Lovely War(91)

James entered the station and boarded a train already in the stable. He didn’t see her.

Let him go, she thought bitterly.

But the seed couldn’t take root in Hazel’s heart. There he was, boarding that train, like One More Chance about to slip away.

She struggled to drag her heavy case back over to the ticket window.

“Can I change my London ticket to one for that train?” she asked the cashier, a balding and slightly oily person, neither through any fault of his own.

“Where are you bound?” asked he.

“Wherever it’s bound,” was her reply.

The cashier’s eyes bulged. This was the most interesting thing to happen at the Chelmsford station for a month of Sundays. He changed her ticket.

“You’re not chasing after that young chappie who just got on the train, are you?” he said.

“That’s a rather impertinent question, don’t you think?” snapped Hazel. “Porter!”

The cashier watched her go. “She’s chasing after that chappie,” he told his fellow cashier at the adjacent window. “I’d bet my week’s wages.”

“I would too if I were her,” replied the other cashier, a spinster of a certain age. Women, in men’s jobs! The war, of course.

Hazel boarded the train. When it pulled out, she rose and worked her way forward until she spotted James. He sat alone in a group of four seats and watched out the window. She barged into his section and sat down in the aisle seat facing his. If he tried to leave, she vowed, she would kick out a leg and trip him.

If she didn’t manage to trip him, I would do it myself.

He looked up soon enough, but not instantly, pausing just long enough that she wanted to scream. But discover her he did, and the surprise on his face was worth an extra train fare.

He gazed at her, dumbstruck, for what felt like an eternity, then sank back into his chair, hid his face inside the bell of his hat, and began to laugh.

Hazel didn’t know whether to be relieved, or to swat his knees with her handbag.

He said something, but through the felt of his hat, Hazel wasn’t sure what.

“How’s that?”

He removed his hat. “I said, ‘What am I going to do with you?’”

“You’re going to talk to me,” she said firmly. “I think I deserve that much.”

He couldn’t help it. He smiled at her, even if his face had forgotten how. She was angry, and so adorably angry, that he didn’t know what to do. That was undoubtedly a very patronizing thing to think, but it didn’t matter. Guilty as charged.

The sight of his smile defrosted something in Hazel.

“What do you want me to say?” James asked her.

What indeed?

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Where are you going?”

“None of that,” she said firmly. “I asked you first.”

“To Lowestoft,” he said.

This was the last thing Hazel had expected to hear, not that she had any expectation at all. “Perfect day for a sunny outing at the beach?” she inquired.

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“Just the place to get one’s mind off their troubles.”

The look that passed across his face made her pause. She tried again in a gentler tone.

“What brings you to Lowestoft?”

He turned to look at her. “To see someone.”

“Someone you met in France?” she asked.

He shook his head. “A woman.”

To Hazel’s credit, she did not become jealous. Baffled, though.

“How long is it to Lowestoft?” she asked.

“Two and a half hours, nearly,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

She looked up quickly. “To spend the day with you?”

“It doesn’t appear,” James said, “that I have any choice in the matter.”

“You don’t,” she agreed. “But I try to seem polite.”

He smiled, against his will, and shook his head. “You’re quite a girl, Hazel Windicott.”

She met his gaze. “So a good friend once told me.”





HADES


     What Adelaide Needed to Know—June 15, 1918





THE RIDE WAS LONG. James watched out the window. Hazel’s attempts at small talk went nowhere. She hid behind a novel. She bought a bag of nuts and offered him some, which he declined.

“You know,” she said, “you still notice all the grand buildings, in every town we pass.”

He smiled. Just a little, but Hazel saw it. “Do I?”

They settled into silence. At Ipswich, they left the train and waited for another. James helped Hazel with her luggage. Again they sat in a private booth, facing each other.

“How is your friend?” he asked at length. “Colette.”

“She’s well.” Hazel paused. “Well, and not well. You remember me telling you about Aubrey? My friend, the jazz pianist at Saint-Nazaire?”

He nodded.

“He went missing,” Hazel said. “The band shipped out, and he wasn’t supposed to go with them, but he vanished, and nobody’s had any word of him. But there was a murder of a black soldier at the base, and”—she gulped—“Colette is convinced he’s the one who was killed.”