by Paul Gallico
“We’d better!” said Patches. “One—two—three . . .” and they hollered, until the other passengers on the boat turned and stared at them, and three RAF kids came over and said: “I say, that’s jolly good. Do you mind if we join you?” and they all shouted together.
There was a piper aboard, and he played Highland music that Jerry found wonderfully exciting and that brought a new kind of gleam to Patches’ eyes and a straightening of her little back. They lunched for two and six on cold ham and boiled potatoes and some cheese, and drank two bottles of the warm, bitter ale, the flavor of which had somehow come to mean “England” to Jerry.
At Inversnaid the country had grown wild and wooded, and the queer dots they had seen on the hillsides from the boat turned out to be sheep with long, silky white coats and coal-black faces. Just before the steamer docked they passed a waterfall creaming over black rocks splitting a green glen, and Patches hugged Jerry’s arm and said: “Oh, Jerry, tomorrow, may we go there and just sit together and listen?”
They were given a room together in the hotel overlooking Loch Lomond after Jerry had signed the register: “Lieutenant and Mrs. Gerald Wright,” while Patches wandered away and examined the stuffed salmon and deer head on the walls so as not to feel the little pang of hurt that would come when she saw him write it. She would admit not the least shadow of pain to spoil the beauty of being with Jerry.
The next morning the change had taken place in them. They breakfasted in their room and then dressed and went out to seek the falls they had seen from the boat the day before.
Neither spoke very much, but they were no longer apart in their silences. They stayed now with their fingers intertwined, or with Patches leaning her body close to Jerry to feel the comfort of the touch of his limbs, or sometimes rubbing her head softly against his shoulder like a kitten, or just leaning it there contentedly as they sat on the rocks at the bottom of the glen, watching the falling water together and listening to the music of its descent. It seemed as though each stream or jet of glistening black water or boiling spume played its individual melody in the harmony of the softly thunderous symphony and mingled with the turmoil and the music in their hearts.
Later in the day they walked north through flowering rhododendron bushes to look for Rob Roy’s Cave, a cleft in the mountain with a barely perceptible entrance where the famous outlaw was supposed to have concealed himself from the English.
The entrance was carpeted with moss and tiny rock flowers, and there was a humming of bees all about. Jerry said: “Do you suppose it’s really true that he hid in there?”
Patches knelt down and tilted her head sideways to look in. “Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? Did you know he was a distant, distant kinsman of mine? A long time ago we were MacGraeme, and the MacGraemes were related to the MacGregors. I’m supposed to have MacGraeme eyes.”
Jerry said: “Let me see them, Patches,” and knelt too and looked into them. It was cool and dark in the deep glen, and there were depths reflected in Patches’ eyes that moved Jerry, and he saw beauties there that he had never seen before. They were together in a country whose mystery and romance stirred him. It was as if a kind of mantle of fantasy had descended upon the slim shoulders of Patches, as though she were cloaked with the mystic antiquity of the long-dead hero to whom she was distant kin and who once might have knelt, tense and harried, on the same wild, green carpet . . .
He said: “Why, Patches! They’re beautiful,” and leaned over and kissed her.
The next day they pushed their bicycles up the ridge on the old coach road and cycled past ruined castle and turquoise-hued Loch Arklet, their baggage strapped to the rear of their wheels, on to Stronachlachar on Loch Katrine, and from there rode on southwards along the banks of the wild lake and the dark, firred clump known as Ellen’s Isle, where once lived the “Lady of the Lake,” rising mysteriously from its surface, and thence onward to the paradise of the Trossachs.
Their way led them from bare, rugged uplands covered with purple heather and thistle to valleys where steep basalt cliffs alternated with bright-green woods of birch and oak. It was in the uplands that they turned a corner and came face to face with their first wild Highland cattle, great, noble steers with huge, spreading horns, six feet from tip to tip, and proud eyes, their fierceness tempered by a silly set of bangs that came down over their forehead and made them look like movie stars.
Patches said: “Why, it’s Greta Garbo,” but Jerry was fascinated with them. He said: “Those pictures I’ve seen of those old drinking-horns—so that’s where they got them! What a country! I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything. I’ll never forget it.”
They rode on with high hearts until, thinking of his lightly-spoken, boyish words, Patches fought against the edges of the shadow again. “I’ll never forget it,” Jerry had said. And in that moment of weakness she knew how deeply she yearned to have him say: “I’ll never forget you, Patches,” just to hear him say it, to have had the words spoken so that she could treasure and cherish them in her heart long after he had forgotten her.
They stayed in the beautiful Trossachs Hotel by Loch Achrey, to rest and play and steep themselves in the beauty of the surroundings, and Jerry wheedled a whole bottle of priceless Scotch whisky, to carry with them for emergencies, from the barmaid.
But the next night, with no warning, Jerry fell victim to an attack of the combat flyer’s megrims, which made it necessary for him to get drunk, quickly and completely . . .
This was the black mood of baffling melancholy and sinking despondency that would seize him without warning, laying a gloomy hold upon his young spirit and darkening it beyond endurance.
It had to do with the horrors that lay behind the “team” and the “game,” neighboring ships in the flight exploding appallingly and spinning earthward trailing flame, smoke, and debris, the sound of the gasping of hurt men, and the void left by friends who failed to come back.
There was too an inescapable pity that welled in the hearts of these boys who were not by nature destroyers. It could be repressed, or temporarily obliterated, by their harassed, adaptable, tough young minds, but it could not remain stifled forever.
As always, it began with a thought, some memory or association, and then a reliving of some dreadful moment that touched off a powder train of others that followed inevitably, leading to culminating horrors, the contemplation of which he could not bear. He could not fight them off, and he had not yet learned to rationalize or explain them. Hence there was nothing for him to do but get drunk quickly before the ultimate in darkness and despair was reached.
They had been sitting together in a corner of the lounge after dinner, laughing over the attempts of the group of Scotch and English trippers—soldiers on leave in bulky tweeds, with their wives, Naval officers, rich refugees from the bomb-torn south, gnarled-looking natives in rough clothes—to understand an American comedy programme that was being rebroadcast over the radio, when Jerry suddenly tossed off his drink with a queer, nervous jerk and poured out another with a kind of desperate immediacy that struck Patches to the heart. His hand shook when he carried it to his lips.
She saw his eyes and the remote horror that had suddenly come into them so swiftly, and her warm heart reacted at once. She said: “Jerry—something hurts you. Jerry, what is it?”
He didn’t answer her, did not even seem to know her. Patches had never seen him like this before, and yet the urgency of his movement in drinking had struck a chord of understanding within her. They were of the same generation and had known the same battlefield. Whatever it was that tortured him, she knew he needed help, and that quickly.
Silently she filled his glass for him, and when he had emptied it, filled it once more. She continued to do this until Jerry slumped forward, his head on the table. Then with her eyes she picked up two pink-cheeked sailors sitting at the next table. They felt the impulse of her need and got up and came over.
“Anything we can do to ’elp yer, miss?”
“I want to get him upstairs . . .”
The two sailors, with the air of experts who had done this before, steadied Jerry between them and walked him out of the lounge while the occupants stared but made no comments. They got Jerry up to the room, where one of the sailors remarked: “Your Yank’s ’ad a bit too much, eh, miss?”
Patches replied: “Haven’t we all?”
The two went away and left her alone with Jerry. She undressed him and put him to bed, and then remained sitting through the night, watching over his heavy breathing, holding his hand, and wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. Not until morning, when he relaxed and entered peaceful sleep, did she join him to rest herself.
Later, when they awoke and went out to meet what the new bright day had to offer, neither spoke of the episode. It was as though it had never happened, and Jerry’s old ebullience manifested itself in the suggestion that they ride out three miles to the Pass of the Cattle and climb Ben Venue. But Patches thought she felt a new tenderness in Jerry towards her that had not been there before.
It was on their return from Ben Venue, where they had lingered too long, that their little adventure befell them.
It was just a small adventure, when they made a wrong turning and were overtaken by darkness and a bitter Highland storm that came roaring out of the north, drenching, blinding and chilling them.
Soaking and freezing, they floundered along, walking their bicycles in the pitch blackness, until Patches’ continued silence alarmed Jerry, and he stopped and reached for her in the darkness, and alarm turned in him to fear. Patches was in trouble.
He felt it from the way she clung to him. Her body, when he took her in his arms, was shaking with chill, and her teeth were chattering so she could not speak to him. She had been heated from the mountain climb and the subsequent ride, and now the light cycling-jacket she had worn over her thin blouse hung in soaked folds about her. Jerry knew it was imperative she be taken some place where it was dry and warm.
Then his eyes saw a weak glimmer of light as of a dying fire flickering through a window, and he made out the shape of a small farm-house cottage.
They felt around to the door, and Jerry pounded on it until a man’s voice shouted from within: “Who’s there? Go away . . .”
Jerry called: “We’re lost. Can you let us in?”
“No, I canna let ye in. We ha’ nothing to do wi’ strangers. Go aboot yer business.”
Jerry shouted: “Strangers, hell! We’re allies—friends. There’s a girl with me who’s sick. Does that mean anything to you?”
There was a moment of silence, and a woman’s voice was heard. “Get oop, Jock. Ye no can turn a mon frae th’ door who calls ye by the name of friend.”
Candles flickered and the door opened, revealing a cottager, with a ruddy face and suspicious eyes, and a large woman behind him. She said: “Stand aside, Jock, and let them in. Do ye no see the puir lassie has a chill? Poke up the fire.”
Jerry carried Patches across the threshold and into the kitchen. She was blue with cold and shaking beyond control. Jerry did not even look at the pair. He gave orders. “Get me a towel of some sort and a blanket.” He stripped the wet clothes from Patches in front of the peat-coal fire, wrapped her in a blanket, and rubbed her hard with the coarse towel the woman gave him.
“Have you got any whisky?”
The man hesitated. “Aye, I might have a drop. But it’s no got the Government stamp on it . . .”
“To hell with the Government stamp! And I want some hot water.”
He wrapped Patches in more of the woollen blankets they brought him, and fed her hot whisky and water until the shaking stopped and the color returned to her face.
The farmer said: “Ye’ll best remove yer ain breeks, Yank. Ye’re welcome to spend the night by the fire. In the morning I’ll put ye on the right track.”
The fire was giving out solid heat now and a flickering yellow hght. Jerry made a bed of the blanket on the floor and wrapped himself in another. The farmer and his wife retired. He took the bundle that was Patches in his arms and held her to him. She said: “Oh, Jerry, you’re sweet,” drowsily, and then leaned her head beneath his chin and went to sleep.
Strands of straight, damp hair fell across her face, and he brushed them away gently and thought how beautiful she was. He could not recall when or how the change had taken place, or even that he had ever thought her plain. It was as though her features had come to take on a special meaning and unfold their beauties one by one. They had lost their individual identity as nose, or mouth, or lashes spread against a cheek. The tender sweetness of each had become intimately familiar to him. He had explored them all, experienced their texture, discovering new enchantments of human architecture in the gentle flare of a nostril, the smooth surface of brow or temple, the innocent and touching gallantry of the spot where her head and neck were joined.
There was a kind of eternity to the low, rough room, the glowing fire and the iron kettle suspended over it, with the rain beating on the roof and dripping from the eaves in steady streams that sounded above Patches’ quiet breathing. His mind remained encompassed there and with the companion he was holding closely as if to give her of his added warmth. Here a world might well begin and end.
In the morning Patches’ youth and constitution, plus the care Jerry had given her, asserted themselves, and she awoke refreshed and with no apparent ill effects from the chill and the wetting.
Thereafter the days slipped by all too quickly, a dreamlike procession of play and laughter alternating with growing passion as they learned the love of each other, and the tendernesses and increasing companionship and need resulting therefrom.
It was downhill all the way from the Trossachs into Aberfoyle, and they took it streaming, all-out, brakes off, sharing the whirlwind of their passage and spending the night at the Bailie Nicol Jarvie, famous, they learned from the inscriptions, for the legend of a fat, little, inoffensive English bailie who, while taking his ease there one night, was assaulted by a gigantic Highlander, who threatened his life with drawn claymore. The game little bailie put him to rout by setting fire to his kilts with a red-hot poker drawn from the fireplace.
They sat drinking Mild and Bitter in a secluded corner of the old Bailie’s bar, where the last of the sunlight filtered in through old, green bottle-glass set into the wall panels of dark bog oak, its rays picking up the sheen of pewter plate and tankards, chain mail, swords, and pikestaffs. Each in his own way was basking in the warmth and delight of the presence of the other, and knowing to the full the exquisite delight of not being alone, of having the other every moment, by pressure of limb to limb, by a touch of the fingers, a caress of the eyes, a quicker breathing, a smile, the fall of a wisp of Patches’ hair across Jerry’s face.
And if one was living for the moment, and the other was trying to make each moment an eternity, their appreciation and delight that each had in the presence of the other was in no way diminished.
They cycled on to Drymen, where Jerry borrowed a set of golf clubs from the local pro and played the course, with Patches walking at his side spellbound in dutiful awe of his every shot; and this was a new experience for Jerry to be so sincerely admired and frankly hero-worshipped, for now that Patches’ love for him had had its outlet, she put no curbs upon her adoration of him.
Thence they rode southward through the gentle, rolling hills of Lennox, and this was a different kind of country, green and more kindly, contrasting with the stern and romantic wildness of the Highlands, and ever their wheels took them at each turn closer to Glasgow and the end of their holiday. For their time was running out, and Patches had to return to duty at Kenwoulton.
As they had planned it in the beginning, so they carried it out. Patches’ leave was up before Jerry’s rest furlough expired, and she was to return alone while Jerry remained another five days in the north. He was planning to go to Prestwick and look up a school friend and classmate from Westbury, Eagles Wilson, an ATC pilot f
lying the Atlantic run with couriers.
But it was not until they were cycling through the grubby outskirts of Glasgow, past the seemingly endless rows of ugly, identical brick houses enlivened only by an occasional corner pub, that either of them realized how close at hand was their hour of parting, how near to an end their journey together.
And so they were once more in a railway station, this time St. Enoch’s, enduring the same smoke and grime and eternal railroad noises and rush of people and porters and soldiers with clanking accoutrements, the roll and rumble of baggage trucks and the senseless effeminate shrieking of the eternally hysterical locomotives.
Jerry had bought everything for Patches he could possibly think of—lunch, and a bottle of wine and a precious half-bottle of brandy, a box of chocolates, three detective novels, magazines, four packets of Player’s cigarettes—and was still prowling around the central bookstall looking for other things to buy her.
Now that the moment was almost at hand, it seemed queer to be saying good-bye to Patches, to be putting her aboard a train that would take her away. But it was not really saying good-bye. She was only going to Kenwoulton, and he would see her again there, at the dances, or in town, perhaps even . . .
His thoughts stopped there, because he kept seeing the figure of Lester Harrison at the bar of the officers’ club and hearing him say: “Pals while you’re together, but when it’s finished, that’s that. Most of ’em are hundred per cent. No tears, no trouble. Boom, it’s over! . . .”
He stole a look at Patches. She was burned brown, and her grey eyes looked light and luminous against the healthy tan of her cheeks. There was a new lustre to the off shade of her hair, now coiled at the back of her neck, hair that he knew was as soft as the finest silk and as fragrant as May flowers. She had changed in the room he had taken at the hotel, and was wearing the same skirt and dark silk blouse in which she had met him. There seemed to be a faraway look in her eyes, but for once her soft, restless, mobile mouth was expressionless. He could not tell what she might be thinking.
