by Peter Albano
“Quite right. It’s my life,” he answered simply.
She remembered troubling statements she had heard from both Lloyd and Reginald. “You feel that Number Five Squadron needs you?”
He squirmed uncomfortably. “Academic, dear Brenda.”
“What do you mean?”
He snorted with frustration and patted his right leg. “Got to convince the medics. Henniker told me this war’s got to stagger along without me.”
“But you don’t believe him.”
“Doctors make mistakes.”
“And you’ll prove him wrong.” Tension raised her voice and she felt inexplicable anger swell.
“What’s wrong, Brenda?”
She answered with a sardonic timbre edging her voice. “Oh, nothing much. Only, it seems, the men who mean the most to me—the men I love—are all so anxious to get themselves killed.”
He looked up from his drink and caught her eyes with his. “You love me?”
“Of course.”
“Like Hugh or Reginald?”
She laughed. “Both, dear Randolph. Both.”
“Like Rodney and Nathan?”
She laughed again. “Most certainly, Randolph.” She took his hand in hers, spoke boldly. “Randolph, you attract women. Kimberly Piper, for one, seems very close to you, and there have been others.” She felt her cheeks redden as she thought of Nicole. “You have had many attractive women interested in you.”
He sighed. “Please, Brenda. Don’t try to build my confidence.” He rubbed his chest. “I have a few problems, you know.” He glanced at his watch. “Zero hour. Time to return to the dungeon or the ogre will lock me up.”
They rose together and walked out of the restaurant hand in hand.
Two days later, Randolph was discharged from the hospital. Despite his mother’s pleas, he refused to return to Fenwyck, preferring to live alone in his small apartment in Kensington. Bernice claimed Randolph could not tolerate his own father. Brenda smiled understanding. Bernice had been to Randolph’s place and found Kimberly Piper there. “She was hanging over him like a mother hen. I actually think the snip was jealous of me.” Bernice was in high spirits. Lloyd’s orders had been changed and he was to remain in the training command for at least another month. She chuckled. “My dear husband’s fit for an asylum.”
For several days Brenda was unable to visit Randolph because both Rodney and Nathan had come down with fevers and coughs. Rebecca rushed from Fenwyck and Bridie, Nicole, and Brenda fussed over the youngsters while McHugh and old Touhy Brockman hung about outside the nursery door. Everyone was worried about “trench fever,” which had been sweeping through the population since 1916. But the hearty little boys began to recover by the fourth day and by the fifth were cavorting in the garden. That afternoon the Gothas visited London.
Happy as only a mother can be after nursing her children through an illness to finally see them playing and laughing again, Brenda was seated with Bernice in a lawn chair when she was startled by the roar of artillery. At first there were desultory detonations, but soon the explosions blended into a solid roar like thunder and the ground shook. It was a fearful sound. “Bridie!” Brenda shouted. “Take the boys to the basement!”
Quickly the governess herded her charges into the house. “The basement, Brenda?” Bernice asked.
At first Brenda had the compulsion to hide, but the sounds were far to the south and there was an overwhelming urge to watch—to see this war that had finally found London. She remembered feeling the same emotion that night long ago when she had watched the Zeppelin fall burning from the sky near Fenwyck. She led Bernice upstairs to her room. The women stared out the French windows toward the Thames and the Liverpool railway station, where smoke was rising.
“There they are!” Bernice shouted, pointing a finger.
Squinting and shading her eyes, Brenda stared high in the eggshell blue sky. First she saw scores of white and brown puffs and then something glinted. Propellers, wires, the sun off of painted surfaces. Soaring in the heavens she could see them. Great gray moths moving ever so slowly through a blooming garden of shell bursts. “One, two, three. . .” She counted them. Over a dozen.
The drumbeat sounds of the antiaircraft guns rose in ferocity. Then their clatter was punctuated with the booming, thudding sounds of bass drums as bombs went off. One after the other great explosions ripped through an area of the city that appeared to be among the docks and warehouses. Soon flames were visible and smoke drifted across the southern horizon. Brenda felt relief that not one bomb had fallen within a mile of fashionable Belgravia. Strangely, she felt guilt, too.
“Why aren’t our chaps up there shooting them?” Bernice asked, a catch in her voice.
“They are,” Brenda said, pointing at a score of climbing airplanes far below the bombers. “At least they’re trying.”
“They’re a mile below the Jerries,” Bernice said in disgust.
“Randolph told me the Gothas can fly very high—that our airplanes would have a devilish time ever reaching them.”
“Damn you!” Bernice shouted, waving her fist at the Gothas. “Damn you, you filthy butchers.” There were tears of frustration on her cheeks.
Exactly one week after having lunch with Randolph at Scott’s, the town car headed for Kensington. Randolph had no telephone, so Brenda took her brother-in-law by surprise. As he opened the door, Brenda could see he was not in the same high spirits she had found the last time she had seen him. “What are you doing here?” he asked, ushering her in. “I didn’t know you even knew where this place was.”
“Bernice gave me the address.” She seated herself on one of the room’s two large couches.
“Something to drink?” he asked, standing in front of her.
“Bordeaux?”
He smiled and limped to a sideboard pushed against the wall and returned with two glasses of wine. He sat beside her and touched her glass with his. “A happy marriage for you and a quick recovery for me.” She smiled at him over her glass and they both drank. He raised his glass again. “The Gothas.”
“You’re toasting them?”
He drank and smacked his lips. “Why not? Remember that lot of fat sods, stuffing themselves at Scott’s?” Brenda nodded. “I’d bet my bit that every one of the lot has grown fat off this bloody war.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Yes, I can say that. Profiteers. The city’s full of them. They need a taste of it. Bully for the Gothas.”
“A lot of innocent people were killed, Randolph.”
“I don’t give a stuff.” He gesticulated to a corner desk where letters lay spread on the desktop. “See those letters. They’re from my adjutant and the chaps at the squadron.” Brenda nodded. “Two more of my chaps are dead—another wounded. He rubbed a clenched fist against his temple. “My adjutant told me the lads call May ‘Bloody May’—over three hundred fifty of our planes shot down in that month alone, and that butcher Richthofen claims twenty-one for himself.”
Brenda shared his agony. “But what can you do? Haven’t you done enough?”
“No! And do you wonder why I’d like to skewer profiteers?”
She put her hand on his arm. “Of course, I understand. But you can’t sit here in this little flat and let yourself be consumed by hate and bitterness.” She tried to find his eyes, but he stared at the far wall mutely. Appalled by his attitude and eager to change the subject, her eyes were caught by what appeared to be a small gym in the far corner of the room: weights, pulleys, and dumbbells on a thick mat. “Your own gymnasium?”
“Yes,” he said, welcoming the turn in conversation, rubbing his leg and side. “Henniker prescribed a therapy program for me.”
Brenda studied a strange contraption in the corner next to the gymnasium. It consisted of a wicker chair bolted to a one-inch-thick sheet of plywood, a hinge
d bar of wood attached to a two-by-four nailed to the plywood in front of the chair, and what appeared to be a broom handle on a pivoting base attached to the plywood. “Controls,” she said with disbelief. “You’ve actually built your own controls.”
“Yes. My S.E.5,” he said.
She felt frustration gnawing deep. “Lord, you’re anxious to return.”
He stabbed a finger at the letters. “There are honest men up there. And there’s no hypocrisy at the front.”
“It’s more than that, Randolph. It isn’t just the other men—’Bloody May,’ is it?”
“What difference does it make? The war exists, doesn’t it? Like a disease—a religion. It’s here and I’m here and I’m part of it.” And then bitterly, he said, “Or I was part of it.”
Brenda sensed the same barriers she had known with Lloyd and Reginald when they talked of the war. She knew it was beyond her and she would never understand them. Instead of arguing, she pointed out simply, “You still limp.”
“I know and that blasted Henniker says I’ll never fly again.” He drank. And then with a rising voice, he said, “But he’s wrong.” He turned to Brenda. “Do you understand—he’s off his bloody wick.” The brown of his eyes was heightened with moisture and there was a plaintive look on his face that reminded her of Rodney pleading for another dessert or the chance to play in a forbidden part of the house. Randolph was shattered.
Brenda was gripped by a confusion of emotions. Why am I here? she asked herself. Why? She loved Randolph—not romantically, but certainly she had a feeling of family for him. A responsibility like she felt for her boys and the agony and frustration he felt seemed to penetrate her mind, grip her soul until she cried out for some way to help him—to see him again the strong man with the confident smile on his face. Involuntarily, she took his hand. “You’re attracted to Kimberly Piper,” she said.
“You think I need a woman.”
“Of course.”
He shook his head. “That’s ended for me. I have the body of a lizard.”
The conversation seemed familiar to Brenda. She had covered the same ground with Reginald. “It would take more than a few scars to make you repulsive, Randolph.”
“Don’t patronize me, Brenda.”
“I’m not patronizing you, Randolph,” Brenda said in exasperation. And then emphatically, she said, “You are an attractive man.”
He ran his hand over his neck and then unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his chest. The white flesh and hair were gone, replaced by a hardened crust of livid scars arranged in overlapping layers. “It’s worse on my legs,” he said. Suddenly, the curl of his lips was cold and enigmatic and the voice came from deep in his throat. “Would you go to bed with this, Brenda?” He gestured at his body with open fingers like a broom sweeping.
Oddly, Brenda was not shocked—not even surprised. The question seemed logical; appropriate. There was no hesitation. “Yes. I’d go to bed with you.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. “I love you, Brenda. I have for years. I used to lie awake at night and envy my brother.” And then ruefully, he said, “Sometimes, I cursed him.”
Brenda could not believe her own words. “Take me to bed, Randolph. You’ve wanted me for years.”
He kissed her wrist, her forearm, and then looked up. There was a peculiar gleam in his eyes. “Once I met a woman at the Empire,” he said grimly. “A woman named Cynthia Boswell. Her husband had been an RFC major. He was killed. She tried to sanctify his memory by bedding every RFC major she met.” He dropped her hand and moved his face very close to hers. “I love you. I won’t make a prostitute of someone I love.”
“Then you will sleep with a woman?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I’m a normal man. I have the same desires all men have.” His smile was twisted. “Maybe, someone I don’t know.” His voice hardened. “It can’t be love—can’t be romance.”
“Not that, Randolph. Not a whore.”
He shook his head and looked away. She heard him mumble, “It would take money—a lot of money.”
“Don’t say that, Randolph.”
She stood slowly. He rose and took both of her hands. She kissed him full on the mouth and he held her for a long moment. “Reginald is a very lucky man,” he said softly. He led her to the door.
“I’ll be back, Randolph.”
He pulled the door open. His eyes glistened like polished onyx and his jaw worked. “No. Please. I love you too much.”
“But I want to help. . .”
“You can help me by staying away.”
She sighed. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
She turned and left.
XIII
As June wore on more rumors spread about the plight of the French army. Lloyd claimed there had been open rebellion in a dozen divisions, court-martials, and executions. “The lot’ll be on us—mark me,” he said. “The BEF’s got to go on the offensive to save the Frogs’ duffs. And Kerensky’s finished—the Ivan army’s bought it. This’ll be a BEF show from now on.”
It began one morning with the explosion of a million pounds of ammonal packed into nineteen mines under a ridge in Flanders called Messines. Brenda was at breakfast in the dining room when the mines went off. The house shook and the chandelier swayed. Then a long, awesome rumble rolled through the city. Everyone rushed outside and stared to the east in confusion. Slowly, Brenda realized that they had actually heard and felt the Western Front. That afternoon the papers reported the mines had wiped out the defenders and that British infantry had occupied the ridge. But as the days passed, there were the usual reports of German counterattacks and the same dreary stalemate returned.
Again, British casualties were heavy and on June 20, Lloyd received his orders to return to the Coldstreams. Brenda accompanied Bernice, Lloyd, Trevor, and Bonnie to Victoria Station. Walter, Rebecca, and Randolph arrived a few minutes before departure time. Bernice and Rebecca clung to the colonel’s arms, talking into his ears simultaneously while the remainder of the family stood in a close semicircle.
Nothing had changed since Brenda had been to the station to see Reginald off: the smell of locomotives; uniforms everywhere; joyous greetings, tearful farewells; the cacophonous sounds of voices, locomotives, hissing safety valves, and rambling steel-wheeled carts bouncing off the high-vaulted ceiling and the stone walls, reverberating, drowning out conversation. A trainman shouted through a megaphone and Bernice stepped aside, Bonnie wrapping her arms around Lloyd’s waist while young Trevor stood to the side ramrod straight with only a slight tremble in his jaw to betray his emotions. Then he shook hands gravely with his father.
Rebecca returned to his arms, crying and talking fitfully into his ear. Walter grabbed his hand and pumped it vigorously. There were tears on his cheeks and for the first time in years, Brenda was aware of a streak of humanity in her father-in-law. Slightly bent, he appeared shorter and very old. Brenda felt no sympathy for him.
Randolph stepped up and grabbed Lloyd’s shoulders. Lloyd in turn clasped his brother’s arms. For a long moment the brothers stared into each other’s eyes and Brenda watched the men speak. “Take care of yourself,” Randolph said.
“I know how and I’ll be with the best chaps in the world,” Lloyd answered.
Randolph nodded understanding and said, “I know. I know.”
Finally, the colonel turned to Brenda and embraced her. Kissing his cheek, it felt rough against her lips. “For God’s sake, take care of yourself,” she said in his ear through a tight throat.
“I’m a survivor, Brenda. We have a saying in the trenches—’Old soldiers never die’. . .”
“Well, just don’t fade away, Lloyd.”
He chuckled. “I don’t intend to.” And then seriously, he said, “Look out for Bernice.”
“Of course. She’s my best friend
.”
“Hate to miss the wedding,” he said. “When will it be?”
“In a week, Lloyd,” she said, stepping back. “Got a telegram from Reginald this morning. He said he’d be back by Monday. We’ll marry on Wednesday. He’s already made the arrangements.”
“Where?”
“All Saints Church. Fulham.”
“Oh, yes. Outer London—magnificent old place.”
“But it’s to be small—informal. Only a few guests.”
The shrill scream of an engine’s whistle and the shouting trainman interrupted them. This time Brenda could distinguish his words. “’Board! ‘Board. Dover train! ‘Board! ‘Board.”
Lloyd turned toward his carriage, but Bernice flung her arms around him and began to sob uncontrollably, refusing to let her husband go. “I’ll never see you again, my love. Never! Never!”
“Please, darling. Please,” he implored softly, stroking her head and kissing her cheek. The whistle shrieked again and he looked up at Randolph and Walter helplessly. Gently, Randolph and Walter took Bernice’s arms and pulled her away from her husband. The train began to move and Lloyd swung into his compartment with surprising agility and slammed the door. Brenda had the weird feeling that he was suddenly younger, stronger, and far more confident than she had seen him in months.
Slowly, the train gained speed and puffed its way out of the station. Silently, the family walked toward the entrance. Rebecca had a hard grip on Randolph’s arm. “You’ve got to come home to Fenwyck. Now! Now! You’re all I have.”
“Straight away, Mother. Got to pick up my things at my digs and I’ll be at Fenwyck this afternoon.”
Rebecca was sobbing and Randolph had his arm around her shoulders as they left the station.
Nicole and Bernice selected the dress. It was a formfitting Lanvin robe de style of periwinkle blue tulle with a sheer silk taffeta appliqué. Delicate and ingeniously attached in the unique Lanvin style, the appliqué appeared to float in thin air, while at the neck and hip free-flowing ribbons and petals undulated and flowed with the movements of her body like wisps of vapor. Black high-heeled shoes, an unobtrusive hat, and white kid gloves completed Brenda’s trousseau. Standing in front of the pier mirror in the afternoon light streaming through the French windows of her quarters, Brenda turned and pirouetted while Bernice and Nicole stood to one side and admired.
