It’s difficult to think of you and Will in the trenches, hunkered down in your dugouts while I sleep in comfort. You’ll think me silly but I slept on the floor last night, with only a thin blanket for warmth. A troubled mind and a cold hard floor do not make for the best bedfellows but I plan to do it again tonight. Every night, until you come home. It won’t be long now, will it?
I expect you’ll also have heard about the bombing of Scarborough. Seventeen innocent lives lost. Women and children among them. Ninety minutes of shelling from the German ships, the papers are reporting. What unimaginable horror. The War Office already has posters up saying: Remember Scarborough and Enlist Today. People are angry, Tom. And rightfully so.
Sometimes, when I wake in the morning, I pretend it is all a dream and that Will is taking breakfast downstairs and you’ll arrive shortly with some outlandish scheme or other for an outing to Somerset to drink scrumpy cider. I don’t even care for scrumpy cider, but I would drink it all the same.
At least you still have time to think of love and romance—or at least my brother does. I’m encouraged to hear he is making a nuisance of himself among the nurses. The poor girls won’t stand a chance against his amorous advances. Is this French girl very pretty? There’s nothing like a foreign accent to turn a man’s heart—she must be quite impossible to resist. How quickly Will forgets his flirtations with Alice. You might remind him of the saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Alice still hopes to hear a few lines from him but I won’t breathe a word to her of this nurse (does she have a name?). Promise to keep me fully informed of any romantic developments?
In less romantic news, we finally have a goose. Not as big as Mama would like, but a goose nonetheless. She forgets (or denies) that we have several fewer mouths to feed this year. I hardly dare mention it. She becomes wretched at the slightest mention of war. None of us can really believe you’ll be away for Christmas, especially since they promised us it would be over. So much for our Parisian plans.
Join me in a little daydreaming, Tom, will you? Look, there we are strolling along the Champs-élysées, marvelling at the Arc de Triomphe as fat snowflakes tumble from a soft sky. There we stand, watching the artists at Montmartre, the soaring majesty of the Sacré-Coeur behind us. C’est si beau. And look at us now, tipping our necks right back so that we can gaze up at the soaring heights of la tour Eiffel. There are three hundred steps up to the top, you know. I’ll race you!
My foolish heart clings to these happier thoughts. But it isn’t just the charm of the capital city that pulls me towards France. You’ll think me silly to say it but part of me longs to be closer to the war. I need to DO something, Tom. Anything, except sit here wondering and worrying.
Do take care, and if I don’t hear from you before, have the happiest Christmas it is possible to have there. We will be thinking of you at every waking moment, and in our dreams.
Joyeux No?l.
Yours,
Evie
From Thomas to Evie
20th December, 1914
Somewhere in France
Dear Evie,
As I sit here in my bunker, completing the never-ending paperwork for my superiors, I’m dreaming of oysters and champagne, roasted chestnuts dusted with sugar, a roaring fire. I never was one for dancing, but I’d give my right hand to be at your mother’s Christmas party right now. Last year I only danced twice—once with you and once with your mother, if you recall—and then I scooted off to the fringes for another scotch. You wore a peacock-blue dress and sparkled like the tinsel on the tree. After a while, the heat in the ballroom had me running for the garden. You found me there and we shared a cigarette beside the rose bushes. Do you remember? I gave you my jacket to keep you warm. That’s when we found your brother huddled behind the holly hedges with Hattie Greenfield. Will and his women!
Will’s French nurse is called Amandine Morel. A pretty French girl named after an almond flower—a perfect opportunity for bad poetry if ever there was one. I have to admit, I envy him the distraction. I’m rather glum. Battles rage on, regardless of season or sacrifice.
My father wrote at last. He seems disappointed I’m not coming home for Christmas, which cheers me a little. The last time I saw him we had a dreadful argument and haven’t spoken since, so his few lines show progress, I suppose. The thing is, Evie, I have little interest in running the London Daily Times . It’s not the sort of work I see myself doing—I’m not interested in chasing the next story to make a few quid or become a star reporter. Nor do I care about status. Frankly, I don’t see why we can’t hire someone else to do it, or pass it along to the next of kin, but Father won’t hear of it. He’s never understood my passion for literature and yet, isn’t that what he does, at least in the most basic sense—share stories with the public? Perhaps I’m a fool to think we can bridge this gap between us.
Forgive me for becoming sentimental. I’m certain this isn’t the sort of thing you were hoping to read in my letters.
Paris will have to wait until next year, if it is still standing. I’m sure all will be well and done by then. This war can’t go on much longer.
Think of me when you slice into that goose. I’ll be imagining it and a fat helping of gravy.
Happy Christmas, dear girl.
Sincerely yours,
Thomas
Paris
15th December, 1968
Paris greets me like an old friend, open-armed and joyous. As our taxi navigates the winding streets, I sit in silence and watch the snow fall from a rose-tinted sky. The city never looked more beautiful.
After the long journey, I am relieved to see the familiar outline of the apartment building on the rue Saint-Germaine, our Parisian home-away-from-home, our own little corner of France, as she called it.
When Margaret finally concedes that I am comfortable and warm and not in any immediate danger of taking a tumble from the balcony, she heads out to discover the city for herself. I envy her the delight of seeing it all for the first time—taking a stroll along the Place de la Concorde, discovering the local delicacies, absorbing it all with the exuberance of youth—and yet I am grateful for the solitude her absence gives me; a moment alone with my memories. And what riches they offer.
I doze for a while, dreaming of walks in the rain in the Jardin du Luxembourg, smiling as she laughs and shakes the damp from her hair. They are pleasant dreams in which I am still a vibrant young man, utterly enchanted by her, and she is still here and not so recently taken from me. It makes waking so unbearable, but wake, I must.
Too soon, Margaret returns with a thud of the heavy front door, bringing the sharp scent of cold and the aroma of roasted chestnuts inside with her. She chatters on with tremendous excitement about the market stalls and the patisseries, the lights along the Seine, the beauty of it all.
“Oh, Mr. Harding, how romantic it all is,” she enthuses as she shakes out her polka-dotted headscarf. “No wonder they call it the city of lights. J’adore, Paris!”