His Very Own Girl

by Carrie Lofty

  Only after he lay panting beside her, his arm slung over her stomach, did Lulu cringe. They hadn’t used protection.

  After that cold slosh of panic, she let herself indulge in the possibility. So . . . what if she was to conceive? A baby with Joe? Start a family with him?

  Her heart ached when she thought about the sort of father he would be, strong and honorable, patient and generous. They’d never talked about a future together, and it wasn’t so hard to reckon why. Yet to do so on that morning, holding his exhausted, fraught body and feeling a low ache in her womb, Lulu did just that. Could they be happy? Maybe the details didn’t matter—where they’d live, what they’d do. All she counted on was the love and safety they’d offer each other. She ached for it like she’d never ached for anything.

  But fear swiftly overwhelmed her golden picture of days to come. A baby. Dear God, what would she do with a baby? Once, so long ago, she and Robbie had talked about a future full of little ones. They’d been barely more than kids themselves and the war hadn’t yet swelled to become an all-consuming blight.

  Since then she’d watched families ripped apart by evacuation, injury, and death. She’d seen hollow-eyed children roaming the streets after dark, searching for food to fill their hollow stomachs. Some had even submitted to prostitution in the shadows and corners of Aldwych station, desperate for the basics of survival. At least at Mersley the agony of those ordinary tragedies hadn’t followed her around day and night.

  And the women at the station, the ones carrying babies as they hurried to meet their soldiers—fathers who hadn’t yet been introduced to their tiniest loved ones. Lulu gulped in air. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t be that.

  Shrugging from beneath Joe’s arm, she donned her summer dressing gown. After a quick trip to the loo to wash up—and to calm the rattled flutter of her heart—she returned to the room.

  Joe was awake. He sat on the bed, propped against the headboard. The impact of seeing him shirtless hadn’t lost its power. Lulu found herself looking him up and down as if for the first time, never finding her fill. No matter what they were together, her primal physical attraction to his long, strong body never failed.

  But she’d be a fool to think that was enough to build a life on. What if she’d got all of this terribly wrong?

  A lit cigarette burned in the ashtray on the bedside table. His aid bag was on the bed with him, his duffel open on the floor. With deft movements he applied a sticking plaster to where she’d bit his forearm. Her gut twisted at the realization that she’d broken the skin.

  He glanced up.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Me, too. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I just wanted to wake you up. Your nightmare—”

  “It’s nothing, really.” He paused. “And I didn’t mean, well . . . afterward. We didn’t use anything.”

  Lulu’s face burned in a blush that slunk all the way down to her cleavage. She waved a dismissive hand. “No need to apologize. I took care of it as best I could.”

  His mouth tightened. His gaze dropped back to the aid bag as he packed away his supplies. Sunlight tipped his hair with gold and made the thatch of curls on his chest glow. For such a big, blunt man he handled the tools of his trade with a delicate precision. Every piece had its place, from a strap filled with six vials of pills to an array of bandages and dressings.

  An unfamiliar silence filled the room. They’d never been so withdrawn from each other. Lulu busied herself, too, dressing, sweeping the hair back from her face. She became conscious of his eyes on her. The tip of his cigarette crackled softly as he inhaled.

  Soon she had no unfinished business left to occupy her—none that didn’t involve Joe.

  The day was turning muggy and warm. Sweat gathered at the collar of her uniform. He still hadn’t risen from the bed to wash and dress.

  “You can go home if you want,” Joe said quietly.

  “No!” They both flinched. “I mean—do you want me to go?”

  “Of course not.” He snubbed out his cigarette. “But you look ready to scram.”

  She sat on the bed and couldn’t keep her shoulders from sagging. “I just don’t know what to do. This feels different.”

  “I know,” he said at last.

  Lulu took advantage of that scant concession, like pushing through a door that had once been locked. She scooted toward the head of the bed and pressed her face to Joe’s chest. The tickle of his chest hair against her cheek was unbearably intimate. His arms folded across her back with such tenderness that she feared her tears would start again.

  They were saying good-bye already. What she didn’t know was for how long, and she couldn’t even blame the war for that. This was a good-bye of their own making.

  “Hey, don’t cry,” he said.

  Lulu wiped her eyes, angry with herself for acting such a fool. She’d stop if she could.

  He rubbed her lower back. “Tell me what your week will be like. Help me picture it.”

  His heart beat loud and strong just beneath her ear, making her words echo distractingly. “Beg for Class Five flights.” He tensed, but she ignored it and pressed on. “Only a handful more before I qualify on Libs and Skymasters. I probably won’t make it until I get to White Waltham.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve requested a transfer. Nicky’s going, and he invited me to come with him.”

  “Nicky, your boss.” His voice had turned frosty.

  “That’s right.” She sat up and braved his thundercloud expression. It was now or never. “He said I’d have a better chance of making runs to the Continent when the time came.”

  “Making runs to—?” Joe frowned. “Are you off your nut?”

  He pushed her aside and climbed out of bed. His movements were stiff, jerky, dripping with anger. He hauled on a change of underwear, then punched one leg after the other into his trousers. Clean T-shirt, uniform blouse, suspenders—he was a soldier again. Just another Yank.

  He turned to her, his features contorted. “Flights to the Continent? Jesus, Lulu, you just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

  “What are you talking about? This is my job!”

  “Bull!” He poked the air with his index finger. “You’ve gone beyond just doing your bit. This is some obsession for you. Forgive me if I can’t compete.”

  “Compete? I’m not asking you to!”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She watched him move as if at half speed. He retrieved a tiny box made of cardboard and tossed it into the lap of her skirt. She let it stay there, eyeing it with fear and a surprising amount of joy.

  It made sense now. He made sense. She’d felt his hesitation all weekend long. Had he been trying to give her a ring? Ask her to marry him?

  Why had he waited?

  “Open it,” he commanded, which scared the joy away.

  The answer to her own question came. He hadn’t asked because not even Lulu could’ve predicted her answer. No wonder he’d been reluctant.

  She opened the box. The ring was delicate, fashioned of swirling gold filaments around a tiny glimmering stone. Her heart shoved into her throat. “Oh, Joe.”

  “So tell me I’m not in competition. It’s me or flying.”

  “That’s hardly fair.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot unfair in the world right now, sweetheart.”

  “I cannot do this.” She clapped the lid shut and laid the ring box on the bed. “You don’t mean it.”

  “Oh, I do. Believe me. I’m not going back out there just to sit in a foxhole and think about you taking enemy fire. If you insist on being that stark raving bats, then it’s best I don’t think about you at all.”

  “Joe—”

  “Stop it. Just stop.” He scraped the back of his skull with his fingernails. “Christ, Lulu, you have no idea what it’s like. It’s bloody and disgusting, something unholy. And you want to be a part of it? You’re like a green recruit who can’t wait to se
e action. Do you know what happens to them?”

  She sat still and let his anger flow over her, oddly disembodied. But her heart was breaking. “What happens to them, Joe?”

  “They get blown to bits, that’s what. They lie there writhing in pain and crying for their mamas as I patch them up, like trying to sew a butchered cow back together.” He began shoving his possessions in his duffel, pointedly leaving the ring on the bed. He kept talking as if railing at God instead of Lulu. “Or else they survive. Job well done, boys. Now you get to pass through hell with the other fellas who’ve made it this far. Good luck reaching the other side. No promises on what you’ll be or how you’ll feel. Just remember to sign your will and tell the family back home to buy more war bonds.”

  Lulu swallowed a sob at the mention of family, knowing Joe had none to write home to. Neither did she, for that matter. They had nothing but each other, and even that comfort had turned thorny. Her throat burned.

  “Just tell me why,” he said. “Why take this chance?”

  “Because I’m needed and because I can. And because I know the end of the war will set everything back the way it was.”

  “Good.”

  Lulu flinched. “You’d have everything I’ve worked for taken from me? Thanks awfully, you pretty little misses, but back into the kitchen?”

  His stony expression didn’t alter. “In a heartbeat.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Like hell I don’t. Jesus, what do you think me and the boys are fighting for? To beat the Nazis? Sure thing.”

  He shrugged into his dress tunic and buttoned it. Less than two days before, she’d started there on her slow path to undressing him, seducing him, comforting him. Now each of his words, spoken with such menacing calm, slashed at her soul.

  “We brave boys in blue,” he said, “are just fighting for the right to go back home to jobs and homes and families. We sure as hell aren’t fighting to go back to women in factories. You’re helping us win the peace, Lulu. It’s not meant to change our way of life.”

  The worst part was that Lulu knew he was right. It’s what she dreaded—not the end of the fighting or the killing. She’d give anything for that. But even if she weren’t so willing, the new freedoms and privileges she’d so eagerly acquired over the last five years would be taken from her anyway. The peace she was working so hard to bring about would ground her forever.

  “Get your things,” Joe said gruffly. “I’ll walk you to the station.”

  “You don’t need to trouble yourself.”

  “Damn it, let me be a man and walk you there.”

  The pain in his voice tore at her, but she was too stunned, too cross, to reach out to him now. Instead she picked up the ring box and held it across the chasm between them.

  “You forgot this.”

  “Keep it, pawn it, I don’t care. Hell, buy yourself a pair of stockings.”

  The train to Chelsfield found them standing together on the platform like strangers. Joe might as well have been underwater for how little he could breathe and how slowly he moved, numb and sleepy. He couldn’t shake the blaring buzz in his head. It drowned out every sound, every thought.

  Good. Let it blare.

  But the images twitching before his eyes offered no such comfort. He saw Smitty at Hill 122. He saw Lulu’s plane gliding toward the ground, its wheels stuck and its propellers trimmed away. He saw his C-47 bursting into flames, dropping like a felled goose.

  And then he saw Lulu. She’d turned to look up at him. His heart twisted. She was beautiful—beautiful and damnably sad. The bitter anger that had filled him didn’t run so rough now. Instead shame and regret tossed back and forth behind his breastbone, nauseating him like the seasickness he’d suffered when crossing the Atlantic.

  “What will you do now?” he heard her ask.

  Joe shrugged. “Wander around, I suppose.”

  Her gaze dropped.

  Would it be so hard to lie to each other? People parted on polite terms all the time. He craved a few lies right about then.

  We’ll meet again. I’ll wait for you. You’ll be back by Christmas. I love you.

  Lie to me, Lulu. Even about that.

  He’d made it through Normandy because Lulu waited for him in England, as much an incentive as the promise of peace. He’d even prayed to her a few times. C’mon, Lulu, get me out of this one. Maybe God had taken offense at his blasphemy, but Joe could list a thousand things He’d find more offensive.

  Yet no matter the horrors of D-Day, he’d had her letter and the promise of a future they might dream up together. One day. Now he had but a wisp of that promise.

  The part of his brain that stood off and away from the hurt they’d inflicted on each other—it fought to make itself heard. Maybe it was self-preservation. He was nothing more than a lonely man on the verge of returning to a war zone. He wasn’t so stuck on his own pride as to toss aside the only lifeline he had left.

  Do something, Weber. Do something or lose her forever.

  He dropped his duffel. It hit the platform with a dull thud. That he could hear it at all—among a thousand voices, two dozen hissing steam locomotives, and his own shrieking thoughts—seemed a miracle. He framed Lulu’s face with his hands and stroked his thumbs across her cheekbones. Tears welled in her dark eyes, nearly black with shadows that would haunt him.

  Forgive me, the rational voice said. And please, God, don’t forget me.

  He tried to speak, but his throat was like a shoe two sizes too small.

  Lulu stopped his words by standing on tiptoe and kissing him. She hadn’t bothered to put on lipstick that morning. She tasted just like her—only her. The feel of her was soft and silky and natural, her lips pressed desperately against his. Joe pulled her to his chest, which burned and throbbed. Not even holding her eased that ache. She squeezed her arms where they crisscrossed behind his neck, her mouth inches now from his ear.

  “I’ll write to you,” she whispered. “Nothing will change that.”

  There it was: the lifeline he needed. He grabbed it. Forget the future and marriage proposals and peacetime. It was a matter of survival.

  “I’d like that.”

  But neither of them said what lovers should say when parting. As Lulu’s train screeched to a stop at the platform, Joe had plenty of chances. They clung to each other for countless minutes. People came and went, bustling to get aboard. He could’ve whispered it in her ear, or mouthed it against the soft hair edging her temple. He could’ve even pulled away and let it shine out of his eyes.

  But “I love you” stayed locked in his chest. He could only hope that she felt the same, unable to speak after they’d done their best to ruin it. The alternative was too crippling.

  She kissed him once more, a swift good-bye. “I’ll be seeing you, Joe,” she said, her words nearly a sob. “Stay safe.”

  “You, too. I mean that, Lulu.”

  The conductor bellowed his last call for all aboard.

  Face flushed, Lulu wiped her eyes. “Well, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  She picked up her suitcase and turned for the train. Joe caught one last glimpse of her pale calves as she climbed aboard. Then he couldn’t see anything else. Head down, eyes shut tight, he stood there until long after the train had pulled away.

  chapter twenty-three

  When Lulu learned of the 82nd Airborne’s drop into occupied Holland, she’d just arrived at RAF Llandow, a repair depot about fifteen miles outside Cardiff.

  Her attention was focused on postflight checklists and the transition from one type of plane to another—from a tiny Martinet due to be retired, to a massive four-engine Lancaster. She’d ferried the same Lankie from its factory so that it could be fitted with radar and armaments. Now prepared for night bombing runs, it was heading to Southampton. That she would be the one to deliver it was an unusual occurrence. Unless she wound up on taxi duty, she rarely flew the same vehicle twice.

  The similarity to her pre
vious love life wasn’t lost on her.

  Demanding days should’ve meant less time to think about Joe. But he was a constant distraction—in the air, during layovers, and when she lay exhausted in bed. Her heart and mind battled to decide whether she was angry with him, missing him, or wanting him. Most days it was three at the same time. Worrying was her tip-top after-hours pastime. Since arriving at White Waltham, she didn’t have Paulie or Betsy to talk to, although they all wrote nearly every day. They’d invited her to fly back up to Mersley for her birthday later that week, but Lulu didn’t know if she had the heart.

  And Nicky. He was awfully busy with his new responsibilities at the ATA headquarters, but their relationship wasn’t the same. Not at all. Something quiet and unspoken had crawled between her and her old friend. Perhaps it was for the best, no matter how distressing. She mourned the loss of his comfort, even as she understood his reasons for backing away. Part of her was relieved. She’d never wanted to hurt him.

  So she worked. With mid-September days growing shorter and the push into German territory building steam, she couldn’t help a sense of urgency. One more flight. Do this one for the boys. One more. Don’t think about Joe.

  That changed as she took tea in the hangar, waiting while the mechanics gave her Lankie a final once-over. The hangar chief, a hard-faced sod from Aberystwyth who made a point of tossing as many Welsh phrases as possible into daily conversation, had switched on the wireless.

  A daytime drop, the BBC announcer said. Into Holland.

  Everyone had assumed the Airborne would return to combat sooner than later, but as Patton and the infantry units tore through Europe, overrunning planned drop zones, the 82nd had sat in France. Waiting. Now they were back in harm’s way—some scheme to capture Dutch bridges. There was even talk of ending the war by Christmas.

  Lulu hung her head and stared into her cooled cup, where a few flecks of tea leaf clung to its side. She’d written to him once, just a brief note to inform him that he wouldn’t become a father anytime soon. She hadn’t been able to write anything beyond that bare statement of fact, not even to ask the questions that kept her up nights. What did he do with his leave time in liberated France? Had he found a new girl to dance with? He wouldn’t have considered it had Lulu accepted his ring. That knowledge filled her with guilt like a festering boil. Guilt. Regret. And a terrible longing.