A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith

Author:April Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307958853
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2014-01-14T08:00:00+00:00

VERDUN

The road out of Paris followed the river, close to the tree-lined quays where early morning strollers were walking dogs not much bigger than their purses. The Seine was the color of cold green marble, as sluggish as the barges that moved so slowly they barely broke the surface. Hammond watched with mounting anxiety until they reached their first landmark, the Vélodrome de Vincennes, where the cycling track for the 1924 Summer Olympics had been built. He checked his watch.

“Right on time,” he told Lily, who was beside him, up front near the driver. Party A took up two more rows, and beyond that it was a full house, with every seat taken by other pilgrims wearing their summer dresses and hats, chattering away beneath an invisible cloud of face powder.

“At this rate, including a rest stop at Montmirail and lunch, we should get to Verdun exactly on time. We’d better, or General Perkins will bust my buns. He always meets the buses himself.” He sighed. “This is like transporting a division.”

“Good practice,” Lily murmured. She was deeply into her paperwork, filling out the health forms from yesterday.

“Right, if you had to move an army to India.”

After the incident at Notre-Dame, formality between them had given way to comradely accord, and they rested their feet together on Hammond’s banjo case, which lay on the floor of the bus, writing in the leather folders open on their laps, like two industrious college students.

“What are you putting down about the departure this morning?” he asked, peering at her notes.

Lily read out loud: “ ‘The pilgrims were cooperative and alert. Mrs. Seibert requested an anti-nausea tablet for the bus. Then Mrs. Russell wanted one also.’ ”

“Did you give it to them?”

“No, I said once we were on the bus, we’d see how they felt.”

“Be sure to put that in the report.”

“Why?”

“So nobody thinks you weren’t on the ball.”

Lily looked down at the page, still puzzled. “Why would they think that?”

“In case Mrs. S and Mrs. R heave all over Mrs. Q and you get blamed for not giving them the pills.”

“Oh, Thomas—” Lily began in protest.

“You have to protect your ass, excuse my French. It’s the name of the game in the army. Anyway, nobody’s going to get sick. The road is straight as an arrow.”

He stared out the window. The bus rolled under bridges and through an industrial sector until the houses thinned away and they were miles from Paris, traveling due east. They passed through acres of combed green flatland, then another stone church identical to the last, presiding over the same-looking clusters of red-roofed houses.

“Hard to believe it,” he mused. “What my father went through. What this must have looked like after the Battle of Verdun. I mean, literally, it was a bloodbath, hundreds of thousands of French casualties. God knows what he saw, whatever was left after the trench rats had their fill, it must have been an open graveyard—like Halloween for real—do you know, after a while the

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