But Jane didn’t know that. Beautiful Jane with the Wedgwood-blue eyes and the silken mane thought he was wonderful. She didn’t know that he’d spent the better part of his life looking for escape hatches and exit routes. The only time he believed in taking chances was at the keys of his beat-up old portable typewriter with the missing semicolon key. Who needed a semicolon anyway? You had to get pretty involved in what you were writing to need one. These days Mac rarely let that happen.
Involvement meant trouble. Speak your mind these days and you could find yourself in Washington before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’d already spoken his mind and lived to tell the tale by the skin of his teeth. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again.
He wasn’t alone any longer. He had Jane to care for. Maybe even a family of his own one day. Sooner or later McCarthy and Cohn and the rest of their paranoid cronies would disappear back into the woodwork and this whole thing would be forgotten. Mac intended to keep his mouth shut until it happened.
Call it getting cynical. Call it getting smart. The Graysons aboard the Queen Mary had made a big impression on Mac. It was good to know the face of the enemy, even when the enemy was your next-door neighbor. He wouldn’t forget that silence these days was definitely golden.
Sticking your neck out never made sense, especially not when you had a wife to take care of. Let somebody else play hero. Mac would settle for playing husband.
* * *
By ten that evening Jane had decided that Americans were the tallest, loudest, nicest people on the face of the earth. Men and women alike towered over her as they hugged and kissed her and welcomed her to her adopted country. The excitement of her arrival, coupled with the scores of people she’d met, had drained all her energy. While she loved telling stories about Queen Elizabeth and her royal prince and princess, it was hard to be witty and charming when you were doing your very best to hold back a most unladylike yawn.
Not that any of Edna’s friends would have held that yawn against her. Jane was surprised to find that so many Americans were dyed-in-the-wool Anglophiles, as besotted with the sound of a British accent as Jane was with American slang.
Twice she’d slipped into the kitchen during the party simply to stare at the enormous refrigerator with its shiny white doors and posh freezer compartment. What wouldn’t they think back home in England at the sight of so much food for one small family? She couldn’t imagine that the queen herself had a more impressive stock of food. Steaks were neatly wrapped and stored in the freezer, along with chicken and chopped beef and big yellow ears of corn.
It simply boggled the imagination!
Americans also seemed to have mastered the art of casual dressing. Casual attire back home meant wearing your second-best dress. In New York, it could mean anything from a siren sheath dress to toreador pants to Bermuda shorts. Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy’s daughter Carolann wore her hair in an Italian pixie cut, short and tousled and quite sexy with gold gypsy earrings and lots of mascara and eyeliner. In her pink-and-white halter-neck sundress with the tight waist and flared skirt, Carolann looked young and fresh and so modern that Jane longed to toss her tweeds into the dustbin and take a pair of scissors to her hair.
How stodgy and old she felt, surrounded by all these vibrant Americans! Even her mother-in-law, Edna, looked more fashionable in her morning-glory blouse with pleating across the bodice than Jane did in her best frock. Edna’s “Mamie” bangs were the perfect complement to her simple bob, and the triple strand of pearls at her neck shimmered in the lamplight.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Mac smiling down at her. “Tired?” he asked.
She nodded as another yawn threatened. “Overwhelmed.”
“We could slip upstairs to the guest room.” He brushed a kiss against her temple. “No one would notice.”
“Behave yourself,” she chided gently. “Your mother went to a great deal of trouble. We shan’t disappoint her by disappearing.”
“She’d understand,” Mac said, eyes twinkling. “Newlyweds can be forgiven almost anything.”
“Anything except poor manners.” Jane was adamant in her stance. The thought of everyone knowing she and Mac had gone upstairs to their room brought a flush to her cheeks.
Finally, at a little before eleven, the last of the guests said good-night and headed for home. Dot and Tom Wilson, who were obviously considered family, stayed behind. Jane noticed secretive smiles flashing between the two older couples.
“I think something’s afoot,” she said to Mac in the kitchen where she was opening another bottle of cola. “Have you noticed the funny looks your parents are giving the Wilsons?”
“Must be your imagination, Janie.” He smothered a yawn with the back of his hand, then flashed her a wicked grin. “Think we could slip up the backstairs without anyone noticing?”
“‘You’re persistent, Mr. Weaver,” she said as he drew her into his embrace. “I’ll grant you that.”
“All good traits,” he observed, trailing kisses along the side of her throat. “You could do worse in a husband.”
“Perhaps, but I doubt if I could do better.” She tilted her head slightly to the right as his lips pressed against her skin. Warm. Tingly. Promising—
“Mac! Jane! What’s keeping you?”
Mac groaned and straightened his shirt. “Why is it I feel like I’m fifteen years old again?”
Jane simply smiled and wiped a smudge of lipstick from his cheek.
Hand in hand, looking for all the world like two guilty youngsters, they strolled back into the living room. The atmosphere buzzed with tension. Not a bad sort of tension, mind you, but more a deep sense of anticipation. Jane looked at the faces of the people before her. What kind of wonderful country made it possible for men and women to reach their fifties and sixties and still seem so optimistic, so certain that good things happened to good people?
Les motioned for them to sit on the piano bench. “As you may have noticed, we haven’t given you two lovebirds your wedding present yet.”
Jane made noises about the party being present enough, but her father-in-law silenced her by raising his hand in the air.
“No blenders,” said Mac, with a wink for Jane. “If you want to give us a gift, you can tell us where we can find a decent apartment to rent.”
The Weavers and the Wilsons seemed to find that innocent statement rather amusing.
“I think I can do better than that,” said Les.
“Much better,” said Edna.
Dot and Tom exchanged glances.
“The basement apartment,” said Mac, looking from his parents to the Wilsons and back again. “Johnny’s old place. You’re offering it to us for the interim.”
Mac quickly explained how Cathy’s husband had lived in the basement of the Wilson house across the street during the months he was courting Cathy.
“Sounds lovely,” said Jane politely, a tad disappointed that they would be living below the ground. She had done more than enough of that during the war.
“Sounds terrible,” said Dot Wilson with a laugh. “We’ve turned the basement apartment into a den for Tom.”
Mac’s brows slid into a frown. “Then what’s all of this about? Are you kicking us out?”
“Yes,” said Les.
“Definitely,” said Edna.
Mac and Jane looked at each other. Her confusion was mirrored in his eyes. “Is this a joke?” asked Mac.
His father’s face creased with an ear-to-ear grin. “Only if you think owning your own house is funny.”
“What?” Mac’s jaw sagged.
So did Jane’s. “What on earth—?”
“Your own home,” Les repeated, “275 Robin Hood Lane.”
“Robin Hood Lane?” Mac asked. “I don’t know Robin Hood Lane. Is it near Continental Avenue?”
“Not too far away,” said Tom Wilson. “About thirty miles.”
“On the Island?”
“Smart boy,” said L
es. “Now you’re catching on.”
Jane listened, spellbound, as Les and Edna told them about the three-bedroom ranch house in a place called Levittown that was theirs if they wanted it. America was more wonderful than even she had imagined.
As for Mac, he was beyond coherent thought. He’d heard about the prosperity running rampant in his home country, but this was way beyond anything he’d envisioned. Cars. Radios. Televisions. Houses. “My God,” he said, dragging his hand through his hair. “You’re giving us a house?” Houses were what you worked twenty years to buy, then worked another twenty years to keep. People gave you blenders and toasters and blankets. They didn’t give you houses, for God’s sake.
“It’s not a palace, mind you,” said his father. “But it seems to me you two need a home and this one was available and so...” His words trailed off and Mac noticed, to his amazement, that his unflappable father looked decidedly flapped.
You shouldn’t take it, he thought as Jane leapt to her feet and hugged everybody once, then twice for good measure. The women started yapping about draperies and wallpaper, and he broke out in a cold sweat when his father and Tom compared notes on plumbing. Tell him to keep it, stupid. You’re not the house type. You’re lucky if you can remember to wind your wristwatch every morning. Houses were for other people, people like his parents and the Wilsons. Couples who had dogs and kids and station wagons and the desire to tie themselves down with mortgages and property taxes.
They sure as hell weren’t for men like Mac.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Jane threw herself into his arms and plastered his face with kisses. “A house! Our very own house!” Her soft blue eyes were aglow with pleasure; that hint of sadness he’d first noticed was nowhere to be seen. “I’ve always wanted a home of my own to care for and—” She stopped abruptly. “Is something wrong?” The glow of pleasure dimmed a degree. “Have I said something I oughtn’t?”
He looked at his parents. At Tom and Dot Wilson. At the face of his beautiful young wife. He wanted her to be as happy tomorrow as she was today, and if that meant he became a home owner in Levittown, Long Island, then so be it.
“Well,” he said, shaking his father’s hand, “it looks like we’ve got ourselves a house.”
* * *
Jane was unpacking her suitcase later that night when Mac unceremoniously swept her off her feet and deposited her on the soft mattress of the double bed. “First things first, wife.” He reached for the buttons on her pale yellow blouse, but she batted his fingers away.
“No, Mac!” Her voice was an urgent whisper. “Your parents—”
“My parents understand perfectly,” he said, once again addressing those buttons with the utmost concentration. “Why do you think they gave us the room with a double bed?”
Jane didn’t want to think about their reasons. All she knew was the thought of making love with Mac—such a personal intimate act!—with his parents two rooms away was more than she could contemplate.
“I can’t,” she said, struggling to sit up. “What if they hear us?”
“Then we’ll be quiet.”
Jane wasn’t certain that was possible. Last night on shipboard their lovemaking had been rather abandoned. “I think not.”
He pressed her back against the mattress and kissed her. A plundering, intoxicating kiss that sent shivers of sensation rushing outward from the center of her being. His hands lingered against the curve of her breasts. “Still say no, Janie?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I mean, no. I can’t, Mac. I simply can’t.”
“That does it.” He sat up and tugged at his trousers. Jane looked away as she bit back a smile. “We move into our own place tomorrow.”
She giggled softly, flattered that she could be the object of such intense desire. “We have no furniture.”
“We’ll get some.”
“We don’t have a car.”
“We’ll buy one.”
“We don’t know where Levittown is.”
He started to laugh. “We’ll get a map.”
“You’re a very determined man, Mr. Weaver.”
He met her eyes. “Just realized that, Mrs. Weaver?”
“There are a number of things I’m just beginning to realize,” she said, leaning back against the pillows. “The neighborhood... this house... I don’t know how to ask you this.”
“Go ahead, Janie. You can ask me anything.”
She hesitated. “It’s simply that it sounds so... so mercenary.” She took a deep breath, then, “Are you rich, Mac?”
His bark of laughter shattered the quiet of the second floor. “I’m not rich, Janie.” He narrowed his eyes, laughter fading. “Does that make a difference?”
She made to leave the bed, but he held her fast. “That’s a terrible question, Mac. Money makes no difference at all.”
His all-American grin returned. “If money makes no difference at all, then why did you ask if I was rich?”
Well, now you’ve done it, Jane Townsend. Asking him about his money as if you’re some brazen gold digger. She should be ashamed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was talking about your parents.”
He looked a trifle puzzled for an instant, then shook his head. “No, they’re not rich.” He paused a moment, lost in thought. “At least, I don’t think they are. I’ve been away a long time. I guess anything’s possible in this day and age.”
“Surely you must know if they’re rich,” Jane persisted, leaping from the bed so she could pace the room, shamelessly delighted by the feel of the handworked carpet beneath her bare feet. “Just look at this home, Mac. It’s splendid.”
Mac shrugged. “It’s not all that different from when I last lived here.”
She stared at him. “Do you mean this is the way the average American family lives?”
“It was when I left. We might have been a little more fortunate than some, but we weren’t rich by any means.”
Jane grew silent. The differences between her old way of life and her new one were overwhelming. Why, everything she owned in the entire world would fit quite nicely in the closet of this one bedroom and there would be room to spare. She wondered why she had bothered to ask Leo Donnelly to forward her belongings. How shabby her mended dresses would seem before the spanking newness of all things American.
I’m not going to look back, she vowed as Mac drew her into his arms once again. She wouldn’t question her good fortune; she would simply settle down and enjoy it. Already she loved her new country, her new family. She even loved the home she had yet to see in a town newer than some of her dresses. More than anything on earth she wanted to belong, to know there was some place on earth where she mattered. Mac had given her that the moment he’d stepped into her life. When they stood before the priest in Southampton, they had tied the first of the bonds that would unite them for eternity, bonds that encompassed his parents and his friends and—please, God!—the children she hoped to have.
It was hard to imagine Queen Elizabeth was any more blessed than Jane Townsend Weaver that night.
And that was precisely why the dream she had that night, in the guest room of the Weavers’ home, came as such a shock.
It had been months since she’d had the dream. Last time it had taken days to shake the feeling of guilt and sorrow that lingered with her like a fine coating of ash...
“If it isn’t the Princess Jane.” Maud Eakins patted the stone step next to her. “Come to sit out the bombing, have you, dearie?”
Jane, seventeen and terribly self-conscious, contemplated risking the Luftwaffe rather than subjecting herself to the old woman’s relentless teasing. Practicality, however, won out. It was either sit next to Maud or continue wending her way through the winding darkness of the underground station.
She sat down next to Maud.
Maud smelled of cabbage and rosewater and Jane’s stomach lurched. Overhead she heard the whine of German aircraft followed by the shuddering rumble of
bombs destroying yet another part of the city she loved.
“And how’s your father?” asked Maud, as prim and proper as a lady in a tea shop. “I’d hoped he would pop ’round the pub and have a pint with me, seeing as how we’re both all alone in the world.” Maud’s husband had been lost in North Africa a few months ago and it hadn’t taken her long to begin her search for a replacement.
Stupid cow, thought Jane, her hands twisting the hem of her cotton skirt as the tunnel shook with vibration. How on earth could you claim to love a man forever and ever, then forget him the moment the first clod of earth hit the lid of the coffin? Why, her father had been widowed these past ten years and still his heart beat only for his late Jenny.
Love lasted forever. Real love did, at least, the kind her parents had known. She glanced at Maud Eakins with her crimsoned mouth and hennaed hair and that dreadful blue velvet ribbon pinned in her graying curls. She doubted if Maud had ever loved anything but the sound of her own voice in her entire life.
Jane’s mood improved considerably as she thought about the wonderful stories she could tell her father after the air raid was over. Her father had still been at work when the siren sounded. Jane had left him a note on the oilcloth-covered kitchen table. “North Station,” it said in her schoolgirl’s hand. “Shall I give Maudie your love?”
How her father would laugh when he got home and found that message! Since her brother’s death two years ago, Jane and her father had only each other to turn to for comfort. It saddened her to think that in the whole wide world only one other person cared whether she lived or died, but she didn’t linger on her sadness for very long. She was lucky—truly lucky!—to have such a wonderful father. His son’s death had come close to breaking his spirit and it had taken all of Jane’s strength to keep him from giving up.
“That’s what they want,” she had said, trying to shake some sense into her parent. “If we become disheartened, the enemy has won the war just as if we laid down our arms and surrendered.”
She didn’t let him know that her heart was pounding in her throat with fear or that the thought of life without him hardly seemed worth living.
Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) Page 13
