“She doesn’t want to hear about that.”
Jess whirled around at the sound of Dan’s voice. He was standing behind them, cheeks pinked with embarrassment, tiredness fixed deep in his eyes, an ugly graze on the back of his hand. “How long have you been there?” she asked.
“Long enough to learn my charms are wasted on you,” he grinned, clearly eager to turn the conversation away from Anne’s recitation of his acts of good.
“You’ve come to get that boy Jennings, haven’t you?” Anne asked. “Wait there.” She disappeared into the ward.
“Surely it’s not a major’s job to escort privates back to the front?” Jess said, offering him her mug before she realized what she was doing and that he probably didn’t want her half-finished coffee. “Sorry,” she apologized.
But he took the mug from her. “Hey, you can’t take it back once you’ve offered it.” He finished it in one long swallow. “Damn that’s good. And no, majors don’t normally escort privates around but I’ve known Jennings since we were kids and his mom told me she’d kill me if anything happened to him. Given his ability to not require actual shelling and bullets in order to injure himself, I thought I’d better look after him. Don’t want to survive the war only to be killed by Jennings’ mom,” he added.
Jess laughed. This was why all the nurses were in love with him. He was that rarest of all things: a nice man. “Do you want to see Victorine before you go?”
“Do you know where she is?” he asked, tiredness suddenly erased from his face, which was now filled with an eagerness of the kind Jess hadn’t seen him turn toward any of the nurses who wanted to give him their hearts.
Jess nodded and he followed her outside where she stopped short.
“What is it?” he asked after he nearly collided with her.
“It’s not raining,” she whispered, awe-struck by something as simple as the cessation of water falling from the sky.
“About goddamned time,” he said, reflexively doing the same as she had, tipping his head up to the sky.
All of a sudden, the deluge began again, striking them full in the face with drops as hard and stinging as rocks. They were rocks, Jess realized. Hailstones, and for some reason, rather than wincing as one hit her brow, she laughed, and so did Dan and they started to run as best they could.
“Next time, don’t say anything and the reprieve might last a little longer,” Dan mock-grouched as they reached her tent.
“I jinxed it, didn’t I?” Jess said, pulling open the tent flap.
Dan smiled when he saw Victorine, soundly sleeping. “Is this your bed?” he asked as he took in Jess’s typewriter and the crate containing her cameras and paper, held up off the ground by rocks. “I thought she was staying in the convalescent tent.”
“She kind of invited herself here. I don’t mind. She keeps me warm.”
“Jess…”
She held up her hand. “I don’t need any thanks. It’s what anyone would do. You love her, the men love her, hell, I’ve half fallen in love with her in one week…” Her voice trailed off at the look on Dan’s face.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “You can’t say that.”
Can’t say what? Jess was about to ask when she suddenly realized. Jinx. If you say the rain has stopped, then it’s bound to start up again. If you say you love someone, then they’re bound to…die.
“I take it back,” she said. “Her bony elbows stick into me all night and you should see the bruises on my legs. She can kick in her sleep harder than any horse.”
Victorine stirred in her sleep, her leg shooting out suddenly and they both laughed. The girl’s eyes flew open. “You came back,” she said sleepily to Dan and he sat on the bed beside her and stroked her hair. Within half a minute she was asleep again.
“Will you read this?” Jess asked abruptly.
In the faint glow of the kerosene lamp, sitting on her bed, Victorine asleep beside him, Dan read her words about Victorine while Jess kept her back turned studiously toward him. When she could no longer hear pages rustling, she said, “I don’t want to send it to my editor unless you approve.”
“You should definitely send it,” was all he said before he gave Victorine a quick kiss on the cheek and left to get Jennings.
Six
Jess’s story about Victorine and the accompanying pictures were syndicated worldwide. I can’t thank you enough, Bel had written. You’ve given Vogue credibility during this period of war that it wouldn’t otherwise have. Jess’s name was one people now knew for something other than how she looked in a dress.
When she’d first learned how far and wide her photographs would travel, Jess sat in the near empty bath at the Savoy Hotel and cried. She cried for Victorine, for the men who made it off the mountain that day only to die by nightfall, for the nurses who had to patch up the men and send them back out into the field, for the people who saw her pictures and didn’t understand that each moment was underlit, hauntingly so, by what had come before, and what would come after.
Beneath the tears, she was so thankful that she’d returned to Italy, despite the fear, and that she’d told a story worth telling.
But that night she saw Warren Stone in the bar shaking his head over a newspaper and she knew her picture well enough to recognize it as the one of Victorine and Dan. Warren still didn’t have his promotion. But Jess had a set of well-regarded pictures behind her name. It would be best if she kept well out of his way and did nothing to provoke him. Not that she really thought there was anything much he could do to her, other than waste her time with disagreeable exchanges.
So, after a short break, where she spent as much time as she could outside, tracing the unfamiliar geography of a wounded city where bedrolls littered tube stations and women with scarves wrapped around their hair sat atop piles of rubble and drank cups of tea and children pretended to shoot one another with crumpled iron bars fallen from buildings, she got herself another set of orders to go back to Italy, to search out another story, thankful that Warren Stone was now on a week’s leave and she didn’t have to deal with him.
She waited in London for a few more days, hoping to see Martha—who was on her way back from visiting her husband in the States—and had almost given up when Martha phoned her room and told Jess she was downstairs. Jess made her way across the black-and-white marble floors and through the mahogany opulence of the lobby until she reached the American Bar where the U.S. Army Press Office had set itself up. She sank into a booth opposite Martha, who had two large whiskies in front of her.
“Wait till you hear this,” Martha said to Jess.
“What?”
“Collier’s has made my dear husband their war correspondent.”
“But you’re the Collier’s war correspondent,” Jess said uncomprehendingly.
“They want someone who can go into combat zones. Especially now that rumor confidently predicts an Allied invasion of Europe within two months. Because I’m a woman, I can’t do the job they want done.” Martha downed her whiskey in one swallow. “The RAF even flew him to London. I had to hitch a ride on a Norwegian freighter.”
“How could he do that to you?”
Martha shrugged, a gesture that might seem nonchalant on anyone else but on Martha it was like a cowering in, an enfolding of herself into something that could not, would not, be hurt. But of course she had been hurt, and not just emotionally, as her next words confirmed, making her action—her attempt to deflect what was likely still to follow from her husband—all the more affecting. “That’s Hem for you,” she said dully. “I asked him for a divorce, of course. He laughed, after he hit me.”
“I’m so sorry.” Jess reached for her friend’s hand. But that wasn’t enough. She moved across and wrapped her arms around Marty, all the while knowing that no matter how much they tried to shield themselves, the wounds were still getting through.
“Last year, if you’d told me this would happen, I wouldn’t have believed you.
We were in love.” Martha blinked, hard. “Then when I told him I was returning to Europe, he said to me, ‘Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?’ ”
Two opposing choices. A binary the world seemed determined to force upon the women who wanted something more inclusive, limiting them to this single moment of a shared embrace, a shared pain, a broken heart and the uncertainty of what was to come when they declared that an either/or choice was not enough.
Into the silence following Martha’s words, Jess heard her name spoken by the men at the next table, accompanied by uproarious laughter and she knew that the bar at the Savoy was not a place she wanted to spend any more time in. And nor should Martha, especially if her husband was here too. “Let’s go to Italy.”
“Not so fast.” Warren Stone shifted into the seat beside Jess.
Damn. She’d waited in London too long and now Warren’s leave was obviously over, or he’d been recalled. And he was cockier than ever. Why?
“You haven’t heard?” Martha said sardonically to Jess.
“Heard what? That a nude painting of me is on display at the Tate Gallery or something equally ridiculous?” Jess said, smiling sweetly at Warren.
“You know they show the men a picture of a naked woman painted in camouflage colors at the infantry training school to arrest the men’s attention when it wanders,” Warren said as he sipped his whiskey.
Jess knew she was gaping, open-mouthed. “That’s a lie,” she insisted.
“It’s not,” Martha said sadly.
“And it’s not what’s important right now,” Warren said, a grin spreading wide across his face. “There are a lot of shiny new women being sent here and they’re very inexperienced. We want to protect you all. So every female correspondent is quarantined in London for now.”
Jess knew that half of what Warren had said was true. As well as wanting to have reporters on the ground if the rumored invasion really was imminent, the American newspapers had seen the success among readers of Ruth Cowan’s pieces on the WACs in North Africa, Iris Carpenter’s reportage of the Blitz, and Martha’s by-line, albeit hidden behind the “Mrs. Ernest Hemingway” title. Which had meant the arrival in England of a dozen more unblooded female reporters, raising the latrine business and the cloakroom question—as the British more politely put it—to bar-room conversation status. And if they were quarantining women already, then it confirmed the invasion was not a rumor, but an action soon to be taken.
“How long are you going to keep us here?” Jess asked, provoked by his comments into breaking her pact not to deliberately antagonize him. “And you can’t keep us here. I’ll speak to your boss.”
“But I am my boss now. Feel free to congratulate me on my promotion,” Warren said.
Jess and Martha looked at one another in disbelief.
“And in answer to your question,” Warren continued cheerfully, having noted with satisfaction the women’s expressions, “you’re to stay here indefinitely.”
“Just because the new reporters are as green as an English paddock, we don’t all need to be treated the same way. Marty and I certainly aren’t inexperienced, nor are we prone to hysterics,” Jess said flatly. Just last week she’d been so proud that her photographs were being syndicated all over the world and now here she was being told she’d be kept away from the invasion just because she was a woman. From beautiful success to ridiculous failure, with the snap of a finger. “How do you expect us to report on an invasion in mainland Europe if we’re stuck here in London?”
“We don’t. The men will do that. You can go with the Red Cross doughnut girls to the camps in the south of England and spread smiles and anything else you care to.” Warren ground out his cigarette.
“You can’t make us stay.” Martha was firm.
“Did I forget to mention that we have official rules now?” Warren leaned back, relaxed, legs wide apart, arms stretched along the back of the booth, unlike Jess and Martha, who were hunched over their drinks.
“The rules state, in writing at last, everything that’s already in practice.” Warren began to recite: “The inherent difficulties, such as housing facilities, which arise due to the presence of women in the forward areas naturally make their ready acceptance as Correspondents a problem. It is believed that sufficient male Correspondents are available to make it unnecessary to utilize women in the forward areas to cover spot news and technical subjects. It is recognized, however, that certain stories, such as those concerning nurses, can best be handled from a woman’s point of view. I hope you’re grateful to me for conceding that you do a better job of writing about nurses. But none of your nurse stories can be filed until the men have filed their war stories. You have to wait at the back of the line for censoring, transmitting; everything. Cheers.” He finished his drink and stood up, having done the damage, leaving them to wallow in it.
“Shit,” Martha said. “I heard that only the men will be going across with the invasion fleet, whatever and wherever that is. But I didn’t know…”
“That the heretofore unrecorded rules are now printed in black and white for all the PROs to beat us over the head with,” Jess finished. “What a joke. It’ll never be safe. Not until somebody wins. Does that mean they’ll never let us over there?”
Neither woman spoke. They drank instead, and smoked.
Then Jess said, “It’s lucky that I got a set of orders before Warren returned from leave. If I go now, I might just get myself on a transport that doesn’t know anything about women being quarantined.”
“Warren will not only kill you when he finds out, he’ll do it with his bare hands,” Martha said, staring at her.
“But I can’t be a war correspondent in the bar of the Savoy. There’s no war here. I’ve had one piece published. If I’m quarantined now, I might never have another piece published again.”
“Then go pack your bags. And good luck.”
Jess slipped away, heart hammering both at the thought of her own daring, and at what Warren really would do to her when he found out.
* * *
Jennings was waiting for Jess when she stepped off the ship, his face obviously hastily scrubbed clean for the assignment, faint dirt streaks showing where his fingers had swiped over his brow and chin.
“Captain May,” he stuttered.
“To whom do I owe the pleasure of being provided with an escort?” Jess asked.
“Anne told Major Hallworth you were coming again and he said he has to provide escorts for all the male correspondents who come over so he didn’t see why you should have to hitch through Italy. Last month, I even had to carry one fellow’s camera lenses around for a week.”
Jess snorted. How could the army honestly think a woman who didn’t get ground transport or ask for assistance was more trouble than a man? A curious rustle of noise made her realize there was quite a line of GIs assembled at port, and that the Naples PRO who’d been so irate with her several months ago was smiling at her in a way that was certainly not friendly.
“Look what I have,” he said, stepping forward to show her a crumpled picture he’d taken from his pocket. It was of Jess. Louise Dahl-Wolfe had shot it for Harper’s Bazaar in 1940 in the early days of Jess’s modeling career. In it, Jess was sitting on the floor reading a book, back to the camera, naked except for her knickers, but all you could see of her in the photograph was her bare back and the very top of her hipbones. She’d been waiting for her next outfit when Louise decided Jess didn’t need an outfit; the shoot was meant to show off the diamond clip in Jess’s hair, rather than a dress. For the first time, Jess wondered how many people actually noticed the hairclip.
“I’ve got one too,” another man joined in the fun, pulling a different picture out of his pocket, this time of Jess in a swimsuit.
“One of the public relations guys in London was real helpful in finding these for us,” the Naples PRO said. “Now, here you are in the flesh.”
He made sure to linger over the word flesh, and Jess just stop
ped herself from shuddering. Warren Stone, Jess knew, was the one who’d made sure the men had so many pictures of her.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. “I have a telegram here for you.” The PRO handed her a piece of paper.
Her orders had been countermanded. She was to return immediately to London. It’ll be more fun to watch you leave in disgrace later, just when you think you’ve settled in, Warren had said to her. And she wondered if Warren had let her go, had wanted to make sure that, before he ordered her to come back and sit in a bar and watch the war from a distance, she would see that every man in the U.S. Army had a picture of Jess to paw over.
“When’s the next ship back?” she asked, as if she didn’t care about any of it.
“Tomorrow. Take her to one of the hotels for the night,” the PRO said to Jennings.
At that, Jennings hitched Jess’s bag onto his shoulder and walked away to the jeep. Jess followed. What else could she do? Stand at the port and watch the GIs compare pictures of her? She hadn’t won when her story and her photos of Victorine were published. Warren Stone had just wanted her to think she had because he knew that would make the loss hurt all the more.
Jennings pulled the jeep out onto the road. “My orders from my CO are to take you to the hospital at Cassino,” he said shyly. “I could bring you back early enough tomorrow to catch the ship.”
Jess leaned over and kissed his cheeks, which were, as always, suffused with the endearing blush that matched the color of his hair. “Thank you.”
* * *
When Jess woke the next morning, it was to find Victorine curled up in bed beside her, staring at her, obviously willing her to wake. “You came back too!” Victorine said and Jess realized it was what she said every time she saw Dan, and now Jess. As if the little girl could never quite believe that anyone would return, as if being passed by her mother to a convoy of medics, never to meet again, was trapped in her psyche like a leaf fossil in rock, barely visible to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for.
The Paris Orphan Page 8
