A Star for Mrs. Blake (18 page)

“Haussmann’s plan is ruler-straight,” he said, as they walked on. “Much too egotistical and grand.”

“I think it fits the city to a T. Of course, I’ve only been in Paris twenty-four hours.”

“But you do agree it’s grand?”

“Compared to Chicago? Chicago is down and dirty with lots of people in reduced circumstances. In Paris, they don’t care.”

“They care a great deal,” Hammond objected. “Certainly about their history and culture. Look at how they revere the military giants—Vauban, Lafayette, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joffre, who beat the Germans in at the First Battle of the Marne—”

“I mean they don’t care about the little people,” she said impatiently.

“How do you know?”

“Just look—everything’s a monument!”

“It’s foolish to even talk about Paris and Chicago in the same breath,” Hammond said. “Chicago’s a cow town.”

“It’s where I’m from, mister.”

“Well, mooo to you.”

She lifted her nose in mock distress. “You think I’m uneducated because I only went to nursing school.”

“And you think I’m a snob,” Hammond guessed with a smile.

“Why? Because you can name all the French generals?”

He laughed. “I apologize for that. I’m really a very down-to-earth type of fellow.”

Lily looked away, buying time, knowing he was flirting with her and trying to figure out how to slow it down.

“No, Thomas, you’re not a snob. You come off like someone bent on his career,” she said with finality.

“Well, if all else fails, I can always be a tour guide,” Hammond replied amiably. “Let’s get away from all this noise.” He raised his handkerchief high enough for the group to see and shouted, “Follow me, ladies!”

They turned off the avenue into the old quarter and smack into a neighborhood street market. The women stopped to examine every dead fish and pig’s head on ice while Hammond and Lily waited awkwardly.

“Got a fag?” she said at last.

Hammond responded with two cigarettes.

“When did you start smoking?” he asked.

“Sixth grade,” she said. “Even though I went to Catholic school, I was still a rebel.”

“So you
are
the rebellious type,” he said hopefully.

“You bet. They thought I was defying God by becoming a nurse.”

“Not really.”

“It’s true. See, that’s what people don’t understand. I care as much about my career as anyone, and it was really hard to come by. Where I grew up, nursing wasn’t considered a ‘real profession,’ ” she said in a disdainful voice. “It was for women of low morals. The only reason I even applied to nursing school was our local vet, Dr. Malloy. I love animals and he used to let me tag along and help; then he figured I might be good at taking care of people. The school was free but my folks had to save up just for the fare to Chicago.” She exhaled smoke. “I lived in a slum with two other students—the kind of place where gangsters were having shoot-outs, and people left newborn babies in a shoe box at our door. It was eye-opening, I’ll tell you that, but we had a lot of fun.”

“Sounds like fun,” Hammond echoed, perplexed. He had somehow lost control of this conversation.

“Where did you go to school?” she asked.

“Mostly public schools. I’m just an army brat,” he assured her. “My father was with the War Department, so we lived in Washington.”

“I always wanted to see the capital of our nation. Maybe someday—”

“You should visit—” Hammond agreed, and almost stumbled into Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Olsen, who were just ahead of them, staring into a barrel seething with scaly silver fish.

“What do they call those?” Cora asked.

Bobbie questioned the vendor in French. “He says mullet. Not too pretty, are they?”

Cora was scrutinizing the greenish water.

“What’s the matter, dear?”

“I’m trying to figure if the keg of salt mackerel I left down home is fairly ripe yet. Might be.”

Bobbie blinked several times, attempting to understand. “Well,” she said finally, “that’s good news.”

She took Cora’s elbow as they waited on a busy corner for a line of taxicabs and bicycles to speed by. The day was overcast, but you could feel a pleasant heat behind the clouds. The trees were rank with summer. The group stayed in the coolness under the canopies of the tightly packed shops until Bobbie stopped, pointing at a display of flowers in tall pails across the street.

“Oh!” she exclaimed delightedly. “French market bouquets! I must make a sketch. Lieutenant, can we spare just a minute?”

“Of course,” he said, and before anyone could stop her, Bobbie was off the sidewalk and on her way to the florist’s stall, pulling a tiny pad and small case of colored pencils from her alligator bag.

“Oh my!” Lily exclaimed, watching her run through traffic.

“I didn’t see that,” Hammond decided.

Cora couldn’t tell what the big deal was. The arrangements were nice, but basically just round bunches of pink and white hydrangeas and green grasses tied up with herbs from the garden. She could do the same thing at home, and not give everyone a heart attack.

Finally Hammond went over, slipped his arm in Bobbie’s, waited for the traffic light, and escorted her back across the street. Bobbie was bubbling with excitement.

“Thank you all very much for waiting,” she said, slipping her materials inside the purse. “That was once in a lifetime!”

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Hammond remarked dryly.

“Very,” she replied, patting his hand.

They kept going until they had reached the open crossroads of the Boulevard des Italiens. At night the marquee that poked the intersection like the prow of a steamer would be alive with moving lights advertising the shows, but now it was a dull corner filled with streetcars and midday shoppers.

“My feet are killing me. How much further we got to walk?” Minnie asked plaintively.

The morning seemed to stretch into infinity.
We have a hell of a way to go
, Hammond wanted to say. He checked his watch. With all this stopping and looking and sketching, they were almost an hour behind schedule. And Mrs. Russell was missing.

“Now we’re in trouble,” Hammond muttered to Lily.

“Don’t worry, she’s always late,” said Minnie, who had sharp ears when it came to hearsay.

“There is
late
and there is
lost
,” Bobbie observed.

Praise the Lord; they were in front of a chocolate shop.

“Do you mind waiting inside?” Hammond asked.

They did not.

“Nurse Lily, would you please make sure nobody else goes wandering?”

“I’ll guard the door,” she promised, acknowledging the worried look in his eyes.

Hammond doubled back through the market streets, asking if anyone had seen
“une américaine folle.”
Finally he spotted her—tall and bony, wearing the same pink blouse she had refused to change since they’d gotten on the ship, a white polka-dot skirt, and a broad velvet hat on a bird’s nest of straw-colored hair, standing at the gate of a small house overgrown with ivy. She was attempting to bargain in English with a boy in knickers who was ringing the bell, selling something from a basket. Hammond only hoped that whatever it was, it was not alive.

“Oh, Lieutenant Hammond!” Wilhelmina smiled. “Please tell this young man I want fourteen.”

Shoelaces. The basket was full of men’s shoelaces. She wanted fourteen pairs in black. He paid for them without question, tipped the boy, stuffed them into his pockets, and took her back to the chocolate
shop, where the ladies were comparing small white paper bags containing miniature chocolate baguettes and adorable chocolate hens. Fretfully, he checked his watch again.

“Everything all right?” Lily asked.

“If we don’t hit every stop on the quartermaster’s schedule, I’ll be duck soup.”

He hailed two cabs and marshaled the mothers inside, making sure to place himself in the one with Mrs. Russell, and put Lily in charge of the other. When they got to the Place Vendôme, he roared through the prepared speech in his instruction packet.

“The Place Vendôme is one of the finest squares in the world. It was designed in the pure classical style—”

“What about lunch?” Wilhelmina wanted to know.

“—the Vendôme Column is cast of the iron of twelve hundred enemy cannons. Napoleon stands on top, wearing the costume of a Roman emperor.”

“Why?” Minnie asked.

“Because, from the beginning of time,” Wilhelmina said solemnly, “man has had the urge to stand upon the highest summit, dressed in bedsheets.”

Everybody cracked up laughing. The sun had gone again and a gentle haze was turning to rain. Red flowers spilled from the iron balconies, and the gold medallions on the doors of the Ministère de la Justice gleamed in the fickle light. As the rain filled the square with a soft gray volume of mist, they took refuge under the archway of an arcade of fine shops. An aristocratic-looking Spanish woman—straight-backed and dressed in black—was accompanied by her dark-eyed, artistic-looking son. Their arms were linked as they bent closer to the windows to discuss the jewels on display. Bobbie, gripping the alligator bag as if she would never let it go, watched the mother and son in the reflection of the glass, her expression openly longing.

Lunch was at Jacques’s, where twice the price buys half the meal. It was a tiny cavelike joint with creaking floors and cane-backed chairs, probably a hundred years old, with ancient wood-planked walls—pretty much like being inside one of those fish barrels on the street. There was a small bar in back, and a steep staircase that looked as if
it led directly to the underworld. Jacques, proprietor and solo waiter, was folding napkins into stiff white crowns because there was nothing else to do. The front room was empty as usual. When Party A entered, he stood up and opened his arms to embrace one and all, speaking in quaintly accented English. “Welcome, mothers of America! Ladies of distinction! We are honored.” He made a show of moving tables and helping each individual to a seat.

“What kind of a place is this?” Minnie wondered.

Jacques cocked his head coquettishly. “It is an experience you will never forget.”

Hammond gulped the sherry that had been wisely put before him. Moments later their man reappeared with a tray of squid, crayfish, and eel—all suckers and antennae, some still waving in the breeze, in order to show them that only the freshest seafood went into the soup.

“Lord help us,” Cora said. “That’s the stuff we throw away.”

Katie drew herself up. “It’s a different matter when you’re hungry,” she said indignantly.

“Maybe so, but they shouldn’t charge money for the leavings.”

“Mrs. Blake is right,” Bobbie declared. “This is not acceptable.”

Katie felt cornered. In Bobbie’s tone she heard an airy dismissal of poor people everywhere, especially her relatives in Ireland, who would have been glad of eel’s meat during the famine, or pig’s guts, or anything.

“It’s not something I’d expect you to understand, Mrs. Olsen. But that’s all right, you’ll never in your lifetime have the need.”

She stood abruptly and shoved the chair back with such force that everything on the table shook, then turned on her heel and left in search of the ladies’ room.

Bobbie called after her, “Mrs. McConnell, I only meant—”

“Let her go.” Cora understood that they came from different ends of the earth, and could only hope things would be patched up later.

Bobbie let her hands fall in exasperation and gave up the ghost. She’d tried being decent with Katie, and all she’d gotten were smart quips and haughty looks, which would never be tolerated at home. Of
course, they were not at home, and Mrs. McConnell was not in her employ, but as she’d learned long ago, there was little benefit in speaking below your station.

“We need to be patient with our Mrs. McConnell,” Cora said quietly. “She doesn’t like to mention it, but she lost two boys in the war.”

Bobbie said nothing.

The others reacted with tut-tuts of sympathy. Minnie nodded along, her eyes telling Cora she had never let on about Katie’s secret, and Cora acknowledged the trust.

“Not ac-
cept
-able?” Jacques was crying.
“C’est la bouillabaisse!”

“Le fish stew,” Hammond echoed. The sherry was dry, and old as the walls. “The famous dish of France.”

“Why don’t we kite it out of here?” Wilhelmina suggested.

“It’s on the schedule,” Hammond answered grimly, meaning some army bureaucrat was on the take and they’d have to somehow get through this lunch.

Jacques looked hurt. Actually, the tray of tentacles was a shock tactic calculated to make them grateful for anything else that might follow. He and Hammond exchanged words and a flurry of hand motions until Jacques shrugged sadly and went away.

“All’s well,” Hammond said brightly. “He’s bringing us the blackboard special.”

Nobody would touch a drop of wine, so it was up to Hammond to take care of the bottle of table red that Jacques had brought. Katie returned looking harried, strays of red hair sticking out on end.

“What’s the matter with you?” Minnie asked.

Katie had suffered a shock going to the ladies’ room. She’d had to first practically feel her way along a dark passage with damp stone walls that smelled as if it had been tunneled out of a sewer, until finding an unmarked door barely lit by a sickly yellow lamp. She was afraid to go in there alone, which paradoxically made the urge more urgent. The door opened to a tiny chamber with sticky floors and grimy walls and a rusted-out toilet that seemed to have no way of flushing. She went anyway and afterward spent several unnerving minutes searching for a hanging chain or a handle on the back until finally spotting a
pedal on the floor. The minuscule sink was just as filthy, gouged with blue-green stains, the faucets incomprehensibly marked
C
and
F
. The
C
faucet brought steaming hot water instead of cold, which sent her fleeing out the door without even fixing her hat, right into the arms of a leering Frenchman.

“I never seen nothin’ like it!” she exclaimed. “The moment I get out of that revolting ladies’ room there’s a disgusting man standin’ in the hall who puts his hand right up my skirt!”