The Darts of Cupid: Stories (6 page)

"What would you like to have?" she asked. "Bacon and eggs?"

"Oh, Constance," I said, "what a question. You must be joking." It was truly a hardly creditable question at that time, when one got one egg a week and the bacon ration was two ounces.

"I get it and I never ask where it comes from," she said. "Calvin does know his way around. And you know, I must hand it to the Yanks. They’re like Father Christmas."

"Not entirely," I said, "because Father Christmas only brings gifts for good little children, and everyone knows that good little girls never get to wear nylons."

"Oh, Eve, aren’t you dreadful," she cried. "I wish I had known you before."

"You are easy to please," I said.

"Promise we must see a lot of each other, now," she said.

"Of course," I said. I never saw her again.

"GOT OVER IT all right?" the Major said to me on the following day.

"Yes, thank you," I said. "And I want to thank you for your kindness. Yours and Constance’s. Please tell her."

"But you’re shocked, aren’t you?" he asked.

I did not speak.

"Yes, I can see it in your eyes. Why are you so shocked?"

I said, "It’s—to me, it is revolting. And unforgivable. How could she?"

"You are looking at it the wrong way," he said. "What the hell, why shouldn’t I lend her to a friend? Hospitality." And he laughed loudly.

I said, "I’m not—please don’t think that I am judging her. She really is a lovely person. It’s just that I can’t understand it. And I can’t understand you, either."

"I know you can’t," he said. "You are like a princess—I’ve said so before—and like a princess you are intolerant and won’t make compromises, and if you can’t have everything, you want nothing. To me, it’s a matter of convenience, what the hell. And the same with her."

"Convenience, like your calling me Miss P. because you are lazy?"

"Yes," he said. "That’s it. I’m kind of lazy."

"Yes," I said, "and it’s dreadful."

"It isn’t dreadful," he said. "It’s just not in your nature."

For a while, we were silent. Then he said, "What are you going to do with yourself? Will you go back to your husband?"

I was bewildered. Just as he had never mentioned his marriage before or after that time when he had shown me the photographs, I had never talked about my marital situation. "Sergeant Parsons must have been yapping at you," I said. "He did it to me, too. I told him he should go and drown himself in his iodine."

"But I can’t drown myself," he said, "because I don’t hold with iodine," and I waited till his laughter had ceased.

"Well?" he asked. He bent his head. He was fondling his key ring and caressing his bunch of keys. I watched his massive broad hand with the thick fingers, smoothly pale and showing no bones, and thought how curious it was that his hands were not pink like the rest of his body, and how I had never yet seen a surgeon fulfilling the myth of possessing long, sensitive, tapering fingers. And then I thought of how my husband had asked me every day, "Do you love me? Are you glad you married me?" and how I had always answered yes, though it had not been true, and how, despite these words, my husband in all of our married life had never so much as fetched me a glass of water or brought me a cup of tea when I was not feeling well or had a cold, and how this man, this stranger, to whom I meant no more than the value of some amusing talks, had washed me and nursed me and cleaned me, good-humoredly and without disgust, and taught me the meaning of love in the course of one night, which I had not learned in those four years from my husband. The Japanese picture came swimming before my eyes, in moonlit tints of white and gray and green, and I closed my eyes for an instant and passed my hand over them.

"No," I said, "I’ll definitely not go back to my husband."

"And where do I come in?" he asked.

"Nowhere," I said, "because to you I was just someone in your bed one night. And by mere chance, too."

He said, "You are on my mind all day long and all the time."

I forced myself to laugh. "Did you think this up by yourself, or did somebody help you?" I asked.

"You know it is true," he said, "and you know it was true from the first minute I saw you."

"Yes, I know," I said.

"And with you, too," he said.

"Yes, with me, too," I said. "And now that I’ve told you, you can go to hell."

"You are making it very difficult for me," he said, "because yesterday when you told me to go to hell I went to the office. Now I’m here anyhow. So where am I to go?"

I watched him in silence.

He said, "I will go to hell if you will come to hell with me. Will you?"

"I don’t know," I said.

"You do know, and you are afraid," he said. "But it’s useless being afraid. It’s got to be."

He did not come in for the next two days. Upon his return to the office, he called me as usual: "Come here to me."

"Where have you been?" I asked, trying to sound friendly.

"London," he said, "and I’ve moved back to the hotel. I’ve given up the flat."

"And Constance?" I asked.

"She’s gone and joined a girlfriend of hers, in an apartment. High time she did anyway."

"It’s all such a pity," I said.

"I didn’t turn her out because of you, if that’s what’s worrying you," he said.

I did not speak.

"You are not talkative today, are you?" he said.

"No," I said.

"That suits me fine," he said, "because I have a lot of work to get through."

"Yes, I know—on the mattress," I said, and watched him laughing.

On the following day, he did not come in till late in the afternoon—half an hour before it was time to leave. He put his briefcase on the desk and called Sergeant Parsons, and talked to him for a few minutes, remaining on his feet. Then he came over to me and sat on the corner of my table. He had never done this before.

"Eve," he said.

"Yes?"

"I’ve got orders to leave," he said. "Overseas, tomorrow morning."

"Yes," I said.

"Look at me," he said. "You are not weeping, are you?"

"Only a little," I said, "because you never called me Eve before."

"I want you to stay the night with me," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"And I won’t ask you out and give you dinner," he said. "I can’t stand sitting for two hours opposite you at a table."

"Yes," I said.

"Go home now and eat," he said, "and I’ll come round and fetch you at eight o’clock. Will that suit?"

"Yes," I said.

"I’ll take you to the flat tonight," he said. "I passed it on to a colonel, but I shoved him out for tonight. We’ll be on our own."

"Yes," I said.

I did not speak during that night at all, and he spoke only three times. Once, he said, "Human relationships are the most interesting thing in life." Then he said, "Never mind the past and never mind the future. You are warm, you are safe, you are here." The third time, he said, "You are my one and only love. Go to sleep now, my love. I want you to be asleep when I go."

ABOUT A MONTH after the Major had left, Sergeant Parsons stopped by my table and said, "I thought you’d like to know, ma’am. The Major is in the north of France. And he isn’t a Major anymore, because his gold leaf has turned to silver."

"Charmed, I’m sure," I said. "That makes him a half colonel. I’ve always wondered, you know, why in the American army silver is above gold."

"Why don’t you write and ask him?" he said.

"I may," I said.

Though I did not show it, I was glad of what the Sergeant had told me, because the Major when he had written had only told me of his being "somewhere in Europe," and he had not mentioned his promotion. This was late in 1944, and he was in charge of a hospital for German prisoners of war.

Soon after this, it was decided to move the Office of the Chief Surgeon to London, together with other branches of the U.S. War Office, and this brought about a split in our crowd. Claudia, June, and Betty were going to London as a matter of course, to be united with their lovers, but Beryl said she was "sick of the Yanks" anyhow, and did not see why she should forsake the safety of Bathdale for the bombing raids of the capital. I was pleased at the chance to get to London; the mild, heavy, wind-still climate of Bathdale, called "relaxing" by the inhabitants, had never suited me. I would have moved, in any case, with our office, because the Major had written that he wanted me to do so; thus he would always be able to find me, no matter what might happen. There were many other losses, too—among the most regretted the Merry Widow, who stayed behind, and the Big Bad Wolf Danielevski, who was posted for service overseas.

Thus we restarted the Zone of Interior in London with only four of us, headed, as before, by Sergeant Parsons. I found a room off the Bayswater Road, a district of imposing residences, stretching along one side of the park, fallen into neglect and converted into private hotels and lodging houses. It was the first time that I took up life in a bed-sitting-room, where the bed was represented by a narrow couch called a "divan" and the sitting by a tub chair of wicker. It was the first time, too, that I had to obtain heating by dropping a sixpenny piece into the slot of a meter, and that I experienced the fear of missing being called on the telephone if I went to the bathroom. But I could always still my dejection by repeating to myself the phrase with which the Major had closed his last letter to me, which was the one he had used on our first night together: "There is nothing to think about and nothing to worry about."

I had chosen Bayswater for two reasons. It was a cheap district, with a still decent address, and there were three buses coming from Notting Hill Gate down the Bayswater Road and going in a straight line to Marble Arch into Oxford Street, with a stop at Selfridges. Our office was situated nearby. The entrance was a shabby, narrow doorway—an entrance of the type used by cleaners and messengers. Once inside, one descended into a basement and into a still deeper basement down two more flights of stairs, where our office spread into majestic proportions and took up the whole floor of the building. It was safer from air attacks than any shelter, and the heated, filtered air and the lighting were provided by machines situated in still further depths. Secretive, unsuspected, and sinister, we spent our working hours in artificial light and air—a make-believe existence akin to that of cut flowers, which appear alive though they are dead.

Now that the staff had been replenished with new civilian local labor, we received several male additions—some delightful, like a retired English army colonel and a humorous admiral with infallibly good manners; some bizarre, like a former lion tamer, and a porter from Claridge’s. Among the new women, the most likable was Queenie, an ex–chorus girl, greatly in demand for telling the future out of teacups. Our old crowd of four kept close together in the Zone of Interior and during the luncheon hour, but I rarely saw them at night, when they went out with their lovers, and I did not meet them at parties, because I had stopped mixing with our officers.

About two months after our settling in London, Sergeant Parsons stopped at my table. "I thought you’d like to know, ma’am," he began.

"Oh yes," I said listlessly. There was precious little I wanted to know in those days, and the stories concerning a little girl called Eve—"Isn’t it strange? Eve, just like you"— had ceased altogether, because my behavior had remained exemplary.

He said, "The General counts on you to come to Paris with us when we move. You are one of our best, and we can’t afford to lose people like you. But then, a girl wants to look out for herself, and nothing lasts forever."

I said, "I don’t want anything to last forever, but you know I want to go to France, the same as Claudia and June and Betty."

"You are so stupid, you women," he remarked. "Don’t you know that when a man is interested in you he’ll always have ways and means to find you?"

"Charmed, I’m sure. Much obliged," I said.

"I happened to have a word with Admiral Parker, the old boy," said the Sergeant. "And he’d like to take you along to the British War Office. The English are getting ready to move out, too—the same as our people. And the job would be so much better. You’d have classy work and a much higher salary."

"Will they be going to France?" I asked.

"That I cannot say," said the Sergeant, "but it would be worth your while finding out—it won’t be as bad as going to the dentist’s, and it’s all on the ‘old boy’ level, what with the Admiral. He has a very soft spot for you—why, I can’t think. He wants to do you a favor, and you don’t want to hurt him. You run along, and don’t forget that a very nice girl wears shoes to match her purse."

I did go with the Admiral to St. James’s Square, where I was given two examination papers, and I passed through three interviews unconcernedly, as I had no wish to be found acceptable. When I was dismissed with the phrase "We will let you know in due course," I was certain this meant the same as, "I’ll give you a tinkle soon, one of these days." But the excursion was enjoyable nevertheless, because the Admiral took me afterward to Shepherd’s, where I had never been before and of which I had heard so much from Claudia, June, and Betty. He drank my health with a charming Edwardian gaiety:

Here’s to you and here’s to me,
And here’s to the girl with the well-shaped knee.
Here’s to the man with his hand on her garter.
He hasn’t got far yet, but he’s a damn good starter.

Six weeks later, they did let me know. I was offered the rank of captain with the British Army of Occupation in Germany, though the war was not yet over, and a salary that was three times as much as the one the Americans paid me.

"What a giggle," said Claudia. "Imagine Prescott-Clark as a captain. Will they salute you in the streets?"

"Don’t be silly, Carter," I said. "They can whistle for me. I’m not going."

"Come along, you lasses," said June. "Let’s have a bash at Queenie and the tea leaves," and we went in search of the chorus girl, who could be relied upon to assure each of us that we would be granted our "heart’s desire."