By lunchtime the tonic had been delivered. It was a dark sludge that tasted disgusting but I dutifully swallowed a tablespoonful. I was served a hearty bowl of soup and sat in a chair by the window, wondering if Sid and Gus would send me a telegram in reply. Actually I was half hoping that they would come to Le Havre themselves to escort me to Paris. It was the sort of thing they would do. But when darkness fell there was no word from them. For dinner I managed a freshly caught sole and buttery potatoes. Liam was also showing interest in food again and was quite annoyed when all he was offered was the breast.
After a good night’s sleep I began to feel more like myself and suggested that I might travel on to Paris that day. My head was now clear enough that I was also thinking of the extra cost of another night at a pension. Miss Hetherington wouldn’t hear of it. Her sick friends didn’t feel up to the long train journey to Venice yet. She said we would all stay one day more and then travel as far as Paris together. They would then continue on to Venice, and I’d be in the capable hands of my friends. Since my legs felt like jelly after coming down the stairs to breakfast I had to agree that traveling with friends would be preferable to traveling alone and trying to manage Liam and my luggage when I felt as weak as a kitten. So I agreed and thanked them for all they had done.
“Nonsense. We unprotected women must stick together,” Miss Hetherington said.
So I spent a second delightful day sitting in the lounge overlooking the seafront. First I wrote to Daniel, telling him that I had arrived safely in France but that I was resting in Le Havre due to a bad case of seasickness. I thought it prudent not to mention that Liam had also been very ill. No need to worry him when he had so much to worry about already. I told him I’d send another letter as soon as I reached Sid and Gus.
This small task left me quite tired and I lay back in my chair, watching the busy scene in the harbor outside my window. It was all so foreign and fascinating with peasant ladies in white lace caps and the fishermen in their blue smocks, contrasting with the red sails. No wonder the Impressionst painters were so keen to paint here. After lunch Therese, the landlady’s daughter, came to amuse Liam, whose eyes no longer looked sunken. It was a huge relief to hear him laugh loudly when Therese knocked down a tower of blocks. I tried him on a little mashed potato and gravy that night and he ate well. It seemed that our ordeal was finally at an end. By tomorrow night I’d be safely with Sid and Gus.
In the morning we set off, the wagon piled high with ourselves and our luggage, for the station. I noted the departure time of the train then paid a boy to deliver my telegram to the telegraph office. Sid and Gus would probably be waiting anxiously, I thought. They’d be so relieved to know I was all right and finally on my way. Miss Hetherington found an empty compartment for the six of us plus Liam and the train pulled out of the station. Yesterday’s good weather had given way to a steady rain as we made our way toward the capital city. The French countryside looked bleak and gray, rainswept scenes of fields divided by lines of poplar trees, just coming into leaf. We passed the massive cathedral at Reims, rising above the sloping roofs of the town.
“Catholics, of course,” Miss Pinkerton said when the other women remarked how magnificent it was. “Why can’t Protestants build decent cathedrals?”
Liam had just fallen asleep on my lap when we came into the outer suburbs of Paris. After having lived in New York for four years, the thing that struck me was that this was a city of low buildings. In New York we were used to new skyscrapers and apartment blocks. Even the tenements were five or six floors high. Here church spires and domes rose above rooftops. And to my disappointment these buildings did not resemble my vision of Paris. They were small and mean and dirty, reminding me of the back streets of Belfast or Liverpool. The only difference was that these houses all had shutters, some brightly painted, some peeling. And there were bright advertising signs painted on house walls. Signs advertising Gauloises cigarettes and Dubonnet and other unfamiliar names. Then I spotted something in the distance above the rooftops, an ironwork tower, impossibly high. I pointed excitedly.
“Look,” I said. “Over there.”
“Goodness me,” Miss Pinkerton exclaimed. “I heard it was quite a monstrosity, and it is, isn’t it? I wonder they didn’t take it down after the exhibition.”
“I suppose it’s progress,” Miss Hetherington said. “We must get used to such things. Skyscrapers and Eiffel Towers. Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who daub on colors willy-nilly and call it painting. That’s what the world is coming to.”
Personally I thought the Eiffel Tower was spectacular and gazed at it until the train went around a bend and it was lost. The train was slowing, and with a final huff and puff we pulled into Saint-Lazare station. Porters swarmed into the carriage, whisking away bags so rapidly that one never expected to find them again. I stood on the steps of our carriage looking out over the crowd and the smoke, an expectant smile on my face, as I tried to spot Sid and Gus.