Lovely War(13)

APHRODITE


     Goodbye—November 24, 1917





JAMES WALKED HER to a corner within sight of the striped barber’s pole outside the King’s Whiskers. Neither of them knew how to say goodbye.

“Tomorrow,” he reminded her. “The concert. We can get some tea after, maybe?”

“When should we meet?” She chewed her lip. And what do I tell my parents?

“Let’s meet at one o’clock. Right here.” He glanced at her. “So I’ll get tickets?”

She nodded. “Get tickets.”

It was time to part. They both knew it. Neither moved.

“What’s your Sunday morning like?” he asked her.

“St. Matthias’s. I play for the choir,” she told him. “The organist is . . .”

“Overseas?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “He died there,” she said. “So he’s not there, but he is, because he’s buried in Flanders.” She couldn’t meet his gaze just then.

He understood. He tried to lighten her mood with a spot of poetry.

“‘If I should die, think only this of me, that there’s some corner of a foreign field . . .’”

“‘. . . that is for ever England,’” Hazel muttered. “It’s rot.” Don’t die.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m all right. About going.” A lie and a truth, becoming every minute more of a lie. “So many have gone, and if I don’t . . . Somebody’s got to stop the Kaiser.”

What could she say? That she wasn’t all right with him going? Not one bit?

James tried to break the silence. “Was he a good organist?”

“Not especially.” She wrinkled her nose. “At his memorial, you’d have thought he was George Frideric Handel himself.”

The rest of the day stretched before James as a yawning chasm of Hazel-lessness. He longed to bury his face in her neck. Even if it was wrapped in a scratchy wool muffler.

But that was too soon, too much to ask of a girl he’d known less than twelve hours, a girl with whom he’d shared two dances and a cup of coffee. (Excellent coffee, but still.) So he squeezed her hand. “Guess I’d better be moving along.”

She bowed her head. “You’ve got loads to do, I’m sure.”

Would he kiss her? Hazel waited to see. Did she want him to? She tried not to stare at his mouth.

So pretty. She was so, so pretty. At first it was the music, and then her eyes, and her hair, but now he saw how entirely adorable she was. He should be beating off other lads with a stick.

Kiss her, I told him.

With a curled finger he gently, quickly brushed her cheek and the tip of her nose.

Leave now, or you never will, he told himself.

“Till tomorrow,” he told her. He turned to go.

No kiss. “One o’clock!” A brave attempt at sounding like she cheerfully didn’t mind not being kissed. I wasn’t fooled.

There was no point in resisting or explaining it away. James wasn’t sure what he dared call what he felt, but he knew his happiness belonged to the piano girl. Whether she would take and keep it safe for him, or not.





APHRODITE


     In Between—November 24, 1917





HAZEL RETURNED HOME to find her parents had stepped out for an errand, so no awkward confessions were needed. Not yet. She sat at the piano for a good long practice session. Just the solid, practical remedy she needed after twelve hours in the clouds. But she trailed off in the middle of pieces and stared out the window. What was James doing now? She made ridiculous mistakes. She played maudlin, sentimental ballads. She was hopeless.

James was little better. He went with his uncle Charlie to an army supply depot to purchase his uniform and kit. Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile. The constantly sung war ditty spun through his head. An oily old salesman listed all the trench ailments he’d need products to prevent or treat. Trench foot. Lice. Bitter cold. Incessant damp. Rats. Mud. Shrapnel. Hunger. Gangrene. Venereal disease.

James wanted to vomit.

“Never mind,” James’s uncle said over a cafeteria lunch. “You may end up in one of the colonies. Or you could have domestic duty.” Uncle Charlie had seen service in the Second Boer War, but not combat. Supply and transport.

“Besides,” he added, “the Americans will be coming over as soon as President Wilson gets ’em recruited and trained and fitted out. Maybe this year it’ll be over by Christmas.”

Unlike 1914. Everyone thought so then.

“How was the dance last night?” his uncle said. “Dance with any pretty girls?”

James looked at the floor. He felt his uncle’s eyes on him.

Uncle Charlie chuckled. “Met someone, did you?”

There was no need to answer this, so James didn’t.

“Good for you,” his uncle said. “You’re about to report. You deserve your bit of fun.”

James winced at this. Miss Hazel Windicott was no “bit of fun.” He finished his food quickly, thanked Uncle Charlie, and left to wander about London. He ended up at the cinema, alone, watching a mediocre film, until it ended and he could go home and go to bed.