Quill Pen Scratchings

Chapter 14

Clemence carried a stack of plates, each individually separated by a sheet of paper, and placed them carefully into a crate filled with hay.  The once productive kitchen was now stacked high with boxes separated into two groups: one to store in the basement of the café, and another, much smaller, to be sent south to Marseille. 

She heard a knock on the side door, which she kept locked, as she had all the doors since her mother had left.  She could see Edmund silhouetted against the curtain.  She took a sharp breath in and walked over to the door, but not before stopping quickly in front of a small mirror that hung near the stairs to smooth her hair and to wipe the small tear that had formed in her right eye.  She looked frightful, she thought. 

She unlocked the door and opened it.  She frowned quickly as she looked at herself, then shrugged and unlocked the door.  After a moment of hesitation, she stepped quickly toward him and kissed him on the cheek, and buried her face in his neck.  He hugged her tightly as they stood on the step outside of the door.  Edmund kissed the top of her head and whispered, “It’s cold.”  Clemence nodded and pulled away and wiped again the tears that had formed in her eyes.  She slid her hand down his arm and held his wrist.  He held a piece of paper in his hand.  She led him inside the kitchen and closed the door behind them, but she didn’t lock it. 

Edmund sat down at the small table.  He still had his coat on.  He looked around the room and said, “This place looks different.”

Clemence looked at him and his coat.  “Aren’t you staying?”

He looked up at her.  “I would like to.”  He dropped his gaze again.

“What’s wrong?”

Edmund looked at the letter that he still held in his hand and then held it out to Clemence.  She looked down at the paper and then back up at Edmund’s face and took it from his hand.  She unfolded it and read it, and as she did so, she tilted her head to the side and put her hand up to her mouth.  She looked up at Edmund with tears forming around the edges of her eyes.  “Oh, Edmund,” she said looking at him.  “Your father.  I am so sorry.”  She knelt on the ground in front of him and he leaned forward and she wrapped her arms around him.  Tears began streaming down his face onto her shoulder, but otherwise he did not move.  Clemence rocked back and forth gently with him.

After a moment, Edmund pulled away slowly from her and leaned back into the chair.  He wiped his eyes and his nose with the sleeve of his coat.  Clemence took a small dish towel that she had hanging from her apron and handed it to Edmund.  He took it and wiped his face and took some deep breaths.  When he felt like he could talk again, he said, “At the same time I got this letter, I received this one as well.” he reached inside of his coat and pulled out the letter from his mother, “My mother wrote this one two days before he died.  She said he was proud of me.”

“Of course he was proud of you,” Clemence said.

“No.  No.  When I left there, he was ashamed of me.”

“Oh, Edmund,” Clemence began.

Edmund shook his head.  “And rightfully so.  I didn’t say goodbye to him when I left, and I haven’t written to him since.  And he died…” Edmund’s voice faltered, and tears welled up again in his eyes.  Clemence rose up on her knees and put her arms around him and pulled him close to her.  He buried his face in her shoulder, and he began to shudder with tears that came from deep within him.   Still holding him, Clemence rose from her knees and sat sideways on his lap, and pressed his face into her chest, and put the side of her head down on top of his.  He hugged her and sobbed and she felt like he was going to crush her in his arms.

Edmund’s father died of a stroke on December 12, 1916, two days after his mother had written and mailed her last letter to Edmund.  He was leaving for work and had walked out to the car parked in front of the house.  He put his hand on the door handle when the stroke occurred, leaving him lying on the ground between the car and the house where no one from the road could see him.  Nobody ever knew if he had died instantly, or if he lingered, laying in the grass waiting for help.  Edmund’s mother happened to glance out of the window about an hour later and noticed that the car was still sitting out in front of the house.  She went out to investigate and found him lying dead on the ground.  She ran to him and dropped to her knees and screamed.  A milkman who was finished with his rounds was driving by and heard her and stopped to help.   But Edmund didn’t know any of this.  The letter written by Edmund’s friend Lloyd didn’t go into that kind of detail.  Lloyd heard about Mr. Fitzhugh’s death two days afterward and drove to Edmund’s house to see if he could help.  Edmund’s mother seemed to latch on to Lloyd as a link to Edmund, and she asked him to write to him, because she didn’t know what to say to him.  She had closed up the house and went to Baltimore to stay with her sister for a while.  So when Edmund had wondered how his home had looked at Christmas, it had actually been a dark and empty shell.

After a few moments, Edmund was still and his tight embrace eased a bit.  Clemence wiped her own tears away with the edge of her apron.  Edmund leaned back in the chair, but his head hung down.  Clemence took the dishtowel out of his hand and touched his chin lightly to raise his face and wiped his eyes and his nose.  He reached up and gently held the back of her hand, and she could feel the calluses and caked blood.  She sat up and turned his hand so that she could see the palm. 

“What did you do?”

Edmund looked down at the torn up skin and broken scabs that bled slightly.  “It has been a hell of a week,” he said, smiling slightly.  “We had to put in a new runway.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Everything hurts.”  Edmund turned his hand and held Clemence’s and raised it to his mouth.  He held her hand against his lips.  He wiped away the last of his tears from his eye and laughed slightly and touched her blouse where his tears had made it wet.  “Sorry,” he said. 

She smiled and leaned forward and kissed his forehead and stood up.

“I missed your mother?” Edmund asked.

“Yes.  I put her on the train two days ago.  It is very strange to be here without her.  Especially at night.”  She walked over to where he had been working before Edmund came in.  “I am just trying to get everything sorted here between what we are storing and what I need to send ahead to Mother.” 

“So you are leaving also?”

Clemence looked down into the box she had been packing. “Yes, on the 15^th.”  She paused and then said, “I have to go.  Mother…”

“I know.”

“Are you going to…” Clemence hesitated, “Can you stay?”

“I was planning to.  For a couple of days.  If you want me to.”

“Of course I want you to.”  Edmund and Clemence looked at each other, and an uncomfortable silence came to rest over the room.

“I can help you get packed.”

“That would be,” she hesitated again and seemed to be struggling to find the appropriate words.  “Thank you.  But not before we see to those hands, and whatever else you managed to do to yourself.” 

Edmund held up his hands and looked at them.  They actually felt better than they had, but they probably looked worse.  He was glad to be talking about something else other than his father and about her leaving.  He took a deep breath and looked around the kitchen.  Edmund felt a great weariness come over him, and he leaned forward in his chair on his elbows. 

Clemence walked over to him and put her hand under his arm. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and changed.  We have, as I have found, lots of clothes of my brother’s left.  Let me draw you a bath and get you some new clothes.”  He straightened his arm and she slid her hand down until she was holding his wrist, which she pulled on until he was standing.  He followed her up the stairs and watched as she began running water in the bathtub, feeling the temperature until it was warm.  She put the stopper in place and then walked past Edmund and went into her brother’s room.  Soon she came back with a clean set of clothes for him and sat them on a chair that was against the wall.  “These should fit, I think.”  Then she quickly turned and looked at him, squeezed his arm and said, “Take your time,” and left the room, shutting the door behind her. 

Edmund stood where he was for a few moments, watching the steam rise off the water, then slowly he undressed and lowered himself into the bath.  He was hurting all over, and the water felt good.  The last thing he submerged was his hands, watching his palms as he slowly dipped them beneath the surface.

After a few moments, he relaxed back into the water and turned his hands over and put them on his legs, and let the warmth ease his body.  He tried to let his pain and loss melt away.  Edmund submerged his head under the water and then ran his hands over his hair as he came up.  The motion made his hands burn, and he looked at them, and blood was trickling out from between the cracked scabs.  He looked around him and the water was tinged a slight pinkish brown.  He picked up the cake of soap that Clemence had left for him and washed himself, and then he had to wash the bloody handprint off the soap.  He pulled the plug from the drain and dried and dressed himself in Clemence’s brother’s clothes.  It occurred to Edmund that she had never told him her brother’s name.  The clothes fit comfortably.  He put his own boots back on and bundled up his clothes and stepped out of the bathroom.  He could hear Clemence in the kitchen downstairs and could feel the heat rising as he descended. 

“Feel better?” She said.

“Yes, thanks.” 

“Come here and let me see those hands.”  She had placed a bottle on the table along with rolls of bandages, and a small tub filled with cream.  There was also a glass with brown liquid in it.  Edmund sat down in one of the chairs and Clemence pulled the other around in front of him so that her legs were together between his.  She took his left hand and laid it palm up in her lap.  He leaned forward as she pulled his hand toward her.  She soaked one of the bandages in the liquid from the bottle and held it above Edmund’s hand.  “This is going to sting a little,” she said, looking up at him. 

“That’s okay.  What is the stuff in the glass for?”

“That is for you to drink.  Apple brandy.”

Edmund reached across her with his free hand and picked the glass up and took a sip of the liquid.  As he did this, she pressed the alcohol-soaked cloth down onto his hand, and it felt like it was being held over an open flame.  No worse though than when Tino had submerged his hands in the tent.  He breathed in sharply and took another drink. 

“Sorry,” she said. 

“It’s okay.”  Edmund replied.  Clemence then took the other side of the bandage and scooped a bit of the cream out of the tub and dabbed it gently on his palm.  She then wrapped his hand tightly in more bandages.  “Didn’t we meet this way?” Edmund said.  Clemence smiled at him and then repeated the process on the other hand.

“There!” She said, sitting back.  “Now you will be of some use to me.” 

“Yes ma’am.” Edmund said, finishing the rest of the brandy.  Clemence stood and gathered up the things on the table and carried them off.  Edmund sat in the chair while she began making dinner for them, and soon the kitchen was filled with the smell of the onions and spices, and a chicken roasting slowly in the oven. 

While their dinner simmered, Edmund helped Clemence carry some of the crates she had been packing down to the cellar.  A small door underneath the stairs led to a wooden staircase.  Clemence went ahead of him and switched on the electric lights that led down to the dirt floor of the cellar.  Shelves lined one wall and were filled with glass jars full of tomatoes and beans, and a wine rack took up the opposite wall, but it was mostly empty.  At Clemence’s direction, Edmund sat the crate on top of several others that were down there already.   Clemence began writing something on the box in pencil.  Edmund walked over to the shelves and picked up one of the jars and remembered visiting his grandmother once in western Maryland, and her cellar had also been filled with such things.  It even occurred to Edmund that the two cellars smelled similar.

“We did a lot of extra canning and preserving this summer.  It is a shame.  I think all this stuff will go bad before anybody gets to eat them.  As a matter of fact, can you get a jar of green beans and some raspberry preserves?  I have some bread rising that I need to put in soon, and that will go with it nicely.”

Edmund poked around on the shelves and found the beans but then pulled out a jar of a reddish liquid and held it up to Clemence.  “Well,” Clemence said, “I don’t want stewed tomatoes on my bread, but if that is what you like, go ahead.”  Edmund put the bottle back on the shelf.  “Toward the back.  Right hand side,” she said.  She was looking at what was left on the wine rack.  Edmund walked over next to her.  “Father used to keep this quite full.  I remember as a child coming down here, and every space was filled with bottles.  There used to be crates of bottles sitting against the wall there.”  She was pulling bottles out and reading the labels, looking for something.  “There are still a few here that my father collected, and that my mother always said were for a special occasion.”  She finally found what she was looking for and pulled a bottle off a top shelf and wiped the label off with her apron.  “Here we are.  No sense in letting the Germans get their hands on this.  Château Margaux 1875.”

They took their treasures and went back up to the kitchen and Edmund continued to carry crates down while Clemence prepared the beans and finished the chicken and the bread.  When the crates were all stored, Clemence opened the wine and poured two glasses, and Edmund took his and went into the dining room and built a fire.  He lit some lamps and candles around the room and turned off the electric lights.  The sofa sat facing the fire, and Edmund put a smaller table in front of it for them to eat on.  As he was doing this, he looked up and Clemence was standing in the doorway watching him.

“It looks lovely,” she said.  “Mother and I have been eating in the kitchen, but this is much nicer.” She turned and went back to tend their supper.  Edmund finished arranging the dining room and then followed her.  She had taken the chicken out and had it on a platter, and she was making gravy.  Soon the bread was done and the beans were served, and Edmund carved the chicken and they made plates for themselves and carried them and their glasses into the dining room and sat at the table by the fire to eat.  

They did not speak very much while they ate, except for Edmund’s complimenting the food.  They also did not drink very much of the wine.  After a few sips, Clemence said, “Does this taste vinegary to you?”

“A bit,” Edmund said. 

“It didn’t age very well.  Or rather, I think, we kept it too long.  Maybe we should have left it for the Germans.”  She held up the bottle and looked at the label. “And father was so proud of this bottle.  It was almost a sacred relic to Mother after he died.”

“So much for the great plans of men,” Edmund said.  But Clemence still sat and stared at the label on the bottle. 

She sniffed slightly and seemed to have a catch in her throat, but she said, “Well, nothing to be done about it.  Why don’t I pour the rest of this out and rinse the glasses, and maybe you could go down and get another bottle for us?  Maybe something not quite so old?” she smiled.  They left their food on the table and Edmund went back to the basement and pulled another bottle from the shelf and returned and opened it and poured it into the rinsed glasses. 

Clemence took a sip.  “Much better,” she said.  They continued eating, but now the conversation flowed easily.  Clemence told Edmund about how her parents had met and got married and opened the café.  Edmund told her about his parents.  It made him feel good to talk about his father in the present tense.  He finally faltered when he told her about his father’s plans for expanding his business. He stopped talking and looked down at the table, and she reached over and held his hand. 

After a moment, Edmund nodded and picked up his glass.  “Here is to our fathers, and what they did for us.”  Clemence picked up her glass and lightly touched it to Edmund’s.  “And for what they did to us.”  Edmund said, laughing slightly before he drank. 

Clemence laughed also as she was drinking and quickly put a napkin up to her face.  “You are going to make it come out of my nose,” she said scoldingly.  After a moment, she said, “You loved your father.”

Edmund looked down at his glass.  “Yes.”  He stopped, and she waited.  “I never told him that.  I have been very angry with him for a long time for sending me here.  And I have been trying to think of the last thing I said to him, and I can’t remember what it was.  I actually don’t think I said anything to him for the few days right before I left.  So, I think my actual last words to him were about a week before I got on the train to New York, and I called him a coward.  I said that he was sending me away to protect his own reputation.  But I know now that he was doing it for me.  To try and protect me.”  He laughed slightly, “It seems strange that he sent me to a war to keep me safe.”

There was a long pause.  After a moment, Clemence said, “Did he ever tell you that he loved you?”

“No,” Edmund said quickly.

“And did he?  Love you?”

“Oh, yes.  I always knew that he did.”

“Well, he knew you did too.” They both sat and looked into the fire.  “The last thing I said to my husband before he left for the front was that he was betraying me by leaving.”  Edmund looked at her, but she continued to stare into the fire.  “I have regretted that every day since.  But I have just had to console myself with the thought that he knew that I loved him.  And he loved me.  And that will have to be enough.”  They both continued to stare into the fire. 

“Are you going to write her back?” 

“Yes,”  he held up his bandaged hands.  “But I’m not sure I can hold a pen.  I thought there would be more time.”

“Yes, we always think that.”  She looked down at his hands.  “If you would like, you could tell me what to say, and I could write it down for you.”

Edmund looked at her, “I would like that very much.”

“Okay.  We can do it in the morning.”  She stood up and began gathering the dishes.  Edmund started doing the same.  “Sit down, I just need to wash up a bit.  It will only take a few minutes.”

“Well, I will help you.”

“I don’t want you to get your bandages wet.”

“I won’t.  I can do other stuff.”  She stopped protesting and they cleared the table.  Edmund sat the new bottle of wine that was still mostly full and their glasses on a side table next to the sofa.  In the kitchen, Clemence began washing the dishes and putting them in a drying rack.  Edmund took a clean towel and began drying them and stacking them on the counter.  They did not speak much as they did this, but fell into a domestic dance, moving easily around, occasionally brushing against each other.  Soon, all the cleaning was done, and they went back into the dining room.  Clemence filled their glasses as Edmund built the fire up.  They sat on the sofa, Edmund on one end, and Clemence in the middle, close to, but not touching, Edmund.

An awkwardness descended on both of them.  The night lay in front of them, and they were alone, and both remembering the last night they had spent together.   Edmund could feel the tension in Clemence’s body next to him.

Finally, she broke the silence.  “Edmund,” she paused, “that last night that you were here,” she paused again and looked at him.  He stared back at her.  His heart was beating fast.  “I was so lonely, and so cold, and I wanted someone to,” she faltered again.  Edmund didn’t say anything.  Clemence looked down at her hands.  “I am going away soon, and you will have to go back to America to take care of your mother.  Both of us have lost so much.  I don’t think I can handle more.”  She looked up at Edmund.  “All I have been thinking about since you left was ‘when were you coming back?’   I don’t want to spend the next year, or next three years of my life that way.”  Edmund didn’t say anything.  Clemence looked down at her hands again.  “I don’t mean to be cruel,” she reached up and touched the side of Edmund’s face, “especially not on this day for you.”  Clemence stood up.  “I’ve put some night clothes for you, probably the same one you wore last time, on my brother’s bed.  We have a lot to do tomorrow, that is, if you still want to stay.”  She looked at him and her eyes were rimmed with tears.

“I would love to stay,” Edmund said, and Clemence caught herself in a sob, and then smiled.  Edmund stood up and put his arms around her, and she buried her face in his shirt.  After a moment, she put a hand between them and gently pushed him away.

“We should go to sleep,” Clemence said in a half whisper.  Edmund nodded and they walked around the room, extinguishing lamps and candles.  Edmund put a screen in front of the fire and followed Clemence into the kitchen.  When everything was put away, they went up the stairs.  “I checked and there is plenty of wood in your room for the night.  I’m afraid you will have to build the fire though.”

“That’s fine.  Would you like me to build yours also?”

“That would be very nice, thank you.”  Clemence stopped at Edmund’s bedroom door and turned and faced him.  “I need a few moments to get ready for bed, if you want, you can go ahead and get your fire started.”

“Okay.”  Edmund walked into his room.  It looked the same as it did the last time he was here, but it felt different.  He heard Clemence walk into her room and shut her door.  He went to the fireplace and put some wood into the hearth and then made a small pile of kindling wood and paper in the hollow of two logs, and lit it with some matches.  He blew on the small flame to make it hotter so the logs would catch. He heard Clemence’s door open and then heard her go into the bathroom.  He heard the faucets of the bathtub squeak and then heard the tub filling with water.  He sat on the cold floor and stared into the fire.  The wood was dry and cured and began to catch quickly.  He stared into the curling smoke and building flame.  He heard Clemence turn the water off.  He thought he should build her fire while she was bathing so that she would have a warm room to come back into.  He stepped out into the hall and walked over to her room.  He stopped and stared for a moment at the bathroom door.  A single line of light spilled out underneath the door, and he could hear Clemence in the bathtub. 

He took a deep breath and continued into her room.  Her clothes were draped over the back of the chair of her vanity.  He walked over to them and picked up her blouse.  He felt it between his fingers.  He raised it to his face and closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her that still clung to the fabric.  He opened his eyes and saw the photograph of her husband still sitting on the dressing table.  He put Clemence’s blouse down and picked up the photograph.  The man stared smiling out of the photograph, and Edmund looked into his eyes, and then up at his hair.  Everything he was looking at was now dead and lying in a grave.  Had there been anything left of him to bury.  He looked to be about Edmund’s age in the picture.  He had been a little older when he died.  Everything that had happened in the last year to Edmund had happened since this man had died.  All his struggles, his pain, Penny’s death, his father’s death, none of it meant anything to this man.  His pain and struggles and loves were already over.

What if Behonne was overrun by the Germans tomorrow, and Edmund was killed, and his life was complete.  Did he accomplish anything?  Did he try?  Did his life mean anything?  This man’s race was finished.  No more striving, no more suffering, no more happiness, no more love, nothing.  But Edmund wasn’t finished yet, and neither was Clemence.  He didn’t want to live as if he were already dead.

Edmund put the photograph back on the dressing table and turned and walked out of Clemence’s room and up to the bathroom door.  His heart beat quickly as he reached out and turned the knob.

Clemence was lying back in the water against the back of the tub.  When Edmund entered, she sat up and then put her hands up over her chest.  “Edmund, I’m not decent.”

Edmund stepped over to the side of the tub and looked down at her.  “Clemence, the thing that haunts me about my past is not what and who I have lost, but the things I regret.  Regret for the things that I did and even more so for the things I did not do.  The things I didn’t say, and the times I kept myself apart when someone needed me not to.”  Edmund paused, and Clemence lowered her hands and lay back again against the tub, looking down into the water.  Edmund half turned and picked up the straight-backed chair that sat against the wall.  Clemence’s robe was draped over the back of it.  He pulled the chair to the edge of the bathtub and sat down.  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and stared at Clemence’s face until she looked up at him. 

“Neither of us knows what is going to happen tomorrow.  We think we know, but we really don’t.  Until yesterday morning, I thought I would see my father again.  I had even planned what I would say to him, and what we would do together afterward.  And now that chance is gone.  I know you thought you would see your husband again.”

Clemence looked back down into the water and there was silence for a moment.  Then she said, “That’s just it.  I knew I wouldn’t see him again when he walked out the door.  And that makes what I said to him, how I treated him, so much more terrible.”

“Clemence, you really didn’t know what was going to happen.  None of us can.  And you were just trying to protect yourself from pain.  That isn’t terrible.  It’s just human.”  After a moment, Clemence looked back up at Edmund.  He was staring down at the floor but soon lifted his head.  “I just don’t want any more time to go by without telling you that I love you.”

Clemence’s eyes dropped slightly and she looked down at his mouth, and then at the collar of his shirt before looking up into his eyes again.  “Are you sure you aren’t just saying that because you are in pain right now?”

Edmund didn’t answer her, and they stared at each other, for what to Edmund felt like an eternity.  Finally he dropped his gaze and said.  “Anyway, I just needed to tell you that.”  He stood up and turned and slid the chair noisily back against the wall and walked to the door.

“Edmund,” Clemence said quietly behind him.  Edmund stopped and slowly turned around.  Clemence was standing up in the bathtub and water ran in rivulets down her body.  They stared at each other for a moment, and then Clemence said, “I love you.”  Edmund took two steps toward her, and she held out her arms to him.  He reached up and took her in his arms, crushing her against him, and feeling the water from her body soak into his clothes.  He lifted her up, out of the water and cradled her in his arms.  Steam rose from her body, and water pooled in her navel.  She reached up and held the side of his face and kissed him.  He carried her out of the bathroom, and he could feel her skin tighten from the cold air in the hallway.  He walked quickly over to the door to his own room, and gently nudged it open with his foot, and carried her in.  He lay her down on the bed and closed the door, shutting out the world.