The Lonely

by Paul Gallico

  Patches lifted her eyes to him, and there was a kind of a trembling at her lips. “Together, Jerry?”

  He took courage from the gentleness of her expression and the clear sincerity of her gaze. There was no anger or outrage in her face, and far back in his mind he heard an echo of what Lester Harrison had said. He continued.

  “We could go up to Scotland and sort of knock around. I’ve always wanted to see Scotland. Maybe pick up a couple of bikes and just ride around together.”

  There was as yet no hurt in Patches, but only a kind of yearning to be loved by Jerry, to realize the dreams that had been with her ever since she had known him, to make come true this companionship that had lived so vividly within her. She was but faintly aware of the shadow that lay across her thoughts. He had not said that he cared for her.

  Jerry reached over and took her hand and leaned his dark head close to hers, so that she could smell the clean youth and freshness of him. He said: “Don’t you want to, Patches? Gee, we could have a swell time together—nothing to worry about, go anywhere we liked.”

  She held his hand tightly, looking down now so that he would not see what was in her eyes, and whispered so that he hardly heard her under the crash of the music and the rising babel of the crowd: “That’s what I’m afraid of, Jerry. I do want to.”

  It was as though a great light went up in him. He had not dreamed that success could be so near. It was like coming home through hell with a ship full of holes and an engine shot away and you never thought you’d make it, and then all of a sudden there was the coast of England and you knew if you could just hold her up a little longer you’d see the familiar pattern of the aerodrome below, just one more effort and you’d be home . . .

  He said: “Why don’t we, Patches? What’s to stop us? Would you?”

  She was no longer afraid to look at him, to see the eagerness and pleading in his face, no longer afraid to look within herself. He was asking for ten days of her life, ten days of a lifetime that she would have given him devotedly. Patches had ceased to think. She had no plan, no scheme to tie him to her with her love; she neither thought nor saw beyond the immediate beauty of being with him by day and night. She whispered: “All right, Jerry. I will.”

  Home was the crippled ship, safe and secure. He breathed a sigh of relief and felt enormously grateful to Patches that she had made it so easy. It had happened almost the way Major Harrison had said—cold turkey.

  Looking into Patches’ eyes, he saw that they were swimming with tears, and they made him wonder. He guessed that maybe girls always cried at a moment like that, even if they were used to it, and his own sensitivity told him that Patches was not hardened. He might be the first with whom she had ever gone away. And he thought of Lester Harrison again and of Catharine, and he wished that he could blot both thoughts from his mind; for he knew what he must now do, and he did not wish to do it.

  It went against the grain, against everything he was and felt and had lived by in the past. And yet he was aware of the essential truth of the warning Major Harrison had given him, and likewise his conscience urged the need of demonstration of loyalty to Catharine. It was as though by hurting Patches he could ease his guilt for a deed about which Catharine would never know, but that might in the future rise up to haunt him. That ghost must now be laid while there was yet time, when he and Patches were still upon no more than the outer threshold of their adventure together.

  Jerry tried to think how Lester would say it. He even pictured the major sitting in his place, aggressively self-confident, swaggering a little, completely sure of himself and his attractions, coming directly to the point with regard to the terms of the trip. Why, the girl Lester had been dancing with was supposed to be a lady in her own right, the daughter of a lord. With a little mouse like Patches he’d make no bones about it.

  He gathered himself for the effort. For some reason he could not explain at the moment it was going to be more difficult even than asking her to go away with him. That had not been hard at all. It seemed just to have happened. He said: “Gee, Patches, you’re really a pretty wonderful kid. I’ll try to make it the best ten days anybody ever had . . .”

  “Oh, Jerry! It will be beautiful.”

  “Look, Patches. There’s . . . I think there’s something I ought to tell you . . .”

  “Tell me, Jerry.”

  “About our going away together, I mean . . .”

  She was alerted now and stared at him with her soft eyes wide with question. Jerry thought: “Oh, my God, it’s like hitting her! But it’s got to be done or we’ll both be sorry.” He tried to put on a lightness and command he could not feel.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve got a girl back home. You know how it is. We’re engaged. We’re going to be married when I go back.” He had a momentary impulse to go on and tell her more about Catharine and what she meant to him, but he decided against it. He waited for Patches to say something, but she kept silent and he had to go on.

  “I mean about us two—I like you a hell of a lot. There’s nobody I’d want to be with but you. But I mean after we get back—well, you understand, my tour’ll be up in a month or so and I’ll be going back home and . . .”

  Patches’ lips moved, but there was so much noise and clatter in the huge room all about them and on the dance floor that he had to bend his head to hear what she was saying.

  “I understand, Jerry.”

  The hurt was so deep that it was all she could do to keep her hands from clutching at her heart to ease the pain. It was not so much the shock of hearing of Jerry’s engagement. They all had girls back home. It was the cruelty with which he had closed the door and locked out her dreams that left her with the sense of utter desolation. She had always known that Jerry would go away in the end, but she had trusted him not to destroy the image of him she carried in her heart, to leave her, if nothing else, the illusion that he was hers.

  He was saying: “I thought I’d better tell you now,” and for a moment she thought of getting up and fleeing from the table so that she would no longer hear him, when he suddenly took both her hands in his and leaned across the table and said with surprising tenderness and deep sincerity: “Gee, Patches, I feel rotten. It’s all right with me if you want to change your mind.”

  Half he wished she would in order to punish him, and half he was desperately afraid that she might; and something of his desperation conveyed itself to her in the hard grip of his fingers and the little pull of his arms as though he were tugging at her heart.

  She said again softly: “It’s all right, Jerry. I understand,” and then added: “I shan’t change my mind. It will be beautiful. And when it’s over we’ll shake hands and say goodbye . . .”

  Jerry’s heart was so full that for a moment it threatened to choke him, but he managed to say: “Gee, Patches, you’re a soldier.”; and then he leaned forward gently and kissed her mouth for the first time.

  The roll of drums and the crashing of the first bars of the national anthems brought them to their feet. It was midnight and the dance was over. They stood side by side at attention, close together so that one could not see that their fingers were entwined and holding hard while The Star-Spangled Banner and God Save the King were played.

  When it was over, he raised his glass with the remainder of the Scotch in it and she lifted hers too. He said: “To Scotland . . . and us . . .” and she replied: “God bless . . .”

  Patches thought her heart would break.

  Jerry thumbed a jeep ride in to Kenwoulton Monday morning to meet Patches. They were picking up the London train to Birmingham and the north when it came through at eleven. He was early for his appointment and wandered the streets of the ugly, red-brick city looking into shops.

  As always, he was startled to find how used he had become to English ways and the English scene, the tall buses and the tiny cars, the long lines of tired-looking women queued up at butcher and fishmonger with their net or paper market-bags, the distinctive smell of coal smo
ke, the homely, friendly pubs placarding their particular brand of beer or ale, drably-clothed people endlessly riding past on bicycles, and the characteristic gaps where houses were missing in the heart of the shopping-district and where now stood the round, low water tanks as protection against any future fire blitz.

  He thought about his own village of Westbury—the broad shopping-street with the huge plate-glass windows, the big shiny cars lined up at the curb, the quiet tree-shaded side streets, the kids pouring out of the high school in the afternoon, the peaceful, lazy games of ball that would be going on on a summer’s day, like this one so far away in Kenwoulton, bright, warm, and shining. What a day to start this queer trip with an odd little girl he did not even know very well!

  How different everything was from home, almost as though he were playing a part in a dream, except that he was there standing at Hadsley Circle carrying his Valpack, his cap pushed to the back of his head, watching a white-cuffed bobby directing the stream of snorting double-decked red buses and military traffic. It might well be that home was the dream.

  He looked at his watch. It was time. He picked up his grip and walked the three streets to Bishop’s Lane, the narrow, grubby street consisting of low and lightless brick houses where Patches was quartered with her group of WAAFs.

  Jerry’s heart was beating hard with excitement. He pictured Patches’ small, shapeless figure, in her blue-grey uniform and jaunty cap, coming down the stairs, and wondered what he would say to her and how she would behave and whether she would detect how strange and awkward he felt.

  He pushed the button beneath her name—“Sgt P. Graeme, WAAF”—and went in. Immediately he heard her call from above: “Is that you, Jerry?” and when he answered, she said: “I’m ready,” and he heard a door close and her feet on the stairs.

  And then she came down the dark, grimy staircase carrying a small bag, and Jerry stared and had to look twice to recognize her. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a dark-blue silk blouse, high-heeled shoes, and silk stockings. She had her hair parted in the centre and coiled about her ears, and perched atop her head was a silly little hat made out of straw and artificial cornflowers.

  Jerry exclaimed: “Patches! You’re in civvies! You look wizard!”

  “Do you like me? I hoped you would. Oh, Jerry, it’s so wonderful to wear clothes again.”

  “Patches—I didn’t expect . . . I mean I’d forgotten you didn’t have to wear your uniform.”

  It wasn’t that it changed the contours of her queer little face or even made her pretty, but she had become a girl, something he had never been conscious of before. Robbed of the bulky stiffness of her uniform, her figure was young and slender; the gentle lift of her breasts showed beneath the silk of her blouse. Her legs moved with a new kind of freedom and rhythm; there was a pathetic slimness to her shoulders and a charm to the proportions of her head and the youth of the soft column of her neck.

  Jerry set down his bag and leaned over almost shyly and kissed her cheek. She lifted her hand to his face and held it there, and then they stood for a moment in the gloomy hall of the lodging-house looking at one another.

  In her mind Patches closed a door softly and paused with her hand upon the door of another. There was nothing left of sadness or hurt or struggle within her. All that had had to be faced she had fought with alone in the hours of the night past. Nothing was left but understanding love and generosity and the young, sweet hunger of her being.

  She looked down at Jerry’s wrist watch and said, as though she were reading from a page: “It began at thirty-one minutes past ten hours, the morning of June 18, in the year 1945 . . .”

  Jerry finished: “. . . when he took her in his arms, kissed her, and said: ‘All clear, baby—let’s go!’ ”

  Arm in arm, they went out into the street.

  They came to their first rest, the second night out, in a huge, grimy, smoke-blackened hotel over the railroad station in Glasgow, where they secured the only remaining room, a gloomy, high-ceilinged chamber in which the sad light from one begrimed window fell athwart the ugly maple washstand with bowl and pitcher.

  The height of the room, the huge bolstered bed big enough for four, the enormous wardrobe, made them feel overwhelmed like Lilliputians. The grey smudge of light that came from the drizzle without was depressing, but by this time they were both so exhausted it did not matter. Jerry was glad they had found some place where Patches could sleep . . .

  The maid who puttered about the room, trying with a touch here and a whisk there to bring it a little cheer, said: “ ’Tis no much for luiks, but ’tis quiet, and I ha’ nae doot ye’ll rest well.”

  The trip north had been a kind of half nightmare of overcrowded railway carriages, dirt, and bad food, and wearied even their young physiques; but it never strained their tempers or altered the patience and good humor of Jerry or the sweetness and mood of play and mischief that had come over Patches from the moment they had closed behind them the door of the house in Bishop’s Lane back in Kenwoulton.

  They had made the wretched journey, hand in hand, half in laughter, half, at times, in mock despair at ever getting anywhere, occupying eight inches of seat together in some filthy, third-class compartment, jammed to suffocation with squalling children, weary soldiers, and nerve-racked civilians, or standing up cramped and crowded in the packed train corridors when they could not get even a place to sit.

  Patches and Jerry trudged blacked-out Birmingham looking fruitlessly for a place to stay overnight, and returned despairing to the dark cavern of the railway station, a gloomy vault of steel and glass filled with steam and smoke and clangor and the endless shuffling feet of thousands of half-seen people, wandering like the lost souls at the approaches to hell, where dim yellow lights would pick up the badges of the regiments of England, or momentarily illumine G.I. or sailor, men and women of the Army and Navy, or drab families lugging heavy boxes and worn suitcases—the endless traffic of wartime England.

  There Jerry had had a sudden inspiration, and, inventing a general and a mission, he chivvied a fusty, wing-collared old clerk in the booking-office into parting with two tickets on the Glasgow sleeper, while Patches stood by in open-mouthed admiration at the beautiful lies Jerry was telling.

  When the train came they discovered that their tickets called for two bare shelves out of four in a third-class cabin complete with one piece of sheetless ticking, a thin blanket, and a bare pillow the size of a book and the same consistency. Also the compartment had two other occupants: a gabby little bagman from Glasgow, with a suitcaseful of apples and tomatoes that he insisted upon sharing with them, and a fat minor official of the Ministry of Information, who lay precariously upon his shelf and snored to wake the dead.

  Patches maintained that it was the booking-clerk’s revenge upon Jerry for the outrageous stories he had told, and dissuaded Jerry from getting off the train and having his life. The M.o.I. man woke up and informed Jerry he was lucky to get the space at all, and that they always booked four people into a third-class sleeper, and usually everybody got on capitally. Jerry was genuinely shocked, and denounced the system as immoral until Patches fell to giggling again and caught his eye, and he blushed and put her to bed on the lower shelf with his blouse under her head and chmbed on to the upper himself.

  He lay there in the darkness, listening to the clanking of the train, the occasional anguished shriek of the locomotive, and the incredible snoring of the M.o.I. official. It was a dreadful journey, for neither closed an eye, and the train pulled into Glasgow six hours late.

  And so they came to spend their first night alone together in the tall, bare bedroom of the grimy, awful railway hotel. Because they were in the toils of exhaustion when they reached the shabby room, there was no embarrassment between them at the loss of their privacy and the sudden exposure to each other, for of course the room had no bath attached, but only a cracked washstand in an alcove at one end.

  Somehow they managed, even though they were awkward and heav
y-handed with the need for sleep, but concerned only with seeking the warmth and the depths of the great, heavy, bolstered double bed, which at least looked as though it might yield a little comfort and rest.

  When Patches came to Jerry she was in a nightdress of washed-out flannel, and somehow she had managed to weave her hair into two dun-colored braids. She smelled of hotel soap and mouthwash and freshly ironed cloth—and young girl.

  At once, and with the simplicity born of her nature and the fatigue of the trip, she came close to him and pillowed her head on his breast with a sigh and a little, tired whimper. A moment later she relaxed her limbs, and her regular breathing told Jerry that she was asleep. He was hardly awake himself.

  The pungent odor of soft-coal smoke, pressed to earth by rain, filled the chamber, and the damp drizzly night was loud with the chuffing and snorting of switch engines from the near-by railway, the thunder and crash of shunting wagons, and the high, wailing shrieks of locomotive whistles. Jerry was sure he heard none of it, but he was to find later that never again would he be able to sniff the characteristic odor of train sheds or hear the clattering of couplings and the nostalgic wailing of engines in the night without thinking of Patches.

  They went from Balloch to Inversnaid up Loch Lomond by paddle-steamer, with their bicycles aboard.

  Here, on the broad, deep-blue surface of the lake, dotted with green islands, there was no war. There was not even an airplane anywhere overhead, and the graceful peak of Ben Lomond, freed from its usual mantle of mist, lifted to the summer sun and with its bold sweep seemed to raise their spirits up with it to the sky.

  The past was overwhelmed by the clear beauty of the scene, the sunlight sparkling on the lake and shining from the green-and-purple hills, the clean, sweet air. Places from which they had come, things that had happened to them, had no existence. This was the world, serene and lovely, and they its sole inhabitants.

  They stood at the railing, drinking in the air and the beauty, and Terry raised up his arms and said: “God! I want to holler!”