At the Edge of Summer (34 page)

T
he soldier stood on the threshold of the caves beneath Brindeau. The caves were dark, but he kept to the splash of sunlight outside, holding a stick like a rapier.

He came alone, lurking in the entrance, not quite stepping in. Once fearless in the face of a trench wall, he was afraid of a cave. Inside, it still smelled of an army, of horses and wood smoke and drying wool. Debris littered the caverns—rotting hay, scraps of torn cloth, tins, bottles, forgotten letters. Memories strewn underfoot. The soldier who hesitated outside, he was afraid of that more than anything.

I moved from the shadows. “Luc.”

I was nervous, too. Taut from my journey from Paris, terrified that I wouldn't find him, that, once again, he'd disappear from my life, I left Mille Mots for the place I'd once felt safe. I went to the familiar darkness of the caves.

And then here he was. Amazingly, beautifully here. I remembered an afternoon in the hallway of Mille Mots where he told me the story of his mother leaving and of his seven-year-old self wishing for her so hard that she felt it across the Channel and came to him. I'd come from Paris, sending wishes into the sky with every mile. And he came. I held on to the end of my coat sleeves and stepped towards him.

At the sight of me, the stick clattered to the ground. And suddenly he was there, so close I could have taken him in my arms. And I should've. Instead I said, “You were gone.”

He wore my red scarf, loose around his neck. “I'm not now.”

“But you were. I didn't know where you'd gone, only that you left in the morning and you didn't come home.” I pressed a hand, wet from limestone, to my forehead. “I wondered if you ever would.”

“I didn't mean for you to worry.” He swallowed. “I just had to be sure the war really was over.”

“And is it?” I moved closer. I could feel the warmth from his coat.

He put a hand to the wall of the cave. “I think so.” He ran fingers down the wall. In the dim light from outside, I could see a roll of honor carved into the stone. “This is where it all happened, you know.”

“Where what…it is?” And I took a step back to look around. I'd known that the war came close to here. I'd seen the ground churned up outside, smelled the lingering memory of horses and men, saw tatters of cloth and discarded shoes. In one corner, I'd overturned an empty pot with my toe. Soldiers had stayed here, but to think that Luc had been one, so near to home, yet a world away. “This is where Michel…and Stefan…”

He inhaled and nodded. “I never thought I'd come back to this cave.”

“Do you wish you hadn't?”

The question echoed, hung in the still air a moment. Water dripped deep within the cave. “If I hadn't, it would be like pretending it never happened.” He hitched his haversack further up his shoulder. “It would be wearing a mask to forget the scars beneath.”

“I made that mask.” I straightened. “I meant it to help.”

“Doesn't it?”

“You're not wearing it.”

“Clare, all those days you spent sketching me, shaping the mask, painting it, all those days matter.” Shadows caught in the scars on his face. “You believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.”

“And do you now?” I wrapped my arms around my chest.

He touched his face, craggy without his mask. “I'm starting to.” He reached into his haversack and took out a slim parcel, wrapped in paper. He seemed almost nervous, turning the package back and forth in his hands. “I should have given this to you ages ago…” he said.

He peeled back the wrapping and held it out. It was a bundle of soft Conté pencils, bunched tight.

It was an odd gift, for someone who was once an art student, for someone who worked in a studio. “For me?”

He must have seen the question on my face, even in the dim of the cave mouth. He twisted the paper. “You don't know this, but once before I bought you pencils. It was the summer you were at Mille Mots.”

“I remember you brought your father pencils.”

“They were meant for you.”

I stood silent for a moment. “Why?”

“Because I believed in you. I knew I'd see your drawings someday in a gallery.” He took a step closer. “Even then, you knew what you loved.”

You,
I wanted to say.

“Did I?” I asked instead.

“You did. You do. Your Something Important.”

“Something,” I repeated. “It's a singular word, isn't it?”

“Clare,” he said, holding out the pencils, so much more on offer. “You're not your mother.”

Though I never thought I'd make a promise, I said, “I won't leave.” And I meant it.

“If you do, take me with you?” In the dimness, I swore he held his breath.

I smiled. “I always have.”

From his bag he took a stub of a candle and lit it. The flame jumped. “So did I.” He held out his hand. “Let me show you something.”

I took it.

We walked into the dark, his hand warm and safe around mine. I closed my eyes and let him lead me. Softly, under his breath, he counted. Steps in from the entrance, steps to where he'd eaten, rested, prayed, dreaded, hoped. “Where did it happen?” I asked.

He slowed and his hand tightened. “Outside, up by where the old farmhouse was. There was a cellar near the line of trees.”

“Did you…”

“It looks different in the daylight,” he said. “I buried the past.”

“I'm glad.”

He drew me closer. He didn't say a word.

“Remember that summer when we'd walk here?” I said, as though he would have forgotten. “It's silly, but when I would come back here into the caves, I used to scratch our initials on the wall with my fingernail. A little deeper, each time, so that it didn't fade.”

He handed me the candle. “It didn't.”

Right there, on the soot-streaked walls, was scratched a pale C.R. and L.C.

“So many years.” I reached out with a finger to trace the initials. “I wonder what the soldiers here thought of it.”

He put his hand over mine, the one that held the candle. “I can't speak for all the soldiers, but those four letters helped one soldier get through it all.” He moved my hand and the candle along the wall. “So much that he carved right beside them.”

It was me. My face, charcoaled and half carved into the limestone. Me, wild-haired, with eyes wide. Through sudden tears, the candle blurred.

“It's how I first saw you, in the front hallway, and how I've always remembered you. Fascinating and frustrating, determined and impulsive, fragile and strong as stone.” He lowered the candle. “A face I couldn't forget, even in the middle of war.”

In his face, I could see the boy I'd lost and the man I'd found again. I loved them both.

Tangier, Morocco

21 June 1922

Dear Grandfather,

We've found the old monastery, where you once stayed. Grandmother was right: the stones sing. The building, though, is maybe not as quiet as you might have known it. Now it houses a school for colonial children. It rings with laughter and French. It's the perfect setting to capture life on canvas.

One of Grandmother's paintings hangs here. Did you know? In the room where Luc teaches, in the old refectory, is a self-portrait. She's swathed in white from head to toe, but her eyes peering from the cloth, they are familiar. Even though Grandmother returned to Scotland, she left a piece of herself in Morocco.

She's wrapped all in white, but her hands are bare, and they cradle her belly. When she painted it, she must have known. Known that soon the pair of you wouldn't be alone. Known that she might have to give up all of the heady days of painting her way across Africa. Known that things would change more for her than for you. Maybe it was all those thoughts that brought her back to Fairbridge. Maybe it was less fear and more a fierce resolve.

I'm not the only artist who came to Tangier in search of memories. The old gardener said that a dozen or so years ago a lady artist with hair as red as mine came seeking refuge. Of course it wasn't a monastery anymore—it was already a school—but the headmaster gave her a bed in exchange for work. She told him she'd been home, only to find her husband dead and her little girl gone. She had nobody left to ask for forgiveness. She was also dying of consumption. He couldn't turn her away, so he set her to restoring a crumbling mural in the old chapel.

But the restoration wasn't the only thing that she did for the chapel. She designed a new altar, and the gardener built it under her direction. You should see it, with legs twining from the ground like rose vines. It looks as though it's springing, living, from the chapel floor. Grandfather, they said she died here in the old monastery, that artist with her regrets and her red hair. But she left something beautiful behind. You would be proud.

There's a new painting hanging now in the old refectory, one that hangs above the rows of curly-headed girls, swinging their legs and doggedly sketching apricots for young Maître Crépet. It's another self-portrait of a woman swathed in robes. She, too, is cradling her stomach for the secret inside. But only with one hand. In the other she holds a wet paintbrush. The woman won't stop for the baby in her stomach. No. But she also won't leave her baby behind. She'll put the paintbrush in her child's hand and, together, they'll paint the world.

Love,

Patricia Clare

T
he core of this novel—artist and soldier meeting over a copper mask in a Paris studio—was inspired by very real history. In researching
Letters from Skye
and the prostheses available during World War I, I came across a footnote mentioning advances in craniofacial prostheses. Intrigued, I dug deeper. While doctors were making strides in plastic surgery and engineers were improving artificial limbs, artists were helping soldiers with facial scars and disfigurements. British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood, while volunteering at the Third London General Hospital during the war, pioneered techniques to create lightweight copper masks. Under the administration of the American Red Cross, Boston sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd opened a studio in Paris offering the same for French soldiers.

The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art holds Anna Coleman Ladd's papers and photos from her time at the Studio for Portrait Masks and I was fortunate to have access to these in researching
At the Edge of Summer.
Most of the archived documents were used as wartime publicity for the studio—contemporary articles meant to encourage donations, photos of French soldiers both with and without their masks. From the photos alone, the studio's work was impressive. Before their masks, many of the soldiers had disfigurements and scarring so extensive that they hadn't been home in years. They didn't want their families and friends to see them like that. As impressive as the photos of the masks were, more impressive were the personal letters to Anna Coleman Ladd from women writing to thank her for giving their husbands and sons the courage to stop hiding and return to them.

Thank you to the Archives of American Art for accommodating my research, despite an ice storm that closed much of the city. Thanks also go to my mother, Beth Turza, for joining me on a road trip to Washington D.C. and for patiently listening to all of my research-fueled ramblings on the drive home. That's what you get for raising a history nerd!

A research trip to France allowed me to not only walk the Parisian streets near where the Studio for Portrait Masks once was, but to take an illuminating guided tour of WWI battlefields and memorials. Many thanks to Olivier Dirson of Chemins d'Histoire tours for showing me the France that my characters would have known. His expertise was boundless and his enthusiasm for the history of the area was infectious.

One of our stops was at the medieval quarries beneath Confrécourt, near to the village of Nouvron-Vingré. Used as a hospital and, later, as a shelter for French troops and their horses, the caves at Confrécourt became a place for artistic soldiers to record and react to the war on the fields above their heads. Like my fictional caves, these are full of carvings, from formal rolls of honor to quick initials scratched into the limestone, from crude pictures of women or wine to studied scenes carved in relief. One of the most poignant is a woman's face, sketched in on the wall, but the carving itself only half-finished. A reminder of how, even in the relative peace away from the lines, war could disrupt. Thank you to the tourism office in Soissons for arranging a private tour of the caves at Confrécourt. To see the artwork, to soak in the history, to just
be
to feel and hear and sense, all was invaluable.

Thank you to my mother-in-law, Candace Brockmole, for tirelessly accompanying me through Paris's art museums and across snowy battlefields. Somebody had to come with me to France, if only to help me eat all those macarons and chocolate crepes.

I would be amiss if I did not offer a few other thank-yous.

To my editor at Ballantine, Jennifer E. Smith, for giving me the space and encouragement to find my story. To Hannah Elnan and Nina Arazoza for pushing me in the right direction. And to Anne Speyer, for a seamless transition. I look forward to what comes next!

To my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, for cheering me on and up. She is smart, sharp as knives, and fearless enough for the both of us. This road continues to be much less scary with her by my side.

So many friends keep me writing, even on the days when I want to do anything but. To Kate Langton, for so many ideas and glasses of wine. To Ardea Russo, for executive tables, cheese dips, and coffee-fueled brainstorming. To Danielle Lewerenz, for those Skype talks all the way from Morocco just when I need them. To Pamela Schoenewaldt, for thoughtful reads and insightful suggestions. To Sarah Lyn Acevedo, for being not only the brilliance behind the camera, but for being my one-woman street team. To Rebecca Burrell, for loving me even in Buffalo.

To Owen for offering tea and to Ellen for offering story suggestions. (Sorry, dear, no tragic ends on the Eiffel Tower.) To Jim for knowing when I need a weekend away from the laptop…and for knowing when I then need to find a quiet corner and a cocktail napkin.

In order to carve a place for her story, the historical novelist must chip away at history. Please pardon the dust.