Oh, I’m sure it’s still there, she heard him say. It’s determined, you know. The earth maintains a great indifference to what we do. When you come back to an area of fields like the ones round here, you understand that the mire up there is just waiting to break out into pasture again. It won’t happen this year—it mightn’t happen for another ten. But in the end the tendency won’t be repressed. There’s greenness waiting under all that slime.
The matron appeared briefly and said, Good morning, Sister; good morning, Captain. It was then Sally saw the nuggets of insignia on his straps which showed him to be that. A captain.
He whispered, Don’t be impressed. The way things are just now there are fifteen men to a platoon and sixty to a company. But they are building us up with new blood. Forcing old hands like me up in rank.
New blood? she asked in horror.
I could have chosen better words, he conceded.
They decided to walk to town past the cemetery and a barley field which a farmer—gambling against a movement of the front line—had bravely planted. The road entered the town from the south. A two-storey official building near the mairie had a shattered roof, but people moved normally in the streets. Big-bosomed farmers’ wives shopped and talked to each other in the open day.
I love these little towns, Charlie told her. I keep sketching them. But don’t worry, I won’t be sketching today.
He held out a hand towards the landscape on the edge of town.
You know, I look at all this, so very nice, very ordered. Farmed for thousands of years. And it does call up by contrast where we’re from. I mean to say, what a valley, the Macleay! It’s a valley that deserves a great painter. It’s a place that almost defies a person to become a painter. It says, Come on, have a go, you useless hayseed! And it would explode Cézanne’s palette. He’d have to go reaching for the tubes of paint he doesn’t use here. That’s what we’ve got, the Australians. We’ve got the place but we just don’t have the artists. Up here, gloom and—admittedly—subtlety. And artists? My God. They’ve got wonderful artists to burn. I had leave, by the way, and went to all the galleries.
We saw the Louvre, said Sally. But we didn’t see enough. We didn’t bring the right eyes to it. Look-and-laugh sort of stuff.
Well, said Charlie, grinning, look-and-laugh isn’t bad. I would be happy if in fifty years girls looked and laughed at something of mine. What amazes me is that up there at the front, you have… Well, you know what’s up there, you deal with it daily. Then just fifty miles southwest down the road, acre after acre of pretty astounding rooms. Then the Salon—and someone took me to the Salon des Refusés—the paintings that before the war hadn’t been accepted for the Academy. That was an education. Even the rejected are brilliant. In fact—as someone mentioned to me—it’s the brilliant who get rejected. It all has a funny effect on your ambitions, you know. Part of you thinks, all right, all you’re fit for, Sonny Jim, is to go back home and illustrate the covers of adventure papers and boys’ magazines. And another part thinks, I can do something like that!
She said, From what I know, at least you’ll give it a great shake.
If she was sure he would exist to take what he had back to Australia and try to see where it fitted in the fabric of the place, she didn’t care too much what difficulties he had fitting it.
I want to give it a shake, he said. Yes, I’d like to. Mind you, one of the war artists I met took me to see some of the new schools—even this crowd called the Vorticists—who are full of a kind of dread, as if everything is going down the gurgler. That seems a reasonable enough idea for these times. But what confuses me is how to take any of it back to Australia. It’s all so different from here. It’s not Europe. It’s non-Europe. And always will be.
They turned into an estaminet of paneled wood and dim glass windows. A townsman and his wife drank together at a table. They were not handsome, but they provided Sally with a parallel to the joy she felt at sharing a table with Charlie. Charlie ordered red wine. She would drink it too, so that they experienced simultaneously its rough strength against the roots of the palate.
Two farmers came in. Both saluted them informally—giving them the credit for being defenders of the township.
Charlie took a deep draught of his red wine when it arrived. She also took a mouthful of this fluid, still mysterious and acrid to her.
Of course, he continued, there’s no substantial difference between us and French people, except in us a kind of innocence. But do you think those farmers over there are giving a hoot about Verlaine or Seurat? They’re just cow-cockies too. So I think the day’s going to come for Australia. Just a bit of a wait, that’s all.
It was a tender hope and she smiled at it. She thought then—as he finished his glass—something so alien to her and as utterly surprising in its arrival as the Taubes. Yet Honora had said it once about Lionel. If I had his son, he could not be lost entirely. And then, if he weren’t lost, there’d be two of them. Men with glittering spirits.
She said, Do you have leave soon?
He lowered his eyelids secretively.
There’s a big stunt on. But… I think by November, maybe some leave.
She noticed they had both drunk their raw red wine down. She had unconsciously kept pace with Charlie. He called for more. With the recent whisky and now this wine, he had become a drinker. It was said they did drink at the front—it was taken for granted there were things best done when a man was part soused.
Listen, she said, I don’t know who Seurat is. I would like to go to Paris and see the paintings with you.
Sally, he said, his face reddening as if he knew she’d read him too accurately—his zeal and desire. I would be so delighted to take you if we could make our leaves coincide. I’ll lecture you mad, the way I did in Rouen. I’ve become an even more obnoxious know-all.
Suddenly it was time to order some stew and bread. When it was eaten they strolled back out of the town. At the crucifix at a shaded corner—the one before the Bapaume Road—he pulled her to him urgently and precisely as she’d hoped and in gratitude she took up the full vigor of the kiss and reimposed it on him, meeting him six-tenths of the way to show that he could hope for something reciprocal. It went on so long as to have the feeling of being a solid entity. If a farmer had appeared on a cart, or a British truck driven down the road with whistling Tommies, it would not have let itself be dissolved.
But there came up again that almost automatic feeling of temporary disqualification from joy. The closer she got to him, the greater the demand to tell him the size of what she’d done. She didn’t disengage herself so violently as to puzzle him or disappoint him. She simply turned her head to one side—as if for breath.
I am on duty tonight, she told him. And you have a long ride.
But we’ll go to Paris?
I hope so, she said. For she did hope so still. Despite the care she had taken not to leave him confused, she could see he was a little confused. But it would not be a jaunt. He would be tested there. She would be.
Well, he told her. It’s back to the bike for now.
He mounted the framework of the cycle and put a boot in one of the stirrups. She could tell once more she’d confused him. So she said, Charlie!
He looked at her and was expectant.
There’s no question, she said, that you’re a man amongst men.
What does that mean? he asked, smiling. Because it doesn’t mean much when you’re in an army.
Well, she said, it means my love, that’s what.