Charles Todd - A Bitter Truth

“You’re here to find that child.”

I was tempted to tell him her name was Sophie, and she’d just been diagnosed with chicken pox, to see if he cared at all.

Instead I said, “Why are you so certain that I have any interest in your child?”

“She’s not my child.”

“Lieutenant Hughes told you that night in the drawing room that she was the image of Juliana.”

“He was drunk and confused.”

The waiter came with a glass of wine and a cup of coffee on a tray, setting them down before us.

“Where were you then, when you told your men you’d been in Paris?”

That shocked him.

“Who told you about that?”

“I don’t precisely remember. Perhaps it was an Australian Sergeant with shrapnel in his shoulder.”

Anger flared in his face. “Don’t deliberately annoy me.”

“I’m not. I’m simply treating you with the same courtesy you’ve shown to me.”

The flush faded, and he grinned in spite of himself. “Yes, I’m sorry. But you see, you’re a friend of Lydia’s, not mine. And I wouldn’t put it past her to take it into her head to want this child, whether it’s mine or not. Which I must say surprises me, because she gave the impression once or twice that she was jealous of Juliana.”

“I don’t think either of you really knows the other. Three years of war can be a very long time in a marriage. Whether they want to or not, people change, and especially with the strain of war. She’d hardly got to know you when you went off to France. And when you did come home, you didn’t appear to be overjoyed to see her. And you were violent.”

“Yes, all right, I deserved that. I didn’t intend to hit her. It was just that-well, never mind, you weren’t there. I needn’t bore you with my worries.”

“It might help me to understand why you are so adamant that this child isn’t yours, and yet here you are in Rouen for the same reason you claim I’ve come here. That’s why you were so displeased when you saw me. To put it mildly. You almost wrecked my motorcar.”

Roger Ellis took a deep breath. His wine remained untouched, while the one sip I’d taken of my coffee made me wonder what had been substituted for coffee beans.

“May I call you Bess?” he asked, catching me off guard. “It seems ridiculous to stand on social ceremony at this stage.”

“Please do.”

“Thank you. When I was wounded, I was in great pain and frightened because I overheard the doctors debating whether or not to take my arm. At least I thought they were discussing me. Apparently I was mistaken, because when I woke up, too terrified to look at my right side for fear I’d see an empty sleeve, I lay there with my eyes shut. Very cowardly of me, I realize that. But the thought of going home to Lydia half a man was something I couldn’t contemplate. The nursing sister who tended me was a young woman, much like you, who finally said to me that if I didn’t sit up and eat, they would have to send me to England to recover. That was the only threat that would have worked, because the last thing I could face was that. I hated her with all my heart, but I opened my eyes, and when she handed me the fork, I was so busy being angry that from habit I reached for it-and a pain shot through my shoulder so fierce, I turned to look at the hand. And it was there. I was so weak with relief she took pity on me and fed me, thinking I was about to pass out from lack of food. I never told her what was going through my mind. I was too ashamed. There were other men in the ward with horrendous injuries, and I had been too wrapped up in myself to notice. I made up for it, helping feed some of the patients once they allowed me out of bed.”

I said, “You haven’t been the only man who feared amputation. I’ve had to hold them afterward, when they cried.”

“A doctor asked me if I wished to go to England to recover, and I couldn’t accept when there were so many others in worse shape. So they found me a house in a little village behind the lines. Chalfleur, it was. And the woman in that house was much like Lydia. Her husband was at the Front, she hadn’t heard from him in weeks. While I was there, he came home on a twenty-four-hour pass, which meant he had less than twelve hours with her. And two weeks after he left, she got me drunk one night and slept with me. That was the only time, and I left the next day.”

He drank a little of his wine and made a face. I thought it must be as bad as my coffee.

“At any rate, some months later I received a letter from Claudette, telling me that her husband had been killed, and that she was expecting his child. I was glad for her and wrote to let her know I was. The next message I had was that she had given birth to a little girl, and that she wanted me to know that the child must be mine, not her husband’s. I didn’t want to believe it. For my sins, I didn’t answer the letter, and then word came that she’d died. I sent what money I could scrape together to the convent where she’d been taken, for her burial and to ask the nuns to look after her child. After that I sent money regularly. But then the fighting drove the nuns and their charges south, and by the time I’d learned of it, I was in the middle of the Somme fighting and there was no way to trace them. Afterward I was too tired to try, and I told myself that I’d done all I could. But George got it into his head that I was hiding something and started his own search. And apparently he found the nuns and saw this child.” He shrugged. “You know the rest, I think.”

“He was going to adopt her himself. With Malcolm dead, I think he wanted to believe he had someone at home. A tie to life, as it were.”

“Yes, and I begrudged him even that. Because I knew if the child did look like Juliana, my family would hear of it soon enough. And Lydia would know who the father was. But by law, the child is not mine. Since Claudette’s husband didn’t disown it-in fact died before he knew she’d borne it-it carries his name, and not mine. It is-was-legally his.” He shook his head. “God knows, there are enough orphans in France. Why did George insist on saving that particular one?”

“Because he loved Juliana, just as you did. And he wanted in some fashion to bring her back again. In war, these things seem important. Because life is important.”

“I know. And because George is dead, I realized that I had to shoulder my own responsibility. I’ve looked, when I could. The question is, have you had any better luck? Is she here in Rouen, is that why you’ve come here?”

I didn’t know what to say. Could I trust him? Could I believe anything he’d told me? It had the ring of truth. Watching him, watching his eyes as he spoke, I thought it was probably the truth. But he had changed stripes so many times that I wondered whether to tell him or not.

The thought occurred to me that he could be killed in the next action, and then what would I do about Sophie?

I said, buying a little time, “What will you do if you find the little girl? You’ve talked to me about responsibility, about George and his foolishness over her, about the fact that she doesn’t bear your name. You seem to have no feeling at all for the mother, even though you slept with her.”

“I liked her very well, Bess. She had a very appealing laugh. Her eyes crinkled at the corners when she was amused. And she was well read. Don’t mistake me, she wasn’t a loose woman, she was quite respectable. And rather pretty. But I didn’t fall in love with her. It wasn’t even lust. That night when she got into my bed, I’d had enough to drink and the guns were loud in the room, reminding me that I was going back to my regiment very soon, and it happened. Damn it, I oughtn’t to be telling you this.”

“I give you my word I won’t repeat any of this to Lydia or anyone else. You haven’t told me about the child.”