The Last Embrace

by Pam Jenoff

  “Look,” Charlie said as we reached the street. A piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in the collar of his military jacket.

  I shivered, grasping the magnitude of what had just happened. “You could have died.” Of course we were all going to die; I’d understood that harsh truth since losing Robbie. But that didn’t make the imminent prospect any less terrifying.

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m lucky.” For all that had happened, some part of him seemed to believe fortune would keep him safe. “Anyway, I was with you, so I would have died happy.” Our eyes met. He brought his lips to mine, seeming to forget that we were in the middle of the city street with dozens of passersby climbing from the shelters, emergency crews running to fires the bombs had set off. I should have stopped him, but warmth and memory rushed over me, extinguishing any sense of propriety. I reached up and grasped his shoulders. His lips were a salty mix of the sea and the tears that had once been.

  He broke away and took my hand and began walking toward the taxi stand at the corner. We were almost running now, the past nipping at our heels. We climbed into the lone cab with its headlights half blacked out and bumper painted white. Inside, we did not speak, as if afraid to break the spell that somehow made this moment possible and all right. He gave the driver an address I could not quite hear over the buzzing in my ears. Then he slid closer. I was nearly in his lap now as he kissed me once more. His hand was at the hem of my skirt.

  The cab detoured around some burning wreckage, then slowed in the blackened street at Tottenham Court Road to pick up another passenger. But Charlie flung a bill into the front seat. “Keep driving.” We sped up again, the bewildered face of the man on the street disappearing from the window.

  “Stop here,” Charlie requested at the edge of Grosvenor Square. The American embassy loomed large on the far side.

  “One quid,” the driver said, as though the money Charlie had handed him a moment earlier didn’t count. Charlie did not balk, but handed the driver the extra fare. Rain began to fall as we climbed from the cab, pelting the leaves above and falling heavy on my hair. He led me toward a hotel that had been converted to house the soldiers. At the curbside a gutter had gotten stopped and a puddle several feet across had formed, blocking our way. Without asking, Charlie lifted me up, and as he carried me over, it was as if he was saving me from the water once more. He did not set me down, but instead carried me around the side of the hotel and up a set of back stairs, navigating the wet, metal steps carefully. Tinny piano music tinkled above loud voices in the lobby.

  On the top floor, he unlocked and pressed open the door to a small room no bigger than a broom closet. There were two narrow beds, one made up, one bare. Charlie’s rucksack stood in the corner packed neatly as though he had just arrived. The air had a dank smell, like laundry not quite dry.

  He set me down and we stared at each other. Wet clothes clung to our bodies. “Charlie...” I should not be here. But it was too late—I could not walk away from him again. His fingers reached the top button of my dress and it fell open, followed by the others, one by one. I pulled his wet shirt over his head to reveal the torso I had seen a thousand times in my dreams since we had last walked the beach together. Clothes seemed to slide from us and I was pressed up against him, the one body I had always wanted, with nothing in between.

  He laid me down on the sheeted bed, cradling my head, then squeezed in beside me as well as he could in the narrow space. His hands ran along the silhouette of my body, as I had dreamed a thousand times, only better. I rose beneath his touch, the strange feelings I had known all of these years suddenly making sense. It was like getting the birthday present I’d wanted for years, only to find that it was even better than I’d imagined. He murmured my name against my ear as he entered me. It hurt for a moment and then it didn’t, and it all faded until there was nothing left.

  * * *

  Afterward he lay beside me, not speaking, holding on tight. I wanted to ask what now. We could not possibly go back. But the questions were too many and too hard so I burrowed deeper into his arms. “Do you mind that it happened?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” I replied truthfully. I had always expected to wait for marriage. But the rules were all different now, jumbled.

  “I’m glad.” He reached behind me for a towel and dried my hair carefully, as though I was a child.

  “I’m sorry I left without telling you, in Washington, I mean.” Though he had already forgiven me, I felt the need to explain. “I just wasn’t ready to face you.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, yes, I think so.” I was clearer, in a way that I had not been before. Lying here in Charlie’s arms in this odd, smelly little room, I felt as if I was home for the first time since Robbie had died. And I never wanted to leave again.

  His face broke into a wide smile and I kissed him, owning what had always been between us. “When did you know?”

  “About us? The first day we stepped out of the car at the beach house. I saw you upstairs through the screen, even before the others did. Then you stepped outside.” A light dawned in his eyes as he relived the moment. “Your hair was all blown from the bay breeze.” I stared at him, so surprised. So he had known from the first as well. “You were just a kid,” he said with a rueful laugh. “Scrawny as a stray cat, with those dark, dark eyes.” He cleared his throat. “And then that day I came into our parlor and you were sitting at the piano, wearing that peach dress, playing so beautifully I thought my heart would break.” How had he remembered that? “And it all changed.” Changed indeed. Was I glad? I had pined after Charlie, craved his attention for years. But it had been simpler somehow when it was just a crush, the feelings unrequited.

  All that time I thought he had not seen me and considered me just a child, he had loved me back. “But you always talked to my brothers,” he added. “So I thought it was just me.”

  “I was nervous around you.”

  “Nervous? Ha! That’s a trick. Not nervous now, are you?” He grabbed me and drew me close for another kiss. Then his face grew serious. “I have to leave soon, you know that.”

  “How soon?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.” And even if he did, he might not be able to say. “The work we do, you see, is going to be even more important with the invasion coming.” His eyes had a wild, desperate look. “Scouting out pockets of German troops, rescuing our own men who are trapped behind enemy lines. We could save hundreds, no, thousands of lives.” And it was going to get him killed.

  “Charlie, no, that’s madness. Why you?”

  “Because I’m good at it. Because it’s my duty. And it has to be someone, doesn’t it? You think it’s irresponsible,” he added when I did not answer.

  I hesitated. I did not want to quarrel with him now. But I had never been any good at holding back. “I think your family has lost enough.” The Connallys had lost one son—how could they possibly bear to go through that again?

  “I’m coming back,” he said, acknowledging the truth in what I had said.

  “I know that you are.”

  “And not just for them.” His head had turned toward me ever so slightly and he was looking at me with the faintest twinkle in his eye, the light that I had not seen in so long, so reminiscent of the boy he had once been. “I’m going to come back from this, Addie,” he repeated, pressing against my unspoken doubts. For everything that had happened, he still believed he could control his own destiny. “I’ll be back to make things right between us. You mark my words. And then we can get married.” I swallowed. To me this had been a night, a chance to have what had once been taken from us. But suddenly we were back together as if nothing had ever happened. Except that it had. “Of course if that’s not what you want, I understand.” Apprehension crept into his voice.

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “I mean, we’ll get married
just as soon as I can get leave. I always imagined having our families at the wedding, but with everything that has happened and the war, I think we ought to do it as soon as possible, don’t you?”

  Suddenly his embrace was suffocating me. I sat up. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I should go.”

  “No, stay. It’s past curfew and there could be more bombs. I’ll sneak you out and see you home before first light.” He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me down, then rested a heavy arm across my chest. “You don’t really want to go, do you?”

  “No.” In point of fact, I did not. I burrowed deeper into the warmth of his chest.

  “Would you go back to the States for me, Addie?” he asked. “Things here are just so dangerous. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”

  “I can’t.” Though touched by his concern, I could not help but be annoyed. “How can you ask that of me?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “I feel the same way about you. Are you going to turn and run?”

  “But I have my mission, it’s different.”

  “And I have my work. Should that matter any less?” He did not answer and the disagreement hung odd and unpleasant between us. “You come back safely and then we’ll go home together.”

  He rolled onto his back, clasping his arms behind his head. “I’m not sure where home is anymore. Everyone is so scattered.”

  “Washington, maybe, or somewhere else. We’ll figure it out.” I rested my head against his chest.

  “Let’s get married now,” he said, weaving his fingers through my hair.

  I pulled away. “What?”

  “Not now exactly, but first thing tomorrow. Let’s find the chaplain and get married.”

  “But...” I was too stunned to form a response. It was not that outrageous an idea—there were couples marrying quickly all over Britain and America now, many of them knowing one another a far shorter time than Charlie and I. And it was not a new idea—we’d planned to marry more than a year ago.

  “Why not? Is it your family?” It had always there beneath the surface, the fact that I was Jewish and the Connallys Catholic. But in the rush, I had not even thought about my aunt and uncle, who would never, ever be okay with this. “Because I’ll convert if it’s important to you.”

  “No,” I interjected. “Becoming Jewish is not something you do for another person. It would have to be because you believed it.”

  “I would,” he insisted, revealing the intensity with which he wanted this, his determination to make it happen. I leaned against him, loving him more than ever. “Or if not, maybe if we just agree that the kids could be Jewish.”

  Kids. My head swam. I had not even decided if I wanted children. This was all moving so quickly and at the same time it had taken forever to get here. Two days ago, I could not have fathomed that we might be together again. Now he was here. But who knew what might come next? If I had learned anything, it was to take the moment, because it might not come again. “Okay—I mean yes.”

  “Really?” His eyes were wide and disbelieving.

  “Yes.”

  A smile, the widest of his I’d seen in years, spread across his face. “There’s a chapel on the far edge of Grosvenor Square that a lot of the fellas are using now. We can do it there. Let’s meet at ten.”

  “Okay, but I should go now.”

  “Not yet.” He reached for me again. His kisses were everything I had imagined a thousand times in my dreams, fueled by the years of wanting. Then it was over and I clung to him, falling into a kind of blackness where I felt everything and nothing.

  Later, I awakened, feeling the familiar yet strangely intimate warmth against my side. I had not planned to fall asleep. I rolled over, bits of sunlight streaming through the blackout curtains. Warmth enveloped me as I studied him. I had seen Charlie sleep before, napping on the Connallys’ couch as the breeze blew the curtains through the open window. Then his face had been peaceful. But now he wrestled in his sleep, fighting an enemy unseen. I reached for his shoulder and he calmed beneath my touch. Perhaps it was a battle I could help him win.

  I rummaged in my purse for a scrap of paper and something to write with. Going to my flat to freshen up. Meet you at the chapel at ten. I set the note on the nightstand, then took one last look at Charlie, fighting the urge to lie down beside him once more. I had to go now, but in just a few hours we would be married. I blew him a kiss.

  In his sleep, he smiled.

  I slipped from the soldiers’ hotel and started to make my way west toward Hyde Park and my flat, conscious of my evening dress that stood out among the morning commuters. Excitement surged through me, quickening my step. Today was my wedding day. I would take Charlie’s last name, really become one of them. I tried it on for size: Adelia Connally. Meet him at the chapel at ten, he had said. Darker thoughts intruded then: I would have to send word to Teddy that I would be late to work again. I would not tell him why, of course, until after. He would be crushed. Would he even go so far as to fire me?

  Brushing away my worries, I walked onward. The air was fresh and warmed by the spring sun and a few faint buds had begun to sprout on the bushes that lined the park. I paused at the newsstand at the corner to pick up a copy of the Times. Teddy and I wired our stories to be filed in Washington thousands of miles away; we seldom saw the finished product and only then weeks or months later. AIR RAID WORST SINCE BLITZ read the headline. It was hard to believe that just hours earlier, we’d been caught in the bombing. The raid, the story said, had been worst south of the river. My breath caught, thinking of the orphanage. How had Leo and the other children at the orphanage fared? I had to know. The clock over the hotel at the corner read 7:10. Still more than two hours to get back to Charlie. Impulsively, I walked to the taxi stand at the corner and gave the address of the orphanage.

  The cab wound through the streets of Belgravia, past the still-posh shops and Georgian houses that were well-tended even amidst the wreckage. Sitting alone on the wide taxi seat, I could not help but remember Charlie and the ride we had shared the previous evening. I grew warm, thinking of his hands all the places they should not have been. I had let things go further than they should have—much further. But it would not matter now that we were getting married.

  As we neared the river, the memories vanished. The morning sky over South London was dark gray, streaked with pink. A thick cloud of smoke from the previous night’s raid seemed to smolder, as if something was still burning. The cab made its way painstakingly across the bridge in thick traffic, then drove east along the river. At the corner a woman sat upon the tall heap of rubble that had once been her house, not seeming to notice the blood that ran down her cheek. Beside her on the ground lay two bodies covered with blankets, one unmistakably small. My throat tightened.

  We stopped once more, blocked by a snarl of buses ahead. “I’ll get out here,” I said, unable to stand it any longer. I paid the driver and leapt from the cab, running in the direction of the orphanage.

  I reached Theed Street and exhaled with relief. Though there was a giant crater in the street and a lorry turned on its side, the house where the children lived stood intact. I paused to catch my breath in front of a bakery that was just opening despite its shattered front window. Then I went inside and used two of my ration cards to buy two loaves still warm from the oven.

  Sister Jayne answered when I knocked at the orphanage. “Oh, hello,” she said, looking surprised.

  “I hope it’s not too early.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron, then gave an airy wave. “Nonsense. With this many children, we never close.” But I could see her eyeing my wrinkled evening dress questioningly. “Come in.”

  I handed her the bread and followed her inside. The wide house with its high, cracked plaster ceilings was chilly, even in late spring. �
��Too expensive to heat in winter,” I could hear Aunt Bess say. The boys and girls were seated around two long, worn wooden tables, somberly eating bowls of porridge. Leo was at the far end of one. I raised my hand. He didn’t smile, though I thought his eyes showed recognition. The children watched with anticipation as Sister Jayne cut and handed out slices of bread thin enough to go around. She did not keep any for herself. I waved off the piece she offered me, then immediately regretted not taking it to slip to Leo. What these children really needed was not just bread, but a rasher of bacon or bit of sausage to bring some color back to their cheeks and put a bit of meat on their bones.

  “We do what we can for food,” Sister Jayne said, sensing my thoughts. “But we don’t have an icebox so it needs to be nonperishable, or eaten quickly.”

  I followed her to the sink where she resumed rinsing dishes. “I worried about how you’d fared with the bombings last night.”

  “We were fine. It’s difficult calming so many terrified little ones. But we were spared any real damage.” She gestured for me to follow her away from the children and up the stairs. She opened a door to a room, giving me a tour though I had not asked.

  “They sleep here.” There were no beds, just thin straw mattresses on the floor, ten to a room where there should have been four or less, blankets not more than pieces of burlap. “Or in the cellar when there’s a raid.”

  “That can’t be easy. Is it just you?”

  “There’s another sister who comes down weekends when she’s able. We’re managing. Keeping them in a routine, that’s the most important part.”

  But as she closed the door and started back down the stairs, Sister Jayne’s face remained creased, without any sign of relief. “I’m afraid there are other problems, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “We received word yesterday that the government has denied our request for additional visas for the children.”