The Bungalow (6 page)

Kitty looked displeased, but then her eyes brightened. “Isn’t she in the South Pacific now?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s been after me to sign up.”

Kitty grinned. “Well, she’s wasting her time on the wrong girl.”

“Maybe not,” I said quietly.

I thought about the wedding, just weeks away. All the little details ran through my mind like the frames of a film. My dress, French silk. The blue garter. A five-tier cake, with fondant. Doilies. Bridesmaid bouquets. White peonies and lavender roses. I shuddered.
How can I get married without Kitty standing by my side?

I sat up straighter and nodded to myself. “I’m going with you,” I said matter-of-factly.

Kitty beamed. “Anne! No, you can’t mean that. What about the wedding? We’d have to leave in under a week, and the commitment is at least nine months, maybe longer.”

I shrugged. “They need nurses, don’t they?” My heart pounded—with excitement, with anticipation, and also with fear.

Kitty nodded through her sniffles. “They do,” she said. “The recruiter says the action in the Pacific is heating up, and they’re in dire need of nurses.”

I smiled. “What kind of friend would I be if I let you set off on the adventure of your life without me?”

Kitty threw her arms around me, and we sat there on the sidewalk together for the next song, and then another. The music from the party sounded as if it might be a world away, and in some ways it was. The clipped laurel hedge represented the border between the certain and the uncertain.

“Gerard will never forgive me,” Kitty said, “for stealing his fiancée away on the eve of his wedding.”

I shook my head. “That’s nonsense. You’re not taking me prisoner. I’m going because I want to.”

I looked over my shoulder at the party behind us. My decision would come with consequences; I knew that. Mother would be beside herself. Papa would warn against it. And Gerard . . .
Gerard
. I sighed. He would find this hard to take—his fiancée going off to a battle zone while he stayed comfortably at home. I knew he’d also be hurt, which is what worried me most of all. But I couldn’t think about that, not now. If he loved me, truly loved me, he would wait—and if he wouldn’t, well, then I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

As each moment passed, I felt my resolve strengthen. I needed to go to the South Pacific with Kitty. Why, exactly? The answer was still hazy. And yet one thing was certain: In this new adventure, I would not be simply playing a part.

K
itty jabbed her elbow into my side, and I groaned, opening my heavy eyelids. “Look out your window,” she said, squealing with delight. “We’re almost here!”

It had been a forty-five-minute flight from an island to the north, where we’d arrived by ship. I’d been seasick for a full four days and longed to be on land again. I looked around the cabin of the small plane, so gray and mechanical. A place for men. Yet, other than the pilots in the cockpit and a single soldier, a tall, gangly fellow with strawberry-blond hair and a freshly pressed uniform on his way back from an extended medical leave, the plane was filled to capacity with nurses.

“Look!” Kitty exclaimed, holding her hand to her heart. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”

I leaned over Kitty to have a look out the tiny window. I gasped as my eyes met the scene below—the impossibly light blue water against white sand and the lush, emerald-green hillside. I hadn’t expected to catch my breath at the sight. Frankly, I hadn’t expected much. Sure, Norah, now on a ship headed stateside, had talked of the islands’ allure, but newspaper articles from home told a different story, one of an unrelenting tropical heat, squalor, and misery, where men fought in mosquito-infested swamps described in letters as “a living hell.” And yet the view from the window didn’t seem to fit that description. No, this island was something else, something entirely different.

My thoughts turned to Gerard and the look on his face when I boarded the plane—sad, unsure, a little frightened. He had been wonderful when I told him, the day after the party, that I was going. But there had been something concerning in his eyes too.

Of course, he tried to talk me out of going, but eventually he squeezed my hand and forced a smile. “I’ll be here for you when you return. Nothing will change that,” he said.

After a long talk before I left, we decided to postpone our wedding a year. Mother was devastated when she heard the news, running to her bedroom to weep. Papa was a little more difficult to read. I waited until the evening after the party at the Godfreys’, right before supper, when he was sipping a scotch in his study. Little beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead. “Are you sure you want to do this, kid?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I can’t explain it other than it just feels
right
.”

He nodded, then lit a cigar, puffing the smoke toward the open window. His eyes glimmered. “I wish I had your courage.”

“Papa—”

“Well, that’s that,” he said abruptly, snuffing out the cigar in an ashtray and any emotion lingering in the air. “We don’t want to miss dinner. Maxine is making
croque monsieur
.” And yet, Papa managed to take only one bite that night.

I straightened my dress. How had mine gotten so rumpled when Kitty’s looked freshly pressed? I frowned.
Have I made a mistake coming here?
I folded my hands in my lap and eyed the landscape below—my new home, for a good portion of a year, at least.

Constance Hildebrand, the charge nurse who would be our superior on the island, stood up in the front of the plane and looked sternly at the group of young nurses. She was a portly woman with gray hair tucked severely under a nurse’s cap clipped so tightly it looked painful. If she had a gentle side, she kept it under lock and key. “We are almost to the island,” she said. It was loud in the airplane, and even though she spoke in a shout, I still had to read her lips to understand her completely. “Don’t be fooled by its beauty; it isn’t a place of luxury,” she continued. “You will work harder and perspire more than you can imagine. The heat is harsh. The humidity is suffocating. And if the mosquitoes don’t get you, the natives will. The ones close to the shoreline are friendly, but don’t venture farther than that. Cannibal colonies still exist not far from the base.”

I glanced at the other women near the aisle, wide-eyed and frightened, as Nurse Hildebrand cleared her throat. “I know you are tired, but there is work to be done,” she said. “You will find your quarters, wash, and meet me in the infirmary at fourteen hundred hours. And, a word of warning: There will be a great many men watching your arrival, men who haven’t seen women in a very long time, aside from the
wahine
.” She shook her head for emphasis. “Do not oblige the men with eye contact. They must be made to behave like gentlemen.”

One of the girls in the row in front of us whipped out her compact, dusting her nose with a bit of powder before applying a fresh coat of red lipstick.

Kitty leaned in toward me with a grin. “There are two thousand men on the island,” she whispered. “And forty-five of us.”

I frowned at Kitty. How could she let her mind turn to men when all I could think of were Nurse Hildebrand’s chilling warnings? “Do you really think there are
cannibals
?”

“Nah,” Kitty said confidently. “She’s just trying to scare us.”

I nodded to reassure myself. “Besides,” I added, “Norah didn’t say anything about mosquitoes in her letters.”

Kitty nodded in agreement. “Meredith Lewis—you know, Jillian’s sister—was on another island near here. She arrived with the first wave of troops and said the cannibal stories are all fiction.”

But instead of comforting me, Kitty’s words hit my heart like shrapnel. Meredith Lewis had been in Gerard’s class in high school. She’d stood next to him in his yearbook photograph, and the memory made me long for home. My heart swelled with uncertainty, but the thoughts quieted as the plane began to shudder and jolt.

Kitty and I held hands as we touched down with a thud, speeding down a runway that appeared dangerously close to the ocean. For a moment, it seemed a very real possibility that we would catapult right into that great body of water like a speeding torpedo. I quietly crossed my heart and said a prayer.

“Here goes,” I whispered under my breath a few moments later, as I filed in with the other women to exit the plane.

I felt Kitty’s hand on my shoulder behind me. “Thank you for coming with me,” she whispered. “You’ll be glad you did, I promise.”

One by one, we walked down the stairs onto the airstrip. The breeze hit my face—warm and humid, and when I took a breath, I could almost feel steam rising in my lungs. A nurse to our right, who had powdered her nose right before stepping off the plane, now looked dewy and shiny-faced, and I noticed a bead of perspiration roll down her cheek. I resisted the urge to retrieve the compact in my handbag, reminding myself that it didn’t matter how I looked; I was engaged.

I looked across the airstrip and saw that Nurse Hildebrand was correct—about the men, at least. A sea of dark green uniforms swarmed like hornets. The bold ones whistled; others just leaned up against trucks behind lit cigarettes, staring.

“You’d think they had never seen women before,” Kitty whispered, batting her eyes at a soldier in the front of the crowd, who puffed up his chest and smiled at us confidently. “He’s cute,” she said, a little louder than she should have.

Nurse Hildebrand turned to face us. “Ladies, allow me to present Colonel Donahue,” she said, turning toward a man in uniform decorated with at least a dozen medals and pins. As he crossed the tarmac, his men moved into formation. A hush came over the crowd, and the nurses watched in fascination as he approached. The colonel was about forty, maybe older, with golden skin, dark hair with specks of gray, and undeniably striking eyes. He looked powerful in uniform, and a little frightening, I thought.

“Nurse Hildebrand, ladies,” he said, with a tip of his hat. “I would like to formally welcome you to Bora-Bora. We are grateful for the service you are bestowing on the country, and I can assure you that your work will not go without a heartfelt thanks from the men stationed on this island, myself included.” He turned to the men and shouted, “At ease,” and the men erupted in applause.

“What a perfect gentleman,” Kitty said in a whisper, without taking her eyes off of the colonel.

I shrugged. The sun felt even hotter now, its rays pelting us with an intensity I hadn’t noticed when we first stepped off the airplane. It radiated off the pavement, causing heat to swirl around us, unrelenting. Kitty’s body swayed slowly next to mine. At first I thought she was moving to the Ella Fitzgerald recording playing from a jeep nearby, but when I turned to face her, I could see that her cheeks had gone white, and her arms limp. “Kitty,” I said, reaching for her hand, “are you all right?”

Her eyes fluttered just as her legs buckled underneath her body. I was able to catch her as she fell, but her bag, overstuffed with dresses too formal for the island, was the real saving grace, cushioning her head against the unforgiving tarmac. She lay in a crumpled heap on the hot cement airfield with her head in my lap.

“Kitty!” I screamed, instinctively pulling the hem of her blue dress lower on her legs.

“Smelling salts!” Nurse Hildebrand ordered, pushing through the circle of hovering women. She produced a green glass vial and held it under Kitty’s nose. “The sun has gotten to her,” she said without emotion. “She’ll become accustomed to it in time.”

Colonel Donahue appeared at Nurse Hildebrand’s side. “Get her a stretcher!” he shouted to a man near the airplane. “And quick.”

“Colonel Donahue,” Nurse Hildebrand said, “we’re dealing with a simple case of heatstroke. She’ll be fine, this one.”

He eyed Kitty with a possessive look. “Just the same, I’d like to make sure she’s comfortable.”

“Suit yourself,” Nurse Hildebrand replied.

Two men appeared moments later with a stretcher and lifted Kitty, now conscious but groggy, onto it.

“Anne,” Kitty said, turning to me, “what happened?”

Colonel Donahue swooped in by her side before I could respond. “It’s always the prettiest ones who faint in the tropics,” he said with a grin.

I didn’t like his tone, but Kitty beamed. “How terribly embarrassing. Was I out long?”

The colonel smiled in return. The crowd around us was so thick I could no longer see through it. “Just long enough to miss the news that we’re having a dance tonight in honor of your arrival,” he said, phrasing the statement as if the dance might be solely for her.

Kitty smiled, much too flirtatiously to address a ranking colonel. “A dance?” she muttered weakly.

“Yes,” he said, “a dance.” He turned to face the crowd. “You heard that right, men, tonight at twenty hundred.”

“Thank you,” Kitty said, unable to stop smiling.

“My pleasure,” he replied gallantly. “I’ll just ask for one favor.”

“Of course,” Kitty said, still beaming.

“That you save a dance for me.”

“I’d love to,” she replied dreamily as the men began wheeling her through the crowd.

Kitty always knew how to make an entrance.

The rest of the crowd began moving. I looked down at my suitcase and Kitty’s enormous bag and groaned. The men had scattered, and now I was left to carry both.

“Can you believe that?” a woman said from behind me. I turned around to find one of the new nurses. Her soft auburn waves resembled Rita Hayworth’s in
Life
magazine, but that was where the similarity ended.

“I’m sorry?” I said, unsure of her meaning.

“Your friend pulled quite a stunt there to get the colonel’s attention,” she said, smirking. A bit of lace protruded above the top button of her dress. I wondered if the reveal was purposeful.

A second later, another nurse, this one with shiny dark hair and a meek smile, appeared at her friend’s side with a look of agreement.