He laughed low and close to her face. Not only did I wonder how long, he said, but I made provision, should you wish… I don’t know how to say this. There’s a place north of here. Few soldiers, if any, there… in Ailly-sur-Somme. There’s a decent enough little hotel on the western bank. I’ve booked two rooms and have a driver bribed to take us out there—he thinks it’s just for a dinner in the country. And indeed we’ll have dinner. And then we can come back afterwards or we can stay there.
She rubbed his surprisingly smooth jaw. The same part of the face, she was reminded, that had been shorn off Officer Constable. She must fight that Durance habit still entrenched in her: everything that presented itself to be rejoiced in had to be matched up at once with something that must be mourned and feared.
Oh, we’ll definitely be staying, she told him like a woman who knew what she was doing—the sort of woman she’d never suspected herself to be.
You said definitely? he asked with a sort of disbelief.
Yes. And if you lose so-called respect for me, I don’t care.
Why would I lose respect?
It is only afterwards that conversations of this nature take on their character of ordinariness, of things said before by the millions—as if somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer or some less elevated document there was a prescribed exchange not only of the plain vows of marriage but of those of seduction too. Yet at their congress of two in the alcove, everything seemed new. Sally had an ambition to be a reckless woman—having seen and envied it in others. And now it was achieved, and she was loved by Charlie for it.
We need another café, he told her, as if he could absorb these new things only by taking a seat. Wait a moment, he said. No more for now.
They went out and found one and sat at a table not warmly placed. This time they had coffee.
Now look, said Charlie. His eyes were direct but she could see a color of embarrassment even in that climate-hardened face. This is a fatal or glorious thing I’m asking, he said. Because I’ve booked two rooms, but that’s useless. The madame won’t choose to be deceived. It’s a very different case from the British, who—I believe, anyhow—can choose to pretend that adjoining rooms are proper enough. But that’s beside the point.
She thought now that she might be more eager than he was but could not find a way to tell him that, to tell him to be easy about it. At the same time she liked his nervousness and was fed by it.
I didn’t know that in the end we’d need to discuss all this tawdry stuff, he said. These cheap little deceptions. All this dancing with shadows. I’m sorry for it.
She held his wrist in a way which really suggested, Get on with it!
Why does it have to be like planning a crime? he asked.
Because joy is a crime now, she told him.
He laughed in gratitude but shook his head. His confusion wasn’t allayed at all.
But it’s worse than anything I’ve said, he insisted. There’s a bogus marriage certificate… The French officers make them and sell them to us… When I get there I can say, Madame, the two-room reservation is a mistake… My wife and I need only…
She held her hands up. You needn’t tell me, she said. I leave that to you.
But why does the world make such a rigmarole?
To make people think twice, she suggested.
But they don’t think twice when they want to tear a young fellow’s head off. They don’t think twice about artillery and gas. You can get all that without jumping through hoops. No forgeries, no nods and lies.
That’s an argument you can’t win, Charlie.
He assessed her. He found it hard to believe in her acceptance. Whereas by now she’d got over her own astonishment at her will to go ahead.
If the driver who took them out along the river to Ailly that afternoon suspected their true plans, they did not care, and were pleased to be dropped off by the door of the hotel which was out of the town, in woods through which a path led to the river. Sally sat in a chair in the little parlor and let Charlie conduct the business at the desk. She felt far from abashed. She felt like a woman in possession.
The room was heavily curtained and lined with wallpaper crowded with roses on a dingy background. The bed seemed concave—sagging from the heavy ease people had taken on it over tens of years. It was covered with thick shawls and its pillows were muscular. Sally counseled herself that this was where it would happen. It was to be that arena—that high bed which shorter-legged women would be forced to enter only by unseemly gymnastics but which she could lower herself onto. She felt nervousness—for his sake and hers. She had, however, encountered something of the movements behind this rite in nursing texts. She knew the physiology. She was not quite as ignorant as if she had worked as a typist. She had certainly been untroubled by embarrassment when they signed in with the authority of their freshly minted but faked document placed on the desk by Charlie as casual proof of union. Now, here, he was still the one who was flustered because he thought she might be. He could not be argued out of the suspicion. It seemed he didn’t know this was a test they must put themselves to.
He took off his overcoat and Sam Browne and uniform jacket and hung them in the great sturdy armoire. A meticulous fellow, he made himself busy about it and commented on the mugginess of the room, even at this time of year, and asked her permission to open the window a little. It was stiff and presented him with a test—a swollen windowpane in a warped and shrinking frame. He seemed to be delighted to have to struggle with it. Sally took off her jacket and hung it in the armoire. Someone knocked tentatively at the door—it was a moon-faced girl with a tray of white wine and some grapes and cheese and biscuits. Monsieur, she mumbled and crossed the room and placed her tray on a table by two heavily upholstered chairs. Then—keeping custody of her eyes—she left, waving her hand in negation as Charlie offered her a few francs hastily delved from his pocket. He closed the door behind her.
Would you like some wine? he asked. For the tray offered him another grateful delay.
She was standing waiting in the middle of the room. She had taken off her gray overcoat and jacket—a reasonable thing to do in a sultry room.
Later for the wine, she told him.
Would you like me to wear… protection?
No, our periods don’t come. They did at Rouen. But they stopped again at the casualty clearing station.
But she was faintly willing anyhow to conceive a child in case Charlie disappeared.
She was aware now that she must dictate the terms. She reached for and caressed the side of his face. She had always undervalued touch except as a medical technique. She had discovered its spectrum now. He responded—all fears of cheapness dropping easily away. The wise, harsh, watchful face battle had given him was close. His mouth was of course tentative again at first, until he detected the frank invitation in hers. She uttered a sentence she could not have foretold. It was a sentence of no distinction but phenomenal novelty to her. It asked him to put his hand inside her blouse.
He did it. Again enthusiasm and certainty grew slowly within him. Touch my breasts now, she instructed. The touch brought a kind of convulsion in her stomach and at the spine’s base, a weakness of the upper thighs. This is why a bed is needed, it occurred to her. The lovers are lamed.
You should undress, she instructed him. Behind the screen, if you like. I’ll do my nurse’s work with the bed. We won’t need eiderdowns.
Again she had made him more sure of himself. You say undress? he asked. He seemed to want details on what this meant.