‘I think it’s time we made a discreet retreat,’ Serena shouted. ‘If Dellinger is the pacifist you say he is, this is the very last thing he would want to have happen.’
Abbra agreed wholeheartedly. The left-wing activists carrying Viet Cong flags were only a tiny fraction of the crowd, but they were an ugly minority and were obviously eager to cause trouble.
The trouble came quickly. As she and Serena tried to force their way towards a women’s group who were carrying a twenty-foot banner with the words SUPPORT OUR GI’S BRING THEM HOME! emblazoned on it, full-scale fighting and arrests broke out.
It seemed to Abbra afterwards that none of the activists who had actually caused the disturbance were the ones being hit on the head with federal marshals’ nightsticks. As the marshals launched into the sea of protesters, it was students and hippies who bore the full brunt of the attack.
She was aware of Serena grasping her hand tightly to prevent herself from falling, of the blinding sting of tear gas, and then, as she fell against him, the long-haired student who had shouted to her that Dellinger had been arrested, was seized by a federal marshal. In horrified disbelief she saw the marshal raise his club, saw the student cover his head with his arms and his hair fly as the club made contact with his head and he sank down on to his knees.
‘No!’ she screamed, wrenching herself away from Serena’s grasp, throwing herself on to the marshal, dragging hold of his arm as he raised the club again. ‘No! No! No!’
The marshal threw her off as if she were an irritating fly. His club came down again, and this time the force of the blow knocked the student’s black loafers from his feet. As Abbra scrambled hysterically to her knees, she could see the blood pouring down from his hair on to the cement surface of the plaza. ‘Bastard!’ she screamed at the marshal, using a word she had never used in anger ever before in her life. ‘You pathetic, cowardly, bastard!’
The marshal turned towards her, his arm rising again. All around them fellow demonstrators, male and female, were being clubbed and hauled off to police vans. Serena grabbed hold of a discarded coat that was being trampled underfoot and hurled it over the marshal’s head. ‘Quick!’ she shouted to Abbra. ‘For Christ’s sake, run!’
Abbra tried to, but the crush was too dense. With Serena once more grasping tight hold of her, she pushed and shoved in Serena’s wake, away from the marshals and their crucifying billy clubs. As tears from the gas poured down her face she was aware with surprise that she was not remotely frightened. She was angry, angry at the troublemakers who had betrayed the demonstration organizers and turned what had been a peaceful, dignified antiwar protest into a bloody brawl, and furiously, blazingly angry at the brutality of the federal marshals.
As arrest after arrest took place, a voice in the crowd began singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and more and more voices joined in. Singing lustily, almost resigned to the fact that they, too, would eventually be grabbed hold of and dragged off into one of the waiting police vans, Abbra and Serena tried to remain on their feet and to push through to the rear of the crush.
As they did so, fresh localized spots of fighting between troops and demonstrators erupted.
‘Oh, God,’ Serena said resignedly. ‘Here they come again.’
They had reached the fringes of a large contingent of black demonstrators. Abbra could see one placard with the words OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE … YOUNG ONES DO being carried by a uniformed black army veteran. Another placard bore the words NOT WITH MY LIFE YOU DON’T.
From somewhere in the distance Abbra was aware that The Battle Hymn of the Republic had ended and that America the Beautiful was now being sung defiantly. As she lustily launched into the second line, a half dozen of the black demonstrators were knocked to the ground by nightstick blows. Shielding her head with her arm in an attempt to avoid a similar fate, she suddenly saw a petite, red-headed girl go sprawling down amid the melee.
Serena had seen her, too, and together they instinctively rushed forwards to drag her clear of the danger.
Their action brought them in front of the military police. As Abbra caught hold of one of the girl’s wrists, hauling her to her feet, a stunning blow hit her head. Dazed, she could, hear Serena screaming her name, but she couldn’t see her; she couldn’t see anything but scarlet flashes scoring dense blackness.
‘I’m all right!’ she gasped, lying. ‘I’m all right!’ Blood, hot and sticky, was trickling down the side of her face and on to her neck. Incredibly, she still had hold of the girl’s wrist, was still on her feet helping Serena pull the girl free of the demonstrators who had fallen on top of her.
Slowly, as the three of them staggered back into the main body of the crowd, her vision cleared. She could see Serena’s face, white with anxiety, could see the face of the girl they had pulled clear of the military police nightsticks, her green eyes full of indignant outrage, a silk tricolour tied around her throat.
‘We need to sit down,’ Serena was saying. ‘We need to bandage your head.’
Dizzily Abbra nodded and allowed herself to be led to the fringe of the crowd and the grassy lawns of the mall.
‘Mon Dieu!’ the girl they had rescued was saying as she staunched the flow of blood with a handkerchief. ‘I thought things were more civilized in America! No one told me I should have come with a crash helmet and a baton!’
For no reason at all Abbra began to giggle. ‘No one told me either,’ she said, grateful that the pain in her head was beginning to ease.
‘Are you okay?’ Serena asked her tightly.
Abbra didn’t venture to nod her head. To do so would have brought a roar of fresh pain. Instead, she said, her voice sounding strangely thick, ‘I think so. I don’t think I’ve got a concussion.’
The redheaded girl suddenly saw Serena’s scarf and her eyes widened. ‘Alors! Are you Serena Anderson? Are you the girl I was to have met at the Lincoln Memorial?’
Serena nodded. She had noticed Gabrielle’s scarf, but had been too concerned by Abbra’s wound to take time to introduce herself.
Gabrielle, too, returned her attention immediately to Abbra. ‘Je regrette,’ she said, distressed. ‘It would not have happened if you had not stayed to pull me free.’
‘It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had troublemakers at the front of the crowd, and unnecessary thuggery from the federal marshals and the military police,’ Serena responded tightly. She took a close look at Abbra’s head and said with relief, ‘You’re right, Abbra. I think you’re going to be fine. The bleeding has stopped, but you’re going to have a God almighty bump there for a few days.’
‘And a God almighty headache,’ Abbra said ruefully.
Serena looked around her. At the parking plaza and the grassy triangle of lawn beyond it, running battles were still taking place. Above the shouting could be heard a valiant rendering of We Shall Overcome.
‘Let’s get away from here,’ she said. ‘This thing is going to go on all night, and you’re in no condition to risk another run-in with the troops. If we make it back as far as the traffic circle at the Virginia end of the bridge, we should be able to pick up a cab.’
‘And go where?’ Abbra asked weakly as the French girl slipped her arm supportingly around her waist.
‘My hotel would be the best bet. We can call a doctor up to put some stitches in your head. It’s no use going to any of the hospitals. They’re going to be overrun.’
Abbra felt too weak to protest. Serena was obviously eminently capable, and she was quite happy to go along with anything that she said. As they began to edge their way through crowds both arriving in the vicinity and attempting to leave, Serena said to her, ‘Sorry, I haven’t introduced you, Abbra. Gabrielle, Abbra Ellis. Abbra’s husband is an army captain being held somewhere in South Vietnam. Abbra, Gabrielle Ryan. Gabrielle wrote to me after seeing a letter I wrote to the Washington Post. Her husband is Australian, and a journalist. He’s been missing for just over a year.’ She raised a hand, flagging down a ta
xi. ‘We’ll talk more when we get to my hotel, and after you’ve been seen by a doctor.’
Abbra willingly allowed herself to be helped into the taxi, smiling despite her violent headache when she heard Serena direct the cab driver to the Jefferson Hotel.
The Jefferson. Of course. Where else had she expected Serena to be staying? The Jefferson was one of the most prestigious hotels in town. Situated only four blocks away from the White House, its rooms were decorated with fine antiques, the laundry was hand ironed and delivered in wicker baskets, and the manager personally greeted guests at the front door. And with the Jefferson as an address, any doctor called would most certainly come. Knowing that she had nothing further to worry about, Abbra leaned back and closed her eyes for the duration of the short cab ride.
When the doctor had duly stitched the wound in her scalp and had given her a pain reliever, Abbra began to feel a great deal better.
‘What are you doing in America?’ she asked Gabrielle as a bellboy wheeled a trolley of food and drink into the room. ‘Are you here just to see Serena?’
Gabrielle sat in a deep-buttoned armchair, her legs curled beneath her. ‘No. I am a singer,’ she said as Serena poured coffee for Abbra and two glasses of Cháteau Latour, Grand Cru for herself and Gabrielle.
Serena handed Abbra the cup of coffee and Gabrielle her glass of wine. ‘What kind of a singer?’ she asked, interested.
Gabrielle grinned, her eyes full of mischievous laughter. ‘At this moment in time, a rock singer.’
‘Oh, God! I wish I’d known you when Bedingham had its pop festival! You would have been a sensation!’
‘Bedingham?’ Gabrielle had written to Serena at her London address. ‘What is Bedingham?’
‘Bedingham is my family home,’ Serena said, a new note entering her voice. She put her wineglass down and, sitting on the end of the canopied bed, she began to tell Abbra and Gabrielle all about Bedingham.
Abbra lay back against the pillows. Serena had insisted that she go to bed the minute they had entered the room, and she had reluctantly obeyed. Now she was glad that she had. The pain reliever had made her feel slightly woozy and as Serena spoke of Bedingham she felt so relaxed that she was almost asleep.
‘And you, Abbra?’ Serena said at last, when she had told the story of the pop festival and how she had met Kyle. ‘What do you do? Where do you live?’
‘San Francisco,’ Abbra replied, easing herself up against the pillows. And she told them of how her mother had asked Lewis to pick her up from a party, and of how they had fallen in love, and then she told them about her novel, and of how it was soon to be published, and of how she had already started on a second book.
Outside in the darkness, police sirens could still be faintly heard, but none of them paid any heed to them.
‘And so what happens to us now?’ Serena asked when Abbra had finished telling her story. ‘Do you return to San Francisco, Abbra? To finish your novel? And do you finish your tour of America, and then return to France, Gabrielle? If so, when are we going to meet again? Because we have to meet again, that is obvious.’
‘I am not returning to France,’ Gabrielle said quietly. ‘Or at least not for more than a few days.’ She paused and they waited expectantly. ‘I am going to Vietnam,’ she said with devastating simplicity. ‘I am going to look for Gavin.’
For a long moment even Serena was rendered speechless. It was Abbra who spoke first, her voice incredulous. ‘But you can’t! The country is at war! Where will you go? Where will you stay? How can you possibly find out any more than the Australian and the American authorities can find out?’
Gabrielle’s kittenlike features were determined. ‘I can go, Abbra, because Vietnam is as much my country as France is. My mother is Vietnamese. I lived in Saigon until I was eight years old.’
There was a sigh of understanding from Serena. It had been obvious to her almost from the first that Gabrielle was of mixed blood. Why hadn’t she realized she was half Vietnamese?
‘I speak Vietnamese,’ Gabrielle was saying. ‘I have family in Saigon.’ She paused again, opened her mouth to say more, and then changed her mind.
‘What is it?’ Serena demanded, sensing her discomfort. ‘What is it that you don’t want to tell us?’
Gabrielle said awkwardly, ‘This is difficult for me. Your husband is a prisoner in the North, and Abbra’s husband is probably being held in terrible conditions by the Viet Cong in the South, and …’
‘And?’ Abbra prompted her gently.
Gabrielle gave a helpless Gallic shrug of her shoulders. ‘And my uncle is a colonel in the North Vietnamese Army. Gavin wanted to meet him. To find out what the war was like from an NVA point of view. My aunt in Saigon arranged the meeting. Gavin went off with my uncle and nothing has been heard of them since. That was over a year ago. If he could have got in touch with me, I know that he would have. But he hasn’t, and so …’ Her voice faltered a little. The admission she was about to make was one she had never before put into words. ‘And so I think that perhaps he is a prisoner. As Lewis and Kyle are prisoners.’
For a long time no one spoke, and then Serena shook her head slowly, as if to clear it to be able to think clearly. ‘Jesus,’ she said in a stunned voice. ‘That is one. hell of a story!’
Gabrielle rose to her feet in the lamplit room. ‘You see why I hesitated before telling you. Perhaps now that you know about the loyalties of some members of my family, you would prefer it if I had never contacted you? If I now left?’
‘Nonsense!’ Before Serena could respond, Abbra sprang from the bed, ignoring the fresh waves of pain that her action occasioned. ‘Your husband is missing just as mine is missing,’ she said fiercely, taking both of Gabrielle’s hands in hers. ‘And I know that I am speaking for Serena as well as myself when I say that all that matters is that the three of us are friends, and that we are all suffering the same kind of agony.’
‘She’s right,’ Serena said. ‘She is speaking for me.’
‘Ça va,’ Gabrielle said, her eyes suspiciously bright.
Reassured that Gabrielle was no longer going to take flight, Abbra let go of her hands and returned a trifle unsteadily to the bed, sitting down on it Indian-fashion and saying with a smile, ‘So that’s it, Gabrielle. There is no more to be said.’
‘Oh, but there is,’ Serena corrected her. While Abbra had been talking so passionately to Gabrielle, she had walked across the room to the window and had stood, looking down into the neon-lit darkness of 16th Street. Now she turned around, her eyes holding Gabrielle’s. ‘There’s something very important still to be said. I want to come with you to Vietnam, Gabrielle. Can I?’
If it had been anyone else, even Abbra, Gabrielle was sure that she would have said no. But Serena was different. She could sense a recklessness beneath the English girl’s capably cool exterior that matched the recklessness in her own nature.
‘Yes,’ she said unhesitatingly. ‘Of course you can come.’
‘I have something to do first,’ Serena said, adrenaline racing through her veins. ‘I have someone to see in Atlantic City. Chuck Wilson. He was Kyle’s buddy and he was seriously injured trying to rescue Kyle.’
‘And I have something to do as well,’ Gabrielle said, not looking forward to the scene that lay ahead of her. ‘I have to tell Radford, the leader of the group that I sing with, that I’m taking off for Saigon. After doing that, anything that happens to me in Vietnam will be a walkover!’
‘What about me?’ Abbra exclaimed indignantly. ‘You surely don’t expect me to return to San Francisco while you two fly off to Saigon! If you’re going, I’m going too!’
‘No,’ Serena said emphatically. ‘No, you’re not, Abbra. Listen to me for a moment. Gabrielle’s situation and my situation are very different from yours. You are an army wife in a way that I, for instance, am not. Your husband is a professional soldier. When he returns home he will return to a career in the army. And he won’t thank you if you ruin his future prosp
ects by upsetting the military.’
‘But …’ Abbra began stubbornly.
‘But nothing,’ Serena said gently but firmly. ‘You have your book to promote, your second novel to write, and your father-in-law to appease. From what you’ve told us, if he thought for one minute you were going to fly to Vietnam, he would have a cardiac arrest!’
Abbra felt her throat tighten. Serena was right. Abbra knew it, but she didn’t want her to be right. She wanted to go to Vietnam. She wanted to do something positive to find Lewis. And she couldn’t. Lewis’s career in the army was his life. She couldn’t jeopardize it, no matter what the cost.
‘Okay,’ she said thickly. ‘But write to me. Write to me every damned week.’
Serena grinned, relieved Abbra had been practical. ‘We will,’ she promised, and turned towards Gabrielle. ‘So when do we leave?’
‘Our American tour ends in two weeks. I’ll return to Paris with the band and speak to my parents, and I’ll meet you there. Don’t bother about a hotel. As long as you don’t mind sleeping on a sofa, you will be very welcome in Montmartre.’
‘That’s it, then. It’s all settled,’ Serena’s satisfaction was bone-deep. ‘But if you don’t mind, Gabrielle, I won’t accept your very kind offer of hospitality. I’ll book into my usual haunt whenever I’m in Paris, the George V. I might as well enjoy what comfort I can while I can!’
A second bottle of Cháteau Latour Grand Cru stood uncorked on the trolley, and she picked it up, topping up both her own glass and Gabrielle’s, and pouring a glass for Abbra.
‘Here’s to us,’ she said exuberantly as they raised their glasses high. ‘And to our husbands; and to the day when we shall all meet again!’
Chapter Twenty-seven
The next day, on the flight back to San Francisco, Abbra planned her immediate future. Although, as a loyal army wife, she knew she couldn’t accompany Serena and Gabrielle to Vietnam, she had no intention of continuing with her present life-style. The advances from her book, though not enormous, had given her financial independence and she was determined to do at last what she had longed to do for months. She was going to move out of her parents’ home and rent a small house of her own.
White Christmas in Saigon Page 49
