Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2)

by Barbara Bretton

  An alarm went off in Nancy’s chest as she tried to remain cool and collected. “What do you mean?”

  Cathy shifted in her chair, visibly uncomfortable. “He’s been a little... well, Nance, he’s been pretty short-tempered lately. Argumentative almost. He and Johnny had a shouting match last week about some illegible order numbers. Gerry almost dared John to fire him.”

  She could barely control the trembling of her hands. The thought of Gerry’s being unemployed struck terror in her heart. “You know Johnny,” she said in what she hoped was a light and breezy tone. “He’s a little hotheaded, isn’t he?”

  Cathy didn’t rise to the bait and that worried Nancy all the more. “Yes, he is, but that’s not the trouble, Nance.” She leaned forward and rested her hand on her sister’s forearm. “Is something wrong, honey? You can tell me.”

  “Good Lord, you sound just like Mom.” She turned toward the sink and busied herself rinsing out a juice glass. “Nothing’s wrong. We couldn’t be happier.” Who wouldn’t be happy in a such a wonderful house? You’d have to be greedy to want anything more from life, wouldn’t you?

  Cathy rose from her chair and stood behind Nancy. “I’m here if you need me,” she said, voice soft. “All you have to do is call.”

  “I know,” said Nancy, “but everything’s fine. You don’t have to worry about us.”

  They chatted as Nancy formed the hamburger patties and wrapped them in waxed paper for later on. Cathy picked up the baby and followed Nancy out into the small backyard where Linda and Billy were playing hide-and-seek with little Kathy as “it.” Gerry had built a brick barbecue near the end of the cement patio and it was Nancy’s job to make certain the charcoal briquettes were neatly arranged and ready for him to start cooking when he got home.

  “An awful lot of trouble to make hamburgers, isn’t it?” Cathy observed as Nancy arranged the little squares of black charcoal. “Seems to me it would be easier to light the oven and use the broiler.”

  “They taste better this way,” Nancy said, her voice tight. “They have cookouts in California all the time.” She’d read all about it in last week’s Look magazine. They’d said Dinah Shore and George Montgomery had the fanciest cookouts in town.

  Cathy glanced up at the overcast sky. “It doesn’t rain in California.”

  “Oh, no!” Nancy looked up at the gathering clouds. “It wouldn’t dare!”

  “We can cook inside,” Cathy reminded her again.

  “I promised you a barbecue and you’re going to have a barbecue.”

  “Is this the why-you-should-move-to-the-suburbs treatment you’re giving me?”

  Nancy grinned. “I thought I was being subtle.”

  Cathy’s laughter rang out through the small backyard. “Nancy, if there’s anything you aren’t, it’s subtle.”

  “Just wait until your second baby comes,” said Nancy. “You won’t have time for subtlety, either.”

  They settled into conversation about babies and childbirth, which came as an enormous relief to Nancy. She’d known where Cathy was heading before, with all those questions. Given the least bit of encouragement, her sister would raise Gerry’s salary and shorten his hours and generally embarrass the daylights out of him. There were definite drawbacks to having your husband work for your family, especially with a husband as pigheaded as Gerry. Why, he hadn’t even wanted to buy a house in Levittown, and only because Wilson Manufacturing had been an important contractor for the Levitt firm.

  But Gerry had finally given in. He took the job with Wilson and then he bought their house on Robin Hood Lane. And like thousands of other young husbands on Long Island, he settled into the life of the suburban commuter—a brand-new phenomenon.

  She cast a sidelong glance at her sister, who was cradling the baby in her arms and whispering advice only an aunt could give. Maybe Cathy didn’t realize it, but the world was changing. Not everybody thought the city was the best place to raise a family. Kids needed sunshine and fresh air and lots of room to grow. Cathy might not want that for her Billy, but Nancy would settle for nothing less for her girls.

  * * *

  Furrawn.

  Jane couldn’t remember where she’d learned the Welsh word, but its meaning had never left her. Talk leading to intimacy. She hadn’t understood everything that implied until now. Of all the weapons in the arsenal of the war between the sexes, was there anything more potent than conversation?

  They’d finished their respective stories on her uncle’s weathered old green typewriter, then filed them with their respective bureaus. Sorry, Leo, she thought as she handed in her four pages of commentary. Suddenly this doesn’t seem so important any longer. There was a lull in the festivities and the celebrants swarmed up and down the byways of London, searching for food and drink and good cheer.

  Once again she and Mac found themselves in the romantic pub where they had spent the earlier part of the afternoon. This time, however, the pub was crowded with revelers.

  “It’s been hours,” she said, glancing at Mac’s watch. “The queen will be addressing the Empire in forty-five minutes.”

  Mac, who was tracing the curve of her jaw with a fingertip, grinned. “What queen?”

  ‘Have you no appreciation for history, Mac?” she countered. “File your story and forget it—is that your motto?” She tapped him playfully on the wrist.

  “Is this how you’re going to be after we’re married?”

  She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her raincoat, which had been draped over the back of her chair. “It hasn’t been determined if we’ll indeed get married, Mac.”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” He drew her up and into his embrace. “That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about all this time.”

  She couldn’t argue with him. Although the word “marriage” hadn’t come up again as they’d sat in the pub, it had been clear it was the subtext of every sentence they uttered. Marriage. Future. Love. Shadows behind shadows, the real conversation beneath shifted and deepened with each minute that passed.

  He backed her up against the table, bodies closer than a wiser woman would have allowed. Even through the layers of clothing, the heat was undeniable. “We’ve had our first date,” he said, his voice rough and sweet in her ear. “I walked you home. I met your folks. We’re on your front porch.”

  She’d seen enough American films to know exactly what he was leading up to. “I should go in,” she said, playing along. “My father will have my head on a platter if I’m not upstairs before ten.”

  She lifted her chin. He ducked his head. The vast difference in their heights made things a trifle inconvenient, but American men turned out to be as ingenious as rumored. She smelled the faint spicy aroma of his shaving soap, the warm scent of desire, the dark essence of ale as he came closer. The faint scar on his cheek begged for the touch of her mouth. Desire rose inside her. She could almost taste him, feel the texture of his lips and tongue, hear the slow rush as their breaths mingled.

  Like the heroine in Sleeping Beauty she came alive at the touch of his mouth on hers. His kiss was hungry, possessive. The kiss of a man claiming what already belonged to him in thought and word and intent. It left her breathless and aching for more.

  “I think it’s time for our second date,” she whispered as they moved apart once again.

  It was his turn to look at his watch. “You’re right.” He kissed her quick and hard, then reached for his battered trench coat. “And in an hour it will be time for our third.”

  She nodded. Somehow it all seemed perfectly logical in a dotty kind of way. It was a day of magic and splendor, a day when anything at all could happen and probably would. They stepped out of the pub and instantly found themselves swept up in a throng of revelers on their way to Buckingham Palace to see the queen. Confetti dotted Whitehall Street, and red and blue streamers drifted lazily along the rainswept sidewalks.

  London had never looked more beautiful to her than it did as she darted up a side st
reet, her hand tucked securely in Mac’s strong one, and showed him a shortcut to the palace. Suddenly Mac came to a stop.

  “Why are we going to the palace?” he asked.

  “Because—” She stopped. “I don’t exactly know.”

  “The speech will be on the radio, won’t it?”

  She nodded. “She certainly won’t make the broadcast from the balcony.”

  “I don’t think she’d miss us, do you?”

  “Not one bit.”

  “We could grab some supper then catch the fireworks over the Thames.”

  “I’d love that.”

  “Then we can talk about the future.”

  She met his eyes. “I’d love that even more.”

  He pulled her close. She wondered how she’d lived all these years without the feel of his strong arms around her.

  But, more importantly, she wondered how she would live the years yet to come without him.

  * * *

  The hamburgers were cooked to perfection. The potato salad was a success. The four children at the table didn’t fight, throw up, or make rude noises and bounce potato chips off the dog’s nose. The adults made adult conversation. Any other night Nancy would have been thrilled to have hosted such a wonderful dinner party.

  Tonight she couldn’t wait to see it end.

  When the Danzas said good-night and climbed into their Oldsmobile 88 to head back into the city, Nancy breathed a sigh of relief and hurried back into the den to watch the film of the coronation. The girls were already in bed, and Gerry, exhausted after a long day at work, was sleeping behind his copy of the Lang Island Press. Even their dog, Bingo, snored peacefully in his basket near the fireplace.

  She was alone with the television, a nickel bottle of Coca-Cola and Queen Elizabeth II. Curled up on the sofa in her favorite blue chenille bathrobe, she could mingle with aristocrats and dance with princes and never leave home. How had she ever lived before television? Thanks to her nine-inch window on the world, she could invite Clark Gable and Cary Grant into her den and hobnob with royalty half a world away. It was a miracle, that’s what it was. An absolute miracle. Why her parents were dragging their heels about the new invention was beyond Nancy. Who needed the drone of the radio when you could watch history unfold right there in your own house?

  Television brought magic into your life. To Nancy it seemed anything was possible when she turned on the set and watched other people’s dreams come true in front of her eyes. Her own dreams of going places and seeing things, of meeting new people and hearing new voices, had disappeared along the way. There were times when she looked at Gerry asleep in his armchair and wondered what their lives would have been like if they’d cast their fates to the wind and hit the road together.

  But there hadn’t been time for spontaneity. They’d married right after the war had ended and, as night follows day, three little girls had appeared on the scene with dreams of their own. Dreams that Nancy and Gerry would move heaven and earth to fulfill.

  Not that she regretted any of their decisions, but she was only human, and the sameness of their days sometimes felt like a hundred-pound weight across her shoulders. She could only imagine how it felt to Gerry, knowing that every weekday morning—stretching far into the unimaginable future—he’d board the train into the city and go to work for his wife’s sister.

  What had happened to their dreams of independence? To their plans to see the world before they grew too old and gray to care if they were in Levittown or London? There was a time when they had looked with horror at her parents and the Weavers and others like them. “Not for us,” they had said fervently, as only the very young dared. “We’ll be different.”

  She sighed and switched off the reading lamp, so that the room was bathed in the gray glow from the television. It was impossible to be different in a world that prized sameness. The camera swept over the faces in the London crowd, pretty Englishwomen with complexions like summer roses, dapper Englishmen with smiles like Cary Grant. Nancy was certain the lives they led were far more exciting than her own perfectly average existence.

  “And there she is now,” said the announcer on channel two. “The new monarch and her family are on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, waving as the crowd below screams ‘Long live the Queen!’”

  Nancy raised her bottle of Coke in salute and settled down to enjoy the spectacle while her family slept.

  * * *

  The ground was soggy, the air was damp and chill, but neither Mac nor Jane noticed. Love, it seemed, provided protection from the elements.

  “Our sixth date,” said Mac, toasting her with champagne he’d managed to procure from a friend at the bureau.

  “Our seventh,” said Jane, laughing softly as they linked arms and sipped from each other’s paper cup.

  “Not that you’re counting.”

  “Of course not,” she said, her tone oh so prim and proper despite the fact she had lost track of time along the way. One thing she hadn’t lost track of was the way each faux date was ended with a kiss. Lingering. Sweet. Passionate. Truth was, she could scarcely remember anything about the coronation or the crowds or the pageantry of the day. Mac’s kisses had erased all else from her memory.

  “We’re going to have a great life, Janie,” he said, wiping a drop of champagne from the corner of her lip with his index finger. “I promise you.”

  His touch sent spirals of sensation rocketing through her body like the golden fireworks exploding in the night sky. “Don’t make promises,” she whispered. Not when you’ll be gone come morning.

  “We can work things out, Janie. You just have to trust me.”

  “It’s impossible,” she said forlornly. “We’ve known each other only twelve hours. How can we pledge our lives on such short acquaintance?”

  He said nothing. What on earth could he say? Any rational being would know the situation was daft, that tossing in your lot with a total stranger, albeit one with beautiful green eyes, was a fool’s errand.

  But then he kissed her and the fireworks in the sky seemed to go off inside her heart.

  They could write letters, keep the transatlantic phone lines humming as they pledged their love, but the one thing they couldn’t do was guarantee they’d have a second chance. The slow contemplative world she’d grown up in was gone, vanished as surely as the hoop skirt. She had nothing and no one to call her own. Nobody who cared, really cared, if she was lonely or sad or frightened that life was passing her by.

  If she let Mac Weaver sail away tomorrow afternoon alone, she’d be losing the best thing that had ever happened to her. The world didn’t hold still simply because you wanted it to. Magic happened once in a lifetime, but it required proximity to take root. Long-distance magic didn’t stand much of a chance, not even in this age of speed.

  Jane understood the way life really was; good intentions and pretty promises weren’t enough to ensure a happy ending. Sometimes you had to close your eyes and jump right in and pray you remembered how to swim against the tide.

  “Yes,” she said. The word shimmered in the air before them like a silver rocket.

  Mac’s blood pounded in his ear. “Say it again.”

  She turned slightly and touched his cheek with her hand. “Yes.”

  His mind went blank. No words. No thoughts. Nothing but a rush of pure happiness so intense he felt as if the fireworks were going off inside his chest.

  “You’ll marry me?”

  “If you still want me.”

  “We leave tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  “Your job... your flat... your family.”

  “I’ll call Leo... I live in a boarding house... you know I have no other family save Nigel.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She took his hand and placed it against her chest. He marveled at the calm and steady beat of her heart. “Never more so, Mac.”

  “It’ll work,” he said, above the thunder of fireworks illuminating the darkness. “We’ll make it w
ork.”

  And although a wiser woman might have questioned how, Jane Townsend only nodded and gave herself over to her future husband’s kiss.

  Chapter Four

  Maybe if they’d had time to think about it, Mac and Jane might not have gone ahead with the wedding. Maybe if they’d had just one moment to catch their collective breath, they might have realized what a crazy, impetuous, downright foolhardy venture they were about to embark upon, and have parted friends. Anything at all would have done it: trouble at the registry office; a problem with the rail passage from London to Southampton; even an objection from the complacent Uncle Nigel or the vociferous Leo Donnelly might have been enough to stop the forward motion of their plans. But, as fate would have it, everything fell into place without so much as a fare-thee-well, and at a few minutes before eleven on the morning of June 4, 1953, Jane Margaret Townsend and MacKenzie Weaver became man and wife in St. Julian’s Church on Winkle Street.

  “Go with God,” said the priest with his incongruous French accent. “May you have many years and many children.”

  Jane stared down at her left hand. Mac’s school ring, Columbia University 1939, dwarfed her middle finger up to the knuckle. The cold metal was a strange sensation against her skin, and she knew she would have to take care her makeshift wedding band didn’t slip off.

  The priest nudged Mac with a smile. “Kiss the bride, lad. She’s a pretty one.”

  The word “children” had done something to Mac, something words like “forever” and “in sickness and in health” hadn’t. This was his wife, not his girlfriend. This was a step into the future, not an easy way to keep the past at bay. He looked at the tiny dark-haired woman he’d taken to wife and felt stark terror. She looked so delicate in her pale blue suit with the white orchid pinned to her left shoulder. They’d had time to race to Covent Garden at dawn before they caught their train and, for a price, he’d gotten a Cockney flower vendor to hand over the choicest bloom.

  Jane had blushed the color of a pale pink tea rose, and he’d been flooded with the desire to sweep her into his arms and protect her from dangers both real and imagined.