White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  Not in San Francisco. Not anywhere where there would be distractions. She wanted a beach house on a lonely part of the coast where she could write without interruption, and where her surroundings would give her mental solace as she continued in her long, agonizing wait for Lewis’s return.

  Remembering the weekend, she felt a glow of comfort. Talking to Serena and Gabrielle about Lewis, knowing that they understood implicitly everything that she was suffering, had been the best kind of therapy she could possibly have undergone. And in talking about Lewis, he had seemed closer than ever to her. Optimism, fierce and strong, surged through her veins. She knew he was alive. All she had to do was wait for him.

  Serena rented a car for the trip to Atlantic City. She had no idea what to expect when she arrived there. The address she was driving to was the one that had headed Chuck Wilson’s last letter to her, the letter in which he had said only that he was going to Wyoming for the summer to recuperate, and the letter in which he had implied that there was no need for them to correspond further. The address could be his family’s home or his personal one, or even, if the stationery had been borrowed, that of a friend.

  As she approached the coastline and caught her first glimpse of grey, surging, Atlantic breakers, she hoped that her suspicions were not correct. If they were, then she did not know how she would react, what she would say.

  She turned off the highway, driving through the suburbs into a quiet residential area. In another few moments she would be able to do what she had wanted to do for so long. She would be able to thank the man who had risked his own life in an effort to save Kyle from capture.

  The house was an old white wooden-framed house with clapboard siding, set in a large plot thick with shrubs and bushes. She parked the car and picked up her full-length wolf coat from the rear seat, then, slipping the coat on, she walked up the pathway towards the front door.

  She rang the bell and heard it jangle, but there was no response. She rang again, a slight frown creasing her brow. She couldn’t possibly leave without making contact with either Chuck or with someone who knew where he was. There was no sign of life from the front of the house, and so she dug her hands into the pockets of her coat and began to walk around to the rear.

  Flowers edged the pathway, asters and chrysanthemums and black-eyed susans, calendulas and marigolds. In the distance were more unexpected delights: bayberry and sumac and wild beach rose. She wondered bemusedly who the imaginative gardener was, and then turned the corner.

  Dominating the rear was a big glass-enclosed porch furnished with a wooden table, presumably for summer meals, and several upholstered, cane-framed chairs. There was also another chair there, facing away from her, with an occupant in it. A wheelchair.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered beneath her breath, her worst fears confirmed, and then as the figure in the wheelchair remained oblivious of her presence, staring broodingly out over the carefully tended lawns and shrubbery, she stepped resolutely forward and into the porch.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, her hands clenching in the depths of her pockets, the nails digging deep into her palms. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you like this, but there didn’t seem to be anyone in the house to answer the bell and …’

  The wheelchair spun to face her.

  ‘And so I thought I’d walk around and see if I could find anyone,’ she finished inadequately.

  He was about twenty-three or twenty-four, but his eyes were ages old. They were so old that she felt chilled just looking into them. And they were blazingly angry.

  ‘Now that you’ve done that, would you kindly leave!’ His voice was a whiplash in the mild autumn air.

  ‘No,’ Serena said, regaining her usual cool self-possession with difficulty. ‘I’m Serena Anderson, and I presume that you are Chuck Wilson.’ She stepped towards him and held out her hand. ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Chuck.’

  He ignored her outstretched hand. He knew who she was. He had known the instant he had set eyes on her. ‘I don’t encourage visitors, Mrs Anderson, and I would prefer it if you left!’

  She regarded him long and intently. He had light brown hair worn a trifle long, high cheekbones, a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, and a finely chiselled mouth. There was something about him that reminded her very strongly of Kyle. He was Kyle’s build, tall and lean, and even though he was in a wheelchair, she could sense the same restless, reckless energy.

  ‘I’ve no intention of leaving,’ she said unperturbedly, her decision made.

  She walked over to the nearest of the cane chairs and sat down. ‘Now,’ she said, swivelling her long legs in their over-the-knee derring-do boots to one side and crossing them at the ankle, her fur open to reveal her lemon minidress, ‘Why don’t you stop behaving like an embittered child and tell me all about it?’

  He drew in his breath between clenched teeth, his knuckles white on the wheels of the chair. She opened her shoulder bag, taking out a couple of joints and a cigarette lighter. ‘Keep me company,’ she said, passing one across to him.

  He hesitated for a long moment and then at last one hand uncurled and he accepted the proferred joint.

  ‘What exactly is it you want to know?’ he asked curtly when they had both lit up and inhaled.

  She didn’t ask any of the questions he had been expecting, questions about Kyle’s shooting-down and capture. Instead she said matter-of-factly and with a stunning lack of pity in her voice, ‘Are you going to be in that obscenity for a lifetime, or is the day going to come when you can throw it away?’

  A ripple of shock ran through him, and then he blew a plume of sweet smoke into the air, saying a trifle unsteadily, ‘Kyle told me you could be a pretty surprising lady. You are. And the answer to your question is that I’m probably stuck here for life.’

  She didn’t say she was sorry. She didn’t say any of the trite, banal, meaningless phrases that he was sick to the gut of hearing. Instead, she said with almost casual brutality, ‘Then you had better start getting used to it, hadn’t you?’

  Before he could recover his power of speech she rose to her feet. ‘If you point me in the direction of the kitchen, I’ll make some coffee. Or perhaps wine and a few beers would be a better idea. Do you have any in, or shall I drive down to the local store?’

  ‘You’re staying, then?’ he asked with what he intended to be cutting sarcasm, knowing even as he spoke that he wanted her to stay. She was doing what no woman had done since his Huey had been riddled with tracer fire. She was treating him without pity. And she was making him feel as if he still retained a shred of masculinity.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said with a lazy smile, her perfectly smooth blond hair swinging glossily straight almost to her waist. ‘I never pass up a party. Of course I’m staying.’

  A little later she made omelettes for them both. They ate them at the table on the porch, remaining there, talking and drinking until it was dark and then, when it became too chilly, they retreated into a room that Chuck described as his ‘den’, taking their third bottle of wine with them.

  His mother had returned home from a family visit at the end of the afternoon and had been at first surprised, and then delighted, and finally disconcerted by Serena’s presence. Now, as they settled themselves in the den, Serena curling up in a battered armchair, and Chuck propelling his wheelchair so that he was within arm’s reach of the coffee table and his glass, she knocked on the door and hesitantly entered.

  ‘Is there anything I can get either of you?’ she asked a trifle awkwardly. ‘I know that Mrs Anderson has already cooked a light supper, but if the two of you would like something a little more substantial …’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Chuck said sharply, and at his graceless response Serena saw a spasm of pain cross his mother’s face.

  She could well imagine the hell it must be, living with a son so embittered, and she also knew how deeply shocked Mrs Wilson must be by her own behaviour. A POW wife, drinking heavily with her husband’s crippled buddy, a buddy
crippled because he had tried to save that self-same husband.

  She smiled warmly at her, saying with all her considerable charm, ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Wilson, but we really don’t want to put you to any bother. Perhaps later we could all have some coffee and sandwiches together?’

  ‘I’ll do some chicken and ham,’ Mrs Wilson said gratefully and then, remembering the omelettes and Serena’s obvious unconventionality, added hurriedly, ‘but perhaps you are a vegetarian? If so, I could …’

  ‘I’m not a vegetarian,’ Serena said firmly, aware of Chuck’s glowering countenance, ‘and chicken and ham would be fine.’

  Appeased, Mrs Wilson thankfully withdrew and Chuck said tightly, ‘There’s no need for you to endure supper with my mother.’

  Serena tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded him quizzically. ‘Were you always such an obnoxious bastard towards her, or is it something you’ve worked hard at cultivating since ’Nam?’

  He said obliquely, ‘You’d be damn obnoxious, too, if you were trapped in someone’s company twenty-four hours a fucking day.’

  ‘But you’re not,’ Serena said. ‘Cars can be adapted so that you can drive. I don’t know what pension you get from the army, but it must be enough for you to hire whatever nursing help you need and to live independently if you want to.’

  She made everything sound so easy that at that moment he hated her. He thought of the last letter Kyle had written to her, the letter in which he had told her about Trinh and of how he wanted a divorce. The letter which he had not handed over to be given to her along with Kyle’s other personal effects. The letter was still in his possession, and for one vicious moment he was tempted to spin his wheelchair towards his desk, get the letter and hurl it into her lap. The moment came and went and he didn’t move. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to shatter all her illusions.

  He said tersely, ‘Let’s change the bloody subject. Tell me what happened yesterday in Washington. The headlines in this morning’s Post said, “55,000 Rally Against War; GIs Repel Pentagon Charge”.’

  She told him about the demonstration, about the peaceful gathering that had taken place at the Lincoln Memorial and that had been attended by at least 50,000 people, and she told him about the march and the peaceful way the demonstration had begun at the Pentagon, and how it had disintegrated and broken up into a series of vicious battles between troops and demonstrators.

  She had no idea whether he would sympathize with antiwar demonstrators, as so many other war veterans did, or whether he would resent them. Even after she had finished telling him about the demonstration she was no wiser. He merely grunted, turning the conversation back to her again, asking her about her life in England, about Bedingham.

  Her face took on an inner radiance as she began to tell him about her home. He watched her, tormented by so many conflicting emotions that he could barely contain them.

  When Kyle had first told him about the blond-haired, long-legged, sophisticated, wild and reckless English aristocrat that he had married, he had been intrigued. And envious. She had sounded like a girl in a million. A girl out of a storybook. And she was. She was incredible. Her hair was so pale in the lamplight that it looked almost silver; her features were a perfectly carved cameo, her eyes crystal-grey, her mouth wide and full-lipped and passionate. It was a face he could look at for a lifetime and never grow tired of. And he couldn’t contemplate making even the slightest sexual overture to her. To do so would be to risk seeing pity in her eyes. Even horror.

  Rage and frustration and bitterness roared through him. He wished he were dead. He wished he had died in his Huey, not been whisked by his terrified copilot to the nearest aid station and then flown on to a superbly equipped military hospital.

  Kyle had been luckier than he. Wherever Kyle was, he still had the use of his legs. When freedom came for him, he would still be able to flirt and screw and stagger with his buddies from bar to bar on all-night drinking sessions. A paraplegic didn’t have drinking buddies. He would be only waist-high as they crowded round a bar. Conversation would flow over his head. He could imagine the bartender asking them if he, the cripple, would like something to drink. But he wouldn’t ask him directly. People never spoke to cripples in wheelchairs directly. They always addressed their questions and comments to whoever else was there, as though the person in the wheelchair were handicapped mentally as well as physically.

  It was a scenario he had assiduously avoided. He had contacted no old friends, no fellow veterans, no fellow war maimed. He had hidden himself away, first at his uncle’s ranch in Wyoming, and then in his mother’s house. And though she did not know it, Serena was the first person to have broken through.

  He found his mouth crooking into a smile as she described her father’s horrified reactions to Bedingham’s pop festival.

  Serena saw the smile and knew that she could give herself a small congratulatory pat on the back. The man she had encountered earlier that afternoon had quite obviously not smiled for a long, long time. She said quietly, knowing that now it was safe to talk about it, ‘Tell me about Kyle. Tell me about your time together in ’Nam. Tell me of how he was shot down, and of what happened immediately afterwards.’

  His smile died, but the rapport between them remained unbroken. ‘Kyle was one hell of a buddy,’ he began, his eyes clouding with reminiscence.

  He didn’t tell her about their mutual whoring. He didn’t tell her about Trinh. He told her about the good times. How the two of them had flown their Hueys as if they were souped-up Mustangs, flaring their birds into hot landing zones through clouds of pink smoke, loading on wounded, kicking out some answering ammo, and then half an hour later coming back and doing it all over again. How, when they were contour flying, they had flown so low they had been practically skiing over the treetops and tall grass. And then he told her about their last mission. Of how Kyle had been shot down. Of how he had seen Kyle hurl himself from the blazing ship to the ground and how he had flown into dense fire in an attempt to pluck him to safety.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked gently as he paused, unable to continue.

  He looked away from her, his face suddenly closed and shuttered. ‘First of all we took a burst through the cockpit. I was temporarily blinded by the debris. Then we were hit again, and this time a bullet hit below my chest protector and went right through to my spine. End of story.’

  The bitterness was back in his voice, and this time she didn’t try to jolt him out of it. She said instead, regretfully, ‘I’d better tell your mother we’re ready for supper now. In another half hour I shall have to leave.’

  He kept his face averted from hers so that she could not see the sudden panic that had filled his eyes. ‘It’s too late for you to drive back to New York. Why don’t you stay here the night?’

  It was an invitation she had known that he would make. ‘No,’ she said, wishing that things were different, wishing that she could stay. ‘Sitting smoking pot and drinking wine with you all afternoon and evening is reprehensible enough behaviour for a POW wife. I can’t ruin my reputation completely by suggesting to your mother that I stay the night.’

  He turned his head, his eyes meeting hers, and a new emotion flooded through her. ‘Kyle told me you were a girl who didn’t give a damn about what people thought of you, and as far as your reputation is concerned, it’s more than safe enough with me. Now.’

  She ignored the last savage barb and forcing a smile, rose to her feet. ‘Nevertheless, I can’t stay,’ she said, her voice a little unsteady. ‘I’ll go and tell your mother that we’re ready to join her for supper.’

  ‘Then where will you stay?’ he persisted, his eyes holding hers unrelentingly.

  ‘I have a hotel room booked,’ she lied, and appalled at the realization that had so suddenly hit her, she walked quickly out into the hall and across into the living room.

  Jesus! Why hadn’t she been prepared for such a reaction the instant she had realized how similar he and Kyle
were? When he had turned his head, his eyes meeting hers in the lamplit room, the emotion that had flooded through her had been one of overpowering physical attraction. And he was confined to a wheelchair, for God’s sake! He probably couldn’t even function in bed. Even if he could, he was Kyle’s best buddy. And she had vowed to remain celibate until Kyle was freed from Hoa Lo.

  Her hand was trembling as she knocked on the living room door and entered. The whole thing was too farcical to be true. She was probably just feeling gratitude towards him for what he had done for Kyle. Or she was overcome with admiration for his bravery. Another alternative came to her, this time repellent. Perhaps she was one of those sick freaks who was sexually turned on by deformity. She dismissed the possibility almost as soon as it occurred to her. She knew herself better than that. The simple truth was that wheelchair or no wheelchair, Chuck Wilson was a damned attractive man with whom she had felt an immediate rapport.

  ‘We’re ready to join you for supper now, Mrs Wilson,’ she said with all the graciousness she was capable of. ‘Chuck has told me all that he can about my husband, and I’m very grateful to him. And for what he did for Kyle.’ She paused and then said, knowing how inadequate the words were, and knowing that there were no words adequate enough, ‘I’m terribly sorry about the injuries Chuck sustained on Kyle’s behalf. If there is anything I or my family can do …’

  ‘There is nothing anyone can do,’ Chuck’s mother said bleakly, her eyes harrowed.

  Serena hesitated. What she was going to say next could, if it were misinterpreted, sound appalling, but it had to be said. ‘I don’t want you to take offence, Mrs Wilson, but my family is reasonably wealthy and …’

  To her intense relief she saw that no offence had been taken.