Lovely War(44)

Hazel chewed on her lip. “It subverts it,” she said slowly. “It makes the song a rebellion.”

“A rebellion,” Aubrey said. “I like that, Lady Hazel de la Windicott.”

Colette handed Aubrey an old French goodbye song. He played it slowly, darkly. Colette immediately understood. She sang, knowing exactly what color to add to give it the blues.

“Where, Miss Fournier . . .” Aubrey began.

“Colette, please,” said she.

First-name basis! “Where, Colette, does that anger come from?”

Colette felt suddenly exposed. “Anger?”

Aubrey nodded. “To look at you, you’re this sophisticated lady without a care in the world. But when you sing, whew!”

Whew, what? Colette feared she was blushing. That hadn’t happened in a long time.

“There’s a whole lotta something bottled up in there. Emotion. Intensity. Anger’s not quite the word, but it’s the closest I can find.”

Colette glanced down into her lap. “Maybe it’s just that I sing loud,” she said. “My choir director used to scold me for that.”

“Anybody’d be nuts to scold you for the way you sing,” Aubrey said. “I want to take a voice like that on the road with me and make it famous around the world.”

Colette watched Aubrey’s face. Was he just flattering her? His dark eyes met her gaze unapologetically.

Mon Dieu, was she staring at him? She was staring at him. Quickly, she looked away. She should leave. Now.

Hazel, watching them, wished she could tiptoe away silently without them noticing.

Aubrey was just playing the introduction to a new song when Hazel snapped her fingers. She’d heard something. An opening door. From one of the bedrooms near the front door.

Aubrey’s hands froze over the keyboard.

“Down,” hissed Colette. She pushed Aubrey’s head toward the ivories, out of sight of anyone below the stage. She stood quickly, gesturing for Hazel to stand also.

“What’s going on here?”

Mrs. Davies appeared in a robe and a frilly cap perched over the curlers in her gray hair.

Hazel rose, her heart pounding and her face flushing. She was the worst liar in the world.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Davies,” Colette said calmly. “We didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“We were practicing,” Hazel said. Was the tremor in her voice as obvious as it felt?

Aubrey, bent behind the wooden piano cabinet, tried not to breathe. He was free to ogle Colette from the shoulders down just at that moment, and he took advantage of it.

If the girls were caught, they’d be dismissed in disgrace from the YMCA. They likely wouldn’t be allowed to work for a relief organization again. But if Aubrey were caught? Military disobedience had terrible consequences. Sometimes fatal, to make an example of the guilty.

The enormity of their crimes became agonizingly real.

“There’s no call for you to practice when decent people are asleep,” said Mrs. Davies. “Off to bed with you, now.”

“We will go, right away,” Colette said.

Mrs. Davies scowled, as if to say, she wasn’t one to be put off by such flimflammery.

“Well?” the secretary demanded. “I’m waiting.”

“Oh,” Colette said smoothly, “you wish to see us off to bed before you go yourself.” As though this was entirely reasonable, and not in the least insulting to two young women old enough to be away from home on their own. Calmly, slowly, even leisurely, she collected and straightened her music. Hazel attempted to do the same with shaking hands.

Colette left the stage as if without a care in the world, and Hazel followed after her.

“Bonsoir, Mrs. Davies,” said Colette. “See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mrs. Davies,” Hazel mumbled, fearing the words might accidentally tumble out as, “Good night, Mrs. Davies, we are hiding a soldier behind the piano.”

She eased her bedroom door shut, then waited, listening for an eternity for any sound.

Colette prepared herself for bed and lay down to read. The night grew quiet. Aubrey must’ve snuck out, and from the seesawing sounds coming through the partition, Mrs. Davies had fallen asleep too.

The book couldn’t hold her attention, so she switched off the light and began her nighttime ritual of visiting her dead. She’d discovered a trick, years back: if she thought of her parents, her brother, her cousin, her uncles, every night, if she summoned their faces and thought of them, one by one, she was less likely to dream, and see blood—less likely to dream, and drown in anguish.

But for the first time in ages, her thoughts wouldn’t stay trained on those dear faces. Try as she would, her thoughts kept drifting back to Aubrey Edwards.

She wasn’t quite sure what had happened that night. She hadn’t seen this storm brewing on the horizon. The King of Ragtime was a hurricane, and somehow she’d forgotten to close one of her windows.

She’d have to be more careful, next time.





APOLLO


     Half an Hour—January 15, 1918





HALF AN HOUR’S a long time to sit behind a piano in the dark and wait for some old biddy to go to sleep. Aubrey stayed awake by dreaming of Colette. There she lay, in her bed, fifteen feet away.