The Last Embrace (19 page)

“I know,” I replied, understanding. Here, the danger was apparent, not hidden as it had been back home. We should not be out though, I thought, casting one eye uneasily to the sky as I had begun to do since coming here.

“Come.” Seeming to read my thoughts, Charlie led me down the Strand, stopping before a pub called The Dog in the Woods. Though the windows had been blacked out and it was well after closing time, boisterous laughter seeped through the cracks. I hesitated. I wanted to be alone with Charlie, not in a place packed with others. But it was too dangerous to stay outside, and I didn't dare to invite him to my flat.

Charlie opened the door and smoke and noise poured out. “We can go somewhere else,” he offered over the din of male voices, as the smell of stale beer assaulted my nose. “Not much of a place for a girl.”

“Woman,” I corrected. My spine stiffened. “Let's go in.”

He led me through a mix of GIs and locals to a small table beneath a Boddington's sign, then left me and squeezed through to the bar. I sat down—the low-key pub was a welcome respite from the club and nightlife where I never quite felt comfortable. Beneath the hum of voices, Glenn Miller played from an unseen photograph.

Charlie returned a few minutes later with a half pint of cider for me and scotch for himself. So the hard drink I'd seen in front of him at the bar in Washington had not been an aberration. I studied his hair again as he sat down, again missing the way it used to roll and dip. But the trim cut gave new definition to his jawbone and cheeks.

He leaned in, one hand beneath his chin. Closer I could see that there were circles around his eyes and his mouth was grimly set in a way that I did not remember. “Tell me everything.” Charlie always had a way of drawing a person out, making him or her feel like the only one in the room.

Looking into his eyes, it would be easy to fall back into the old ways. But there was so much embedded in his request, I did not know where to begin. “I was working for the
Post
and there was a chance to come over here.”

“Right about when I saw you in Washington.” His eyes were challenging.

“Yes, just then.” I swallowed, glossing over the bit about how I'd asked for the transfer after seeing him. His hand was on the table and I had to force myself not to reach out and take it. How could I not, when all that I ever wanted was right here in this very room? The ache was excruciating.

“It's still mostly secretarial, but Teddy lets me do some copyediting.” I hated mentioning his name to Charlie.

Charlie's eyebrows rose. “You work for him?”

“Yes.” My eyes met his.

“I mean, I knew he was with the
Post
. I guess I just hadn't put two and two together.” He frowned, not bothering to hide his displeasure. “You two must spend a lot of time together.”

“It's not just me. There are about a half dozen or so British girls. They're not fond of me.”

“That's hard to imagine.”

“The American and all that.” I could not, of course, tell him that their resentment had as much to do with the fact that I shared office quarters with Teddy as with my nationality.

“Do you mind?”

I shrugged. “Not really.” The lack of company wasn't so bad. I enjoyed my lunches strolling the streets and peaceful Sundays in my flat, not really speaking to anyone. And I had Claire as a friend now. But the feeling of being disliked took me back to my early days in Philadelphia, trying to fit in with the other kids. “It wouldn't change anything if I did. Thank you, by the way, for the photograph you sent.”

His brow creased. “I didn't send anything.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward silence, embarrassment warming my cheeks. His denial and the confusion that accompanied it seemed genuine. But if he hadn't sent me the photo of the boys, then who had?

“Cheers.” He raised his glass to mine, then downed about half the scotch without grimacing. “You still haven't said if you and Teddy are together.”

I took a sip of cider. “Not in any real way.” Charlie's shoulders dropped slightly with relief. “Does it matter?”

“It doesn't, I suppose.” He stared hard at his nearly empty glass, fingers tapping against it. He was jealous. I was pleased and at the same time annoyed.

Had he dated? I suspected again that I did not want to know the answer. “Tell me more about your family. You said Jack's taking classes?”

“Jack has a friend,” he said bluntly, pronouncing the last word with emphasis. I cocked my head, not understanding. Jack always had friends. “You see, it turns out Jackie doesn't like women.”

“Oh!” I brought my hand to my mouth. I had heard jokes about gay people—
faegele
, the women on Porter Street called it, referring to odd Saul Scheerson the haberdasher who lived alone in the apartment above his butcher shop.

I wanted to protest that it wasn't true. Suddenly, though, it all made sense, the way Jack seemed different and a bit uncomfortable and the way he couldn't really join in the banter about girls with the others. There had been a dance once at school and as I had hung back by the wall, trying not to stare at Charlie and his friends, Jack had come across the gymnasium in an act of mercy and asked me to dance. His hands on my hips had been stiff and formal, in the places they were supposed to be, but immense discomfort which I had chalked up to him thinking of me as a sister.

“I don't think Mom and Dad have figured it out quite yet. I don't understand it myself.” He swirled the bit of remaining liquor at the bottom of his glass. To Charlie, Jack's strange choices were just another part of life that had not turned out the way he had planned.

“You still haven't told me about your work.”

“Just army stuff.” He shifted. “I was picked for flight school down in Georgia and I did well enough. Now we're all just waiting for orders. We'll all be shipping out soon.” The planned American invasion and the opening of the second front was the worst-kept secret in Britain—it had been debated hotly in pubs and cafes for months, the question not if, but when. The conversations had become more hushed lately, though—it was as if everyone knew the moment was drawing near and didn't want to give anything away.

He gestured toward my cider glass, still half-full. “Another? That has to be getting warm.”

I shook my head. “It's late. We should go.” Last orders had been called a few minutes earlier and around us the crowd had thinned. The barman was wiping down tables now and sweeping up, gently signaling they were about to close. Charlie helped me on with my coat.

Outside the air had cooled. As I started across the pavement, my foot slipped on a broken pavement stone and I lurched forward. Charlie's hand shot out as though lunging for a pass at one of the games and he caught me. For all of these months, I had tried to stand on my own. Yet here he was, rescuing me again. His hand lingered on my arm. It felt good—so good—and I hated myself for that.

I pulled my arm away. “What time is the last train back to Duxford?”

“I've got a room at one of the soldiers' hotels, just off Grosvenor Square.” So he was staying. The neighborhood around the American embassy had come to be called Little America because of the thousands of troops billeted there. GIs swarmed the streets, walking in groups of three or four. But Charlie had come to find me alone. “I'll see you home,” he offered.

“No need. I'll just find a cab.”

“It's well after curfew.”

“The Tube, then. I'll find my own way.”

We stood motionless, staring at one another. “So what happens now?” I could not help but ask. For a few minutes, it had been almost like the old days, or close enough to still feel right. But he was headed his way and me mine, two balls bumping into one another before spinning unstoppably in opposite directions.

“I don't know. I didn't think about it. I just knew you were in London and came looking as soon as I could.” So unlike Charlie, who had always seemed to live his life by some grand plan. “I had to see you.” There was an odd finality to his words.

“Charlie, what's going on?” He'd never been any good at keeping secrets from me, but he was tense and strange in a way I had never seen. “Is it your family? Did something happen?”

“No,” he replied quickly.

“Then what?” He did not answer. My voice rose an octave. “What is this all about?”

“My work.”

“Yes, of course. I know the troops are just awaiting orders to go over. It must be so nerve-racking.”

“It's more than that.” His voice turned low and gruff with new urgency. “I'm part of a special unit that is doing reconnaissance work.”

“I thought you were waiting to fly out of Duxford.”

He shook his head. “I am. That is, I'm not. I can't say more.”

My frustration rose. He must have had reasons—good reason—for not talking about his work. But my fears grew as I imagined the unknown danger he faced. “Please, I just want to know you are going to be all right.” My words sounded foolish; how could any of us promise that now?

But his jaw set stubbornly. “I should never have told you. You work for the paper, for Christ's sake. For Theodore White.”

“Charlie, I would never say anything.”

“I just had to see and touch it all again one more time. You. Us.” Though he would say no more, he was going soon, this time for real.

Panic shot through me like lightning. “You don't have to do this,” I said, almost pleading. By taking on these missions, maybe Charlie was trying to rewrite the past, or to get some control of his life. Once he had taken all the right steps, following the script that had been written for him: a football scholarship, college. The night he'd pulled Robbie from the water had changed all that, and I could sense a destructive streak in him now that reminded me of Liam. “Is this about Robbie?” Charlie recoiled as if he'd been slapped. “What happened to him wasn't your fault.”

“I dream about him all the time,” he replied after a minute. “That he's falling from that dune like the day we met you.” He still could not bring himself to say his brother's name.

“You caught him that day.”

“Right. Only in my dream I can't. And I couldn't when it really mattered.” There was a wild, desperate look to his eyes. “He should be here now, playing sports and starting to like girls, not lying in a box in the ground.”

“Getting yourself killed isn't going to change that. You're chasing a memory,” I said, my tone pleading.

“At least I'm not running away. Isn't that what you did by coming here?” His voice rose. We stared at each other for several seconds, the truth laid bare between us. “When did this get hard?” he asked, softly now. “Barely back in the same place and fighting. I don't want to part badly, Ad. Matter of fact, I don't want to part at all.” He stepped closer.

“Me neither.”

His lips were upon mine then, and his arms circling me, in the same way and the same places they had been that one night. But it was nothing like the kiss, tentative and innocent, that we had shared on the dock. His movements were rough, hardened by time and fueled by the liquor I could taste and smell. His eyes were closed and he was somewhere else, trying to erase all that had been. Everything was different.

“Stop.” I put my hand on his chest.

But he was demanding now, pressing me back against the cold stone of the building, trying to persuade me. His hands cupped my face to keep me close. “It isn't wrong,” he murmured. “It's exactly as it always should have been.”

I pushed him away. “I can't. We shouldn't, not like this.”

“But, Addie, before everything happened... I thought we were just starting out.”

My head spun with confusion. I wanted him, more than anything in my life. But not like this. “Don't you see? Too much has happened. We can't pick up as though it hasn't.” He left me once; how could I ever trust him again?

He stepped back. “I'll go.” The words punched at my heart. If only we had more time to figure it out. “You don't have to run again,” he added softly, looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes so reminiscent of his youngest brother. “Good night, Addie.” He tipped his hat and started to turn.

I wanted to cry out as deep regret thudded down upon me. I had only just found Charlie. Though I needed him to go, I fought not to call out and stop him. I could scarcely bear to have him walk away from me again.

As Charlie disappeared around the corner, I turned, lost in the darkness and fog that suddenly swirled all around me. Regret loomed and I started forward, wanting to run after him and throw myself into his arms, to tell him that I had been wrong. But then I stopped, remembering all of the reasons I'd held him off in the first place. I stood, immobilized. Coming to London had seemed the answer, a way to escape the past. It had not removed my pain, though, just dulled it for a time. Now it was back, throbbing a thousand times worse for having been denied.

Suddenly a siren cut through the air. This was not the familiar signal of curfew that had rung out hours earlier, but something louder and more intense. A buzzing came from overhead, growing rapidly. At the corner, people streamed down the stairs of buildings with none of the usual weariness, running for the shelter at the corner. An air raid—and this time it was for real.

As I started for the shelter, an explosion rocked the street below me, sending me sprawling forward. Not daring to get up, I crawled to the base of the nearest row house, shards of glass and rubble cutting into my hands. I cowered in the corner by a staircase, covering my head from the hot dust and debris. The sky above lit up like fireworks over the boardwalk on the Fourth of July. I'd heard tales of the Blitz, and even felt a distant rumble from a V-1 on occasion as I lay in my flat at night. A few times I'd been roused from bed by Mrs. Dashani's knocking and we'd made our way to the corner shelter, only to return after the all clear. But this was my first real air raid and as the explosions came, closer and relentless, I grasped frantically at the pavement, willing myself to become part of it.

There was a moment's lull between detonations. I peered up, choking against the smoke and dust that filled the air. On the sidewalk where I'd stood moments earlier, a boy, no more than five or six, stood motionless amidst the people that rushed past him to shelter. I started to go toward him. But there was another explosion, shattering the window above my head and sending glass raining down upon me as I ducked for cover once more. When I looked up again, the boy was gone. Had I imagined him to be there? It seemed impossible that a child could be out in this alone. I started once more in the direction where I had seen the boy, but someone grabbed me from behind.

“Bloody fool!” a cockney voice exclaimed harshly. Hands pulled me into a cellar shelter closer than the other one I had seen. “Get inside!” Where was Charlie? He could not have gotten far before the air raid began. I prayed that he had made it to safety.

I scanned the street again. Not seeing the child, I climbed the rest of the way down the ladder to the shelter. It was crowded, with a dozen or so people squeezed awkwardly into the tiny, closet-like space that should have held half as many. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and smoke. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the dim light. Across the shelter, I saw a familiar figure, seated on a crate, half facing away from me. It was Lord Raddingley. What was he doing here, in this run-down basement? A woman sat close on his lap, torso pressed against his. Claire. I started toward them, squeezing in between people and trying not to step on anyone. They must have been caught on the street, too. Closer, I stopped. The woman on his lap was not Claire, but another woman, yellow-haired and heavily made up. Her body was pressed close to his in a way that left no mistake about their intimacy. I stifled a gasp.

A minute later the sirens stopped and the air outside grew still. People began to unfold themselves from the crowded space. I climbed up the ladder and stepped out onto the street. At the curb, something sat hunched in a ball, teetering dangerously close to the road and threatening to fall into it. As I neared, the ball straightened. The child I had seen during the bombing raid had not been an apparition after all.

“Are you okay?” There was no response. The child stared straight ahead, not meeting my eyes. He wore secondhand clothes that had been darned at the cuffs and his face was blackened with soot. But beyond that, he did not appear to be injured. “Hello? Are you hurt?” He looked at me blankly through a too-long fringe of blond hair. Perhaps he was in shock, or did not speak English. I tried again in Italian, then switched to French, then Yiddish. Nothing worked.

People were hurrying now from the shelters back to their homes. Sirens wailed, from emergency vehicles racing to the sites with the most damage. A charred smell filled the air, burning my nose and throat. “Come.” I took the boy's hand and walked to a bobby at the corner, who seemed to have lost his trademark blue cap in the chaos. “I found a child.”

The policeman covered his mouth and coughed. “No one's come looking for him. One of the street lads by the looks of him.” Where were his parents? “Nearest orphanage is south of here across the bridge. I can't leave my post, but I can have someone take him to the stationhouse and send him there in the morning.”

I shuddered at the thought of the child locked up for the evening, taken by the police as I might have been the day I arrived in America because there was no one to claim me at immigration. “I'll take him myself.”

“Theed Street, just over the footbridge. But you won't get a cab and I can't let you walk. There's the curfew and likely more raids before this night is over. You'll have to leave the boy with me.”

I braced myself for an argument. I would take the child to my flat if I had to before I would turn him over to the police. But before I could make my case, there came a crashing noise from the corner as the roof of a building that had been hit by a shell began to cave in. “Bloody hell!” the policeman swore, running in the direction of the collapse.

I turned to the boy and held out my hand. He hung back uncertainly. What would I do if he refused to come with me? I couldn't force him. Then he slipped his hand in mine and the soft, warm fingers felt so much like Robbie's, I might have cried. But there was no time. I looked around for a taxi and found none. “Come,” I said softly and began to walk quickly through the streets, relieved that the boy kept up without complaint.

A few minutes later, we reached the river, not far from where I had stood with Charlie just hours earlier. I stared at the Hungerford Bridge spanning the Thames, long and bare and exposed. Searchlights licked the sky, looking for the next wave of bomber planes.

I started forward toward the footpath, but the child pulled back. “Don't be afraid,” I urged, not sure why he should believe me. But then I noticed he was missing a shoe and the cracked sole of his foot was seeping blood into the pavement, just as Mamma's had the night she put me on the boat. It must have hurt him terribly for blocks, and yet the strong little boy had said nothing.

I peered desperately across the bridge once more. Then I knelt, gesturing for the child to climb on my back. He was denser than his slight frame suggested and I struggled under the weight. I started across the bridge, trying to stay low.

We reached the other side and I straightened, breathing easier. Theed Street was, as the policeman had said, not far beyond the base of the bridge. As we turned onto the unlit street, the door to one of the houses flew open and a woman dressed in black-and-white nun's garb rushed out. “Leo!” I set him down and he ran toward her. Kneeling, she grabbed the child and began speaking close to his face scolding him in German, though whether to the boy or herself I was not quite sure. I was caught off guard by the language, which no one spoke openly in London these days.

“I'm Jayne Highsmith,” she offered in English. “Sister Jayne, they call me here.”

“Adelia.” The woman wrapped her arms around the child, then looked up expectantly at me. I must look so odd in the party dress I'd borrowed from Claire, now wrinkled and filthy. “I found him on the street over by St. Paul's.”

“Leo's always running off,” the woman explained apologetically. “He's one of about two dozen children that we were able to bring over from a refugee camp near Lille. We managed to get sponsors to bring them here before the German occupation. It's a bit cramped and they'd be better off outside the city, but we've had no choice since a bomb damaged the abbey in Surrey last month. They're the lucky ones—we still have another thirty little ones awaiting their papers in the north of France.” Lucky. Someone had called me that once, and in retrospect they had been right. Appreciation welled in me for my aunt and uncle, who had been willing to take me in.

“Are they orphans?”

“Some have parents back in Europe who sent them ahead for safety. Leo's had it worse than most. His parents were killed on Kristallnacht.” I'd heard of the rampage in Germany and Austria, Jews beaten, their homes and shops destroyed. “And no one here can communicate with him.” She stopped, seeing my puzzled look. “Leo's deaf.”

So that explained why he had not responded to my questions. I looked down at the boy, who must feel so isolated and confused. “He's all alone.”

“He has a sister among the children still waiting for paperwork in France.”

“Couldn't all of the children be brought out at once?” I asked, curiosity making me more direct.

“We only had papers for so many—and we got the most urgent cases out first. Leo, without his hearing, was most vulnerable.” I nodded. There was no telling what would happen to someone like him if he had stayed. “His sister will be here soon enough.” There came a faint rumbling and the woman looked upward uneasily. “We should be inside. You're welcome to stay until it's light out.”

“No, thank you, I should be getting back.” I patted Leo's shoulder and he looked up with an almost-smile. Watching as he followed the woman back into the house, a part of me wished I was going with him.

I started back toward the bridge. The sky was beginning to pinken now, illuminating the street before me. The devastation of South London was beyond anything I had seen since my arrival, entire blocks decimated, not just from this night but the past months of bombing. At the entrance to the underground at Waterloo, which had been hooded with aluminum to keep its lights from planes overhead, people climbed the stairs to the street with rolled blankets in hand. The tube stations had become places to sleep during the Blitz and many still went there, either for safety or because their homes had been destroyed and there was simply nowhere else for them to go. Their faces were haggard from lack of sleep but they moved forward, jaws set grimly. A mother leaned against a light post, holding two infants and looking as though she might collapse at any second. I reached in my pocket and fished out whatever coins I had, then handed them to the woman, wishing that I had more to give.

I recrossed the footbridge into the city. The streets were calm now as Londoners began their morning, stepping around the broken boards and rubble as they made their way to work. At the corner, the fire brigade hosed down the charred rubble of a building and a policeman guided traffic around the wreckage, which protruded into the roadway. At the base of St. Paul's, I found a cab and gave the driver my address. As I slumped in the backseat watching the shops of Piccadilly Circus scroll past, I tried to make sense of what had happened with Charlie. The very deepest part of me had wanted to see him and to run into his arms. But something had stopped me from getting too close again.

I asked the driver to stop short of my address on Porchester Terrace, and paid him. Then I hurried up the steps, past Mrs. Dashani's door before the landlady could see me in the previous evening's clothes. In my room, I took my dressing gown from the hook, then walked to the toilet down the hall to run a bath. Ten minutes later, I sank into the steaming tub, guiltily avoiding the line where the hot water was supposed to stop for rationing. Baths were one of the things I loved best here—the steep porcelain tub on brass-footed legs. I poured in some of the bath salts I'd splurged on at Boots.

As the water enveloped me, my thoughts returned to Charlie. Even as I had wanted to be with him, part of me wanted to flee again as I had in Washington. Resentment seeped in that he had come and complicated things just as I found a new start. My life here was nothing grand—a tiny flat, a job which, for all of the extras, was still just a typing job. But I was my own person here—not just an extension of the Connallys. I would not leave again. More to the point, I didn't have anywhere to go.

I sank deeper in the water. I shouldn't linger, I knew; I needed to get dressed for work. But my muscles relaxed in the warm water and my eyes grew heavy.

I was standing on the beach at Ohio Avenue, watching Liam surf in the distance. The waves grew larger and I tried to shout to him over the breaking surf to come in. But he could not hear me. A wave loomed large, swallowing the beach and crashing down upon me. The current was fiercer than it had ever been before, threatening not just to sweep me away but to tear me apart, pull my limbs from one another. Through the water a hand felt for me and even though I could not see, I knew that it was Charlie. I reached for him but then he was gone.