by Dean Hughes
But LaRue paid no attention. She waved her hand in front of herself. “Under this coat is a dress every girl at East—and not just sophomores—would die to have bought first. I have on the new ‘Heartbeat Casual,’ in melon green. It cost me eleven dollars, but don’t tell my dad.”
“Didn’t he pay for it?”
“Not exactly. I worked for him, and he paid me, but it was my money by then, not his.”
“So what’s so fancy about this dress?”
“It isn’t fancy. It’s casual.” She unbuttoned her coat and opened it so he could see. What LaRue liked about the dress was the way it buttoned all the way down the front, like a long shirt. “I saw it at ZCMI and knew it would be the new thing this spring. So I wore it today, to get ahead of everyone. By March, imitations will be blossoming like daffodils.”
“I never understand styles. If my clothes are still holding together, I just keep wearing the same ones.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I know. I see you all the time. And by the way, if you want to be popular, don’t admit to things like that.”
Cecil shook his head. He sounded serious again when he said, “I still say the price is too high. From my point of view, you’re selling yourself way too cheap.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
They had arrived at the corner where LaRue had to turn. Cecil usually continued on for another block. The two hesitated at the corner for a moment, and then Cecil turned and walked with LaRue down the hill toward her house, obviously because he wanted to continue the conversation—although he didn’t say so. “I don’t understand you, LaRue. You’re smart, but you’ve always gone out of your way to avoid letting anyone know it. It’s like you’ve decided that being so beautiful, you’d rather use your big brown eyes than your head to get what you want.”
“Beautiful? Cecil, do you think I’m beautiful?” She was smiling, flirting.
“Don’t do that, LaRue. You know how pretty you are. You’d be better off if you didn’t know.”
LaRue knew she was being complimented and, at the same time, cut to the bone. Who was Cecil, of all people, to be telling her how to operate in this world? But he seemed to know her secret—the one so obvious she was always surprised more people didn’t pick up on it. She was almost never sincere, almost always calculating. But then, Cecil didn’t have to be brilliant to see it; everyone else just had to be stupid.
“It sounds like you don’t like me, Cecil.”
“Don’t do that either.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t try to get me to say what you want to hear.”
LaRue took a long breath and then didn’t deny his accusation. She even liked the fact that he couldn’t be manipulated that way.
“I’ve already told you that you’re beautiful and that you’re smart. That ought to be enough.”
“You’ve also told me that I’m shallow and that I’m selling myself too cheap.”
“Well, yeah. Something like that. But I guess that means I think you’re worth more than you’re getting.” He ducked his head, and then he added, “LaRue, I’ve liked you for as long as I can remember. Since clear back in grade school. Just like all the other boys. I don’t like to admit that, but it’s the truth.”
LaRue was surprisingly flattered. She would never go out with Cecil, of course, or even think of him that way, but she was surprised by how much she liked talking to him.
The two had arrived at LaRue’s house. As she reached her front walk, she stopped. Then she turned and looked at him. She was about to say good-bye when he said, “So. What do you think? Do you want to go steady?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought not.” They both smiled. “But I would like to talk some more one of these days. I never have anyone to talk to.”
“We will, Cecil. We’ll talk some more.”
He nodded, but the smile didn’t return. In fact, LaRue saw a wistfulness in his eyes—some longing that she knew she could do nothing to repair.
“We’ll go somewhere and have a really long discussion one of these days,” LaRue said.
“Okay.”
But she didn’t mean it. She had enjoyed the little chat, but she didn’t want him to think she would go out with him. She would feel funny if people saw them together, and besides, she was wary of his little penetrations into her head.
Chapter 5
Anna Thomas was at the London office of the British Secret Intelligence Service when her supervisor asked her, “Would you like to take on some additional work?”
“Yes, I would,” she told him. “I could use the money.”
“Well, it’s a bit different, this. The American boys, over at OSS, need a good translator, and they asked us for a recommendation. I told them about you, and they want to have a chat with you, just to see how it might go.”
So Anna walked to the American OSS office, just up Grosvenor Street, and she sat down with a man who told her it was better that she not know his name for the present. He was an impressive man, however. He seemed educated, well spoken. He interviewed Anna carefully, learning everything he could about her background in Germany and about her American husband, and yet Anna had the feeling that he already knew everything she told him.
Eventually the man said, “Mrs. Thomas, I’m willing to hire you, based on what we’ve talked about, but you must understand that you’ll be required to come here, never to take your work home as you have done for the M-6 fellows at SIS, and you won’t be able to speak a word about what you learn—not to your mother, not to anyone. This is top-secret material, and we don’t like to put it in the hands of civilians, but it’s information coming out of Germany, and our own people simply don’t have the background they need. You know the country, the nuances of language, landmarks, culture—all in a way that our people never will.”
“I understand.”
He folded his arms across his chest. He was wearing a white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a dreary tie, dark blue, that was loose at the neck. Anna thought that before the war he might have been a professor, certainly not a military man. There was something contemplative and distant about him, even as engaged as they were in conversation. “But let me explain a little about these transmissions,” he added, “and you’ll understand why no word of this material can ever leave the building.”
Anna nodded.
“Mrs. Thomas, the British have never done much to penetrate Germany. We have far too little reconnaissance information about the effects of our bombing, about troop movements, fortifications and buildups, civilian morale—all kinds of things. For the past few months we’ve been getting some people into the country. Most of them are native German speakers, and some don’t speak much English, so many of the transmissions are in German. The operatives use a radio system we call Joan/Eleanor. Joan is the ground radio, and Eleanor is the receiver that picks up messages. The radio directs a signal, straight up. It’s a narrow signal at the ground level, but it fans out. We fly over the area, at high altitude, in a small, fast little airplane called a Mosquito. The pilot circles over the radio signal and records the information. This method is far less dangerous to the ground operative because German detection equipment can’t pick up a signal that is directed straight up, and the airplanes are high enough that they’re rarely noticed.”
“Will I translate the radio messages?”
“Yes. The messages are recorded on a spool of wire. You can play them back on a machine I’ll show you how to operate. Sometimes the signals break up a little, but most of the recordings are pretty clear. Let me have you listen to one. Come with me.”
The agent got up from his desk and motioned toward the door, but in the hallway he walked on ahead. Anna had had time to get nervous by then. She wondered whether her English would be adequate to give him what he wanted. And she wondered what “nuances” were. She would have to look the word up when she got home.
The man led her to a little room o
nly large enough for a desk and chair. He held the door for her and then closed it behind him. On the desk was a little recording machine. The man showed her how to load the spool of wire, and how to play and rewind it.
“This is a new recording,” he told her. “Listen, and see whether you can understand it all right.”
The two listened for maybe half a minute before Anna said, “Yes, I understand it very well.”
“Good. Some recordings are not quite so clear, but you’ll do fine with them, I’m certain.”
“Sir, I’m worried about one thing.”
“What’s that?” He turned toward her, lowered his head a little, seeming patient.
“I think my father is in Germany. No one has ever said that to us, and he couldn’t tell us, but I’m almost sure that he’s one of your operatives. If that’s true, and there’s a problem with my knowing that, say so now.”
The man took his time but finally said, “What you know is that your father is working for our office and that he’s away. We have informed your mother, from time to time, that he is all right. I want to say nothing else.”
“But perhaps I could hear him on one of these—”
“I want to say nothing else.”
“It’s good. But I thought you should know.”
“Yes. I’m not surprised that you would draw the conclusion that your father is in Germany. But you must understand that it isn’t my position to confirm it.”
That did seem, actually, a sort of confirmation, but Anna didn’t say so. She only said, “I understand.”
“If you don’t mind starting right now, we need this recording translated today. If you can’t stay, we can—”
“No. It’s fine. I’ll do it now.”
The agent opened a drawer and got paper and pencils out for her, and then he left, but she didn’t write anything at first. She decided to listen to the recording once, all the way through, before she began to translate.
What she felt as she listened was something she hadn’t experienced lately. She heard the hurried descriptions of bombing raids, of reconstruction efforts, of troop movements, even of resistance work. But beyond the words, she heard the speaker’s anxiety, the same trepidation she had lived with for such a long time when the war was lurking nearby. In Berlin, she had known the horror of the blanket-bombing raids, and in London, the threat of rockets. But for Londoners, now, the threat of attack was mostly over, and it was easy to lose touch with that terror of present danger.
She thought of her father moving about in Germany perhaps, relaying transmissions, putting his life in constant danger. She thought of her brother, Peter, perhaps in jail, perhaps on the run. And Alex, for whom troop movements were life, not symbols on a map.
All those feelings were on her mind when she wrote to Alex that night. She couldn’t tell him what she was doing for the OSS, but she could try to make herself real to him and hope that it helped in some way. Before she wrote her letter, however, she read, one more time, the last one she had received from him:
Dear Anna,
I can tell you now that I’m no longer in Belgium. I’m in France, not away from the battle front exactly, but in a place that’s pretty safe, by comparison. I took a shower when we first got here, and you can’t imagine how great that was. I would need to take a hundred more and sleep in a bed for a few months before I could ever feel like my old self, but a good shower at least brought me back to life a little. I sleep inside now, too. The building I’m in is something short of the Ritz, but it has most of its walls, and a stove, so it’s a big step up from what I’ve had for the last couple months. I even saw a movie, “Rhapsody in Blue.” They brought it out to us, and we moved back from the line to watch it. It was almost shocking to hear music and see people acting like people. I suppose it wasn’t very real, in one sense, but it looked like the life I remember.
I think every day, almost every minute, about our baby. I guess I’m like every dad. I figure my kids are going to be the greatest ever—smart and good and as beautiful as their mom. But I’ll have to say that I worry less about greatness than I probably would have back home. I’ll settle for some happiness, some togetherness. I will admit, I dream of playing catch (that’s baseball) with my son, or throwing a few passes to him (that’s football—American football), but I could sure enjoy a little girl putting her arms around my neck, or letting me do her braids for her.
All of that is so difficult to imagine, even to believe in, here, and that’s why I concentrate on it so hard. We’ll make it happen, Anna. I only pray that I can be with you when the time comes. Can you send me a picture? I want to see you all round and motherly. I want to hold you in my arms and feel our little child between us. Before long, I want to be fussing about scraped knees and chickenpox, not about everything I see over here.
I love your letters, Anna, and I should start receiving them much faster now. So keep them coming and I’ll do the same. Talk to our baby, tell him (or her) all about me. By the way, have you been sick? You didn’t say anything about that. I remember how sick my mother always was, when she was expecting.
I love you. In the middle of this endless night, your letters come to me like flickers of light across the channel, and it lets me know, always, where home is. It’s not in Utah, not in any place. It’s with you.
Love, Alex
The letter had come only the day before, but Anna had almost memorized it, she had read it so many times. Still, it made her cry again. She wrote back to him:
Dear Alex,
I am happy to know that you are in a safer place and that you are out of the snow and mud. You sounded more like you in your last letter, and that made me very happy.
I have not been sick. I am lucky, I must say. But my great joy is that the baby moves within me all the time now. For a long time, I waited for a change in me. Now I’m getting fat and ugly as an old Hausfrau, with apple cheeks, and I don’t like that so much, but I like to feel the baby kicking and turning like a school child not liking to be in his desk at school all day. I believe it’s a boy, so active he is, and I believe he is handsome, with your dark hair. That’s how I see him when I try to think what kind of boy he might be. Maybe it’s a girl though, strong and quick, like a German girl. You always say you like my eyes, so if she is a girl, I hope she has such eyes for you to love just as much.
Alex, I am busy, and I am doing good things—things that will help with the war, perhaps. I can’t say more than that in a letter. But I feel very close to you. If you could hold me in bed tonight, and curve your strong body around the bend in me, I would hold on and never let go, I think. Once I have you again, I never want you out of my sight forever. I don’t want to be a flicker of light to you. I want to be your sun. I want you to be my world, with only our little baby to fill it up. I know that life has problems, but if I have you with me, nothing will ever be so bad again. At least that’s what I feel and hope. Be safe, my beloved one. Think of me tonight.
Love, Anna
***
Once again Richard Hammond had boarded a ship, and Bobbi had watched him sail out of her life. He had only waved once—probably because of his bandages—so Bobbi hadn’t waved much either. She had merely stood on the dock and stared at him, tried to memorize him. Bobbi was about to give up everything familiar and once again be alone. She had learned now that the Charity was to dock at Pearl Harbor in just a few days. When it returned to sea, she would be on it. That meant losing Afton and Ishi, her beloved Nuanunu family and all her friends in the Waikiki ward.
She had now worked her last day in the naval hospital and had a few days off until her ship arrived. One afternoon she was in her room sorting through her uniforms and few possessions, trying to decide what was worth keeping and what she would need in the close quarters of a ship. She was holding up a rather seasoned white nurse’s dress and wondering whether it could last her a while yet when she heard a knock. She opened the door and saw the young receptionist who normally sat at the desk downstairs.
“There’s someone here who wants to see you,” she said, and she smiled. “A Marine.”
“Who is it?”
“He told me not to tell you his name. He said, ‘Tell her to come down and see for herself. She won’t believe it if you tell her.’ All I can say is, he’s kind of cute.”
Bobbi was intrigued. She tried to think of the Marines she knew. Before she walked downstairs, she took a minute to run a comb through her hair, but she didn’t put on any lipstick. She was wearing a civilian dress—a little linen sun dress that needed to be thrown out with the rest of her worn-out things, but one she had thought would be comfortable on a work day like this.
When she reached the main floor she saw the Marine, but he was looking out the window, his back to her. She couldn’t think who it was. He was a slim man, not one of those big-shouldered types she often saw in Marine uniforms.
Then he turned around—and the air went out of her. It was David Stinson. “Hi,” he said, and he grinned in that childlike way of his. “I’ll bet you didn’t expect to see me.”
“You’re a Marine?”
He nodded, still smiling, and then he walked to her. “I know you’re engaged, but I’m still going to kiss you.” He only gave her a little peck on the cheek, but Bobbi was amazingly self-conscious about it. She thought of that night she had talked with him in his apartment, back in Salt Lake, and he had kissed her and set off such confusion in her life.
“I’m off to the war,” David said. “I managed to stay out of it for a long time, but my patriotic zeal was finally too much for me. Besides, they were about to draft me.” He leaned his head back and laughed. He was the same old David, but he looked so strange with his hair cut short.
“But why the Marines?”
“Oh, you know me. I always go for the best.” He was still holding her hands. In some ways he was more appealing than ever, a little more filled out, and in spite of what he was saying, more subdued. He didn’t seem quite so arrogant, either.
“Let’s walk outside,” Bobbi said. There were things she wanted to ask him, but not with the receptionist listening. “I hope you won’t be ashamed to be seen with me. I look a fright.”
