The Last Embrace (14 page)

Dismissed, I walked through the outer office. I had done it—I was going to London. I gazed through the window at the Washington Monument, which seemed to stare back remorsefully. Could I really leave, just like that? There was nothing keeping me. The life I created was transient, the city never really mine. And I'd done it before, leaving Philadelphia and the only life I had really known. The second time would not be nearly as hard.

I gazed out the window towards the Old Ebbitt Grill. Charlie would be wondering where I was, perhaps realizing even that I was not going to show. Should I somehow send a message? No, there was no way to explain why I had not come. And he had not given me a phone number or other way to contact him—perhaps because he did not want to give me a chance to say no.

I looked around the office, knowing I would not pass this way again. Once my life had seemed a great circle of gathered holidays and returning seasons and school-year rituals. Now it seemed to go straight, a great linear journey to a point unknown. I picked up my purse and walked from the office, closing the door behind me.

England
November 1943

I stared out into the fog-shrouded horizon, closing my overcoat where it gapped a bit beneath my scarf, then burying my hands in my muffler. Southampton, chalky and white, was a slip thickening in the distance. My shoulders slumped with weariness at the end of nearly a week of travel. We had been scheduled to arrive the previous day, but the threat of an air raid had kept us bobbling in the choppy waters just west of the Channel for hours until the all clear came. Now the morning sky was an ominous slate gray. The sea winds rose up, whipping my hair wildly. Gulls cried out sharply overhead.

I'd left Washington in an orderly fashion, not fleeing as I had done Philadelphia, but rather returning to the boardinghouse to pack and notify the landlady. I'd even bought a second-hand suitcase and packed before taking the train to New York the next morning. As we neared Philadelphia and the railway tracks wound through the gritty neighborhoods by the Navy Yard, I had pressed my fingers to the glass, feeling for the places I'd once known. The train stopped at 30th Street Station to take on passengers and for a minute I had considered hopping off and seeing my aunt and uncle. But I had closed that door months earlier and could not go back. I'd exhaled, breathing easier, as the train continued on. I would write to let them know that I'd gone instead.

After I boarded the ship in New York, I stayed on the deck, heedless of the icy rain that fell lightly, needing to see. As we pulled from the harbor and the Statue of Liberty slid from view, I was flooded with doubt: thousands of refugees were trying desperately to get to America, as I had done when I was a girl. And yet here I was leaving. London had been an impulse in my haste to avoid facing Charlie again. But England was at war, and I was going there—alone.

The second-class cabin Mr. Steeves had arranged was tiny, even smaller than my bedroom in Washington. It was all mine, though, and opulent compared to my earlier voyage to America. I was one of just a handful of civilians on the ship—so few had a reason to cross in this direction now. I did not mingle with the soldiers and nurses that danced and laughed on the decks at night. Instead I read, trying not to think of the dark, rough waters below.

But the rocking ship taunted me: going back, going back. At night I tossed feverishly. I dreamed of Thanksgiving night, Charlie striding up the porch steps of the Connally house toward me. “Now we can be together,” he said, his smile as broad as it had ever been. I reached out for him, but as he neared a wave of water rose from nowhere, throwing me to the ground. When I stood up again, he was gone. I'd awakened with a start, staring around the cabin, trying to see and breathe through the darkness that surrounded me. Other times I lay awake, seeing Charlie seated at the bar in Washington as he realized I was not going to show. I was flooded with remorse: How could I have given up the one meeting I had hoped for months to have again?

A bump pulled me from my thoughts and I held the railing not to be jostled as the ship came into a harbor, guided by a tugboat. A low fog swirled, obscuring the tops of the vessels around us. “We'll be disembarking soon,” someone said. I nodded and slipped through the crowd and along the deck, suitcase already in hand. The air was a thick mixture of smoke and salt.

Some twenty minutes later, we anchored and the gangplank lowered. “Quickly, please.” The purser's voice sounded harried as he cast an eye warily upward. Taking in the area, I understood: Southampton, a key port city, had been a major target of the Luftwaffe. Buildings were flattened as far as I could see in either direction, as though a giant had come through, crushing the entire town under its feet. It was a thousand times worse than anything I'd seen on the newsreels back home.

I joined the orderly queue that snaked forward from the ship, passing a military vessel unloading wounded soldiers on stretchers into ambulances. My lower stomach churned and I wondered if it was nerves or something I had eaten, or whether I was getting my period and would need to find a drugstore.

We shuffled toward the arrivals hall, seemingly the only building that still stood whole. Inside, the immigration officer studied my passport for what seemed like ages before peering at me in disbelief. “You're coming to London now?”

I squirmed, suddenly sixteen again and afraid he would turn me away. “For work, yes.” I met his gaze squarely and my heart thumped. “At the
Washington Post
.” He looked so unimpressed I wondered if he had heard of it.

“You've got a place to stay?”

“The newspaper arranged it,” I lied. In fact, Mr. Steeves had made no reference to accommodation. The officer scribbled something on the ship's log. Would he send me back? But he stamped my passport and handed it back to me. “Make sure you get to the city quickly and mind the curfew.”

I exchanged some money at a kiosk and stepped from the terminal. Travelers with their luggage navigated between cars and taxis through an intersection where the traffic light listed to one side, broken. On the far side of the road, the wreckage of what had once been a pub smoldered, sending up smoke that made my throat burn. I walked toward an old man selling matches and other odd bits on top of a wooden crate. “The bus station?” I asked, wishing I could spare the money to buy something from him. I had just over sixty dollars on me, most of that from the hundred Uncle Meyer had given me for graduation, the rest from what I had earned in Washington. I needed to hold on to every penny until I was settled into my job here and figured out what things would cost.

He shook his head. “Gone. Buses pick up from the corner.”

Twenty minutes later I boarded a bus bound for London and paid the driver my fare. We pulled away from the devastation of the coast. Sheep grazed the withered hills, the landscape nearly untouched. But as we neared the city, I could understand why the immigration officer had been incredulous at my coming here. At home the war had been big posters in the train stations exhorting people to buy war bonds, grainy newsreels at the cinema. Aside from Todd Dennison getting killed, it had been almost unreal.

But here the war was everywhere, inescapable. In London's outer boroughs like Richmond and Twickenham, the devastation was more sporadic, a house crushed here or there, as though perhaps a tree had fallen on it. Amidst the wreckage, people were doing strangely ordinary things, going to work and putting out the garbage and hanging wash on the lines. Closer to the city center, the scope of the damage unfurled. Entire blocks lay smashed. Traffic slowed and the bus inched forward, following the taxis and other buses through a detour where debris had made the road ahead impassible. Then came another street like that and another, until I had lost count. Though I had read the reports of the Blitz, I had imagined London, all of England really, as one step removed from the chaos of the Continent. But this was a city at war, as surely as if the German tanks were rolling down Westminster.

The bus pulled to a complete stop at an intersection and I studied the passersby on the street below. In front of a corner butcher shop women queued for whatever there was to be bought with the ration coupons. Though their expressions were calm, there was a weariness about them, shoulders stooped, the months of bombings having taken their toll. There was something odd about them, too, and it took me more than a minute to realize: none of them had any children, not babies in prams or toddlers shifted from hip to hip. They had all been shipped out of the city to safety with families in the countryside ahead of the Blitz, and even now that the bombing had stilled most remained in exile in case it should resume.

As the bus moved forward, I looked back, shivering. What would it take for a mother to put her child on a train and send them away, not knowing if or when she'd ever see them again? Mamma had done just that, putting my safety ahead of her own pain. Mrs. Connally surely would have done the same to keep Robbie safe if she could have. I swallowed back the lump that had formed in my throat.

It was nearly noon when I reached Fleet Street, having decided to use a bit of my money to take a taxi from Victoria station, rather than attempt the underground. Through the window, storied London, with its charming Victorian houses, had looked exactly as I'd expected, and at the same time not at all: coarse sandbags abutted most of the buildings and the windows that were not broken were blackened with tape or paint. “Can't go no further,” the cabdriver said as we reached a police blockade hastily erected in the middle of the busy street. “Closed for security reasons.” Were the newspaper offices that lined the famed block some sort of target?

I paid the driver and stepped from the cab, then paused to get my bearings. I started up Fleet Street, navigating the pavement carefully to avoid the sea of craters and debris. As I walked, my stride grew lighter. Despite the wreckage, I savored the freedom of a place I did not know at all—and where no one knew me.

A few minutes later, I set down my small suitcase by my feet and gazed up at the massive dome of St. Paul's silhouetted against the slate-gray sky, its dome guarding defiantly over streets and streets of buildings blown to rubble. Over the river behind the cathedral, barrage balloons floated like slow whales.

Something bumped into me from behind, nearly sending me sprawling. It was a man who had been walking with his head drawn low beneath the wide brim of his hat, focused on the papers he held. I waited for him to apologize. “Watch where you are going,” he admonished instead, his blue eyes flashing icily.

“Hey!” I stopped, shocked by his rudeness. He had bumped into me. But I bit my tongue; the last thing I needed now was trouble. Besides, the man was already out of earshot.

Recovering, I inhaled deeply—the air was different here, coal-tinged and mixed with exhaust. I studied the numbers of the buildings: Number 19 Fleet Street, which housed the
Post
's London office, should be just ahead.

The ground rumbled unexpectedly beneath my feet. Panicking, I threw myself into a doorway, then eyed the sky. I'd read the news articles of the sudden bomb attacks that had come out of nowhere, destroying homes and taking lives by the dozens. But around me pedestrians carried on, unperturbed. The noise came again and listening closely, I realized it was not an air raid, but an underground train traveling below.

Embarrassed, I straightened, catching a glimpse of my disheveled hair in the glass window of a stationer's shop. I could not turn up at the news bureau looking like this. I turned and walked back to a café I had passed a minute earlier. Inside, a group of men clustered at the counter, smoking and arguing over lunch about something Churchill had said. I slipped past them and found the toilet and freshened up.

When I stepped out again, the argument had reached a fever pitch. “If Chamberlain hadn't stepped in to help Poland, we wouldn't be in this mess,” one of the men at the counter said.

I couldn't help myself. “That's exactly the kind of thinking that got Britain into trouble in the first place,” I blurted. Then men turned and looked at me, mouths agape. I desperately wished I could fade into the walls. But it was too far gone for that. “Appeasement was a failed policy,” I added.

“Oh?” A head rose above the others. I stared in surprise at the familiar blue eyes—it was the man who had bumped into me on the street minutes earlier. Hat removed, his hair was blond and neatly styled beneath.

“Yes.” I squared my shoulders, as annoyed by his rudeness as his politics. “If Britain had not declared war, we'd be right where we are now, only Hitler would be stronger.”

“I agree. If you'd heard the first part of my statement you'd have known that.” He smiled, self-satisfied. “And that is why,” the man continued, “the American army needs to go across the Channel immediately.” He turned away dismissively. I walked from the coffee shop, cheeks burning.

As freshened up as I could manage, I proceeded to Number 19. Inside, the reception area for the
Post
was small and crowded, a far cry from the stately lobby of the Washington bureau. I waited for the woman behind the desk to set down the phone. “Is Mr. Theodore White available? I'm Adelia Montforte from the Washington office.”

The receptionist turned toward me impatiently, penciled eyebrows arched in reaction to my accent, bright red lips pursed. She wore a metal bracelet bearing her name and personal details. An identity bracelet, I realized, in case she fell victim to a bombing. “He's out.”

My stomach sank a bit. I had come here depending upon the job Mr. Steeves had referenced. I did not have a backup plan—or even a place to stay.

I tried again. “I'm here about a secretarial position.”

“So are they.” The receptionist gestured toward the waiting area of filled chairs. She eyed me skeptically, then looked down over the desk toward my feet. Most people who came for interviews did not bring a suitcase. “You have an appointment?”

“I was sent from the Washington bureau,” I repeated. I held out Mr. Steeves's card and the secretary's eyes widened slightly.