Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1943)

intuition, should have told mewhn David died, and so saved the memory of him from the hatred I had built up. "Please tell me about it, I said and I tried to look at him, but I couldn't. I couldn't bear it— not yet, not now— to see that face that was David's and yet not David's. Jeff Kent took out his wallet, finding what he was looking for in it by sense of touch, for his eyes never left me. "I've been four years in Europe, Paula, reporting the things that led up to the war and after that the war itself. I was in Berlin and Rome, and at last in London. It was in London that I got the game leg that makes me limp. When I was able to move they sent me home by Clipper. "But that's getting ahead of myself. I was in Rome, two years ago, when I got a letter from Jimmy Proal. Jimmy's a good friend of mine, and he was David's pal, off and on, for years. And he was with David when — when it happened." He hesitated, then went on, huskily. "David was in New York, and had just found a job on one of the newspapers. One night, when he and Jimmy were on their way down to the Village for dinner, Dave stepped out from the curb without looking and a car, clipping around the corner, plowed into him. That's all there was to it — he was thrown against the curb, dead before Jimmy got to him." I could see the picture as clearly as if it had been I who stood there that night, watching death snatch David. David, so terribly, vibrantly alive, so full of the joy of life, the mirth of it, the wonder of it, lying crumpled in a gutter like a heap of old clothes! Jeff's voice went on evenly, unemotionally, and I knew that he realized that I couldn't bear sympathy just then. "Of course, by the time Jimmy's letter reached me there was nothing that I could do. Jimmy had taken care of everything. You see, he didn't know about you. As far as he knew, I was the only person in the world really— really close to David. So Jimmy packed away the things in Dave's room and kept them for me until I came home. "I got in a week ago, and I looked 6^ "Detour to Paradise," by Doris McFerron, is based on an original radio play by Roger Quayle Denny, first broadcast on Stars Over Hollywood, Saturdays at 12:30 P.M.. EWT, on CBS, sponsored by Dari-Rich. 26 through Dave's things. Among them there was a half-finished letter to me, telling me all about you, Paula. After that it wasn't hard to find you. He'd said in the letter that you used to work for the Telegram here, so I left New York and came out, called the Telegram and found that you still work there. I got your home address from a friend in the city room, figuring that you'd rather not have me come to tell you at the office." His voice stopped, and I wished frantically that it would begin again, giving me something to listen to, something to fix my thoughts upon. "Paula— would you like to see the letter he left?" I nodded, put out my hand for the letter he had taken from his wallet, forced my eyes to it. There it was, David's roundish, little-boy handwriting. Some of the sentences leapt at me from the page, the sentences telling the things I had wanted so much to know.' "Paula's a darling; you'll love her on sight ... I'm not fit to lick her boots after the way I've treated her, but things are going to be different. I'll make it up ... I just got this job on the telegraph desk two days ago, but I'm sure it'll pan out. When I'm really sure — a week or two— I'U send for Paula, but I want everything smooth as satin before I do, so RADIO NUB"0" I'll be all set to give her the sort of life she expects marriage to be, poor kid . . . I've been doing a lot of heavy thinking since I left Paula and I've come to. the conclusion that she's about as right as anyone could be. Lord, a man can't run around from job to job and city to city like a big kid all his life. Maybe this time we'll start a family. Nothing like a couple of kids to make Dave Kent a pillar of the church, I'll bet you . . . Anyway, I want another chance . . ." The words blurred. The little room was quiet for a bit, broken only by the sound of Jeff striking a match. Finally he said, "Paula, tell me about you and David, if you think you'd like to. Maybe it would help, talking about it to someone who knew him almost as well as you did." I nodded, and almost at once, as JAXTJAJIY, 1943 if I had had nothing whatever to do with it, I heard my voice begin to tell "him about us— about David and me — in little, meager sentences, phrases that were word-shy because there were no words to tell how much I had loved David, how hurt I had been when he went away from me. That was the false Paula speaking, the contained, reserved Paula I had trained myself to be. Yet all the time I told the story, so barren of all the things that had made it our story, the other half of me was reliving those few short, sad-happy months that were the sweetest thing life had ever offered me in spite of the heartache they had brought. I'd heard about Dave Kent long before I met him. He was a kind of legend among newspaper men in our section of the country. If someone told a good story someone else was sure to say, "Oh, Dave Kent told me that one in Chicago a month ago!" Letters from Dave Kent were passed around from hand to hand. There were tales of his reporting prowess and of his wit — what he said to the season's number one debutante when she snooted him in an interview, how he had acted as intermediary in a famous kidnapping case, of tricks he'd used to get stories that left other reporters tagging along with their tongues hanging out. There were stories, too, of his devil-take-the-hindmost attitude toward life, his utter disregard of anyone and everyone, the lightness with which he resigned from good jobs in order to move along to another city and so still, for a short time, his urge to be constantly on the move, never to be tied down. He was like the reporters I'd read about in books or seen in the movies — not like the prosaic men who worked on the Telegram at all. And so, when a Telegram subeditor leaned over my switchboard one day and said, "Got a letter from Dave Kent. He's coming to town and wants a date with a new girl — like to meet him?" I said yes with a swift intake of breath. Did I want to meet him? After all those stories, who wouldn't? Remember the nursery rhyme about Solomon Grundy — born on Monday, christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, and so on? That's about what it was like with Dave and me. We met on a Saturday, and on the next Saturday we were married. In between was a week of madness in which, daytimes, I plugged in unpaired jacks on my switchboard and then wondered why people didn't get their calls straight, or rang bells in people's ears and apologized hastily, only to do it again the next minute. Evenings were pure heaven, lost in the heart-filling wonder of having fallen madly, completely, without reservation, in love with Dave Kent. And he with me. | WAS floating about two feet off the ground as I got ready to meet him that first night. I brushed my hair, usually about the color of wheat, until I got a spun-gold look into it. My eyes, usually blue, were black with the excitement that dilated them. My hands are my only pretensions to real beauty, and I fussed hours with them, putting on three different shades of nail polish before I was satisfied. Nothing but a new dress would do, of course, and I'd bought one with a green velveteen jacket and a silly little velveteen" hat to match. Even now I remember every detail of how David looked, what he said, that first evening. I even remember the sound of the doorbell that night, somehow a different, more portentous ring then ever before. And when I opened the door, Dave Kent was standing there, looking just as I wanted him to look, only more so. Continued on page 66 27