She had done it.
She would have her year in France, a year away from the whispers, stares, and malicious half-heard gossip that had blighted nearly every moment of the past five years. She would . . . her mind reeled at the possibilities. She would eat pastries and drink wine and wear short skirts and rouge, and she would sit in the sun and burn her nose, and not care what anyone thought of her.
Best of all, she would go to school and meet people who knew nothing of her past, and to them she would simply be Helena Parr, an artist like themselves.
Helena Parr. Artist. Merely thinking the words filled her with delight—and it reminded her of one task that simply couldn’t wait.
Returning to her desk, she took out a sheet of notepaper and began to write.
45, Wilton Crescent
London, SW1
England
16 March 1924
Dear Ma?tre Czerny,
Further to my earlier inquiry, I should like to reserve a place at your school for the September 1924 session for intermediate students. I shall send a bank draft for the required deposit under separate cover.
Yours faithfully,
Miss Helena Parr
Chapter 2
Strange to think she’d never been on a sleeper train before. She’d been to the south of France often enough, but her father detested rail journeys and invariably insisted they go by ship. As Helena was a poor sailor, she’d always dreaded the voyage to Marseille.
But this—this was heavenly. Her first-class compartment on the train bleu—she supposed the name came from the cars’ midnight blue exteriors—was a tiny marvel of modern luxury, and rather than set down her valise and take off her coat she simply stood at its entrance and stared.
It was scarcely more than two yards wide, and perhaps a little longer from door to window. Every vertical plane was covered in gleaming mahogany panels, their lacquer polished to a mirror finish. To her right was a plush banquette, not yet transformed into her bed for the night. She reached out and unlatched the curving door to her left. It revealed a sink with hot and cold taps, chrome-framed mirrors, and an electric light that switched on automatically.
The train wouldn’t be leaving Calais for another half hour, so she might as well unpack before they started to move. With only a single case for the overnight journey, her trunk having been stowed in the baggage car, she didn’t have much to do. She shut and latched the door to her compartment, folded out the little table beside the window, and set out her valise. She’d brought a frock for dinner and another for her arrival in Antibes, neither of them much creased; these she hung on the back of the door. There was even a little rack for shoes at the bottom. Her nightgown and underclothes could remain in the case for now.
Mama had wanted her to bring one of the maids, fearing that Helena wouldn’t be able to manage, but Helena had refused. Even before her illness, and the months of constant scrutiny by physicians and nursemaids, she’d rarely been left on her own. There had always been servants around, always, and though most of them were agreeable and friendly, and were usually quiet and unassuming, they were simply there.
Here, though, there was no one to mind her, watch her, hover over her. She had twenty-four hours to herself to do as she pleased, to act as she liked, and to be anyone she chose to be. For the first time in her life she was wonderfully and blissfully alone, and she would savor every single, intoxicating minute.
The train shuddered to life, lumbering out of the station with painful slowness, but before long they had left the coast behind and were rolling through the peaceful farmland of the Pas de Calais. Helena perched on the banquette and stared out the window, too excited to open her book, and watched as the countryside gave way to the outskirts of Amiens, their only stop before Paris. As they slowed to cross a low, rather rickety bridge, she glimpsed a faded sign that gave a name to the river flowing languidly below: la Somme.
The Somme. Simply reading the name made her shiver. She was pretty certain the battles had been fought farther away, farther to the north—she could still remember, if hazily, the maps of the front lines that the newspapers had included whenever there was a new advance to report. And the war had come very close indeed to this ancient town, for hadn’t there been a Battle of Amiens toward the end?
At the time, she’d read the newspapers compulsively, trying to make sense of it all, but understanding had proved elusive. What sense could be made of something so futile? The broken men at the hospital where she’d volunteered, their faces still so vivid in her mind’s eye, had been testament enough of the nature of war.