Radio romances (July-Dec 1945)

that it happen at home than anywhere else. "But," my father finished grimly, "I intend to be here. Lance is going to talk to me as well as to you." "Yes," I said. "I think he wants to." The next day was Sunday. A lovely, soft spring day, full of the vagrant smells and stirrings of coming summer. It was a day made for peace. But there was little in our house. Mother and Dad were tense with a kind of grim-lipped waiting. And Dessy was sulky and raging, by turns. With all the violent, thoughtless feelings of sixteen, she let everybody know exactly what she thought as soon as she heard Lance was coming. "You haven't any pride," she cried at me accusingly. "He's ruined your life and now you let him come back like this — if he'd brought his wife back, I suppose you'd invite her over for tea! You — you just make me sick!" I didn't try to answer. What she said didn't mean anything. I was still held in the same, curious thrall of last night. We were all sitting in the livingroom when he came. The front door opens directly into it, and Lance just pushed open the screen and came in. We sat and looked at him and nobody said a word. Nobody could. Because in his arms, awkwardly and not too surely, he was carrying a pink-blanketwrapped little bundle. Lance had brought his daughter. He stopped a moment, caught in the strange silence in that room. Then he looked down at the sleeping baby and said, quite simply and directly, "Her name is Anne." He made as if to put her on the couch. Mother spoke then, for the first time. "Don't do that," she said sharply, uncompromisingly. "Give her to me." The baby didn't stir as she was given over. Lance looked at me. "I didn't want to bring her, Linna. I didn't intend to. But the landlady was going out and there was no one to leave her with. I'm sorry." "It's — all right," I said with difficulty. It wasn't. I didn't want to see that child, to feel any further its reality. He looked around the room, that waiting, hostile room. And for one fleeting second, I could feel pity for him. Animosity was alive there — in my mother's unyielding expression even as she held the child, in Dad's hostile eyes, 40 Before We kPart was adapted from one of the problems originally presented on John J. Anthony's weekday program, broadcast at 1 :45 P.M. EWT, on Mutual. in Dessy's open contemptuous dislike, and in my — I don't know what I showed. It couldn't have been easy for him. In a way, perhaps, going into battle there in Normandy might have been better than the intangibles he was facing here, things he couldn't touch. Lance drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. I saw again the sharp lines around his mouth. I saw the shabby uniform — Lance, who had always been so neat and spruce. And I saw that he wore no ribbons — no Purple Heart, no service stars, no "brag rags." With intuitive understanding, I knew why. He'd left them off on purpose because he couldn't, wouldn't, use anything that would appear to beg fof sympathy. "I'm glad you're all here," he said in a low voice. "What I've got to say isn't an easy or a pretty thing to say, but it has to be done. I want to thank you for letting me come — like this." "CIT down," my father said. There ^ was no friendliness in it. No quarter. Lance sat down in the straight chair by the desk. His hands were trembling and he didn't seem to care. "It's a long story," he said. "And I guess I'll just have to tell it in my own way." Going overseas (Lance began) was a lot more for me than just getting on a boat and going from one place to another. Of course it was for everybody — we knew we weren't taking a joy ride but going somewhere where, eventually, in one way or another, we'd fight. But for me, it was more than that even. Leaving Linna was like an amputation. It was like leaving a part of myself — an arm or a leg — and I didn't feel complete any more. You know what I mean? It was more than homesickness. It was like I wasn't myself any more, but just part of myself living in a dream. Of course they kept us busy, and being in England, knowing English people and getting used to their ways, was interesting. But none of it seemed real. I used to live for mail call and Linna's letters. I'd read them over and over, feeling our love was the only part of me that was really me and that the life we'd planned together was the only one that was really living. I knew we had a big job ahead of us and it would be a long time before I got home, but I tried not. to think much about it. So when I was off-duty, I'd keep busy. I'd take long walks around the country where we were stationed, and whenever I had weekend leave I'd go up to London, sightseeing and stuff. It was just filling in time. I got to know a few English people and once I got used to the fact that they were different from us, I liked them. You couldn't help it. The way they took the war and the blitz and the shortages — they were swell! One Saturday night in London, there was an air raid. A bad one. I'd been by myself, walking along one of the residential streets thinking about Linna, when the sirens went. It was pitch black of course and I didn't know where the nearest shelter was, so I ducked into a doorway. The noise was awful — the worst I'd ever heard. They were dropping a lot of incendiaries, and I don't mind saying I was scared. It was getting worse when all of a sudden somebody ran in beside me. Even in the dark I could tell it was a girl. But she wasn't panicky or anything. She even laughed a little when she saw me, all scrooged down like they . tell you to do, and said, "Hello, Yank. Mind some company?" I said I was glad of it, and I was, too. It doesn't sound very heroic or anything, but. I felt a kind of comfort to have somebody else there, another human being in the midst of all that noise and fire and hell. We huddled down close to each other. "It's a bad one, isn't it?" she said, and her voice was as cool as if we'd been waiting out a rainstorm. "It sure is! What are you doing out in it?" I was making myself talk so I wouldn't feel so damned scared. "I was trying to get home, where I've got a nice comfortable Anderson shelter out in the backyard. But I couldn't quite make it." There was a terrific blast, real close, and just sort of instinctively I threw my arms around her. It must have stunned us a little for a minute, or something, because when my head cleared, I found she was holding on to me, too, and looking up at me with the strangest expression on her face. I felt strange myself. It was like there was nobody else in the world but us two, and that we might get hit any minute, and that all that mattered was that we were alive right now. and in each other's arms. It's hard to describe but I felt an excitement, an exhilaration — IJcnow it sounds crazy but I wanted to laugh out loud. And more than anything I wanted to kiss her because the next minute I might be dead. So I did. And she kissed me back, and it was like — well, it was like some of that fire outside was burning right inside of me. Then a bomb hit about a block away, and for a little while everything seemed to black out. When it got clear again, the girl was standing at the edge of the doorway looking out into the street in the direction of the blast. "There were people in that house!" she cried. "Come on, Yank!" And she did something I'd never have had the courage to do. She ducked out and started running down the street. There was nothing else for me to do but follow her. I couldn't let a girl show me up, scared though I was. By the time I caught up with her, she was already pulling bricks and stuff away from what had been the front door of the house where the bomb had struck. I began to help her. By the flickering light, I could see her face; it was like she was on fire with something inside. We worked feverishly there together, trying to clear a space, and it was all crazy but it was all real — realer than anything that had happened to me in my whole life. The war was real and I was (Continued on page 69)