Sara’s thoughts drifted from Paris to London to Avonlea. The pages she wrote then would have been incomprehensible to anyone but herself, as the words were tangled thoughts that spilled out of her mind onto paper in no particular order. Her diary was chaotic; she was used to chaos.
“Sara Stanley!” Sara turned in her seat. Olivia stood in the doorway of the kitchen, holding a glass kerosene lamp in her hand. “What on earth are you doing up at this hour?”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Olivia. I-I couldn’t sleep. I suppose I’m not used to sleeping much at night.”
Olivia blew out her lamp and set it on the table, so that her features were only illuminated by Sara’s candle. Even in the low light, Sara could see an expression of concern on her aunt’s face and in her eyes. Olivia sat down at the table. “Why is that, Sara?”
Sara studied her hands. “Gunshots,” she replied softly. “I used to hear them at night. All the time. It kept me awake. If I fell asleep at all, I heard bombs exploding and gunshots. Even in the morning when I woke up. I don’t think it ever stopped.” Sara looked at her aunt and said in an almost laughing tone. “You know what I used to do, just so I could sleep at night? I pretended it was a thunderstorm.”
Olivia placed a comforting arm around her niece. She noticed the yellow glimmer of a gold cross that hung around her neck. Her eyes fell on the diary, covered in Sara’s unusually untidy handwriting. “Oh, Sara,” Olivia leaned her dark head against Sara’s golden one. “You’re so young to have had to face all of that. I wish there were some way I could help you.”
“It has to end,” Sara replied. Olivia left her niece’s side to start a pot of tea. The clock in the parlour chimed two.
“Aunt Olivia?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you ever-would you ever leave Uncle Jasper behind?”
“Jasper? Oh, well, no, Sara. I wouldn’t. Not if I could help it. Why?” Sara averted her aunt’s gaze. “So there is a young man.”
Sara smiled wanly. “Dr. Henri D’Aulaire.” It was the first time Sara had said his name since leaving Paris. “He convinced me to leave France. I-I begged him to come with me. He told me-he told me I didn’t belong there. He’s right. But I don’t belong in Avonlea, either. I can’t go back to Montreal. I just want to stay here in London. I feel so safe here.”
Olivia turned to her niece and looked squarely at her. “Sara, it’s not like you to shy away form something like this--”
“I ran away from Henri…I shouldn’t have let him convince me to leave. How could I have ever--”
“You left because you love him. I know that’s hard to make sense of, but you’ll see. Oh, Sara. It pains me to see you so unhappy. You know Jasper and I would do anything, anything at all for you, Sara. After all, you’re the one who brought us together.” Sara smiled, the first one of her illuminating smiles that Olivia had seen in months. There was something different in her smile, though. Something not missing, but altogether changed.
“I didn’t bring you and Uncle Jasper together, Aunt Olivia. You did that yourselves. I just showed you the way.”
Olivia put her arm around her niece and held her close. Sara seemed so lost. I want to return the favour, Olivia thought. “Tell me all about your doctor, Sara,” she said as she poured the tea into two delicate china cups. “Knowing you, he’s tall, dark, romantic and handsome. Tell me how you met.”
“It was August of last year,” she began. “The war had just started and everyone thought it would only last a few weeks. I was concerned, of course, but I thought it would end soon. Soldiers were arriving in steamers every day, and it was like this big, long party. It was like there was nothing that could disturb my Paris.
“It was so warm, even for August. I always went out at night with my friends I had made, usually Katherine DuMaine.” Sara’s eyes sparkled as she remembered Paris as it had been. Her Paris. It had been so sophisticated in an almost innocent way. “There was this café that the soldiers went to some nights. It had a reputation of being…well…a little wild. I was so intoxicated with Paris that night. I can’t even find the words to describe the atmosphere of Paris.” Olivia raised her eyebrows at this. It must have been indescribable indeed. “We could hear artillery fire in the distance, but it just added to the excitement.”
* * *
“Let’s go in,” Sara said excitedly in front of the door of the café.”
“Sara, we can’t,” protested Katherine’s friend Clarissa. “It’s full of soldiers.”
“Only cheap girls go into places like that,” agreed Katherine. “Sara!” It was too late. Sara had already entered the café and Katherine and Clarissa had no choice but to reluctantly follow her in.
Inside, soldiers were milling around. There were enlisted drummers, pipers, and fiddlers playing songs and the soldiers were swinging pretty French girls around the room. They were shouting and laughing. The music got to Sara. It was so intense and colourful. She tried to put it into words as best as she could in her mind so that she could write about it in her diary when she went back to her apartment. It was like the first time she had heard Booth Elliot play ragtime on the piano in the parlour of Rose Cottage. It was alive like that.
Soldiers approached Sara and asked her to dance. She assented readily, much to the horror of Katherine and Clarissa.
There were French girls on whom, in Katherine’s opinion, one could not tell where the rouge ended and the skin began and they were squealing with laughter as the soldiers swung them around the wooden dance floor. Sara saw a few of the girls gather in the centre of the room and they began a fast-paced French folk dance. The soldiers enthusiastically cheered them. She was reminded of a dance that she had been taught when she was living in Avonlea; one that her aunt Hetty would be horrified to know that she knew. It was a dance that she had learned from Gus Pike and he had learned it at the Cannery. She removed her hat and boldly stepped into the middle of the French girls and began it, each step reminding her of the next and the next. The soldiers liked it and the tempo of the music increased and the sound of her shoes made against the wooden floor became louder and louder. The other girls stopped dancing. All attention was on her.
Suddenly, he was there.
He caught her eye while she was dancing and held her gaze. Her eyes concentrated on him and the rest of her body danced. Her cheeks burned. He was tall, with black hair that was cut close to his head. He wore a khaki uniform and a white armband with a red cross on his sleeve. He wasn’t cheering like the rest of the soldiers. She had noticed him when she came in, but only looked at him for a second. He had been in the corner of the café, reading. She wasn’t sure if he was handsome or not. He just stood there and looked into her eyes. The song finished and its rhythm was still beating in Sara’s heart.
She didn’t see him again until she became a nurse. As the war progressed into lasting a month, and then two, Sara began to take the war more seriously than did those around her. She felt that she had to do something. She wasn’t indifferent to it at first, but she, like so many, thought it wouldn’t last. Paris had been so wonderful, so cultured, so alive, and so vibrant. She felt inspired there. Sara performed very well at L’ecole de beaux arts and had even published a few stories in French magazines. She eagerly translated them to her relatives in Avonlea, and sent them along with her letters. She was exhilarated that her dream of becoming a writer was finally being realised; she would be able to touch people with her stories, even those not fortunate enough to hear Sara tell a story. She frequented coffee-houses on obscure streets and exchanged her ideas, stories and poems with others. Her professors and writers she met encouraged her. She loved the society of Paris. There were balls almost every weekend. Sara was able to indulge her taste in beautiful clothes without the scrutiny of Nanny Louisa and Aunt Hetty. She sent gifts home now and then. A complete set of the greatest books in the Western world in Braille for Gus, spring dresses for Cecily and Felicity, the most fascinating toys for Daniel and, under scathing protests from Hetty in the form of letters, gifts for Davey and Dora, Rachel and herself. Reports came in to her from her trustees and she handled them with the responsibility and business sense that had made her father so prosperous.
She had to admit that she was at first drawn to the romance of the profession. She knew it could help her write. After the first few days, she realised she wasn’t content just tending to the wounded. She would sit by each one and read to them, write letters for them, talk to them about who they were, who they had been, and who they wanted to be. She didn’t know all the soldiers at the hospital, but she knew quite a few, and they all gradually came to know her. In every one of them, she saw Felix. She saw Gus Pike, the Pettibone boys, Elbert Werts, Davey Keith. The list went on. She saw someone’s son, someone’s sweetheart, someone’s husband, someone’s brother, and someone’s friend. She read to them. She read everything she could find: books she had brought from home, books that they carried with them into battle, her favourite passages from the Bible, magazines. Once she managed a makeshift magic lantern show, the type she had given so long ago in Avonlea. And she would sing to them. She sang songs her uncle Alec had taught her, the maritime songs of Gus Pike, songs about the Island and the latest ragtime songs.
On some nights, the soldiers would wake each other, whispering excitedly that Miss Stanley had come, and she was going to tell a story. They, like the King children, always knew when Sara had a story to tell. She told tales of innocence, adventure, tales she had spun in a dimly lit kitchen thousands of miles and years away; tales in an orchard with her childhood playmates. They listened eagerly. They listened to hear Sara’s golden voice. They listened because they lay on cots all day and had nothing to do. They listened because somewhere in Sara’s voice, in the tales that she told there was an innocence that they had lost; an innocence that they were unsure still existed in the world. Sara was everything to them. She was their sister, their mother, their sweetheart, their wife, and their friend. She came alive at night. She didn’t forget what went on outside the windows of the hospital, but she could get beyond it. She was a little girl again with new playmates; they became little boys. There were paintings on the ceiling, and stains from water leaking in, and Sara made them come alive. She told stores, but she told truth. There could still be innocence. There could be love and joy. All things wonderful in life were not lost to them. It would take healing, but someday. eventually, there were Avonlea lads in the hospital, but before they had arrived, the soldiers started calling her the Story Girl. Sara kept them spellbound, and in that hospital, by bedsides and corridors, they built a warm, safe place. She watched over them, and held their hands and she gently talked them to sleep, and their dreams were golden, not haunted, because of her.
* * *
“I was singing to the soldiers on my second afternoon at the hospital when I saw him again. I even remember what I was singing. He walked into the room and just stood there, just looking at me. He introduced himself. I was always at the hospital. That was the only time we saw each other. Sometimes he’d go away to the battlefields for days. I couldn’t sleep. Every day, all we heard was how the war would end soon and every day it just got worse.”
“Promise you’ll write,” Sara insisted at the train station, holding Henri’s arms with her hands.
“I promise.”
She looked around her. The crowd was thickening. Hundreds of civilians were rushing to the station, fervently attempting to get out of Paris and Europe as soon as they possibly could. They were shouting at each other, their voices intruding on Sara’s last moments with Henri until…? “I can’t do this,” she told him. “I can’t leave you now. Not like this.”
“Sara….”
“Come with me,” she said suddenly, her blue eyes lighting up. “Yes, come with me.”
The crowd was becoming a huge wave, pushing against Sara and forcing her feet to lose their grip on the ground. She held onto Henri’s arms as long as she could, looking into his eyes for some sign of agreement. She saw none. “What about you?”
“I am afraid,” he confided.
“You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to do this. If you leave…Europe’s such a mess…they’ll never know-”
“I’m in the Army, Sara. I can’t run away. I have no choice. You see? There’s the train. Go on, now. You mustn’t be afraid.”
The crowd became stronger, and soon she couldn’t hold on. Henri suddenly pulled her close to him and kissed her.
She was terribly afraid when he let her go. The crowd swept her along. She looked back as often and as far as she could. She saw him waving at her, his long white coat thrown over his uniform, a dishevelled cap sitting defiantly atop his head. She was pushed along. She automatically handed her ticket over. She spoke mechanically in French. She looked back again. All she could see was the rushing, panic-stricken crowd.
Then he was there.
He was so close, just outside her window. She put her hand to the glass. There was a kiss in his eyes as he looked into her tearful ones and he nodded to her, as if to say, “Remember what I told you. Remember what you are to do. You’ll make it home. I promise.”
* * *
“I was so afraid when I left Paris,” she continued. “All the while I was pretending. When I left, everything…it just came rushing up. I knew I had to come to London. I just couldn’t face going back to Avonlea.”
Olivia had been listening to the tale her niece told and consoling her, kindness flowing out of her brown eyes. “I remember when you were a little girl, Sara,” she reminisced. “You used to come home with your eyes all bright and your arms full of flowers.”
“That’s not me anymore,” Sara replied.
“No, you’ll never be the same Sara Stanley again. Don’t stay here in London, Sara, although you know we’d love to have you. Ignoring your wounds won’t make them go away; they’ll just get deeper. I once said to Hetty that you were destined for something, Sara. I still think that. Not because of your fortune, but because of who you are. I want that for you, darling. It can’t happen if you just let fear eat you up inside. After everything you saw, there’s one thing that’s still inside you that will never change. A little village nestled by the sea. It will always be a part of you. You need to be brave enough to face it.”
* * *
Sara stepped into the brick corridor at the very front of the Dales’ London home and looked at her aunt with curiosity. Olivia was merrily packing the Dales’ motorcar for what appeared to be a trip into the country. Jasper had ingeniously hooked up a gramophone to the back of the motorcar so that they could listen to music as they drove along. Their motorcar was most likely the most state-of-the-art in London. Sara could see Monty wrestling with some odd-looking straps that were attached the back of the seat. Jasper already had the car’s engine purring and he was puttering around it, inspecting tires and headlights. Monty was happily situated in the back of the motorcar, sitting up straight like a gentleman. Olivia was giving some last-minute instructions about Alicia to Audrey, who took the child inside.
“Aunt Olivia,” Sara said in order to gain her aunt’s attention. She wrinkled her brow in confusion and her red lips parted in astonishment. “What on earth are you doing? What is all this?”
“This, Sara Stanley, is the Dales’ weekly picnic in the countryside.” Olivia showed her a brown wicker hamper and opened the lid. “There’s nothing like Great-grandmother King’s strawberry pie at a picnic. If you would just hurry along a bit, Sara. I’ve got some preserves in the kitchen, would you go fetch them? Oh! And bring your bonnet. Jasper says the sun is going to be very hot today.” Olivia bustled past her and placed the hamper in the motorcar.
“Aunt-Aunt Olivia, I…well…I appreciate your inviting me along, but…I-I think I’d just like to stay here and read today, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, nonsense, Sara,” Olivia said cheerfully. “It’s a beautiful day. You don’t want to be stuck inside.”
“I wouldn’t be stuck--”
“Sara, for pity’s sake, get in the motorcar,” Olivia commanded with a sudden firmness in her voice.
* * *
Jasper drove along, with the sound of ragtime music floating out of the car. Monty had quite a few of the Dales’ gramophone recordings with him, and he periodically turned around and changed the recording while the motorcar was moving, much to Olivia’s distress. “I’ll put this one on for you, Cousin Sara. I want you to listen to it. I always want to hear it when I’m sad.” Sara leaned over and kissed the little boy’s forehead. It was Mendelssohn; she remembered it from her childhood in Montreal. She looked up and saw the sun gleaming in slants through the trees. Without even thinking about it, an image of children gathered together in an orchard entered her mind.
Soon, they had completely left the city behind and were motoring through English farming villages. They all seemed to go on with their lives without the war hanging over their heads. There was a simplicity about those who lived in the villages, but somehow a different kind of simplicity. She saw that the war was affecting them, but it wasn’t taking over their lives.
Sara listened to the music and she looked up at the sky. For the first time in months, she wasn’t looking for a German aeroplane. The sky was an incredible blue and the earth was alive with the smells of spring. She watched the trees pass above her, interspersed with slants of sunlight. She felt free.
They came to a meadow that was near the sea and Olivia spread out the picnic. While she did that, Jasper and Monty played with Monty’s kite. Sara walked over to a hill that was just over the sea and looked into it. She had her writing folder with her and she opened the first page and read what she had written:
There once was a time in a place called Avonlea when life was simpler. Children grew and years went by and yet it always seemed as though nothing would ever change. And Avonlea it remained, though some would go, and others stay.
Sara bit her pencil for a moment and thought before she began writing again.
But we were to learn that all things change. For beyond our shores, the clouds of a distant war loomed. And soon, nothing would be the same again.
Oh, yes, Sara thought to herself. Perhaps it can. Not entirely the same, like those farmers back there. It takes strength to go back to that innocence. And just as soon as that thought passed, a memory burst into her conscious. It was one sentence, one that she had started to hear in her dreams. “Somehow I’ve never thought of you as a coward, Sara.”
She wasn’t a coward. She knew that. Over the horizon, she saw a steamship that was bound west. She watched it for a long time, after the tendrils of smoke had gone from her view. An incredible calm rushed over her. She heard Monty laughing as he played with his father. Tears welled in her eyes. She smiled to herself.
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