White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Ellis.’ It was the chaplain speaking. His eyes were compassionate. She swung her eyes away from him, facing the officer, saying, ‘It’s Lewis, isn’t it? There’s news?’

  Taking her lightly by the arm, the officer led her to the nearest chair. Numbly she sat. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I’m afraid the news isn’t good, Mrs Ellis.’

  She waited. It was a gloriously hot day, and through the wide window of the room she could see the dazzle of sunlight on the distant surf. A half-finished page was still wound in the typewriter. She wondered what her last sentence had been and couldn’t remember. She wondered if she would ever write another sentence.

  ‘We have confirmation from a fellow prisoner, recently released, that your husband died in a jungle camp in the Ca Mau Peninsula sometime during October of last year.’

  October. When she had flown to Washington for the antiwar demonstration. When she had met Serena and Gabrielle and been so full of renewed hope. October. Before her first novel had been published. Before her second novel had been completed. Eight months ago. Lewis had died eight long months ago, and she hadn’t known. It was impossible. Inconceivable.

  She said in a cracked, harsh voice that she didn’t recognize as her own, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s a first-hand account, Mrs Ellis,’ the chaplain said gently. ‘There can be no mistake.’

  She looked into his face, and saw that he was speaking the truth. Lewis was dead. He was dead and she was going to have to live the rest of her life without him.

  She rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’d like to be alone please.’

  ‘I don’t think that is a very good idea, Mrs Ellis.’ It was the chaplain. He was in late middle age and he looked tired and drawn. She wondered how many other wives he had broken the same news to. How he could bear to wake up each day, knowing what his work entailed.

  She repeated immovably, ‘I would like to be alone, please.’

  In the end, unhappily, they left. As their limousine pulled away, churning up a cloud of dust and the fine sand that always thinly layered her driveway, she stood in the centre of her sitting room. Lewis would never see it now. He would never live there with her. He would never know about the novels. Never touch her again. Never hold her and kiss her.

  She was still dry-eyed. She couldn’t cry. Her grief was too deep for tears. Despite the summer heat there was goose flesh on her arms and legs. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, wondering how she was going to survive. ‘Oh, Lewis, Lewis, Lewis!’

  Her father-in-law came to see her; her parents came, insistent that

  she move back to San Francisco. She refused, knowing that she

  could never live there again. From now on her home was the home she had made for herself when she had thought Lewis was still alive.

  Scott had sent her a telegram. He was in Rome on a summer vacation. He had told her to be brave, and from Scott the words had not seemed trite.

  The hardest thing of all was in believing that it was true. If there had been a body to bury, it would have been easier. But there was no body. There was no coffin, no wreaths of flowers, no funeral service, no grave to visit. There was no tangible evidence of his death at all. It was as if Lewis, and the brief days of their marriage that they had spent together, had never been.

  There were so few memories. Only the platonically affectionate dates that they had enjoyed together in Carmel and San Francisco; their one-night honeymoon and their week in Hawaii. That was all the time that they had had. The paucity of it broke her heart.

  She had written to Serena and Gabrielle and had received long, commiserative, supportive letters back from them. And she had told Patti, who had been exquisitely sympathetic and who had immediately driven down from Los Angeles to see her. There had been no one else to tell. Their marriage had not been long enough for them to have formed any mutual friendships. Her grief could not be truly shared with anyone. Not until Scott returned from Italy.

  His father had told her that he was vacationing in Europe until the end of July, and she had reconciled herself to not seeing him until then. Without a funeral to attend there was, after all, no reason for him to return.

  A week after her official visitors had arrived in their black limousine, she slipped out of the house early, just as the sun was rising, and went for a long walk on the beach. She wanted to think about the future as well as the past. A future without Lewis. What would she do? Where would she go? How would she manage to exist through the half life that lay ahead of her?

  It was too early even for pre-breakfast beachcombers and she was alone. A sea gull swept inland, below eye level, the rising sun glinting rosy on its back. She would write. That much was obvious. Whatever happened, she would always write. But what else? What else could there possibly be now that she no longer had Lewis?

  In the distance she saw another person on the sand. She turned and began to walk slowly back in the direction of the house. Perhaps she should think about buying the house or, if that wasn’t possible, buying another house close by. After all, she would need a home, and there was never going to be a home for her on an army base with Lewis.

  Wry sadness flooded through her. She was an army widow who had never experienced army life. She would never know, now, whether or not she would have adapted successfully to such a change in her life-style. She was wearing dark grey slacks and a white silk shirt, a black cashmere sweater around her shoulders. She slipped her hands into the pockets of her slacks, looking broodingly out over the pearl-grey ocean as she walked.

  She didn’t look towards the house until it was twenty yards away. Then, turning away from the ocean to walk across the beach to the steps that led towards it, she looked up and saw him.

  He looked as if he had been standing there for a long time, watching her. He had allowed his hair to grow indecently long. Beneath the early morning sun it gleamed the colour of ripening barley. She couldn’t see the expression on his face or in his eyes; she didn’t need to. Her heart began to beat in sharp, slamming strokes that she could feel even in her fingertips. He had come back.

  ‘Scott!’ she cried, taking her hands out of her pockets and breaking into a run. ‘Scott!’

  She hurtled into his arms, and as they closed around her, and as she clung to him, safe in the harbour of his strength and his love for her, the frozen waste inside her thawed, and tears came in a grieving torrent.

  ‘He died, and I didn’t know,’ she gasped, her breath coming in great, shuddering sobs. ‘Oh, Scott, how could I not have known? How could I not have been able to tell?’

  He had no answer for her. He merely held her tight, stroking her hair, soothing her as best he could.

  She wept as though she would never stop, and then at last she said thickly, ‘I loved him so much. I thought I was going to have him to love for the rest of my life.’

  ‘I know, baby. I know,’ he said gently, and with his arm around her shoulders, he began to lead her back into the house.

  ‘Are you going to be able to talk to this guy who says he was in the same camp as Lewis?’ he asked her as he cooked breakfast for them both.

  She had cried until she could cry no longer. Now she sat with her legs curled beneath her on the window seat in the kitchen, watching him as he grilled bacon and fried eggs.

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes so dark they were almost black, her face ivory pale. ‘I wanted to, but in the official letter I received, I was told that the soldier in question was an Australian serving with the First Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He has been honourably discharged and his present whereabouts aren’t known.’

  Scott’s jawline hardened. He didn’t believe what she had been told for one moment. The army was simply trying not to cause waves, and perhaps trying to save her from further distress. He said, ‘There’s a Marlon Brando film showing in La Jolla tonight. Would you like to see it with me?’

  The movies. It had been months since she had been to the movies, or anywhere e
lse for that matter.

  For an instant she was too shocked by the suggestion to reply and then she said, with no doubt at all in her voice, ‘I’d love to.’

  She needed distraction. She needed to go through the motions of living until the motions once again became natural. And she needed company, Scott’s company.

  For four months she told no one that he had reentered her life, and she didn’t attend his games. But when he was in town he drove down from Los Angeles to take her out to dinner, to take her to the movies and the occasional concert, to discuss her work with her and to walk with her on the beach. She didn’t tell her father-in-law; she didn’t tell her parents; she didn’t even tell Patti.

  In all those months he never once referred to the words he had spoken to her in the forest above Lake Tahoe, and he never touched her, except chastely when helping her in and out of the car, or slipping her coat around her shoulders. In October, as he was about to drive back to Los Angeles, and she was walking him from the house to his Chevrolet, he turned to her and said suddenly, his voice oddly abrupt, ‘Has enough time passed, Abbra? Can I ask you now?’

  It was early evening and behind him the ocean lay in indigo shadow, the surging surf milky-pale.

  ‘Ask me what?’ she said, smiling up at him with no intimation of what was to come.

  There was no answering smile on his face. Every line of his body was taut with tension. ‘Will you marry me?’ he said simply.

  Time wavered and halted. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Somewhere deep in her subconscious she had always known that this moment would come, and she had refused to think about it, had refused to think of what her reply might be.

  ‘I love you, Abbra,’ he said, still not touching her, still not reaching out for her. ‘I always have. I want you to be my wife.’

  He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans. Beneath the thick, sun-bleached tumble of his hair his eyes were onyx-dark. She could see white lines of strain edging his mouth and a pulse begin to beat at the corner of his jaw.

  Still she couldn’t speak or move. He had been her brother-in-law and for a long time, longer than she had cared to admit he had been the most important person in her life. He was also a professional football player, a pin-up, a man who could have his pick of hundreds of women. And he was in love with her. He had been in love with her for a long time.

  Her heart was beating fast and light, high in her throat. Though she had known of Lewis’s death for only four months, he had, in reality, been dead for a year. That was why Scott was asking her to marry him now. Because it had been a year. And because he loved her.

  Suddenly it was as if a great dam inside her was at last breaking free. Loving Scott would not diminish her memories of Lewis. Nothing would ever do that. Lewis would be a part of her life always. But in a moment of stunning, dizzying revelation, she knew that she loved Scott. She was deeply, irrevocably, deliriously in love with the man who was asking her to marry him.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said, opening her arms and stepping towards him, so sure of the rightness of her answer that nothing in the world could have swerved her from it. ‘Oh, yes, I will marry you, Scott! I want to marry you more than anything else in the world!’

  His return trip to Los Angeles was forgotten. Lifting her up in his arms, he turned back with her to the house, striding through the sun-filled, book-filled room in which she worked, carrying her up the narrow stairs to the bedroom he had never entered.

  There had never been any physical intimacy between them beyond hugs and an occasional chaste kiss. Now he was going to make love to her, and neither of them could wait. She unbuttoned her blouse with trembling fingers, slipping her skirt down over her hips, leaving it where it fell. She stood still in her bra and panties, filled with crippling shyness. Scott was so much more experienced than she was. The models and actresses that he had dated had all, surely, been knowledgeable and unimaginably abandoned. Was he going to be disappointed in her? Was he assuming qualities about her that she did not possess?

  He had thrown his turtleneck sweater to the far side of the room. Now he kicked off his jeans, looking across at her, aware for the first time of her sudden hesitancy. He didn’t need to ask her what was the matter. The reason for her apprehension was blatant in her eyes. Slowly he stretched his hand out across the bed towards her.

  ‘I love you,’ he said thickly. ‘I’ve never been in love with anyone before, ever.’ Her hand slipped trustingly into his. ‘I’ve never been to bed with a woman I love. This is my first time, Abbra. You have as much to teach me as I have to teach you.’

  She gave a little cry, overcome with love for him, and with gratitude for his understanding. Gently he pulled her on to the bed and into his arms. He had waited so long for her, he wasn’t going to spoil everything by rushing now. ‘I love you, Abbra,’ he said again, pushing her silk-black hair away from her face, kissing her temples, her eyes, the corners of her mouth. ‘I love you, lady. I’m always going to love you. All the days of my life.’

  When he unhooked her bra and cupped her breasts in his large, strong hands, she shivered in delight. Slowly his thumbs brushed her nipples, slowly he lowered his head, kissing and gently sucking.

  She had not waited for him to slide her panties down. She was so damp, and hot and eager, for him, she had wriggled out of them herself, kicking them away, spreading her legs wide and pulling him down on to top her.

  It had been as wonderful as he had known it would be. It had been more than wonderful. It had been the most cataclysmic, exquisite, joy-filled experience of his life. There was no ghost in the room with them. No doubt. No guilt. Only love, complete, and satisfying, and boundless.

  When they broke the news that they were going to marry, her parents were so shocked they were almost catatonic. They refused point-blank to come to the wedding. They refused to meet Scott. They said that unless she came to her senses and called the wedding off, they would never have anything to do with her again.

  Tom Ellis’s reaction had been equally intense. At first he refused to believe it. And when they had lovingly and patiently assured him that they were telling him the truth, his rage had been terrifying. They were defiling Lewis’s memory. They were shameless. Adulterous. He wished they were both dead, as Lewis was dead.

  Abbra had been so distressed that it had taken nearly all her courage to break the news to Patti. What if Patti’s reaction, too, was one of stunned horror? If it was, there would be no one at their wedding. They would have to pull strangers in off the street to act as witnesses.

  ‘You couldn’t have called at a better time,’ Patti said cheerily from the sophisticated depths of her Los Angeles office. ‘I was just about to call to tell you Book of the Month Club has bought the book! Publication date, by the way, is definitely February ’69, and your editor tells me that the jacket is going to be sensational!’

  ‘That’s great, Patti,’ Abbra said, barely registering it. ‘I have some news for you too.’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I’m marrying Scott, and I would like you to be my maid of honour.’

  There wasn’t even a fraction of a second pause. Patti let out a whoop of glee that must have been audible in the next block. ‘That’s wonderful news, Abbra! I’d love to be your maid of honour! When is the wedding? What shall I wear? What are you going to wear? Oh, my God, I haven’t been so thrilled by a piece of news in years!’

  ‘She’s pleased?’ Scott asked unnecessarily when she put the telephone receiver back on its rest.

  Abbra grinned. ‘She’s pleased. And she’s going to be my maid of honour.’

  ‘And a buddy from the team is going to be my best man,’ Scott said, pulling her lovingly down next to him on the sofa and drawing her into his arms. ‘So all our troubles are over, and our guest list is complete.’

  Despite the fact that there were going to be only two guests, they had decided on a church wedding.

  It was a small, white-walled church, Spanish in style, and on the evening before
their marriage she decorated it herself with small-budded pink roses and stephanotis and clouds of orange blossom.

  Her dress was of pale ice-blue silk with huge puff sleeves, a tiny waist, and a softly flowing fall skirt. Her bouquet was made up of the same flowers that she had decorated the church with, and although she had transferred Lewis’s wedding ring to the third finger of her right hand, with Scott’s blessing she still wore his engagement ring on her left hand. Instead of an engagement ring Scott had bought her a pair of delicate, antique pearl-and-diamond earrings. Apart from these, and her ring, she wore no other jewellery.

  Patti was exquisite in a pale pink dress the exact colour of the roses in her and Abbra’s bouquets. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Scott warmly, flirted happily with the best man, and presented the bride and groom with a magnificent Lalique vase as a wedding present.

  When the simple ceremony had been completed, they drove to the Hotel Valencia, overlooking La Jolla Cove, and celebrated with champagne and a lavish wedding breakfast.

  They were flying to New Orleans for their honeymoon, because Abbra had never seen it before and it was a city that she had always wanted to visit.

  The best man and maid of honour, by now comfortably holding hands, drove them to San Diego International Airport. At the departure lounge doors Abbra turned, her black hair swinging glossily as she tossed her bouquet towards Patti.

  Patti caught it neatly with a wide smile and a naughty wink, and Scott’s buddy, who was standing beside her, blushed sheepishly.

  As the departure lounge doors closed behind Scott and herself, Abbra’s heart was full to overflowing. She had a future again. She had someone she loved, who loved her in return.