The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  She found a lift. And she thought of Jacques and Morgan all the way to Queens.

  * * * *

  Alice saw Morgan and Jacques less often now that she had moved to St. Albans. Her work was absorbing her more and more. She was taking special courses in cancer therapy and for that reason was being kept on at the hospital instead of being transferred to another station. But she did see them both and she knew that she was heading for a showdown. There had to be one—it was unfair to put it off. And yet Alice did postpone it and in this she was strangely helped by the passive attitude of the two men in her life.

  When she was with Morgan he was attentive and sweet, but almost impersonal. Only his devoted, troubled eyes gave him away. Alice felt as if she had known him forever, but—and for his sake, she hated to say it even to herself—as if he were her brother. He looked somewhat like a faithful Airedale, like the Airedale on the rug that used to be in her bedroom at Seventy-ninth Street. She had given the rug to Pat when she left; she had also tried to give her Morgan, but that hadn’t worked.

  Morgan never asked her to marry him, but he didn’t need to. Without uttering a word he had plainly said, “I want you, Alice, and you know it. If you want me to leave, I shall. If you think you can love me, I’m here, waiting. It’s up to you to decide, for I have no decision to make. I’m already committed.”

  Morgan never kissed her except chastely on the cheek.

  Jacques never kissed her except passionately on the mouth.

  She responded, thrilled, ecstatic. She dreamed of these kisses, she wanted them, and sometimes it was as if Jacques knew and withheld them teasingly, the more to savor her desire and its gratification later.

  Pat had once said, “He’s French. Won’t he try to seduce you?”

  Alice was not going to be seduced, but she would have been less than honest with herself had she not admitted the strong temptation. And also the perverse annoyance that Jacques, Frenchman or not, had never suggested it.

  She took him to some Navy dances and he was invariably a hit and she, deliciously and smugly, the object of envy. But what always pleased her most was that the men liked him, too. He was at ease with them and they all had a good time. The Navy is a jealous organization and it meant something that Jacques, with two strikes against him—one, he was a foreigner, and two, he was too attractive to the girls—could still be popular with the males. It made Alice proud.

  Proud?

  But why?

  He was not hers to boast of; he was simply her guest at an officers’ party. If Morgan in silence had tried to get Alice to declare herself, Alice vocally had tried, with equal lack of success, to get an inkling from Jacques.

  “Tell me, Jacques,” she had said, “what were you like when you were a little boy?”

  “I was a romantic. All little boys are romantic. You never heard of the Countess d’Agoult, did you? She was something of a famous writer in the nineteenth century and she used the nom de plume, the pen name, I should say, of Daniel Stern. So I dreamed and pretended I was descended from her and that I was nobility. It was very silly. My father was a merchant and we were miles from being nobility. But when I was a little boy I was ashamed of trade and wanted to be related to a countess. It is the other way around now. And I am no longer a little boy.”

  It was a sweet little story, Alice thought, but it told her nothing.

  And then once, in a desperate effort to find something solid to which to cling, she asked the unforgivable, forcing question. She had walked with him to his parked car in front of the hospital. The air was a caress and the star-salted sky was purple. The Iwo Jima statue was floodlighted and shone shockingly white. He kissed her, and her spine, her knees turned to water and she clung to him as if to keep from falling.

  “What are we doing, Jacques? Where is this leading?” She knew that the questioning could make a man feel entrapped, causing him to flee, and yet she had to take the risk. She had to know, wanting, as she still spun from the kiss, to trap him indeed, the while she flirted with the danger of losing him.

  But Jacques answered easily and perspicaciously.

  “Ah, my dear, I have come to know you well. I know you are a girl who would not become my petite amie, as we say in France. It is marriage for you. But for me, I am not yet free to marry. It is not another girl; it is business, family, even nationality and religion—as you must have suspected. If I marry…when I marry… I would like it to be you, but I cannot ask you to wait because I do not know when that ‘when’ will be. It is for the moment not in my control. So where does this lead? I do not know. I know that this is bliss…” He kissed her again and her ears thundered and she drowned and she forgot everything but the passionate present.

  There were two men in Alice’s life, each of whom, evidently, would like to marry her. And yet neither, although they were both men of strong will, could make up his mind to ask her.

  A curious situation and surely not a flattering one.

  What would be the outside influence that would tip the scales?

  With Morgan, it was she herself. Dear Morgan, he was hers for the asking. With Jacques, it was some complex she did not know. Family, business, religion, nationality. These he had mentioned. Was there something he had not told her?

  The winter passed. It was mild and uneventful. It was surely for Alice—and Pat, too—a winter of discontent, a winter of waiting. The girls continued to see one another as often as possible, but the simple fact of geography tended to make their relationship less close. Also, Pat resented Alice’s treatment of Morgan and because of her sympathy she had developed an unreasonable dislike of Jacques.

  Morgan asked Pat out several times and Pat who, had she allowed it could have been in love with him, always accepted. It was galling to her because she knew Morgan was inviting her as a substitute for Alice. If he could not be with Alice, he wanted to be with someone close to Alice, someone to whom he could speak of her. Pat did not take offense at this; instead, she pitied him deeply.

  Only once did she let herself become exasperated.

  She and Morgan were having dinner at the Pantheon Club. Jacques came into the dining room with another man, bowed to Pat and waved cheerily to Morgan. If a man could smile while scowling, that is what Morgan did.

  “Morgan,” she heard herself saying, “why don’t you snap out of it? You’re supposed to be a Navy officer and officers are supposed to make decisions. Why won’t you ask Alice to marry you, put it on the line, and if she won’t, face the fact and stop looking like a spaniel? And let me also tell you,” she went on, suddenly released, “I’m getting tired of wet-nursing you. I’m very fond of you, Morgan, but it may be that I’ve had enough of being a substitute Alice. Ever think I might like you to take me out for me alone?”

  Morgan was genuinely stricken and ashamed.

  “I’m a selfish dope, Pat. Forgive me. I’ll take your advice. I’ll snap out of it. I know it’s what I should do but, you see, I don’t want to hear her ‘no.’ I keep thinking that if I wait she might change her mind. If I asked her tonight I know what the answer would be.”

  So Pat accomplished nothing.

  And the waiting winter wore on.

  But there was action that spring.

  CHAPTER 4

  In the Forties on Ninth Avenue there is a small French restaurant named La Bonne Bouche. It is run by M. and Mme. Henri LeClerc, but of course everybody calls him Papa and her Maman. Papa does some of the cooking, but he is in his seventies and is helped by a younger relative who is in his fifties. Maman, in the traditional black dress of the caissière, sits in front at the cash register and handles the finances.

  There are two waiters, sometimes three, all somehow related to the family. There is also a hat-check girl, who is a grandniece and doubles as waitress if there is a large crowd, but there rarely is. She is cute as a button, but she is engaged and has never accepted the
invitations to go out on the town with elderly American customers who have had a touch too much of vin ordinaire. None of the French customers ever asks for a date, because they of course all know she is “family” and most of them also know she is going steady with a young man who might take a forcefully dim view of such an escapade.

  The place is like a myriad of others in New York. It doesn’t make much money, but it manages to get by and, at any rate, as Papa says, “We always have food.” It is situated in the tunnel-like basement of an old brownstone; the kitchen is in back, then there is the dining room, and to the right, in front, is a tiny bar that can seat six and hold Maman’s high desk and the cash register. Opposite Maman is the tiny check room where the saucy grandniece presides.

  Anybody could guess what the mural decorations are: they are those wonderful French travel posters which, no matter how familiar they become, never fail to please with their bright, bold colors and their facile, fluent drawing.

  There is naturally not much choice of food. On Fridays, there is the inevitable bouillabaisse and every day there is the inevitable coq au vin. The salad and soups are wonderful and anyone is a fool who doesn’t take an omelet at luncheon.

  There was no good reason for preferring La Bonne Bouche to any other of several dozen good, inexpensive, and simple French restaurants. But most of Papa’s customers were regulars; some even had permanently reserved tables. They enjoyed being made a fuss over and they brought their friends and, “Ça va, ça va, ça va, we get on,” as Papa would say with his national Gallic shrug.

  One of his regulars was dining there tonight. He was Henri St. Georges, a small, swarthy, wiry man who worked in an import-export concern in the neighborhood. He was a reticent but extremely polite man and he came to the restaurant two or three times a week. Papa judged by his accent that he came from Marseilles. His English, however, was perfect. Tonight he was expecting three guests.

  Two were already seated at the table. With the professional ear of the proper restaurant keeper, Papa, who tonight was not cooking but was ambling around his small restaurant greeting patrons and getting in his waiters’ way, had learned from M. St. Georges’ introduction that their names were Felix and Antoinette.

  Papa had never seen them before but he wished, even in his seventies, that he had and that he would again. This of course applied strictly to Antoinette. Felix was a big, heavy, scowling man; he looked like a blond Max Schmeling, whose utter destruction at the hands of Joe Louis in their return bout Papa had been privileged to see and had never forgot. But Antoinette. Ah! Antoinette.

  She had a pale oval face, huge violet eyes, a beautifully modeled nose, and a wide mouth generously and unashamedly reddened. Her abundant black hair was swept straight back from her forehead, as if to proclaim that the beauty of her face needed no frame, and became an enormous coiled bun at the nape of her neck. When she smiled, it was as if lights were turned on in the room.

  From her left temple, reaching almost to the lobe of her ear, was a thin red line. It could be a birthmark. Or, Papa thought with a wondering shudder, the kind of scar a whip might leave. But she wore whatever it was proudly—again as if to assert that her beauty was such it had to have a flaw. With sublimely confident insolence, she had drawn attention to the scar by affixing at the tip of it a small black triangular beauty spot.

  She wore a white rough silk sleeveless blouse which tapered in a V from her shoulders to an incredibly tiny waist encased by a black patent leather belt. From this flared a short black skirt. She had long, perfectly molded legs, and her pointed, spike-heeled French shoes were black patent leather, picking up the accent of the belt. She had seemed to float when she walked into the restaurant. Papa thought she was the most desirable woman he had ever seen.

  * * * *

  So had most of the restaurant’s patrons and her entrance had been greeted by the hush which is the greatest compliment that can come to a woman entering a public place. But Papa’s customers came mostly to eat and discuss their own affairs and after that instant of tribute they returned to their own preoccupations. It was this which Henri St. Georges liked about the restaurant. If you came here as often as he did you became as anonymous as an accustomed piece of furniture. Nobody eavesdropped, except occasionally Papa, but Papa you could keep an eye on and guard against.

  “He ought to be here soon,” Henri said in French.

  Antoinette smiled and lights went on, but Felix and Henri seemed not to notice.

  “Ha ha!” said Henri, the fraction of a moment later, and now turned to English. “Do you know Shakespeare, Felix? You should. I study him. ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep…’ That’s from Henry IV, and for me they answer. Here he is now. Le voilà,” he added to Antoinette.

  They all turned to look at the well-groomed man who was checking his hat and gloves. It was Jacques Stern.

  * * * *

  “Antoinette!” Jacques said, bowing, slim and elegant, and kissing her left hand, on which was a ruby.

  “And you, my friends, it has been a long time. And how go the affaires? Is business good?”

  Felix stroked Antoinette’s chin with a sort of proprietary air, as if he had not liked Jacques’ kissing her hand and the resulting sparkle that had come into her eyes. Antoinette smiled gently at him.

  “Business is good,” said Henri. “We are thinking of opening an office on the East Side. Opening an office on the East Side is a sign of prosperity. But a warehouse has to be here—on the West—and that is, alas, where I must be. Let me order our dinner. There is not much choice, but what there is is good…”

  And the conversation continued in trivialities until Jacques, speaking French, said, “I have an appointment tonight at nine. What does the Big One have to say?”

  “Speak English, you fool,” Henri snapped like the crack of a whip.

  There was a pause. Jacques seemed not too disconcerted by the sudden attack, Antoinette glowed in beauty like the ruby on her finger, and Felix glowered like her surly protector.

  “This is what the Big One has to say,” Henri said after he had ordered and they were alone. “How does it go with the Navy nurse?”

  “It goes well,” said Jacques. “We have dates and we are enjoying them.”

  “That is not enough.”

  “What do you mean?” Jacques asked.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean. And what he means. You must marry her. Your credentials are in order?”

  “Of course. You should know that. But marriage! Why?”

  “Dates are not enough. As husband, you could accompany her anywhere. We will make you rich if need be. At officers’ clubs, at installations—say Alaska, in which we are interested—at cocktail parties at your own home… Think what you can learn and pick up. I wish I were you. She is not unattractive.”

  “Suppose she doesn’t accept?” Jacques said. “There are other men. One I know of…”

  “If she doesn’t accept, you have failed,” Henri said.

  “One does what one is told,” Jacques said, “and I suppose there are worse assignments. Will you be my best man, Henri?”

  “In the business we’re in, we don’t make jokes, Jacques. You will continue to send me your information the usual way. And—a bit of advice—don’t be so interested in Antoinette. It does not become a bridegroom and anyhow Felix might knock your head off.”

  “Ah, but that would never be necessary, eh?” said Felix, and playfully and amicably he grazed Jacques’ chin with his fist. The fist was hard as a rock.

  “The temptation is great, but I shouldn’t like to tangle with you, my friend…” Jacques answered. “But, tell me, Henri, what if the girl succumbs to my undoubtedly irresistible charms and accepts me and then announces that as Mme. Stern”—at mention of the words “Mme. Stern” Antoinette shot him a quick, penetrating glance, but he paid it no heed—“she no longer wishes to be a Navy
nurse? She wishes to be a civilian wife and—who knows?—carrying things too far, a civilian mother?”

  “That has also been taken into consideration. It is what our leaders have taught us to call a calculated risk. The girl is a dedicated nurse, so you have told us, and we have checked. You can, you tell her, accompany her anywhere she goes, for you are lucky, you have money, and you can attend to your affairs from any part of the world.

  “Tell her you are proud that she is a Navy nurse, that you would like her to remain in the Service. All this is logical; you should see it without my telling you. Say you are selling out your affairs in Europe and are going to establish yourself in business here. Maybe you’ll be doing business with the Navy, who knows? You’d like that, you say. Wouldn’t she? Oh, it should not be difficult. You should be able to do this. It would be unwise to fail.

  “We realize that American women can be stubborn—indeed, all women can, even the impeccable Antoinette. The girl may insist on resigning, though she shouldn’t if you tell her not to. If so, we shall see. But if she wants to resign as a condition of marriage, stall her off. Establish yourself in a position where it will be natural for you to keep up with your wife’s Navy connections. She becomes through you and your money an important hostess for the top military. It is thought out very well. Nobody could suspect her and, anyway, she knows nothing. And, of course, nobody’d better suspect you… No, my friend, it will work as I have outlined.”

  Jacques said somberly, “I guess I can do it.”

  Henri patted his hand. “Oh, certainly, certainly. No doubt about it. In this business, and especially with the Big One, we do not fail. Not even a little…

  “And now,” he said brightly, “that’s it. No questions. What questions can there be? So let us speak French again for Antoinette’s sake. Pour vous, Antoinette, une fine? Pour tout le monde, des fines?” And they all had brandy.