“Oh, I don’t know....”
“It would be great for your French.”
“Yes, I’ll have a great vocabulary the next time I want to chat about bombs, blood, and barbed wire. But honestly, Emma, you’re asking me to take on a lot of responsibility. What if... what if something happened to the letters?” asked Rosalyn. “They’re irreplaceable.”
“What would happen to them?” asked Blondine.
“I don’t know.... They could get wet, or burned, or...” Rosalyn trailed off with a shrug and reverted to English. “I’m such a klutz lately. The other week, I left my e-reader on my car roof and drove off. What if I spilled coffee on them, or left them in a café somewhere?”
“What is ‘klutz’?” Blondine asked.
“Empotée,”said Emma.“Maladroite.”
“Huh.You’rea klutz?” said Blondine. “Emma’s the one with the broken leg. And last time she was here, she had a cast on her arm.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Emma laughed. “Anyway, Rosalyn, that’s catastrophic thinking, and that’s not good for anybody. Nothing’s going to happen to the letters, and if it does—well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. They’ve been scanned into the computer, so you could read them that way if it would make you feel better. But I warn you: The letters are aloteasier to read in person, what withthe faded ink, the old-fashioned handwriting, and the holes and deletions from the military censors.”
As Emma spoke, Rosalyn silently agreed. It was the feeling of the letters in her hands, the tangible connection to history, that had attracted her to them in the first place. Reading digitized images on a computer screen wouldn’t be the same.
“Besides,” continued Emma, “you saw what happened to them on the plane. If they’re going to be damaged or destroyed, it’s much likelier to happen when they’re in my possession than in yours. At least you have two good legs. Blondine’s right. I’m like Calamity Jane.”
More like the Unsinkable Molly Brown,Rosalyn thought to herself.
“At the very least we should put them in plastic sleeves to protect them,” said Rosalyn.
“My father has a whole bunch in the office that we use for our wine tastings,” said Blondine. “Want me to get some?”
“They’re not archival quality,” said Emma. “But they’ll do in a pinch.”
And so the three women spent the next hour carefully inserting old letters into protective plastic sleeves, until Emma had to leave for an appointment and Blondine needed to cover the phones in the office. Later that morning, André brought another two boxes full of letters down toChambre Chardonnay. As Emma had said, there were hundreds, spanning years.
It dawned on Rosalyn that, what with Emma and André sharing thegîte, Blondine now at work daily in the office, and Gaspard Blé arriving soon, her peculiar countryside hermitage had come to an end.
Strangely enough, the realization didn’t cast her into despair.
Chapter Eighteen
Rosalyn couldn’t help herself: she dove into the letters, and spent the rest of the day struggling with the French and reading the faded—and often censored—words.
She started with an easy one: Doris’s first letter. The script was slanted and florid, with decorative swirls and bobs that looked lovely but were difficult to decipher, like ornate calligraphy. But at least it was in English.
November 13, 1914
Dear Monsieur Legrand:
It seems odd to be writing to someone I have never met, and am unlikely ever to meet. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doris Dickinson Whittaker, and I live near a town named Coonawara, in Australia. Although half the blood in my veins is French, thanks to my dear departed mother, I learned her native language in school rather than at her knee. I am therefore committing the great sin of composing this letter inEnglish first, and then translating it into the French as I remember from school, with the loyal but occasionally unreliable assistance of the great, fat dictionary that sits upon my desk.
A friend of mine told me about themarraines de guerre, the women who write to boys on the front, to boost their spirits and remind them of home and country. And yet you, my poor Émile, must be content with an Australianmarraine, one who can’t possibly remind you of home and hearth and country! But I hope that our correspondence may remind you, at least in part, of what you are fighting for.
For I am with you brave French boys, in heart and soul.
Doris
Australia
1914
Doris sat back in her fine leather chair, the unfinished letter on the gleaming mahogany desk in front of her. She gazed at the ornate grandfather clock and the carved marble mantelpiece, the tasseled velvet curtains and the embroidered silk pillows adorning the velvet love seat. The things her husband had provided for her.
