The Last Mission

by William Kennedy

  It’s a row of what used to be two-story town houses. Now each has been converted to four flats, two on each floor, one in front and one in back. Mine is on the second floor back, looking into a leafy tree. The sitting room is large, with four big windows. The kitchen, on the other hand, is barely big enough for a sink and a stove. If the door of the fridge is open, you can’t enter or leave the room. The bedroom will take a double and a chest of drawers. The closet is small, but so are my needs. The tiled bathroom has a small plastic shower that sprays a fog-like mist. The electric water heater is right under the showerhead.

  “If you ever need something larger, you’ll have no trouble selling. Or renting, for that matter. Two or three students go in on a place like this and they add up to a top rent.” Livingstone has decided I’ll never fit into such cramped quarters and he’s already putting in a plug for the next purchase.

  Arthur Lyons rides up with me and helps me get my luggage up the stairs. “Lovely view,” he says to flatter my choice. There’s not much he can praise about the space. “You’re not going to need a great deal of furniture.” A polite way of saying that nothing much is going to fit.

  “I don’t think I’ll need a great deal of anything, Arthur.”

  He nods. Lucky for me.

  But there’s not much that I want, and even less that I need. It’s curious, but I think I was happiest when I owned nothing. The uniform technically was mine. The bunk, the blanket, and the desk were government issue. The Austin was actually owned by a conglomerate of interests—sergeants in the motor pool, the sergeant with the key to the liquor locker, the clerk who got me the personnel files, even the shopkeeper who owned the garage.

  I didn’t own any of the places where Angela and I were together, and I didn’t own her, except for those very moments. The next day was always the unintended gift of the German gunners and fighter pilots. I had no right to it. And the next week was a fantasy. Nobody beats the wheel for long. It was just me, and the place in space/time that I happened to be passing through, and yet I was so alive that I could taste it and feel its energy surging inside me.

  The things I came to own needed minding. I needed insurance to be protected against their loss, and even security companies to watch over them while I slept. Wealth made me protective, defensive, and finally hopelessly conservative. That’s what happened. I never planned it.

  But I won’t let it happen to me here. That was one life, and this one in England is another. No better, no worse, just different. How is it different? Wisdom is learning not to ask.

  I have a small party when I’m all moved in. I invite Arthur, and Herbert, Browning’s son, Martin, and Andrew Barnes from the records department. Surprisingly enough, they all come, promising to just wish me well. But I have a fifteen-year-old single malt, and a bottle of Bombay gin. Everyone stays the afternoon and leaves happy.

  I turn in my rental car when I take delivery of my new English Ford. It’s not the Austin I wanted, but everyone assures me that if I happened to find one it would cost a fortune, and then another fortune to put back in shape. I’ve been in England for nearly a month when I finally buy a bunch of wildflowers and a bottle of champagne and begin my journey back to my unfinished life.

  Should I call her? Or just arrive? I’m halfway to Chigwell, and I still haven’t decided. Kay would always call ahead to give people a chance to think of an excuse if they didn’t want to see you. Or at least to tidy up. Maybe I’m afraid of the excuse. There are a thousand reasons why Angela would want to keep our friendship at ocean’s length, and only one reason to assume she’ll be glad to see me. Kit had read her letter and told me that Angela didn’t want to say good-bye.

  I’m not afraid of her rejection. What I’m more afraid of is that she will try to spare my feelings. “How nice to see you” when she doesn’t really mean it. I can’t expect her to know her own heart instantly. It took me a lifetime to know my own. My fear is that she might join me in polishing away the tarnish of our years, and where I find joy, she might find pain. I don’t know the answers, and I’m trying hard not to ask the questions. I’m just moving toward her, resisting all the sensible reasons to stop, make a call, and go away.

  The motorway becomes the main street, with a turnaround in the center of her neighborhood. I pull off, resist the excuse of a bite of lunch and a cup of coffee, and pull up in front of her house. Her car is parked off the street. I take the flowers and the champagne and lift the door knocker.

  When she opens the door, Angela is already smiling. It’s almost as if she was expecting me. Did Herbert Little tell her that I had returned to England? Did one of my friends call ahead to say, “He’s coming down tomorrow”? Or is it like my return from a mission over the Continent when she came out of her office and simply knew I would be there?

  “These are for you.”

  “How lovely.” She takes the flowers and walks away from me into the kitchen.

  She seems perfectly comfortable, entirely at ease. She shows none of the anxiety that I feel.

  I follow her and put the champagne in her refrigerator. “This is for us.”

  “I’ll get the glasses.”

  “No, don’t. Not yet.”

  She looks at me cautiously, then decides, “Oh, of course. It will need to chill.”

  “Yes…no…it’s not that. Well, yes, it does need to chill, but there’s something I have to say to you first.”

  “Oh, dear, should I be sitting down?”

  “Please.” I take her hand and lead her into her sitting room, leaving the flowers and champagne behind. I sit next to her on the small sofa.

  “Angela, I can’t explain the past. I don’t know why things happened the way they did. I didn’t intend to be away, but that’s where I was. I was living a happy, fulfilling, wonderful life. And yet I’m sorry. I know it sounds ridiculous, but as best I’ve been able to figure out, it’s the truth. I hope to God that’s the way it’s been for you, too.”

  “Jim…”

  “No, please, let me say this. I know I’m asking you to understand what I don’t understand. But I want to try.”

  She nods gently, my permission to go ahead.

  “I don’t know what’s ahead, either. I know I have no more control over my future than I did fifty years ago. Then, every sunrise could have been my last, and nothing has happened to make that situation any better. I used to think I was in control. Now I know that I’m not.

  “All I know is right now, I’m here. You’re here. At this time and in this place. And I love you. That’s one of the constants of my world. That I…”

  She puts her finger across my lips. “Shh! Why do you carry on so?”

  We sit together for a moment, looking at one another. Her eyes are still the joy of my life.

  “Can we have dinner?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “Yes, it is, if I have any hope of surviving.”

  THE END