Losing Julia (61 page)

She loved me. Julia always did love me. I looked up at the sky.

“You thought I was… ”

“Well, she didn’t exactly say dead. It was just the way she talked about you. How both you and Daniel were frozen in time for her. Forever young. Her young soldiers… ”

“What about her husband?” I asked.

“What husband?”

“The one she married, around 1929?”

“She never married.”

“What?”

“Oh no. We used to tease her about it. She was so beautiful.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. What makes you think she married?”

I looked at her but couldn’t say anything. What did that mean? Was the engagement called off? Why wouldn’t she have told me that? Or was there no engagement? The thought suddenly overwhelmed me:
there was no other man
. Not for Julia. Certainly not that quickly. No, the letter she sent was to protect me, to keep me from looking for her. That was it, wasn’t it? She couldn’t bear to pull me away from my wife and son, even if it meant spending the rest of her life alone. And yet I was alone too.

All those years.

The young woman was still staring at me, her bright green eyes studying my reaction. She waited a minute, then said, “Your portrait is quite handsome, really. It’s hanging in my apartment in Paris. You and Grandfather were on either side of the fireplace at her house for years.”

“Her house… ”

“Not five miles from here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, she came to visit in, let’s see, 1928 I think it was, and never left.”

So you stayed behind. Someone else must have mailed the letter for you from New York. All those years in France. Alone amongst the ruins.

“She sent for my mother… ”

“Robin?”

“Yes. Are you okay?”

“Tell me, Julia is… ” But your face just told me. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

“I’m so sorry. She died just last year.”

I sat down again quickly and she sat next to me, this time closer. “She did quite well for herself with her art gallery. I always admired her so much; her work in the underground during the Second World War, her independence, the long walks she’d take in the countryside right up until the end. I think the land held some sort of magic for her. And she always took special care of this memorial. We scattered her ashes around it. After she died, I decided it was my turn.”

I glanced over at the basket of flowers, then rested my cane along my knees, unable to talk.

“I’ll leave you for a moment,” she said softly, backing away and walking toward the trees. I stared up at the sky and watched as a flock of birds flew by.

When she returned she stood, staring at me. That’s when I saw the necklace.

She put her hand on it. “You recognize this? It was Julia’s.” She took it off and handed it to me. I laid it gently in my palm, then ran my fingers along the length of it, stopping to rub the sapphire pendant.

“Did you give it to her?”

I nodded.

“Then keep it, please.”

“No, I want you to have it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” I handed it back to her. She self-consciously clasped it around her neck.

“You look like her,” I said.

“Oh yes, everybody used to say that. I’m quite flattered, really.”

“You’re… ”

“Natalie. I’m studying art at the Sorbonne. Painting.”

“You’ve got the right ancestry.”

“It’s a start.”

“A good one.”

I looked closely at her hair and her hands and the slenderness of her face. Then I turned toward the open field that stretched from one ridgeline to another. “Onions,” I laughed. “There are onions growing in no-man’s-land.”

She followed my eyes toward the field, which was now cultivated, and smiled.

“Your grandfather hated onions,” I said.

“I don’t know very much about him, I’m afraid. But I’m very curious. He’s always seemed like sort of a hero to me, not just because of the war but because of the way he and Grandmother met and ran away. It always sounded so romantic, especially when I was a young girl.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, close enough to each other so that I could smell her hair.

“Would you like a drink?” I said, reaching into my leather bag.

“Oh, I’ve got some water, thanks.”

“Ah, but you don’t have Scotch.”

“Scotch?” She raised her eyebrows and her cheeks tugged playfully at the sides of her mouth.

“I’ve brought along a bottle of Scotch—if you don’t mind sharing a glass I purloined from my hotel.”

“Why sure, thank you.” She sat next to me and watched as I carefully removed the lid from the bottle and poured a glass, pausing to look at the signatures.

I watched her take a drink and made sure to sip from precisely where she sipped without her noticing. A slight breeze brought her perfume right up against me and into my chest.

“I’m sorry to stare but you bring back a lot of memories,” I said.

“That’s all right,” she said with almost a giggle. “I stared at your face for years.” She turned and traced her fingers along a name carved in the granite: John Giles. I thought of his dog and his dreams of opening a movie theater in Cleveland.

“I have to meet someone for dinner tonight. Can I offer you a ride back to your hotel?” she asked.

“Thanks, but that’s my car there,” I said. “Or at least I borrowed it from the concierge at my hotel. It’s just down the road. Did you know I’m too old to rent a car? A bad risk, it seems. Couldn’t convince them I could see my hands in front of my face, not that I can. Anyway, I’d like to sit here awhile.” I looked over at Jack Lawton’s name and thought of him lisping one of his dirty stories.

“Oh, I understand. But it must be rather sad, thinking about all those poor men.” She put her hand on my forearm. “I’ve always hated being somewhere where loved ones once were and now they are not and I still am. It’s haunting.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said, watching our arms together, hers white and smooth and mine gray and wrinkled.

She started to say something, stopped and then said, “May I paint you?”

“Me?”

“Yes, I’d come back tomorrow—if you’d meet me. Would you sit for me? Here, in front of the memorial?”

“You really want to paint an old codger like me?” I thought of Tometti and his Italian love songs and I wondered whether Teresa was still alive.

“I was going to come back anyway to paint. It’s something I always promised myself I’d do. And now with you here, well, to think that I could paint the same man my grandmother painted… ”

“Yes, of course.”

She stood up. “So it’s a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

“How’s noon?”

“Shouldn’t we catch the morning light?” I asked.

“Oh yes, you’re right. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. How’s seven a.m.?”

“That’s great. You mean it?”

“I’ll be here.”

“And you’ll tell me what happened to you and Julia? She was very tight-lipped about you and I’m dying to know more.”

“It’s not a long story.”

“Please, I’d love to hear it.”

“Then I shall tell it to you. I shall tell you the story.”

“Wonderful.” She studied my face for a moment as if wondering where she would begin, then shuffled her feet and said, “Well, good-bye, then.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” She took a few steps, then turned back toward me and waved and walked away with a remarkable lightness that made me smile. I watched as she faded into the dusk and I waved several times though I knew she could not see me.

As her car pulled down the gravel road and slid into the light gray mist I poured another half glass of Scotch and carefully placed the bottle on the ground. Then I pulled out my journal from my bag, opened it and placed it on my lap. After I took a sip of Scotch I took out my pen and started a letter to Julia, telling her that I had met her beautiful granddaughter and that she was going to paint my portrait in the morning. I also told her that I missed her terribly and that I was sorry I was too late and that I didn’t know how I was ever going to say good-bye.

When the rain started I closed the journal and tilted my head up and opened my mouth and let the drops fall on my tongue. Then I took another sip of the Scotch and raised my glass to the monument and squinted until I could read the names etched in stone out loud one by one from beginning to end, over and over again as loud as I could.

EPILOGUE

I had to paint him from memory. I put him just next to the memorial in the morning light, standing with his cane and that leather bag over his shoulder with the sun casting shadows in the names etched in stone behind him. I couldn’t finish it at first; maybe because it made me so sad, especially after I read his diary. Once I began to read it, I realized that it was the story he was going to tell me: the story of Patrick and Daniel and Julia.

The last thing he wrote was to Julia, telling her that he had just met her granddaughter here in France and how I looked just like her. What got to me were the last lines, where his beautiful handwriting suddenly comes apart. He wrote:

When did you know you’d never leave, Julia? When? Was it because you’d fallen too? Is that what you meant about the things that couldn’t be said, that you’d always love me, even if it meant being alone for the rest of your life? And that
was
you in the night, wasn’t it? You talking to me and listening and holding me. So maybe all those years we weren’t really alone. Maybe we had what other people will risk everything for, if only they get the chance: a place in our hearts we could always go, a place that was safe and hallowed and full of wonder; a place where love conquers loss.

I’ve come back, Julia. I’ve come home. The hardest part is being last. Such memories! The laughter. The screams. Your eyes. But it’s the right place for me. It’s where I belong.

And I’m ready now. After all these years I’m finally ready …

I sent his belongings to his children. We’ve written each other several times and they promise to visit soon. They also volunteered to say something to the people at Great Oaks, particularly Janet, Erica, Hanford, Robert, Sarah and Jeffrey.

One Saturday a few months after Patrick died, I was walking along a street in Paris and suddenly I realized what was wrong with my portrait. So I ran all the way back to my apartment and pulled it out and I worked on it for three days. When I finished I wept, not just because I was upset but because I knew I had gotten it right this time. Julia was there now, standing right next to Patrick so they were almost touching, with the morning dew just beginning to dry on the granite monument behind them and the light just coming through the trees.

Oh, and I put smiles on both of them, even though it’s a memorial. I just thought that if they were together, they’d be smiling. I don’t think Daniel would mind anymore. After all, I think of him as the sunlight.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My profound thanks to Ellen Levine and Leslie Schnur for their passionate and unwavering support, and to my friends and family for always believing.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Chatto & Windus for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Soldier’s Dream” by Wilfred Owen, from
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
,
C. Day Lewis (editor). Copyright Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission.

I would also like to mention a few of the many books that were helpful during my research. Excerpts on pages 13, 43, and 132 are taken from
Privates’ Manual
by Major Jas. A. Moss. The quote from Siegfried Sassoon on page 16 is taken from his book,
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston.
Excerpts from the diary of the German 57th Regiment on page 16, as well as quotes from Marie-Paul Rimbault on page 258 and an unnamed nurse on page 259, are taken from
Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I
by John Ellis. Quotes from Reginald Gill on page 33 and Harold Coulter on page 318 are taken from
The Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front
by Malcolm Brown. Excerpts from the marching song on page 39, as well as quotes from Joyce Lewis on page 113 and Maurice Griffin on page 245, are taken from
Over There: The Story of America’s First Great Overseas Crusade
by Frank Freidel. The quote from Albert Ettinger on page 84 is taken from
A Doughboy with the Fighting 69th
by Albert M. Ettinger and A. Churchill Ettinger.

The quotes from French Marshal Philippe Pétain on page 136, from French Marshal Joseph Joffre on page 146, and from Marc Boassan on page 198 are taken from
The Price of Glory
by Alistair Home. The quote from Isaac Rosenberg on page 153 and the Lafayette Escadrille song excerpted on pages 232 are taken from
Voices from the Great War
by Peter Vansittart. The quote from Wilfred Owen on page 177 is taken from
The First World War: A Complete History
by Martin Gilbert. The quote from C. Miles on page 204 is taken from Lyn Macdonald’s
1914-1918: Voices & Images of the Great War,
as is the quote from W. H. Shaw on page 256. The information on page 260 that more than three thousand British veterans of World War I were still confined to mental asylums on the eve of World War II is taken from Macdonald’s
The Roses of
No
Man’s Land.
The quote from Herbert Essame on page 222 is taken from
The Great War and Modern Memory
by Paul Fussell. And finally, the quote from Robert Graves on page 335 is taken from his book
Goodbye to All That.

Other important books include
Make the Kaiser Dance
by Henry Berry;
The War to End All Wars
by Edward M. Coffman;
The World War One Source Book
by Philip J. Haythornthwaite;
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque, and
The Doughboys
by Laurence Stallings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR