The Lonely (16 page)

What had become of all the missing hours between home and Scotland and Kenwoulton? How much was true and how much a dream, which part was waking and which sleeping? Had he ever left Kenwoulton? Had he ever been home? Jerry remembered suddenly, with the sensation of approaching panic, how unreal he had felt in Westbury, the sense of being invisible and in a dream, and he struggled hard to keep a hold on himself.

But the struggle itself added to the fantastic sense of unreality, the loss of security, and the bewilderment in his mind. For now he found that he could no longer clearly remember or recapture anything—not Westbury, or Glasgow, or even Kenwoulton. He could not even believe the feel of the cobbles beneath his feet, the rain on his face, or the pungent odors of the English night. The panic against which he had been fighting fastened a firmer grip upon him, and he knew that he was losing his grip on himself.

Jerry felt as though he were suspended between heaven and earth in the grey overcast through which he had so often flown, that he was no more than a shadow adrift in a universe of shadows, and he felt too that he was dead and that the dead were walking beside him, two by two, boys and girls. He could hear, but he did not hear; he could see, but he did not see.

There was nothing left of the world he had known. Everything had retreated into the outer distances beyond regaining. He was lost and wandering adrift in a strange fringe of dark, swirling mists that would never lift.

He thought of Patches and of Catharine, of his mother and father and of his home, and they seemed many, many aeons of time and space away. He saw the earth as a whirling globe receding from him through the dark universe, growing smaller and smaller as it hurtled into eternity, and somewhere, infinitesimal upon its face, were all those he knew and loved. His mind turned to Gedsborough Airbase, the lumbering Liberators, and his companions: Sam Bognano, his pilot, Major Harrison, who had been his idol and his model, the men in his crew, who were dearer and closer to him than brothers. He was cut off from them all, perhaps forever. To find them again, to find anyone or anything he knew, would take many thousands of years of searching and wandering through strange and unfamiliar places . . .

And in thinking of Patches, Jerry remembered a dream he had once and when he was a boy. It was of a brown-haired girl he had met upon a meadow, and they had loved each other. And then in the dream she had vanished and he had searched for her endlessly with an aching in his throat, a choking sadness, an unbearable desolation and loneliness in his heart for the beauty that had been, and he could never find her again. When he had awakened, nothing remained of the dream for a long time but the longing and the sadness.

And now it seemed as if he had recaptured this dream in all its poignant clarity, only it was a dream no longer, but reality. This was what had happened to him. He had shifted aspects, had turned like a looking-glass upon an axis and now faced the other way. All that had been reality—the war, his work, his friends, Patches and their honeymoon through Scotland, Main Street of Westbury with the jiggling marquee sign of the Bijou Theatre, the pop eyes of Reston as he let him into his home, home itself—took on the crazy, illogical, unrelated aspect of dreams. The dark fantasies that rose from the depths of his harassed and unhappy being had become reality.

The same choking sadness was in his throat, the same longing and desolation in his heart, but added were fear and the imminence of panic, and something even more terrible and desperate. He knew that he was in danger of breakdown.

It was no longer clear to him whether the enveloping night through which he moved, drained of everything but longing, sorrow, and despair, was the black of night or the darkness of the mind that might never lift.

With all his youthful health, vigor, and irrepressible vitality, not even the occasional attacks of nerves had been able to frighten him, but he was frightened now, for he felt himself no longer able to discern between reality and fantasy, and an abyss blacker than any night was opening up before him.

A dim light pierced the gloom through which he wandered, and instinctively, as does a moth, Jerry turned to it without knowing, and it drew his footsteps on. It came from a hanging street lamp, blacked out except for a small cone below that permitted one faint shaft to fall athwart the long, darker shape of human forms, ghosts like himself, huddling miserably in the rain in a queue along the edge of the pavement, waiting for a bus.

The bus queue in a blacked-out English town had become a part of Jerry’s life since he had been based at Gedsborough, as were all the shapes and sounds of Kenwoulton at night, but he did not recognize them now. His mind did not react to familiar outlines and voices and smothered talk. Those, like himself, were the eternally lonely, the lost who peopled the darkness that lay beyond the universe.

But his gaze was caught upon the shaft of light descending perpendicularly from the small opening in the lamp above to where it fell directly upon a set, white face and illuminated it so that it alone stood out from all the darkness with a faint shining.

Jerry’s eyes came to rest upon it, staring through the darkness, holding to the tiny spot of light in the gloom, clinging like a drowning man fighting for life, not daring to move lest it prove still another illusion of the dreams that tortured him, gazing, staring, trying to comprehend it with his mind, for it was the face of Patches . . .

And as he gazed, still not daring to believe he saw the shadowy outlines of her figure, wet, lumpy, the raindrops glistening from the heavy mackintosh drawn over her uniform and shining from the coils of damp hair beneath the military cap. It was safety, sanity, help and rescue, food and drink, journey’s end, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the joy of living—everything in nature, in heaven, and on earth that stirred the heart—it was Patches.

There it was, a white oval, the face of a plain, ordinary human being, marked with the curving lines of brows, the dark smudges of lashes, the ordinary familiar landmarks of the features—nose, mouth, and chin—and yet this one dear visage had the power, shining out of the black mists of the night that enveloped his spirit as well as his corporeal body, to halt the march of terror and panic that had laid hold of him, to dispel the dark, terrifying dreams, the confusion, and the aching loneliness.

Even greater was its power, for its presence, its shape and color, its molecules, its being, were the miracle that cancelled the doom of the eternal and never-ending search upon which he had felt himself embarked. In the finding of it he had found himself with it. This face and person of Patches was not any imagining or dream. It was the beacon that beckoned him home after perilous flight—the friendly, comforting light shining in the darkness.

This was the stone in his heart, the pain in his throat, the longing and the loneliness. It was Patches. At last Jerry knew and understood the meaning of loving her, of knowing that nothing could ever wholly alter the need of her that had become a part of him, or the tenderness, warmth, and devotion that he felt for her.

For the first time he had a glimpse of understanding of the miracle of love and loving that transforms the commonplaces of flesh and blood into the lyric beauty of human relationship. She was music—was this girl—she was magic, she was goddess, mother, protectress, nymph, and witch, she was the earth and nature itself, with the power to restore him and keep him beyond all fear and harm. For even in the brief span of the instant in which he paused spellbound in the shadows by the glimpse of her, things that had so nearly slipped out of reach all about him became manifest again through his senses. Sight, sound, smell, and feel returned to him; he was aware again of the familiar shapes of houses in the blacked-out city, the touch of humans who brushed by him, the murmur of voices and muffled laughter, and the fresh, tangy scent of the rain mingled with the acrid, pressed-down coal smoke—the scent of England.

Because of the presence of Patches, the night and the rain and the grimy city became shot with swift and stabbing beauties that were all a part of the deep and boundless emotions moving him close to tears. He was like a wanderer who, returning after long years, yet hesitates and pauses on the threshold of the reality of all the yearning and nostalgic dreams, not for the moment daring to realize it because it had for so long been ardently yearned for and desired.

There was a heavy rumbling, and a dim, flickering eye pierced the darkness as the bus charged around the corner and screeched to a halt. The waiting line stirred and shifted, and in another instant the face of Patches would have vanished from the shaft of light, when Jerry sprang forward, shouting her name: “Patches! Patches!” And as she turned at the familiar and so desperately longed-for sound of his voice, he reached her side and swept her into his arms, and held her there tightly, all wet and cold and shivery, as she had been once before, the night they were lost on the moors.

The bus conductor shouted: “Come along now!” The line surged onward, pushing and scrambling to board the bus. No one looked, or stopped or bothered to notice the American flyer and the little WAAF with the white face who had been there a moment ago, for the darkness had swallowed them up.

They were together in each other’s arms in a niche beneath a small stone gate-arch at the top of an alley, and Jerry held Patches close to him, saying: “Patches . . . Patches, I love you so . . .”

He could not get enough of holding her so closely that he could feel her heart pounding deep beneath her clothes, of kissing her eyes, her mouth, her temples, even the damp cloth of her uniform because it was a part of her, of touching her face with his fingers, exploring her features, saying over and over that he loved her, as though in one torrential outburst he could make up to her all that he had once denied.

As though she had been lost to him for years instead of days he cried: “Patches, I’ve found you . . . I love you . . . Will you marry me, Patches . . . please, dear Patches?”

And Patches knew only that she was safe in Jerry’s arms, sobbing: “Oh, Jerry, don’t let me go. Don’t ever leave me again,” and that for the throbbing moment the darkness was lifted for her too. There had been no chance for her to think, to prepare herself. She did not know whence he had come or how he had found her, but only that she was in his arms, calling his name, answering his every desire for contact with her, giving him her mouth and her eyes wet with tears and rain, holding his face cupped in her hands, straining her body to his so that it might never be torn away, making little sounds in her throat at each renewed touch of his lips or his hands, listening with her heart’s blood to him saying that he loved her.

She was so parched and starved for the things he was telling her, the husky, broken sentences of love, that she was hearing him with her soul, soaking it up as a thirsty flower does the rain after a drought, and there in the darkness, clinging to him, her head pressed hard against his chest, as though she would lay her cheek against his heart, she began to live again, to swell with singing joy and happiness. The black abyss that had threatened to engulf her had closed; sweet earth upheld her feet again.

“Patches, I love you . . .”

“I love you, Jerry. Forever . . .”

“Will you marry me, Patches? You haven’t said . . .”

“Yes, Jerry. I will.”

“When?”

“Whenever—”

“Right away? Tomorrow? As soon as we can . . .”

“Yes . . . I . . . Oh, Jerry, Jerry . . .” and the last was a different kind of a cry from her other calling of his name, and he felt her suddenly go limp in his arms.

For the mark of the hours she had spent since he had left her had cut deeply, the wounds were raw, and the memory of pain came through her happiness, and she did not think that she could bear to be hurt again.

Jerry said: “Patches, darling, what is it? What’s the matter?”

Patches was back in the officers’ club at Gedsborough, across the table from Jerry, under the picture of the burning oil works, and she was hearing Jerry saying the words that had once come close to breaking her heart: “I’ve got a girl back home. You know how it is. We’re engaged. We’re going to be married when I go back . . .”

“Patches . . . what is it?”

She had to ask it. There was no escape. And though she might die from the doing of it, she had to remind him, to give him his chance, to make him think. She whispered: “Jerry . . . The girl back home? The one you were going home to marry? . . .”

In the time that elapsed between her question and Jerry’s answer a thick drop of rain fell from the old stone arch above their heads and splashed on her brow, to run down her cheek and mingle with the tears.

“I’m not in love with her, Patches. I love you. There’s no one but you. There never will be.”

But in that moment Jerry had travelled swiftly and far in his thoughts, faster than any ship of the air, faster than the speed of light. He had been to Westbury—his home, his room, Catharine’s house, Main Street, and his boyhood—and back before he gave her his answer. And in the journeying a knowledge had come to him, and it was the knowledge of what it was to be a man.

There were many parts to this knowledge, some sweet, and some bitter, and in the clear vision that had come to him he seemed to see and understand each one and how they came to make the whole.

He knew for instance that he had never loved Catharine, because he had never understood the hunger, the pity, the power, and the terror of love. Nor might he ever have known but for the being called Patches and that which had come alive between them.

And it was another part too that there was once a boy, a crazy kid, having himself a hell of a time flying an airplane with a bunch of good guys, a kid who wanted to grow up to be a man and who thought that to be a man he had to be like someone else, like Major Lester Harrison, for instance, gay and careless and free with women, reckless and hard and tough. And he had tried to be like him and found that that was not being a man at all. In the incalculably swift flash of his thoughts Jerry had even had time for a quick dart of pity for Major Harrison and to wonder what cross it was the major carried on his shoulders.