile anymore. Not that I had a reason to. Months from that night in the rain-dripped cellar, and my torn face still ached. Months from that night when Bauer turned my own bayonet on Chaffre, and my torn soul was still numb.
After Martel dragged me, bleeding, to the poste de secours, I didn’t remember much. I was bandaged and loaded into an ambulance and jolted farther and farther back along the line, from dressing station to dressing station, hospital to hospital. It passed in a fog of morphine and needles and cold bandages. Something stinging was poured into my wounds. I was stitched. I slept wrapped in agony. I remember throwing a bedpan late one night. Someone in the ward was screaming. I didn’t know if it was me.
I knew I was slipping towards the edge. Out on the battlefield, I was determined. But here, in these crowded, desperate hospital wards, in this haze of pain and regret, I was willing to go. It certainly was better than remembering.
When I arrived at Royaumont, I was scorched with a fever. They carried me on a stretcher and I felt every bump. Sticky rain fell on my face. Inside, it was bright lights, soft hands, murmurs. I swore I heard the sound of singing, like angels. They gave me something bitter in a cup, something that made me shudder and retch. And then I slept.
I woke to the sound of Scottish voices. Women teasing, scolding, reassuring. Before I opened my eyes, I was weeping.
One of those voices bent near and a cool hand cupped the side of my forehead. “Monsieur, tu as de la douleur? Pouvez-vous me dire où se faire mal?” Her fingers trailed my left cheek. “Ah, his fever is down.”
“Please, I speak English.” I opened my eyes. Not Clare, of course not, but her lilt made me feel a sudden peace. The nurse was young, dressed all in gray. “You look like a dove.”
She smiled ruefully. “A partridge. Little gray partridges are what they call us.”
“No, a dove.”
“You won’t think as kindly of me in a moment.” She carefully lifted bandages from my cheek. “You had an infection in your wounds. I’m sorry, but we had to cut your stitches open to drain them. We may have to remove more tissue.” She touched my ruined faced gently, from my nose down to my jaw. “Both your shoulder and your nose are coming along nicely, but I think there is still debris in your cheek, right here.” I winced. “Will you mind if I clean it?”
“As long as you keep talking, you can do whatever you like to me.”
Her name was Mabel and she was my savior. She brought me back from the edge and kept me from slipping too close again. She held my hand while they restitched me, like a worn pair of trousers, and sponged off the mud of the trenches. She spooned broth into my aching jaw. She helped me with my buttons, with my socks, with all of the little things I couldn’t do with my shoulder the way it was. She told me about a lazy childhood in Kirkcaldy, until her words washed me clean.
But then I was patched up and was left with the waiting and the healing.
The hospital at Royaumont was built in a medieval abbey. The Scottish hospital unit that had moved onto the grounds had added electric lights and running water, had assembled rows of beds, dragged in grass-stuffed mattresses, scrubbed up operating theaters, yet traces of the old abbey remained. Vaulted ceilings, wide windows overlooking a courtyard, the ghosts of hymns in the stones. The doctors and gray-uniformed nurses and orderlies—all Scottish, all women—moved between the beds, quietly checking dressings, administering medicine, smoothing red blankets. In that peace, we recovered.