His Very Own Girl (26 page)

Lulu swallowed a sob at the mention of family, knowing Joe had none to write home to. Neither did she, for that matter. They had nothing but each other, and even that comfort had turned thorny. Her throat burned.

“Just tell me why,” he said. “Why take this chance?”

“Because I’m needed and because I
can
. And because I know the end of the war will set everything back the way it was.”

“
Good
.”

Lulu flinched. “You’d have everything I’ve worked for taken from me? Thanks awfully, you pretty little misses, but back into the kitchen?”

His stony expression didn’t alter. “In a heartbeat.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Like hell I don’t. Jesus, what do you think me and the boys are fighting for? To beat the Nazis? Sure thing.”

He shrugged into his dress tunic and buttoned it. Less than two days before, she’d started there on her slow path to undressing him, seducing him, comforting him. Now each of his words, spoken with such menacing calm, slashed at her soul.

“We brave boys in blue,” he said, “are just fighting for the right to go back home to jobs and homes and families. We sure as hell aren’t fighting to go back to women in factories. You’re helping us win the peace, Lulu. It’s not meant to change our way of life.”

The worst part was that Lulu knew he was right. It’s what she dreaded—not the end of the fighting or the killing. She’d give anything for that. But even if she weren’t so willing, the new freedoms and privileges she’d so eagerly acquired over the last five years would be taken from her anyway. The peace she was working so hard to bring about would ground her forever.

“Get your things,” Joe said gruffly. “I’ll walk you to the station.”

“You don’t need to trouble yourself.”

“Damn it, let me be a man and walk you there.”

The pain in his voice tore at her, but she was too stunned, too cross, to reach out to him now. Instead she picked up the ring box and held it across the chasm between them.

“You forgot this.”

“Keep it, pawn it, I don’t care. Hell, buy yourself a pair of stockings.”

The train to Chelsfield found them standing together on the platform like strangers. Joe might as well have been underwater for how little he could breathe and how slowly he moved, numb and sleepy. He couldn’t shake the blaring buzz in his head. It drowned out every sound, every thought.

Good. Let it blare.

But the images twitching before his eyes offered no such comfort. He saw Smitty at Hill 122. He saw Lulu’s plane gliding toward the ground, its wheels stuck and its propellers trimmed away. He saw his C-47 bursting into flames, dropping like a felled goose.

And then he saw Lulu. She’d turned to look up at him. His heart twisted. She was beautiful—beautiful and damnably sad. The bitter anger that had filled him didn’t run so rough now. Instead shame and regret tossed back and forth behind his breastbone, nauseating him like the seasickness he’d suffered when crossing the Atlantic.

“What will you do now?” he heard her ask.

Joe shrugged. “Wander around, I suppose.”

Her gaze dropped.

Would it be so hard to lie to each other? People parted on polite terms all the time. He craved a few lies right about then.

We’ll meet again. I’ll wait for you. You’ll be back by Christmas. I love you.

Lie to me, Lulu. Even about that.

He’d made it through Normandy because Lulu waited for him in England, as much an incentive as the promise of peace. He’d even prayed to her a few times.
C’mon, Lulu, get me out of this one.
Maybe God had taken offense at his blasphemy, but Joe could list a thousand things He’d find more offensive.

Yet no matter the horrors of D-Day, he’d had her letter and the promise of a future they might dream up together. One day. Now he had but a wisp of that promise.

The part of his brain that stood off and away from the hurt they’d inflicted on each other—it fought to make itself heard. Maybe it was self-preservation. He was nothing more than a lonely man on the verge of returning to a war zone. He wasn’t so stuck on his own pride as to toss aside the only lifeline he had left.

Do something, Weber. Do something or lose her forever.

He dropped his duffel. It hit the platform with a dull thud. That he could hear it at all—among a thousand voices, two dozen hissing steam locomotives, and his own shrieking thoughts—seemed a miracle. He framed Lulu’s face with his hands and stroked his thumbs across her cheekbones. Tears welled in her dark eyes, nearly black with shadows that would haunt him.

Forgive me,
the rational voice said.
And please, God, don’t forget me.

He tried to speak, but his throat was like a shoe two sizes too small.

Lulu stopped his words by standing on tiptoe and kissing him. She hadn’t bothered to put on lipstick that morning. She tasted just like her—only her. The feel of her was soft and silky and natural, her lips pressed desperately against his. Joe pulled her to his chest, which burned and throbbed. Not even holding her eased that ache. She squeezed her arms where they crisscrossed behind his neck, her mouth inches now from his ear.

“I’ll write to you,” she whispered. “Nothing will change that.”

There it was: the lifeline he needed. He grabbed it. Forget the future and marriage proposals and peacetime. It was a matter of survival.

“I’d like that.”

But neither of them said what lovers should say when parting. As Lulu’s train screeched to a stop at the platform, Joe had plenty of chances. They clung to each other for countless minutes. People came and went, bustling to get aboard. He could’ve whispered it in her ear, or mouthed it against the soft hair edging her temple. He could’ve even pulled away and let it shine out of his eyes.

But “I love you” stayed locked in his chest. He could only hope that she felt the same, unable to speak after they’d done their best to ruin it. The alternative was too crippling.

She kissed him once more, a swift good-bye. “I’ll be seeing you, Joe,” she said, her words nearly a sob. “Stay safe.”

“You, too. I mean that, Lulu.”

The conductor bellowed his last call for all aboard.

Face flushed, Lulu wiped her eyes. “Well, then.”

“Yeah.”

She picked up her suitcase and turned for the train. Joe caught one last glimpse of her pale calves as she climbed aboard. Then he couldn’t see anything else. Head down, eyes shut tight, he stood there until long after the train had pulled away.

chapter twenty-three

When Lulu learned of the 82nd Airborne’s drop into occupied Holland, she’d just arrived at RAF Llandow, a repair depot about fifteen miles outside Cardiff.

Her attention was focused on postflight checklists and the transition from one type of plane to another—from a tiny Martinet due to be retired, to a massive four-engine Lancaster. She’d ferried the same Lankie from its factory so that it could be fitted with radar and armaments. Now prepared for night bombing runs, it was heading to Southampton. That she would be the one to deliver it was an unusual occurrence. Unless she wound up on taxi duty, she rarely flew the same vehicle twice.

The similarity to her previous love life wasn’t lost on her.

Demanding days should’ve meant less time to think about Joe. But he was a constant distraction—in the air, during layovers, and when she lay exhausted in bed. Her heart and mind battled to decide whether she was angry with him, missing him, or wanting him. Most days it was three at the same time. Worrying was her tip-top after-hours pastime. Since arriving at White Waltham, she didn’t have Paulie or Betsy to talk to, although they all wrote nearly every day. They’d invited her to fly back up to Mersley for her birthday later that week, but Lulu didn’t know if she had the heart.

And Nicky. He was awfully busy with his new responsibilities at the ATA headquarters, but their relationship wasn’t the same. Not at all. Something quiet and unspoken had crawled between her and her old friend. Perhaps it was for the best, no matter how distressing. She mourned the loss of his comfort, even as she understood his reasons for backing away. Part of her was relieved. She’d never wanted to hurt him.

So she worked. With mid-September days growing shorter and the push into German territory building steam, she couldn’t help a sense of urgency. One more flight. Do this one for the boys. One more. Don’t think about Joe.

That changed as she took tea in the hangar, waiting while the mechanics gave her Lankie a final once-over. The hangar chief, a hard-faced sod from Aberystwyth who made a point of tossing as many Welsh phrases as possible into daily conversation, had switched on the wireless.

A daytime drop, the BBC announcer said. Into Holland.

Everyone had assumed the Airborne would return to combat sooner than later, but as Patton and the infantry units tore through Europe, overrunning planned drop zones, the 82nd had sat in France. Waiting. Now they were back in harm’s way—some scheme to capture Dutch bridges. There was even talk of ending the war by Christmas.

Lulu hung her head and stared into her cooled cup, where a few flecks of tea leaf clung to its side. She’d written to him once, just a brief note to inform him that he wouldn’t become a father anytime soon. She hadn’t been able to write anything beyond that bare statement of fact, not even to ask the questions that kept her up nights. What did he do with his leave time in liberated France? Had he found a new girl to dance with? He wouldn’t have considered it had Lulu accepted his ring. That knowledge filled her with guilt like a festering boil. Guilt. Regret. And a terrible longing.

She’d thought Joe unfair in making her choose. But there it was. Her choice was flying. She had no claim to him now, and neither of them had reaffirmed their pledges of fidelity. Yet her old ambitions had become so muddled. She still wanted both, but with him back in danger on the front lines, she yearned to take it all back—their fight, her pride.

Hugging her elbows, hunched in on herself, Lulu had never been so uncertain. A hundred times a day she’d wanted to tell him what a mistake she’d made.

I love you, Joe,
she imagined writing once more.

But then what?

The picture after that was as blank as a city under blackout. Was she really so incapable of imagining a happy life with him? She used to think that the war limited her ability to create such a picture. After all, until very recently, she’d held out little hope of actually surviving the beastly thing. German victory had seemed so very near while London burned. Curled in her grimy little bunk in Aldwych, she’d expected the roof to collapse with every shuddering bomb blast.

Then, once she
had
survived, flying had once again become her obsession. It remained her lifeline out of a mire of heartbreak.

Now the tide might be turning. Morale was an unlimited ceiling on a sunny day. Not tomorrow, and maybe not even by Christmas, but peace
would
come.

If she couldn’t imagine a future with Joe under such buoyant circumstances, then perhaps their notions of happiness were simply too divergent. She couldn’t give up her purpose and pride, not even for Joe.

And he wanted the kind of wife who . . .

She blinked. She sat up. What kind of wife
did
he want? He’d never mentioned dreams for the future, as if that part of him had been crippled by prison, combat, and the loss of his family. Surely he had a few rattling around in that wounded heart of his. She’d only assumed the rigors of combat would forge his conventional bent into steel. He would yearn for peacetime with a traditional wife at his side. He had said as much in London.

But the weeks since had tempered
her
stalwart resistance to change. How had they affected Joe? Was there any room in his heart for compromise, as she’d begun to find in hers?

“Bobby, how long till my Lankie’s up?”

The Welshman smoothed his pale mustache and shrugged. “Twenty. Why, you got somewhere to be?”

“Southampton, apparently. Would be nice if I arrived before nightfall. But there’s no telling with your crew.”

“Watch what you say about my fellas,
saesnes
.”

“Be careful, old boy,” she said with a smile. “When you say ‘Englishwoman’ that way, it sounds like an endearment.”

He smoothed his mustache again. Lulu would’ve sworn he blushed.

After downing the cold tea with a grimace, Lulu searched the hangar until she found a sheet of paper and a pencil. She sat cross-legged in a quiet corner. Looking at the yellowed sheet, she nodded once as if giving herself permission.

The future. Hope was becoming easier to find, easier to nurture and keep afloat. He’d imagined enough to plan on proposing, although that didn’t mean he had considered the details beyond her answer. Perhaps he didn’t know what she wanted, either. She stopped chewing the end of her pencil and began writing.

17 September 1944

Dear Joe,

I’m twenty minutes away from climbing into a Lancaster, bound for Southampton. I only just heard news on the wireless about your latest drop. Everyone’s buzzing with the idea that the war will be over by Christmas. Would that were true! I know you might not believe me, considering all the careless things we said to one another, but I would give anything for the fighting to end. Anything. Even my work with the ATA.

I want to write to you—and this isn’t duty talking, Joe. You know me better than that by now. And I very much want to read your letters in return. I long for news from you. I worry.

Can we forget our last conversation ever happened? Perhaps we can talk about it later, face-to-face, but it’s too thorny to tackle by post.

So, I’ll pretend you’re nodding in complete agreement. There. A little fiction is good for the wartime soul.

Now I’m pretending that the rumors are true, and Jerry will lay down arms by Christmas. What now, Joe? What would you do in peacetime?

Come imagine with me.

Your Lulu

Joe carried her letter through most of Holland, where dikes and narrow roads between elevated fields made Normandy’s claustrophobic hedgerows seem open and free. He kept it in his tunic pocket long after even the most optimistic officers gave up on making Operation Market Garden a success, while he watched, day after day, as his regiment dwindled. That slim piece of paper became his talisman. Some irrational part of him came to believe the zany notion that if he put off answering until the next day, then he’d live to see morning. He couldn’t die with unfinished business.

But of course that wasn’t true. Men in Baker who had children back home to raise—they had unfinished business. Men with fiancées who waited for the day when they’d finally make sacred, heartfelt vows to their devoted sweethearts—they had unfinished business. Hell, every man in the army and the other services besides—they all had the simple unfinished business of living the rest of their lives. They had years of peace and productivity and the strange melancholy of old age. Yet they died anyway.

What now, Joe? What would you do in peacetime?

He needed to reply. And he would, make-believe shield or not, if only he knew the answer. His long-ago dream of a quiet little house, a business of his own, a wife and kids . . . he couldn’t see any of it anymore. Combat had rubbed it out of his mind, like a violent sandstorm across all he’d once known.

Now when Joe dreamed of life after the war, he dreamed of Lulu. No one and nothing else.

What did the details matter?

The Allies left Holland behind. Tails between their legs was hardly how Joe had imagined the operation ending. Overrunning a scattered and retreating German army as they skedaddled over the Rhine—that would’ve been grand. Instead it was the Airborne who retreated. Morale dipped. Hopes of V-E Day showing its bright shining face in 1944 faded.