Le Temps des Cerises Read Free

read: Here Silence is Always Kept and Insubordination is Everywhere , Sister Agnes’ confession was delivered of its own accord in the shape of a tiny blue baby girl, amidst much shouting and hysteria on the part of everyone concerned except for the Mother Superior who whispered for all she was worth and Brother Michael who stood open mouthed and tugging at his blue twill apron as if he were tolling the angelus.

Chapter two

    21 st December 1870

    Dearest Maman,
    Here I am in the thick of it still, as you see – though thank God I sleep on my own bed tonight instead of this wretched straw pallet. The mud is almost up to our knees after the sudden thaw but it is still bitterly cold. Those socks you sent to me via Monsieur K. are a godsend, Maman. A real godsend. It is the coldest winter ever they say. Of course it would be!
    I have still not a scratch upon me, having seen no real action. Alphonse has his chest wound from Le Bourget which aches a little more, he says, when a pretty girl goes past! I envy him sometimes: his spontaneity, his ready engagement with life, the ability to slough off an identity yet still be the same, to wake up bright and breezy day after day. Constancy above all in all things. I am weak willed as a woman. I wish that something would happen – anything – if only to see if I could bear it. All this waiting around will be the death of me. We while away the time somehow with cards and dominoes – wine is plentiful! We have a few tables and chairs dotted about – a little sitting room at the ramparts! All I need to feel at home is a roaring fire, some toasted muffins, you knitting quietly in your armchair and Molly thumping away on the piano! Tell her I expect a perfect rendition of the Moonlight Sonata when I next see her!
    You would not recognise the city if you came to visit. It is quite simply a fortress: the Louvre an armament shop, the Bon Marché a hospital (all your favourite calicoes and linens being used to mop up the wounded!), the squares nothing more than parade grounds. Not a single stump is left in the Bois de Boulogne and the lime trees you loved so on the Boulevard Haussmann have all gone for firewood. We have no lighting after dark (Paris, city of light, extinguished!), the Prussians having cut off our coal supply from Belgium; and few carriages are to be seen because (don’t read this bit out to Molly) the horses have all been eaten (Paris, city of the gourmet, famished!). Nobody knows how to make it palatable. Copies of The Practical Cuisine are selling like hotcakes apparently as uppercrust housekeepers search for tips on ‘how to dress exotic meats’! The rest of Paris searches for tips on how to dress thin air. I dream of a cheese green as an emerald and...

    Laurie broke off from his letter to blow on his numbed fingers, stamp his feet and take a sip of the watery coffee commonly referred to as mouth warmer – because the only thing it was good for was warming one’s mouth. He rolled it around his tongue like a wine then spat it out again. What didn’t he dream of here in this ruined landscape, acres of dreary white before him, the city like a crouching beast behind him. What didn’t they all dream of but to win the war, get out of this stupid futile mess and go back home for good instead of this endless to-ing and fro-ing; though in fairness, he had to admit, some wanted it, to some it was an adventure, like Alphonse maybe, or the little gunner who rubbed his cannon down as if it were a horse or a woman and made snowmen on sentry duty just for the hell of it. Laurie crunched on the stale biscuit he’d been saving in his mess tin and reread the page he’d just written, wondering if its tone was sufficiently buoyant. He spent a long time over his letters, believing them to be a filial and fraternal duty, digging up curious and unusual anecdotes to entertain his mother and sister who sat in Toulouse in blissful ignorance.