Read Online The Race for Paris by Meg Waite Clayton - Free Book Online
Authors: Meg Waite Clayton
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capturing the flag and the flowers against the rubble gray.
Fletcher sighed. “I do have an idea. For today, anyway.”
Then to me, again with the charming little bit of smile, just enough to convey warmth while remaining respectful of the circumstances, “I’m Fletcher Roebuck, by the way. I’m afraid Livvie here has lost her proper manners. Her husband, Charles, and I are chums.”
He shook my hand, his fingernails dark with dirt.
“Fletcher,” I repeated, lingering on the comfortable flick of his name.
OUTSIDE SAINT-LÔ
TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1944
[Lee Miller, under house arrest for her actions at Saint-Malo] was rubbing eau de cologne all over herself because she’d been bitten by fleas. I told her calamine would be better, and gave her some of mine.
—Journalist Catherine Coyne
F letcher’s jeep—a thing with no doors and a hairline crack in its windshield—had a propensity to find and share every bump and hole in the road. Liv sat in the passenger seat, her lens trained on the military trucks moving troops and supplies, the roadside littered with gum wrappers and cigarette butts, the summer-green landscape ahead carved with unexpected strips of black. I braced myself with one hand and held my Corona in my lap with the other as we banked into a turn, our rucksacks shifting sideways, pressing the two side buckles on my boot into my leg. I righted my typewriter again, and as I tried to make something of the flag and the flowers and the door stretcher and the soldiers we’d left behind, the dust everywhere,I envied Liv and Fletcher their cameras, their ability to capture a moment as they observed it and then leave it behind.
Fletcher relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, leaving a single index finger there. “Your military will have someone looking for you two in no time, Liv,” he said. “They probably already do.”
L iv had met Fletcher just twice before that morning, although Charles and Fletcher had known each other for years. The first time she’d met him, at the New York Daily Press office just after she and Charles had become engaged, Fletcher had asked Liv to bring him tea—with lemon, he’d said; his blunder, his presumption, mistaking her for an office girl—and she’d set him right, she’d answered, “You must be Fletcher Roebuck, then,” in a tone meant to leave no doubt she’d heard enough about him to disapprove and didn’t mind if he knew she did. Still, she’d been the embarrassed one.
They’d met a second time when Liv and Charles had bumped into Fletcher at the Palm Court in London, the day before she was to cross the Channel. Fletcher invited them to stay the night at his family’s country home, Trefoil Hall—which Charles had visited when he and Fletcher had returned from Poland years before. It wasn’t far from the port where Liv was to disembark. Fletcher hadn’t meant to go with them to Chichester, he’d meant to stay the night in London, but Charles somehow persuaded him to drive them down.
As the high turrets flanking the arched central entry to Trefoil came into view, the vaulting windows and stone gargoyles, Charles said to Liv, “Didn’t I tell you it was a castle? Tell her the story about your grandfather, Fletch.”
“My great-great-great-great-grand uncle ,” Fletcher said.
Charles waved off the correction with a flip of his hand and a dismissive “Uncle, grandfather. He won the place in a card game.”
“A game of vingt-et-un did have a bit to do with it,” Fletcher conceded. “The ace of clubs my distant uncle flipped up didn’t win him the property, but it did gain him the fortune to build it. Yet it makes rather a better story to imagine the house itself at stake, doesn’t it?”
“The house is shaped like an ace of clubs,” Charles explained to Liv. “A third turret overlooking the sea in the back matches these front two.”
“The neighbors think it in abominable taste,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher sighed. “I do have an idea. For today, anyway.”
Then to me, again with the charming little bit of smile, just enough to convey warmth while remaining respectful of the circumstances, “I’m Fletcher Roebuck, by the way. I’m afraid Livvie here has lost her proper manners. Her husband, Charles, and I are chums.”
He shook my hand, his fingernails dark with dirt.
“Fletcher,” I repeated, lingering on the comfortable flick of his name.
OUTSIDE SAINT-LÔ
TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1944
[Lee Miller, under house arrest for her actions at Saint-Malo] was rubbing eau de cologne all over herself because she’d been bitten by fleas. I told her calamine would be better, and gave her some of mine.
—Journalist Catherine Coyne
F letcher’s jeep—a thing with no doors and a hairline crack in its windshield—had a propensity to find and share every bump and hole in the road. Liv sat in the passenger seat, her lens trained on the military trucks moving troops and supplies, the roadside littered with gum wrappers and cigarette butts, the summer-green landscape ahead carved with unexpected strips of black. I braced myself with one hand and held my Corona in my lap with the other as we banked into a turn, our rucksacks shifting sideways, pressing the two side buckles on my boot into my leg. I righted my typewriter again, and as I tried to make something of the flag and the flowers and the door stretcher and the soldiers we’d left behind, the dust everywhere,I envied Liv and Fletcher their cameras, their ability to capture a moment as they observed it and then leave it behind.
Fletcher relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, leaving a single index finger there. “Your military will have someone looking for you two in no time, Liv,” he said. “They probably already do.”
L iv had met Fletcher just twice before that morning, although Charles and Fletcher had known each other for years. The first time she’d met him, at the New York Daily Press office just after she and Charles had become engaged, Fletcher had asked Liv to bring him tea—with lemon, he’d said; his blunder, his presumption, mistaking her for an office girl—and she’d set him right, she’d answered, “You must be Fletcher Roebuck, then,” in a tone meant to leave no doubt she’d heard enough about him to disapprove and didn’t mind if he knew she did. Still, she’d been the embarrassed one.
They’d met a second time when Liv and Charles had bumped into Fletcher at the Palm Court in London, the day before she was to cross the Channel. Fletcher invited them to stay the night at his family’s country home, Trefoil Hall—which Charles had visited when he and Fletcher had returned from Poland years before. It wasn’t far from the port where Liv was to disembark. Fletcher hadn’t meant to go with them to Chichester, he’d meant to stay the night in London, but Charles somehow persuaded him to drive them down.
As the high turrets flanking the arched central entry to Trefoil came into view, the vaulting windows and stone gargoyles, Charles said to Liv, “Didn’t I tell you it was a castle? Tell her the story about your grandfather, Fletch.”
“My great-great-great-great-grand uncle ,” Fletcher said.
Charles waved off the correction with a flip of his hand and a dismissive “Uncle, grandfather. He won the place in a card game.”
“A game of vingt-et-un did have a bit to do with it,” Fletcher conceded. “The ace of clubs my distant uncle flipped up didn’t win him the property, but it did gain him the fortune to build it. Yet it makes rather a better story to imagine the house itself at stake, doesn’t it?”
“The house is shaped like an ace of clubs,” Charles explained to Liv. “A third turret overlooking the sea in the back matches these front two.”
“The neighbors think it in abominable taste,” Fletcher said.
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