“What about a wife? Kids?”
Or grandkids, she did not add. Gus was the right age to have them but Annie had sufficiently offended him for one day. No use pointing out that she saw him as old.
“Kids?” he said. “Nah. Not me.”
“Oh, I, uh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Sorry? Why? It’s not an affliction, merely a fact. I’m close with my niece. She’s damned good enough for me.”
“Sounds like you made the right decision, then,” Annie said awkwardly.
She was pretty wretched at this pleasantry business, his requested how-do-you-dos.
“No wife, either,” Gus said. “And before you ask, I’ve never been married because I never found the right woman. Simple explanation for a lifetime of questions.”
Annie tried to conjure up an artful response.
Sorry, mate.
The game’s not over.
In the next life, maybe less booze.
“So, this banter is going well,” she said with a rigid smile.
Suddenly Annie wished she had a drink in front of her and contemplated flagging down Ned.
“Bloody sad,” Gus said.
“Well, I’ve heard marriage is more trouble than it’s worth. Parenthood too. My mom—”
“What? No. Not that. On the telly.”
Annie looked at the screen above the bar. On instinct, her stomach clenched.
The feelings never changed, no matter how many times she watched the footage. A second plane into a building. The smoke-crush of the towers to the ground. Mayhem erupting on camera. All the mayhem that could not be seen. Even after a hundred viewings it didn’t seem real.
“Jesus,” she said, recoiling with the impact.
Here they were, nearly two months out, and the news would not move on, not even in some other country.
“Haven’t the faintest why they keep showing it,” Gus said.
“I agree.” Annie’s eyes remained glued to the screen. “It’s messed up.”
“Did you know anyone?” He pointed toward the television. “Lost that day?’
“Yes,” she said. “No one close. But yes.”
She had a friend, a sorority sister named Megan, who died in one of the towers. Megan worked a bond-trading desk, whatever that meant, and was engaged to be married. She would always be that. Engaged. Her future lost in the rubble.
Most people who lived on the East Coast knew someone who worked at the World Trade Center, or someone who knew someone. Megan was a few years ahead in school so they weren’t close, despite being “sisters.” But it was hard not to be sad about her death. And harder still not to feel like a jerk, as though Annie were using Megan for some twisted claim to fame.
“I’m sorry,” Gus said. “About your friend. A damned tragedy.”
“Thanks. And it was. But like I said, we weren’t close.”
“Doesn’t make it any less awful.”
“I guess you’re right. It feels weird—unnatural—to think she’s not around.”
She heard the quiver in her own voice.
“And yet,” Gus said. “The deaths carry on.”
“It really is sickening how often they replay the footage. Here’s hoping a celebrity does something awful ASAP.”
“I was referring to the new deaths,” Gus said. “The servicemen and women. All those young people now going off to war, and to what end?”
Her face blanched.
“Sorry, Annie, I know he’s your president and all,” Gus said. “But I’m suspicious. I mean, hell, not too hard to get a nation behind you if everyone’s afraid and desperate to believe in something.”
Annie covered her mouth with a hand. Desperate. Is that what they were?
Eric was fine. He would be fine. At any rate, he was at that moment safe, on a float, in the middle of the ocean. Annie had nearly convinced herself that it was the only place he’d be until they saw each other again.
“The prez had to do something, right?” Gus continued. “Make a show. And people are rallying because revenge is sweet. It’s like what Mrs. Spencer said about Hitler. ‘Well, he had the whole world up in arms!’”
“I hardly think Bush is Hitler.”
“No, no, of course not. I don’t mean to get political. I know this is a sensitive topic for you Yanks. Easy to criticize when it’s someone else’s damned country. Even if we’re sticking our necks in it, too. Blimey, Annie, you’re downright green. I’m the biggest arse around.”
“Don’t, uh,” Annie sputtered. “It’s just, um, unpleasant. Sad. Whatever your politics. Sometimes I don’t even know what to think myself.”
Gus nodded, took a sip of cider.
“‘The war has not accustomed me to death,’” he said, changing the tenor of his voice.
“Proust?” she said.
“Bingo.” He pointed the glass toward her. “Mrs. Spencer’s favorite. I adore you bookish girls.”
“I’m engaged,” she blurted. “To a marine. He’s on his way to Afghanistan right now. That’s why I got so upset about the war comment.”
“Oh Christ,” Gus said. “Jesus f’ing Christ. I noticed the band on your finger, and that you twirl it continuously. I should’ve asked but figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know. What an arse. What a goddamned arse.”
“No. It’s okay,” she said, although it wasn’t. Not exactly. Annie closed her eyes. “I wish he was in a different line of business. An accountant. Going to law school. But this is what he chose. And he was a marine long before we met.”
She opened her eyes again and was surprised to find herself taking a sip of Gus’s drink.
“The ironic part is that Marines aren’t deploying to Afghanistan, as a rule,” she said. “He just happened to be going on an MEU, a marine ship, that was already deploying. And now they have the pleasure of being some of the first associated with the war. Oh, excuse me, Operation Enduring Freedom.”
“Shite. Wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yep.”
Then again, had he not been deploying, they never would’ve met. Less than one percent of Marines were going out. Inconceivable odds, though her best friend Summer called them the odds of finding true love. Annie and Eric were destined for each other, she insisted. It sounded giddy and perfect on three glasses of pinot noir, but a war was a big price to pay.
“That’s some tough stuff,” Gus said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“No one does. And don’t feel like you have to. It could be worse.”
She thought of the 9/11 families, the spaces now empty in thousands of lives.
“Engaged to a bloke going off to war,” he said with a cluck. “Not unlike our Pru.”
“God, I hope I’m nothing like Pru. Especially in the fiancé department.”
“Blimey, none of this is coming out like I’ve intended. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Please.” Annie slapped at the air. “You haven’t said anything untrue. All I can do is assume I’ll see him again, that Eric’s safe return is the only possible outcome. Everything else is fiction, happening to a bunch of unlucky bastards without faces or names.”
“A bloody decent stance to have.”
“My mom accuses me of being too romantic, of living in literature and books. But I’m a-okay ignoring the bad stuff and only picturing the ship returning; the thousands of family members waiting near the harbor.
“In my little fantasy, when he returns, the government will give Eric a desk and a phone at the Pentagon. We’ll have a couple of kids and they’ll grow up knowing their father was a hero once, even though he’s transformed into an ordinary dad. Delusions. But they work for me.”
“Lovely delusions,” Gus said, eyes watering. “All of them.”
“Well, I’ve always favored fiction,” she said with a defeated sigh. “To quote Edith Wharton, ‘We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?’” Annie took another sip of his cider. “Though I’d like to wager that we can.”
/>
Suddenly Mrs. Spencer’s words popped into Annie’s head. “ARE YOU QUOTING EDITH WHARTON AT ME?” For a moment she found a smile.
“That’s what I like to see,” Gus said. “A cheerful Annie.”
“And cheerful Annie is who I prefer to be.” She shook her head. “Time to change the subject before I turn into a puddled mess. Please, Gus, take me back to the Grange.” She pointed toward the book. “Help me forget, for a little while.”
“That’s a mighty tall order.”
“It worked for Pru,” Annie said, forcing a brightness she did not feel. “She got over her fiancé, eventually. Right? Otherwise this story is just too sad.”
Gus frowned. It was a long while before he spoke again.
“One could say it worked out,” he said at last. “I suppose. Depending on the one you asked.”
Seventeen
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 1972
After a week at the Grange, Pru’s activities fell into a steady rhythm.
Whatever apprehension she first felt about waking up with a ninety-year-old woman in her bed, to speak nothing of the accompanying milky old-lady smell, she soon got over. Or she ignored for the sake of her ongoing employment. Pru had nowhere else to go.
Though she grew accustomed to the pattern of her days, the nights were another matter. Unexpected bedmates notwithstanding, Pru struggled to sleep, mostly because of the voices. Real or imagined, in her head or in the home, muffled conversations disrupted any hope of peace.
The darkness brought with it the sound of a male, sometimes a woman, and it happened nearly every night. Pru mentioned it once, to Mrs. Spencer’s vast hilarity. Perhaps the bed reserved at the O’Connell Ward should go to Pru instead, she guffawed. Although, every once in a while, Mrs. Spencer would ascribe the voices to Tom.
Come dawn, Pru didn’t have time to ponder the disturbances on account of the fifty or so spaniels she tended to daily. She fed the dogs, tidied their messes, groomed them, and then mopped up ever more messes due to their very efficient digestive tracks. With no less than twelve bitches and an unending parade of newly born pups, there wasn’t a hairless speck of real estate in the whole bloody place.
“Miss Valentine!” Mrs. Spencer would call out. “Reina. Have you seen Reina? No one sets foot off this property until we find Reina.”
Better finding Reina than serving midwife to Princess. Pru had seen enough puppy births to know she didn’t want to see more of them. Not that she had a choice.
Alas, despite the amount of time she spent with them, Pru couldn’t distinguish Reina from Arthur from Bixby from fuck-all. The dogs all looked the same to her, male or female, from this litter or from that.
But Pru played the game. She’d roam the yard aimlessly looking for Reina, with a solemn face of purpose but accomplishing nothing. Mrs. Spencer always found the missing pooch, in the end.
And then there were the cats. All of those cats. Twenty-five? A hundred? They were too bountiful to estimate. The cats were the reason for the unplugged refrigerator, as it turned out. Whenever a feline met its demise, Mrs. Spencer stored it in the icebox to be dealt with later. Of course, later never came.
The work was dull, but constant, Pru’s hours mostly packed. When she had a spare moment, Pru meandered into town to grab a bite of something perishable, a treat she couldn’t enjoy at home thanks to the cat-in-the-icebox arrangement. For her part, Mrs. Spencer ate minimally, which matched up with her gaunt frame well enough.
Charlie would’ve been horrified to see his fiancée reduced to such circumstances, but Pru didn’t mind all that much. More puppies nipping at her legs meant less time thinking of Charlie, dusty and alone in the family mausoleum. Where did he die first? she often wondered. Was it in his head, or at his heart?
And Mrs. Spencer had a knack for detecting when her employee’s mind began to stray. The second she noticed Pru was not fully engaged with the task at hand, Mrs. Spencer dialed up a ribald Parisian tale or yet another reference to the barn man Tom.
“Did I tell you about the time he kidnapped those German POWs for me?” Mrs. Spencer asked one afternoon while they waited for a dog to finish laboring.
“Kidnapped? Why, Mrs. Spencer? Banbury too short on men for you?”
“Very funny, Miss Valentine. No, my apple trees required pruning and Tom is afraid of heights.”
“And you desperately needed your trees cut back?” Pru said. “In the middle of a war?”
“It was 1945 thus hardly the middle. Regardless, Tom showed up with two Krauts and they got to it straightaway. The men were knowledgeable, quick, and well behaved. Those are the Germans for you. Oh look! Here comes the first puppy of the litter!”
Mrs. Spencer was not the only individual who liked to raise the topic of Tom. Locals were also keen to discuss the man, though they didn’t know what to make of him either.
It was universally agreed upon that Tom had lived among them at one time but fell into a black hole of existence around 1953. One person seemed to recall the German POW story, but couldn’t be sure.
“Have you seen him?” they all asked.
“Have you found the body?”
“There must be a body.”
“How about bones?”
“A mummified corpse?”
Pru didn’t fault them for their macabre assumptions. Who hadn’t seen the movie Psycho? Possessed by a dead mother, or a dead landscaper, it was all the same. Plus Mrs. Spencer was considered a bit of a psycho herself, given her propensity to tear through town shouting obscenities and threatening peoples’ lives.
“You speak to me that way again, Mr. Haverford, and you’d better check for a bomb beneath the hood of your precious lorry!”
“It’s Harris, not Haverford. And I’m a missus, not a mister!”
“Car bomb, old man! Beware the car bomb!”
“I don’t mean it,” Mrs. Spencer would insist later, at home, by the stove. “Some people like to hunt. This is my sport.”
After only a few weeks, Pru had several dozen stories like these to tell.
Was she afraid of the old woman? Perhaps. But a month in, Pru had sustained no serious injuries, physical or otherwise. Even the verbal insults did not much sting. The most threatening aspects to life at the Grange were the partially collapsed ceilings and gaping holes in the floors.
“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Pru would say to the night sky. “Guns? Rumored dead bodies? That’s nothing. It’ll be rotted wood that does me in.”
In the end, Pru decided tales of Tom were nothing more than village scuttlebutt. And the voices she heard were probably the adolescent boys who skulked around the property, using slingshots to hurl pebbles and other projectiles through the windows. Pru herself had been beamed in the head with a turnip.
Plus it was in Mrs. Spencer’s very nature to play up rumors of the man. The woman knew full well the townsfolk longed for a gothic tale. Everyone loved a ghost story and so she gave them one. There’d probably never been a Tom at all. It’s what Pru told herself anyhow. She had to find some comfort, enough to allow for a little rest.
Eighteen
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 1972
“I’m going to make Christmas dinner!” Mrs. Spencer announced.
“Hmm,” Pru answered, on reflex.
Christmas dinner. It was probably another of the woman’s ambitious schemes that never came to fruition. Just like the proposed freight elevator and in-ground swimming pool.
“What do you think, Miss Valentine?”
“Sounds fab,” she said.
Pru glanced down and made a face. Puppy gunk. Everywhere.
“Does he really need to be hand-fed?” she asked.
This particular dog was fed via eyedropper three times per day, for no discernible reason other than he was particular, like so many other creatures in that house. Meanwhile they had no
shortage of runts and spaniels with eating problems that were left to fend for themselves.
“Miss Valentine? Are you listening?”
Though she wasn’t listening, Pru nodded and wiped both hands on her trousers. Already her sartorial standards had fallen into grand disrepair. Not that there was anyone around to notice.
“What do you think, then?” Mrs. Spencer pressed. “A homemade Christmas?”
“Really?” Pru said as the pup nipped at her hand, breaking the skin. “You’re serious about it?”
“Of course I’m serious!”
“A dinner seems like a lot of effort.”
And unsanitary besides, what with the stove used for foot warming and home heating and the dead cats in the fridge.
“You think I can’t cook?” Mrs. Spencer said. “Is that the problem?”
“Heavens no,” Pru said, though that was exactly what she thought. “I truly believe you can do anything you set your mind to.”
And this was equally true. The woman was old, frail, her mind forever careening into faraway places and long-ago years. Yet through the cobwebbed stories of Proust and Paris and grand literary salons, Mrs. Spencer remained formidable somehow. She was made of strength, a rare metal perhaps, available only to the elite.
“It’s the kitchen,” Mrs. Spencer guessed. “You think the kitchen is in poor shape.”
She couldn’t help it: Pru laughed.
“Is something funny, Miss Valentine?”
“Mrs. Spencer, I don’t think the kitchen is in poor shape. I know it is. There’s only one working appliance and you use it to warm your toes.”
On top of that there were at best three and a half plates plus a dodgy spattering of pots, most of them filthy black. Forks were used for dog grooming, and just that morning Pru had watched Mrs. Spencer scrape calluses from her heels with a silver spatula.
“You think I can’t make do?” Mrs. Spencer said with a hip-jut and a humph. “I was in Paris during the Great War. The first German shells hit in 1918 and not a week later I made Easter dinner in my very quaint kitchen. We were under ration!”
“Mrs. Spencer…”
There was no way to hear the word “Easter” without Pru’s brain tacking “Offensive” on the end of it. A holiday, forever ruined. Of course, for Pru, most things ambled back to Charlie eventually.
I'll See You in Paris Page 9
