“I am always very proud of her,” Lucien said. That had the virtue of being true and polite at the same time, something which could not be said about a good many other possible responses. Galtier glanced over toward the building clouds. “And now, Father, if you will pardon me-” The horse broke into a trot this time, as if it truly did understand how much he wanted to get away.
“Go with God, my son,” Father Pascal called after him. He waved back toward the priest, hoping the snowstorm would catch him before he got back to Riviere-du-Loup.
If Lucien was to reach the farmhouse, he had to drive past the hospital. It was almost as if Major Quigley had set a small town on his property: the hospital certainly had more ambulances coming to it and leaving it than Riviere-du-Loup had had motorcars at the start of the war. It also had a large gasoline-powered generator that gave it electricity, while trucks and big wagons brought in coal to keep it warm against the worst a Quebec winter could do.
People bustled in and out the front door, those going in pausing to show their bona fides to armed guards at the doorway. A doctor stood outside the entrance, smoking a cigarette; red spattered his white jacket. Out came a U.S. officer in green-gray, a formidable row of ribbons and medals on his chest and an even more formidable scowl on his face. Lucien would have bet he hadn’t got what he wanted, whatever that was. And here came a couple of women pulling overcoats on over their long white dresses to fight the chill outside.
Galtier steered the wagon toward them and reined to a halt. “Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” he said, formal as a butler. “May I offer you a ride to your home?”
Nicole Galtier smiled at him. “Oh, bonsoir, Papa,” she said. “I didn’t expect you here at just this time.” She started to climb into the wagon, then turned back toward the other nurse. “See you tomorrow, Henrietta.”
“See you tomorrow,” Henrietta said. She went over to the doctor. He gave her a cigarette and lighted it with his own, leaning his face close to hers.
The horse had taken several strides before Lucien fully noticed what he’d heard. “You spoke to her in English,” he said to Nicole.
“I am learning it, yes,” she answered, and tossed her head so that the starched white cap she wore almost flew off. “If I am to do anything that is important and not just wash and carry, I have to learn it.” She glanced at him to see how he was taking that. When he didn’t say anything, she went on, “You have learned it, and use what you have learned, is that not so?”
“Yes, it is so,” he told her, and wondered where to go from there. Discovering he had no idea, he kept quiet till he had driven the wagon into the barn. “Go on to the house,” he said then. “I’ll see to the horse and be in with you in a few minutes.”
Brushing down the animal and making sure it had food and water-but not too much of either-was a routine he took for granted. He had heard that rich farmers had motorcars of their own, and tractors and threshers with motors, too. He wondered what they thought of doing without horses. He shrugged. He was not a rich farmer, nor likely to become one.
As he often did, he sighed with pleasure on walking into the farmhouse. Not only was it warm, it was also full of the good smells of cooking. “Is that chicken stew?” he called in the direction of the kitchen.
Marie’s voice floated resignedly out: “Yes, Lucien-chicken stew. One day, I swear, I shall buy a zebra or a camel, so I can roast it in the oven and not have you know at first sniff what it is.”
“Zebra would probably taste like horse,” their son Georges said, and then, exercising his gift for the absurd, “although it could be the meat would have stripes.”
“Thank God we have not been hungry enough to have to learn the taste of horse,” Lucien said. “Thank Him twice, for the beast we have is so old, he would surely be tough.”
Charles said, “I have read in a book on the French Foreign Legion that the roasted hump of a camel is supposed to be a great delicacy.”
“Since a man has to be a fool-a brave fool, yes, but a fool-to join the Foreign Legion, I do not think he is to be trusted in matters of taste,” Galtier said. “And I do not think a camel would do well in the snow.”
“You do not have reason, Papa,” Charles said, glad to show off knowledge at his father’s expense. “Not only are there camels that live in the desert, there are also others-Bactrians, they are called-that live in cold countries.”
“But not in Quebec,” Lucien said firmly. He caught the evil gleam in Georges’ eye and forestalled him: “Nor, for that matter, have we any great herds of zebras here.” Georges pouted; he hated having his father anticipate a joke.
Over the supper table, they talked of camels and zebras and of more practical matters like the price chickens were bringing in Riviere-du-Loup, whether the kerosene ration was likely to be cut again, and what a good bunch of applejack this latest one from their neighbor was. “Warms you better than the fire does,” Charles said, sipping the potent, illegal, popular stuff.
And Nicole, as had become her habit, talked about the work she did at the hospital. “The officer had a wounded leg full of pus, and I helped drain it,” she said. “I did not do much, of course, as I am so new, but I watched with great care, and I think I will be able to do more next time.” Her nose wrinkled. “The smell was bad, but not so bad that I could not stand it.”
Susanne screwed up her face into a horrible grimace. “That’s disgusting, Nicole,” she exclaimed, freighting the word with all the emphasis she could give. The rest of her sisters, older and younger, nodded vehemently.
Gently, Marie said, “Perhaps not at supper, Nicole.”
“It is my work,” Nicole said, sounding as angry as Lucien had ever heard her. “We all talk about what we do in the day. Am I to wear a muzzle because I do not do what everyone else does?” She got up and hurried away from the table.
Lucien stared after her. When he had hesitated over letting her take the job at the hospital, it had been because he feared and disliked the company into which she would be thrown there. He had never thought that, simply by virtue of doing different things from the rest of the family, she might become sundered from it-and might want to become sundered from it.
He knocked back his little glass of applejack and poured it full again. The problems he had expected with Nicole’s job had for the most part not arisen. The problems he had not expected…“Life is never simple,” he declared. Maybe it was the applejack, but he had the feeling of having said something truly profound.
“Gas shells,” Jake Featherston said enthusiastically. “Isn’t that fine? The damnyankees have been doing it to our boys, and now we get to do it right back.”
Michael Scott grinned at him. “Chokes me up just thinkin’ about it, Sarge,” he said, and did an alarmingly realistic impression of a man trying to cough chlorine-fried lungs right out of his chest. After the laughter at the gallows humor subsided, he went on, “When they going to have ’em for the big guns?”
“God knows,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “Best I can tell, we got our factories stretched like a rubber band that’s about to break and hit you a lick between the eyes. There’s a war on, case you haven’t noticed, so they got to make more stuff than they ever reckoned they could. They got to do that with most of the men who were workin’ in ’em before totin’ guns now. And they got to do it with half the niggers, maybe, up in arms instead of doin’ the jobs they’re supposed to be doin’. Damn lucky the Yankees ain’t ridden roughshod over us.”
That produced a gloomy silence. It also produced several worried looks toward the north. The first U.S. attacks after the Red uprising had been beaten back, and the damnyankees, as if taken by surprise that they hadn’t easily overwhelmed the Confederates, seemed to have paused to think things over. Signs were, though, that they were building up to try something new. Whenever the weather was decent, U.S. aeroplanes buzzed over the Confederate lines, spying out whatever they could. Confederate reconnaissance reported more activity than usual in the Yankee trenches.