by Paul Gallico
He was in the habit of talking his heart out to Sam Bognano, and night after night the two had exchanged their thoughts and problems and simple philosophies, their fears and doubts, their feelings for their girls and their plans for the future. But somehow Jerry found that he could not speak of the thought that always came uppermost in his mind—to take Patches away with him for his rest leave.
It was the idea that was exciting rather than Patches. She came to mind because she would fit so well. And with a girl as plain and quiet as Patches it wouldn’t even be cheating on Catharine. It would be an episode of the war to be forgotten with all the rest of the sights and sounds and fears and sorrows to be left behind when the war was over.
It wasn’t as though he wanted to go away with someone who was glamorous or beautiful or even important—in a way, to rival Catharine. In the moral code he had acquired by osmosis, as it were, back home, this would have been a gross disloyalty. To feel about anyone else as he felt about Catharine Quentin was an utter impossibility. They were promised, and his profound and enormous gratitude to her for loving him acted as a constant check upon his relations with other girls he met.
Their two families, his and hers, lived within a half a block of each other on quiet and exclusive Severn Avenue in Westlake Park, near Westbury, Long Island. They were only children—he and Catharine—and their mothers, Helen Wright and Millicent Quentin, had been girls together in St Louis. When the Quentins had moved east shortly after Catharine was born, it had been Helen who had persuaded them to settle close by.
They were good, honest people, but, above all, they were nice people of the upper middle class, who, if they lived by formula, at least selected one that had the merit of wide acceptance. Jerry had not an iota of snob in him, but still he was aware of a wonderful rightness about his family and the Quentins that was lacking in others. There was a kind of harmony about their houses. It was a part of the formula.
Jerry’s father, Harman Wright, was president of the Westbury Farmers Bank and chairman of the Real Estate Board, and at fifty-five looked young enough to be taken for Jerry’s older brother. He played fast tennis, low-handicap golf, rode horseback, loved his wife, his son, and his business, and at all times and under all circumstances behaved like a gentleman.
Since Jerry could remember, theirs had been a suburban home of easy-going luxury. Since money was the commodity in which Harman Wright dealt, as well as possessing it from both sides of the family, they were hampered neither by any lack of it nor any necessity for displaying it. Its presence was something taken for granted with no particular merit attached to it. It was a family that had managed to keep its youth and good manners. Helen Wright could always be counted upon to handle the superficial impeccably.
She was a handsome matron who had kept her looks and figure for her husband and son as a part of the formula. She regulated their lives pleasantly. Her social position in the community occupied a good deal of her time, but not to the exclusion of her family. Thus the wheels, and all the wheels within the wheels, of her life appeared to run faultlessly. In her bloodstream were the germs of a minor dynast and geneticist. She believed that if the right people would just always marry the right people, the world must in the end benefit thereby.
The Quentins were much like them. Fred Quentin, Catharine’s father, was a member of a law firm handling a good deal of the business of the Long Island Railroad. He was prosperous, and he and Harman Wright had become devoted friends, golf-, bridge-, and hunting-partners. They belonged to the same town and country clubs, shared a shooting-lodge in the Carolinas, thought and voted the same way politically. They worked hard and played hard, but always, as far as could be observed, clean and according to the rules and traditions, which had a meaning for them. They were both chaps who went all out for what they were after, whether it was a client, a deal, a golf match, or a bird. They knew both how to win, and how, if need be, to lose. It was in this atmosphere that Jerry was brought up and by observation and example acquired his patterns of behavior.
He was well aware of how near to his mother’s heart lay his forthcoming marriage to Catharine; it seemed as if he had always been aware of it even though he never had the feeling that they were being unduly thrown together. The close friendship of their parents was manifest to both of them, and yet, oddly enough, it affected neither and did not interfere with the course of their romance or their attraction to each other. And perhaps it was in another sense not at all odd, since the two youngsters likewise followed the formula of rightness.
They grew up normally together, went through the phases of puppy love, then girl-hating and boy-hating, drifted apart, renewed interest, saw each other almost daily, and slowly formed the habits and ties that were to bind them together forever in the same desirable pattern. For in addition to being the clean-cut, handsome, appetizing youngsters they were, each saw in the other a continuation of the security they had enjoyed all their lives, a reflection of the best of their own environment and caste.
But not under any circumstances was Jerry able to think of, or visualize even remotely, such a thing as a little going-away together, a holiday adventure with Catharine even had she been available. In these fantasies she played no part. He was incapable of visualizing her at his side by day or by night on the forthcoming leave in the north country. He had for that matter not even a clear picture of what love between them would be like when they were married, the how and the when of their physical union, and on what level it would be conducted. A mother-goddess figure could yield in grace and pity, could tolerate and bestow, but never share. Something like this went through his mind when he thought of it at all, and even filled him vaguely with apprehension.
But he could think of Patches and be stirred and even entertain the liveliest fantasy of how Patches would look when he awoke and contemplated her sleeping beside him in the morning because . . . He couldn’t find the answer to the “because.” It was strange, because Patches was neither beautiful nor sexy-looking according to Air Force standards. She would never be pinned up over a foodlocker. If it was looks and that thing you were after, you would never give her a second glance.
Jerry had met Patches several months ago at one of the regular Saturday-night dances. She had come over from Kenwoulton with a group of WAAF radar technicians attached to operational headquarters of a Spitfire base not far from the town. Her name was Patrice Graeme. She had been in the WAAF four years. Her father was a commander in the Royal Navy and was at sea. Her mother and grandmother had been killed in the south of England when a flying bomb had wiped out their home.
She was, as Jerry saw her, a quiet, plain girl, small, with a pale, oval face distinguished physically only by the fine texture and coloring of the skin and large greyish eyes reflecting blue, sometimes green-and-hazel, lights, and marked by straight, well-defined brows that were rather too heavy for the proportions of a small nose, the end of which she could wiggle like that of a rabbit, and did when she encountered a thought or an idea she found particularly exciting.
She had straight, light-brown hair, which she wore coiled at the back of her neck so as not to interfere with the Royal Air Force cap perched on the side of her head, and a round firm chin, softened by a gentle and sweetly formed mouth. It was the friendliness and softness of her mouth and the curiously eager expression that lay about it, whether her lips were parted with inner excitement or pressed together in silent thought, that really made Jerry look at her a second time and want to dance with her when she sailed by on the arm of a brother officer.
The expression on her face was as though there was always something delicious and secret that she knew, as though she possessed a limitless storehouse of pleasant memories upon which to draw. And indeed there were many—the secrets of a remembered and cherished childhood—recollections of rose gardens and hedge mazes, of kindly Nannies and adventures in enchanted woods in the springtime, or evenings when the sky reflected gold and rose in a quiet stream, childhood toys, a golliwog, an
d a calico cat who slept with her, and a live ginger kitten with whom she held endless conversation.
When she was a child and learning to talk she had been unable to say her name, Patrice. It had come out “Patches,” and Patches she had remained. She was by nature warm, sunny, and particularly kind, as people are who have had a lovely childhood. Too, she was full of mischief and suppressed fun, but it stayed suppressed because for so long there had been no release. The bitter war had cast its shadow over her, and she had retired to her inner life, where she could dwell undisturbed.
Jerry liked her silences and her presence because they were soothing. The thing was, with a little mouse like that who wasn’t either pretty or popular, you didn’t have to try to be entertaining. She was there when you wanted her, and when you didn’t, she would retire to her own world and you could even amuse yourself watching the inner lights that would suddenly illuminate her eyes or the odd, surprised little movements at the corners of her mouth. He sometimes felt as though he would like to know what was going on in that mind hidden away beneath the simple, artless features and the straight, soft, brown hair, but he was never sufficiently interested in her to pursue the idea. She helped marvellously to pass the time until he should return home.
They took to meeting outside the airbase sometimes, over in Kenwoulton, where she lived. He could call her up when a mission was scrubbed, and they would go to the local cinema together or sit in a pub and drink beer and watch the dart players. She was someone to talk to about home and Westbury and flying, though he did not mention Catharine, purely because he had been bred as a gentleman.
Or, as indicated before, they could just sit and not talk at all for long periods, and yet when he left her he would feel warmed and refreshed, just as though they had talked. He was not aware that little, quiet inner communications between them had taken place—a glance, a cocking of an eyebrow, just the slightest touch off centre, the whispers of smiles or half-begun expressions that formed about her mouth.
Jerry was also not in the slightest aware that Patches was in love with him and that more and more when they were together she wove her dreams about him, that when she went back in her thoughts to the enchanted woods of her childhood, she met him there, that they went picnicking together on the banks of the gold and silver river—he and she and the ginger cat—and that more and more, wherever she went in her gentle mind to escape from the drab and dreadful realities that beset her, there was Jerry with his black hair and deep-blue eyes and wide smile—Jerry as child, as boy, and Jerry too as man.
Lying awake on his cot in the darkness listening to the sound of Sam Bognano’s breathing, Jerry wrestled with his thoughts. He wished to God he had never encountered Lester Harrison at the bar that night, had never thought of going away with Patches. Maybe Sam or Lester could put a deal like that up to a girl cold turkey, but he knew it went against everything he had ever learned. If it were some tramp who was getting her few quid for the night—hell, those girls knew what they were up against. You made the deal and that was all there was to it. But Patches was different. She was a soldier and a friend. Maybe she even came from a fine family, like his own at home.
And suddenly in the darkness he found himself asking what, after all, did he really know about Patches? Maybe it was true what Lester Harrison had said about girls here being different from back home. Maybe he was just being a dumb kid and missing a lot of fun. A guy had to cut that out and grow up some time. Those quiet girls often were just the ones. Maybe Patches had had a lot of fellows.
And he thought then of Patches with other men, and the thought brought renewed desire in him and the determination to ask her next Saturday night when they would be together at the dance. He wondered why he had tortured himself so much with worrying about how she might react, since she didn’t mean a damned thing to him one way or another. He did not realize that not until he had cheapened her in his thoughts and placed her a cut above the level of the Piccadilly Commandos in London had he been able to make the decision.
The Saturday-night dance at the officers’ club was the usual feverish mixture of noise and heat, sound and color, high-pitched chatter of English girls, the thumping, squawking band all but drowned in the jumble of laughter, voices, and stomping feet. Pilots, navigators, and bombardiers, shavetails and colonels in their smart battle jackets with their rows of colored ribbons at the left breast, danced or paraded with blue-clad Wrens, their neat white blouses and black ties setting off their pink cheeks, or husky Land Army girls in green jerseys, girls from the town, fresh from the factories, girls in evening dress, WAAF’s in blue-grey, ATS’s in khaki—or jostled at the bar in the rush to get at the Scotch before it ran out.
High spirits, high speed, and high pressure ruled the night, for the affair ended at twelve and the boys had to dance fast, drink faster, and love quickly. Already dewy-eyed couples were petting in corners and the dancers on the floor clutched each other more closely, matching the rising tempo of the night. So little time . . .
Jerry and Patches had danced several dances when in the middle of one he suddenly stopped and said: “Let’s sit and talk, Patches.”
She smiled her fleeting, shadowy smile at him and said: “Okay, Jerry,” as he had taught her, “I’d like that . . .”
They went to their little table for two beneath the picture of the familiar oil works, and Jerry worked his way to the bar and wangled two double Scotches just as the last of the supplies gave out. He returned triumphantly with the two glasses and said: “This is it, Patches. From here on it’s de-icing fluid. Cheers!” and he raised his glass.
Patches said: “God bless!” and raised hers and took a small sip to make it last longer. She drank because the whisky was a food and helped to heal the aches of physical weariness that was a daily part of living under the war. She wondered what it would be like when she went on leave, to be able to lie abed as long as she wanted, and where she would go. She had an aunt who lived in Norfolk, which was well out of range of the V-bombs, but she remembered, her aunt had made a bad marriage and it was not a happy household. More than anything she craved warmth and tenderness and a few of the little luxuries and amenities of living that had been denied her for so long.
Jerry watched Patches and thought how clean-looking she was, fresh and scrubbed and sexlessly appetizing, with yet an incongruous, coquettish touch of red on her young lips. She probably had the stub of one hoarded lipstick left, and used it only on the nights of the dances or when they had a date together in town.
Now that he was with her again he was aware that there was about her an aura of innocence that made impossible the thoughts he had had of her the night before. For if she was a little nobody, a girl he had met casually through the war, who had helped him to pass the time, yet she was also a person with dignity and some unfathomed inner life of her own, which stood as a barrier between him and the use he wished to make of her.
Major Harrison danced by with a tall red-haired beauty in his arms. Instead of holding her at the waist, his fingers were at the back of her neck, caressing gently, and she was looking up at him through eyes half closed. Over her shoulder, the major dropped a wink at Jerry as though to say: “You see, there’s nothing to it.”
In that moment Jerry would have given everything he possessed or hoped to possess to be like Lester Harrison, to escape from himself into manhood. And yet never had he been more aware of the gap that existed between him and older men.
He drank off half his whisky and set the glass down with the sharp click and sigh, which startled Patches out of her thoughts.
Jerry said to her: “What were you thinking of, Patches?”
“I was wondering. I’m going off for ten days’ leave on Monday. I’ve wanted it so much, and now that it’s come, I’m almost afraid of it.” A look of defiant determination came into her eyes, and she said: “I shan’t go to my aunt’s in Norfolk, and that’s final.”
Her own sudden vehemence surprised her, and she added: “Oh, I didn�
�t mean to say it just that way, but I’ve made up my mind. She’s a disappointed woman who quarrels with her husband.”
Jerry said: “I just found out I’m going on leave too. I’ve been grounded by the Flight Surgeon.”
Patches gave a little, soft cry: “Oh, Jerry!” and involuntarily placed her small hand on his arm. “It isn’t anything serious . . . ? You haven’t been hurt, have you?”
Jerry grinned and said: “Oh sure! Look—I’m a nervous wreck,” and he picked up his glass, his hand shaking with mock nerves.
Patches smiled with relief and said: “Isn’t it silly?” but her eyes remained on him, searching and harboring little shadows of alarm. Jerry felt the warmth and concern in them and the friendly sympathy that flowed from her. And the determination to speak what was on his mind came suddenly from a genuine desire to be with her in the coming days, to have her with him, rather than his consideration of it as a romantic adventure.
He turned to her and said earnestly: “Patches . . .”
“Yes, Jerry?”
“Don’t you think . . . I mean isn’t it funny that we should both get leave at the same time?”
Patches’ eyes were on him questioningly. “I suppose so, Jerry. I hadn’t thought of it.” But she was thinking of it then, at once, and her eyes dropped from his, and the thoughts stirred her so that she did not dare to look at him because she loved him so dearly.
He said, fumbling, but carried onward by his sincerity: “I mean it’s almost as though it had happened on purpose—you not knowing where to go, and me being grounded and given rest leave.”
She did not move or look up. Only her fingers stirred restlessly about her glass. She kept her eyes hidden.
“Patches . . . Why couldn’t we go off together? Wouldn’t it be sort of swell if we could go away and see places with one another?”