Quill Pen Scratchings

Chapter 17

Edmund drove as fast as he could, at moments barely keeping the car on the road.  When the trees broke overhead, or when he was next to the rolling fields to his right, he could glimpse the German planes as they swarmed over the town ahead.  He could hear their low droning engines, and the higher pitched ones of the Nieuports as they were trying to chase the Germans off.  It was clear to Edmund that the old Nieuports flown by the Escadrille were no match for the new Fokkers. 

Edmund heard the muffled booms of explosion in the town, and he pushed the gas down harder, squealing his tires as he made a sharp turn.  The noise of bombs and guns intensified ahead, and he prayed that Clemence was safe.  When he finally approached the outskirts of the town, he could see flames and belching smoke ahead, and planes continued to fly low overhead.  Finally, he could see the café, and it looked untouched.  He hoped that Clemence had gone into the cellar.  He looked up and to his right, and a Fokker glided in along the path that he was driving.  He could make out every detail of the undercarriage of the plane and see the Iron Cross insignia painted on the wing. 

Edmund quickly looked down at the rifle that Tino had given to him, but he didn’t think he could really hit it while he was driving.  The plane continued over his head until it was past him, and he watched as the pilot reached his hand over the side of the plane and dropped two small bombs onto the café.  He watched them fall silently through the air, and separate slightly, one hitting the side wall near the front of the building, and one landing on the roof. The roof exploded first and then the wall, and the building erupted in a ball of fire and black smoke.  The front of the building collapsed into a heap of stone and wood.  Edmund sped forward.  He could hear nothing and the café seemed to recede into the past before him, as if he would never reach it. 

He slid to a stop twenty yards away from the café, and he jumped out of the car, grabbing the rifle.  A whistling noise broke through the silence, and Edmund looked up to see the bathtub from the upstairs of the café pirouetting through the air.   He stopped and watched as it plummeted to the ground and landed with a deafening clang a few feet from where he stopped.  The sides of the iron tub were caved in and met in the middle.  Edmund stared at it as he ran past and then sprinted to the café.  Only the back wall of the building still stood to its full height.  It looked as if a large saw had cut the building diagonally from there to the sidewalk patio in the front of the building.  The rubble pile blocked his view of what had been the dining room. 

He ran up to it, but couldn’t find a place to climb over, so he finally just threw himself up as high as he could and grabbed a large wooden beam and pulled himself up.  As he scrambled to the top, he thought that the wall between the kitchen and the dining room still stood, and he could see into the bedroom where he had slept when he stayed.  The bed was still intact, though the front wall was gone, along with the rest of the top floor, including Clemence’s room.  He climbed on top of the rubble heap and looked down.  Clemence was kneeling, trying to lift the top of a collapsed table off of the floor.

“Clemence!” Edmund cried and he lost control of his voice as he did so.  She did not look up at him, but lifted the tabletop on its side, and then began picking up table legs off of the ground.  Edmund leapt as carefully as he could down the pile that he had climbed.  He yelled her name again, but she did not respond.  Finally, he was down on the floor and he ran to her and grabbed both of her shoulders.   “Clemence!  Clemence!”

She looked at him briefly, but did not seem to know him, and then looked down at the ground again, searchingly.  “The tables are all gone.  How are we going to serve supper?  The people will be here soon, and I don’t even have anything on the stove yet.” She looked up at Edmund, “Where are they going to sit?”

Edmund rubbed her face with his thumbs, holding the sides of her head.  She had cuts on her cheek that looked like they were from flying glass. He felt her head, and then her shoulders and then held her tightly against him.  She did not resist, but she did not hug him back.  He held her apart from him again, holding her shoulders.  “Clemence, it’s me.  Are you hurt?”  Edmund’s voice was shaking.

“Edmund?”  She looked at him uncomprehendingly.  Her eyes swept the rubble again, and then she looked up into her brother’s room and saw the bed sitting intact.  “Where is the bathroom?”

“Over there.” Edmund nodded his head toward where the bathtub was lying in the street.  “Are you okay?”

She looked back up at him.  “Edmund,” she looked around the room again, and her eyes filled with tears, and her mouth opened in an expression of horror, and a cry welled up from deep within her.  She looked back up at him, and he pulled her tightly to himself and she sobbed into his chest, her legs slowly collapsing under her.  Edmund lowered her gently to the ground and held her while she cried, and they sat in the middle of what used to be the dining room of the café.  The large hearth was still there, but one side of the wooden mantle had fallen and was now laying diagonally across the fireplace opening.  The door into the kitchen hung by one hinge, and he could see through it.  The kitchen looked relatively unchanged, and it seemed to Edmund as if this doorway was a portal to another time.

He slowly lifted her up, and with one arm around her back, he swept her legs into his other arm and carried her into the kitchen, kicking the door out of the way as he went.  He sat her down carefully on the large preparation table and ran over to the sink and picked up a dishtowel.  He turned on the faucet in the sink, but no water came out.  He looked around and found a pitcher of water sittig near the stove.  He poured water on the towel and returned over to Clemence.  Her face was coated in plaster dust and dirt.  He wiped her face clean, being careful of the cuts on the side of her face.  She stared at him as he did this.

She sniffed slightly and looked away and then looked back at him.  “Isn’t this how we met?”

“Something like this.” Edmund said.

She looked over his shoulder through the door to the ruin of the dining room.  “Everything’s destroyed.”

“No, not everything.  I saw the building get hit.  I thought you were gone.”  Edmund almost couldn’t get the last word out, and he reached out and held her tightly, crushing her up against him.  She rocked him back and forth, and he reached a hand up and ran it across her hair.  “I thought that I had lost you.”

He stood up, and Clemence took the dishtowel and wiped his tears away.  She looked back out of the doorway again.  Edmund followed her eyes and then walked over and looked himself, leaning on the door frame.  After a moment, he reached out and grabbed the hanging door and pulled it forcibly into the frame, shutting out the ruin.  He turned and surveyed the room.  Apart from a large crack in the wall adjoining the dining room, it looked the same as it ever had, except that Clemence and he had already packed up most of the items in the room when he was there previously.  He looked up the stairs, and the door at the top was closed, though he could see sunlight pouring in around it. 

“There isn’t any water,” he said.  Then he walked over to the wall switch for the lights.  He pushed the buttons repeatedly but nothing happened.  “Or electricity.”

“We have a well out back, and lamps and a stove.”

“We need to see about getting you on the train south.”  Clemence’s tickets were for the day after next.  He wanted to get her out of this wreck as soon as he could.

“I don’t have anything to wear.  Everything I had prepared to take with me was still in my bedroom.  And now it’s gone.”  She looked down at the sleeves of her blouse and then down at her dress.  “I guess I will be wearing this.”

“Well, you look beautiful in it,” Edmund said.

Clemence laughed slightly and then looked down at the floor.  “Thank you, but it is a bit dirty.  I guess I should wash it before I go.  I think we packed a few old clothes down in the basement.  I will go and find a nightshirt or something to wear while these are drying.”  As she headed down into the basement, Edmund went out into the back and brought in some wood to build up the fire in the stove.  When he was in the back, he opened the door to the old shed that stood near the back fence.  He found a hammer and some nails and some old planks of wood.  He brought these in also and nailed up the door from the kitchen into the now ruined dining room.  He boarded up the cracks around the door as best he could. 

After he had done these things, he told Clemence that he was going to go look at the train station to make sure that it was still operating and that it hadn’t been destroyed by the Germans.  He hugged her for a long time near the door before he left, and he locked the side door as he left with his key. 

Bar le Duc had been hit hard by the German planes.  Many buildings looked just like the café, and large piles of rubble spilled out into the streets.  People were climbing over them to salvage whatever they could from the wreckage.  Above the buildings and trees that still stood, Edmund could see the tall tower of Saint-Etienne, and he was glad that the old church hadn’t been destroyed.  Men had lit bonfires in the street from shattered pieces of wood from the buildings and homes they used to live in. 

He made his way to the train station which thankfully the Germans had missed.  The crowd of newly created refugees increased as he went.  The train platform was deluged with old men, young boys, and women and girls of all ages.  A conductor stood on a small crate near a hissing and steaming train that sat on the tracks.  He was trying to shout over the crowd that the train was full of ticketed passengers, and that everyone would need to buy a ticket.  They would be increasing the number of trains to the station at Bar le Duc the next day, continuing into the next week.  People became angry when they realized they would have to return to the bombed-out remains of their homes, at least for a few days.  Most of the crowd turned towards the ticket window, and Edmund backed away.  Clemence had her ticket.

Edmund turned and stepped back off the platform and back into the street.  He passed an old man wearing a felt hat sitting on a box.  He had his legs crossed and his hands were folded over his lap.  He stared into the ground.  As Edmund walked by, the man looked up, but seemed to stare through Edmund.  He nodded at the old man, but he just looked down at the ground again.  Edmund kept walking back to the café. 

He unlocked the door using his key, and the warm smell of dinner enveloped him as he walked in the door.  Clemence stood by the stove and smiled at him as he entered, but it seemed to cost her to do so.

“The train station is still there, but half the town is trying to leave now, and there are no more trains for today.  They said they are only taking ticketed passengers.”

Clemence nodded and turned back to the stove.  “Does the rest of the town look like this?”

“Yes, pretty much.  Saint-Etienne is still there though.  When I walked back, it looked like that is where many people were headed with blankets and bundles of their possessions.  I think it is going to be home to a lot of people for the next couple of days.”

Clemence stopped stirring the stew she was making and stared down at the stove for a moment.  “We should probably take some food over there.”

Edmund looked at her in amazement.  

“What we have left will just go to waste anyway.  There is an old cast iron cookpot and tripod out in the shed that father used to use.  Let’s take it up to the church and just put everything we have left into a big stew.  We certainly have enough bowls and silver to serve them all.”

She looked up and saw Edmund staring at her. 

“What?  I have been feeding these people all my life.  I am not going to stop when they are starving!”  She seemed almost angry as she said this.

She served their supper and opened a bottle of wine.  They ate at the small table in the kitchen by candlelight.  After they ate, Edmund went to the shed armed with a small scrub brush and found the cast iron cauldron, and the tripod and chains.  He scrubbed out the cauldron at the well until his hands were frozen.  He carried it to Saint-Etienne and set up the tripod on the corner of the street.  The church was full of people who had brought all they had left in the world with them.  Edmund looked around and found a bombed out and deserted building nearby.  It had a well in the side yard with a bucket hanging on it.  He filled the bucket carried it over to the cookpot and poured it in.  It took him several trips, but he soon had the cauldron about two-thirds full.  He looked around and found scrap wood and piled it up under the suspended pot and then took a stick that was burning at one end from a nearby bonfire.  He turned and saw Clemence walking up the street with a tray full of cut-up chicken and some ham. She had quickly seared it on the stove and was bringing it for the stew.  Edmund ran to her and took the tray from her and then helped her put the pieces into the water.

She then asked Edmund to go back and get the bowls full of vegetables that she had cut up, and a selection of spices that she had put into a large glass.  She had a ladle in her apron, and she began to stir the stew.  The water was just beginning to warm, and she stood leaning over it, being careful to keep her dress out of the fire.  Edmund walked back to the café and brought back the things she had requested.  When he approached the fire and Clemence the second time, a small crowd of people were standing around the fire talking to her, and he stood off in the dark for a few moments and watched.  They all were staring into the fire and talking softly, two old men, a woman and a smaller girl.  They all suddenly laughed softly.   

Edmund came forward and handed the large bowl of vegetables to Clemence.  One of the old men thanked him.  Clemence poured the vegetables into the pot and Edmund stirred as she did so.  Then she took the glass full of spices and slowly added them to the swirling stew. 

Edmund returned and brought a crate full of bowls and spoons, and soon there was a ring around the fire and Clemence, and she dished up the stew from the pot.    Edmund stood in the background as people crowded around Clemence and demonstrated their affection for her.  Many people told her how sorry they were for the café and asked about her mother.  Clemence was surrounded by adulation and thanks, and Edmund looked at her and was amazed by the strength she possessed.  Edmund received an occasional pat on the back and warm smile, but just by virtue of his association with Clemence. 

Soon after night descended for good, and the crowd had been fed, Edmund and Clemence stood close by the fire to keep warm.  There was one unused bowl left, and no spoons, so Clemence dished up what was left of the stew and she and Edmund shared it, drinking from the bowl.  “I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.  That was all the food we had left, except for just a little bit for the next day or so for us.” She looked up at Edmund as she said this. 

“I overheard a couple of the town elders talking as I was carrying the last of the vegetables over.  They said that the Red Cross was coming in the morning to help organize relief.”

“Well, at least we got through the first night,” Clemence said, looking around at the street.  Most of the women and children were settling down for the night in the church.  A few of the older men stood around one of the other bonfires, smoking and passing a brown bottle around.  When Edmund and Clemence began packing up, four of these men walked over to help them, and then volunteered to help carry things back to the café.  They recovered almost all the bowls, except for two, which had broken.  Several of the silver spoons were missing.  Clemence said that she didn’t care, if they needed them badly enough to steal them, then they were probably worse off than she was. 

When they had reached the door of the café, the men put the things they had carried down and ceremonially kissed Clemence on both cheeks, and then shook Edmund’s hand, with many “Merci’s” exchanged.

Edmund washed the pot out in the well, and Clemence washed the bowls with some water that Edmund brought in.  When the cleaning up had done, he built up the fire in the stove.  Clemence sat at the small table by candlelight.  Neither knew what time it was.  Clemence stood and ran her hand along the preparation table, as if feeling it for comfort.  “Where are we going to sleep?”

“I think your brother’s bed is still upstairs.  I will try and bring the mattress down.”  Edmund mounted the stairs, treading carefully near the top, testing each step to make sure it was still safe.  The door at the top was closed, and he could feel cold air cascading down the steps around his feet as it tumbled down.  He turned the knob and pushed on the door.  Debris was piled in front of it, but he was able to push it out of the way, the door bending under the pressure.  He stepped into what had been the hallway, and then into the bedroom he had slept in.  The front wall was gone, but if he faced away from it toward the back of the house, everything else remained undisturbed, as if he would turn around and the hallway to Clemence’s room and the large bathtub, and Madam Morel’s rooms were all still there.  The ewer and washbasin stood undisturbed on the dresser. 

Edmund looked at the window that looked into the back yard, and he remembered how the sunlight had streamed through the curtains on that first morning when he could still feel Clemence’s warmth clinging to him.  The cold night air was causing his breath to come out in white clouds. 

He turned and looked out over the ruins of the dining room of the café, the fallen mantle and collapsed tables and chairs.  Beyond that, he could see the rubble that had been the bar where they had watched the dance of drunken soldiers and fallen women.    In every direction, buildings lay half in the streets, and men stood around bonfires made of the buildings’ remains.  They were lucky, Edmund thought, that no fires had erupted to finish off what was left.  To the north, he could see the tower of Saint-Etienne where they had spent the evening, serving one last meal to the now homeless townspeople.

He heard a scraping sound and turned to see Clemence coming up the stairs.  He watched as she seemed to go through the same observations that Edmund had, looking first at the mostly intact room, and then out at the town.  She walked over and sat down on the bed and continued to stare out into the darkness.  Edmund looked up at the cloudless sky and at the indifferent stars that continued to shine in all their glory, as if none of this destruction had happened below them. 

“What am I going to tell Mother?”  Clemence said.

Edmund looked back at her, and after a long moment of silence, he said, “She is a strong person.”

“All she talked about as she was leaving was coming back, and the improvements that she wanted to make.”  She looked at Edmund closely, “With your help, of course.”  They continued to look at each other.  “But all that is gone now.”

“Is it?” Edmund said.

“I am leaving after tomorrow.  You are not.  You have a widowed mother and a house and a business that you are responsible for.  And now that,” she hesitated, “your pilot is dead, you have nothing holding you in France.”  He had told her about Knox while they were at Saint Etienne.

“Clemence,” Edmund began.

“Your mother needs you, as mine needs me.”  She stood up and said, “I’m cold.” And she began bundling up the sheets and the blankets and pillows from the bed into one large roll, which she slung over her shoulder. “Can you manage the mattress?” she asked when Edmund reached out to help her.

“Yes,” he replied.  He watched her disappear down the steps into the kitchen.  Edmund leaned over the bed and grabbed the edge of the mattress and bent it up, finally lifting the whole mattress from the bedframe.  It was wobbly and kept bending, but he managed to wrestle it over to the steps, and then slide it down the stairs.  When it rested at the bottom, he ran back up and closed the door tightly.  He bent the mattress around the landing at the bottom and then slid it over toward the stove.  Clemence had moved the preparation table and cleared a spot on the floor that she and Madam Morel always kept meticulously scrubbed. 

Clemence made the bed on the floor, as Edmund added wood to the fire in the stove, and then blew out the candles and lamps.  Clemence sat on the edge of the mattress and took off her shoes and climbed under the covers with all her clothes still on, leaving room for Edmund beside her.  Edmund looked at her for a moment, but she didn’t look up at him, just simply stared at the fire through the air vents in the front of the stove. 

He took off his boots and jacket, and slid under the blankets beside her, facing her back. He put his arms around her, and she moved back into him, but did not turn around or say anything.  They drifted off to sleep where they lay.