Clash by Night (10 page)

“That was foolish, I suppose,” Lysette murmured carefully, unsure why he was telling her about it.

“‘It is magnificent, but it is not war’”, Becker said thoughtfully, looking over her head, his eyes fixed on nothing.

“I beg your pardon?” Lysette said, bewildered.

His gaze returned to hers. “That was said about the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about and looked it.

“It was very brave, but useless, like the Poles I saw charging tanks,” Becker clarified.

“Oh. I see. But maybe the Poles felt that if they were going to die anyway, they might was well die fighting.”

Becker nodded, studying her face. “Yes. I think they felt that way,” he replied quietly. Then, as if he hadn’t digressed he put his cap on the wooden window seat and inquired, “Were the sisters in the orphanage kind to you?”

“Yes, but...” she said, and stopped, as if afraid to reveal too much.

His dark eyes narrowed. “But?”

Lysette shrugged eloquently. “They were kind in their own way. But when they did something for you, they were really doing it for God, not for you, and you felt that, if you know what I mean. There was always that... distance.”
 

Becker nodded again, slowly. “I understand.” He walked toward her once more, and this time moved behind the desk, removing that obstacle between them. He paused in front of her and she looked up at him.

“How did you meet your husband?” he asked quietly.

“He was the son of the man who sent me to school.”

“Ah. So you grew up with him.”
 

“In a way. I met him when I was twelve.”

“Childhood sweethearts, then.”

Lysette said nothing, watching him warily. She didn’t resent the personal turn of the conversation; she was too surprised by his curiosity to be offended. But the impression he was getting was so far from the truth that she didn’t know how to respond.

He misinterpreted her silence and changed the subject. “Did you organize this system?” he asked, gesturing to the banks of drawers, the rows of bookshelves.

“Yes. I put it all together when I came here.”
 

“Explain it to me,” he said, in that voice of command which demanded instant obedience. Lysette couldn’t believe he was actually interested but he listened attentively while she described the numerical coding of the books and their placement on the shelves, as well as the card catalogs, which were indexed by title, author, and subject matter. He stopped her a few times to ask pertinent questions, and when she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, he said, “You love books, don’t you?”

She nodded. “They’re great friends, I think.”
 

“I think so too.”

“They’re not fickle like people, they’re always there when you want them and they never change,” Lysette added softly.

Brown eyes met blue, and for a moment she could sense the loneliness in him, which echoed hers.

He looked away from her abruptly, breaking the connection. “Very true.” His gaze returned to her face. “Please go on.”

Lysette hesitated. This man was the top ranking officer in the whole German garrison, and he wanted to spend his morning talking to her about a library, and not a very good one at that? But he was waiting patiently, his arms folded, his dark head tilted to one side, and she saw no alternative but to comply with his request.

Anyway, she didn’t want him to leave. So she went on talking, hoping she had enough gold in her mine of information to hold his attention for a while longer.

And she did.

* * *

Laura walked her bicycle down the main street of Bar-le-Duc, steadying the packages in the basket on the back. The general store in Fains, which also served as the post office and the repository of the village’s single telephone, had a limited supply of fresh produce so she bought food in Bar-le-Duc as often as she could. Today she had gotten some special items to prepare a dinner for Harris, including the fruit preserves for which the town was famous; the least she could do was feed the man. She could see after only one meeting that he would rather smoke than eat, and while he was with them she felt it her duty to make sure he had regular meals.

She had managed to put the marine out of her mind until now, concentrating on the morning’s tasks. But as she crossed the road and slid her bike into the rack in front of the hospital, she allowed him to fill her thoughts, remembering the previous night.

She’d decided within an hour or so that his superiors had picked the right man for the job. And that she had to be very careful around him.

Her reaction was purely emotional and the reason for it was clear. Even in his ridiculous borrowed clothes Harris had been so American that it hurt. She could easily picture him at a baseball game, sunstruck in a tennis shirt with a hot dog in his hand, yelling at the umpire. Or playing touch football in the chill October dusk, calling for a pass on a leaf strewn field redolent of wood smoke and fallen apples. He reminded her of every boy she had ever known in school, in her early life; Bobby Hicks who’d taught her to shoot marbles in the fourth grade, Scott Marston who’d sat behind her in junior high and whispered jokes in her ear during social studies, Dave Wincote who’d taken her to the prom. Harris was the great Midwest, the City of Big Shoulders; he was Huck Finn and Andy Hardy, he was home.

You’re just lonely, she told herself severely. Thierry’s dead, his village is full of Germans, there’s a war on, and you’re lonely. That’s all it is.

But that wasn’t all and she knew it.

She had loved Thierry partly because he was exotic, different, a distinct departure from the men she’d known in America. She enjoyed his continental ways, his delightful accent when he spoke English, his European outlook. But now she was drawn to Harris for exactly the opposite reasons and in her present situation that allure was very strong.

Laura locked the bike and took her packages out of the basket, carrying them with her. Everybody stole these days, theft had become a way of life. She mounted the broad front steps of the hospital, avoiding the glances of the German soldiers she encountered on the way, and passed through the lobby, heading for the surgical ward to look for Brigitte.

Laura walked by Becker’s office. The door was open and she saw that the colonel was absent, but his aide was inside, setting up what looked like a meal tray. She hesitated for a second, and the boy looked up, meeting her gaze.
 

 
My enemy, Laura thought. Yet if you discounted the uniform, put him in ordinary clothes, he would look like any other village boy, too young to be occupied with the serious business of war.
 

Becker’s aide dropped his gaze and Laura walked on. It wouldn’t do to entertain such thoughts. If she started thinking of them as anything other than a foe to be conquered, she was lost.

 
Laura stopped at the nurse’s station on the ward to ask for Brigitte. A white draped nursing nun glided by, moving with a whisper of cloth and swish of clicking beads, leaving behind the clean, wholesome scent of lemon verbena. Laura shifted her packages to her left arm. Above her head loomed a statue of the Sacred Heart for which the hospital was named. It overlooked the corridor, the figure’s pale eyes raised heavenward, one hand held to its breast. The other hand, pierced and bleeding, was outstretched, shedding yellow rays from the palm. A votive light flickered redly at its feet, kept burning continually by the nuns.
 

Laura turned to look across the ward’s ocean of white tile, and saw Brigitte coming down the aisle between the facing rows of wrought iron beds. They lined either side of the large, antiseptically scrubbed room. She was carrying a pan containing soiled linen and a pair of forceps in one hand, and a brown bottle of carbolic disinfectant in the other. A set of yellow rubber gloves protruded from her uniform pocket.

Laura waved. Brigitte indicated that she would just be a moment and disappeared into one of the side chambers with her burdens. She emerged a few moments later, straightening her cap.

“Have you got a minute?” Laura asked as the younger woman walked up to her, exuding the odor of liquid soap. They both glanced at the German soldier who stood at attention across from the desk. He wore the same stone face as the rest of them: bland and expressionless, like a wax doll.

Brigitte nodded. “I’ll see if I can take my break,” she said, moving to speak to the head nurse. When she got permission she led Laura to a room behind the station, a bare cell with a large scarred table and a few scattered chairs that served as the staff lounge.

“Do they come into the operating room, too?” Laura asked when they were out of earshot, nodding in the direction of the guard.

Brigitte rolled her eyes. “No, but they stand just outside it, like Cerberus at the gates of Hades.” She unbuttoned the top of her blouse, removing the detachable starched collar. “And that’s exactly what it’s like inside sometimes…hell.”

They both sat, Laura putting down her packages, Brigitte stretching out her legs gratefully.

“Tough morning?” Laura said.

Brigitte rubbed the back of her neck. “Bad postoperative case, infected leg wound. He’s a British national who wound up here somehow, and every time he regains consciousness he calls me ‘Sister’. I always want to get one of the nuns and then realize that’s what they call nurses in England.” She leaned in closer. “I’ll bet that’s why our German friend is so attentive. He has orders to keep his eye on our prize patient.”

“Do they think he’s a spy?” Laura asked.

Brigitte shrugged. “They think everybody’s a spy.”

And sometimes they’re right, Laura thought to herself. Aloud she said, “I wanted to know if you were off this weekend and could come home. We’d like to see you.”

Brigitte didn’t say anything, but Laura noticed a perceptible tightening of her mouth and her fingers knotted together on the table.

She didn’t care for Henri’s alliance with the Germans any more than her brother did. Though she was less vocal about her feelings than Alain, she’d been avoiding her father. She finally said tonelessly, “I’m off.”

“Then you’ll come home?”

“All right.”

Laura absorbed Brigitte’s reply in silence. She had made the request for Henri, who doted on his only daughter. Alain would have preferred for Brigitte to remain at the nurses’ residence, where she wouldn’t be likely to catch on to their activities with Vipère.

“You have to see your father, Brie,” Laura said gently at length, using Thierry’s pet name for his little sister. “Whatever you think of his new friends, he loves you. He misses you when you stay in town. And Alain and I haven’t had much chance to talk to you lately either.”
 

“Alain doesn’t talk,” Brigitte said. “He rants and raves and carries on, as if all that yelling could change anything.”

Laura was sorely tempted to tell Brigitte about Vipère, let her know that her brother was doing much more than just making noise. But, like Alain, she wanted to wait until she was sure the time was right.

The door opened and they both turned to see the head nurse, who said crisply, “Duclos, we need you in five minutes to change Martin’s dressings.”

“That was fast,” Laura observed dryly.

“We’re understaffed,” Brigitte said, rising. “A number of those who left when the Germans moved in have never come back.” She raised her finely drawn, almost invisible brows. “Maybe they were the smart ones.”

Laura got up to follow her sister-in-law into the hall. “Somebody had to stay and face it,” she said, picking up her groceries.

When they emerged into the corridor Laura saw that Becker’s aide was talking to the guard stationed near the desk. He fell silent when he saw Brigitte.

“That boy is staring at you,” Laura whispered to Brigitte.

“What boy?” Brigitte said uncomfortably, looking away.

“What do you mean, ‘what boy’? That corporal standing just over there. He’s burning a hole right through you, how can you miss him?”

“Oh, him,” Brigitte said, moving to the desk and picking up a patient chart, flipping through it.

“He seems fascinated,” Laura observed.

“Don’t be silly. I only spoke to him once.”

“You spoke to him?” Laura asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

Brigitte sighed, seeing that she was only getting herself in deeper. “He helped me this morning when one of the orderlies was bothering me.”

“He’s beautiful,” Laura said cautiously, stating the obvious.

“He’s German,” Brigitte replied flatly, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

Laura saw that the supervisor was glaring at Brigitte disapprovingly and decided that she’d better leave. “I’ll let you get back to work,” she said to Brigitte. “We’ll expect you Friday night, then?”

Brigitte nodded.

Laura kissed her cheek. “I’ll tell your father and Alain that we’re expecting you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Brigitte echoed, and turned back to the ward.

On her way out Laura passed the corporal, who was still following Brigitte with his eyes. He was definitely smitten, and Laura filed away that piece of information for future reference.