Lovely War(49)

    January 7, 1918

Dear Hazel,

In case my last letter got lost, I’ve been at for a week and a half. You must be in France now. Where did you end up?

The weather’s cold, but the sun is pleasant at midday and it warms things up considerably. Apparently I’m not half bad at target shooting.

I don’t know when my turn for leave will come around, but when it does, I could take a train to Paris and meet you there. Is Paris within your reach? Let’s meet there.

I wish I were the sort with words to express what the thought of you brings me.

Say you’ll come, do. I owe you something.

Yours,

James



Hazel burst into Colette’s room, waving the letters. She found her friend pinning up her dark curls with the help of a small travel mirror.

“A letter?” asked Colette. “From your Jacques?”

Hazel cast herself down upon Colette’s cot, nearly crumpling it. “Two letters. He’s gone to the Front.” Hazel scanned the lines again. “With the Fifth Army. But he’s not in the trenches yet. He’s still training in reserve. Colette,” she said breathlessly, “he wants me to go see him! In Paris!”

Colette pinned up another sleek curl. “How marvelous!”

“How can I go?” Hazel moaned. “I have to go! I must go!”

“I agree,” said Colette blandly. “Have you ever been to Paris?”

Hazel shook her head.

“Sacre bleu! Then, it is fixed. You will go.”

Hazel sat bolt upright. “I couldn’t possibly!” She gasped. “It’s unthinkable.”

Colette looked at her curiously. “Why not go?” She dabbed small drops of lotion around her face. “Because of Mrs. Davies? It can all be arranged. Volunteers take leave, now and again.”

Hazel shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m eighteen. I know no one in Paris. Where would I stay? I can’t just go there, all by myself. And especially not to spend time with a young man. What if—” She snatched the pillow from Colette’s cot and hid her face in it.

Colette sat next to Hazel on the bed. “Oh, you English.” She sighed. “More afraid of yourselves than of all the Kaiser’s armies combined.”

Hazel lowered the pillow. “How’s that?”

“Are you afraid,” asked Colette, “that your Jacques will take advantage of you?”

Hazel shook her head. “No. Not in the least.”

“Then what is there to be afraid of?”

Hazel sank her chin into her palm. What to say? What was it, exactly! “Myself!”

Colette’s eyebrows rose. “You are afraid you will take advantage of him?”

Hazel fell sideways on the bunk and shrieked into her pillow.

“Aha,” Colette declared. “I have hit the hammer on the nail.”

“I could no more take advantage of James than I could . . . Never mind.”

“Then what are you afraid of?” asked la belge. “You two will spend a riotous weekend in Paris, eating bread-and-butter sandwiches, drinking milk, and quoting Psalms to each other.”

Hazel puffed out her cheeks. Her petite passion wasn’t quite so tepid as that.

“We could go to a symphony,” she said.

“Ah.” Colette nodded very seriously. “Perhaps you would need a chaperone, after all.”

“Oh, stop!” Hazel biffed her friend with the pillow. “We never had a chaperone. I always snuck out to see him.”

Colette gasped. “Mademoiselle Windicott! You shock me!”

Hazel rolled over. “You see,” she said, “I’m not quite so innocent as you think.”

“I see,” said her friend, “that you are exactly as I think, and more so.” Colette watched Hazel turn lavender and wanted to squeeze her on the spot.

“If anyone found out, there’d be such a scandal,” Hazel said. “When I’m around James, I do the most outrageous things.”

Colette smiled. “Then I would like to meet this James. It is settled,” she said. “I’ll come, too. I’ll be your chaperone when you need one, and I will disappear when you don’t.”

Hazel took a deep breath. The idea was even more frightening now that it took on a whiff of actual possibility.

“But where will we stay?” said she. “How do we—”

“Never mind that,” ordered Colette. “My aunt Solange will be delighted to have us, and will provide all the respectability your English heart could wish for.”

With each word, this terrifying, tingling possibility grew more and more real. She’d have two, maybe three, days to spend with James. As much time as she’d ever had with him thus far. What might happen? With James Alderidge, anything was possible.

She remembered the end of his letter. I owe you something.

She seized her friend’s wrist.

“Colette,” she whispered. “What if I do something dreadful?”

Colette laughed. “I’ll hold the flowers. And the priest will be the one to read a Psalm.”

Hazel decided to turn the spotlight off herself for a spell.

“What about you, Colette?” Hazel said. “I think Aubrey likes you.”