‘What will you be doing out there?’ she asked, not sure that she really wanted to know.
‘I’m going to be a military adviser to the South Vietnamese Army.’
‘So you will be helping the Vietnamese fight their own war?’
‘What a nice, simplistic way of putting it. Yes, Abbra, when it comes down to the bottom line, that is what I’ll be doing.’
It was as they were leaving the zoo that she thought she must have inadvertently said something that had shocked him, just as much as his conversation about Vietnam had shocked her.
He stopped short suddenly, his eyes blank, as if in stunned surprise.
She turned towards him questioningly. ‘What is it? What did I say?’
For a second she thought he wasn’t going to answer her, and then he said vaguely, ‘I’m sorry … just a minute …’ He raised his hand as if to ward her off.
He looked a little as if he were going to faint. She frowned, stepping towards him, saying in sudden deep concern, ‘Lewis! What is it? Are you sick?’
‘No …’ He still didn’t move, although the colour had begun to come back into his face. He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘That was the damnedest thing.’ There was a park bench a few yards away from them and he walked across to it, sitting down, beginning to laugh a little. ‘Hell! I suddenly felt as if I’d gone down the biggest roller-coaster in the world!’
‘You mean you were dizzy?’ She sat beside him, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.
‘Yes. No.’ He seemed to have completely recovered. He gave her a slightly abashed grin. ‘Giddy would be a better word. Nothing was going round and round. I just felt as if I’d fallen a hundred floors in an elevator.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Come on. If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be locked in for the night with the animals.’
As they began to walk back towards the car, she said curiously, ‘Has that ever happened to you before, Lewis?’
‘No.’ This time his grin was genuinely carefree. ‘It must have been the shrimp rolls at lunch.’
She was silent for a minute, and then she said hesitantly, ‘You don’t think it might have something to do with the blow you received to your head last month?’
His grin vanished. He stared at her. ‘No, I don’t. That’s a ridiculous suggestion.’
‘Not really. Daddy has patients who—’
‘I had a reaction to something I ate. That’s all.’
There was such finality in his voice that she didn’t finish the sentence she had begun. She was probably being imaginative anyway.
To say anything more to him before she had spoken to her father was pointless.
‘Who are we talking about?’ Abbra’s father asked.
She shrugged vaguely. ‘Just a friend. She got hit on the head a few weeks ago and never had it checked out.’
‘And what did you say happened to her in class? Did she have a momentary loss of consciousness?’
‘Not exactly. It was more as if she just didn’t know where she was for a second. She said afterwards that she felt as if she had fallen a hundred floors in an elevator.’
‘It sounds as if she might be suffering from focal epilepsy. It’s quite common when there’s been a blow to the head. It results in an underlying structural abnormality being revealed. Natural resistance to epileptic activity is lowered, and mild seizures can occur. Tell her not to worry too much, but it goes without saying that she should report what happened to her doctor at the earliest opportunity.’
‘If it was a mild epileptic seizure, would she have more and would they be harmful enough that her choice of career might be affected?’
‘If what she suffered was a mild epileptic seizure triggered by the injury she received, then it is more than likely that there will be another. There are no hard and fast rules where epilepsy is concerned. And, of course, if that is what it is, then her choice of career may be circumscribed.’
‘She wants to go into the army,’ Abbra said, her hands behind her back, her fingers crossed.
Her father picked up a copy of the Chronicle and shook it open, saying with finality, ‘If she has become subject to epileptic seizures she is highly unlikely to be accepted into any profession requiring a stringent physical. Suggest to her that she become a schoolteacher instead.’
Even though she knew Lewis would not want the subject raised again, she was determined that the next time he flew out to see her, she would do so. Incredibly, because of what happened within minutes of their meeting again, she forgot all about her intention and the subject was never broached.
He had taken hold of her hand, drawing her toward him, and before she could protest, his arms had slid around her and he had lowered his head to hers, kissing her lovingly.
In the first brief second, as his lips touched hers, her every instinct was to push him gently away, and to say that though she was fond of him, she didn’t want their easygoing friendship to develop into anything more. She didn’t. It was a very pleasant kiss. The nicest she had ever received. Instead of pushing him away her arms slid up and around his neck, her mouth parting softly and warmly beneath his.
‘But there is still Jerry,’ she had said afterwards, not wanting to be guilty of leading him into believing that what was happening between them was serious.
He had shrugged dismissively and she had been unable to see the expression in his dark eyes. ‘Jerry is in New York,’ he had said, and neither of them had mentioned him again.
In June there were newspaper reports of battalion after battalion of South Vietnamese troops being defeated by the Viet Cong, and Lewis’s phone calls to her, and letters, were full of impatience because he still hadn’t received orders to leave for Saigon.
It was while he was on the telephone, telling her how President Johnson was going to have to send more combat troops to Vietnam, that she knew he was experiencing another giddy spell.
He broke off speaking in the middle of a sentence.
‘Lewis?’ she had said. ‘Lewis?’
‘Yes. Just a minute …’
His voice had the same disoriented quality about it that she had noticed at the zoo.
‘Lewis!’ she had said again, her voice sharp with anxiety. ‘Lewis! Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ There had been a moment’s hesitation, and she knew that he was lying. There was a note in his voice she had never heard before, a note that seemed incredible in a man so tough and supremely confident. A note of fear.
She said with utter certainty, ‘You’ve just had another giddy spell.’
‘Wait a minute, Abbra …’ He sounded as if he were gathering his wits with difficulty. After a little while he said, ‘I’m okay now. I was just a little light-headed for a second.’
She said carefully, not wanting to arouse the same chill response in him that she had aroused the last time she had tried to talk to him about it, ‘When it happened before, at the zoo, were you tired afterwards?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and at the relief in his voice she knew he was assuming she thought his momentary disorientation was merely due to overtiredness.
She said gently, disillusioning him, ‘I spoke to Daddy about what happened. I told him it had happened to a university friend. He thinks the giddiness and momentary loss of awareness may be a mild form of epilepsy known as focal epilepsy. And all epilepsy sufferers feel the need to sleep after an attack.’
‘Epilepsy?’ First there was disbelief in his voice, then anger. ‘Epilepsy? You can’t be serious. You can’t suggest I’m suffering from epilepsy! Christ, Abbra! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I’m damned glad you didn’t mention my name to your father! A malicious rumour like that could end my career!’
‘Not if medical tests proved it was only a rumour.’
‘There’s no need for medical tests! I was a little disorientated for a couple of seconds. I didn’t fall down on the ground in a fit, frothing at the mouth and swallowing my tongue!’
‘That’s
grand mal. I never suggested you were suffering from grand mal. All I’m suggesting is that the blow you received on your head has done more damage than you were aware of. Some epileptic seizures are so slight that it’s even hard for the sufferer to realize what it is they are experiencing.’
‘I couldn’t care less whether they know or not! I wasn’t experiencing a seizure! I’ve passed medical test after medical test, and for your information, I am one hundred per cent physically fit!’
‘Go for a complete physical,’ she said softly, refusing to give in. ‘Then we need never mention it again because there will be no doubt, one way or the other.’
‘There’s no doubt now!’ he said, obviously furious, and hung up on her.
Abbra was sure Lewis would never telephone her or see her again. She was intensely unhappy. Over the last few months he had become a part of her life. She tried to stop thinking about him and to think about Jerry instead. The rumour at Stanford was that he was on his way back to San Francisco. Once she saw Jerry again, she would stop missing Lewis. Lewis had been too old for her anyway. Too endearingly old-fashioned.
It was a Sunday morning, three weeks later, when the telephone calls came. The first had been from Jerry. He had laconically said that he was back in town and at his old apartment in North Beach. He was tied up all day, but if she wanted to see him tomorrow, it was fine by him.
The next telephone call, minutes later, was from Lewis.
‘You were right,’ he said briefly, his voice oddly flat. ‘I’ve been to a doctor. A neurologist. I have a hairline fracture of the skull, and the blow evidently reduced my resistance to epileptic seizures. What I’m actually suffering from is something called temporal lobe epilepsy, which I think is the same sort of epilepsy your father was referring to. There are a wide range of symptoms that can be experienced and the brief, momentary loss of awareness I’ve suffered from a time or two, along with that almost pleasant giddy sensation, is the way that I experience it. It may develop and I may, in the future, suffer a full-scale epileptic attack. On the other hand, I may never notice a damn thing wrong with me, ever again.’
‘And the army?’ she said fearfully. ‘What did the doctor say about your career in the army?’
‘He didn’t know about it. However many army physicals I undergo, I’m unlikely to have a brain scan. And without a brain scan no one can know that there’s anything wrong with me. And there isn’t really anything wrong. I haven’t had another attack, and I personally doubt if I ever will have another.’
‘So you’re not going to give your army medical officer a copy of the neurologist’s report?’
‘No.’
‘But, Lewis—’
His voice was no longer flat. It was so overwrought it was nearly out of control. ‘For Christ’s sake, Abbra! The word epilepsy on my army records would finish me! I’d be desk-bound for the rest of my career! And why? Because very occasionally I feel as if I’ve come down a roller coaster? No one is ever going to know about this, Abbra. No one! Not ever!’
‘Okay.’ She didn’t know why, but she had begun to cry. ‘I’m so sorry about it all, Lewis.’
‘Yes. I know.’ His voice had softened. He sounded unutterably weary. ‘I have a two-day pass, and I have some other news for you as well. I’ll see you this evening. We’ll go to a movie.’
‘A movie would be lovely.’
She had put the telephone receiver back on its rest. She knew that what he was doing was very wrong, but she couldn’t think any less of him for doing it. The army was his passion and his life. He always had wanted to be a soldier. She couldn’t even begin to imagine him as anything else. And he was right about the epilepsy. Once on his army medical record it would never come off, no matter how mild the form he was suffering from, no matter if he never, ever suffered from another attack again.
He would be here this evening. She would see him then. And though Jerry had said he was tied up all day and couldn’t see her until tomorrow, she was going to ignore what he’d told her. After all, she hadn’t seen him for nearly six months, so she certainly wasn’t going to wait another six hours. She was going to drive over and see him right away.
Half an hour later she parked her Oldsmobile in the street outside his apartment. The apartment was over a liquor store and she ran up the stairs, excitement mounting in her till she could hardly bear it. She had missed Jerry. He was so talented, so outrageous, such wonderful fun. She could smell the sickly sweet aroma of marijuana and was uncaring. Jerry was a poet. All poets smoked pot. And pot was harmless. Nothing more than a stiff drink.
The door at the top of the uncarpeted stairs was dosed. She gave only the briefest of knocks before opening it, a wide smile on her face, saying sunnily, ‘Hi, Jerry! I thought I’d surprise you!’
He didn’t look remotely surprised. Only vastly amused. He was laying naked on unclean, dishevelled sheets. The girl beside him, eyebrows raised in surprise, was naked also. As was their sweat-sheened male and obviously mutual friend.
It was the girl who was smoking marijuana. Jerry was snorting coke. Abbra had never seen the white powder before, but she knew what it was.
She stood for a moment, almost too dazed to react, all the anticipated pleasure draining from her. There was a time when she might have thought this kind of a scene was fun, hip. No longer. The semen-stained sheets, and the tangled, perspiring bodies made her feel nauseated. She didn’t want any part of this. She didn’t want to be even remotely connected to such people.
She turned on her heel, uncaring of the shouts of laughter that followed her down the stairs.
She was crying when she reached the Oldsmobile. Not because she knew that she was never going to see Jerry again, but because she was so ashamed of her own foolishness. How could she not have seen him as her mother had so clearly seen him? As Lewis would no doubt have seen him. How could she have been so stupid for so long? So blind?
She rammed her car key into the ignition, slamming the Oldsmobile into gear. She didn’t want to go home. Not yet. Not until it was evening and Lewis would be there.
She drove north, stopping the car in deserted countryside to walk. Walking always calmed her and it calmed her now. She was glad that she had driven down to North Beach so unexpectedly. Glad that she had seen what she had seen. She felt suddenly much more mature, more sure of who she was and of what she wanted in life. As dusk fell she returned to her car, driving back to San Francisco, happy and eager to see Lewis again.
He pulled in the driveway only seconds ahead of her. She was out of her car even before he was, running towards him. ‘Oh, Lewis! I’m so glad to see you!’ she cried, hurling herself into his welcoming arms.
He held her very close, sensing a momentous change in her. ‘What is it?’ he demanded gently, and then intuitively, ‘Is it Jerry? Have you seen Jerry?’
She nodded, lifting her head to his, her arms still tightly around his waist. ‘Yes, and Jerry doesn’t matter anymore. I didn’t realize it until today, but he never has mattered.’
‘I’m going to ’Nam,’ he said, not letting go of her. ‘I leave at the end of next week. Will you marry me before I go?’
‘Oh, yes, Lewis!’ She began to laugh and cry simultaneously. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
Chapter Two
Serena Blyth-Templeton woke at dawn to the sound of an army of men hammering tent pegs into the ground to make gigantic marquees. She groaned and rolled over pulling a pillow over her head. It was the longest day of summer. The day Bedingham was to play host to the Rolling Stones, the Animals, a dozen lesser-known bands, and God alone knew how many thousands and thousands of fans.
‘Oh hell, oh shit,’ she said loudly. ‘I shouldn’t have driven home last night! I should have stayed in town!’
But she hadn’t stayed at her family’s town house in Chelsea; she had driven home through the English countryside, intoxicated on champagne and high on marijuana, and the fates had been kind to her, as they always were, and she’d had no accidents
and no police cars had come screaming after her. Serena didn’t know whether this was a relief or a disappointment. Life was so boring, and a night in a cell sounded as if it might have a certain piquancy about it. It would certainly stir up her father, which was always fun, and it might even impress Lance.
Her twin brother had become obsessed with everything extremely left wing. If it was anti establishment, anti his father, anti his privileged upbringing and expensive education, then Lance was fervently in favour of it. The latest object of his contempt was the police, though Serena privately doubted that Lance had ever had anything to do with them apart from cursing them when they politely asked him to remove his Aston-Martin from the double yellow lines outside the house in Cheyne Walk. Nevertheless, for the past two months Lance had denounced all policemen, even their friendly local police, as ‘fascist pigs’, to his mother’s bewilderment and his father’s irritation.
The hammering continued relentlessly, the goosedown pillow no defence against it. With a groan of despair Serena flung it to one side and with an obscene lack of a hangover, sprang agilely from the bed. It was a day she had been looking forward to for months, though wild horses wouldn’t have made her admit it. To do so would have been uncool. She had decided early on in the planning of the concert that the only acceptable reaction to Mick Jagger’s presence and performance at Bedingham was to assume an attitude of sophisticated indifference. After all, she wasn’t a groupie, queuing all night for the privilege of seeing Mick at a distance of five hundred yards. She was Lady Serena Blyth-Templeton, and as such Jagger was surely her guest, just as much as he was her father’s.
With long, easy strides she crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The green sward that fronted Bedingham and stretched away gently uphill into a three-mile-long avenue of elms was nearly invisible beneath a stage swarming with technicians and groaning under the weight of expensive sound equipment. Seating around the stage was still being erected, though the punters, as Serena’s father always referred to those members of the public who paid for the privilege of visiting Bedingham would, for the most part, either sit on the grass or stand.
White Christmas in Saigon Page 3