Always and Forever (6 page)

“Oh, we split up.” She’d blown a fuse when she discovered she was pregnant. Hell, she always said she knew how to take care of herself. “That’s when I enlisted.” The timing was right—he knew he’d be drafted in another few weeks anyway. It always got a rise out of women when he pointed out he’d enlisted; he hadn’t waited to be drafted. And the old man paid for the abortion when Debbie went screaming to him.

“What are you going to do back home?” David asked. He knew this photography bit was a one-shot situation.

“I’m not sure. The old man keeps trying to shove me into the business. I told him I’ve spent three years in the army. I need some time to figure out where I want to go. I can’t go far on the twenty bucks a week the GI Bill gives me for 52 weeks.”

“You could go back to school,” David pointed out.

“Are you kidding? I hated school. I never would have finished high school if you hadn’t been there sharing my room,” he reminded. “All I thought about that last year—when we were together at boarding school—was nookie. And college was a drag.”

“I have to go,” David said. “I’m working tonight.”

“You’ll be sorry later that you missed Paris,” Phil warned. “I hear the bars and nightclubs are rolling again. But then,” he drawled, “you never really appreciated the great things in life.”

To Kathy the approach of Hanukkah was unexpectedly poignant here. For how many years had it been impossible to celebrate Hanukkah in Germany? Over half of the group members were Jewish. Kathy knew they shared her feelings about this first. Hanukkah since the end of the war. Brian, who was not Jewish, discovered a menorah beneath the rubble of what had once been a Hebrew school. David whittled down candles to fit into the holders, and for eight nights they lit the Hanukkah candles. For Christmas they decorated a tiny pine tree with designs cut from colored construction paper. But ever close to the surface of their minds were the terrible shortages—food, coal, clothing—that plagued the city despite all the relief efforts.

Phil kept up their spirits, Kathy admitted to herself. He charmed everybody. Maybe not Brian, she decided after a moment. Brian was annoyed that most of the girls in their group acted as though Phil had personally liberated Paris.

On Christmas Eve Phil came up with a bottle of champagne after a visit to the crumbling waterfront.

“I won it in a crap game,” he reported while someone hastily unearthed a corkscrew. “A talent I developed in the army.”

He’d also come up with a sprig of mistletoe, which he hung over the kitchen door. Kathy was startled when he reached for her beneath the mistletoe and kissed her. But all at once it wasn’t a casual “mistletoe kiss.” She was trembling when he released her.

“We’ll have to do that again,” he whispered. “Why do you keep running away from me?”

“I don’t,” she stammered. Nobody had ever kissed her like that. Nobody had ever really kissed her, she thought. Just awkward pecks by self-conscious students who hadn’t been drafted.

Why hadn’t David ever kissed her?

A
LMOST OVERNIGHT, IT SEEMED
to Kathy, Phil was in pursuit. He made it clear to the others that he was intrigued by her. Not Rhoda, or Claire, or the other three girls. She waited for David to show some indication of his own feelings, but he seemed to withdraw into himself. He was relieved, she tormented herself. He hadn’t wanted anything more than friendship from her. How could she have been so stupid?

Running from her hurt at David’s withdrawal, she found solace in Phil’s attentions. At intervals the memory of those heated moments beneath the mistletoe dominated her thoughts. She was disconcerted by the physical arousal she felt in his presence. And Phil made it clear he was attracted to her.

Despite their long working hours Phil contrived to see her alone. They sipped watery beer in a nearby tavern and held hands beneath the table. They managed brief interludes in his dreary basement flat, though only after she made Phil understand nothing would happen beyond passionate kisses and heated touching. And each time she wondered how much longer she could keep saying no to his entreaties.
She didn’t really want to stop.

Then all at once she began to worry that Phil would be leaving before the group began the search for return transportation sometime in February. He kept talking about flying to Paris. Would she ever see Phil back in New York? It was frightening to think that she might never see him again.

Rhoda was having a hectic fling with Frank Collins, the would-be writer from Columbia’s School of Journalism.

“Look, we’re three thousand miles from home,” she said calmly. “Why shouldn’t I play? We’re careful. I won’t get pregnant.”

“You hope,” Kathy said grimly. So many girls played around during the, war years, and everybody just looked the other way. But she couldn’t bring herself to sleep with Phil. Her body said “yes,” but her heart said “no.”

“I know nothing’s going to come of it. But ten or twenty years from now, when I’m teaching somewhere in Brooklyn, I’ll look back and remember this as the exciting, wild time of my life.” Her eyes were quizzical. “I can’t figure you out. I thought you and David had something real going on, and now you’re all starry-eyed over Phil. Not that everything female in this flat doesn’t feel the same way.” She giggled reminiscently. “But I’m happy settling for Frank.”

“David is a close friend,” Kathy said self-consciously.
That’s all he wanted to be.
Maybe at first she was just flattered that Phil was interested in her. He made it clear right off that he thought she was attractive and exciting, and he was dying to sleep with her. He had a way of touching her—on the hand or shoulder—that shot off fireworks in her. She’d never known anybody like Phil. What was it Rhoda said the other day?
“That Phil is something. Like a character in a Hollywood movie.”

“If Phil does go to Paris, he’d better come back with six bottles of Chanel No. 5, or he’s in big trouble,” Rhoda laughed.

Already, they learned, Brian was trying to arrange for return transportation for the group sometime in the latter part of February and encountering problems. They’d hoped that by this time not every transatlantic ship would be commandeered to return GIs to America or to ferry war brides and babies. But again, Kathy gathered, they’d sail home on something less elegant than a commercial liner.

“I hear the
Elizabeth
will be back in normal business in the fall,” Brian said humorously. “But our funds will fade away by the end of next month.”

On a cold early February night, when their coffee supply had run out, Phil arrived with a pound of Turkish coffee he had acquired at the waterfront. While Rhoda and Claire grabbed the coffee and went out to the kitchen, Phil pulled Kathy off into a corner of the living room. None of the others had arrived home from their assignments yet, but Phil and Kathy knew they’d be coming into the flat at any moment.

“I wangled more than coffee today,” he told her with a triumphant smile. “I have plane seats for two to Paris on Saturday morning and return seats on Sunday night.”

“This Saturday?” She felt her face grow hot. He’d said
two
seats.

“Day after tomorrow,” he confirmed. “Come with me, Kathy. You can’t go home without seeing Paris.”

“Phil, I can’t,” she stammered. “I mean, I’ll be working Saturday:”

“Brian will give you a day off. You’ve been working harder than anybody—”

“Phil, I can’t.” She forced herself to meet his eyes.

“Nothing will happen,” he promised. “Not unless you want it to. We’ll take two rooms in some little
pension,
” he teased. “With no connecting door. How can you turn down a side trip to Paris?”

“All right,” she said after a moment. Her heart pounding in anticipation. “But only if Brian agrees. And nothing is going to happen,” she stipulated. No more than already had.

“Brian will agree.” He reached to pull her close. “You know you drive me nuts, Kathy.”

The others arrived, and they all gathered around to sample Phil’s cache of Turkish coffee. Now he told them about his imminent excursion to Paris.

“I have seats for two,” he said casually, and his eyes settled on Kathy. She saw David’s startled reaction. For a tense moment she thought he would lash out at Phil. His mouth set in a grim line, he focused on his cup of Turkish coffee. “Brian, you won’t object if Kathy takes off to go with me, will you?”

Brian hesitated only a second.

“Not if she wants to go,” he said. “She’s been working her butt off since the day we arrived.”

On Saturday morning—hiding her terror as she remembered Brian’s earlier comments about the hazards of flying in winter—she left the flat with Phil while the others struggled into wakefulness. For a moment last night she thought that David was upset that she was going to Paris with Phil. But only for a moment.

“Who can show you Paris better than a GI who helped to liberate it?” he’d said quietly. “Enjoy the trip, Kathy.”

Kathy managed to conceal her alarm on the short flight from Hamburg to Paris.

“My family won’t believe I’ve been up in a plane,” she told Phil, one hand in his as the pilot began the descent to the airport below. “The closest I’ve ever been to a plane is when they had one on display in the center of Penn Station when I was a little kid.”

“It won’t be the old prewar Paris,” Phil warned. “I came over with my Dad in ’37. It was a business trip for him. I was twenty and raring to see everything. The Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergére, Maxim’s. And we saw it.” He grinned reminiscently.

“Not the Paris of Fitzgerald and Hemingway,” Kathy guessed. She’d been fascinated by all she’d read of that period. Was that why she’d agreed to come? “But it’s Paris,” she said reverently. She was impressed by the knowledge that Phil had been here before the war. David, too, she remembered, had talked of school vacations in Paris. But Phil and David had lived in a different world from hers. A monied world.

Kathy was enthralled by everything she saw, even though this was Paris still in the shadows of World War II. The morning was gray and shrouded in mist, the trees bare. The city had suffered little damage during the war years. It rose stately and beautiful around them.

Phil was in high spirits as they roamed through the streets. He pointed out the silhouette of Notre-Dame, the old Ile de la Cité—where the great cathedral stands—and the Eiffel Tower.

“I know the Eiffel Tower is not exactly beautiful,” he laughed, “but it has a kind of elegant dignity rising through the mist.”

Kathy was conscious of a grimness, a confusion in the people they passed. The Parisians had been wildly happy when they greeted the army of liberation, she understood; but now they had to deal with cold and hunger and a shortage of money. Kathy saw men with fishing poles on the bank of the Seine, and understood fishing today was not for sport but to put food on the dinner table.

In the prestigious shops they found French perfumes but no Chanel No. 5. Mme. Chanel had closed up her huge company in 1939.

“We’ll make do,” Kathy said blithely, though she was shocked at the prices of French perfumes even in Paris.

“With luck we’ll be able to find a taxi to take us up the hill to Montmartre,” Phil said while they lingered over a meager lunch in a shabby bistro, dimly lit because Paris suffered from a lack of electricity. “It’s like climbing the side of a mountain.”

Finally, they snared a taxi. The driver was amused by Phil’s college French. The Montmartre beneath the chalk-white dome of Sacré-Coeur had lost its Bohemian air of earlier days, though it was still home to the poor of Paris. A few painters had set themselves up alongside the curving, cobblestone streets to entice foreigners to buy their wares. On impulse Kathy bought a small painting of a Montmartre street to take home to her parents.

“You know where I’d like to spend the night?” Phil said softly, an arm about her waist.

“Where?” All at once she was tense.

“The small house at the edge of town where Chuck and I were billeted. I don’t know who’s there now. It had been deserted when we came into the city. The owners had run off without even packing most of their clothes. They may have been collaborators, knowing what would happen to them with liberation.”

“But it wouldn’t be deserted now,” she guessed.

“Let’s try to find a taxi to take us there,” he said ebulliently. “Maybe we can rent it for the night. Nobody has money in Paris, the way I hear it. We’ll ask them to play innkeeper.”

Only Phil would dream up something like this, Kathy thought dreamily when they were at last in a taxi and approaching the house. What a romantic way to spend a holiday in Paris!

Kathy stood inspecting the cottage while Phil paid off the driver. It was probably a hundred years old, she guessed, but cared for lovingly. In another few weeks the tiny garden would be beautiful.

People lived here. An older couple appeared at the doorway, curious about the arrival of a taxi. Phil turned from the taxi, slid an arm about her waist, and prodded her toward the couple. They were suspicious of Phil and her; Kathy interpreted, pleased that her own French was sufficient to translate.

“Please forgive our intrusion.” Phil smiled charmingly. “I was billeted here when the Americans arrived to help in the liberation of Paris. I wanted to show my wife where I lived.” Kathy saw the woman glance at her hand and smile faintly. “I was wondering—” He hesitated, his eyes apologetic. “Would it be possible for us to rent the house? Just for one night,” he pinpointed. “We’ll be gone by tomorrow afternoon.”

The couple exchanged a startled glance. A pair of crazy Americans, they were thinking, Kathy surmised.

“We have been here just a few months,” the man began. “The house belonged to my uncle, who has since died. I am not sure that he would approve of strangers—”
Why was he talking so much?
He paused while Phil pulled a handful of American dollars from a pocket and held them up eloquently. “But for such a fine young couple,” he continued with an expansive smile, “I think he would approve.”

The woman indicated a small supply of food could be had if they wished; Phil dug up more American dollars.