Beautiful things, made more so by contrast with the scorch marks that ran along the foundation of her sitting room. Doris had had most of the interior rooms gutted and repaired, but intentionally left that one corner unretouched, the soot and burn marks reminding her of the life she had nearly lost, along with her home.
The phrase “war godmothers” did not sound nearly as romantic asmarraines de guerre, Doris thought, and wondered if it was merely a function of the translation, or whether the French language was inherently more beautiful than English. She didn’t like that the English phrase used “god” in the title. Since this war had begun, Doris sometimes doubted whether He had ever existed at all, or whether He had merely grown tired of human antics and forsaken them.
She could hardly blame Him, if so.
It was unusual for an Australian woman to be amarraine de guerre—as she had just penned to the young Monsieur Émile Legrand, mostmarraineswere French. But Doris had not hesitated to use her money to make it happen; one way or another, she would do her part for the war effort.
And she had always wanted a child to pass her wisdom on to. Not that she had much wisdom, but she supposed some inevitably came with age, no matter how one tried to hide from it. What else was money for, after all? To find the name and essential military address of one Émile Legrand, a simple farm boy from the outskirts of Reims, in the region of Champagne, in the north of France, not far from the borders with Germany and Belgium. The site of the fiercest fighting.
What else should she tell her new “godson” about herself? Doris leaned over the desk once again and reached for her pen, the kind that had a reservoir of ink inside the barrel, the clever thing. Her husband had insisted on buying these extravagantly priced fountain pens, preferring them over the dip pens that stained so easily. She supposed that was yet another thing she should thank him for.
She started to write, then hesitated, her pen held aloft. Her girlhood friend Caroline Bickley had urged Doris not to reveal her wealth or marital status, for fear she might be taken advantage of.A soldier may be fighting for a noble cause,Caroline had said sternly overthe rim of her teacup.But that does not mean that all soldiers are noble.And indeed, the flyer that described the idealmarraineunderscored the importance of not becoming too personal—some of the public already considered correspondence between unmarried men and women without benefit of chaperones a touch unsavory.
People were ridiculous.
I am so sorry that you have been compelled to go to war at such a young age. I imagine you garbed in your uniform of sky blue trousers and jacket, as we have seen described in our newspapers. The traditional uniform of bright red trousers was very smart, though I understand it made you more visible to those dastardly Huns!
I am sure you are very brave, but I know you would rather be dressed in your simple muslins, guiding the plow and bringing in the harvest. Please tell me what you can about your life before the war, and even now; perhaps it would be a solace to you to share your experiences with a “mother” so very far away.
I assure you, I am not a delicate flower, and I read every account of the war that comes to us, no matter the wretchedness of the violence. I do not fear the darkness. If it is any succor to you to share with me, please describe to me your life in the trenches.
Doris caught a glimpse of herself, distorted in the reflection of the curved glass doors of an intricately inlaid curio cabinet imported from England.
Her father had always instructed Doris to make the most of her winsome good looks, and ever the obedient child, she had obeyed, catching the eye of the richest man in the county, RichardWhittaker. For all the good his fortune had done her. She was scarred now, not from a fist but from a life of bitterness. Her plump, youthful face had not aged well, and over the years, it had settled into the hard angles and sharp planes of disappointment and resentment. No children, no husband, sitting in her fire-damaged mansion with a staff who cared for her because she paid them to. Her once-lithe figure was now heavy and clumsy, due to her fondness for pastries and tea cakes. Food and wine were her last indulgences.
Her only other source of happiness was her collection of dollhouses.
There was a Cotswold cottage, a Venetian town house, a Tokyo home with small rice paper doors. And within, tiny mothers and fathers, even tinier children. Pets and grandparents. Families. Symbols of lives Doris would never live, but could fantasize about.
She peeked into the windows of her newest acquisition: a petite French farmhouse, complete with stone walls. She had asked the doll maker to build it when she read about the victory of the Marne, followed by the siege of Reims and the bombardment of the cathedral. Inside the farmhouse, three miniature baguettes sat on the big wooden kitchen table, alongside a mound of diminutive produce and petite baskets of apples. The mother worked in the kitchen; the father brought home a rabbit for dinner. Bundles of herbs—thyme and lavender—hung from the rafters. A fiddle sat in the corner; she imagined the father played in the evenings, when the family gathered around the stone hearth, a large iron pot of simmering stew hanging from a hook above the red-orange embers.
It was a simple house, a happy home.
Doris thought of the invading Germans—the “barbarian Huns,” as the English and Australian press had started to call them—marching across the fields of Belgium and France, tipping over the water troughs for the horses, slaughtering the cows and sheep to feedthemselves, terrorizing the children. Turning the neat green fields red with blood...
Best not to think about that. The French—with the British and Australians and other allies—would fight valiantly against the invading hordes. And they would be victorious.
Theyhadto be victorious.
After finishing her letter to Émile, Doris would take on the unpleasant task of writing to influential friends in the United States, telling them in no uncertain terms that their nation must not stay neutral but must rally to the support of their good friends France and England.
Doris thought of the day the messenger came to the door with the news of her husband’s death. He had shot himself, the drunken fool, when his pistol fired as he climbed over a fence chasing a black cockatoo he was convinced had insulted him. It was a stupid and entirely avoidable act of an idiot, and exactly the sort of thing she had come to expect of him. Doris referred to her husband’s untimely demise with the polite fiction “a hunting accident,” and those who knew the truth tactfully pretended they didn’t.
As Caroline Bickley had swathed Doris in the customary widow’s weeds, she counseled: “Chin up, my dear. There is something peculiarly compelling about a widow who has found her voice.”
Finally, Doris concluded her letter to Émile, the simple French farm boy, with a quotation:
The American writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “In the Heavens above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of ‘Mother.’” I am sure you have a true mother who is thinking of you, and I have no intention, still less the ability, to replace her, but I thank you for allowing me to be yourmarraine de guerre, just for now. Just until the nightmare is over.
Once the missive was composed, Doris set about the onerous task of translating it into her finishing school French—something else she should thank her husband for. She had come to him a “diamond in the rough,” as he’d liked to say, and he’d said it often. They met when she was fifteen, and he nearly forty. With her parents’ enthusiastic approval, Richard sent her to finishing school to be trained and molded into the proper society wife he believed he deserved. Doris had been willing enough at the time—she was barely more than a child, she reflected—and she had learned many things during those years.
Quite enough, her dear brother, Louis, liked to say, to ensure Doris would never become a proper wife.
She stared at the letter, once again hesitating. Finally, she signed it:
Yours truly,
Mrs. Doris Dickinson Whittaker
