Tigers in Red Weather

by Liza Klaussmann

  “Whose maid?”

  But he knew who it was. There was no use pretending anymore.

  1944: DECEMBER

  Even though Christmas was over, the train station still carried that whiff of holiday excitement. You could almost smell the pine in the air. People milled past Hughes, a moving canvas of anticipation. A pretty Wren in a gray coat with jingle bells sewn onto the hem tinkled by, lifting his spirits, if only for a moment. He had missed the train to London and now faced the depressing prospect of spending one of his three precious liberty days back aboard the Jones.

  Stepping out into the streets of Southampton only made him feel lower. The Germans had bombed the hell out of the city, so that its most prominent feature was now a snaking mass of metal from the station to the docks, a landscape of tracks, towers and cranes. The buildings looked like a collection of ruins, jagged blackened structures reaching skyward. But it was the staircases leading nowhere that disturbed Hughes the most. They seemed to be everywhere, futile against the blown-out backs of the houses; he had learned to keep his eyes on the pavement when he went into town.

  Still, it was better than Le Havre, where they had just left off an entire motorized division. The French port town had taken such a beating during its recapture that the Jones had been forced to continue to England to reprovision, instead of going straight back home.

  Hughes made his way back to the docks and headed for the Red Cross canteen, where at least you could get a coffee that wasn’t just lukewarm sludge, and maybe a doughnut, and stare at the Red Cross girls in their pale blue overalls.

  Inside, a long line made him curse his luck all over again. Hughes was about to give up and go in search of a pub instead when he heard Charlie Wells call out to him.

  “Derringer.” Charlie was standing midway along the line, motioning for Hughes to join him. “I thought you were on a train to London. What happened, decided the charms of Southampton were too good to be missed?”

  “I missed the damn train,” Hughes said, ignoring the men grumbling behind him about line cutters.

  “Ah, well, you can come out with me and the boys. You might learn something.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Ha.” Charlie clapped him on the back. “Don’t be sensitive. Come on, we need to put some hair on that chest of yours. It’ll get you out of that stiff collar, at least.”

  Hughes wasn’t in the mood for Charlie. In fact, he hadn’t been in the mood for much lately. He hadn’t seen Nick in three months, and Christmas had been a dismal affair, with the Jones pitching fitfully all the way from the Brooklyn Naval Yard, a frozen turkey, and cranberry sauce that tasted like sweet, red piss. He was sick of these wretched, destroyed cities, harbors that were always blowing like shit and the seasickness that never seemed to get better. When he’d seen the Army boys disembark in France after ten days on the Atlantic, he couldn’t help laughing to himself. They’d been the color of pea soup. But then again, it could have been the thought of an enforced march against the Germans in midwinter.

  “Lieutenant Derringer.”

  Hughes turned to see Commander Lindsey behind him. Like Hughes, he was wearing his dress blues. “Captain.”

  “I’m glad I ran into you. You’re going to London, I believe. Three days’ liberty?”

  “Yes, sir, but I missed my train. Doesn’t look like I’ll be leaving until tomorrow now, sir.”

  “Missed your train, did you?” Commander Lindsey rubbed his finger over the top of his lip, which he had a habit of doing when he was thinking over a problem. The first time it happened, Hughes had thought his captain was telling him that he had something on his face and he had mimicked the gesture, until Commander Lindsey had demanded to know why the hell he was so twitchy.

  “That’s unfortunate,” the captain said. “I have a dispatch here that has to get to the Naval Control Room by tonight. Lieutenants Wilson and Jacks have already gone on, I suspect.”

  “Yes, sir. I think they did make it to the train.”

  “Right. Well, Lieutenant, maybe we can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’ll have a word with the Brits and see if they have a dispatch driver they can spare. Maybe we can get you to London tonight, after all.”

  “That would be terrific, sir.”

  “Get your coffee, Lieutenant, and be quick about it. I’ll meet you out front.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mr. Wells.” Commander Lindsey nodded at Charlie, before turning on his heel and walking toward the canteen door.

  “Annapolis bastard,” Charlie said when the captain had left. “Always walks like he has a stick up his ass.”

  “You got your commission. Besides, you shouldn’t be so sensitive,” Hughes said, grinning at him.

  “Let’s get the coffee,” Charlie said, scowling. But his face lit up again when a Red Cross girl with a big chest turned to serve them. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m not sure what London has that I can’t find here.” Charlie winked at the Red Cross girl, who smiled back.

  Hughes laughed. He was already feeling a damn sight better.

  At the Royal Navy Admiralty House, in one of the city’s remaining municipal buildings, Hughes waited in the lobby while Commander Lindsey went to speak with his British counterpart. The hustle and bustle of the post reminded him of the train station, but without all that Christmas business, which was a relief. He had sent off a letter to Nick two weeks before Christmas Day, hoping that it would get to her on time. He hadn’t known what to say, except that he loved her and missed her; he couldn’t write about what he was doing or where he had been or was going.

  The year on active duty had been like living in suspended time. There was the world he had left behind, and this other place he had slipped into: the constant explosion of depth charges from the K-guns shaking the ship; the pale faces of the crew in the battle station red lights; zigzagging across the Atlantic in total blackout, decoding messages until you thought your eyes would drop out of your head. Nick was still living in the real world, a place you could dream about sometimes when you took up the bunk chains to get some sleep. But where he was you couldn’t talk about, let alone explain.

  “Lieutenant Derringer.”

  Hughes looked up and saw Commander Lindsey. It took him several seconds more to realize that the person accompanying him was a woman; she was wearing breeches, an oversized hacking jacket and what looked like flight boots. At first, he couldn’t tell how old she was. But as they got nearer he saw from the girl’s brow, shining below a mass of tightly pinned hair, that she was about Nick’s age.

  “You’re in luck, Lieutenant. Dispatch Rider Eva Brooke here has a delivery to make herself in London.” Hughes thought he detected the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his captain’s lips.

  “Sir,” Hughes said. He looked at the girl. “Miss Brooke.”

  “Mrs. Brooke,” the woman said in a voice that sounded like a church bell.

  “I beg your pardon. Mrs. Brooke.”

  “Right. Lieutenant, this dispatch is for Lieutenant Commander Napier at the Admiralty Citadel. See that it gets to him before you enjoy the sights.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Commander Lindsey turned to the young woman. “Mrs. Brooke.”

  “Commander.” The young woman gave his captain a smart nod.

  They made their way out of Admiralty House and around to a lot in the back filled with rubble from neighboring buildings. A group of boys were showing off their shrapnel collections to one another.

  One of them had a black eye. It made Hughes’s head feel light, like vertigo.

  “I suppose I won’t be needing this,” Mrs. Brooke said, throwing her motorcycle helmet in the backseat and eyeing the car with disgust, before opening the driver’s-side door and getting in.

  “What do you normally drive?”

  “A motorcycle,” she said. She gave Hughes a wry smile.

  “Yes, I got that,” Hughes said. “Which kind?”

  “D
o you know anything about motorcycles?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Brooke said, and released the clutch, backing the car out of the lot. She honked twice at the boys, who scattered like pigeons.

  Hughes ran his hand over the dashboard. “A Daimler. German.”

  “Very perceptive. Are you always this clever?”

  Hughes looked at her; she was staring straight ahead. “Not always. I have my moments.”

  “Well, we did have a General Motors factory until the Luftwaffe took a sudden and rather noisy fancy to it.”

  “They’re funny that way.” Hughes patted his breast pocket, reassuring himself he had put his toothbrush in there. He had several extra collars in his coat jacket, and that was it for his liberty provisions. “So what are you delivering to the Admiralty?”

  “This bloody car, if you can believe it. Apparently, they lost a couple in air raids last week.” She turned to Hughes. He noticed that her eyes were almost exactly the same shade of brown as her hair. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but I don’t think the Royal Navy would waste their precious petrol taking just a letter all the way to London. Even for you.”

  They began to leave the vestiges of Southampton behind and the road opened up, dead winter fields on either side.

  “Why didn’t your commander take the letter himself?” Mrs. Brooke asked after some time.

  Her voice really was like a church bell. Hughes thought of the chimes of St. Andrews on the Island, where he and Nick had been married. Nick’s naked body flashed inadvertently through his head, like a bright, hot streak of light.

  “He’s got a girl in town, I think.”

  “Ah, yes, the proverbial girl in town.”

  “You sound like you don’t approve.”

  “I don’t approve or disapprove. It’s just a cliché, that’s all,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s the worst thing to be, a cliché,” Hughes said.

  “Aren’t you? I think it’s just about the worst possible thing in the world.”

  “Everybody wants to pretend they’re different, but we’re not. We’re all the same.” He thought about the Jones, 200 seamen and 12 officers, 212 men shaking from the depth charges.

  “How awful for you, to think like that, Lieutenant,” she said and her voice had a softness to it that irritated Hughes. “And call me Eva. I’m not sure I can bear to hear ‘Mrs. Brooke’ for the next three hours.”

  “Where is your husband, then?” Hughes pitied the poor fellow.

  “I can’t really be certain,” she said. “Last time we saw each other he had been in North Africa.”

  “He’s in the Navy, too?”

  “Yes.” She sighed.

  Hughes fell silent. He didn’t think he could handle listening to a soliloquy about Mr. Brooke, which was bound to follow that sigh. Then again, you could never be sure, especially about a girl who rode motorcycles. He leaned his head back against the seat and stared out the window.

  “Are you from here?”

  “When you Americans say ‘here,’ I’m never quite sure where you mean.”

  “Here,” Hughes said, passing his hand in front of the windshield. He was getting impatient with her snotty little attitude.

  “Hampshire? No,” Eva said.

  Hughes watched small circles of fog appear and fade on the window with his breath. Outside, the gunmetal sky hung dully around them. He pulled his Zippo out of his pocket, and started flicking it with his thumb, listening to the rhythmic click of the steel.

  “So, where are you from?” Eva finally asked, as if she were resigned to conversation.

  “Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Hughes said, thinking of his mother and father rambling around their big house all alone.

  He had written to his mother, too, letters full of good cheer and optimism about winning the war. It disgusted him a bit, the tone of those letters, but she had been so angry when he went off that he felt it was his job to present things in the best possible light. He imagined her now, on her fainting couch, her fists balled in fury as she read them.

  In the distance, he saw what looked like seagulls with very black heads. He watched them circling and thought of German planes and the ocean. He thought of Le Havre and wondered where that division was now, and how many had already been cut up by the panzers, and how many had frostbite and how many would be escorted by the Jones one day, back across the Atlantic, home. Listening to the sound of the motor vibrating underneath him, he dozed off.

  When he woke, the glass was steamed up. He reached into the pocket of his coat and found his pack of Lucky Strikes. He cracked the window a bit and put a cigarette in his mouth.

  He turned to Eva and offered her one.

  “Oh, yes, please,” she said, and for the first time she looked like what she was, a young woman, delighted by the prospect of tobacco.

  “How old are you?” Hughes asked, lighting one and handing it off to Eva.

  “Twenty-four,” she said.

  The open window brought in the sharp scent of wet grass and dead leaves.

  “What made you want to be a dispatch rider?” He pulled lazily on his own cigarette, feeling more relaxed than he had in some time.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “The obvious reason,” he said.

  “Yes, of course. Then I suppose the answer must be equally obvious.”

  “Excitement?”

  “Yes, and also … I don’t like the idea of being stuck.”

  “I’d give anything to be stuck in one place right now,” Hughes said.

  “Not just in a place. I don’t know, just stuck in anything, really.” She said it firmly, but Hughes had the strange impression she might cry.

  Her hair had started to come unpinned, curling up around her face and neck, and Hughes saw that she would be, in fact, attractive, if it weren’t for the breeches and the ill-fitting jacket. Her hands on the wheel looked very small and he had an urge to see her wrists, which he imagined to be birdlike.

  “So you have your motorcycle and you can ride away whenever you like, is that it?” He exhaled into the car.

  “Well, it’s not all that cavalier.”

  “I guess it must be nice for your husband to know you’re doing your part, fighting alongside him, so to speak.”

  “Oh, is that what husbands like? I’ve never been very good at knowing about those things.” She sounded contemptuous. “Is that what your wife does, her part?”

  “In a way,” Hughes said, looking hard at her. He didn’t like her tone. “She exists. That’s enough for me.”

  “How charming.”

  Hughes ignored the comment.

  “She must be quite a marvel, your wife, for her very existence to give you such comfort.”

  “She is.”

  Eva looked at him. She seemed unspeakably sad suddenly. “Oh, hell,” she said, turning back to the road.

  They passed a few minutes in silence. Jesus, she was prickly. “How far away are we?” he asked.

  “We’re not far now.” Her voice had returned to its former clarity, all business.

  Hughes felt relieved. “I’ve never been to the Admiralty Citadel,” he said. “What’s it like?”

  “Oh, you know, maps and things. All very busy in there.”

  He lit another cigarette. “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”

  “Are you asking me to step out?”

  “What?” Hughes felt his cheeks go a little hot, like a girl. “No, it was just a question.”

  “Oh, don’t get so excited. I was only joking,” she said and gave him a sly smile.

  Hughes laughed. She was a strange bird, this Eva Brooke, like some kind of actress playing a million different parts.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said, “perhaps with my family. I have a couple of days’ leave.”

  “Oh,” Hughes said.

  “But your commander said you had three days. I’m sure there will be dances, if you’re loo
king for something to do.”

  Hughes was silent.

  “What’s that face? Don’t you like dances?”

  “Not very much right now, I guess. They remind me of my wife.” He thought of Nick in her dress with the neckline like a heart. He liked that dress.

  “Oh my,” Eva said, “you really are smitten. We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”

  It was at that point that Hughes decided to shut up for the rest of the trip.

  When they hit London, Eva’s driving became more careful, as she maneuvered to avoid parked cars, fire trucks and general debris. It was still strange to go from one bombed-out city to the next, with only rolling fields and the odd village in between. As they passed what had once been the Dunhill shop, he was reminded of his last visit to London, before the war. He had come with his college crew team and they had made a somewhat drunken visit to stock up on cigars in anticipation of a win against their English rivals. Now all that was left was its sign, leaning up against a pile of rubble.

  “Goddamn Germans,” he said. “Look at this place.”

  “Yes,” Eva said, “it does feel sometimes like the whole world’s on fire, doesn’t it?”

  They parked and Eva put her service card on the windshield, flicking it disdainfully against the glass. “I’m not sure what they’d do about it, anyway,” she said, more to herself than Hughes.

  She walked briskly toward the Admiralty Citadel, a large concrete blockhouse with a square tower and firing positions, like something out of the Middle Ages.

  “Charming, isn’t it?” she said, giving him a smile.

  Hughes noticed that she’d managed to put lipstick on at some point and her hair was tidied. When had she done that? Did she really think a little lipstick was going to detract from her badly fitting clothes? Still, there was something sexy about it. He didn’t know if he had actually ever seen a woman in breeches before.

  They showed their papers to the guards at both the entrance to the building and the stairwell, going down several flights underground.

  Eva seemed to know her way around. When they reached a certain level, she took a corridor and then another. They had to squeeze past several naval officials who were pulling maps out of drawers in heavy wooden chests. A white phone on one wall rang doggedly until a Wren picked it up. It reminded Hughes of the Jones belowdeck. Dark and cramped, with green painted concrete and steel. Finally, they got to the entrance of the operations room, which was heavily sandbagged, and again flashed their identification.