Read Online Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethel - Free Book Online

like you do and fight.’
    â€˜Fight?’ Laurie stared at her incredulously. ‘What do you mean, fight?’
    â€˜There are women battalions,’ Eveline replied a little defensively. ‘I heard a girl talking about one the other day in the queue at Potin’s. They have their own uniforms and guns. They train just as the men do, fight just like the men do.’
    â€˜But it is a ridiculous notion,’ Laurie smiled. ‘You cannot possibly fight!’
    â€˜Why ever not?’ Eveline demanded with a flash of anger. ‘You’re always saying I’m strong as a horse and fearless as a lion.’
    â€˜Yes, well.’ Laurie looked a little taken aback and could only think to repeat: ‘But you do so much already. You have even tended to the wounded in the Palais de L’Industrie.’
    â€˜I do not want to simper at the bedside of a gangrenous soldier,’ she replied dismissively. ‘I leave that to the society women and the cocodettes .’ In truth, she could not bear to see the dead stacked up like biscuits in the green and foetid death shed – it filled her with an impotent disgust.
    Laurie smiled distractedly. ‘I hope you would simper at my bedside… but what about your father and Jacques?’ he repeated.
    â€˜What about them? It is always about them. It is never about me.’
    Laurie said in a gentler tone: ‘That is because they rely on you. Without you they would,’ he wanted to say ‘starve to death’ which was probably true, but instead he said, ‘they could not manage. They could not manage without you, Evie. You know they could not manage.’ He saw the stubborn set of her mouth and went on: ‘There is precious little glory in war, Evie.’
    Her eyes travelled to the uniform hung up behind the back of the door and the chassepot rifle propped against the wall; and she shook her head, angry at his not understanding. ‘It is not about the glory,’ she muttered. ‘You of all people should know that it is not about the glory.’
    He did know. She was too modest and lacking in vanity for it ever to be anything to do with glory. He knew, too, that in a world grown topsy-turvy the only thing that kept him sane was the thought of her back home where she belonged with her father and Jacques, doing the most simple, harmless things: making soup, cleaning the floor, worrying about the overgrown vine and searching for food. He wanted to keep her there on a pin in a corner of his mind, simply for his own comfort; though one day she might wriggle out of his grasp and fly away in all her beauty.
    â€˜I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ he said at last, looking terribly upset and she smiled back at him.
    â€˜How could I ever get hurt?’ She leapt up from the cane chair, galloped over to the little round window and peered out of it. It was still all stars and blackness and in the distance the square-topped belfry of St Jacques. Nobody, not even a mouse, was stirring. There was no need to be afraid. It is only when we wait, Alphonse had said, that we need to be afraid. She turned suddenly and cried out impulsively: ‘Kiss me, Laurie, kiss me. Right here. Right now! Let me stay with you.’
    Laurie stared at her in astonishment, wondering if the drink at St Nicolas had been too much for her. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glittered like a maenad’s. He did not think he had ever seen her look so beautiful, framed as she was before the porthole window, her chestnut hair aglow, her wide red mouth trembling with emotion, her luminous skin… He got up quickly and took her in his arms so that she did not catch sight of the perturbation in his face. He wanted the first time to be perfect, when they were married, when they had their own establishment, when he had published a volume of poetry… not now. Not on the eve of an enemy attack. Not after some wine and a slight