Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  “What do you mean?” Anne asked.

  “Miss Neville!” the major said, rising and extending his hand, “in ten minutes I’m going to cable Noumea and recommend, without qualification, your marriage to Lieutenant Bates. And in the meantime the American Government wants to give you this present.”

  Anne unfolded the parcel and read the book’s title: W.P.A. Guide to Oklahoma. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “If you’re going to live in Oklahoma, we want you to learn about it first. So you’ll be prepared when you get there. And tomorrow night you’re invited to the Young Eagles Club.”

  “The what?” Barbara asked.

  But the major was already in his good-bye spiel. “I think America is very lucky, getting a fine good-looking girl like you. Yes, sir, rules or no rules, I’m telling you now, you’re practically an American, Miss Neville!”

  “Then maybe you could help us?” Barbara asked hesitatingly.

  “At your service! Once you pass the investigation we’ll do anything within reason. We want you to like America.”

  “Anne’s future husband … Lieutenant Bates … he’s on Tarawa.”

  The pompousness and the major-ness evaporated and Harding banged his leg. “Oh, damn it!” he groaned. “Why won’t they let us have those lists?”

  “Is there any way you could find out?”

  “No!” he snapped. “You’d think we had no rights here in New Zealand. They won’t let us have the lists.”

  “Is there anything we might do?” Barbara asked.

  “Not a damn thing,” the major sighed. Then suddenly he jammed his hat on his head and asked, “Is that the phone, there on the corner?”

  “Yes,” Barbara said, leading him to the bright-red kiosk.

  Major Harding pushed his way in, jangled the hook and stuck his head out the door. “How do you work these damned gook phones?” he asked.

  Barbara laughed and said, “They’re difficult.” Then she showed him how to deposit the pennies, and listened as he stormed at headquarters about the casualty lists from Tarawa. “Damn it!” she heard him shout, “these are fine girls. The one I interviewed this morning is as fine as any American girl you’d ever meet. She’s got a right to know.” He slammed the receiver and said, “I’m disgusted. I was a lawyer in Chicago, and I thought I knew what red tape was.”

  “If you hear, please let us know.”

  “Let you know! Sister, I’m going to cable Halsey direct!” Before he said good-bye to Anne he whispered to Barbara, “This damned routine is getting me down. Checking on marriages when you aren’t sure there’s ever going to be one.”

  “Have you met this situation before?” Barbara asked.

  He looked down at her with the worn-out patience of a businessman trying to explain to his wife what had happened at the office. “Have I met it? Lady, the last four marriages I’ve investigated, we don’t know whether the husband got through Tarawa or not.” He shook Anne’s hand and then Barbara’s. “You girls were swell. This is a hell of a job they gave me, isn’t it?”

  He climbed back into the staff car and started forth to interview another Christchurch girl who wanted to marry an American who might or might not still be living. When he waved from the rear door Anne said, “Life with people like that might be fun.”

  Barbara laughed and said, “I thought I’d scream if he called me Lady one more time. Say!” she said, leafing through the book on Oklahoma. “I thought where you’re going was a city. Look at all this land!”

  The next evening Major Harding appeared after tea and said, “The Young Eagles Club is meeting in Christchurch tonight, and with your permission I’d like to take you in.”

  “There’s no news about Dick?”

  “None. This Young Eagles Club sounds funny, but it’s a good idea. Wish you’d come along.”

  “What is it?” Anne asked.

  “American Government is very eager that you girls marrying Americans understand your new country. The consul is going to speak tonight about conditions in the western part of the country.”

  “I’d rather not, Major.”

  “I wish you would,” he said quietly. “You see, there’s a lot of fables abroad about our country. We like to keep the record clear.”

  “Your men brag enough about it,” Barbara interjected.

  The major turned and spoke directly to her. “You misunderstand! The Eagles Club—there’s one in every city—try to correct misinformation. After all,” he laughed, “America isn’t like you see in the movies. At the Eagles Club we try to ten the truth.”

  “I’d like to hear such a meeting!” Barbara said.

  Stuffily the major explained, “But you’re not eligible. It’s only for girls who are going to marry Americans.”

  He led Anne to the staff car and carefully held the door for her. Evelyn said, “If all Americans do that for girls, no wonder they’re such dynamite!”

  Barbara asked her sister to sit down. “You’ve got to watch your language, Evelyn.”

  “I didn’t swear!” the vivacious youngster replied.

  “I don’t mean swearing so much as your slovenly way of speaking. Your use of so many American words.”

  “I sort of go for it!” Evelyn replied.

  “But where do you learn such words?”

  “I hear the Americans talking. Stores. Places.”

  “Evelyn! Have you been meeting … soldiers, I mean?”

  The younger girl thought for a moment and said, “Well, not meeting, exactly. But I see a certain Yank after school.”

  “Oh, darling! You’re only fifteen!”

  “Lots of girls walk with American soldiers. They’re very nice.”

  “Look, darling! You’ve been awfully sweet with me, being patient when I acted like a mother. For two more years, Evelyn, believe in what I tell you. Don’t go with soldiers.”

  “But Iceberg Annie went with one and everything turned out swell.”

  “Not so swell, maybe,” Barbara replied, grimacing at the ugly word. “Because Anne is going to have a baby.”

  Evelyn drew back and stared across the table. She started to speak and then rose slowly and started to help with the dishes. “I’ll do what you say, Mums!” she laughed nervously. Then she asked, “Will Anne have the baby?”

  “Of course!”

  “Because I think Dick Bates is alive.”

  “Of course he is!”

  When Anne returned, Evelyn fetched her a chair and the three girls sat about the kitchen table discussing the Young Eagles Club. “It was really amazing!” Anne said. “There must have been two hundred of us, all planning to go to America. The consul explained how much different America was from the movies. Then the head chaplain from Wellington assured us that America wasn’t like the movies. And finally the colonel said Americans didn’t all have the luxuries you see in the movies.”

  “Sounds like they only had one record,” Evelyn said.

  “Wasn’t it boring?” Barbara asked.

  “Strangely, no. Because each man so obviously wanted us to like his country. And there was one exciting bit when a big map of the States was brought in. The two Callendar girls are marrying Yanks, you know. The consul asked them to stand up. The older girl—she’s the one with buck teeth—is going to live in California. The one who’s marrying a Catholic boy will live in Boston. The consul asked each girl to stand up front with her finger in her city. Then he said the average American family would be able to visit back and forth between two cities that far apart perhaps once in four years. He said it would cost—oh, something like three hundred pounds. Then he laughed and said, ‘So you sisters better give up any idea of nagging your husbands for a visit every summer. Unless your husbands are rich, like in the movies.’ ”

  “Then he laughed, ha ha?” Evelyn asked.

  “Yes, but you gained the impression everyone was trying to tell the truth.”

  “That’s easy!” Evelyn explained. “They know the G.I.’s have lied to lot
s of our girls and they’re afraid the New Zealanders will tell the truth first.”

  For the first time in several days Anne laughed. “I think you’re right! Because one of the girls asked a special question. She said she was marrying a Negro from Georgia and what would it be like in America? Like marrying a Maori?”

  “How did they answer that one?” Evelyn asked.

  “The consul coughed, but the head chaplain spoke right up. ‘If I were you, my dear, I wouldn’t go through with such a marriage.’

  “ ‘Why not?’ the girl asked.

  “ ‘Because your life will be an intolerable misery,’ the chaplain said.”

  “It must have been exciting,” Barbara said.

  “It was, in special ways. I sat beside two girls whose men were on Tarawa. We could almost hear one another praying.”

  Early next morning the staff car stopped at Ferrymead. The major seemed afraid to get out and Evelyn, watching at the window, whispered to Barbara, “Oh, my God!”

  There was a knock at the door and Major Harding said bluntly, “We got the list. Lieutenant Bates was killed. At Tarawa.”

  It was Barbara who started to cry. Anne simply sat down and stared at the major, who said, “We demanded the lists and we got them. A great many men were killed.”

  “Thank you, Major,” Barbara sniffed. She indicated that he was to leave.

  “No,” he said stubbornly. “I can’t leave like this. People should not be alone at a time like this.”

  “Please,” Barbara begged.

  “No, Mrs. Forbes, there’s a great deal I can do for you. After all, your sister is practically an American now.” He started to open a briefcase.

  “You bring your papers back this afternoon,” Barbara said.

  When he had left, the three girls—almost as if by signal—started to care for their mother. With unusual attention they bathed and fed her, talked with her about the weather, and placed her chair so she could study the estuary. At the end Anne said, “I’m going to lie down.”

  Evelyn said, “I’ll be off to school, and, Babs, I won’t walk with the Americans.”

  Anne stopped. “What’s this about Americans?”

  “Oh, I just met a nice Yank at the store. We’ve been walking together.”

  “You seem very young,” Anne said in a whisper.

  “Barbara thought so, too,” Evelyn laughed.

  “Let’s agree on one thing,” Anne said, taking Evelyn’s two hands. “Let agree that if later on you do want to talk with a soldier, you’ll bring him right out here.”

  “That’s fair enough!” Evelyn agreed.

  But when she was gone Barbara said, “Anne! You’ve ruined it! She agreed not to see any Americans till she was seventeen.”

  “How silly!” Anne laughed with nervous uncertainty. “Evelyn’s almost a grown girl. Sooner or later, if the occupation keeps up …”

  “I’ll call the store and tell them you’ll not be in. That you won’t be in any more,” Barbara said, escaping from a thought which had begun to agitate her mind.

  “Nonsense, Barbara! I’ll work like anyone else.”

  “No. You’ll stay here and watch Evelyn and Mother. I’ll take your job. Now lie down.”

  As Anne did so she looked up and said, “I do wish that Delia were here. I never understood Delia.” Then she hugged the pillow to her face and made believe she had fallen asleep.

  Barbara tiptoed out of the cottage and went to the telephone kiosk, where she talked with Anne’s employer. The man growled, “She can’t just quit. She’s got to clear it with Manpower.”

  “I’m taking her place,” Barbara explained.

  “You’ll have to clear it with Manpower,” the voice warned.

  When Evelyn reached home that night she said, “See! I came straight home.” There was a touch of bitterness in her make-believe childishness and Barbara said quickly, “It’s exactly as Anne proposed, dear. If you want to talk with an American soldier, you bring him here. In your own home.”

  “I thought you said two years?”

  “Anne’s proposal was wiser. You see, darling, you’re not grown up yet and you’re not a child.”

  “It’s just that there aren’t any boys I know … They’ve all gone to war.”

  Barbara was shocked. She had thought of Evelyn always as a child, and she had ignored the fact that war was as cruel to children growing into adulthood as to anyone else. Then suddenly little Evelyn threw her arms across the table and began to sob violently. “What’s happened?” Barbara cried.

  “Nothing. Just that Daddy’s gone and Kit and your Mark and now Dick. Everyone I’ve loved has been killed.” She kept her face against the table, but her shoulders twisted in a manner that tore at Barbara’s heart.

  “You’ve got to believe that it all adds to some purpose,” the older girl said.

  “Don’t be so goddamned brave!” Evelyn sniffed. “Even Deel’s gone! And I feel like the devil, Babs.”

  “I know,” her sister argued. “I’ve been so concerned about myself I’ve forgotten you were growing …”

  Evelyn wiped her eyes and asked, “Where’s Anne?”

  “The major and a chaplain came to take her to another meeting of the Young Eagles. They said she was an American now, more than ever.”

  “Pretty soon she’ll be packing a gat,” Evelyn said. The two sisters thought this very funny but Evelyn stopped laughing abruptly and asked. “Babs! Could I bring Max home? You wouldn’t be … ashamed of me?”

  “No, darling! Of course not!”

  Quickly the younger girl ran to the kitchen door and cried, “Yooo, Max! It’s all right!”

  From the darkness appeared a small wiry G.I. with a uniform that didn’t fit too well and sharp, penetrating eyes. “This is Max Murphy!” Evelyn said proudly.

  Max said he was from New York City, “Biggest burg in the world.” He fell comfortably into Captain Neville’s old chair and propped his feet on the ottoman.

  “Would you care for some tea, Max?” Barbara asked.

  “Boy!” he said, picking his teeth. “This is some country. Nothin’ but tea.”

  “Don’t you like tea?” Barbara asked solicitously, acting the mother who desperately wants to like her only daughter’s first beau.

  “Me? I despise tea. If you ask me too much tea is why the teeth of New Zealand is so rotten.”

  Barbara gulped. This was a very touchy subject. She herself had excellent teeth, but she had to acknowledge that her countrymen did not. In fact the dental health of New Zealand was shocking, but she thought it ungenerous of Max Murphy to say so.

  “Tell me, what do you New Zealanders think?” Max asked.

  “About what?” Barbara inquired.

  “About us Americans coming in and saving your country? Where was your men?”

  Barbara was about to explain, bitterly, where her men were, but she happened to look at Evelyn and the girl was so delighted to have Max there in the comfortable chair, handing out his opinions, that Barbara could say nothing. There was not time enough in the world, she realized, to explain to such Americans where the men of New Zealand were. The only thing to do was to be patient and hope that they would learn.

  “It’s a tough war!” Max continued, wolfing the sugar cookies—there was so little sugar in New Zealand that it was always kept for American G.I.’s—and trying to blow smoke rings. “You probably wouldn’t believe it, but I been away from home for more than a year!”

  When Max left, Barbara asked Evelyn, “Which battles was he in?”

  “Oh, he’s never been in any. He’s been stationed in Hawaii. Don’t you think he’s cute?”

  “Yes,” Barbara said. That night she prayed that the Americans would invade some new island—in a hurry.

  Reluctantly, however, she had to turn over to Anne the supervision of Evelyn’s dates with Max, for when she reported to Manpower she was told bluntly and irrevocably that she could not work at Anne’s old job. She must serve as nurse in
the hospital for the criminal insane.

  “Neither have the others,” the commissioners said.

  “I’ll appeal.”

  “The appeal is not granted.”

  “You handle the appeals, too?”

  “We must. This is a total emergency.”

  “But I’ve never been a nurse!” Barbara protested.

  “I know,” Barbara said.

  The manpower shortage was so acute that she had to start work the next morning. Her work was so horrifying that she preferred never to speak of it. The hospital matron said, “It’s our only choice, Mrs. Forbes. You’ve been married. We can’t give such work to naïve girls.”

  The bed pans did not bother Barbara, not even when the idiot inmates spilled them along the corridors, but the old men who had lost their minds completely were such cruel relics of the handsome New Zealand men she had known that sometimes she felt as if she could not work another day. And at night when she got home, there would be Max Murphy, lolling in the comfortable chair, eating up all the sugar.

  When Anne’s baby was born, Max went into the bedroom to see the ugly little girl and returned to his chair soberly shaking his head. In a whispered voice he pointed out that in America nice girls didn’t have babies without being married. He said his mother would break his sister’s back if she went around having babies. And furthermore his older brother would crucify the man responsible; that is, after his brother got out of reform school he would crucify the guy.

  Max also reported that he had seen the last brides’ ship leave for the States, and in his opinion most of the girls on board were pigs. Barbara blushed at this, but Max quickly added, “There were also some nice girls like you and Evelyn, but not many. Most of them was pigs.”

  Barbara would have been unable to stand both Max and the hospital, had not Major Harding begun stopping at the cottage. He came at first to report that Lieutenant Richard Bates had left no insurance for Anne, but that if she wanted to apply to the committee on illegitimate children she could get a government allowance.

  “We don’t need that,” Barbara said.

  The major stayed that night and talked with the girls for a long time. Later, his presence slowed Max down a bit and Barbara once went so far as to inquire if there was any way that Max could be eased out of Christchurch.