by Peggy Gaddis
Christmas came and went almost unnoticed There were packages from Tom and Beth, packages wrapped and filled and tied with love and anxious longing. There were packages from friends back home and a great stack of Christmas cards. There was a beautiful diamond and sapphire bracelet from Mrs. Parker, who was prettily touched by Geraldine’s hastily thought-of last-minute gift of a handsome leather bag. But there was no present, no card from Phil.
It was late in January when at last Tip came home. When Mrs. Parker and Geraldine were told that he was in the Navy hospital, and that they might see him for a few moments, they stood for a moment almost shocked by the end of their long ordeal of waiting. Geraldine’s knees were weak and her throat closed tightly.
She could not speak. She clung to the back of a chair for support, and the middle-aged, kindly navy nurse steadied her and held something pungent to her lips. Geraldine’s teeth clicked against the rim of the glass as something hot and stinging slid down her closed throat. Slowly warmth spread through her chilled body, and her knees stiffened a little.
Mrs. Parker looked at her, affronted. Because Mrs. Parker was tense and eager and young-looking with excited anticipation, and waved away the glass the nurse offered tentatively.
“I don’t need a stimulant. All I need is a glimpse of my boy,” she said. Her voice was triumphant, almost a shout for all its soft, low tone.
“I think that perhaps I should prepare you a little,” said the nurse, obviously seeking for words with which to soften the blow she must deal these two very decorative and interesting women. “Your son, Mrs. Parker, has had a very rough time of it. No, no — I don’t mean that he is blind or handicapped in a physical way. But he has been desperately ill; he has been starved — in short, you must prepare yourself so that you do not let him realize how distressed you will be when you see him.”
Mrs. Parker was pale but her mouth was set and her eyes were steady. “He will recover,” she stated, and the tone made it a statement rather than a question.
“Oh, yes, but it will take a long time before he will be quite himself. You must be very patient, and you must take very good care of him.” The nurse smiled warmly at them both and said quietly, “But of course, I know you will. And now, if you will come with me.”
The nurse led the way swiftly through the corridors. And then they were at a closed door, and the nurse looked quickly at the women who followed her, gave them an encouraging smile and pushed open the door.
A man lay in the high, narrow bed. At least, he bore some resemblance to a man, although he was so gaunt and emaciated that he was little more than a skeleton, with skin drawn tautly over the bones. He looked long and lifeless beneath the thin covers. His hair was thickly streaked with white and it was not until he turned his head and Geraldine met his eyes that she knew this was Tip.
The floor seemed to rock beneath her feet. The walls seemed to advance and retreat in some crazy minuet; her eyes blurred and her heart went sick with an agonized pity that sent her across the floor, saying warmly, adoringly. “Oh, Tip, Tip, darling! Oh, darling!”
His face lit up as she bent above him and for a moment hid her face against his pillow. His hand went up, shaking a little as though even that effort was almost too much for his frail strength.
And then he saw Mrs. Parker, and he said in a voice that was little more than a thread of sound, “Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Lucy!”
Mrs. Parker made herself smile though her mouth trembled and great tears slid down her cheeks, but she stumbled to the bed, and said huskily, “My boy! My precious boy!”
Geraldine pulled herself together and gave way to Tip’s mother. And as she stood a little behind Mrs. Parker looking down at that gaunt, emaciated, fever-ridden skeleton, she knew that it would not be hard to pretend to Tip; she ached with pity, a pity that would make it easy for her to convince him that her love for him had never wavered. He had endured heaven knows what deprivation while finding his way back to Saigon and his own people; he should never have to know that the girl he loved had grown out of love with him! It was a little prayer and a deep, solemn vow in her heart.
When the first excitement had lessened a little and Geraldine and Mrs. Parker were seated by the bed, the nurse, assured that they had themselves in hand and would not disturb her patient unduly, went away and they talked.
Tip said, his eyes on Geraldine, “You’re prettier than ever, darling. I’d have sworn that wasn’t possible.”
She smiled through her tears. “Oh, that’s just because I haven’t had much competition. When you see some of the others back here — ”
“You’ll always be the prettiest!” he told her firmly.
There was a gentle knock at the door, and a girl came in. Her crisply cut, smartly fitted uniform marked her as a navy nurse; she was young, not more than twenty-two or three; she had soft red curls and gray-green eyes, and a slightly tip-tilted nose across which a group of tiny freckles marched audaciously. She was not at all pretty, but she was vital and vibrant with life and health, and extremely attractive.
“Sorry to intrude, Lieutenant,” she said crisply. “But I dropped in to see how you were.”
Tip’s eyes were warm and eager.
“Miss Lucy, Gerry — this is Lieutenant Ruth Jamison, my flight nurse,” he introduced her eagerly. “She flew me in from Hawaii.”
The nurse smiled, and her face looked gay and impish.
“Well, the pilot helped a little,” she said lightly. “He’s a very good patient, Mrs. Parker. He was almost no trouble at all!”
Tip grinned, a small grin that was the very faintest possible memory of a smile that had once been audacious and gay and charming.
“And from Jamie, that’s top praise, indeed! I feel as if I’d been decorated!” he said cheerfully.
“I can’t thank you enough for looking after my son, Miss Jamison,” said Mrs. Parker winningly.
Lieutenant Jamison looked at her quietly and said, “It’s my job, Mrs. Parker. There’s little any nurse can do. It’s always a privilege to do what we can!”
She turned towards the door and Tip said, “Happy Landings, Jamie.”
Over her shoulder she repeated that “Happy Landings, Lieutenant.”
The door opened and closed behind her and Tip relaxed a little. Geraldine said gently, “Maybe we’d better go now, Mother Parker. We mustn’t tire him out.”
Mrs. Parker said rebelliously, “But we’ve only just got here!”
“But he’s been very sick and he’s got to get his strength back,” said Geraldine, smiling tenderly at him. “We don’t want to be thrown out on our very first visit — we want them to let us come again.”
She bent above Tip and kissed his dry, hot lips. His hand closed about hers and held it very tightly, and he said very low, “Loving you always, darling.”
“Always, darling,” she answered steadily.
Behind her, Mrs. Parker waited, listening, tense, and relaxed a little.
Chapter Five
It was a month before Tip was allowed to leave the hospital, and then it was only a temporary leave. He was permitted to go to the cottage in the hills for a month’s convalescence, during which he was to keep in touch with the hospital. At the end of that month, he would be given a physical examination and the doctors would decide whether any more could be done for him by their science, before permitting him to be discharged.
He had gained weight in the first month and was not a living skeleton any longer. But it would be a long, long time before he would lose the look of one who has lived through hell.
The change in him was not merely physical, as Geraldine was learning slowly, and almost with terror. He was a stranger; the old gay, audacious, happy-go-lucky Tip was gone. In his stead was a stranger, his hair streaked with gray, his lined white face that of a man who had aged fifteen years. His eyes had a dark, tortured look that sickened Geraldine when she tried to think of what had brought that look. He was gentle, courteous, polite — and aloof, a
lmost impersonal. He accepted her own and his mother’s services with gratitude and an embarrassment that made him seem almost a stranger. He was agreeable to anything suggested; he seemed terribly anxious to please them, as though he had to win their liking. In short, Geraldine summed it up when he had been at the cottage a week. Tip was humble! And of all things on earth that Tip might have been, humility was the last she would have named!
His gentleness and his way of sitting for hours gazing into space, not sleeping yet not entirely awake, disturbed her greatly.
That first day, when they had arrived at the cottage and Mrs. Parker had thrown open the door to Geraldine’s bedroom and had urged that Tip get into bed and rest, he had paused in the doorway, looking uncertainly about him, and then a dark flush had risen to his thin face and he had turned to Geraldine.
“This is your room?” he asked.
Geraldine felt her own face flush but she smiled at him.
“Where else would you expect us to put you, pal? I’m your wife — remember?”
If her teeth set slightly on the last and if her eyes found it hard to meet that steady, curious regard in his, apparently only Mrs. Parker was aware of it.
“I think I’d better have a hole of my own somewhere,” Tip said flatly, and explained, “You see, I don’t sleep very well — as a matter of fact, I have the devil’s own nightmares and I don’t want to share ‘em — not yet, anyway!”
“But my darling boy — ” Mrs. Parker protested.
He turned and put his arm about her.
“Let me have my way, Miss Lucy,” he said.
Tip had appropriated a small, pleasant room that opened off the kitchen, obviously intended for a maid’s room. It contained a single bed with a rather lumpy mattress, furniture that had served its usefulness in the front of the house before being relegated to this spot.
“But the bed isn’t comfortable,” pleaded Mrs. Parker, and gave Geraldine an unfriendly glance, her voice chilling a little. “If you don’t want to share Geraldine’s room, then she can take this one and you can have hers!”
Tip grinned at her, that sad, queer little grin that was so unlike the Tip they had once known.
“Geraldine’s room is much too fine for me, Miss Lucy,” he said quietly. “This is the height of luxury, after — well, anyway, I’d be lost on a good mattress, in a pretty room. Better let me get used to things like that gradually. No, this is fine; this is what I want. And remember, you’re supposed to humor me and give in to my whims and fancies and not let me get upset — the doctors said so!”
He looked curiously at Geraldine for just a moment, and she had a hot, uncomfortable feeling that he had sensed the delicate, carefully controlled instant of sharp relief that she had felt at the knowledge that he was not yet ready to claim her as his wife.
So, though Mrs. Parker fussed and fretted, Tip had moved his scanty belongings into the maid’s room and he spent long hours there, lying flat on his back, his hands laced beneath his head, his eyes on the ceiling. Not sleeping, as they thought. Gradually, his strength came back so that he could go for brief walks, Geraldine or his mother always at his side. Each day the length of the walks increased a little. His weight increased, too, and when at the end of thirty days he returned to the hospital for a check-up, he was told that he could go home.
Geraldine and Mrs. Parker had driven him down to the hospital and were waiting in the car when he came down the steps. They saw him pause to greet a girl in a blue uniform, a little blue cap cockily aslant over ruddy curls. They spoke for a moment, then they shook hands, smiling, and Tip came on to the car.
“Who was the nurse you spoke to, Tip?” asked Mrs. Parker curiously.
“Lieutenant Jamison, my flight nurse. You met her that first day you came to the hospital, remember?” answered Tip casually but there was a trace of excitement in his manner. “She’s due for a furlough and she wanted advice about where to go for a good long rest. I told her we were giving up the cottage in a day or so and she’s coming up to dinner tonight to see it”
“But that will be splendid!” chattered Mrs. Parker. “I’d love to thank her personally for what she did for you.”
“You needn’t, Miss Lucy,” Tip cut in curtly. “I was just a part of her job. One out of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, she’s looked after ever since the war began.”
Geraldine and Mrs. Parker were each in their own rooms dressing for dinner when the sharp ring came at the doorbell, following the sound of a car in the drive. Geraldine hurried, knowing that the guest had arrived, but when she went into the living room, she saw that Lieutenant Jamison was not alone.
A tall, rangy, mahogany-brown young man, his blond hair bleached by the same tropic suns that had browned his old-young face, and clad in the blue and gold uniform of a lieutenant in the Navy, unfolded his long legs and stood up to greet her with bright, admiring eyes.
Lieutenant Jamison was composed, friendly, pleasant; Tip was busy with a cocktail shaker, to which he returned when the introductions had been made.
Geraldine had scarcely made the guests welcome when Mrs. Parker, regal in black lace and diamonds, came rustling into the room and the introductions were gone through again.
“I hope you didn’t mind my tagging along,” Lieutenant Bob Drake apologized pleasantly, with an engaging grin on his homely, pleasant face. “She wanted to borrow my car to drive out — ”
“I could have driven in for you, Jamie,” Tip cut in.
The girl’s level brown eyes, steady and honest as the dawn met his and she said quietly, “I don’t think that would have been wise, do you?”
Dinner was pleasant. Everybody was on his or her best behavior. But afterwards, when it was time for Jamie and Bob to go, Geraldine volunteered to show Jamie the rest of the house. In the bedroom Geraldine had expected to share with Tip, Jamie paused, looked about her and said half under her breath, “This is — nice. No wonder he’s better.”
Geraldine made herself laugh lightly, hating the artificial sound of it.
“Oh, he refuses to sleep here,” she said lightly. “Says it is much too luxurious. Isn’t that ridiculous? He’s taken the maid’s room.”
“The Viet Cong gave him a very bad time, Mrs. Parker,” Jamie said.
Impulsively, Geraldine laid her hand on the nurse’s wrist and was startled to find that it was cold and not quite steady.
“Not Mrs. Parker — I hate it,” she said before she could check the words. “Please call me Geraldine, and may I call you — Jamie, as Tip does?”
“I wish you would,” said Jamie and her smile was shy and endearing. “Tip’s been through a very bitter time, Geraldine. Of course, you know vaguely what that means. But no civilian, no one who hasn’t been out there and seen things, can have the faintest notion what it’s really like. You will have to be very gentle with him. He’s not going to be easy to get along with. It will require a lot of patience and — a very great deal of love.”
Geraldine’s face was scarlet but she met Jamie’s grave eyes steadily.
“All that I have to give, Jamie — always,” she said quietly and knew that Jamie understood that she meant it exactly as it was spoken.
The nurse smiled warmly.
“Then that’s all right,” she said with relief. “Don’t fuss over him; don’t try to coddle him. As nearly as is humanly possible treat him exactly as you would if he had never gone off to war. And gradually you’ll have him back, the way he was then — almost.”
The two women smiled at each other shyly, wanting to be friends, not quite sure how to bridge the gap that lay between their backgrounds, their experience, their knowledge of the world.
After Jamie and Bob Drake had gone, Mrs. Parker said indignantly, “How very rude of her! To bring a guest without asking permission: I was terrified there wouldn’t be enough — ”
She stopped, startled, at the glance Tip flung at her, and a moment later, unwontedly subdued, she said good night and went away.
Tip stood at the window, his shoulders hunched, his clenched hands sunk deeply into his pockets.
Geraldine waited. She still felt shy of this man who had been her husband but who was now a stranger to her. Instinctively she waited for him to break the silence, and at last, as though feeling her presence, he turned and looked at her.
For a moment his eyes were blank, his face terribly tired and taut And then with a conscious effort he smiled and said, “Hello! My, but you’re pretty tonight, Mrs. Parker. A new dress?”
“A present for you,” said Geraldine, trying hard to be gay and flippant, as she swept him a little mocking curtsy. “Your mother selected it — she said it was your favorite color.”
“Any color you wear is my favorite color,” said Tip gallantly.
And then he moved, unexpectedly, and his arms were about her, holding her close against him, his cheek pressed against her hair.
Chapter Six
They arrived in Marthasville a little after eleven on a spring morning that was doing its best to behave like summer.
The train slowed and came to a stop. There was a great roar from many voices; and Geraldine, startled, looked out to see that station jam-packed with people. As she and Mrs. Parker and Tip stepped from the train, the Fireman’s Volunteer Band struck up a resounding rendition of “Hail the Conquering Hero” and the three self-conscious little drum-majorettes from the High School band stepped smartly like prancing ponies.
Stretched from one side of the street to the other was a huge banner asway in the spring breeze. A banner that proclaimed in great scarlet letters:
WELCOME HOME, TIP
Marthasville’s Favorite Son
Dazed, bewildered, Tip stepped down from the platform and stood, with his proud mother on one side, Geraldine on the other, while the Mayor, fat, complacent, red-faced Homer Lloyd, stepped forward, bearing an enormous key made of gilt paper, plentifully adorned with flowing streamers.