“You’ll be all right, love, going into London by yourself?” Randy, the pilot, asked as they both climbed from the plane.
“Of course,” she assured him. “You just go on home to your wife before the fog gets you. I can take care of myself.”
Later, Alpharetta ignored the whistles and wolf calls of the men as she walked with her luggage toward the military bus bound for the railway station. When she had reached the station, she walked along the platform and looked for a vacant compartment, or at least one that had a space left.
She saw no vacancies—only closed doors, full compartments, and crowds of military people rushing toward the aisles of the passenger train. It was almost as if all the armies of the world were in one spot, seeking seats on the same train.
All around her were uniforms of different shapes, sizes and nationalities—British, American, colonial troops—each with distinctive headgear—glengarries, soft khaki caps with their edges bent out of shape to give a more casual appearance, boxy, staid, militarily correct hats worn by army officers, sailors’ tams with their ships’ names carefully removed from the bands. And caught up in the swarming mass was Alpharetta in her uniform, with silver wings across her breast to signify the air transport service.
In the momentum, Alpharetta moved up the steps and onto the train, her luggage dragged behind her. “Excuse me, please,” she murmured as she edged down the aisle of car after car, while she too searched for a seat and, at the same time, tried to keep her balance against the train pulling out and gathering speed.
Afraid the entire trip to London might be spent in the aisle with her luggage, she heard a friendly voice call out, “In ‘ere, ma’am. There’s a tuppence of space just about your size.”
Alpharetta smiled at the soldier. Relieved to have found a place, she squeezed into the small area made for her and used her luggage as a cushion for her feet.
As soon as she was seated, the same young soldier, as if eager for her denial, asked, “You meeting someone in London?”
“Yes,” Alpharetta responded almost apologetically, for his eagerness turned to immediate despair at her reply. The light went out of his blue eyes, and his round, ruddy face with a slight sprinkling of freckles across his nose momentarily lost its vitality.
“That’s the luck of the Irish for you, Paddy,” the soldier opposite him teased.
“Would you . . . would you like your seat back?” Alpharetta inquired.
“Now what kind of Indian giver would I be, to do such a thing as that?” He grinned sheepishly. “Besides, you might change your mind in the next twelve hours when you see what charmin’ fellows we can be.”
“Well, I want to warn you,” Alpharetta said with a yawn, “I haven’t slept in twenty hours. So don’t take it personally if I go to sleep in the middle of one of your jokes.”
“Oh, don’t apologize, ma’am,” the second soldier said. “Paddy’s jokes are known for putting people to sleep.”
The third soldier, silent during this exchange, joined in to needle his friend. “Paddy’s our secret weapon. In Sicily, we sent him over the lines to tell jokes to the Germans. That was the only way we could get past Mount Etna. Once the Germans were asleep . . .”
“Paddy got a medal for it, he did.”
The corporal, taking the teasing good-naturedly, said, “Actually, it was the bazooka that did it.”
Alpharetta leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the sounds of the train and its passengers—easy camaraderie; laughter begetting laughter, jokes shared in a frenzy that comes at wartime; bubbling gaiety to hide the horrors they had already experienced.
She thought of Marsh, training for the coming invasion. With a sudden need, she reached into her shoulder bag for his letter.
She was glad she had begun writing to him again, once she reached Kansas. They had been so close—the four of them—Marsh, Ben Mark, Belline, and herself, especially when Marsh was stationed at Fort Benning. But then the war had separated them. Now it was easier for her to see Ben Mark again, for it was Marsh who had arranged for all of them to meet at the Ritz for tea.
As she reread Marsh’s latest letter for the twentieth time, Alpharetta experienced an excitement coupled with a vague uneasiness. The letter was guarded, as if he were keeping something from her that she should know. Finally she folded his letter and dropped it into her bag.
The train quieted. The soldiers began to play cards. Alpharetta looked out the window for a time as the express sped through the countryside. The glimpses of green were at odds with the gray buildings and steel-gray rails and orange vats rusted from the English mist. She stifled another yawn behind her hand and, lulled by the monotonous sway of the rail car, Alpharetta drifted exhaustedly into a sound sleep.
Former Wing Commander Sir Dow Pomeroy, now promoted to air vice-marshal, was not in the best of moods. The fog surrounding London had not only grounded his scheduled flight to the city, but now, permeating the entire countryside, it had brought even his car to a standstill.
Pacing up and down on the rail platform, he waited to hear if the stationmaster could stop the approaching express train from Prestwick to London. That was his only hope of arriving in time for the meeting at the Air Ministry.
It was disappointing enough to be missing the dinner party for Harry, but it was imperative for him to be in London by early morning to be briefed on his new assignment.
Group Captain Freddie Mallory, aide to Dow Pomeroy, brought his commander good news. “The message has been sent, sir. I think you’ll be more comfortable, though, waiting in the car until the train arrives.”
“How much longer will it be, Freddie?”
“Approximately an hour.”
“This damned fog. I might have known it would spoil things.”
Within the hour, the train slowed and came to an unscheduled stop. Heads lifted from makeshift pillows, and wary men listened for sounds overhead—for the Luftwaffe, for the secret weapon that was supposed to make the blitz resemble child’s play, while outside, the swirl of fog closed even tighter.
“It’s all right, chaps. Just a high-ranking officer getting on.” The news traveled up and down the train. And the passengers went back to what they had been doing before—some sleeping, others telling jokes and dealing cards.
But the conductor, searching for a comfortable spot where he might place the air vice-marshal, stopped before the compartment shared by Paddy and his friends.
“Sorry, laddies,” the conductor apologized. “But I’ll have to move you to another section of the train. We have a VIP getting on, unexpected-like.”
They all groaned. But one of the soldiers, Rhodes, inquired with a grin “What’s the army code on that, Paddy? Do we move for a mere VIP?”
Looking out the window toward the platform and, recognizing the rank of the waiting officer, Paddy replied, “That’s no ordinary VIP. It’s a VGDIP.”
“Well, why didn’t the conductor say so in the first place?” The young soldier picked up his duffel bag and leaned over to awaken Alpharetta.
The conductor stopped him. “Let the lady sleep. No need for her to move, too.”
And so it was that Alpharetta’s newly made friends, Paddy, Rhodes, and Matthews, vanished into another car of the train while their places were taken by Sir Dow Pomeroy and his aide, Group Captain Mallory, for the remainder of the trip into London.
With nothing to disturb her, Alpharetta continued sleeping until a sudden noise outside the train erupted. With a start, she sat up. Disoriented, not knowing day from night, she struggled to get her bearings, looking around to find some point of reference, something on which to anchor her split-second flight from dream to consciousness. Slowly the outlines of the rail compartment came into focus. She had not gone to sleep at the controls of the fighter plane, after all, but had already landed and was on the train to London.
She glanced around the compartment for Paddy and his friends, but all three were gone. Seated opposite her, instead, were two
British air officers, seeming very much at home and unconcerned over the noise that had awakened her.
A puzzled Alpharetta smoothed her hair and straightened her uniform. “Excuse me, please,” she said, looking toward the more approachable of the two. “Could you tell me what happened to the other occupants of this compartment?”
Freddie Mallory looked slightly uncomfortable. “I have no idea. But I presume the conductor found places for them elsewhere.”
His tones were clipped, precise. As soon as he had answered, he returned to reading his book.
His supercilious reply angered Alpharetta. So they had pulled rank on Paddy and the other two, ousting them from their comfortable places. Alpharetta looked from one to the other in an accusing manner. Her initial urge, to get up and leave the rail compartment, too, soon evaporated as she recalled the crowded conditions of the train. And so, ignoring the two men, Alpharetta sat quietly, her hands, small and slender, folded calmly in her lap. And she made no effort to converse.
At first, Dow Pomeroy was relieved. Despite her uniform, he knew from her brief question that she was an American. And for that reason, he’d been deliberately aloof. Every American he’d met so far had been entirely too talkative and friendly. It seemed to be a national trait. And he’d had no wish to carry on a meaningless conversation with someone he would never see again. Yet it intrigued him that the woman had not reacted according to the stereotype. Beyond that first question, she’d made no effort to speak with either him or his aide.
As the hour passed and the silence continued, Dow glanced up from his newspaper from time to time. He saw that, although her uniform was travel-worn, the woman opposite him had a patrician look about her—and the coloring he so admired in women. Hair, titian red; eyes, emerald green. There was something vaguely disturbing but familiar about her.
Dow’s memory swept over the long, cold portrait corridor of Harrington Hall, the family estate, where ancestors stared impersonally from their gilt frames—men in formal dress or uniform; women in ethereal white, each with the family coronet upon her head.
As a boy, he had spent many a long, rainy afternoon staring up at and memorizing the features of each generation. For a fleeting moment he visualized the portrait of the young woman opposite him. She gazed from her frame with a serenity in keeping with the gallery. And on her head was a diamond coronet belonging to his family from the time of the Norman Conquest.
Alpharetta’s green eyes intercepted his scrutiny and Dow quickly averted his gaze. What was the matter with him? He must be coming down with a fever. Else his mind would not have become so frivolous, imagining that the complete stranger, and an increasingly hostile one at that, who sat across from him even remotely resembled the family portrait of the titian-haired beauty he’d had a schoolboy crush on.
Taking refuge behind his newspaper again, Dow became aware not of the printed words, but the speed of the train hurtling itself toward Euston Station.
The train slowed and stopped. Dow, making no pretense to ignore her any longer, openly watched as Alpharetta stood, adjusted her hat on her red hair, and reached for her luggage. Group Captain Mallory, redeeming himself slightly, opened the outside compartment door for her.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice aloof. And then she was gone.
Waiting for the crowds to disperse before venturing onto the platform, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Dow Pomeroy sat impatiently, trying to conjure the face of his fiancée, Meg. But he was not successful. He saw only hair of burnished copper and eyes of green staring at him from a large gilt frame.
Alpharetta followed the crowd onto the street where a fine mist sprinkled the city and vied with the fog to give discomfort. Within a few seconds she was alone, lost in a darkened silence, as if somehow she had taken the wrong turn and missed the exit.
Her sense of equilibrium vanished. Even her shoes disappeared from view as she stared toward the pavement. Onward she groped, with her hand stretched in front of her, until she bumped into the side of a vehicle parked at the curbing.
“Do you wish a taxi?” a voice from the darkness uttered.
“Yes. Oh yes, please,” Alpharetta answered, relieved to hear the sound of another human being.
Her luggage exchanged hands and was relegated to the front seat of the taxi while Alpharetta settled herself in the back.
“To Rainbow Corner, off Picadilly Circus, please,” she announced.
All the street signs, all the highway signs had been taken down for the duration of the war. Marsh had warned her about that. Only he hadn’t warned her about the thickness of the fog that wrapped itself around the city, making it twice as difficult to find one’s way.
Realizing how lucky she was to have literally bumped into the taxi, Alpharetta sat upright, straining her eyes and wondering how the driver could find his way ahead, when visibility was no more than a few inches. But the driver, more used to the fog than Alpharetta, steered his taxi behind a large red double-decker bus. And in front of the bus, a man carrying a shielded lantern walked on foot to guide the bus driver.
Traveling at a snail’s pace, Alpharetta, like a blind man whose other senses have become more acute, could now hear the noise in the darkened streets. Occasionally, soldiers loomed from the curbing and stepped back again, their American voices cutting through the mist briefly, like their flashlights.
At times, even the taxi driver had to pull to the curbing, get out, and trace the outline of numbers on the sides of the buildings to see how far they had traveled.
Once the vehicle had come to a brief stop and Alpharetta was alone in the taxi, a soldier bent his head to peer inside and exclaimed, “Hey, Mama. Buy me that.” Then the light caught the glitter of the silver wings on her uniform. Quickly he straightened and disappeared.
Finally reaching Rainbow Corner, Alpharetta said, “You’ll wait for me, won’t you? I shan’t be long. I just have to pick up my billeting.”
The taxi driver replied, “Yes, miss. Take your time.”
She left her luggage in the front of the taxi and walked toward the sound of voices. Luckily for Alpharetta, her billeting was assured, for with the thousands of GIs on pass, lodging was a problem. A central housing service at Rainbow Corner had been set up to help the soldiers find accommodations. Even then, on any given weekend, as many as a thousand men slept on cots in bomb shelters.
“This is the key to the flat,” the woman at the desk explained to Alpharetta. “And the address. You’ll be sharing the flat with five others by tomorrow. Oh, and here’s the key to the park.” She held a second key for Alpharetta.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The key to the park,” the woman repeated. “The gate is always locked.”
Dubiously, Alpharetta took the second key as well. “Thank you,” she said, dropping it into her shoulder bag, too.
She walked out of the building and edged cautiously toward the waiting taxi.
By the time Alpharetta reached the flat near Berkeley Square and used the key to open the massive front door, it was close to midnight. With no idea that, at the same time, Dow Pomeroy’s batman was building a fire in the black onyx fireplace three doors away, a shivering Alpharetta, wearing her long pink woolen underwear, crawled between ice-cold sheets and began to dream of her meeting with Ben Mark St. John.
Chapter 11
The sun, so timid in its early-morning journey, began to fight its way through the fog of London by mid morning. Alpharetta had gotten up late and, although not wanting anything more substantial than a cup of coffee, she forced herself to eat breakfast. It would be at least five hours before she met the others at the Ritz for tea.
After eight months of separation from Ben Mark, Alpharetta was philosophical about waiting only hours more. Yet she had to remind herself that she not only needed to eat, but to find something to pass the time until late afternoon. Else she would be in no state to see anyone.
She put on her coat, tied a scarf around her neck and, venturing out onto the str
eet, began to survey the surroundings she hadn’t seen the night before.
Directly in front of her was a park surrounded by walls and shrubbery. She walked to the closed gate and peered inside. Benches, sheltered under the limbs of trees, were empty, and the few pigeons, strutting along the walkway, cocked their heads and listened, as if waiting for her to enter and feed them. But Alpharetta was empty-handed and it was cold. She backed away from the gate and began to walk down the street from the flat. At the corner, she automatically looked up for a street sign, but no markings indicated where she had been and where she was going.
Farther down, in front of another square, she saw an old-fashioned hack, with a FOR HIRE sign up on its seat. The sight of the horse and driver immediately dredged up memories of early days on another continent, when she was the moonshiner’s daughter, living within the shadow of Stone Mountain, where figures carved in stone recalled yesterday’s heroes of the South.
Like a child again, she wanted to see other monuments, other heroes, in this land where her cousin, Anna Clare, had been presented to the queen at the Court of St. James—and to ride through the familiar streets described by Anna Clare in that year of her greatest triumph.
Alpharetta signaled to the driver, and as the hack came to a stop beside her, she climbed into it. Her enthusiasm was evident in her voice.
“I want to see it all,” she said, “the Thames, the Tower, Trafalgar Square, Soho, Parliament, Big Ben . . .”
When the driver gave her a dubious look, she laughed and pulled out of her shoulder bag a one-pound note. “Or at least this much of the city.”
His solemn face denied his pleasure at her exuberance as he tucked the money in his leather pouch.
“This is your first time to London, miss?”
“Yes.”
“Not like it used to be,” the driver apologized, “before the Jerries got to her. She was a grand old lady, she was. Just like the Queen Mother. Now her face is dirty, like that flower woman on the steps. But lucky at that, I guess—to be alive.”
On Wings of Fire Page 9
