When Sophia was persuaded to take some leave in the winter of 1916, she decided not to go home. She did not want to be paraded about as a brave nurse. She wanted to be on her own, as she never was at the hospital.
She went to Paris. She stayed in a little hotel near the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, ate tasty if sometimes slightly suspect meals, walked for hours along the grey banks of the Seine, among the intimate alleys of the Île Saint-Louis and the dark ruined warren of the Marais. As she walked, she told herself not to dwell on the amputated limbs and the gangrene. Here in Paris, a city that even in wartime whispered of a happy future, she could hope that one day, perhaps quite soon, another life might begin. She found a restaurant where they tolerated a woman on her own, particularly when she told them she was a nurse, and always gave her the same table. She was buoyed up by admiring looks from men in the street. But she was quite firm if any man, particularly a soldier, tried to talk to her. She’d seen enough soldiers.
After two or three days she felt lonely, and on impulse, finding herself in the rue de l’Université, rang the doorbell of the old duchess she’d stayed with before the war. To her surprise, the duchess was delighted to see her. She no longer had well-born young women assembled in her narrow bedrooms or round her frugal table. ‘Je suis seule, dans cet grand appartement, seule avec la cuisinière. La vie pourrait devenir bien triste.’ She produced a bottle of port, and pressed a glass, and then another, on Sophia. ‘Je vous inviterais à dîner, mais il y a si peu à manger, ça ne serait pas correcte.’
Sophia told her about the hospital and she listened keenly. She thought Sophia should inject the German patients and kill them. Sophia was astonished at the brutality the war had unleashed in apparently mild people. She recalled that there had never been any German girls staying with the duchess. ‘Je déteste les Boches,’ the old lady went on, and she talked about the Franco-Prussian War when she had been Sophia’s age, and how cruel the Germans had been, and how Parisians had suffered. ‘I never thought we would see all these privations again. Until recently, our life was so comfortable. Anyway, one thing it shows is that being a duchess is not much help when life is difficult.’ This seemed to amuse her. ‘I am also a marchioness, you know, but being a marchioness is not worth a sou these days, any more than being a duchess.’ Getting a little tipsy, she offered her guest yet another glass. It was remarkably cold in her apartment, even in the room she inhabited (there was a lumpy divan in the corner, which was no doubt her bed). Sophia accepted the port.
She gave Sophia some advice: while in Paris, she should buy some clothes. ‘Your clothes are so clearly English, my dear, and therefore naïve, and also a little shabby, which is a pity. I know English people like shabby clothes, but in Paris, as I surely told you when you were my guest, clothes are not a duty but one of life’s essential pleasures. Of course, English tweeds are supportable, but some of the clothes my English girls arrived in were risible. Go to Madame Lanvin, I am told by my friends she is very clever, she has things for young women. They say she believes that in these times to maintain faith in such things as fine clothes is to maintain faith in civilisation. Buy as many clothes there as you can afford – you will not regret it. Mention my name, even these days it may be useful.’
Smiling at the thought of Sister Marsden’s reaction if she returned to the hospital in the latest Paris fashions, Sophia set off to Madame Lanvin. She was nervous at first but the nervousness did not last. The rooms on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré were modest, welcoming, with striped wallpaper and rows of pictures, and huge cheval mirrors. Within five minutes the vendeuse, nodding at the name of the duchesse, had discreetly looked Sophia up and down, ascertained her father was a judge, grasped what she was doing in France. Would she be coming back to Paris? Would she be going soon to London? Would there be friends, and parties? She looked at Sophia’s crude short haircut, and tutted, and said, ‘Such beautiful hair, and they cut it like that – well, I suppose nurses are not supposed to set their patients on fire.’
She disappeared for a moment, and re-emerged with various things in enticing wrappings. They looked at heavenly little hats, severe and yet gay. Sophia had never seen such hats. She eventually lined up six on the counter. She wanted to buy them all, but the vendeuse shook her head and only let her take one, and after a good deal of discussion, two. Sophia tried on a delicious green silk dress with a panniered skirt. A robe de style, the vendeuse said it was called, it was a favourite design of Madame Lanvin’s. The vendeuse pushed Sophia’s hair up on her head, took her gently by the arm, moved her in front of a mirror. Sophia gasped, almost cried. The vendeuse smiled and said, ‘Ça fait du bien, une jolie robe.’ Sophia felt she was thawing into a human being. It was delightful chez Lanvin, the vendeuse was so kind. She said that Madame Lanvin had started by devising clothes for her own daughter, she cherished the spirit of youth.
In the end Sophia selected a day dress and a little suit, a velvet beret and a pair of gloves. She chose a short evening dress made of blue-green silk chiffon with a tulle and lace tunic and a rose-coloured sash, adorned with roses and leaves on the tunic and around the neck. Then she saw another, longer dress, also chiffon; she hummed and hawed, it was so beautiful to look at and to feel, she stroked it longingly. But the vendeuse said, ‘Mademoiselle, you do not need another evening dress, one is quite enough. There will be other occasions. Once people have bought from Madame Lanvin, they return.’
Some of the things would be ready for her in three days as a special favour since she was nursing the poor young men; some would be sent on. When she was ready to leave, she felt much more attractive than Nurse Benson had been. The vendeuse asked for her address, and smiled when Sophia mentioned the hospital.
‘No, no, we will write to your father.’
‘But. . .’
‘No, no, much better to write direct to Papa.’
Then she gave Sophia a large envelope. ‘For you, a present from the house. For your brave work, for France and England.’
‘Oh,’ cried Sophia, ‘may I open it now?’
It was a green silk scarf, like the scarf Mark had given her but infinitely more elegant. She put it round her neck. The vendeuse shook her head, untied the scarf, rearranged it, and nodded.
‘Vous êtes seule à Paris?’ she asked. ‘Ce n’est pas très gai, pour une jeune fille, d’être toute seule.’
‘Ça ne dure qu’une petite semaine,’ said Sophia. ‘Je suis tout à fait contente.’ Kissing the vendeuse on each cheek – she looked surprised but not displeased – Sophia ran out of the shop.
When she was in the restaurant consuming a piece of steak – horsemeat, she was sure – and some red wine, she asked herself whether it was frivolous at such a time to spend money on beautiful clothes. Her older colleagues would certainly think so, but then they resisted any deviation from the line of duty. She said to herself, our youth has been stolen, and if we want to snatch some of youth’s pleasures, that is our right.
She ordered another little carafe. It was amusing to think how shocked her mother would be at her drinking wine on her own, it was not what an Evelyn Gardens girl should do. But in France wine was an everyday feature of life. In any case, she doubted the values of Evelyn Gardens.
She was afraid of becoming anaesthetised to grief. A few weeks earlier Laura’s fiancé had been killed. Laura had refused to wear mourning: she’d announced that death was the final statement of the absurd. Two days later she had gone to a party, flirted wildly and got drunk. ‘I meant to get drunk,’ she’d written to Sophia. ‘There’s nothing to value and hope for any more except pleasure, there’s no more sadness left in me. Or rather, to tell you the truth, darling, I’m so depressed I can hardly bear to live, only I must.’
Thinking about Laura made Sophia anxious, so she stayed in the restaurant and drank some more wine. As she left, she was smiled at again. This man looked charming. And not too young, she’d seen too many destroyed young men, she liked the idea of a man who could be relied on. This one looked intently, admiringly, at her, perhaps because her hair was still up as the vendeuse had arranged it, or it might be the scarf. Her waiter had been particularly attentive at lunch, she thought, though he’d seemed anxious when she ordered her third carafe. She let her eyes rest on this stranger for a moment, but a moment only: after all, she was a well-brought-up girl, she was a VAD, she was English, her father was a judge, weren’t these good reasons not to return a Frenchman’s smile? But she couldn’t help thinking how attractive a Frenchman could be – charming, manly and yet sensual. In the hospital she never let herself think about men being attractive, but here. . .
A moment after she’d passed him, she did something she’d never done before, and glanced back. He was standing looking in her direction, quite intent, it made him even more attractive. She wavered, almost turned back, then in her head rang admonitory tones, and she hurried down the street. When she reached the corner she thought that she’d made a mistake, but he had gone. She was furious with herself, then and for a long time after.