The Lonely (6 page)

Then his eyes saw a weak glimmer of light as of a dying fire flickering through a window, and he made out the shape of a small farm-house cottage.

They felt around to the door, and Jerry pounded on it until a man’s voice shouted from within: “Who’s there? Go away . . .”

Jerry called: “We’re lost. Can you let us in?”

“No, I canna let ye in. We ha’ nothing to do wi’ strangers. Go aboot yer business.”

Jerry shouted: “Strangers, hell! We’re allies—friends. There’s a girl with me who’s sick. Does that mean anything to you?”

There was a moment of silence, and a woman’s voice was heard. “Get oop, Jock. Ye no can turn a mon frae th’ door who calls ye by the name of friend.”

Candles flickered and the door opened, revealing a cottager, with a ruddy face and suspicious eyes, and a large woman behind him. She said: “Stand aside, Jock, and let them in. Do ye no see the puir lassie has a chill? Poke up the fire.”

Jerry carried Patches across the threshold and into the kitchen. She was blue with cold and shaking beyond control. Jerry did not even look at the pair. He gave orders. “Get me a towel of some sort and a blanket.” He stripped the wet clothes from Patches in front of the peat-coal fire, wrapped her in a blanket, and rubbed her hard with the coarse towel the woman gave him.

“Have you got any whisky?”

The man hesitated. “Aye, I might have a drop. But it’s no got the Government stamp on it . . .”

“To hell with the Government stamp! And I want some hot water.”

He wrapped Patches in more of the woollen blankets they brought him, and fed her hot whisky and water until the shaking stopped and the color returned to her face.

The farmer said: “Ye’ll best remove yer ain breeks, Yank. Ye’re welcome to spend the night by the fire. In the morning I’ll put ye on the right track.”

The fire was giving out solid heat now and a flickering yellow hght. Jerry made a bed of the blanket on the floor and wrapped himself in another. The farmer and his wife retired. He took the bundle that was Patches in his arms and held her to him. She said: “Oh, Jerry, you’re sweet,” drowsily, and then leaned her head beneath his chin and went to sleep.

Strands of straight, damp hair fell across her face, and he brushed them away gently and thought how beautiful she was. He could not recall when or how the change had taken place, or even that he had ever thought her plain. It was as though her features had come to take on a special meaning and unfold their beauties one by one. They had lost their individual identity as nose, or mouth, or lashes spread against a cheek. The tender sweetness of each had become intimately familiar to him. He had explored them all, experienced their texture, discovering new enchantments of human architecture in the gentle flare of a nostril, the smooth surface of brow or temple, the innocent and touching gallantry of the spot where her head and neck were joined.

There was a kind of eternity to the low, rough room, the glowing fire and the iron kettle suspended over it, with the rain beating on the roof and dripping from the eaves in steady streams that sounded above Patches’ quiet breathing. His mind remained encompassed there and with the companion he was holding closely as if to give her of his added warmth. Here a world might well begin and end.

In the morning Patches’ youth and constitution, plus the care Jerry had given her, asserted themselves, and she awoke refreshed and with no apparent ill effects from the chill and the wetting.

Thereafter the days slipped by all too quickly, a dreamlike procession of play and laughter alternating with growing passion as they learned the love of each other, and the tendernesses and increasing companionship and need resulting therefrom.

It was downhill all the way from the Trossachs into Aberfoyle, and they took it streaming, all-out, brakes off, sharing the whirlwind of their passage and spending the night at the Bailie Nicol Jarvie, famous, they learned from the inscriptions, for the legend of a fat, little, inoffensive English bailie who, while taking his ease there one night, was assaulted by a gigantic Highlander, who threatened his life with drawn claymore. The game little bailie put him to rout by setting fire to his kilts with a red-hot poker drawn from the fireplace.

They sat drinking Mild and Bitter in a secluded corner of the old Bailie’s bar, where the last of the sunlight filtered in through old, green bottle-glass set into the wall panels of dark bog oak, its rays picking up the sheen of pewter plate and tankards, chain mail, swords, and pikestaffs. Each in his own way was basking in the warmth and delight of the presence of the other, and knowing to the full the exquisite delight of not being alone, of having the other every moment, by pressure of limb to limb, by a touch of the fingers, a caress of the eyes, a quicker breathing, a smile, the fall of a wisp of Patches’ hair across Jerry’s face.

And if one was living for the moment, and the other was trying to make each moment an eternity, their appreciation and delight that each had in the presence of the other was in no way diminished.

They cycled on to Drymen, where Jerry borrowed a set of golf clubs from the local pro and played the course, with Patches walking at his side spellbound in dutiful awe of his every shot; and this was a new experience for Jerry to be so sincerely admired and frankly hero-worshipped, for now that Patches’ love for him had had its outlet, she put no curbs upon her adoration of him.

Thence they rode southward through the gentle, rolling hills of Lennox, and this was a different kind of country, green and more kindly, contrasting with the stern and romantic wildness of the Highlands, and ever their wheels took them at each turn closer to Glasgow and the end of their holiday. For their time was running out, and Patches had to return to duty at Kenwoulton.

As they had planned it in the beginning, so they carried it out. Patches’ leave was up before Jerry’s rest furlough expired, and she was to return alone while Jerry remained another five days in the north. He was planning to go to Prestwick and look up a school friend and classmate from Westbury, Eagles Wilson, an ATC pilot flying the Atlantic run with couriers.

But it was not until they were cycling through the grubby outskirts of Glasgow, past the seemingly endless rows of ugly, identical brick houses enlivened only by an occasional corner pub, that either of them realized how close at hand was their hour of parting, how near to an end their journey together.

And so they were once more in a railway station, this time St. Enoch’s, enduring the same smoke and grime and eternal railroad noises and rush of people and porters and soldiers with clanking accoutrements, the roll and rumble of baggage trucks and the senseless effeminate shrieking of the eternally hysterical locomotives.

Jerry had bought everything for Patches he could possibly think of—lunch, and a bottle of wine and a precious half-bottle of brandy, a box of chocolates, three detective novels, magazines, four packets of Player’s cigarettes—and was still prowling around the central bookstall looking for other things to buy her.

Now that the moment was almost at hand, it seemed queer to be saying good-bye to Patches, to be putting her aboard a train that would take her away. But it was not really saying good-bye. She was only going to Kenwoulton, and he would see her again there, at the dances, or in town, perhaps even . . .

His thoughts stopped there, because he kept seeing the figure of Lester Harrison at the bar of the officers’ club and hearing him say: “Pals while you’re together, but when it’s finished, that’s that. Most of ’em are hundred per cent. No tears, no trouble. Boom, it’s over! . . .”

He stole a look at Patches. She was burned brown, and her grey eyes looked light and luminous against the healthy tan of her cheeks. There was a new lustre to the off shade of her hair, now coiled at the back of her neck, hair that he knew was as soft as the finest silk and as fragrant as May flowers. She had changed in the room he had taken at the hotel, and was wearing the same skirt and dark silk blouse in which she had met him. There seemed to be a faraway look in her eyes, but for once her soft, restless, mobile mouth was expressionless. He could not tell what she might be thinking.

Now he had found her a place in a first-class carriage, and he was standing on the platform, looking up at her as she leaned out of the window, and there were five minutes yet to wait until the train should depart, and they did not know what to say to each other.

Patches fought valiantly and gallantly against the tears that lay so close to the surface and yet that must be suppressed until she was alone, because that was how Jerry had wanted it. She had erected, as barriers against shedding them, the unforgettable memories of the hours of beauty they had passed together, but she knew they could not stand against the longing and the loneliness that would come later.

To help her, she called upon the sense of remembered reality of the gloomy station, the familiar sights and sounds and smells, things she had been used to all her life when she went away on trips.

She looked down at this dark boy with the crumpled cap on the back of his glossy head, and the young blue eyes beneath the heavily marked brows, the cleft chin and the gay, careless mouth—this Jerry, who was a piece of her heart, whose heartbeat she had felt, whose being she had shared, whose body had been there to touch when she stirred and reached out in the night—and told herself that it was just someone she knew, almost a stranger, come down to see her off.

They had kissed good-bye on the platform, but it had not hurt too much then, for it had been but a brushing kiss and a hurried hug in the crowd rushing for places in the carriages.

Jerry smiled up. “See you when I get back to Kenwoulton . . .”

Patches said: “Have a good time, Jerry.”

“You’ve been wonderful, Patches . . .”

Closing carriage doors banged down the line. The whistle shrieked twice. Patches gave Jerry her hand, and they gripped for a moment until the train began to move and parted them.

“Good-bye, Patches . . .”

“God bless, Jerry . . .”

Far down the station the engine wheezed and chuffed under its load of cars—“Hundred per cent—hundred per cent—hundred per cent . . .” The clacking wheels picked up in acceleration, and said faster and faster “Boom—it’s—over! Boom—it’s—over! Boom—it’s—over!” The train was gone from the platform, and the engine, far out in the yards, wailed its farewell: “I under-sta-a-a-a-a-nd . . .”

Jerry watched until the platform was quite empty and the last car had vanished. He sighed and thought: “Well, I guess that’s that. Gee, she was a swell kid. It’ll be funny not to have her around . . .”

He thought of what Major Harrison had said—“Hell, you don’t want to get involved with them!”—put his cap on the back of his head, and walked the streets moodily back to his hotel, where he found himself hesitating to go up to his room. He could not tell whence the feeling had come, but it was as though he knew suddenly that she would be there waiting for him. He pulled himself together and got into the lift.

It was the same kind of high, dark chamber they had occupied together their first night in Glasgow. He closed the door and switched on the single electric drop-light that hung from the ceiling, and the room was so filled with her presence that he stood for a moment blinking at the emptiness as though there were something wrong.

He saw her first only in odd little things she had left behind: a tiny blue pin set with baby turquoises, a powder box on the edge of the wash-stand, a crumpled empty packet of Player’s cigarettes—she preferred them to the American brand he smoked—and an inner sole that had come loose and fallen out of one of her slippers.

She had promised him right from the beginning that she was untidy. Jerry, trained to finicky neatness in the Air Force, had instituted something called “Policing Quarters,” in which they were supposed to share, but which always ended up with Patches sitting cross-legged on the bed smoking a cigarette and pointing out things he was overlooking—“Oh, Jerry, there—over in the corner. Why do I like to throw things in corners?” while Jerry picked them up and muttered threats of extraordinary Air Force punishments and gigs.

He went about the room picking things up, as though Patches were indeed sitting on the bed, and when he had them all in a little pile, he stood looking at them with a puzzled frown that they should be there and not Patches. She always had difficulty in closing the pin, and he seemed to hear her muttering: “Oh, bother!” until he came over and fixed it for her.

And she had her own little way of putting powder on her nose and then holding it up to him for inspection. And he would kiss her on the tip as a signal that it was all right.

The inner sole had long been loose from the slipper and was always coming out and being put back in again, because shoes in England were hard to come by, and they would try to think of stopping to get some glue and paste it. And nightfall would catch them somewhere along the line of their trip with the sole coming loose again, and Patches would groan: “Oh, dear, we didn’t get the glue again! And we were right
in
the shop!”

He took the tiny slip of soft leather in his fingers and held it there for a moment; and then he said her name: “Patches . . .”

The sense of missing her, the longing for her presence, overwhelmed him so suddenly that he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands and was frightened by the power of the emotion, afraid to look up again at the shattering emptiness of the room because it would verify that Patches was gone.

Physically she was no longer there, but memories of her crowded in upon him—her voice, expressions of her face, the feel of her cheek against his, the odd independence of her little toe, her laugh, the shape of her fingernails, the soft and trusting warmth of her sleeping, and a hundred other things he did not even know he had noted.

He said: “Oh, Christ, no!” and got up from the bed jerkily and went to the window and looked out upon the traffic in the street below and saw a girl on a bicycle who reminded him of the erect, excited way that Patches rode, her little head and eager eyes turning this way and that so as to be sure to miss nothing.