He did have a way about him, Lilian said, stepping in the snow, not the least aware that the canvas on her uppers was wet through.

Some days before lunch she made the awful time pleasant by writing Walter Vail. She wrote on her tilted writing desk or took paper outside on the terrace despite the bitter air. She wrote less than she would have liked, not wanting to bombard him. Still, she figured many letters wouldn’t reach him. She addressed him Dear Walter and signed herself Yours, Lilian. She tried to be amusing — soldiers would want to hear of gay things.

She received one letter from him and memorized every word. The letter did not strike as many personal notes as she would have liked, but then he was in a war.

March 17, 1918

Dear Lilian,

I am here in Rheims where you had told me of the cathedral and I wanted to let you know what has become of it. The town is awfully blown up. The streets are full of shell holes and the townspeople go about setting off the ‘duds’ stuck in the walls, ruining things further. I saw a picture of the cathedral in a book someone had last week and from the front I could imagine how it looked before its injury. Some of the front carvings up to thirty feet were saved by the sandbags and the clock had been removed for safety. One can still see the colored glazes. But up close you see the back and the sides which have been badly blasted and destroyed and much of the roof has fallen through. The ribs of one chapel roof still stand like a whale skeleton. I received a few fragments of red and blue glass and the guide who gave them to me said that often people shed a tear. I suppose I looked unmoved.

Many shells had burst inside and people were sorting through the fragments. An old Roman gate still stood and some statues as well. I saw a bearded, wise-looking man put a head together. That’s what has become of the cathedral. I remember your having admired it.

If you were here you would jump over the ditches and climb the barbed wire, not like the rest of us sad tired fellows.

Yours,

Walter Vail

II: Walter Vail

II

Walter Vail

15 • No return

THE WAR was over, but Walter Vail did not return. He had not been wounded, Lilian knew, and he certainly had not been killed — the Fenwicks would have known right away. He had simply not come back when the others did.