Lovely War(106)

“My mother wants to know,” James told her one evening, as they strolled home from a play, “if we would join them for Christmas dinner.”

Hazel’s eyes grew wide. Christmas dinner, two weeks away, sounded quite official. But nothing was truly official yet. At least, not to anyone but her and James.

“I’d love to,” Hazel said. “But I’d feel terrible, leaving my parents all alone.”

They crossed a crowded street. “They’re invited,” James said. “The more, the merrier.”

“Perfect!” Hazel grinned. “My mother will spend the rest of the holiday season worrying about what to wear.”

“I was thinking,” James continued, “that we should invite Colette and Aubrey, too. If he could get some leave, they could come spend Christmas here.”

“Oh! I’ll write to her immediately,” Hazel said. “No. I’ll send a telegram.”

James wasn’t finished. “And then I got to thinking,” he said, “that if we’re all gathered for Christmas dinner, we ought to kill two birds with one stone.”

Hazel paused to notice a woman’s garish orange hat. “And celebrate Boxing Day?”

His reply was nonchalant. “And hold a wedding reception.”

Gone and forgotten was the hat.

Hazel’s jaw dropped. Her feet refused to take another step. “You’re not serious.”

He nodded. “Like the maggot,” he said, “I’m in Dead Ernest.”

Hazel couldn’t even scold him for the joke. Her mind reeled. On her bureau at home stood a little china trinket dish. Inside, hidden to the world, lay a golden ring. Sometimes, at night, she’d slip it on. But she never wore it openly. Her parents didn’t know it existed.

James stood before her, watching, waiting.

Hazel treasured the ring, and the love it represented. But to her mind, it only meant that someday, some far-off someday, they would, if James still felt the same, perhaps, eventually . . . She couldn’t even admit to the word. And now—

“You want to get married,” she said slowly. “In two weeks.”

He nodded. “Only because I can’t think of a respectable way to do it sooner.”

How is one supposed to behave at such a moment? Not, Hazel was sure, like a beaming idiot. (She was wrong, incidentally.) But someone, she thought, ought to keep a level head.

“Marriage is forever, James,” she told him firmly.

“That’s the point.”

She gulped. “Aren’t we rather young?”

A look of worry crossed his face.

“Do you think so?” he asked seriously. “After this war, I feel a hundred and two.”

“Me too.” She smiled. “Ninety-seven, at any rate.”

He wrapped his arms around her, whispering close to her ear.

“I waited once to kiss you,” he said, “and almost lost my chance. I waited for the war to end before asking you to marry me, and you nearly died.” He kissed her forehead. “If the war’s taught me anything at all, it’s that life is short. I won’t waste any more of it waiting for you.”

“I had no idea,” she said, “that you were so impatient.”

You can imagine, I’m sure, what happened next. I, of course, got to watch.

They took their time about it. But finally speech was once again possible.

He folded his arms across his chest. “You still haven’t answered me,” he said sternly. “Christmas dinner? Christmas wedding? What will it be, Miss Windicott?”

She must find some way to torment him, just a little longer, first. So she tapped her finger against her chin.

“Now, I wonder what I should put in Colette’s and Aubrey’s Boxing Day boxes,” she mused. “We must make it fun. I imagine neither of them have ever celebrated it.”

He slipped his arm through hers, and they resumed their progress down the street. “So long as they’re there on the twenty-fifth, I don’t care a bit about their twenty-sixth.” He gave her a meaningful look. “We will be otherwise occupied.”



* * *





Aubrey managed to get leave to travel to London and take Colette to the wedding. He played, and she sang, and James’s Chelmsford friends marveled that he had made friends with such jazz luminaries during the war. Those two were going places.

Chelsmford was correct.

Hazel and James ate the cake and threw the flowers, and found a cheap little second-floor London flat. Hazel kept flowerpots in windows. James pulled a muscle wrangling a secondhand spinet piano around a bend in the impossible stairs. To their neighbors’ dismay, they adopted a poodle.

Maggie came often on weekend breaks from business training college. Colette came when she could get away, until Aubrey’s division sailed for the States.

Hazel taught youth piano lessons, and James found a post at an engineering firm. They burnt their dinner and ran out of money and figured things out as they went along. They invited their parents to come for tea. They took long walks in Hyde Park, remembering.

Three years after they married, Hazel gave birth to a daughter, Rose. Her infatuated parents called her Rosie.

James pulled another muscle relocating the spinet to a larger flat. A year later, Rosie learned to walk by clutching the poodle’s hair and toddling beside him.