At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [66]
It would be dusk soon. He must find a billet of some kind for the night, maybe three nights. He did not really want to find Punch Fuller, but he had to try. Damn Major Northrup for his stupidity, a father too blind to let his son lie buried in peace.
He found a room; it was small and expensive, but quite clean. The landlady made him an omelette with herbs and charged for it extortionately. But it was the best meal he had eaten since the early spring and he told her so with gratitude. There was no tea, and the coffee was bitter, but at least it was served in a cup, not a Dixie can, and there was no taste of oil to it.
He slept late, vaguely discomforted by the physical ease of a bed, and the silence compared with the guns he was used to. It should have wrapped him round in peace, but it didn’t.
He went out again, asking first at the half dozen or so small hotels he knew the men used when in Paris. He kept his chaplain’s collar showing to allay suspicion that his search had any ill intent, but it didn’t help. He spoke of Punch Fuller by name, and described him fairly closely: his long nose and sharp chin, his slightly rolling walk, his ready wit. They all stared at him with blank faces, many openly hostile.
Then he tried the cafés, bars, and other drinking places—all without success. By near midnight again he was nursing a glass of rough red wine in a nightclub in the cellar of one of the older hotels. There were several other British soldiers there. They seemed determined to stay awake for every precious hour of leave, savor it to the last breath of smoky, wine-filled atmosphere, hear every aching note of the music from the three-piece band. A middle-aged woman with a thin body sang in a languorous voice filled with heartbreak.
Suddenly Joseph could no longer keep from his mind the awareness of how everything had changed since he was last here on leave himself, too short a time to go home. It was only three months ago, but now it was all just a little shabbier; a few more chairs were broken and not mended, and the tables more deeply scarred. Windows were cracked, lamps missing pieces of colored glass. It was this room he could see as he sat, but in his mind it was everywhere. Coffee was thin and bitter. Women’s faces were bleak, numbed with loss. Clothes were patched and repaired, the few shreds of style left a little more desperate. Outside there was uncollected rubbish blowing in the gutters, and windows were boarded up where there was no glass to mend them.
The comradeship was still there, the anger and the pain, and a shred of the old ironic wit. But the shell was thin, and too near to breaking.
Joseph sipped his wine again and watched the group of Tommies at the bar. None of them looked more than twenty, several far younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. They were laughing too loudly. They thought they were pretending to be brave, knowing that tomorrow or the next day they were going back to be killed. Joseph knew the courage was real—but behind the stupid jokes, white faces were slicked with the sweat of uncertainty and fear. Finally, Joseph realized, each man was desperately alone.
The three-piece band started a Cole Porter song. Porter himself was somewhere here in Paris, so Joseph had heard, but he would be in a better place than this, more sophisticated.
He should start looking for Punch Fuller again. He had to tell General Northrup that he had tried. Stupid man. The truth would hurt everyone, himself most of all.
And yet Joseph knew that some Englishman had shot Major Northrup on purpose, to save him from bringing on them even more destruction, and more of his friends sacrificed for nothing. Did duty require you to die pointlessly? If Punch were to ask him that, what would he say?
He had no idea. Too many of the old certainties were gone. Once he would have known exactly what to say to Morel about honor and