by Paul Gallico
Now he had found her a place in a first-class carriage, and he was standing on the platform, looking up at her as she leaned out of the window, and there were five minutes yet to wait until the train should depart, and they did not know what to say to each other.
Patches fought valiantly and gallantly against the tears that lay so close to the surface and yet that must be suppressed until she was alone, because that was how Jerry had wanted it. She had erected, as barriers against shedding them, the unforgettable memories of the hours of beauty they had passed together, but she knew they could not stand against the longing and the loneliness that would come later.
To help her, she called upon the sense of remembered reality of the gloomy station, the familiar sights and sounds and smells, things she had been used to all her life when she went away on trips.
She looked down at this dark boy with the crumpled cap on the back of his glossy head, and the young blue eyes beneath the heavily marked brows, the cleft chin and the gay, careless mouth—this Jerry, who was a piece of her heart, whose heartbeat she had felt, whose being she had shared, whose body had been there to touch when she stirred and reached out in the night—and told herself that it was just someone she knew, almost a stranger, come down to see her off.
They had kissed good-bye on the platform, but it had not hurt too much then, for it had been but a brushing kiss and a hurried hug in the crowd rushing for places in the carriages.
Jerry smiled up. “See you when I get back to Kenwoulton . . .”
Patches said: “Have a good time, Jerry.”
“You’ve been wonderful, Patches . . .”
Closing carriage doors banged down the line. The whistle shrieked twice. Patches gave Jerry her hand, and they gripped for a moment until the train began to move and parted them.
“Good-bye, Patches . . .”
“God bless, Jerry . . .”
Far down the station the engine wheezed and chuffed under its load of cars—“Hundred per cent—hundred per cent—hundred per cent . . .” The clacking wheels picked up in acceleration, and said faster and faster “Boom—it’s—over! Boom—it’s—over! Boom—it’s—over!” The train was gone from the platform, and the engine, far out in the yards, wailed its farewell: “I under-sta-a-a-a-a-nd . . .”
Jerry watched until the platform was quite empty and the last car had vanished. He sighed and thought: “Well, I guess that’s that. Gee, she was a swell kid. It’ll be funny not to have her around . . .”
He thought of what Major Harrison had said—“Hell, you don’t want to get involved with them!”—put his cap on the back of his head, and walked the streets moodily back to his hotel, where he found himself hesitating to go up to his room. He could not tell whence the feeling had come, but it was as though he knew suddenly that she would be there waiting for him. He pulled himself together and got into the lift.
It was the same kind of high, dark chamber they had occupied together their first night in Glasgow. He closed the door and switched on the single electric drop-light that hung from the ceiling, and the room was so filled with her presence that he stood for a moment blinking at the emptiness as though there were something wrong.
He saw her first only in odd little things she had left behind: a tiny blue pin set with baby turquoises, a powder box on the edge of the wash-stand, a crumpled empty packet of Player’s cigarettes—she preferred them to the American brand he smoked—and an inner sole that had come loose and fallen out of one of her slippers.
She had promised him right from the beginning that she was untidy. Jerry, trained to finicky neatness in the Air Force, had instituted something called “Policing Quarters,” in which they were supposed to share, but which always ended up with Patches sitting cross-legged on the bed smoking a cigarette and pointing out things he was overlooking—“Oh, Jerry, there—over in the corner. Why do I like to throw things in corners?” while Jerry picked them up and muttered threats of extraordinary Air Force punishments and gigs.
He went about the room picking things up, as though Patches were indeed sitting on the bed, and when he had them all in a little pile, he stood looking at them with a puzzled frown that they should be there and not Patches. She always had difficulty in closing the pin, and he seemed to hear her muttering: “Oh, bother!” until he came over and fixed it for her.
And she had her own little way of putting powder on her nose and then holding it up to him for inspection. And he would kiss her on the tip as a signal that it was all right.
The inner sole had long been loose from the slipper and was always coming out and being put back in again, because shoes in England were hard to come by, and they would try to think of stopping to get some glue and paste it. And nightfall would catch them somewhere along the line of their trip with the sole coming loose again, and Patches would groan: “Oh, dear, we didn’t get the glue again! And we were right in the shop!”
He took the tiny slip of soft leather in his fingers and held it there for a moment; and then he said her name: “Patches . . .”
The sense of missing her, the longing for her presence, overwhelmed him so suddenly that he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands and was frightened by the power of the emotion, afraid to look up again at the shattering emptiness of the room because it would verify that Patches was gone.
Physically she was no longer there, but memories of her crowded in upon him—her voice, expressions of her face, the feel of her cheek against his, the odd independence of her little toe, her laugh, the shape of her fingernails, the soft and trusting warmth of her sleeping, and a hundred other things he did not even know he had noted.
He said: “Oh, Christ, no!” and got up from the bed jerkily and went to the window and looked out upon the traffic in the street below and saw a girl on a bicycle who reminded him of the erect, excited way that Patches rode, her little head and eager eyes turning this way and that so as to be sure to miss nothing.
Hell, it was just that he had got used to her, she was such a sweet little kid! The thing to do was to stop acting like a baby and go downstairs and have a couple of drinks and forget the whole business. If every guy who ever had a little adventure with a girl moped around when it was over until . . .
His eyes fell on his Valpack, with his name and rank stencilled on the side, and at once he felt the pang of missing the fat little bag that belonged to Patches, and the thought came to him that he wasn’t every guy. He was Jerry Wright, and somehow what seemed to go for other men didn’t go for him. He wasn’t like Major Harrison, or even like Sam Bognano. And then as he sat down again on the bed with a dreadful feeling of being drained and lost and empty, he realized that in many ways he wasn’t even Jerry Wright any more. He was a part of someone else who was no longer there, the someone who was called Patches.
And once the thoughts began, and the beginnings of truth pierced his understanding, there was no stopping them. There could be no forgetting Patches, ever. She was under his skin. She was in his heart, his mind, his soul, and his senses for all time.
He sat staring before him, unseeing but remembering so many of the things that had seemed to be no more than pauses on the way to sensual ecstasy.
And he knew now that each and every one was intimately connected with Patches. The young breasts were the tender, swelling, lovable breasts of Patches, and not the mere stimulating and exciting paps of women. They were so completely and extraordinarily hers in shape and form and proportioned to her body—the velvet skin and softly budded tips, her carriage of them and the tenderness with which she yielded them to him. No one but Patches could have done it so or made him such a sweet and gentle gift.
The small, warm movements of her body approaching the anguish of climax were hers, and the sounds in her throat, the trembling of her soft lips, and the utterly dear fragrance of her hair and skin—these were as much a part of Patches as her voice, her smile, or the wrinkling of her nose when she laughed.
Jerry was thinking now of t
he emotion that had been growing in him all through the wonderful days and nights with Patches and that he had struggled so to suppress. He recalled moments when she had been in his arms, her body welded to his in mutual passion, when he had been so deeply moved and shaken by the sweetness of her that he had wanted to whisper to her: “Patches, Patches! I love you, oh, I love you! . . .” He had never permitted himself to do so.
He could say it now, as well as feel it throbbing in his heart—now that she was gone and the inescapable meaning of their union became at last clear to him. For they were wedded to each other. A marriage had taken place, in and around and about them; this thing that happened between a man and a woman to unite them and bind them to each other in union permeated them; this was the full fragrance and flower of the love that can be brought into being between a man and a woman.
The tall, drab room became a kind of torture chamber to Jerry, a prison of mirrors where the very walls and ceiling and doors and the drab furniture reflected the truths that were welling up from deep inside him.
You could play at being a man, go through the outward motions of a gay and lighthearted adventure, a careless holiday to be put away as an episode of a war-torn world turned upside down, but what if you found that afterward the presence of the girl had entered into your bloodstream, that the touch of her hand on yours, the texture of her skin, the expression of her eyes, the feel and smell of her hair, the sound of her voice, were as necessary to you as the air you breathed and the food that sustained you?
What could you do, how could you forget, if you knew every bright corner of her dear mind, the little human likes and dislikes, the generosities and tendernesses and capacities for love and sympathy? Patches had kept nothing back in the hours they had played and lived and talked together. She had showed him the gentle, dreamy other world in which she lived, and permitted him to enter in and share it with her. She had concealed neither her weaknesses nor her strength, and in his mind there was now a memory of her of such simple, human, lovable beauty that he felt as though he could not bear it, and he said aloud what he could no longer deny: “Patches . . . Patches, I love you . . .”
It was then, with shame flushing his face and an icy feeling at the pit of his stomach, that Jerry saw himself and what he had done; that he had made a bawd of her and sent her away alone without ever revealing what was in his heart for her, without letting her know the things he felt.
He had sent her away, this girl to whom he was wedded, who completed him and filled every corner of his being, with a wave and a handshake and a careless thank you, like a prostitute from whom he bought favors, in fulfilment of a standard of behavior that was supposed to be grown-up and manly.
He had set the terms baldly and brutally in accordance with how he had been told the game was played, and Patches had met them to the very end. He was remembering her as he had last seen her framed in the window of the railway carriage, so small and game, dry-eyed, her head held high, her hand raised to wave until she was out of sight.
“Most of ’em are hundred per cent. No tears and no trouble. Boom, it’s over!”
But what did you do if it wasn’t over inside you? If it could never be over, if you knew that as long as you lived and wherever you were, the memory of her and the longing to have her next you would be with you?
Jerry’s eyes fell upon his Valpack, as from below, a migrant locomotive emitted its piercing wail, and he knew what he must do, what he was impelled to do for his salvation, if there was to be any future, any life thereafter.
Hurry! Go down to the station. Catch the night train. Squeeze in somewhere. Go back. Hurry home to Kenwoulton to find Patches and take her in his arms, to hold her to him and see her beloved head and eyes again and the little fluttering at the corners of her mouth, to tell her that he loved her, to beg her to forgive him, and plead with her to marry him, never again to leave him.
He leaped up from the bed, and the scramble to pack his bag gave momentary relief to his nerves and feelings until the dreadful doubt as to what Patches would say and do entered his mind. What if she didn’t love him? What if the trip had not meant as much to her as it had to him, if it had been just a gay adventure to her? Surely if she had loved him she would have cried a little at the parting, given some sign . . .
Doubt and fear made him fumble and redouble his efforts, and he struggled with his alarm, calling up memories of moments together and preparing in his mind what he would say to her when he found her, all the things that had cried to be said before—“Patches, I love you so much. You must love me. You’ve got to marry me, Patches, you’ve got to. There’s nothing in the whole world, nobody but . . .”
Jerry stopped in the middle of his packing, sat down on a chair with his hands clutching his head, and said: “Oh, Christ! I must be going crazy.” He had thought of Catharine.
He had never quite forgotten her, but she had drifted into the background as the world each had known had receded more and more from Patches and him during the romantic, tender period of their honeymoon.
Catharine was there now. She lived. She existed. He was engaged to her. At that very moment she might be reading and rereading the letter he had written her at the completion of his thirtieth mission two weeks ago. He had hinted that the time was not far off when they would be able to get married.
Catharine . . . Patches . . . love . . . marriage . . . Tell Patches: “I love you, there’s nobody on earth but you,” and hear her say: “What about the girl you were going to marry at home, Jerry?” He couldn’t even speak to Patches, much less go to her. He wasn’t free. He was Lieutenant Jerry Wright of Westbury, Long Island, and the U.S. Army Air Forces, an officer and a gentleman, engaged to be married to Miss Catharine Quentin in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Westbury . . . orange blossoms and floating tulle, Sam Bognano for his best man, bridesmaids in organdie, their parents in the front row, her mother weeping a little, rice at the church door and wedding breakfast at the club . . .
Patches . . . Catharine . . . Jerry wrestled. Walk up the aisle with Catharine, with Patches in his heart? Go back to Kenwoulton and the airbase, be close to Patches, see her, feel her presence, and never speak? Write and destroy Catharine? Keep his promise and marry Catharine, and never for a moment escape from the memory of and desperate longing for Patches?
There was no answer he could find, no escape, no plan. He left his bag where it was, open in the middle of the room, put on his cap and went downstairs, and, only half seeing, crossed the street to the Grosvenor Saloon Bar opposite the station, where he found a place at the bar and ordered a double brandy.
A big American ATC pilot, who with his back turned had made room, looked around at him, stared and said: “Well, pluck all my feathers and call me baldy! Jerry Wright, you little bastard, you! What are you doing up here among the haggis and the thistle?”
Jerry put his drink down. It was Eagles Wilson, the Air Transport pilot who had played full back on the Westbury High School team when Jerry was an end. They hugged each other—it had been three years since they had last met, and for a moment, seeing Eagles was like a breath of home to Jerry, and yet in the next instant he felt he hardly knew what to say to him. He tossed off his double brandy, to try to pull himself together, and ordered another, and explained that he was on the tag end of a rest furlough and still had five days to go. He added: “I was going out to Prestwick to look you up.”
“Well, whaddya know? What a break! I’m just having a quickie beer before driving out there. I’ve got a jeep. We’re taking off in a couple of hours with a V.I.P., and I mean a very important personage. Come on out and meet the gang.”
Quite suddenly Jerry didn’t want to go. It was good to see Eagles, but somehow he couldn’t face a gang of pilots. He needed to be alone. The pain that was torturing him was very close to the surface.
He ordered another double brandy at ten shillings and drew a look from the barmaid. He said to Eagles: “Have another.”
The big pilot shook his hea
d and said: “Not me. I’m driving. Non-stop to New York. A very important personage.” Then he added casually: “Kinda soaking it up, aren’t you, kid?”
Jerry didn’t reply, but tossed the drink off at a gulp and set the glass down on the bar with a sharp click that made him frown. He tried to signal the barmaid, but she ignored him pointedly and busied herself with trade at the other end of the bar.
Eagles said: “Come on, kid, let’s go. We got a lot to talk about,” and took Jerry by the arm and led him to the jeep parked outside.
They started out of town on the twenty-five mile drive to Prestwick, and Eagles drove silently, threading the jeep through the traffic until they were out in the rolling country. Then he remarked, apropos of nothing: “Kinda longing for that girl of yours, aren’t you, kid?”
Jerry looked up startled. How could Eagles guess what was gnawing ceaselessly at his vitals? Did it show on one’s face like that?
Eagles continued: “I don’t blame you. Catharine’s one in a million. She’s a hundred per cent. I saw her the last time I was home. Damn if she hasn’t gotten more beautiful! She’s all for you, kid.”
Jerry’s face twitched, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. He said: “Yeah, Cat’s a wonderful girl . . .”
They drove on a little in silence. Then Eagles asked: “How’d you like to pay her a little visit?”
Jerry looked up with a trace of irritation and said: “What the hell are you talking about? I’m due back at Gedsborough on Tuesday.” This was Friday.
Eagles replied loftily, and with a trace of mock dramatics: “Think nothing of it. Since when has time and space been an obstacle to an intrepid birdman?” He changed his tone of banter and said: “Look here, kid. There’s nothing the matter with you that a look into that girl’s eyes won’t fix. Here’s this V.I.P. job. It’s a turn-around. We lay over eight hours in New York and come right back. We’ll be back here Sunday. One of our guys will drop you off at Gedsborough on his way to London, and you’ll have two days to spare, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
