Leeway Cottage

by Beth Gutcheon

  “He can’t dance,” says Kjeld.

  “He can’t dance, don’t ask him,” sings an American second lieutenant, as Laurus blushes.

  “Why not?” Libby looks under the table. “He’s got two feet, I counted them.”

  “Married,” says Laurus, exhibiting his wedding band.

  “Oh,” says Libby sadly.

  “Not everyone thinks it matters,” says the lieutenant.

  “But you do?” says Libby to Laurus.

  Laurus nods.

  “Lucky wife,” says Libby.

  When the music stops, and the other girls come back to the table, Libby says to Laurus, “Well, if you can’t dance, I don’t suppose you can play the piano,” and Kjeld guffaws.

  “Does that mean he can?”

  “It does,” says Laurus. “Why did you ask?”

  “Because I can sing,” says Libby.

  “Can you really?”

  “Sing ‘White Christmas’!” demands the lieutenant. He calls for more beer.

  “Jimmy, it’s April.”

  “I know, but I love that song. ‘I’mmm dreeeeaming…’”

  To stop him, Laurus goes to the piano and plays the first chords, looking over his shoulder at Libby. Come on, I dare you. A great clamor breaks out at their table and soon Libby is on her feet beside the piano, wiggling as she pulls her slip down under her skirt. She is deliciously unself-conscious.

  “Can you really sing?” Laurus asks.

  “No,” says Libby, “but there’s a war on.”

  “This key all right?”

  She drapes herself against the piano, lights a cigarette, and nods to him to begin. She really can’t sing, but her imitation of a chanteuse is so amusing that she gets wild applause.

  “Miss Peggy Lee, eat your heart out!” calls the lieutenant.

  On the evenings Laurus and Libby meet at Rainbow Corner, they get into the habit of walking together through the blacked-out streets, back to the nurses’ residence hall, sometimes with the other girls, sometimes alone.

  One night, taking a deep breath of the soft London darkness, Libby asks him, “What do you miss most about springtime at home?”

  “The first strawberries,” he says, and is surprised to find that in answering he has thought of home as Denmark, not New York. “What do you?”

  “American birds. There were always nests in the trees outside my window. I could watch the babies hatch out and the parents feeding them. And the first asparagus, my mother grows it. And then the tree peepers on summer nights.”

  “Are tree peepers birds?”

  “No, they’re little frogs.”

  “That live in trees?”

  “Of course.”

  “What a strange country. What kind of trees do you have out your window?”

  “Enormous maples that my grandfather planted. He was a Sooner. And in the spring you could take the pods that fell and split the seed end, and inside there was stickum so you could stick the pod on your little nose. We all went around with little green Pinocchio noses. Oh, and the smell of the grass the first time it’s cut in the spring! That smell, coming through the classroom window while you waited for recess! And jumping rope! Do Danish girls jump-rope?”

  She is enchanting. Guileless, warmhearted, like somebody’s sister. Like his sister. She has four brothers, whom she obviously adores. He makes her tell him about the Sooners, and she makes him tell her about smørrebrød, and makes him laugh, trying to pronounce “rødgrød med fløde,” and he invites her to lunch the next day at a café serving Scandinavian food around the corner from the Danish Freedom Council.

  At lunch, when their plates arrive, featuring dense bread and several kinds of toppings, she points at them one at a time and makes him tell what they are called in Danish and English.

  “These pink ones?”

  “They are made with fish roe, but we don’t call it that.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Squished elevator man.”

  She laughs, a wonderful deep rippling sound.

  “We don’t have many elevator men, but when we have them, they wear red jackets.”

  “What’s this one called?” She points to a grayish liver paste.

  “That one is very bad. That one is called ‘squished Negro.’”

  “That is bad. I didn’t think you had Negroes in Denmark.”

  “We have a few, mostly artists and musicians. Danes are mad for American jazz.”

  “I love jazz.”

  “Do you? Have you heard Art Tatum?”

  “Nope. Is he the greatest?”

  “Yep. Well, skål.”

  “Skål,” she says, and takes a sip of beer, while studying the plate, to decide what to eat first.

  “No, no,” says Laurus. “You must look at me as we raise our glasses to each other, and keep looking as we drink. Then we raise our glasses to each other again. Then you can look away.”

  She does as instructed, and as he looks into her night-brown eyes, he feels something go through him to the pit of his stomach. Suddenly he is surprised that people do this intensely intimate thing so constantly and casually at home. Libby’s cheeks are about eight shades pinker, and she seems not to know where to look. They begin eating, and talking with false gaiety about the food.

  She goes every night after that to the Rainbow Corner but it’s more than a week before Laurus turns up with Kjeld and a couple of others. He looks around the room, telling himself he’s making sure she isn’t there. When he sees that she is, he feels a hot wash of happiness.

  Libby is dancing with a GI who appears to be seven feet tall, with the biggest hands and feet Laurus ever saw. She waves from behind the giant’s back, and Laurus, while pretending to attend to the conversation at their table, orders a beer and then is surprised when one arrives, drinks it without tasting it, and waits for the music to stop or the giant to relinquish Libby. Not that it’s anything to him, but just to see if she will or will not then come to his table.

  The music does not stop, and the giant turns out to do a mean Lindy Hop. Laurus can’t take his eyes off them.

  When the music shifts to a fox-trot, Laurus, with no memory of crossing the floor, finds himself tapping the giant on the shoulder.

  He is a pleasant giant, with a wide face and an easy smile. He lets Libby go with a bow, and she turns to Laurus the same smile of welcome she has just given in farewell. And Laurus finds himself absolutely tongue-tied. When they have chattered with ease for hours all spring.

  He remembers that he doesn’t dance except with his wife. He prays she won’t mention it. He wonders if the giant is someone special to her. He has no idea how to ask. She holds him and follows effortlessly. Finally he frames a sentence.

  “You’re a wonderful dancer.”

  “Thank you. That’s why I offered to dance before I offered to sing.”

  He chuckles appreciatively. He feels as if his bowels might let go, he is so flooded with emotion.

  They dance until the end of the song, and then another, and then the music breaks off at last. As he leads her to their table, he sees Kjeld looking at him quizzically.

  He orders two beers, and when they come, looks anywhere but at her. If she offers to skål, he doesn’t know what he may do afterward. When the music starts again, he gets up and holds his hand to her. She takes it and rises to follow him. The song is “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Her skin smells lemony.

  “No moon tonight,” Libby says at last.

  “I know.”

  “I used to love the full moon at home. Now I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe again when there’s a moon.”

  The full moon brings the bombers. He wonders the same thing.

  In the dark of that night he walks her home. The air is warm and smells of fruit trees in bloom. What cars are in the streets have their headlights taped down to slits and they creep along, picking their way with blades of light in the thick spring dark.

  At the corner of her block, Libby sto
ps and turns to him. She knows their relationship is about to change, and she wants to be away from the coming and going of others at the door of her building.

  They look at each other in silence. Then he says her name softly, and she stands immobile, waiting. He kisses her. First with his lips, then somehow their arms, their bodies, their tongues, are all part of it.

  He steps away a little and then comes right back into her arms and they kiss again. Finally, he puts his hands on her elbows and holds her gently away from him. A large car with curtained windows makes its way down the street and past them, like a huge animal tiptoeing.

  “And now?” she says finally.

  “And now…we say goodbye.”

  A long pause. She had expected this, though hoped for something else.

  “A clean cut,” he says.

  They stand on the edge of tears for more ticking seconds. Then he kisses his fingertips and touches them to her forehead. He says, “Always.”

  “Always,” she whispers.

  She turns and walks away from him. She has a long strong neck and perfect posture. She is wearing a light-colored dress—he wishes he noticed such things, he wishes he’d committed everything about this moment to memory, there were sprigs of some little purple flower printed on the dress, he thinks. Her dark hair swings loose at her shoulders. Feminine, capable, gentle, brave, his brain says to him. Are you mad to let that walk out of your life?

  As she reaches the door of the nurses’ house, she stops and turns. There is just enough light from the edge of the blackout curtain at the adjacent window for him to see her face. She kisses one finger and turns it to him, sending the kiss to him. Then she tries to smile and fails; and then she is gone. Although she goes back to the Rainbow Corner often for the remainder of the war, she never sees him there again.

  Darling,

  I wish you could see Eleanor…she’s like a little marshmallow girl, all soft and pink and gurgly. She’s outside on her blanket under the oak tree with Sandra. I’m enclosing some snapshots I took at the bathing beach last week. I’ll take more when I can get the film. You’ll love so much giving her a bath. She opens her little hands like pink starfishes and slaps the water, then she clutches her hands together and laughs and laughs at the splashes. Then she does it again.

  And you should hear the way she laughs when you make an oompah noise against her tummy. I hope you’ll get to see her while she’s little and cuddly like this…

  Gladys is coming this week to stay with us. Her baby’s due at Christmas. It will be fun to have her here, and she can borrow my maternity clothes. Neville is in the Pacific somewhere. Oh, I suppose I wasn’t supposed to say that. I hope Tojo doesn’t read this letter.

  I’m enjoying my milk route. I know all the village gossip, and we talk it all over when my ladies come here to knit Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It’s such a funny group, everyone from Mrs. Sherman who sells crabmeat on the Kingdom Road to Auntie Violet Holmes. We have a new member, a niece of Dr. Carey. She went to Vassar College, and had a job in New York, in publishing, but she’s been sent here to “get over something.” No one is saying what. You’ve never seen anything like her. She has black eyes and brown hair that’s almost black and she wears it very short, like a boy’s. And she wears men’s trousers! And in the rain, she wears a fedora! And she’s really very good-looking! Her name is Anselma and her mother is Italian. If she showed up in Cleveland dressed like that, I don’t know what would happen, but here, nobody turns a hair. They’re used to Miss Leaf, and those two ladies who run the pottery. It’s too small a place for people not to get along.

  Uh-oh. I hear Eleanor. More later.

  Now it’s Sunday. Sorry for the long delay. Sandra was stung by a bee, and made a colossal fuss. She’s so good with the baby, I forget she’s just fourteen. Onward—I have a classic Candace story for you. I happened to be at The Elms one afternoon when Ralph was getting ready to go to the dump. I saw him carry a box of old books out, and thank God I caught him—Mother was throwing out my grandmother’s Line-a-Day diaries. Can you imagine? Forty years of Granabelle’s life, and she was throwing them out. Without asking me. She said, Well, what are you going to do with them, read them? I said, Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The next time I saw her, she asked me with that prune smile how I was getting along in the Line-a-Days. So I went home and sat down with one of them, and they’re fascinating. (I don’t know why they’re called Line-a-Days—they’re four lines a day.) I started with 1909. They seemed to spend all their time sewing and reading aloud to each other. The dressmaker would come for a week a couple of times a year and Granabelle would sew along with her, for days. Also, she always noted when she washed her hair. I counted and found she only did it about five times a year! It took two people and took all day to dry afterward. Her hair was long enough to sit on.

  So I get to the page for May 18, 1910, and here’s what it says: “Terrible news—Berthe Brant has shot herself!”

  Shot herself! Mother always said she died from lacing her corsets too tight when she was pregnant! I went straight to The Elms with the book, and asked Candace if she knew what really happened, and she said vaguely, Oh, yes, she thought she had known that. Well, then why on earth would she say that Berthe had died of lacing her stays too tight? She said that she guessed suicide was too shameful to talk about.

  What kind of people would tell a story like that, about a poor dead woman? Plus, I don’t even know if Candace made it up to make Berthe seem like a fool, or if my father and Granabelle did, and the whole family agreed to tell this awful story?

  And why did Berthe shoot herself?

  There’s no point asking Candace any more about it. She gave that horrible little barking laugh which means nothing is funny and she wishes she were allowed to hit me, and said, It never fails, Sydney, you are drawn like a magnet to the commonest things. Don’t you love people who smile when they’re angry?

  All for now, I’ve got to get this in the mail. Gladdy comes tomorrow. Write! Baby and I love your letters. I’ll write again as soon as I can. I love you ten bushels and three pecks.

  Your

  Swan

  PS Forgot the best part. Now Mother is keeping a Line-a-Day. “For Eleanor,” she says.

  Throughout August of 1943, unraveling civil order in Denmark is infuriating to Dr. Best. In Kaj and Nina’s world, Best is an archvillain. But they differ about Scavenius, their own prime minister. Kaj thinks Scavenius has saved Denmark the humiliation, the Quisling government, the disaster to their Jews that Norway has suffered. Nina says Scavenius is a Nazi sympathizer. She says she wants to shoot Hitler herself.

  “But you’re a pacifist,” says Kaj.

  “I make an exception in his case,” says Nina.

  Both would be surprised to learn how much Werner Best himself wants the present unrest to abate, how little he wants to have to retaliate. This is not because he is a warm and gentle person in spite of his smirk and his Nazi strut; it’s for his own political survival. He is now identified with the policy of allowing Denmark relative normalcy (far more normalcy than exists in Germany anymore) in exchange for its workers and its goods. He is jockeying for the approval of the Führer. Best’s competition is the dark and meaty General von Hanneken, now commanding the Wehrmacht in Denmark. Von Hanneken believes he was sent to turn Denmark into a German province. He views Werner Best as a fly in his ointment. The Third Reich likes to give contrary orders to its subordinates; it keeps them off balance, out of league with each other, and perpetually striving for preference.

  At the beginning of August, as Sydney and Gladdy are putting up as many jars of raspberry jam as their sugar rations allow, Sweden finally cancels the right of transit across its borders for German troops. Lines drawn in sand in 1940 are being kicked apart. In quiet little Odense, a town best known as the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish strikers have badly beaten at least one German officer and refused to go back to work, no matter who begs them. All over the
country the streets are full of SS troops, firing guns and threatening troublemakers. With more German troops in the country, more public and private buildings are taken over for housing and training them, increasing Danish irritation. Copenhagen’s largest exhibition hall, the Forum, an extravaganza of steel and glass, is for instance being turned into a German barracks. On August 24 the militant underground delivers beer in wooden cases to the Forum, where it is happily accepted. Each has a layer of Tuborg beer bottles on its top rack and is stuffed with explosive beneath. The Forum blows up in broad daylight, without a shot fired or a Resistance fighter lost. Der Führer is furious.

  Best writes to Berlin that a new situation has arisen. Berlin, however, already knows. Von Hanneken is complaining angrily that Best’s experiment has failed. Best is called to Berlin to have his ears scorched off, by Himmler, as Hitler is too angry to see him. The Führer does not, as Best has suggested, think that the solution to this situation is to make Werner Best de facto ruler of Denmark. Instead, on August 28, General von Hanneken orders the Danish government to announce the following:

  There is an official state of Emergency.

  Public gatherings of more than five people are now forbidden.