FIFTY-TWO

BEATRICE

Paris

May 1918

In returning to Paris, my first priority was to meet the crisis of a new wave of child refugees. I helped make a refuge of the old dilapidated seminary complex of the Church of Saint-Sulpice, where Adrienne Lafayette had once been a parishioner. And I felt certain she’d approve, for it was there, with Emily and Clara, that we fed more than two thousand refugees, more than a quarter of them children—mostly orphans—in need of food, clothing, and medical treatment at our makeshift hospital ward.

We couldn’t send them all to Chavaniac, but we could save some, and it meant all hands on deck. Thus, I spent my mornings in a battle with lice, stripping children of louse-ridden clothes and shearing them like lambs. I spent my afternoons bathing ragamuffins until the tub water turned black. In the evenings I spooned broth into the mouths of children too weak to do it themselves.

All of this should have exhausted me, but I felt gloriously awake, and I resolved to confront Willie.

“I fear for you to go alone to see him,” said Emily. “I had Amaury pay Mr. Chanler a visit when you were gone. He found your husband in an agitated state, whistling, snapping his fingers, imagining conspiracies everywhere . . .”

“Yes, well, Willie does have a mind for international intrigue,” I admitted. On the other hand, morphine and alcohol also caused irrational whirling in his tempestuous brain. “But I’m not in the least concerned.”

I’d survived bombs; I could certainly survive Willie, and I meant to. So I went to his house and found him enthroned upon an armchair, surrounded by a clutter of books, letters, and various scribblings in piles on the floor. He didn’t seem drunk, but the day was young. No, the most alarming thing was that between portraits of prizefighters and racehorses, someone had nailed Willie’s rejected prosthetics to the wall of his home.

Had he decorated his home with plaster feet and aluminum peg legs to remind himself of his resilience, or to set a foreboding aesthetic for visitors? Whatever the purpose, the overall impression was that of an imbalanced mind. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” Willie asked.

I cleared a stack of newspapers from the only available chair. “Who could pass up the opportunity to enjoy such a welcoming atmosphere?”

Willie smirked. “I meant you couldn’t stay away from the war. By my count, it’s your seventh war-crossing, and I can’t think of any relief worker, man or woman, who has taken the risk as many times as you.”

Now was plainly not the time to tell him I’d nearly been torpedoed in a bathtub! Instead, in a vain attempt to soothe myself, I tried to conjure up images of Max building bookshelves in a little white house and myself in an apron, learning to make cassoulet. “This will be my last great adventure—a relief to your mind, I’m sure.”

“Your last great adventure?” He lit up a cigar. “I don’t believe that for a minute. You won’t give it up now that you’ve become a real player. Truthfully, my lameness has made me pretty useless, and you’re the only one in this family keeping up its end in the war. I’m rather proud of you.”

Willie was proud of me? I didn’t think I still cared what he thought, so I was shocked to find myself moved. “Why, I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Then your memory is failing you.” He snapped open his newspaper. “How are the boys?”

“Billy has been learning to play the bugle,” I reported. “And Ashley dreams of aviation . . . They miss you—it really would delight them if you’d write more often. And when you do, I think it’d help if you could sign your letters as Daddy and not Your Father, William Astor Chanler.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said. “How’s Billy’s speech?”

“Much better. He’s out of short pants, growing like a weed.”

“Good. Perhaps he can wear some of my old clothes.”

I crossed my legs, settling in for a longer discussion. “Are you hurting for money?”

“Everyone is hurting for money. The idiot ranters think the war was fought to line industrialists’ pockets, but it’s impossible to calculate the damage it’s done to wealth. Trade is disrupted. Factories bombed. Capital gone up in smoke. A whole generation of workers wiped out.”

He knew more about economics than I did, but I’d learned a great deal recently. “I suppose labor will have the upper hand after the war.”

“Who told you that? The communist agitators on your labor mission?”

“They’re socialists,” I protested. “And patriots.”

“Rabble-rousers,” he shot back.

“Well, I got on with them like a breeze. Strange, but true. I’m sorry you couldn’t be a spectator—you’d have had much to tickle your sense of humor!”

It was oddly comforting to argue with him again, until he burst forth with, “They’re all conspiring. Labor leaders. Bolsheviks. Catholics. Especially Jews—”

“You sound mad as a hatter,” I interrupted, having no patience for this. “You’re just looking for someone to blame for the state of the world!”

“Someone is to blame, aren’t they?”

I didn’t have any intention of getting drawn into a quarrel about his increasingly prejudiced thinking. Especially not when I’d come with another purpose altogether. There would never be an easy time to broach it, so I took a deep breath and blurted, “I’m leaving for Chavaniac at the end of the week, but before I go, I’d like to talk to you about Captain Furlaud . . .”

Willie peered over the top of the newspaper. “Tiring of him yet?”

I decided to be patient. Gentle, even. “He’s quite devoted to me and the boys. It isn’t some tawdry—”

“Oh, spare me. You’re not going to give up everything for a man like that.”

“I don’t want to argue, Willie. You and I have tried to make each other happy, but we haven’t managed it. I know you’re capable of great generosity of spirit, so let’s not wreck each other.”

Somewhere in the house, the telephone was ringing, but Willie’s attention was entirely on me. “You’re wrestling with your conscience, my dear,” he said, leaning forward. “If you knew the right thing to do, you’d do it. When the right thing isn’t obvious, you do any damned thing you please and make no apologies. Yet you didn’t file for a divorce when you were in New York, did you?”

“I didn’t wish to be cruel.”

He puffed his cigar thoughtfully. “To me or to your banker? Between me, him, and the war, your life is a three-ring circus, and maybe you like it that way. You’re not going to settle down and become someone else’s little missus.”

My temper flared. “Willie—”

A knock interrupted. It was my husband’s manservant. “Sir, there’s a call for you from Mr. Chapman.”

“Not now,” Willie barked.

“They think they’ve found your nephew, sir.”

A thick silence descended, every other thought driven away. I knew Victor was dead; still, I let myself imagine. Perhaps there’d been some manner of confusion. Perhaps my nephew had been a prisoner of war all this time. Perhaps he’d—

“I’ll take the call,” Willie said, and I had to bring him the phone. After a brief conversation, clipped and flat, I knew my imaginations were cruel hopes. Hanging up the receiver, Willie explained, “The Chapmans want me to identify the corpse. A pilot’s body in a shallow grave somewhere not far from Verdun. They’ve got him in a pine box now and shipped him behind the fighting lines. Some of Victor’s old comrades in the Lafayette Escadrille—the few still alive—went to take a look, but the body is so badly decomposed they can’t be sure it’s him.”

Naturally, Victor’s parents wanted someone who knew him longer to look upon the remains. They wanted Willie to do it, and I knew he would, though it would put his heart to torture. It was a heavy responsibility, and I found myself asking, “Do you want me to go with you?”

Willie dropped his gaze. “You needn’t. It’s an ugly business.”

I wasn’t going to make him beg. Going didn’t change anything, after all. It was an act of simple humanity. And I too needed to know the truth about what happened to my nephew.

Willie remained sober during the long trip, which made him more cross than usual, of course, but I didn’t mind so very much. When it was time for American soldiers to pry open the pine coffin, he asked me to wait outside. “Bea, I can’t imagine I’ll ever be able to wipe what I see from my memory after today, and I want one of us to remember the face of that boy as it actually was.”

I wanted to argue, but in the end, I waited outside, holding a wreath of flowers I’d hoped to lay on the coffin. Then I waited some more. Never good at waiting, even with a book, I wondered if I ought to write a letter to Max explaining what I was doing here with my husband, but decided against it.

On crutches, Willie returned to the car, glassy-eyed and shaken. “It doesn’t look like Victor, but he had letters in his pocket he might’ve been delivering to a friend.”

“He’s been a long time in the ground,” I said gently. “He’s not likely to look like himself.”

Willie rubbed the back of his neck. “You remember his smile, those perfect teeth . . . well, this poor fellow had fillings.”

I recoiled to think how close Willie must have come to the corpse to discover fillings. Then I inhaled sharply, remembering something. “When I saw him at Amiens he mentioned having found some holes in his teeth. Said he had them looked at by a Romanian comrade-in-arms who studied dentistry . . .”

“Ah, well, then maybe.” Willie dropped his face into his hands. “What am I going to say to the Chapmans?”

There wasn’t any right answer. There wasn’t any wrong one either. Even if those were Victor’s bones, he wasn’t in that pine box. He was somewhere else now. The only people for whom it mattered were still alive. “What does your instinct say?”

Willie looked up and stared at me. “It’s not him.”

“Then it’s not Victor.”

Willie’s hard gaze melted into a pool of gratitude for my faith in his judgment. He blew out a breath. Then another. “I’m sorry, Beatrice.”

Had Willie just apologized for something? I was so shocked it took me a moment to recover. I wanted to ask what he was sorry about, but he wet his lips and stared straight ahead. “I’ve made you late for your visit to Chavaniac . . .”

“I’m the president; they have to wait for me.”

He put his hand on my knee. “Your work there seems to have made you happy. Happier anyway.”

“I owe you for that and much more.”

“Less than you suppose,” he said. “As it happens, there’s nothing I’ve ever given you that you haven’t transformed. I buy a house, you make it a home. I buy a hotel, and you make it the showpiece of New York. I give you a chateau, and now it’s an international charity with an impressive budget.”

My heart swelled, feeling this was very fine praise. “You’ve always known I was a good investment.”

“I’ve always known you were more than that.”

I love thee against my will, I thought. Our marriage was dead, but love survived. Unfortunately, it didn’t change that we could never live together again. And it didn’t change that our marriage was broken beyond repair. He must have known it, because his shoulders rounded in defeat. “I regret . . . well, I try never to regret, but I won’t fight you about the banker if that’s what you really want.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, and kissed his cheek.

We were silent a long time after, just sitting together reflecting on all that had passed. Then he drew me into a companionable embrace. “We had a good run, didn’t we?”

And my smile was bittersweet. “That we did.”