Mercredi, le 10 juillet 1912
Dear Clare,
Eight days of tennis. Can you believe it, Clare? I shook hands with Otto Kreuzer and fetched balls for Albert Canet during a practice. He gave me advice and a ball he had used. I even saw the King of Sweden, who sat straight down the row from me. One day when the competitions were interrupted because of a downpour, Bauer and I snuck onto the outdoor courts for a stolen game (because what is a little rain to the pair of us?). Halfway through, a man in a dripping overcoat approached us and I was sure we were caught and would be deported straight away. Bauer, rule-following German that he is, was terrified. But it wasn’t the Swedish police. Our audience of one was none other than Monsieur Thibauld, the writer and coach. He said that if he didn’t see us on the courts at the Berlin Olympics, he would eat his left shoe. Bauer and I shook on it right there.
You’re right, Clare. The way I feel when I’m on the court, it’s nothing like how I feel in the classroom. Out here, the sun in my eyes, arms burning, feet aching, I feel alive. The way Papa feels with his paintbrush, you with your pencil, even Uncle Théophile with his Iliad. Like this is what I was put on earth to do. Like this is my Something Important.
The games are over, the prizes have been given, and the boat sails tomorrow, but my head is still in the clouds. Clare, do I ever have to come down?
Luc
Marrakesh, Morocco
14 August 1912
Dear Luc,
We’ve moved again. That Berber dialect. You were right in your guess of Africa, as now we are in Marrakesh.
Oh, Luc, all of the languages swirling in the marketplace, the stacks of warm clay jars, the smell of spices in the air! Rugs woven in reds and oranges and deep nighttime blues. Women swathed in white, edging through the streets with baskets on their head. Melons as big as fairy tales. Rows of pointed leather shoes, every color on the palette. Streets tented by billowing sheets of cotton, freshly dyed and drying in the hot breeze. I try to paint the way your father explained, to capture all the quickness and light of the souks, but my colors run together. There’s too much here to take in. Grandfather had an easel made for me by a man in the Carpenter’s Souk. It’s flimsy, but it stands straight and folds when I want it to and smells wonderfully of cedar.
I read your letter from Sweden, knowing that you understood. I’m in the clouds and, Luc, I can’t feel the ground beneath me. I feel the way I did that time in the steam of Marthe’s kitchen when we confessed our passions. You doubted yours then, but now, hearing you claim it, hearing you want it, I feel we can conquer the world. I won’t let anything weigh me down. I can’t imagine stagnating away in that house in Scotland the way my mother did for so many years, rather than being here, where everything is warm with life and possibility. I can’t imagine trading all of this for a quiet domestic life. At this moment, I’m standing at the path to my own Something Important. I just have to trust myself to take the first step.
Clare
Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris
Lundi, le 9 septembre 1912
Dear Clare,
He’s gone and done it. Poor Uncle Jules has gone to the great dueling ground in the sky.
The other night he was as drunk as a marquis and, at intermission, challenged a playgoer who made some uncomplimentary remarks about Véronique’s legs. Uncle Jules’s secret shame was that he’d grown nearsighted and so his shot missed by a kilometer. The other gentleman was just as nearsighted and, unfortunately, hit my uncle square in the chest. He’d planned to delope, as he was Uncle Jules’s next-door neighbor and oldest friend, but didn’t miss the shot as he intended. We are sad, of course, but Jules always said that it was the way he wanted to go. Either that, or on the field in glorious battle. He’ll have to settle for a somewhat blind and botched duel.
Véronique has draped the apartment in meters of black crepe, even down to the birds’ cages. She goes around dabbing at her eyes and murmuring about what a “good run” they had. She’s vowed to not drink Champagne until after the funeral. Uncle Théophile is measuring how long before he can evict her and sell the apartment to cover Jules’s latest round of debts. In the week before his death, he bought seven new pairs of shoes. Jules, that is; Théophile has worn the same pair for a decade. The apartment, though, is in Véronique’s name, and she won’t budge a centimeter. Papa spends his time sniffling around the black-draped salon and leaving all the arrangements to his older brother.
The amazing thing is that I was in Uncle Jules’s will, too. He left me a sizable amount, to be held in trust until I turn twenty-one, only a year off. It will come in handy when I’m in the army, I’m sure. I’ve heard that recruits are willing to be bribed in wine. He also left me Demetrius and Lysander, though two foul-mouthed parrots are less of an asset in the army. Véronique has said she’ll care for them when I leave next fall and has invited me to come visit the parrots, and her, whenever I happen to be in Paris.
Life moves on in its grand march. Though some companions only walk along with us for part of the journey, we’ll always hear the echo of their footsteps.
Luc
Marrakesh, Morocco
1 October 1912
Dear Luc,
Things are as usual here. Grandfather’s widow friend brought over a tagine again. It’s disgusting, how he’ll smile and simper and eat around the pieces of mutton so that he doesn’t have to admit that he follows a Pythagorean diet. With as often as she comes around, I don’t imagine she’ll stop if she finds out that he doesn’t eat meat.
When she started making camel eyes at him (and she always does), I escaped to the Djemma el Fna. Grandfather thinks it’s too crowded and no place for a girl, but I wear a robe and scarf and, anyway, I have a bicycle now. I’m faster than I used to be. And besides, I can’t resist going. All of the snake charmers and storytellers and dancers in their horned hats. The square is so full of life.
With that heavy paper you sent, I’ve taken to sketching the water sellers. They’re usually young boys in tattered robes, bent under the water skins on their backs and the strings of tin bowls around their necks. If I keep buying bowls of water, they’ll patiently ignore me while I draw. There’s one, a boy with a limp, who reminds me of you. He’s always on the edges of the group, looking like he’s waiting to begin life. But his eyes watch me. Though he’s afraid to say a word to me—a girl, and a Western girl at that—he looks as though, more than anything, he needs someone to listen. It still amazes me that, after so many years, you let me listen to you. As long as I can, I’ll walk with you on your “grand march.”
I love it here, the swirl and commotion of the markets, the color-drenched scarves and robes, the aching warmth of the clay walls. I speak Moroccan French now, and a spattering of Arabic, and I can bargain like a camel trader. Everything is so alive. And yet, all someone has to do is mention the word “Scotland,” and I’m suddenly hungry for it. I can smell gorse in the air, hear the Tummel rippling past, feel the breath from the Highlands. In those moments, I want to be there, too.
Grandfather doesn’t understand. Whenever I mention Perthshire to him, he just laughs and waves a hand and says, “Isn’t it better to be away from there?” I know Grandfather and why he’s been away so long. It was my grandmother’s death and all of the things that remind him of her. For him, memories haunt the halls of Fairbridge, though they are memories softened by distance. It has been too long since he’s known the word “home.” These days, the whole world is his home.