Sentimental Journey (60 page)

He couldn’t see her with the blacked-out windows, but she’d missed only one date, because of a change in her ferrying schedule. Two weeks afterward, he’d flown to meet her when he came back from an assignment in France involving a Nazi rocket-bomb launching device set up on the coast. For the last three months, they’d been planning and coordinating their leave time to be together.

His uncle was happy. Skip had a girl.

She must have spotted him before he saw her, because she tapped him on the shoulder from behind. “Hey, there.”

He spun around.

She tossed her head. Her honey-colored hair brushed her shoulders. She didn’t often wear hats. She would wear a ribbon that matched whatever she was wearing. He liked that about her, found her sense of freedom refreshing. Perhaps working with Cassidy made him accustomed to that casual, open manner of the Yanks.

She leaned back and slowly slid the long narrow tweed skirt of her suit up past her knee. “Want to have a good time, soldier?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her a long, studied look. “How much do you charge?”

A pair of older women were passing by and heard. They starched up and clucked their tongues before they hurried past.

Charley burst out laughing. “You’ve turned me into a shameless hussy.”

“I’ve always been keen on shameless hussies. Which one are you again?”

Laughing, she tucked her arm into his, and they walked together toward the exit.

“How is your mother?”

“Overbearing, unreasonable, and stubborn.”

“Ah, I wondered where you got those traits.”

“You are quite badly disciplined, you know. I must speak with your father about the ill manner in which you were raised.”

She laughed, hugging his arm closer. “He’ll be here soon enough. But I’m afraid he’ll agree with you. I’ve always been strong-willed. You two can commiserate together over my failure to be quiet and demure. It should break the ice. Now, you must tell me what I need to do to hit it off with your mother. From everything you’ve been telling me, I’m half terrified of her.”

He covered her hand with his. “Truthfully, be yourself. She’s really quite a wonderful woman . . . when she wants to be.”

“It must be difficult for her. And you.”

“Eleanore takes the brunt of it, but I do believe good fortune has smiled on us. I think I have found the answer to handling Mother. You met Cassidy—the Yank I was with, in the Lysander that day?”

“He’s rather hard to forget. Quick mind, bawdy sense of humor, and damn good looking.”

“His face was blacked.”

“Hmmm, so was yours.”

“Look. Are you hungry? We can stop here for tea.”

“I’m famished.”

He opened the door for her, and a few minutes later they were seated at a small, quiet table.

“So, I interrupted your story. Tell me about your mother and Cassidy.”

He shook his head. “We’ve worked together for months. I had no idea until the other day when we were talking over a drink. His wife is a blind teacher. Wait. I didn’t say that right. She teaches the blind how to get on. Exactly what we tried to hire for Mother, exactly what she needs but is too stubborn to admit it or accept it.”

“That’s amazing. Can she help her? I mean, didn’t she send the others running?”

“Yes, but we have let Mother have her way for a while now. Kitty Cassidy is blind herself. Apparently she understands what Mother’s going through. Cassidy’s trying to pull some strings to get her over here. We shall find out soon enough.”

She was quiet as they brought tea. She ate a bit of sandwich, then said, “Pop didn’t want me to come here at first. He felt I’d be too close to the war for him to feel comfortable about my safety. In fact, I expect that’s one of the reasons he’s coming. Business is certainly part of it, but I know him well enough to bet he jumped at the opportunity to check up on me.”

“He sounds like a man of high intelligence.”

“Funny. My point is, how will her family feel about her being over here?”

“I did ask about that. She’s from California, and Cassidy said he didn’t figure after Pearl Harbor that she would be any more at risk here than on the West Coast. He laughed and said it wouldn’t matter anyway. No one in her family, including him, would dare make the mistake of telling her what to do. Then he told me how they met. Apparently she was living in Morocco with the family of a college friend. They were in the diplomatic corps and had two blind children. When the war broke out, they left, but her papers were delayed. Got herself in some kind of fix. They sent him in to get her out of it.”

“Oh, good,” she said, grinning. “I think I like her already.”

“Of course you do. I’m surrounded by contrary females. I’m counting on Mother to react the same way.”

“We wouldn’t want you to grow complacent and bored. National heroes need a little humbling.”

“You sound like Helen.” He signaled for the bill.

“I adore Helen. We’ve met twice since you introduced us.”

“An action I will live to regret, no doubt.”

They left arm in arm and wound their way along the London streets, which were filled with people in uniform—olive drab, nut brown, crisp white, and deep blue. They walked in the park and had a photograph taken near the Serpentine, then went to Oxford Street and stopped at Selfridges, where she bought a new red ribbon and a small box of tea-olive soap for one of her ferry chums.

On the way out of the store they passed a fragrance counter that showed the effects of the war. The few bottles of fine perfume there were dearly priced and locked away in a glass case. The fragrances that were on the counter were plain vials of cheap scent. A salesclerk stopped her and sprayed a small amount of cologne made from rose oil and alcohol on her wrist.

Charley sniffed it and raised her wrist for him to smell.

“It smells like a sot fell in a rose garden.”

She laughed and put the bottle down.

“Show us that one.” Skip pointed to the glass doors.

The salesclerk perked up, took a silver key from her belt, and unlocked the cabinet. “Skip?” Charley put her hand on his arm.

“It’s for my mother.”

“Oh.”

The salesclerk set the bottle on the counter. “You’ll have to sniff the stopper. I can’t let you sample this one. There are only three bottles left.”

Charley held up a hand. “No. I don’t need to try it. It’s for his mother.”

“See if you like it.”

Charley looked at him, frowning.

“Go on.”

She sniffed the glass cap, and she smiled softly, then handed it back to the salesclerk. “It’s just lovely.”

“I’ll take it.” Skip paid for it and he watched Charley while the salesclerk wrapped up the bottle of perfume.

Charley was smelling the cheap bottles and frowning with each one.

The salesclerk handed him the box and they left. The wind picked up from a dark and roiling storm blowing in from the distance. The temperature had dropped while they were inside, and the rain began to fall in fat drops.

“We’d best head for the hotel.” He put his arm around her shoulders, and they ran the few blocks to their hotel.

Once inside the lobby, he handed her the box. “This is for you.”

She stopped walking. “You said it was for your mother.”

“I lied.”

“I can’t accept this.”

“It’s done. Be gracious and accept my gift.”

“Skip. This is
Ma Griffe.
It’s terribly expensive.”

“I can afford it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I didn’t get you a Christmas gift.”

“We didn’t know each other at Christmas.”

“When is your birthday?”

She stood there, stubbornly silent, her lips thin as a pencil line.

“Fine, I’ll ask your father when he arrives next week.”

“Okay, fine. It’s July fourth.”

“Your Independence Day?”

She nodded.

“No wonder you’re so stubborn. You were born on the day those colonial anarchists rose up against the Mother Country.”

She was still laughing when he pulled her along with him toward the lift and walked her inside, blocking her with his body before he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Think of it as a gift for me. As soon as we get to the room, you can dab that scent on all the soft spots I’m going to suck.”

He could see the moment she gave in. She leaned her head into his shoulder. All he could see was the part in her hair.

“Thank you. I love your exorbitant gift.”

A few minutes later he unlocked the door and they went inside. Her bag had been delivered from the station and was sitting in the dressing room, but the last thing he wanted on her was more clothes. The useless ones she was wearing ended up on the floor. They went straight to bed and stayed there.

He awoke sometime in the early morning. There had been no raid that night. The weather had turned terribly bad. He smoked a cigarette and stood near the bed, watching her sleep, listening to the soft sound of her even breathing and thinking about what was beginning between them.

She’d made the mistake of falling in love with him. He had seen it on her face that night and the last time they had been together. He took a deep drag off the cigarette. Some decent part of him wanted to warn her, to tell her the women he loved were killed or blinded, that loving him was suicide for the heart and perhaps the spirit.

But he couldn’t tell her. He wanted her to love him, even though he couldn’t love her back.

He stubbed out the cigarette in a marble ashtray and moved closer to the bed.

He had lost his sense of honor, ironically, because of war—where honor, duty, and valor were supposed to be what made fighting men. None of those things motivated him. He asked himself if his lack of them made him a coward.

It was an odd thing to him that of late, and with regularity, he thought that he did not want to die, which . . . wasn’t exactly the same thing as wanting to live.

He wondered if there was a God. If there was purity after death. Or did we just exist only to die and there was nothing more to life and death than that? He stood there in a dark room with a woman he craved, with unsettling emotions he didn’t understand, in a world he couldn’t control.

The wind outside whispered through the curtains in time and meter with her soft, easy breathing. He felt nothing of ease; he felt awkward, out of place; he had a sudden sense of lost time. Her perfume was in the air, light and familiar, but it didn’t make him any more comfortable. He looked across the room.

A huge mirror hung on the opposite wall above a clothes chest, and he could see his silhouette reflected in it. No features. Nothing familiar, merely the dark outlines of a man who appeared to be a stranger. Then he realized that perhaps it wasn’t time he had lost, but himself.

“WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER”

It was June in southern California, that time of year when mornings were gray and overcast, but by noon the sun would come through and burn your nose to a crisp if you forgot to wear a hat. Kitty sat on the front porch swing, idly pushing it back and forth with her bare toes as the seagulls called out from overhead, the breeze made the palm tree fronds sway in whispers, and the waves drummed deeply on the beach across the street.