A Legend of the Great War

'I doubt if they'd stay around, but you never know. I'd better see you somewhere safe.'

'My 'ouse, yes, thank you. It is near.'

She led Andrew through two deserted streets, until they came to an area of much larger houses. Andrew sensed when they turned into the last street, and as they did so, the woman said something he did not understand:

'I owe you so much, monsieur. What they do, them, I could feel it like another woman, you know.'

'Like anybody, I suppose.'

'There are people 'oo would not believe it.'

The house, as well as her remarks, puzzled and surprised Andrew. It was very large, with enough electric lighting to suggest some kind of party, although it was a Sunday evening, and all was quiet. The gardens, with their topiary hedges, were far better kept than he was used to seeing in wartime, and there were recently-built conservatories, cast-iron he thought, at each end of the building. The whole thing suggested money, enough to intimidate him a little. But it was not in the fashionable part of town, and most of the houses around it were relatively run-down.

'You are safe now.Au revoir, madame.'

'Oh, but no! Come inside for a moment, monsieur.'

Uncertain of himself, Andrew accompanied her, to be met by what he took for a host of servants. But that was odd, too. There were only a couple each of housemaids and footmen in servants' livery, and at least half a dozen agitated women and girls, in expensive-looking dresses which seemed just a shade overdone for a casual evening. They acted like family, but were not sufficiently alike to be relatives. Indeed, one was dark-skinned, North African Andrew guessed, although her hair was more brown than black. All of them were exceptionally good-looking.

Two very large, hard-faced young men in dark suits sidled into view, and seemed to grow quite upset as they heard the lady's tale. One of them appeared to remonstrate with her in some way, and yet they bore themselves like employees. A cane rapped against a table leg with a strangely dull sound, as if it was heavier than wood, and Andrew, through a better class of tailoring than the army's, thought he could make out the shape of a hidden pistol. Who could this lady be, that she should need bodyguards? Or if she needed them, why should she have been alone on a dark winter's night?

She had disappeared for the moment, and Andrew was shepherded into the salon, where he was given some kind of aperitif which banished the chill. He was surrounded by cooing females who were clearly moved by his assistance to their mistress, but whose chattering French he found hard to understand. A housemaid brandished a clothes-brush, clearly waiting for the mud on his uniform to dry, but they would have none of his suggestions that he should remain standing, or something be placed on the armchair before he sat down.

'Is madame lying down?' he asked. 'Really she should, you know.'

For some reason they all giggled.

'I must leave soon. Will you give my thanks to madame.'

'Mademoiselle,' said someone, and they all giggled again.

Then she was in the room, more transformed than he would have thought possible. She was wearing a green dress trimmed with lace, just a little more restrained and higher at the neck than the others', and a necklace and earrings with some kind of matching stones. Her hair was up, and no trace remained of an ordeal that had happened, Andrew realised, not half an hour before. She made a gesture, and the crowd dispersed.

'I must thank you, monsieur,' she said, with a radiant smile. 'I 'ope you can stay to dinner.'

Now here was an odd thing. With what he already knew, why in the world should there be a trace of nervousness in her voice, which he sensed was not often nervous? Suddenly he very much wanted to stay.

'Well, I need to be back… No, I don't need to be back.'

'C'est bien! It will be very quiet here. We are closed tonight.'

'Closed? Do you have a business here?'

He wondered what it could be, for the girls certainly did not look like seamstresses, and there was too much of an air of luxury for any business he could think of.

'Oh monsieur, do you not know? This is an 'ouse.'

Andrew was mystified for a moment, for he knew a house when he saw one, and her words made no sense. The roof and the walls were a giveaway. He tried to think of some French idiom that might explain her words, and then he thought of the house in the Rue Voltaire, near Saint-Luc l'Église. He was in a rather grand version of the local brothel, and the lady…

'Oh. I see.'

'You must 'urry somewhere, per'aps? I understand very well.'

Too well, Andrew thought, and faltered. He felt this was altogether too complicated for him, and he might have refused if it could only have made her think he was shy, childish, slow on the uptake or impossibly gauche. But it was typical of the boy, who had detected added strain in her voice, that he could not risk having her think he despised her. Ah well, it could be no worse than the Salient, that was for sure.

'Well, I suppose… '

'C'est dimanche, bien entendu.' She saw Andrew's main fear, and her accent grew thicker. 'We are closed, and no… no people will come here. You 'ave be'aved like my true friend this night, and it is late and cold, and… and late to go open tins, no?'

'And it wouldn't inconvenience you?'

'Can you believe we are so popular 'ere, and yet we don' 'ave no superfluity of true friends?'

'Well, maybe…' Andrew believed her, and knew a surge of sympathy, for true friends were what he, surely the most natural of outcasts, had never lacked since he enlisted.

She led Andrew through to a little sitting-room, most exquisitely furnished and with a table ready laid. Andrew wondered who had been there before, and banished the thought.

'You go in there, and take off your uniform. We clean. You can wash, and put on a robe.'

The place was a tiny dressing-room, with another door which opened into some other room. In an alcove was a shower-bath, which Andrew had never even heard of, but which he found marvellously refreshing when he worked out the principle. Afterwards he donned a brocaded dressing-gown, and left his uniform on the table.

'Oh wonderful!' the lady exclaimed as he emerged. 'You look different. Very 'andsome, I think.'

'No, surely not?'

'Oh yes, surely yes. 'Andsome. Surely, since your skirt is so dark, you must be ofle Waterloo Black Watch? But it is much shorter in the old paintings.'

'It should come exactly to the top of the kneecap. And we don't call it a skirt.'

'I'm sorry. I don't think the French painter could have seen them. You will take an aperitif?'

They sat on a sofa, and a footman brought some sweet wine which Andrew liked very much. They chatted inconsequentially for a while, and then the footman brought a lightconsommé, so they moved to the table, which was just big enough for two. They exchanged names, and hers is a thing which no questioning would ever draw from Andrew. There was something indescribably delightful about the way she pronounced his, and he had never experienced, with any woman, such an impression of interest in what he thought and felt. A niggling little worm in his brain whispered that that was no doubt a professional skill. But why should she waste it on the likes of him, when she must have rated his finances even lower than they were? She seemed to be picking his brains, moreover, on everything to do with his life, and with his war. Andrew, who had an ear, would forever fall better into the rhythm of French, after that conversation, though it was mostly in English.

'But I'm talking too much about myself,' he said at last. 'Would you like to tell me about you?'

'About 'ow I come to this life, you mean?' she said, with a tilted little smile, and she made that strange French expulsion of air that Andrew, in others, had never much liked. People render it as 'Pouf!', but it has less to do with the voicebox than that. 'That is what they all ask.'

'Only if you it think matters.'

'Andrew, it matters to me. My parents, to escape the mines, they leave Lens and go to Armentières, where I was born poor – poorer than you maybe. Do you know Armentières?'

'It depends what you mean by know. I've never been there, but I know it's close to the lines.'

'Three kilometres. When I was very young my father disappear, and my mother come to Paris. Did you ever see anything like this?'

Her hands were exquisitely cared for, but where she pointed, on the inside of the top joint of her right index finger, the fingerprint was gone, and the pad might have been slightly swollen. It was the remains of an almost vanished callous.

'From some kind of work, perhaps? It isn't at all ugly'

'It is from a great ugliness, just the same. I became a seamstress when I was nine, and those years… ' She opened a small crocheted case with an almost furtive glance around the room, and showed him a pair of gold spectacles. 'You see? And inhaute couture, les salauds, in work only tiny fingers can do. Andrew, such things should not be. At fourteen there was old Monsieur Jarliet, who was a… a friend of my mother's. It made my mother angry, for an hour or two, but what could she do? At sixteen I follow my mother onto the streets – you know, in places the lowest, Belleville at first. You know what is Belleville?'

'No. A beautiful town, the name means.'

'Beautiful?' The Gallic expulsion of air was quite violent, like a sort of rasping snort. 'Oh Andrew, you could not know, but it is thebanlieue industriale de Paris, un mauvais quartier. You think being on the streets don' get worse? There are the streets of Belleville, where thep'tit bourgeois come for something dirty. At seventeen I identify my mother's body after a week in the river, on that slab in the morgue, with water dripping from a little brass tap, and I see the marks and… you know, the traces, that I can't make policemen see… It is strange I was not killed, like I think she was, or got diseases. But I know the secret, the thing which not one street girl in a thousand knows. I 'ated my life, but I didn' let myself 'ate the person who was nearest, for it. Can you believe that in those years, despite all difficulty, I never go 'alf a day without washing, or wear dirty clothes? When you start dirtiness, you never stop.'

'Well yes, I understand – '

'Oh no, Andrew, I am sorry!' Her hand shot up, in front of her mouth. 'A soldier becomes dirty from the things 'e is made to do…'

'I know what you mean. Go on.'

'I know it is my job and my fortune always to make men 'appy, the most I can, not the least I 'ave to… And girls who make men happy, they don' 'ave so much trouble. Andrew, don' you try anyexperiences about street girls.'

'I wasn't planning to… I mean…'

'You don' insult me with taking my advice, Andrew. Because I knew these things, and I was clean, and because I was lucky with structure of the bones, when I was seventeen I got a job in amaison tolérée, in Paris. A very grand place, for thebeau monde, do you understand? Can you understand, for a littlegamine like me, it was like a lifebelt when one is drowning? Madame Sophie, she liked me, and she taught me a million things. Ah, she had vision, Madame Sophie, for she saw what I could be. Do you think all this so terrible, Andrew?'

'I think the way you came to it was terrible. I've spent the last few months killing people, of whom I know nothing but where their conscription papers came from, and I was thinking about doing that for a living, afterwards. I can't see that you've done anything so bad.'

'Oh, tu sais répondre, toi! You don' 'ave to go to any 'ouse, you, if you talk so well to girls. Then when I was nineteenMonsieur le Vicomte made an arrangement with Madame Sophie, and kept me in 'is… in 'is residence, at Auteuil – it is no secret, forle tout Paris knows these things – and I lived like a princess for seven years. Oh, the prince is lucky who 'as such a princess, and the princess who 'as such a prince! Only I don' wearhaute couture, never at all.'

'Oh? I thought you did.'

Again came the Gallic noise, half-laughing this time.

'Then 'e married Mademoiselle de Lavelle, such a lovely girl. We both knew it must 'appen someday. It was the family. Twenty years younger than him,les salauds! But I am sure 'e was never unkind.'

'So he abandoned you?'

'Andrew, you read too many stories!Les nouveaux riches, they will abandon, but did you never hear thatnoblesse oblige? He say "Where you like to live?", and that Paris is not good for me, which I know better than 'e does. I can't think of anywhere, so of course I say "Armentières", and 'e buy the house in Armentières for me, better than this, and give me money to live well. I choose my town quickly, jus' like that, but truly I find I chose a wonderful place. So I open the best house north of Paris, and really, I don' think south can be better. Would you believe that people, people with names, come from Paris for our weekend parties in Armentières? And do you know where I find my girls?'

'Er, no, I never really wondered…'

'In Belleville, or places very similar. Ha, you don't think it, to look?'

'I wouldn't have thought of it of you. Or you of me, perhaps.'

'Just so. But they are strays, orphans,apaches, people marked for death. But I teach them to make beautiful something which could be ugly, to be nobody's fool, and yet to be warm, valued people after they leave me. Do themoralistes do so much? Then comes the war. Then the world abandonM. le Vicomte, my true friend and the friend of the least among the French. For 'e was killed at Maubeuge, and Andrew, I weep for 'im, and also for Armentières. I don' even know if my house is standing.'

Andrew knew, better that her, what it meant to be three kilometres from the lines.

The servants brought in the main course, which was delicious little peppered tournedos with diced and fried potatoes, which in some way were very different from thepommes de terre frites he knew so well. There was a burgundy, which even Andrew could tell was very good, with the beef, and a sweet yet clean-tasting Montbazillac, of which Andrew prayed he would remember the name, with theprofiteroles and cream. She led him back to the sofa, and in some mysterious fashion the lighting dimmed.

The talk became inconsequential for a time, but at length she drew out the stories he had only hinted at, and thought he never would tell to anyone, of how much had been vacant and barren in his Glasgow childhood, and about the eternal, numbing fear and horror of war. He could not well deny what the dull little ribbon of the Victoria Cross on his chest was, and with just a word here and there, she drew forth more of its importance than Andrew thought he told her, and a far more real story of the storming of the Taupière than any other civilian had heard. As he came to an end, on top of that filthy, sliding slagheap, with the distant, antlike figures clustering around the dying General Von Zechlin in his sunlight-gilded puddle on the road to her childhood home of Lens, it shocked him to realise that he had done more talking than ever before in his life, and he thought it too much. But Mademoiselle, whom men must have queued up to impress, seemed spellbound.

'Oh, Andrew, you 'ave done this for France, and… and for Armentières.'

'Well, I don't believe I thought about France, the day we enlisted. But I've seen what bringing war to a country means, and nobody has done that to the Germans.'

'You know, Andrew, we French are not a grateful people. Notcollectivement, you understand, when the nephews and grandchildren of those who fought will talk of obligation in future years, mostly for politics. But those who fought and shed their blood for France will never be forgotten.'

'I've hardly bled at all, to speak of.'

'Thank God. You make it sound, Andrew, like this war 'as been good for you.'

'Up to now, in a way, it has. I feel a stronger person than I ever thought I could be. But it could get a lot worse in a minute, any minute of any day, and I've seen a lot of good people die. I've never lost a home I loved, as you have, and plenty of other French and Belgian people.'

'Oh, where I am is my 'ome. In a way the war 'as made my business easier. We are busy, and the war brings a better class of person to us. Our peacetimeclientele, do you see, they are all damaged in some way, to come to us. Oh, I don' feel guilty, because we don' damage them any worse, and what is better to do for them? Don' you forget that the girls are damaged too, even me. If you were some brave British major of forty with a tobacco smell, a practical age, I should be afraid to 'ave you 'ere, I think, because I might show damage, and make you despise me. But in war, in our manner, I believe we serve France. I think men away from women, men leading a hard, maybe short life, they idealize us, and they like to take away kind memories. Only a fool, I think, wants his last memory of a woman to be an unpleasantness.

'We saw unpleasantness tonight, I think. We have some soldiers like that, not many I hope. I think the strain destroys some men's judgement.'

'Bien sûr. But I don' want the police to know. If soldiers do wrong, could God ever 'ave a better chance torégler sa compte, no? If 'e doesn't, 'e is not looking for my 'elp.'

'Well, maybe you're right. But I wouldn't want to think of them going and doing the same to another woman, who might be more easily hurt. They can't all have a man with a pistol turn up.'

'You think they will do it again? Andrew, did you see 'ow terrified they were? And me too. When I was in Belleville I tell myself that I can endure the worst any man can do, if it happens. But I never thought they would cover my face. Andrew, sit closer.'

Andrew, in some fashion, suddenly felt a lot more flustered than the previous time he had sat down so close to the lady. With a non-smoker's keen senses, he had always hated perfume, but there was something irresistible in the subtlety of the fragrance the woman wore, and 'subtle' is a word Andrew had always loved. Now hadn't he heard that perfume was diffused by the warmth of the skin? The boy was not sure whether he ought to be thinking about skin.

She called for something, and the footman brought a tray with decanter, glasses and a jug of water. She poured some water, and then a green liquid from the decanter, through a lump of sugar held in a little spoon with a pierced lid. A milky opalescence spread in the glass.

'La fée verte. The green fairy.Absinthe.'

'I… I see. Isn't the government making it illegal this year?'

'If someone 'as to drink too much, it is the cheapest. But those will pay a few sous more,v'là tout, and solve their problems in worse ways. Like my business, do you see? But a little is relaxing, that is all. Let me tell you something. Do you see a line on the decanter, just a centimetre from the surface?'

'No.'

'There is no line. But me, I see it, just like I saw it every night in Belleville. A woman must know 'ow much she drinks, Andrew, absinthe or anything else, or there wait the marble slab, and the brass tap. Yes, and perhaps the marks policemen don't want to see. You try it?'

'Well, all right…'

There was a strangely attractive bitter pungency to the green liqueur, and it did indeed seem no stronger than many another drink he knew. She went over to the piano in the corner, with a lamp behind her which turned her hair into a golden halo, and played for some time. Perhaps it was the absinthe, but for Andrew, like silent music inside his own head, she seemed to have the knack of converting the most petty little traditional airs into something far greater. The memory he would always associate with that halo-like head was a curious, tinkling little French tune with a deceptively strong rhythm, which he had already heard in anestaminet somewhere. But now it seemed to speak to the human soul, and he grew unafraid. Perhaps it was her marvellous talent for putting him at his ease. Or perhaps it was the absinthe.