by Rebecca Dean
She closed her eyes. Tomorrow night would be different.
Tomorrow night they would be at White Sulphur Springs in their bridal suite.
Tomorrow night Win would be romantic and tender and everything would be utterly, utterly perfect.
Chapter Sixteen
The train journey to White Sulphur Springs was idyllic. For most of the way they had a compartment entirely to themselves, and Win kissed and cuddled her in a way that set all her senses on fire in anticipation of the coming evening.
The wooded Allegheny Mountains were at their best in the fall, and the higher the train climbed into West Virginia, the more spectacular the scenery became, the late-autumn leaves a constantly shifting panorama of red and orange and gold.
The Greenbrier was a luxurious hotel in a prime position, but the minute they entered it Wallis knew that, because of the time of year, they were going to be among only a handful of guests. November was not a favorite month for vacationing.
She squeezed Win’s hand lovingly. They hadn’t come to the Greenbrier to socialize, and the fewer guests there were, the more privacy they would have.
When the bellboy had deposited their luggage in their room and had closed the door behind him, Win’s handsome tip in his pocket, Wallis let out a deep satisfied sigh. “It’s a splendid room, Win. The bed is even bigger than the one we had last night at the Shoreham.”
Win wasn’t listening to her. He was looking down at a notice that lay beneath the glass top of their dressing table.
“Goddamn it!” he said explosively, “West Virginia is a dry state! The hotel doesn’t sell liquor!”
Although Wallis enjoyed predinner cocktails, they weren’t a necessity to her, and Win’s outraged indignation amused her.
“Then we’re just going to have to manage without, darling,” she said, walking up behind him and sliding her arms lovingly around his waist.
He whipped around, thrusting her away from him so violently that she stumbled, saving herself from falling only by catching hold of the back of a chair.
“We’re like hell going to manage without!” His face was flushed with rage. “Don’t bother unpacking. We’re not staying.”
Wallis’s head reeled as she gripped tight hold of the chair. “But Win, darling … We have to stay. You must be able to get a drink of something somewhere.”
He didn’t bother replying to her. Instead he strode to where their suitcases had been deposited and, seizing hold of the one that was his, yanked it up onto the bed, vicious anger in every line of his body.
Wallis had never before been the object of male anger bordering on violence. Uncle Sol had often been angry, but he had never given physical vent to it. As for her late stepfather, she couldn’t remember Mr. Rasin uttering even a cross word.
She ran her tongue across her bottom lip nervously as Win began rifling through his suitcase, tossing clothes left and right onto the bed. Common sense told her that in the mood he was in she should be afraid of him, but she wasn’t afraid.
She was too stunned by shock to be afraid.
It was as if, in the space of half a second, she’d stepped from one world into another, one that was entirely different and horrifyingly unwelcome.
“Ah!” Triumphantly Win retrieved a hip flask from the bottom of his case. Unscrewing the top of it, he took a deep swallow and then turned toward her, his good mood restored. “There’s enough gin here to get up to flying speed till I can find another source of supply.”
Dazedly Wallis eased her grip on the back of the chair. It was as if the ugly scene of a few seconds ago had never taken place. Had it, perhaps, simply been occasioned by honeymoon nerves? Had Win wanted to be shored up by a little alcohol before taking her to bed for the first time? It wasn’t something she had previously thought even slightly likely, but she found the idea of her courageous aviator husband being a little shy on the first night of his honeymoon endearing.
When he put the flask down and opened his arms, she walked across the room and straight into them.
“We need to change and go down to dinner, Wallis,” he said, his mouth against her hair. “The sooner we’ve dined, the sooner we’ll be back here.”
It was reasoning that made complete sense, and with her honeymoon mood fully restored, Wallis changed into one of the glamorous new gowns that formed part of her extensive trousseau.
All through dinner her buoyant mood persisted. Everything was back on keel again; everything was going to be just as she had imagined it would be.
The first dent in her renewed confidence came when they reentered their bridal suite to find a bottle wrapped in brown paper waiting for Win on the nightstand.
He tore the paper off and she saw that it was a bottle of gin.
He gave her a wink. “A little cash given to the right person will always produce liquor in a dry state, Wallis. Every waiter worth his salt has his own bootlegger—and this looks like pretty good stuff.”
He unscrewed the cap and took a deep swallow, and then, happy with the bottle’s contents, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Remembering what the result of the champagne toasts had been the previous day, Wallis felt her tummy muscles tighten.
Remaining virginal on the first night of married life was one thing. Remaining virginal for two nights did not, to her, seem like a good idea.
“Let’s go to bed, darling,” she said, willing him to put the cap back on the bottle.
He took another drink and then turned off the gaslights so that the room was lit only by moonlight. This time when she had undressed, Wallis slid the cream silk, lace-edged nightdress she had bought especially for her wedding night over her head.
When Win lay down beside her, he was stark naked with a strong erection. Having become familiar with the feel of his private parts over the long months of their courtship, the sight of him naked wasn’t the unnerving experience it would otherwise have been. Fleetingly she wondered how less forward brides dealt with the shock of seeing their husbands naked for the first time. As Win’s mouth closed on hers, it occurred to her that they probably never did see their husbands naked; that all lovemaking, perhaps lifelong, took place in rooms not only devoid of artificial light but devoid of moonlight as well.
“I love you, Wallis.” Win’s voice was hoarse and urgent. “Not being able to have you has been driving me crazy for months.” His face was now buried in her neck, his fingers in places she had never previously allowed.
What in imagination she had thought would be excitingly erotic was, in reality, decidedly uncomfortable.
Telling him so would, she knew, not be a very good idea.
Parting her legs, he tried to enter her.
Wallis dug her nails into her palms and shut her eyes tight against the pain.
The sensation she had waited so long for, the sensation when he would slide inside her, never came.
“Goddamn it, Wallis!” The frustrated anger that had been in his voice when he had discovered the hotel didn’t serve alcohol was back in full measure. “You must have a hymen like a brick wall!”
Bewildered, disappointed, and hurting like hell, Wallis tried to keep control of the situation. “Try again, darling. It really doesn’t hurt that much, and I want you so badly, darling. Truly I do.”
Win did try again—so forcefully Wallis had to bite the back of her hand to prevent herself from screaming.
Win didn’t have any experience with virgins, but he did know when something was wrong. When a man had a hard-on like an iron bar, a normal hymen was no real barrier to it. Which meant there was nothing normal about the difficulty he was meeting with.
The language he used in his frustration was language Wallis had never heard used before. As he rolled angrily away from her, tears of hysteria began building up in her throat.
“What’s wrong, Win? Why can’t we do it? What can I do to help?”
It was a problem that in the immediate present Win had only one answer for.
&nb
sp; “I’m going to get out of bed and you’re going to kneel down in front of me and instead of using your hand, you’re going to take me in your mouth. D’you understand?”
Numb with pain and an overwhelming sense of failure, Wallis nodded and clumsily did as he asked.
With his hands heavy on the top of her head in order to keep her head forced down, it wasn’t romantic or tender and it was a long, long way from being perfect.
For the rest of their honeymoon, though, it was what she had to resort to, for no matter how often Win tried to relieve her of her virginity, she was as much a virgin when she returned to Pensacola as she had been when she had left it.
The only person she could talk with about the problem was her mother—and the only advice Alice felt able to give her was to go to a doctor.
It was something Wallis simply couldn’t bring herself to do. She didn’t want a doctor at Pensacola knowing about her shameful intimate secret, nor did she want a Baltimore doctor knowing about it. The only doctor she was prepared to see was one who didn’t know her and whom she could see under another name—and how that could be arranged she didn’t know.
Outwardly, of course, both she and Win behaved as if there were nothing at all wrong with their marriage. In reality, there was so much wrong with it, Wallis often locked herself in the bathroom and, huddled on the floor with her hands over her face, wept with sheer misery.
Win’s two main failings were failings she now knew he’d always had—and about which both Rob and Archie, without being disloyal to Win, had tried to warn her. He drank far more than she had ever suspected, and he didn’t have only a quick-fire temper—he had a violent temper. Under normal circumstances both defects would have been bad enough. As it was, the sexual difficulties they were encountering in their marriage meant that both his drinking and his temper were growing more and more out of control.
He shouted at her for the least little thing. He jeered at her that she wasn’t a proper woman—but he didn’t lose his interest in her as a woman. In a bizarre way, his inability to possess her only made him want her more—and there was only ever one outcome. It was one that Wallis—out of sheer necessity—was becoming extremely proficient at.
Win had always been violently jealous, but now his rage wasn’t aroused only if he thought anyone was flirting with her; it was also aroused if he thought she was flirting—and whenever he mistakenly thought she was, he became physically abusive toward her.
Her arms and upper body were marked by bruises she grew expert at hiding.
“Not my face, Win!” she would plead whenever he succumbed to violent, frustrated rage and hit out at her. “Please, not my face!”
Well aware of how fast gossip would spread on the air station if Wallis began appearing in public with black eyes and a split lip, Win took care not to land any of his punches where the result would be visible. After all, he had his career to think about. Wallis was a relative by marriage of Commander Mustin’s, and he knew that if there were no visible signs of his abuse, Mustin would never know what took place in the privacy of his and Wallis’s home, for if Wallis had one quality in massive abundance, it was her pride.
As far as the world was concerned, he knew she was determined their marriage would be seen as being a success, which, bizarrely, in many ways it was, for she soon had the reputation for giving the best dinner parties on the air station and was certainly the liveliest and most popular hostess Pensacola had.
In part this was because Wallis couldn’t help being lively and good fun. As a Montague, being so was in her blood and in her bones. Social success was also compensation for her miserable failure to be a proper wife to Win. The knowledge that she wasn’t enabled her to understand the violence that had become a standard part of their life together. It was simply something she had to put up with and accept. There was no other alternative.
By early 1917 her life as a Navy wife had settled into a well-established routine. Though the bungalow she and Win had been allocated was small—so small it could have fitted easily into the drawing room at 34 East Preston Street—it was also pretty. On a little verandah that looked out over a glorious view of the bay, scented roses and oleanders grew in tubs. Inside, every wall was painted white. It was the very first thing Wallis had insisted on having done. The gay chintz curtains at the windows were curtains she had made herself, and though the bungalow was too small for live-in household help, household help was cheap on the air station and, like every other wife living there, she had both a cook and a maid.
There was a strict rule on the base that no pilot was allowed to drink on the days he was scheduled to fly. Wallis was well aware that Win—and several other aviators—broke this rule by toasting the flag before a flight, having another to “boost their courage,” and a third to “settle them down,” but at least they never risked getting noticeably drunk, and when Win wasn’t drunk, he tended not to be so violent.
Saturday nights were when he always let his hair down, doing so at the only nightspot Pensacola possessed: the San Carlos Hotel.
“You’re a lucky woman, Skinny,” Corinne said to her one evening as they and other friends were grouped around one of the tables and Win, having grabbed a cane and a straw boater that weren’t his, was fronting the orchestra as an impromptu song-and-dance man. “Win is such a live wire. He must be great fun to live with.”
Wallis did what she always did on such occasions. She laughed agreement, grateful that Corinne didn’t suspect that fun, where she and Win were concerned, was in very short supply.
“Another huge intake of cadets is coming in tomorrow,” Win said to her one morning in early February. “How the hell I’m expected to get them all up and running as pilots in the necessary time, I sure as hell don’t know. It’s going to be a physical impossibility.”
Wallis was pinning her hair into its habitual glossy chignon. She paused in what she was doing. “What do you mean by ‘in the necessary time,’ Win?”
Win shrugged himself into his uniform jacket and began buttoning it up. “Before America declares itself to be at war. Haven’t you noticed how fast things are changing on the base? When you first came here there were only a handful of officers. Now there are fifty-eight officers and over four hundred enlisted men, with more arriving on every train.”
He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t forget we’re due at Brad and Fidelia Rainey’s this evening for a game of poker.”
At times like this Wallis could imagine them as a normal, happily married couple. They were moments she treasured.
As she walked him to the front door, he said, “By the way, word is Henry is being transferred to Washington to be executive officer of the USS North Dakota. If he is, Corinne will be going with him.”
When the door had closed behind him, Wallis leaned against it, her eyes closed.
If Corinne were to leave Pensacola, she would lose the best friend she had there. Worse, if war was declared, there was no telling where Win would be sent on active service. Wherever he was sent, what would then happen to her? Would she be expected to remain at Pensacola, or would the Navy expect her to return to her family home in Baltimore for the duration of the hostilities? If they did, she wouldn’t be able to do so.
Uncle Sol would most certainly not welcome her beneath his roof—nor did she want to be beneath it. Her Aunt Bessie was now in Washington, D.C., acting as paid companion to an elderly rich widow, and her mother, in order to be close to her, had moved into a small apartment nearby.
The uncertainty of her future made her feel sick with an anxiety that was all too familiar. It was how she had felt as a child when she had not known if she was going to be able to go to the same school as all her friends. The same crippling anxiety she had felt when her mother had left her alone in the house in the evening and she had lived in terror of her not returning. The anxiety she had lived with all her life of not knowing if Uncle Sol would fund her as, if her father had lived, he would have funded her. Nothing had ever been able
to be taken for granted: not the education that all her Warfield cousins had received without even thinking about it, not her and her mother having a roof over their heads; not her debutante year. Even her wedding had not been taken care of in the way most brides’ weddings were traditionally taken care of.
The knot in her stomach turned to real pain, and she wondered if she was developing an ulcer. It wouldn’t be surprising, considering the tension she lived with on a daily basis, never knowing when a harmless word or action would trigger Win off in a rage that would result in his physically hurting her.
She looked at her watch. On most afternoons she played bridge with other naval wives, but she wasn’t in the mood for bridge today. What she needed at the present moment was escapism—and her favorite method of finding it was going to the movies.
She walked back into the bedroom and picked up a jacket and her purse. The Isis Theater in Pensacola showed a different movie every week and had become one of her favorite places of retreat. A peanut vendor had his stall just outside the theater and, armed with a bag of hot peanuts, she would sometimes go there two and three times a week, even though it meant watching the same film over and over again.
Often she went with Fidelia Rainey, but as Fidelia was hosting the poker game that evening, Fidelia would be busy making food preparations—food always accompanied a Pensacola poker game, for it was generally only the men who played while the women grouped in another room, talking and nibbling at whatever delicacies had been prepared for them.
By the time Wallis left the bungalow that evening with Win, she had recovered her high spirits. The movie had been a Charlie Chaplin comedy and had immediately put her in a good humor. Poker was also her favorite way of spending an evening. When Win had taught her the game, he had taught her well, and she had a natural aptitude. It was now taken for granted by Pensacola’s regular poker players that if Win was playing, Wallis would be playing also, though not always at the same table.