She began to see less and less of her close friends. After the first heady pleasure of showing off her wedding ring and receiving her friends’ squeals of congratulations, she found that she had very little to say to them. The endless talk about who was dating whom was no longer fascinating, and they were not interested in the things that preoccupied her: the military situation in Southeast Asia and her fears for Lewis’s safety.
As September merged into October, she wondered if returning to San Francisco had been a mistake. If she had moved into quarters on an army base, then at least she would have had other married women to talk to, women who would understand her position and who perhaps also had husbands serving overseas. As it was, she felt oddly isolated and increasingly lonely. After six months in Vietnam, Lewis would have five days leave. He had already written to her and suggested they spend his leave together in Hawaii. There was hardly a waking moment when she wasn’t thinking about it, looking forward to it, but there was another three months before the dream would become reality, and the three months stretched ahead of her as if they were three hundred.
On the second Thursday in October a ring at the front door put an end to her growing worries. She was in her bedroom, writing the daily portion of her weekly letter to Lewis, when her mother knocked and entered, saying in a voice that indicated she wasn’t very pleased by the event, ‘You have a visitor, Abbra. Scott.’
Abbra put her pen down immediately, rising to her feet in happy anticipation.
‘I appreciate the fact that as he is now your brother-in-law a certain courtesy is due him, but I don’t approve of him, Abbra. He-is so unlike Lewis. Why any well-educated young man should opt out of his responsibilities in the way that Scott has done is completely beyond me. With all his opportunities he should have become a lawyer or a stockbroker. Or followed his father and Lewis into the army.’
‘Playing professional football isn’t opting out of responsibilities, Mom,’ Abbra said patiently, sliding the half-written letter into the top drawer of her desk. ‘It’s a career, just like any other career, and it’s a tough and competitive one.’
Her mother shook her head, unconvinced. ‘I’m sorry, Abbra, but I can’t possibly agree with you. Professional football players are not the sort of people that we would normally mix with.’
‘Well, we’re mixing with one now, so everyone had better start getting used to the idea!’ Abbra said with asperity. ‘Where is he? In the living room?’
Her mother nodded, her lips tightening. Even though she had approved of Lewis, she had not approved of the indecently quick wedding. It had not been at all the kind of wedding she had pictured for her daughter. And now this. A football player in her house. She didn’t like it, and she had no intention of allowing it to become a regular event.
Abbra ran quickly down the stairs, hoping that her father wasn’t being as cold to Scott as her mother had obviously been. When she went into the living room and found him standing by the window in an otherwise empty room, her reaction was one of relief.
‘Hello,’ she said with a welcoming smile. ‘I’m Abbra.’
Scott had been looking out over the bay and turned quickly, shocked amazement flaring in his eyes. He strode to meet her, suppressing his emotion almost immediately. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Abbra,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Sorry I wasn’t able to make the wedding. It was my first training camp and there was no way I could break loose, even for a day.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said truthfully, ‘I understood.’
He grinned down at her. ‘That’s good. My father certainly didn’t. When I was injured in the first game of the season, he said it was God’s punishment for my putting training before family commitments!’
Her eyes darkened with concern. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had been injured. What happened? What did you do?’ As she asked, she wondered why he’d looked shocked when she walked into the room. What had he been expecting? Someone far more glamorous and sophisticated? He had known she was still at college. Surely he couldn’t have expected her to be much older?
‘I made a seventy-five-yard touchdown interception which won the game, but I was hit after the whistle and the ligaments in my ankle were badly torn. I’ve been having physical therapy on them now for six weeks, and it will take another three or four weeks before I can play again.’
He was taller than Lewis, six feet three or perhaps six feet four, and he was as powerfully built as the genial giant she had been dancing with the night she had met Lewis. Scott’s hair was nearly as blond as the genial giant’s had been. It grew low into the nape of his neck, a rich barley-gold, and thick and curly.
‘So while I’m resting up and having treatment on it, I thought I’d catch up on my family obligations.’ He grinned again. ‘Which in this case means getting to know my new sister-in-law. I wondered if you’d have an early dinner with me, to help the process along?’
‘I’d love to!’ she said immediately. It was deeply important to Abbra that she get on well with Lewis’s family. Though she had met his father as a child, the wedding was their first real opportunity to talk. She’d liked him and been fairly sure that the feeling was mutual. Now she had a chance to get to know Scott and she would also, at long last, be able to talk to someone about Lewis.
‘I’ll just put some shoes on and let my mother know I’m going out,’ she said.
Incredibly, he hadn’t realized she was barefoot. He and Lewis were so dissimilar in taste and temperament that he had never in a million years imagined Lewis would have married any girl he, Scott, thought halfway passable. When Abbra had walked gaily into the room in jeans and an open-neck cotton shirt, glossy dark hair swinging silkily around a square-jawed, high-cheekboned face, he had been so stunned that he could hardly speak. He had known that she was still at college, but had never for a moment imagined she would be so young and glowingly vital.
He looked down at her feet. They were narrow and well-shaped, the nails painted a pale, pearly pink. He wanted to tell her not to put on anything too stylish in the hope that after they ate they would be able to go down to the beach and walk. Almost as soon as the thought entered his head he cursed himself for a fool. He was taking her out for a meal, but it wasn’t a date. It couldn’t end on the beach or anywhere even remotely similar. She was his sister-in-law, not a prospective girlfriend, and the sooner he realized it, the better.
Her mother was crossing the hall as they left the house. He said good-bye with friendly politeness, and she responded with chilly formality.
‘Was it something I said?’ he said half jokingly to Abbra as they walked across the gravel drive towards a gleaming new Ford Mustang.
When she had left the room for her shoes, she had also changed out of her jeans and cotton shirt, and was now wearing a turquoise skirt that swirled around her legs, a pale mauve silk shirt, and high-heeled, delicately strapped sandals. Her eyes, as they met his, were agonizingly apologetic.
‘I’m sorry, Scott. It’s just that my mother doesn’t approve of professional football players. She’s convinced that all they do is hang around bars and get into drunken fights.’
He opened the car door, the grin back on his face.
‘It could be your mother is right,’ he teased.
She gurgled with laughter, the sound carrying back to the house. In the luxuriously furnished living room, Mrs Daley sat down on a sofa, her back straight, her lips tight. When her husband came home she was going to have a very serious talk with him. Scott Ellis was nowhere near as socially acceptable as Lewis and, brother-in-law or not, she didn’t like his free and easy attitude toward Abbra. This initial excursion could not be allowed to develop into a habit. If it did, goodness only knew what the gossips would make of it.
It was early evening and the light was soft over the Bay and the bridge and the cliffs beyond. Scott drove down Broadway, leaving the opulence of Pacific Heights behind him, manoeuvring deftly through the Chinatown traffic and on to Columbus Avenue toward h
er favourite Italian restaurant.
‘Hi,’ one of Luigi’s chefs called out to her from the open-plan kitchen. ‘Long time no see!’
‘I’ve been busy getting married,’ Abbra responded as Scott ignored the formality of the booths and led the way to the counter, where they could sit and eat and watch the chefs as they worked. She held up the third finger of her left hand so the chef could see her gleaming new wedding ring.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, beaming at both of them, and then, to Scott, ‘you’re a lucky guy.’
Scott’s eyes danced in amusement and Abbra flushed rosily, saying quickly, ‘This isn’t my husband. My husband is serving overseas. This is Scott Ellis, my brother-in-law.’
The chef paused in what he was doing and looked at Scott with fresh interest. ‘Say, aren’t you the guy who was injured scoring during the Rams’ season opener?’
Scott nodded, and admitted modestly that he was.
The chef shook his head sympathetically. ‘That was pretty bad luck. I saw the game on TV. It was a pretty mean late tackle. The guy should have been suspended. I wish to God you were playing for the 49ers. We could use you!’
Scott accepted the compliment with easy grace and returned his attention to Abbra. ‘I’m glad to see that you don’t talk about football all the time,’ she said teasingly as they ate perfectly cooked fettuccine with a delicious white sauce, and talked about books and writers, discovering a shared passion for Dashiell Hammett.
‘Did Lewis tell you I did?’ he asked, topping up her glass of burgundy.
There was something in his voice that reminded her that Lewis had been disapproving of Scott’s choice of career. The flush that had touched her cheeks when the chef had mistaken him for her husband edged back. ‘No, of course not,’ she said, uncomfortably aware that if Lewis hadn’t actually said so, he had certainly hinted at it. ‘It’s just that I imagined professional football players would talk about football and nothing else.’
‘Well, this one doesn’t,’ he said good-naturedly, knowing that she was being tactful and that Lewis had most certainly been speaking disparagingly about him. ‘The problem is, when I’m with Lewis, I don’t know what the hell else to talk about!’
She stared at him, wondering if he was joking, and then realized with amazement that he wasn’t. ‘But how can you not have anything to talk to him about?’ she asked bewilderedly. ‘He’s your brother!’
He grinned. ‘And you’re an only child, right?’
She nodded.
‘Believe me, Abbra, being a sibling doesn’t automatically mean that you have everything in common. Most brothers that I know have very different interests. Where Lewis and I are concerned, the differences are pretty big. Dad has lived his life for the army. He loves it passionately and I don’t think it ever occurred to him that Lewis and I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. With Lewis he was lucky. As a child all Lewis wanted to do was play soldiers. Me? I was sick death of soldiers and army life. All I wanted to do was play football, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I don’t have any regrets, but it hasn’t exactly brought me and Lewis very close.’
‘You make it sound as if you’re not even friends.’ Her voice was heavy with disappointment.
He resisted the urge to cover her hand comfortingly with his. ‘In a lot of ways we’re not. We don’t hang around together and we never have. But what we have is deeper than friendship, so don’t worry about us, Abbra. We’re brothers. We annoy and infuriate each other, but when it comes to the bottom line, we care about each other more than we care about anyone else. And that’s all that matters.’
‘Doesn’t he write to you from Vietnam?’ she asked, her dismay ebbing.
‘I had a brief note from him at the end of July, shortly after he arrived. He sounded as if he was in his element, though how anyone could actually enjoy living out in the jungle and facing sniper fire twenty-four hours a day, I can’t imagine.’
As soon as he said it he regretted it. Her face had paled, her eyes darkening until they were a deep-drowned purple. ‘Did he tell you that he was under constant sniper fire?’
He shook his head. ‘No, don’t worry, Abbra. That’s just my own idea of what life out there must be like. He told me he was serving as an adviser to a Vietnamese infantry battalion, but to tell the truth, I don’t have an idea of what that means.’
Zabaglione had followed the pasta and wine, and coffee had followed the zabaglione.
‘He’s part of a five-man American advisory team,’ Abbra said, her voice warming as she was at last able to talk about the subject closest to her heart. ‘It’s composed of a captain, a first lieutenant, and three non-commissioned officers.’
‘And Lewis is the first lieutenant?’ Scott asked, already knowing the answer to his question.
‘Yes.’ There was such quiet pride in her voice that his heart felt as if it were being squeezed tight. ‘They are operating in the southernmost part of Vietnam, in the Ca Mau peninsula. Lewis says that the Vietnamese battalion commander has been fighting the Communists for over six years, and that several of the other Vietnamese officers have been fighting for just as long.’
‘And before that they were fighting the French,’ Scott said, sliding his coffee cup away from him and signalling for another. ‘It isn’t worth thinking about, is it?’
‘No,’ she agreed, bleakly trying to imagine what it must be like for Lewis, rarely seeing another American apart from the four in his team; spending days, sometimes weeks at a time hunting through the U Minh or Nam Can forests for reinforced Viet Cong regiments; never knowing when they would stumble into an ambush or meet with enemy fire.
He saw the troubled expression in her eyes, and this time he did reach out and comfortingly cover her hand with his. ‘Don’t worry about him, Abbra. Lewis is a professional soldier. This is what he’s been trained for; he’s looked forward to it his whole life.’
She stared at him, appalled. ‘He isn’t enjoying it out there! He couldn’t be! No one could!’
‘Well, perhaps enjoying is the wrong word,’ Scott said, not truly believing that it was. ‘I guess I should have said that he would be satisfied that he was doing the job he was trained for and doing it well.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘The area where he’s operating is one that the Viet Cong have been trying hard to control for several years. He told me that hundreds of teachers and village chiefs had been assassinated for refusing to cooperate with them. If the area is more stable now that he and his Vietnamese battalion are operating there, and if the people in the villages are suffering less, then he will be gaining satisfaction from what he’s doing.’
Scott wasn’t sure whether the area would be more stable or not, but obviously thinking that it would be was the only way Abbra could come to terms with Lewis being there. He wondered how she would get along with the wives of Lewis’s fellow officers, and remembering the wives of his father’s fellow officers felt a surge of pity for her. He couldn’t imagine her as a typical army wife, her only interest her husband’s career, living for him and through him, with no real interests or life of her own.
‘We’d better go,’ he said gently. ‘Your mother will think I’ve run off with you.’ It was nearly ten-thirty and they had been talking for over three hours.
She rose regretfully. It had been the nicest evening she could remember since parting from Lewis.
‘Are you going back to Los Angeles tonight?’ she asked, wondering when she would see him again.
He shook his head. ‘I’m not really supposed to be driving at all, not until the physical therapist gives me the all-clear. I’ve arranged to stay over at a friend’s house and then I’ll drive leisurely back to L.A. tomorrow morning ready for my afternoon appointment with the therapist.’
She nodded understandingly, saying nothing as they walked out into the street, but he noticed that her shoulders were drooping very slightly and it occurred to him that she had enjoyed the evening just as much as he had. None of Lew
is’s friends or their wives were living in San Francisco, and he couldn’t imagine that her mother encouraged much conversation about Lewis, or about anything else that interested her.
‘I’m coming up again next weekend,’ he said casually. ‘It would be nice if you could take pity on me again and have dinner with me. Being a semi-cripple, I’m not exactly in great social demand at the moment.’
It was a lie. As an up-and-coming star with the Rams, his social life had never been more hectic and his injury had made not the slightest bit of difference to that part of his life.
Her face lit up, and he slid his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight. He had driven to San Francisco on a duty visit to meet a sister-in-law he had expected to have nothing in common with.
Instead, he had found a woman he knew was going to be a great friend and that he loved as family already.
Abbra happily accepted the crushing hug in the manner that it was given. She had never had any brothers or sisters, and she was overjoyed at the immediate closeness that had sprung up between her and Scott.
‘We nearly met once before, on the night that I first met Lewis.’ Her face softened, her eyes glowing as she remembered. ‘It was at a party given by a friend of mine in San Francisco at the end of May. Her brother had invited lots of his friends, and you were among them. I danced with another friend of yours. He pointed you out to me because he was telling me how he hoped to be drafted by the Rams, and of how you had already signed with them.’
They were at the car now, and he had released her shoulders, and was staring down at her. ‘You mean we were both in the same room and I didn’t notice you?’ he said incredulously. ‘It isn’t possible!’
She laughed affectionately. ‘Oh, but it is. You were surrounded by admiring females.’
He continued to look down at her, still puzzled. ‘I don’t remember Lewis being at any party that I was at. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t remember Lewis being at any party.’
White Christmas in Saigon Page 8
