White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  He said with forced lightness, overcoming the temptation of Boston with difficulty, ‘You haven’t wished me a happy birthday yet.’

  Her eyes flew wide, a look of horror crossing her face, ‘Scott! I’m so sorry! I was so keyed up about your reaction to the book that I completely forgot!’

  He sighed in exaggerated disappointment, shaking his head of curly blond hair in mock despair. ‘I don’t know, Abbra. I act as a Svengali to you, advising you on every single word you write; I wine and dine you at the most prestigious watering hole in the entire damned country, and what do I get for my pains? Not even a birthday card!’

  She had begun to laugh. When she was with Scott, she was always laughing. ‘Idiot,’ she said affectionately. ‘Not only have I brought you a card, I’ve also brought you a present.’

  She reached down into her handbag, which was tucked discreetly beneath the table, and withdrew a card and small gold-wrapped box tied with scarlet ribbon and topped with a scarlet bow.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ she said in the soft, low-modulated voice that he loved so much. ‘I hope you like them.’

  If she had bought him nothing but a ten-cent stick of gum, he would have treasured it for the rest of his life.

  The card was a reproduction of Renoir’s ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’ from the Phillips Collection in the Washington Gallery, and she had signed it simply ‘Abbra’. The small box contained a pair of gold, black-faced cameo cufflinks.

  He kept his head low over the box for a few seconds, knowing that the expression in his eyes was too revealing. When at last he raised his head and looked across at her, his hazel eyes were light and laughing, totally carefree.

  ‘Thank you very much, sister-in-law mine,’ he said, resisting the temptation to lean across and kiss her. ‘From now on I’ll be able to shoot my cuffs with style and panache.’

  Style and panache were such an inherent part of his personality that she laughed, her cheeks dimpling. ‘I’m glad you like them,’ she said, turning her head as her father-in-law’s tall shadow fell over them.

  ‘Abbra my dear. You look well. How is Lewis liking his new role as a co van truong?’ he asked, sitting down next to her. ‘Is he making the most of it?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s given him an opportunity to improve the living standards of the villagers who are living under his jurisdiction.’

  Her father-in-law raised his eyebrows. ‘He’s there to root out Viet Cong, my dear,’ he said baldly, ‘not play at being a welfare officer.’

  Scott raised a hand protestingly. ‘No Vietnam,’ he said good-naturedly but with steely firmness. ‘This is a birthday celebration. My birthday celebration, and I don’t want it ruined with controversy.’

  ‘There’s no controversy between Abbra and myself,’ his father said with asperity. ‘She understands what the war is about and why Lewis is out there. Which is a damned sight more than those fools who took part in that antiwar demonstration in New York.’

  Scott’s jawline had tightened and he leaned across the table toward his father, his body taut with tension.

  ‘Listen to me for a moment, Dad. I was—’

  Abbra interrupted him with feverish haste. ‘You’d better get ready to blow out some candles, Scott. There’s a cart heading this way with a cake on it.’

  Scott’s eyes widened in stunned disbelief.

  ‘Happy birthday, sir,’ the waiter said, wheeling the cart to the side of their table.

  The cake was iced in lemon, decorated by the figure of a football player wearing a Rams shirt emblazoned with Scott’s number, and surrounded by flickering candles.

  ‘Who the devil…’ he began, forgetting the fight he was just about to have with his father.

  ‘Everyone should have a cake on their birthday,’ Abbra said, wondering for a fleeting moment if she had misjudged his reaction to her surprise.

  He began to laugh, taking hold of her hand and squeezing it tight, ‘I might have guessed! Hell, I haven’t had a birthday cake since I was eight years old!’

  ‘Are you going to blow the candles out, sir?’ the waiter asked.

  ‘You have to make a wish,’ Abbra reminded him.

  He had reluctantly removed his hand from hers, and for a brief moment the smile on his face was rueful. He sure as hell couldn’t wish for what he really wanted.

  ‘Come on,’ Abbra urged him, laughing. ‘You have to blow them all out at once, remember.’

  He took a deep breath, blowing them out with ease, not wishing for the thing he really wanted, Abbra’s presence at his side as his wife. Instead, he wished that she would be with him on his next birthday, and his next and his next and his next.

  ‘Would your wife like a slice of cake now?’ the waiter was asking.

  Scott stared at him, momentarily shaken at how the innocent query had dovetailed with his private thoughts.

  Abbra had flushed rosily. It was an understandable mistake. She had ordered the cake in her own name, and her name was, after all, Ellis. But she found the assumption that she was Scott’s wife strangely disconcerting.

  Only Colonel Ellis seemed unperturbed by the waiter’s error. ‘Mrs Ellis is the wife of my older son, who is serving in Vietnam,’ he said, oblivious to the sudden strain on Scott’s face. ‘Do you want a slice of cake now, Abbra, or when we’ve finished dinner?’

  ‘When we’ve finished dinner,’ she said, the flush in her cheeks dying slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ the waiter said. ‘I’m very sorry, sir.’

  As he made his apologies and wheeled the trolley and cake away, she tried to catch Scott’s eye, wanting to laugh with him over the waiter’s mistake, knowing that once they had joked about it, she would feel more comfortable.

  ‘What a silly mistake for anyone to have made,’ Scott said lightly, picking up the leather-bound menu. ‘As if I could be so lucky!’ And though his voice was light and careless, he didn’t laugh, and his eyes didn’t meet hers, and her uneasiness was a long time in dying.

  Abbra flew to Boston. She had written to Lewis about her plans for visiting the East Coast in her regular weekly letter to him, but not the reason behind her trip. She would do that later, she promised herself, when her book was finished. She had two hundred pages finished now, and the book had become such a vital part of her life that she couldn’t imagine how she had existed in her non-writing days.

  As she strolled the streets, walking in the footsteps of Maddie, her heroine, it was as if Maddie were walking at her side, as if she actually existed. There were times when, if Scott had been with her, she knew she would have been saying, ‘That’s the corner of the Common where Maddie met Rory’ and ‘That’s the restaurant where she learned about her son’s illness.’ It was a strange, beguiling sensation, visiting scenes where events conjured in her imagination had taken place, and where now, as she visited them, it seemed as though they actually had taken place.

  ‘Did you travel to Boston by yourself?’ Patti asked her as they lunched in an elegant French restaurant near her office, celebrating the news that Abbra’s British publisher was delighted with the first two hundred pages of the novel.

  Abbra nodded. ‘Yes. I thought that having someone with me would be a distraction, though there were dozens of times when I wanted to show Scott places I had written about.’

  Patti laid down her fork and leaned back in her chair When she had asked if Abbra had travelled to Boston alone Patti had been wondering if Abbra had taken her moth with her, or a female friend. She hadn’t imagined for moment that she might have taken her brother-in-law.

  She asked, intrigued, ‘Do you and Scott often take trips together?’

  ‘No,’ Abbra said guilelessly, spearing a button mushroom with her fork, two shiny wings of night-black hair swinging forward slightly and brushing her cheeks. ‘Not unless you count flying to places like Denver and San Diego to watch him play.’

  ‘But you think he would have enjoyed the Boston trip?’ Patti prompted.

 
Abbra took a sip of her wine and smiled. ‘Yes. I think Maddie has become as real to him as she is to me.’

  Lunch could wait, Patti decided. She had been curious before about Abbra’s relationship with the fabled Scot Ellis. Now she was determined that her curiosity would be satisfied.

  ‘And what about Lewis?’ she asked. ‘Is Maddie real to him too?’

  Abbra pushed her plate away and leaned back in her chair, but with none of Patti’s sense of leisured ease. ‘No,’ she said with a slight frown. ‘I can’t really share the book with Lewis. He has so much on his mind in Vietnam. It would seem—’ She hesitated, and then said reluctantly, ‘It would seem trivial somehow to be writing to him about a novel.’

  Patti’s brows rose slightly. ‘But it isn’t trivial to you, is it?’

  ‘No.’ Abbra flashed her a vivid, wide smile. ‘It’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. Apart from my marrying Lewis, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Patti agreed a trifle dryly, her curiosity far from slaked. ‘Are Scott and Lewis very much alike? Is that why you spend so much time with Scott? Because it’s like being with Lewis?’

  Abbra burst into laughter. ‘Good heavens, no! They’re nothing alike! Lewis is very much a military man. Very correct and precise. Scott is just the opposite, very happy-go-lucky and devil-may-care. I doubt Lewis has ever been to a football game in his life, and Scott’s whole existence is focused on the game. I can’t truthfully think of any one thing they have in common.’

  Patti rested her elbow on the arms of her chair and steepled her fingers together, lowering her chin. Far from being cleared up, the mystery was deepening. ‘Then I’m sorry, Abbra,’ she said with her usual directness. ‘But I really don’t know why you and Scott spend so much time together.’

  Abbra stared at her. ‘But it’s very clear,’ she said at last, struggling to come to terms with the fact that Patti obviously thought it was strange. ‘I mean, we’re family. He’s my brother-in-law. It’s only natural that I go and watch him play, isn’t it?’

  Patti tilted her head slightly to one side, her blond bouffant hairdo resembling a halo. ‘Scott used to be a regular item in the gossip column,’ she said musingly. ‘Wherever he went, there was always a gorgeous model or movie star clinging to his arm. These last six months there’s been no one.’ She paused and then said, her voice carefully free of insinuating intonation. ‘Apart from yourself, of course.’

  Abbra’s face had gone white. ‘Is that how it looks?’ she asked at last, her voice taut. ‘As if there were something… not quite right about our relationship?’

  Patti felt a twinge of remorse. She hadn’t meant to distress Abbra, just discover exactly what sort of relationship she had with Scott. But if Abbra was unaware of the speculation the two of them were arousing, then she didn’t really regret bringing the subject out into the open. It was inevitable that someday, someone would ask, and it was better that the question come from her rather than from a prying journalist.

  Abbra had risen to her feet, her hands shaking slightly as she picked up her clutch bag. ‘I think I’d better go no Patti. It’s been a lovely lunch, and I’m more excited than I can say about the British deal but I’ve got a lot of work still to do on the book and I think I should get back to San Francisco and start it.’

  Patti nodded. She knew why Abbra was cutting and running, but if it had never occurred to Abbra before that her relationship with Scott was one that was likely to cause gossip, then maybe it was good that she had been made aware of it, and that she give it some thought.

  ‘If you want to talk to me about anything, please don’t hesitate to call,’ she said, rising to her feet, and kissing Abbra affectionately on the cheek.

  Abbra forced a small smile. ‘Thanks, Patti. I’ll remember. Bye.’

  She walked quickly from the restaurant, attracting admiring glances from a group of businessmen at a nearby table. She had driven down to Los Angeles the previous afternoon, and had booked into the Jamaica Bay for two nights. After her lunch with Patti she planned to so some Shopping and then, at five o’clock, she had arranged to meet Scott at the Fine Arts Museum. From there they had planned to go to the movies or the theatre.

  She flagged down a taxi outside the restaurant and asked to be taken, not to Rodeo Drive and the shops, but back to her hotel. She couldn’t see Scott. Not now. She sat in the back of the taxi, her knuckles white.

  She had met Patti Maine only a half dozen times, but she knew her well enough to know that she didn’t speak carelessly. If Patti thought there was something wrong about her relationship with Scott, and had had the honesty to tell her so, then other people must be thinking so too. She remembered the waiter at the Polo Lounge and the innocent mistake that he had made. Major football stars were always targets for gossip, and the press loved nothing better than to insure that the gossip reached as wide an audience as possible. The mere thought of a story insinuating that Scott had abandoned all his previous girlfriends in order to escort his sister-in-law around town made Abbra feel physically ill. No one who knew them would believe the insinuations for a moment, but they would still distress her father-in-law and her own parents.

  She stepped out of the taxi at the Jamaica Bay and hurried through the lobby to her room. All sorts of things were suddenly making sense. The speculative expression in some of Scott’s teammates’ eyes and the quickly suppressed laughter whenever she and Scott joined them for drinks or a meal.

  She threw her jacket and her clutch bag on to the bed and reached for the telephone, asking for an outside line. And there had been that odd incident, months ago now, when Scott had been involved in a fight. It had been so unlike him; he was so easygoing and even-tempered. Scott had said merely that the guy he had decked had said something to which he had taken exception. With sudden certainty she now knew what that something had been.

  She dialled his number, her fingers still trembling. They couldn’t continue seeing each other as they had been doing. Sooner or later a gossip columnist would get hold of the story and milk it for all it was worth. He wouldn’t care. She knew that. But she cared for him. She didn’t want to see ugly speculations being printed about him.

  ‘Scott Ellis’s office,’ the woman from his service answered.

  Her breath was tight in her throat. For a second she was tempted to put the receiver down and to try again later, and then she knew that if she waited, her resolution would fail.

  ‘It’s Abbra,’ she said, forcing her voice to be steady. ‘Please tell Scott I’ve decided not to stay overnight in L. A. After having lunch with my agent I realized how much work I have to do on the book and I’ve decided to go away for a while so that I can concentrate.’

  As the woman thanked her and hung up, Abbra closed her eyes tight. She wouldn’t be seeing him again. Perhaps not for months. There were a hundred and one things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to tell him about the British book deal. She wanted to show him the chapter she had finished writing on Friday.

  She wanted, quite simply, to be with him.

  The realization was cataclysmic. She stood, still holding the telephone receiver in her hand, staring blindly in front of her. When had it happened? In the name of God, how had it happened?

  Clumsily she replaced the telephone receiver.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, not moving, standing as immobile as a pillar of salt. ‘Oh, dear, dear God!’ And then her tears began to fall, sliding down her cheeks, splashing unrestrainedly on to her hands and her dress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  To Serena’s surprise Rupert was waiting for her at Heathrow when she landed.

  ‘In the message you left on my answering machine, you said you would be in the shop on Tuesday morning, so I assumed you would be flying back today.’

  ‘But how did you know which flight I would be on?’ she asked as he kissed her chastely on the temple and swung her Louis Vuitton suitcase from the trolley she had been pushing.

  ‘It wasn’
t exactly a masterpiece of detective work,’ he said in his habitual amused drawl. ‘Flights aren’t pouring in from Alabama on the hour, every hour. This was die only flight you could possibly be on, assuming, of course, that you hadn’t fled the wilds of Alabama for the more civilized fleshpots of Los Angeles or New York.’

  Despite her fatigue after the long flight, she giggled and tucked her hand affectionately through the crook of his arm. ‘It could have been a temptation,’ she said dryly. ‘Fort Rucker, Alabama, isn’t the most alluring place in the world.’

  ‘Fort where?’ Rupert asked in deepening amusement as they stepped out of the arrivals bay and into brilliant sunshine.

  ‘Fort Rucker.’

  When she saw him waiting to greet her, she had made an instant decision. She wasn’t in love with him, not in the way she was in love with Kyle, but over the last few months he had been enormous fun, both as an employer and a lover. It would be a year before she would see Kyle again, and she saw no reason why Rupert shouldn’t continue to be enormous fun. And why he shouldn’t also become a friend.

  ‘Would it be impertinent of me to ask why anyone in their right mind would wish to leave London and the delights of Annabel’s and Regine’s, for a place that sounds as if it’s straight out of a Civil War novel?’

  They had reached his Lagonda and he tossed her suitcase into the boot, opening the front passenger seat door for her, regarding her quizzically.

  Serena stepped into the car, leaning her head comfortably back against the luxurious headrest. It seemed that her absence Rupert had also come to some decisions about their relationship. Until then he hadn’t asked any questions about her private life. He knew about her elopement and the subsequent razzmatazz that had attended her wedding but he had never questioned her about Kyle and the subsequent, immediate separation. Now, it seemed, he too wanted to take on the role of a friend, in whom confidences could be safely placed.