Crossings (53 page)

iane's train reached San Diego at eleven o'clock the next night, and she didn't reach the hotel until midnight. She knew that it was too late for Nick to call, and she waited breathlessly by the phone the next day, until finally he called just after noon. She had been awake and tense since seven o'clock that morning.

“I'm sorry, love. I couldn't call. I've got meetings and briefings and God knows what else.”

She panicked at his words. “Can I see you?” She glanced out at the Pacific as she spoke, trying to imagine where he was. Her room had a view of the base and the port in the distance.

“I can't see you until tonight. And Liane …” He hated to do it, but he knew he had to tell her. “That'll be it. I have to report to the base at six o'clock tomorrow morning.”

“When do you sail?” Her heart was pounding in her ears.

“I don't know. All I know is that I have to be on the ship at six o'clock tomorrow morning. I assume we sail the next day. But they won't tell us.” That was standard military procedure, because of the war. “Look, I've got to go. I'll see you tonight. As soon as I can.”

“I'll be here.” She spent the day in her room, terrified that he would come early and she would miss him. And at ten minutes to six there was a knock on her door. It was Nick and she flew into his arms, crying and laughing and desperately happy to see him. For these few moments they could pretend that he would never leave.

“God, you look so good to me, love.”

“So do you.” But they were both exhausted from the strain of the past two days. It was a time she knew she would never forget. It was worse than when she had left Paris.

They talked frantically for half an hour, and then he took her in his arms and took her to bed, and after that, things seemed to slow down. They never left the room to go to dinner that night, and they never slept. They lay there and they talked and made love. And Liane trembled as she saw the sun come up. She knew that their last night was over.

At five thirty he got out of bed, and he looked at her soberly as she watched him. “Babe … I've got to go….”

“I know.” She sat up, wanting to pull him to her, wanting to turn the clock back.

And then he asked her something he had wanted to ask her for two days. “Will you write to me, or would you rather not?” They had agreed four months before that when he left it would be over.

“I'll write.” She smiled sadly. She was already writing to Armand, and now she had lost two men to the war, for the time being at least. She didn't know what she would do when he came back. For weeks she had been asking herself that question. Things were different than they had been on the
Deauville
, she and Nick had had four months, not thirteen days, and she couldn't give him up so easily now. Once or twice she had thought of leaving Armand after the war, but she didn't think she could. Nor could she give up Nick Burnham.

“I'll write to you too. But it may take forever for you to get my letters.”

“I'll be waiting.”

He didn't shower before he put on his clothes. He didn't want to waste a single minute of their time together, he could shower on the ship, he had a lifetime to do that. And all he had now were a few moments left with Liane. “Remember what I said about Johnny.” He had given her Hillary's address, but she had insisted again that she wouldn't need it. He'd come back to see to Johnny himself, and he had answered “Just in case.” She had taken it to make him feel better.

Their last moments ticked by like the last seconds before a bomb explodes, and in the end they stood in her room and he held her tight. “I'm going to leave you here.”

Panic struck her again. “Can't I take you back to the base?”

He shook his head. “It'll just make it harder.” She nodded, tears already flooding her face, and he kissed her one last time and looked into her eyes. “I'll be back.”

“I know.” And neither of them asked the other what would happen then. It was too late to think of that. All they had was the present, and whatever fate dealt them later. “Nick … take care. …” She grabbed at him once as he left the room, and he held her again, and then with a last wave he ran down the stairs, and she went back into their room and closed the door, and she sat, feeling as though the last bit of life had been drained out of her. She was still sitting in the room two hours later, thinking of him, when she happened to glance out the window, and the whole Pacific Ocean seemed to have disappeared and in its place was an enormous ship, moving slowly out to sea. Her heart pounded as she watched. It was an aircraft carrier, and she knew as she watched that it was the
Lexington
and Nick was on it. She flung open the window of her room as though that would bring her a little closer, and she watched until it had left the harbor. And then she turned slowly and packed her bag, and two hours later she was back on the train, sitting silent and still as she returned to San Francisco.

hen Liane got back to San Francisco, she let herself into the house, and climbed slowly up the stairs to her room. It was late and the house was dark, and she jumped as though a bomb had exploded near her when she heard a voice. It was Uncle George. He was sitting quietly in her room, in the dark, waiting for her.

“Is something wrong? … The girls?”

“They're fine.” He looked at her searchingly as she turned on the light. She looked ravaged. “Are you all right, Liane?”

“I'm fine.” But she began to cry as she said it, and she turned away so he wouldn't see. “Really … I'm all right….”

“No, you're not. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. I didn't expect you to be. That's why I'm here.”

And then, like a little child, she flew into his arms. “Oh, Uncle George …”

“I know … I know … he'll be back …” But so would Armand. And all the way home on the train she had thought about both men. She was torn between the two now. And then her uncle poured her a glass of brandy. He had brought a bottle and two glasses to her room, and she smiled at him through her tears.

“What did I ever do to deserve a nice uncle like you?”

“You're a good woman, Liane.” He said it without a smile.

“And you deserve a good man. And God willing, you'll have one.”

She took a sip of the brandy and sat down with a nervous smile. “The trouble is, Uncle George, I have two of them.” But he didn't answer. He left her a little while after that, and she went to bed, and in the morning she felt a little better.

She had a letter from Armand that day and he sounded a little better too. He seemed cheered by “recent events,” as he told her, but he didn't say what they were. And the weather had warmed up and his legs weren't as painful.

In the next few days the news from London was cheering too. The British had received their first shipment of United States food, averting a drastic food shortage in London.

And on April 18, everyone read in the American press of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, led by Lt. Colonel James H. Doolittle, the aeronautical scientist and pilot. He had modified sixteen B-25 bombers, and the team had headed for Japan, knowing full well that they couldn't return, with the intention of landing in unoccupied China, after they bombed Tokyo. And all but one of the planes made it, with the result of an enormous improvement in morale among the troops. Revenge had been served. Tokyo had been bombed. It was a thank-you for Pearl Harbor.

But the good cheer over the Doolittle raid was short-lived. By the night of May 4, everyone was talking of the battle of the Coral Sea, and Liane lay awake through the night, praying for Nick. The battle raged on for two days, under the direction of General MacArthur, who had wisely stayed behind in New Guinea, at Port Moresby. And by May 6 they knew the worst. The
Lexington
had sunk. Miraculously only 216 men had died. Another 2,735 had been saved and taken on board the
Lady Lex's
sister ship, the
Yorktown
. But what Liane did not know was whether Nick was among the 216, or the others. As she sat frozen in her room day after day, listening to the radio she'd brought upstairs, she remembered the ghastly scenes in the Atlantic when the
Queen
Victoria
had sunk. And now she prayed that Nick would be among the survivors. She took her meals in her room on trays, and they returned to the kitchen, barely touched, as her uncle sat in the library, listening to the news there. But it would be weeks, if not longer, before they would have word of Nick. Unbeknownst to Liane, George had someone in his office call Brett Williams in New York, but he knew nothing either.

And also on May 6, the broadcaster told the nation that General Jonathan Wainwright had been forced to surrender Corregidor to the Japanese. General Wainwright and his men were taken prisoner. Things were not going well in the Pacific.

“Liane.” George stood in the doorway of her bedroom on the morning of May 8, two days after the
Lexington
had sunk. “I want you to come downstairs for breakfast.”

She stared at him lifelessly from her bed. “I'm not hungry-”

“I don't care. The girls are afraid you're sick.” She stared at him then for a long time, and silently nodded. And when she came down at last, she was weak from the days in bed, listening to the radio with the shades drawn. The girls watched her now as though they were frightened of her, and she made an effort to see them off to school, and then she went back to her room and turned the radio on again. But there was nothing more. The battle of the Coral Sea was over.

“Liane.” He had followed her to her room again and she turned to look at her uncle with empty eyes. “You can't do this to yourself.”

“I'll be all right.”

“I know you will. And what you're doing isn't helping him.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “They've had no news in New York. If he'd been killed, they would have got a telegram. I'm sure he lived through it.” She nodded, fighting back tears again. It was just too much worrying about both of them. And that day, she had had another letter from Armand. Thirty thousand Jews had been taken out of their homes in Paris. It was one of the letters Moulin had gotten out, and like many of the others, it crossed the Atlantic on the
Gripsholm
.

The Jews in Paris had been locked in a stadium for eight days without water or food or toilets. Many people, including women and children, had died. The world was going mad. From one end of the globe to the other, people were dying and killing each other. Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She pulled a dress from her closet and threw it on the bed. She looked better than she had in days.

“Where are you going?”

“To my office.” And she didn't tell him why. She bathed and dressed, and an hour later she had turned in her resignation, not from the Red Cross, but that chapter. And by that afternoon she had signed up at the naval hospital in Oakland. She was assigned to the care of men in a surgical ward. It was the most difficult work of all, but when she returned to the house on Broadway at eight o'clock that night, she felt better than she had in months. It was what she should have done long before, and always meant to do. She told her uncle that night after dinner.

“That's a terrible job, Liane. Are you sure that's what you want to do?”