Authors: Gilbert Morris
“And you’re still searching for that high calling you talk so much about.”
“I don’t talk about it much anymore, Parker.”
“Do you think you’ve found it, then? Serving in the mission and working in the hospital?”
“I . . . don’t know. I’m not sure of much of anything anymore.”
His face clouded. “I know that feeling,” he said quietly. Suddenly he asked, “Have you seen the movie
The Wizard of Oz?
”
“Oh yes! It’s a wonderful movie.”
“You know what that movie means to me, the whole essence of it?”
“What?”
“That happiness is to be found in our own backyards. We don’t have to go off seeking any wizard to give it to us.”
“Why, of course, that’s very true. Most of us don’t recognize it, though. Maybe God’s tired of me pestering Him to put me in whatever high place He has.”
After some more quiet conversation, she said, “I’d better go check on your father.”
“All right. I’ll go see what we’ll be having for dinner tonight.”
****
Kat stayed busy all day. She took Gregory’s supper to him and at his request sat down and talked with him for half an hour. He did not feel well, but he did seem eager to have company. He asked her to tell him about America, and he listened attentively. “I’d love to go there someday,” he whispered hoarsely.
“You should. You and my father would get along well. You’re alike in many ways.”
“Oh, he’s a handsome man, is he?”
“You’re full of vanity, Lord Braden! Yes, he is a handsome man, and I think he’s the most honest and decent and loving man I’ve ever known.”
“What a wonderful thing to say of anyone!”
“Well, it’s true. Promise me when you get well and this war is over you’ll come and see us.”
“I will,” Gregory said firmly. “Grace and I will come, and maybe we can get Parker and the twins to come too. We’ll descend on you like the Assyrians came down on the fold, as the poem says.”
“You like Byron?”
“I like that one.”
“I’ll read it to you sometime. I read it once and won a competition back when I was in school. Oh, I did love all the swashbuckling and roaring.” She giggled and said, “But I won. Perhaps because I was the loudest.”
Gregory grew sleepy, so she excused herself and spent much of the evening with the children. After she had tucked the children into bed, Kat said, “You need to go to bed too, Parker. You’re trying to do too much.”
“All right. I will. Sleep well, and thanks again for coming.”
“I love your family,” Kat said, “and I’m glad I could help.”
“They love you too.” He wanted to add the words “all
of us” but knew that would not be right. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
****
Parker’s condition improved considerably over the next few days, and so did that of the twins. Parker was talking about returning to duty, and the rest of the family was trying to convince him that it was too soon. He finally agreed to stay home for another day or two.
As for Kat, she had never felt so much at home with a family as she did with Lord and Lady Braden. She had not imagined that nobility could be so warm and genuine. She had imagined they might be cold and very formal.
Another surprise had been Parker’s aunt Edith, who had always disliked Americans. She had returned two days ago from her visit to Oxford, where she had been doing research. She had been spending a considerable amount of time with Kat, and one day she commented to Grace that she would have to revise her opinion of Americans if Kat was a good sample.
Kat knew she had to get back to the mission, however, and Parker made up his mind to go back to the base at the same time.
“I’ll just do office work,” he said defensively. “No going up until the doctor clears me. I couldn’t anyway.”
On the final afternoon of Kat’s stay, Parker and Kat were walking outside and Parker was showing her his vegetable garden. His pride was evident as he pointed out the various plants and even picked a few vegetables. “We have to have a man come in and tend it now, but I used to love doing the gardening.”
“I’ve always loved gardening too. We had such a big one in Georgia. There were hard days when I was growing up—the Depression and all—so we grew everything we possibly could.”
They walked for a time, and finally he stopped and looked
back at the house and sighed. “I hate to leave. I wish I didn’t ever have to go back.”
Kat was surprised. It was the first time he had ever said anything like this. She knew he loved to fly but hated the part of his job that included killing other men.
“I hate to leave too.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just stay like this always?”
“Yes, it would, but as we’ve said before, things change.”
“That’s not always true.”
“What do you mean, Parker?”
“
You
don’t change, Katherine. You’re always the same.”
“Why, I’m as changeable as a weather vane! Crying one day and laughing the next. You know that.”
“In essentials you’re always the same.”
Kat saw the warmth of his eyes, and something came to her in that still moment. She could not face him, afraid that he might read her true emotions. “Look at that,” she said, trying to change the subject. She pointed to a chipmunk that was streaking across the ground. The animal froze and tucked its front legs tightly together against its chest.
“It looks like an alderman come to beg for a donation of some sort,” Parker said with a grin.
Kat had no interest in the chipmunk at the moment. She knew she loved Parker and had loved him for years. Indeed, looking back at her life she saw that she had never been able to put away the love she’d had for him when he’d been in Georgia. She suddenly felt nervous. “I think I’d better go in. It’s getting chilly.”
As they moved toward the house, he reached out and took her arm. “I guess I’m like the apostle Paul. I see through a glass darkly,” Parker said, “but I want you to know how much it’s meant having you here. More than just the help. You have such a sweet spirit.”
Kat suddenly realized the loneliness that lay in this man. She longed to put her arms around him but knew that it was
not her place to do such a thing. She quickly said, “Thank you, Parker.”
He followed her up the walk, and as they entered the house, both of them felt they had let a special moment slip by unheeded. Neither of them, however, felt bold enough to remedy the situation, so each went his own way and the opportunity was lost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Meredith
The weariness and near despair of the RAF pilots had descended upon Brodie Lee. As he walked down the streets of London, he was depressed even more by the sights that met his eyes. A bomber raid had taken place only six hours earlier, and flames still raged in some of the buildings, although firefighters struggled valiantly to contain them. The walls left standing were being knocked down as soon as possible to remove the danger of them crashing to the ground. The acrid smell of explosives and burning buildings filled the city, the smoke hovering over it in an ugly cloud.
Brodie passed a group of repairmen taping up the ends of electrical cables that had been severed by the bombs, while a family was loading what was left of their household—a sofa, several chairs, and a few boxes of housewares—onto a horse-drawn cart. Farther on he walked around a pair of men who had rolled a rack containing women’s clothes out of a bombed building and looked as if they were trying to decide what to do with it.
Brodie’s deep depression also stemmed from his visit to the hospital in East Grinstead, where he had gone to visit one of the men who had been terribly burned. What made his visit even more difficult was that the pilot had been Trevor Park, the ex-movie star, the most handsome man in the entire squadron or, perhaps, in the RAF. A shiver ran over Brodie at the memory of Trevor’s face burned almost beyond recognition and the look of despair in his remaining eye. Brodie had
visited only for ten minutes and was glad when the nurse had come to get Trevor for further surgery.
“You’ll be back with us soon, Trevor,” Brodie had said.
“No I won’t.” The man’s voice had been flat, a whisper tinged with despair and hopelessness.
Brodie passed by a restaurant with all the windows blown out. Broken glass lay strewn all over the sidewalk, but peering inside, Brodie was shocked to see that it was business as usual. The patrons were sitting next to the window, some of them laughing, and a waitress moved around, delivering food from the depths of the restaurant.
Brodie could not help but marvel at the endurance of these people. The English had proven themselves to be far tougher than Hitler and his henchmen had predicted. Even now with their beloved London being taken apart by bombers on a daily basis, they still had not given up.
Walking aimlessly along the streets, Brodie wondered at himself. He had always considered himself a rather tough individual, but what he was seeing in this leveling of one of the great cities of the world shocked him. He had heard all of his life about the treasures of London, buildings ancient and meaningful in the history of the world—and now they were nothing but heaps of rubble and broken glass and charred wood. He walked by the Tower Bridge at the edge of Central London and glanced up at the barrage balloons that were meant to stop low-flying aircraft. They looked like fat sausages pulling at their cables as if anxious to be off somewhere.
Brodie walked through the heart of London until he came to stand beneath the tall pillar in Trafalgar Square with the statue of Nelson perched atop it. He stared up at the statue for a long time. Brodie was not a great reader of books, but somehow Horatio Nelson had always fascinated him. He had once read a biography of the diminutive English admiral who had held the power of Napoleon at bay and defeated him time after time.
“Good job, old boy. I hope we can do the same thing to Adolf.”
Turning, he walked past the office workers who were scurrying along the sidewalks and streets as if there had been no raid. It occurred to Brodie that thirty minutes from now this part of London might be as devastated as the part he had just gone through, and the thought troubled him. He made up his mind to go to the mission, and a fear tugged at him that it might have been leveled too, so he hastened his pace.
As he continued his walk, he passed a huge group of young people, perhaps a hundred, near an Underground station. All of them wore identification tags pinned to their clothing and had boxes that contained gas masks. He stopped a uniformed bobby who was ambling by. “Where are these children going?”
“They’re being taken to homes and places of safety outside the city, don’t you see?”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Yes, it is. Families have volunteered to take them in. I have a brother ten miles outside of London. He took two of them, and he enjoyed having them so much that he’s taking in four more.”
“You must be proud of him.”
“Well, of course I am. But it’s the sort of thing we have to do.”
Brodie watched as the children were taken down to the Underground before he hurried on. He kept scanning the skies for bombers, but none appeared. As he walked, he thought suddenly of Bernie Cox. He had never gotten over the death of the young airman who had been his friend. When Bernie had died, Brodie had lost some of his own life as well, and he couldn’t get over it. He still dreamed about the nightmarish incident when he had let his friend get killed. This in turn had opened him up to thoughts that he had seldom had before—thoughts of God and of eternity.
Now he came within sight of the mission building and gave a sigh of relief as he saw it still standing. “Thank God,”
he muttered, and somehow it shocked him that he had said such a thing.
I’ve kept God out of my life, and now I come expecting Him to take care of things for me. That’s a rotten way to be!
He entered the mission and asked a man he had met before about Meredith.
“She’ll be leaving in a few minutes. She’s taking some children out to meet up with foster parents who will take them to the country.”
“Where is she, do you know?” He listened to the directions carefully and then went off to find her. He succeeded with some difficulty, and when he saw her, he was relieved. He had not realized he was so worried about her.
“Hello, little lady. Need some help with these young’uns?”
Meredith was surprised. “Yes, I could use some help,” she said, giving him a smile. “Here. You take Jeffrey, and then I can handle the other two.”
Jeffrey was no more than two or three, and his eyes were huge as he looked up at the tall man who stood before him. “All right if I pick you up, Jeff?”
“Yeth.”
Brodie picked the boy up, and soon he and Meredith and two little girls with braids down their backs had found their way out to the street. “Where are you going with them?”
“Only to the Underground. The couple that are taking them will be meeting us there.”
“That’s a decent thing to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m very proud of our people for helping like this.”
Brodie observed how good Meredith was with the children. They were nervous and upset, but her ready smile and her encouraging words and ways helped calm them down.
“The entrance to the Underground is right over there. Oh, and there they are.”
Mr. and Mrs. Williams proved to be a couple in their fifties. He was red-faced with a bushy mustache and a pair of
bright eyes. His wife was a small woman with determination written on her face.
“Here they are,” Meredith said and then introduced each child. “Take good care of them, now.”
“We’ll do that,” Mr. Williams said. He reached out and took Jeffrey from Brodie and asked, “RAF, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I wish you’d go back and shoot down a few of those nasty bombers.”
“I’ll do just that, with your love,” Brodie said with a grin.
The children left, herded by the Williamses, and Brodie asked, “What now?”
“I’ve got to go make a call on an invalid—two of them, as a matter of fact. A man and his wife. They’re in their late eighties. They were doing fine until she was hurt in one of the raids. His health hadn’t been the best, and she was taking care of
him.
Now he’s resurrected himself. A lovely couple.”