The Colour of Sunset

1927 - Craig Castle

The way Julie learned the story, Solange didn't even notice the suit on its mannequin. But Esmé did, and she insisted that her companion try it on.

"I told your lady mother not to be ridiculous," laughed Solange as Julie ran her small hands over the vibrant, fiery colours of the soft wool. "I said, 'This is one of the most fashionable shops in Ormaie. It's for people like you, not for people like me.'"

"And I replied that she was doing a poor job of living up to the revolutionary esprit of her native France," Esmé continued calmly. "I reminded her that it was a free country, and that she was entitled to wear whatever clothes she pleased, including an haute couture suit."

"Then I believe that I reminded you that égalité in the legal sense did not mean that the same ethos extended to every corner of life," countered Solange. "But I agreed to try it on, anyway."

"And, for all your grumbling over my allegedly-Bolshevist rhetoric, you found that you looked rather stunning in the suit, and decided to buy it," finished Esmé, smiling.

"What's 'Bolshevist'?" Julie asked curiously, being only five years old and thus unfamiliar with the past decade of international political history.

"An anachronistic reference," Solange frowned disapprovingly. "Who among us used that term all the way back in 1912?"

"That long ago?" Esmé asked in disbelief.

"It says so on the label that the modiste sewed into the lining of the suit jacket," replied Solange crisply.

"In any event," continued Esmé, "we had to show off our finery for the others, once all of my new dresses were done being tailored and had been picked up, and everyone just loved Solange in her new suit."

"Everyone except perhaps Colette," Solange corrected her. "I'm not sure that she approved of the meteoric rise in her fellow maid's fashion standards."

"Well, the rest of us were quite glad that you had treated yourself to such a luxury, at any rate," Esmé said. (Julie, who was utterly spoiled by her aristocratic family, had no concept of how expensive fashion could be, and even less of an idea of why this type of expenditure would be uncommon for her nanny.) "My aunt seemed ready to steal the suit off your back, she loved the colour so."

"Ah, yes," smiled Solange. "What did she call it? 'The colour of sunset,' or something equally melodramatic?"

"It's true!" Julie concurred, her cherubic face lighting up now that the conversation was back on familiar footing. "It does have sunset-colours. And you look beautiful in it, Nanny."

And so Solange did.

1938 - Strathfearn

Solange had no idea what to expect of the proceedings at Strathfearn, but Madame had told her that there would be lawyers, and so she packed her best suit, in case she had dealings with any of them. Instead, she found herself balancing tea and sandwiches on trays while stepping around pails of paint and rolls of canvas, trying to make it from the distant kitchen back to their cramped little rooms without tripping and spilling the whole lot. Once returned to their tiny corner of the house, she spent her days scowling at the din of hammers and shouting workmen, as she tried and failed to focus her attention on the new Romilly novel that Madame had so graciously agreed to let her read first.

In fact, the only place that Solange could even think to wear her finery was to church, and so she did. She had always been of the opinion that one should show respect to the Almighty by wearing one's best clothes to places of worship, anyway. The denomination of the local parish in Brig O'Fearn was the Church of Scotland - unsurprisingly - but years of living in a non-Catholic country had helped reconcile Solange to the belief that God would still be listening, no matter the house from whence her entreaties issued. Today, as the congregation sang tunelessly through a set of hymns, Solange closed her eyes and offered up a silent prayer: Please, Lord, let me not be driven mad by these noisy construction workers. Send me some means of deliverance, be it an increase in patience, or a distraction of any type...

It had rained for hours the night before, and as Solange started down the street after the service, her foot skidded on a slick flagstone. She would have fallen in the mud and stained her prized wool suit - and probably at least fractured some part of her body, Solange reflected later - had someone not caught her arm and steadied her.

"Thank you," she gasped.

"Not at all," replied her rescuer gamely as she regained her balance. "Couldn't have you spoil that suit of yours, not when it's so..."

Solange looked up and into the face of Dr. Hugh Housman of Oxford, who blinked at her in astonishment.

"Beautiful," he finished after a prolonged moment.

God had decided to answer her prayer, after all. Solange knew it paid to wear one's finest to church.

1943 - Ormaie

When the Nazis finally had retreated back into the town, she told them to bury the girls on the riverbank. Rage stirred within her when she thought of those poor young women lying out there for so long, exposed to the elements, especially knowing that one of them was the best friend of the distraught young Englishwoman who had wept in her arms for nearly an hour after being forced to do the unthinkable. So, when one of the Résistance fighters whom she had enlisted to dig the graves - a pensive young man who had been studying to become a professor of poetry before the war - pointed out that they had no shrouds in which to bury the girls, she instantly pulled from an old cedar chest the yellowing, delicate lace veils that she and her sister had worn at their First Communion, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

The would-be poetry professor took the veils from her hands as reverently as if they were relics, and nodded his approval once.

"This feels right," he said. "And the lace will look lovely against the wool pullover that one of the girls is wearing."

"The wool pullover?" she repeated, perplexed.

"It's... unique," he explained sheepishly. "It caught my eye because it's so different from what you would expect a prisoner to be wearing, a sort of burnt orange with scarlet woven through. Almost radiant. It's like - and please forgive the simile - it's like the sunset."

She said nothing for a long moment. The poetry professor cleared his throat, then gave a tiny bow, and turned to leave, the veils still draped ceremonially over his hands.

"Wait," she said when he was one foot out the door, and he stopped and turned back to her. "Do one other thing for me."

The poetry professor waited patiently.

"After you have buried them," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady, "please cut every rose left in the garden."

"All of them?" he repeated for clarity's sake.

"Every last one," she insisted, "and lay them on the grave."

This late in the year, the autumn damasks were drooped and withering, but they still held their crepuscular glow. The men of the Résistance cut them, one by one, and piled them on the freshly-packed grave: bright scarlets and oranges and yellows and searing whites. It was the best she could do for these poor girls, for all of the lives that were fading into the twilight when just in the bloom of their youths. And the mound of roses blazed like a bonfire on the riverbank, blazed almost as brightly as the explosion that sent the Château de Bordeaux up in a spectacle of flames a few days later.