Charles Todd - A Bitter Truth

I knocked on the door, but no one answered my summons, and so I sat in the motorcar until a murky dawn began to break. By that time I was so cold and stiff I could hardly get out and walk to the door.

An elderly nun answered my summons, although she had taken her time about it. And I saw why, when the door swung open, for beneath her woolen robes, one foot was encased in a heavy boot with a thick sole, designed to make the left leg the same length as the right.

She asked my business, and I again used the ploy that I had come to see if the children that had been treated at the English aid station were in need of further care.

To my utter relief, she invited me into the foyer. It was a blessed reprieve from the morning cold outside, although still hardly what I would consider warm.

“We have fifteen orphans here,” she was saying. “None of them to my knowledge treated by the English.”

She made it sound as if they would have been treated by the devil and his cohorts, but I smiled and asked if I could see the other children, since I was here.

“Yes, it is hard to find medicines for the little ones. Do you have medicines? Come with me.”

She led me through a labyrinth of rooms to a large kitchen, where a small fire had been built on a hearth large enough to roast an ox. A kettle of what appeared to be something like porridge was bubbling on the hob, and I could feel my mouth water.

At a long table sat the children, who fell silent and looked up from their bowls to stare at me with wide dark eyes, wary and uncertain. I was sure that strangers seldom brought good tidings to this house. Another nun, older than the first, was also staring at me, pausing as she stirred the contents of the black iron pot.

My heart plummeted when I realized that the youngest of the fifteen was nearly five. And I had never seen any of them before.

“Are there by any chance younger children here?” I asked the nun.

“Younger?” she asked sharply, straightening up.

“Yes. In particular a little girl of perhaps two years of age. Very fair, very sweet smile.”

“There is a little boy upstairs, badly burned from falling into the fire. But no little girl.”

“Then I will see the little boy, if you like.”

“He has been treated by the local doctor,” the nun said, returning to her pot. I could see that she didn’t care for my coming here. I wondered what her experience of the war had been, for I could see that she had a long scar, healed but still raw and red, down one side of her face.

“Then he’s in good hands,” I assured her. “Do you know where I might find this little girl? Is there another orphanage in Rouen?”

I was prepared to hear that there was not. It was the first nun who answered me, after a quick glance at her companion.

“Three streets away, in Rue St. Catherine, there is another house, not of our order. But they have some nine children there, I believe. Mostly infants younger than these.”

“Thank you,” I said, then asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“There’s no money for anything. The church does what it can. But there are so many refugees. It’s very difficult.”

I thought at first she was asking me for money, for a donation for the children. And then I realized she was saying something else, that the war had disrupted her quiet life in a convent devoted to prayer and contemplation. Instead she was struggling to feed and dress and care for children in a dilapidated house in a town that was within hearing of the guns that had changed all their lives. I had to wonder if her faith had been tested almost beyond her ability to cope.

I nodded and made my way back through the warren of rooms that couldn’t be kept warm or made more comfortable. And growing children needed more than just porridge. But there were shortages in England as well. What was happening in Germany? Were they suffering too?

I drove on to the house the nun had described.

It too was old and tired, and the smoke coming from its chimneys was thin and discouraging. I lifted the weather-etched iron anchor and let it drop against the iron plate.

This time the nun who came to the door was frail, her face lined, but her eyes were a vivid blue that was in sharp contrast to the soft, sagging skin of age. “Sister,” she said, “how may we help you?”

“I’m looking for a child,” I said, giving her the same account that I had used before.

She smiled. “That would be Sophie. Yes, come in. I’m Sister Marie Joseph.”

The carpet was threadbare, the furniture in desperate need of polish, the walls in dire need of paint, patches of the ornate ceiling stained by water from a roof that most probably should have been replaced even before the war.

“Tell me how you knew about Sophie?” she asked, offering me a chair. I could understand that she was reluctant to let me, a stranger, see Sophie, and what I was about to say would determine whether or not I would be allowed beyond this parlor.

I tried to explain that someone in England had begged me to find her.

She nodded. “Her mother told me that the father was English.”

“And she is dead?”

“Oh, yes, of a raging fever a week after childbirth. We had taken her in, she had nowhere else to go. She had gone to market the day that a shell landed squarely on the kitchen of her house. She came to us, then, already in her fifth month of pregnancy. A lovely young woman, I must tell you. She was an enormous help to us for as long as her health was good. But we lacked the food she needed. Not enough milk or meat, but still, she would have lived but for the fever.”

“May I see the child?” I asked. “I have come a long way.”

“She’s asleep, but yes, you may look in on her. You will carry the lamp for me, please.”

She climbed the stairs with an effort, holding on to the banister and almost pulling herself up the narrow steps.

In a bedroom on the first floor were two cribs, and in one of them, wrapped in a blue blanket with a ragged fringe was a little girl with golden hair that shimmered in the dark like a halo as the lamplight struck it. She lay asleep with her thumb in her mouth, the edge of a night dress just visible at her throat.

I moved quietly into the room to see her better. In the next crib was another little girl, perhaps a year or so older, but small framed for her age.

The elderly nun said softly, “Is she the child?”

I couldn’t see her eyes or her smile, I couldn’t see her face fully.

But I had no doubt that this was the little girl George Hughes had seen.

“Has she always been in your care?” I asked softly.

The elderly nun said, “Our house was larger and we had more children. But of necessity we have had to separate, some to the Loire, near Angers, and others to Caen. Wherever we could be taken in. The children too have been separated. This house was given to us by a family that was moving to Marseilles, away from the war altogether. They feared another German breakthrough. And we’ve been fearful ourselves. But there is nowhere to go.”

And the family had been clever, leaving these nuns in charge of their home. It wouldn’t be vandalized or, worse, filled with refugees desperate for a roof over their heads.

I crossed the room and put a hand on the child’s silky hair.

And realized that she was feverish.

I said something to the nun, and she nodded. “It’s been a trial for all of us. She sleeps now, because we have given her a drop of something to help her. But we can find no cause for this fever. The doctor has been called to her. He says she is teething.”

But teething was not the problem, I was sure of it. “How long has it been going on?”

“It rose the night before this last.”