Brave Hearts

by Carolyn Hart

  “Catharine.”

  It was a faint call, filtered through the mound of rubble that covered her.

  “Catharine!”

  Tears burned her eyes. From somewhere above her, Jack called her name.

  “Careful there, careful! The whole bloody mess’ll go down if you pull on that,” the rescue worker shouted.

  His mate yelled, “There’s somebody down there. I heard a cry.”

  The ARP workers wore rubber boots and thick padded gloves. One of them held a blue-shaded lamp.

  The stocky man with the rough voice repeated, “I heard her. Right about here.” He began to shift the debris. “Come on, lads.”

  Jack crouched at the edge of the sidewalk. He strained to see through the dark in the dim pool of light from the lamp.

  Then a cry went up. “Here’s one, but she’s gone. Give me a hand, will you?”

  Jack crouched, and his chest ached. One of the workers gave a heave. A mound of debris moved, and the worker began to tug. He and a second man clambered awkwardly over the heaped rubble, carrying a sagging, still form. When they got to the sidewalk and gently laid her down, Jack was there. He bent down and saw a dark sweep of hair before he realized the hair was dark with soot and grime, but a loose tendril was blond. It wasn’t Catharine.

  The rescue workers were turning away. Jack called after them. “There’s another woman down there.”

  “We’re still looking, mate.”

  Jack followed and waited at the edge of the broken-up masonry.

  Twenty minutes. Thirty. An hour. Jack waited, unmoving. He’d watched before as rescue parties scrambled among shattered houses, trying to find someone alive, anyone alive. Sometimes, everyone survived. Sometimes, no one. Death might strike at the head of the table, bypass the foot. There was no rhyme or reason in a bombing. So he knew there was hope. And one of the rescuers said a woman had called out. He didn’t look again at the still form on the sidewalk. Please, God, let Catharine live. He wished he could help dig, but he knew he must wait as thousands of Londoners waited this night to learn whether the answer was life or death. Let her be alive, he prayed. At last he understood the heartbreak of war.

  Tomorrow men and women like him would file stories—stories of the night that fire and death rampaged across the West End. Correspondents would describe the bomb destruction.

  He knotted his hands in tight, hard fists and waited.

  Dust cascaded down into her face, clogged her nose and throat. Catharine twisted her head. “Don’t.” She coughed. “Please, I’m choking.”

  “Miss.” The voice was deep and rough. “You just hold quiet now. We’ll have you out as quick as we can. You hold quiet.” Then he shouted to the others, “I’ve found one alive. Get me a rope.”

  The rubble shook and settled. More dust swirled around her, but she held her breath. Then the beam that trapped her began to move. There were grunts of exertion and calls of encouragement. The beam lifted, and she was free. Gloved hands gripped her arms; a dim blue light shone in her face.

  “Are you hurt, miss?”

  Cautiously, she moved. Her head ached from the force of the concussion, her back was stiff, but she was lucky this night.

  “Careful, miss. We can get a stretcher.”

  “No.” Her voice was hoarsened by the dust. “No, I’m all right. The beam protected me.”

  The man picked her up as easily as he might have lifted a child and mounted the rubble. “She’s all right,” he called out.

  “Catharine?” Jack’s voice carried across the mound of debris.

  “Yes.”

  Jack took her in his arms when the man gently swung her to her feet on the sidewalk. They didn’t speak, but Jack held her. Catharine felt strength flowing back into her.

  Then the ambulance attendant brought a cup of hot tea. Catharine took it and turned to face the warden, who wanted information about the others in the house. He also needed her to identify Priscilla’s body.

  Jack held her arm, and they walked to the covered stretcher at the curbside. The warden pulled down the cover and flashed on the pale blue light.

  Priscilla’s face was pale and lifeless. Only a few hours ago, they’d talked and laughed . . .

  “Priscilla Redmond,” Catharine said quietly. “She’s . . . she was with the War Relief Society.”

  Jack waited with Catharine while they dug out Fontaine and his wife and the two maids.

  “All gone?” Catharine asked.

  The warden nodded.

  “I must call Spencer,” Catharine said wearily.

  A neighbor’s son spoke up. “The phones are all down.”

  “Where is he?” Jack asked.

  “At the embassy.” She spoke in a monotone.

  “We’ve got to get you to shelter,” Jack said quickly.

  The neighbor’s son stepped forward. “My mother sent me to offer our house. We’re taking in several people tonight from the houses that were hit.”

  “That’s very kind.” Catharine wavered unsteadily on her feet. Suddenly, she wanted so much to lie down, to close her eyes and try not to remember. She felt leaden and sick.

  Jack slipped an arm around her shoulders and supported her as they walked slowly down the street, away from the wreckage. They didn’t talk, and she was grateful. He was glad she lived. She knew that. Jack didn’t know Priscilla, the Fontaines, or the two middle-aged maids, but he understood that words couldn’t help.

  It was enough that he was there and she felt his warmth.

  When they reached the neighbor’s, he gave her shoulders a hard squeeze. “I’ll call the embassy from my office. Don’t worry, I’ll get word to Spencer.”

  “Thank you, Jack. He often stays the night. He called this afternoon and said he wouldn’t be home. Tell him where I am. Tell him not to try and come. There’s nothing he can do tonight.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  She was starting up the steps when Jack said, “Catharine, remember. I’ll see you tomorrow in Regent’s Park.”

  “Tomorrow.” She said it slowly as if it were a word in an unfamiliar language. It was in another lifetime that they had laughed on the telephone and promised to meet. It was a lifetime ago for Priscilla and the Fontaines and Millie and Agnes.

  “Tomorrow,” Jack repeated.

  Spencer wrinkled his nose at the smell of cooking fish. These flats really weren’t very nice, but Peggy never complained. At the thought of Peggy, his steps quickened, and the flowers he carried rattled a little against the florist’s green paper.

  The hall light provided barely enough illumination for Spencer to find his key. As the door opened, he called out her name.

  He smelled cooking here, too, but it had a savory scent, and he knew Peggy’d done it again, hoarded her rationing coupons to buy a piece of beef for him. It would be a simple meal, and he’d never cared much for simple meals. He liked fine, rich French cuisine, but nothing ever tasted quite so wonderful as the simple meals Peggy cooked for him. Ever since he’d escaped the comfortable mediocrity of his childhood, he’d tried to avoid any contact with the commonplace, the usual. Then the irrelevant skein of thought broke because Peggy stood in the doorway to the cramped kitchen, and all he felt was complete pleasure. Her golden red hair glistened even in the dim light of the dingy apartment. Her eyes, so softly blue they reminded him of a midsummer sky, glowed with warmth that was only for him. He felt younger, very strong, and immeasurably happy.

  “I came as soon as I could.”

  She smiled. “I know you did.” It was half past nine, but she smiled. Peggy never complained about the hole-in-wall circumstances of their meetings even though he knew that it mattered to her. She was conventional and proper. Sometimes, in the darkness of his house on Seamore Place, in the middle of the night when the bombs crashed down and the antiaircraft guns banged and made sleep impossible, he wondered where he was going and what would happen to them. Divorce was unacceptable. It could spell the end of his career—it wou
ld be a stain on his record, and his postings wouldn’t be to the fine embassies, to the places that really counted. Divorce meant a fellow wasn’t quite steady, and steadiness was important in the Foreign Service. Divorce would also spell the end of comfortable living, of being able to afford all the niceties that marked him as a member of the right set, because the money belonged to Catharine.

  But Peggy was as warming to his spirit as a crackling fire in the chill of December. She adored him. Even to think in those terms made Spencer uncomfortable. It wasn’t sophisticated, and he’d built a life where form mattered equally with substance, perhaps mattered more than substance. Yet, here he was.

  Her soft, round face glowed with pleasure. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said simply.

  He held out the bouquet of spring flowers, sweet-scented violets, bright primroses, and sharply yellow daffodils.

  Peggy took the flowers, then stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You always do the nicest things,” she said happily. As she bustled around the kitchen, hunting for a vase and finally settling for a water jar, he absorbed her pleasure and felt the tension from the long, discouraging day at the embassy drain away.

  After finishing two bowls of stew, he dried the dishes as she washed, and he listened with a smile as she chattered on in her soft Southern accent, “I got a letter from Mama today, and she says Father Coughlin’s still got people shouting for him in the streets. Spencer, I don’t know how anyone can still listen to him!”

  He murmured something in reply, but his eyes were watching the soft ripple of her white sweater over her full breasts and the curve of her hips. She was so small and soft and when she turned to him he forgot the war, forgot his hunger to succeed.

  Peggy squeezed out the dishcloth and hung it to dry, then looked up and saw the tenderness and heat in his eyes. She smiled so sweetly and lovingly that his heart ached.

  He was reaching for her when the telephone rang.

  They both stiffened and looked toward the phone. No one had this number except the duty officer at the embassy, who thought Spencer kept the flat for nights when the bombing was too heavy for him to try to reach his home.

  The phone rang again.

  Spencer reached out. He was to be called only in the event of an emergency. “Hello.”

  “Spencer, this is Frank. First thing, Catharine’s all right, absolutely okay and staying with neighbors.”

  “All right? What do you mean?”

  “Your house got it tonight. Apparently, from the message we received, it’s gone, and there were some casualties.”

  “You’re sure Catharine’s all right?”

  Peggy looked at him sharply, and her hand went up to her throat.

  Spencer was nodding. “Right, right. I appreciate your calling. Now, what’s the address where Catharine’s staying?” He listened. “Oh, did she say that? She sent word for me not to come?”

  When he hung up the phone, he turned to Peggy. “It’s bad. Every­one killed but Catharine. The whole staff and a woman who was visiting.”

  “Your house was hit?”

  “Destroyed.”

  “Oh, my God.” Peggy’s face blanched, looked suddenly old. “If you hadn’t come here tonight, you could have been killed. Oh, Spencer.” Tears flooded her eyes.

  He reached out, pulled her into his arms. For an instant, he thought of Catharine. He should go to her. But she’d sent word not to come. His arms tightened around Peggy. He felt twistings of guilt and a surge of thanksgiving that he and Peggy were alive.

  The swans, their feathers a glistening white, glided in a stately pro­cession across the shining water. It could be any spring day in any park, Catharine thought, until she glanced up at the bobbing barrage balloons, then looked across what had been a smooth, open expanse of lawn at the gun emplacements piled round with sandbags.

  “But it is spring,” she said suddenly, emphasizing the verb.

  “Yes, it is.” Jack nodded seriously. “It’s a lovely day and not even the war can ruin that.” He reached out for her hand. They walked in companionable silence to a bench. His hand’s warmth and strength helped push away the awful remembrances of the night before: the dust and the fear and the nearness of death.

  “Tell me about Chicago.”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “Never.”

  “I’ll take you someday.” He said it matter-of-factly.

  She clung to his hand and watched him, loving the way the sunlight gilded his strong face, loving the look in his eyes. He would take her to Chicago someday—if only he could, but that could never happen. She almost told him so; then she willed away the cold truth. She could pretend, couldn’t she? She could sit by his side in the soft spring air, feel the warmth and strength of his handclasp, and not think beyond this moment.

  He was smiling. “We’ll walk along Lake Michigan, and the wind will blow your hair, blow and whip it into tangles.”

  “So it really is a windy city?”

  “Very, very windy. Very dirty. Covered with coal dust, and there are always wrappers and newspapers rustling in the streets, and the people walk very fast and work hard. The beer is wonderful. You’ll like it.”

  “If I went with you, I would like it.”

  As she watched him, she wanted suddenly to sketch him. She hadn’t drawn or painted in years, but she wished she had a sketch pad and soft charcoal. He wasn’t conventionally handsome; his face was too bold for that—the vivid, challenging blue eyes deep set beneath craggy brows, the strong mouth that looked both tough and sensuous. His mouth . . . she would like to touch his mouth with her fingertips.

  They looked at each other. Silence fell between them, but they needed no words as their awareness grew.

  Catharine swallowed. “Tell me more about Chicago.”

  “I haven’t been there in fifteen years.”

  She was terribly conscious of his nearness.

  “Where have you been these past fifteen years?”

  “Everywhere,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Tell me.”

  “The Yangtze River in a gunboat. The Yucatan jungles with des­peradoes. I’ve seen the Taj Mahal at moonrise and the rose-red city of Petra on a baking summer day. These last few years, I’ve moved around because of the house painter. I listened to him at Nuremberg; then I covered the fall of Czechoslovakia and Belgium and Holland. And France.”

  “You don’t feel nearly so detached as you sound, do you?” she asked gently.

  “No.”

  “Now you’re watching a city being battered to pieces.” She bit her lip. “Jack, why do you stay? You don’t have to. You could go home.”

  “Go home where it’s safe? Being safe has never been one of my priorities.” His bright blue eyes watched her. “Why don’t you go home, Catharine? You don’t have to stay either.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “Why?”

  “It would look very defeatist if the diplomats’ wives went home.”

  “So we’re both damn fools,” he said drily.

  He was so near; Catharine felt her pulse race. Abruptly, she stood and walked toward the water and the railing.

  Jack came up beside her and slipped his arm around her shoulders. For an instant, she stood stiffly; then, slowly, she relaxed. She loved the touch of his arm, the warmth of his body next to hers.

  Their eyes met and held as they had on that first night at the Savoy. His head bent toward her. Slowly, she lifted her face. Their lips touched.

  It was, at first, such a gentle kiss, almost a ghost of a kiss, it was so light, tender, and soft. Then, abruptly, excitingly, their mouths opened, their tongues touched, and Catharine felt a rush of desire. She wanted nothing more than to be in his arms and to explore his taste and being.

  It was wild, glorious, and magnificent, but Catharine knew that if she continued, she would lose herself. She tried to pull away, but he held her tightly. His mouth warm against her cheek, he asked, “Do you really want me to
stop?”

  “No.”

  They kissed again; then she said breathlessly, “Jack, we must stop. This can’t come to anything, and that’s not fair to you.”

  “Let me worry about what’s fair to me. I want you, Catharine.”

  She tried to quench the desire that raged within her at his words.

  “I’m married,” and the words were so weary. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come.” She pulled back, her hands against his chest, tears in her eyes. “I keep saying that, don’t I?”

  He still held her hard against him. “I know why you came.”

  She looked up, her eyes dark with pain.

  His hand gently brushed an angry scratch that flamed on her cheek. “You almost died last night, and you feel the same way I do. There’s so little time, and you and I could have something wonderful.”

  She took a jerky breath and nodded. “But can that be enough for you?”

  “A bomb may get me tomorrow. Or the next day. We can’t count on any future.” His eyes softened. “But we can have today.”

  Then, piercing the sky, rising and falling, rising and falling, the sirens sounded.

  Catharine’s head jerked up. She stared up at the empty blue sky, her eyes wide and strained.

  He pulled her close. “Don’t be frightened. There’s a shelter . . .”

  “No,” she cried. “Oh, God, no. I can’t stand to be buried. Not again. Not ever again.”

  He stroked her hair, tangled his hand in the soft, sleek waves of her hair. “My apartment’s just a block from here—and it’s on the top floor.”

  “The top floor?” She looked at him in astonishment.

  “It lets quite cheap—and I get a spectacular view of the barrages.”

  “The top floor,” she repeated.

  “Tiptop.”

  Suddenly, they both began to laugh.

  The scruffy brown rug on the floor of the boxlike living room was so faded it could scarcely be differentiated from the linoleum floor. A saggy leather sofa sat against one wall, but sunlight streamed in through the open west windows and a soft May breeze riffled the dingy curtains.