The Last Mission

by William Kennedy

  “You’ll be able to predict rain,” the doctor told me.

  “Will I be able to fly?”

  “Only in an airplane. Not by yourself.”

  “Very funny, sir.” The doctor was a colonel. “Am I still working for the Eighth Air Force?”

  “Give us two weeks to see what it looks like after the swelling goes down. If everything is okay, I’ll clear you for duty.”

  “Great, now can I make a telephone call?”

  “You kidding? We don’t have any telephones.”

  “There’s someone I want to tell I’m still alive.”

  “Write her a letter.”

  I dozed on and off for a couple of days. I had begged paper from one of the nurses and had it laid out on my bed tray when Colonel Mast stopped by to tell me I was going home.

  “Home? To the States?”

  “Yeah. Your invasion of England is over. A job well done.”

  “When?”

  He glanced at his watch. “In a couple of hours.”

  “But…there’s someone…”

  “You be on the plane. That’s an order.”

  I slid out of the bed, found my flight gear with the burned sleeve and the pants with the leg already split open. I was almost dressed when the nurse came in and recoiled in horror. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going out of here in two hours.”

  “I know, but we have hospital gowns.”

  “I have to see someone. Please! I need a quick stop back at my unit.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s against regulations.”

  “If you don’t get me a ride, I’m going to start walking.”

  She returned with an orderly, a master sergeant who I thought was going to wrestle me back into my bed. Instead, he helped me to my feet and fitted a pair of crutches under my arms, then helped me down to a staff car—a 1940 Packard, painted khaki, with a Red Cross emblem on the door.

  I found Carberry’s letter and carried it in my teeth as I hobbled into our quarters. I wanted him to go to Angela and say some of the things he had written to Alice. Not about her finding someone else—just about loving her forever. And I wanted him to promise her that I would be coming back to England.

  When I stepped into Michael’s quarters, the mattress was rolled up at one end of the bedspring. The locker door was open and the shelves were empty. I slumped against the doorjamb and knew instantly, with perfect clarity, that there was no more Michael Carberry. He was gone. Vanished. In the bright light of one of the flashes over Regensberg, Michael had ceased to exist. I leaned into the room and placed his letter carefully in the center of his desk, where the housing officer would be sure to see it and to mail it. Nothing could have made me mail it myself. Let someone else—someone who didn’t care—have the unhappy duty of telling Alice that she should live her life without the young man who was her life.

  Now

  Arthur Lyons and Herbert Little are both looking down at the rings on the bar when I finish my story. They’ve been tsk-tsking and shaking their heads at appropriate intervals, but never at the expense of raising their glasses.

  “The poor boy,” Arthur says. “He never got to live his life.”

  “Did you ever see…talk to his…Alice?” Herbert asks.

  I shake my head.

  “So you couldn’t get a message to Angela?” Arthur concludes.

  “All I could think about was Michael. On the way back to the hospital, Angela never once crossed my mind. When I got there, they had already brought my gear and my footlocker. I wrote two short letters: one to her and one to Sergeant Browning. I had just finished them when they came to take me to the plane.”

  “And you never posted them?”

  “I mailed hers from the hospital back in the States. Browning’s I just held on to.”

  Another round of tsk-tsking, and then both of them sipped at their drinks.

  “Sad,” Arthur Little said. “It’s like Romeo and Juliet, without the last scene. You don’t know how it would have come out.”

  “Do we ever know how things come out?” I challenged. “Except in the theater and fairy tales? Things don’t end in real life, do they? Even when you die, there are things you put in motion that keep on going—like Alice’s life. Was she ever completely free of Michael?”

  Arthur Lyons nodded in agreement. “People never do live happily ever after. The prince and the princess in all those stories just live together, no happier or sadder than the rest of us. You finish one adventure and you’re already into the next.”

  We sit quietly for a few minutes, all well down in our cups. Then I down the dregs of my drink and slam my glass on the bar to announce the end of our wake. “Time,” I announce, even though the hotel bar doesn’t have to observe pub hours. I hold out my hand. “Gentlemen, if either of you are ever coming to the States, I’ll try to make you feel as much at home as you’ve done for me.”

  “You’re not leaving?” Arthur asks in a shocked tone.

  “Noon flight tomorrow,” I remind him.

  “That’s the middle of the day. Plenty of time in the morning for good-byes. Let me buy you one more.”

  “What’s your hurry?” Herbert wants to know.

  “I’ve got a son trying to keep himself out of jail,” I remind them, and neither of them has an argument with that. So I shake Arthur’s hand and pat Herbert’s slumped shoulders and make my way back up to my room.

  Like Romeo and Juliet without the final scenes, I remember Herbert lamenting. He has put it perfectly. That’s why I came back to England: to see the final scenes that I missed the first time. Only it doesn’t work that way. The scenes are never final. There are no curtain calls.

  I’m up early in the morning and packed more quickly than I anticipated. I have an early breakfast, pick up a newspaper, and return to my room. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at my door. Arthur and Herbert are standing shoulder to shoulder, both with deadpan expressions.

  “You’re not going to like this, Yank,” Arthur says.

  “Like what?” I ask, forgetting to invite them in.

  He glances at Herbert and then nudges him with his elbow. “Tell him.”

  “I thought you agreed,” Herbert says to Arthur.

  “I didn’t agree. All I said was that was what I would like to do.”

  “You said it was a good idea…”

  I’m looking from one to the other like a tennis spectator. “What was a good idea?”

  Herbert checks out the corridor while Arthur steals a glance into my room. “Maybe we better be sitting down,” Arthur suggests, reminding me to step aside and ask them in. They sit side by side on my rumpled bed while I pull up the desk chair.

  “Last night,” Arthur begins, “it seemed as if you really wanted to find out what had happened to Angela Priest. You said no but your eyes were saying yes.”

  “I meant no.”

  Arthur looks guiltily at Herbert, then Herbert takes up the case. “You can’t just leave without seeing this through. At our age, there’s no way of knowing whether you’ll ever get a second chance.”

  “This is my second chance, and I think I’m doing the right thing. All I could do is bring back the worst of our relationship—the way we disappointed one another.”

  “That’s not what she says.”

  It hits me like a fist in the gut. “She says? You talked to her?”

  Another guilty exchange of glances.

  “Oh, God! How could you? I told you I couldn’t see her.”

  “Well, we felt…” Arthur starts.

  “It was my decision to make. Not yours. You had no right to…” No right to do what? Try to help a friend? There’s no reason to be angry with them. I slump forward in frustration.

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” Arthur says. “It seemed like a good idea last night. This morning, when Herbert told me he had actually made the call, I knew it wasn’t a very good idea at all.”

  “I thought it was the right thing to do,” Her
bert says to Arthur, “and I thought you agreed.” Then he talks to me. “I wanted to do you a favor, Yank. I didn’t mean to meddle.”

  I look up at the two pathetic faces and manage a smile. “I know. I know. You wanted to help…”

  “That’s all we wanted,” Arthur agrees.

  “And maybe you did help. I probably shouldn’t leave without talking to her. I can’t leave, now that she knows I’m here.” They both look relieved but neither of them says anything, so I have to ask, “What did she say?”

  “She said she understood why you wouldn’t want to call her,” Herbert reported. “She thought maybe she ought to call you.” He nods toward the desk telephone. “I told her where you were staying, but I don’t think she’s going to call. She sounded just like you. Anxious…but afraid.”

  She has my address and telephone number. The phone might ring, or she might be waiting downstairs in the lobby. I suppose I could leave it in Angela’s hands. If she wants to see me, she can. If she doesn’t, then I’ll be taking off at noon.

  “You’re not too furious with us?” Arthur suggests hopefully.

  “No. You may have done the right thing after all. I owe her a call. I’ve owed her one for fifty years.” I turn to Herbert. “You have her number?”

  He unclenches his fist and hands me the scrap of paper that he’s been squeezing the life out of. “It’s her home phone. If you call now, I’m sure you’ll get her before she’s off on her day.”

  We sit, staring at one another for a moment.

  “Do you suppose I might have a bit of privacy?”

  They both leap up as if they’ve just discovered that their pants are on fire.

  They collide in the doorway in their frenzy to get out. I’m left only inches from the telephone with Angela’s number in my hand.

  For a few minutes I can’t move. I’m absolutely terrified by the thought of her voice. I can’t imagine what I might say if she answers. How are you? Ridiculous coming from someone who hasn’t bothered to ask for half a century. It’s good to hear your voice? Sure, so why did someone else have to arrange for the call? I’m sorry, so very sorry? Presumptuous to think that she might remember the pain I caused her.

  And what will she say? Sorry that I lied to you fifty years ago? Or maybe, I only waited for you for the first twenty years? Jesus, but this is stupid! Her only sensible comment would be Who the hell is this and why should I care?

  The phone rings, and my heart misses a beat. It’s her, and I have no idea what I’ll say to her. I need more time. I need to think this through. It rings again, and then again. Without any guidance from me, my hand lifts the receiver.

  “Mr. Marron.” It’s a woman’s voice.

  “Yes?” I can hardly hear my own words.

  “This is the housekeeper. Will you be out by eleven, or would you like a late checkout?”

  “What?”

  She repeats the offer.

  “Can I get back to you in a few minutes?” I ask. My schedule is going to depend on what happens when I call Angela.

  It wasn’t as if I was cheating. I had never cheated on Kay from the day of our engagement. Maybe my executive lifestyle wasn’t a Hollywood of opportunities, but I truly doubted whether there could ever be a set of circumstances that I would allow to compromise our marriage.

  I had thought many times about Angela during the forty-three years that Kay and I were husband and wife, but never with regrets. That was then and this is now. I wasn’t unhappy with my choice, even though I knew I had never really made a choice. Being with Angela would have been a different life, but still an ordinary life, with its own highs and lows. In some ways better than my life with Kay, and in some ways not nearly as fulfilling. I never believed in the romantic notion that two people had been destined for one another from the beginning of time.

  I thought a great deal about cheating during my stay in East Anglia, particularly once I knew that Angela was alive and living nearby. Should I contact her? Should I meet with her? Or would that be the supreme act of disloyalty to Kay and a cruel insult to my children? I hadn’t been to Kay’s grave since the day of her funeral. Why would I visit the grave of a long-dead relationship?

  In some ways, the fact that a detective who needed my cooperation had planted Angela in my life had gotten me off the hook. I could indulge the thought that a meeting would be terribly embarrassing for her, and that it would be hurtful for me to call. More honest was the embarrassment it would cause me and the uneasy feeling that Kay would be the subject of scorn and humiliation in whatever new life she had entered.

  In the end, I decided that Kay and Angela weren’t rivals, and had never been rivals. They had never competed in the same arena. Rather, they had lived in two separate worlds, like matter and antimatter that can occupy the same space and yet be totally unaware of one another.

  It was like the two lives I had led, in two separate universes that had never come into contact. What was I? A bomber pilot or an insurance salesman? Was I a hero who had put his life on the line every day? Or was I a bureaucrat armed with a ballpoint pen and a stapler? The fact was that I was both: two persons living in one body, in schizophrenic ignorance of one another. My courageous persona would never have settled for ground duty. My clerical persona was afraid to ride the subway at night. Had they met, they never would have become friends.

  Angela inhabited one of my lives, and Kay the other. Angela could caress a frightened young man who had not yet learned how to live. Kay could support a secure older man who had forgotten. Angela might never have been able to settle down with an executive. Kay had actually told me that she couldn’t deal with the uncertainties of a flyer.

  Neither one of them could offend the other or be offended by the other. In their two different worlds, they heard different sounds and saw different sights. Probably each was incapable of experiencing the other’s feelings.

  I press Herbert’s crumpled paper flat on the desk, take a long breath, and begin dialing the number. Halfway through, I stop and set the handset back in its cradle. What am I going to say? What will be the first sound I make? I try a half dozen openers, but all of them are inadequate. Then I realize that my call won’t be a surprise. Herbert Little has told her I’m here. She knows that he has told me, so when her phone rings, she can just let it ring. There’s no need for her to pick it up. If she answers, it can only be because she wants to speak with me, or at least hear my voice. That thought gives me courage.

  I say the number out loud as I dial, then I sit on the edge of my chair through the switching sounds until I hear the dial tone. The instrument feels hot in my hand and I know I have to put it down, but in that instant of indecision I hear her voice.

  “Hello, are you there?”

  I recognize the sound instantly, even though I haven’t heard it in all of my adult life. I could always imagine what Angela looked like and always remember her words, but my brain could never recreate the sound of her voice. And yet it was there, lying dormant all these years. I hear her breath and my heart reacts with instant joy.

  “It’s Jim. Jim Marron.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you called!”

  “Are you? I was afraid to. I thought you might not be glad at all.”

  “Why would I not be happy to hear from you? I was walking in circles around my telephone, hoping that it would ring. I thought of picking it up and calling you, but then I thought that I was probably the last person you’d want to speak with.”

  “Oh, no, I was dying to talk to you. But I was…well…I guess, ashamed.”

  “Ashamed? What did you ever do to be ashamed of?”

  “I…left. Without an explanation. Without even a proper good-bye.”

  “I knew why you left—and I knew why you decided not to come back. You found out about me. All the while I knew that sooner or later you would find out, and that when you did you would leave.”

  “Found out?”

  “About the sergeant…and me.”

  “I
know all about that.”

  “But I should have told you—right away, before anything happened…between us.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. It’s mattered for a long, long time.”

  There’s a pause. All my life I hated the way I left her. Now I was unburdened. And from the sound of it, she had spent too much of her life hating herself for not telling me. And now she was unburdened. We had given each other absolution. The sacrament was over.

  “I’d like to see you,” I hear myself say. It’s spontaneous, without any conscious decision on my part. I was leaving for the airport in another hour, and then leaving the country. And yet more than anything else, I want to see her.

  “I’d like that. I’d hate to have you leave without seeing you.”

  “I have your address in London. I could drive down this morning.”

  “Your friend said you were catching a plane.”

  “There’s one tomorrow. I’m not in any rush.”

  Her house is north of the city, in a place called Chigwell. She gives me directions.

  “Will I meet your family?” I ask, not sure that I want to.

  “No, there’s no one left here. Mr. Murray passed away. Jennie is living in Paris.”

  I tell her that I can switch my flight to the next morning. I could come down in the afternoon, perhaps take her out to dinner, and then continue on to a hotel at Heathrow. She offers me a night’s lodging, but seems relieved when I turned it down. “I’ll be on an early flight,” I assume. “I should get down to Heathrow tonight.”

  I call down to the desk and tell them that I will be checking out, then I call ahead to Heathrow and get a room for a late arrival. I call the airline and cancel my reservation. “Can I rebook you?” the clerk offers.

  “No, I’m not really sure when I’ll be going back.”

  It’s a nervous drive down to Chigwell, which is technically part of London but actually closer to Cambridge. I can think of nothing but our meeting, and am apprehensive that it might go terribly. A truck horn blares inches from my ear as I absently wander into the slow lane, and minutes later a driver who finally made it around me shouts silent words into my closed window. I’m driving in a trance and hardly drawing a breath, but I make the correct turns off the rotaries and suddenly am only a mile from the exit she described.