He found the clubhouse without trouble. There he asked a middle-aged Navy petty officer how one arranged to play a round. Shoes and clubs were available for fifty cents in the locker room, he was told, and the greens fee was a dollar.
"And do I have to play in uniform?"
"Uniform regulations are waived while you are physically on the golf course proper, sir," the petty officer told him. "You can take off your hat and blouse and tie."
Pickering fetched his clubs and a pair of golf shoes from the trunk of the convertible and then went to the locker room and paid the fees. After that he hung his blouse, hat, Sam Browne belt, and field scarf in a locker and went outside. A lanky teen-aged Negro boy detached himself from a group of his peers, offered his services as a caddy, and led him to the first tee.
A middle- aged woman was already on the tee. A woman who took her golf seriously, he saw. She was teed up, but had stepped away from the ball and was practicing her swing. He at first approved of this (his major objection to women on the links was that most of them did not take the game seriously); but his approval turned to annoyance when the middle-aged woman kept taking practice swings.
How long am I supposed to wait?
And then she saw him standing mere and smiled. "Good afternoon," she said.
"Hello," he said politely.
"I didn't see you," she said. "I'm really sorry."
"Don't be silly," Pickering said.
"I was waiting for my daughter," the woman said. And then, "And here, at long last, she is."
Pickering followed her gesture and found himself looking at Martha Sayre Culhane. She was wearing a band over her blond hair, a cotton windbreaker on top of a pale blue sweater, and a tight-across-the-back khaki-colored gabardine skirt. That sight immediately urged into his mind's eye another image of her. In that one she was in her birthday suit.
Martha Sayre Culhane's eyebrows rose when she saw him; she was not pleased.
"If you don't mind playing with women," Martha Sayre Culhane's mother said. "They really discourage singles."
"I would be delighted," Pick said.
"I'm Jeanne Sayre," Martha Sayre's Culhane's mother said. "And this is Martha. Martha Culhane."
In turn, they offered their hands. Martha Sayre Culhane's hand, he thought, was exquisitely soft and feminine.
"My name is Malcolm Pickering," he said. "People call me Pick."
"I thought your name was Foster," Martha Sayre Culhane said, matter-of-factly.
"Oh, you've met?" Jeanne Sayre asked.
"The desk clerk at the San Carlos, almost beside himself with awe, pointed him out to me," Martha Sayre Culhane said.
That's not true, Pickering thought, with certainty. She asked him who I was. She was curious.
"Oh?" her mother said, her tone making it clear that her daughter was embarrassing and annoying her.
"According to the desk clerk," Martha Sayre Culhane said, "we are about to go a round with the heir apparent to the Foster Hotel chain, now resident in the San Carlos penthouse."
"He told me about you, too," Pickering blurted.
Jeanne Sayre looked uncomfortably from one to the other. And then she looked between them, avoiding what she did not want to look at.
"But your name isn't Foster?" Martha challenged. "What about the rest of the story? How much of that is true?"
"Martha!" Jeanne Sayre snapped.
"Andrew Foster is my mother's father," Pickering said.
He saw surprise on Jeanne Sayre's face. But he didn't know what was in Martha Sayre Culhane's eyes.
"And what brought you to honor the Marine Corps with your presence?" Martha Sayre Culhane challenged.
"An old family custom," Pick snapped. "My father-my father is Fleming Pickering, as in Pacific Far East Shipping-was a Marine in the last war. Whenever the professionals need help to pull their acorns out of the fire, we lend a hand. I am twenty-two years old. I went to Harvard, where I was the assistant business manager of the Crimson. I am unmarried, have a polo handicap of six, and generally can get around eighteen holes in the middle seventies. Is there anything else you would like to know?"
"Good for you, Lieutenant!" Jeanne Sayre said. "Martha, really-"
"If there's no objection," Martha Sayre Culhane interrupted her mother, "I think I'll go first."
She stepped to the tee and drove her mother's ball straight down the fairway.
Whoever had taught her to play golf, Pickering saw, had managed to impress upon her the importance of follow-through. At the end of her swing, her khaki gabardine skirt was skintight against the most fascinating derriere he had ever seen.
"If you would rather not play with us, Lieutenant," Jeanne Sayre said, "I would certainly understand."
"If it's all right with you," Pick said, "I'll play with you."
She met his eyes for a moment. Her eyes, Pick saw, were gray, and kind, and perceptive.
"You go ahead," Jeanne Sayre said. "I'll bring up the rear."
Martha Sayre Culhane hated him, Pick was aware, because he was here. Alive. And her husband-the late Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-had-been Culhane, USMC-had died in the futile defense of Wake Island.
Pick was ambivalent about that. Shamefully, perhaps even disgustingly ambivalent. He was sorry that Lieutenant Culhane was dead. He was sorry that Martha Sayre Culhane was a widow. And glad that she was.
By the time they came off the course, there was no doubt in Pick Pickering's mind that he was in love. There was simply no other explanation for the way he felt when-however briefly- their eyes had met.
(Two)
Thirtieth Street Station Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1820 Hours, 8 January 1942
The weather was simply too cold and nasty for Ernie Sage to wait on the curb outside the Thirtieth Street Station as she had promised.
But she found, inside the station near one of the Market Street doors, a place where she could look out and wait for him. It was hardly more comfortable than the street: Every time the door opened, there was a blast of cold air, and she desperately needed to go to the ladies' room. But she held firmly to her spot; she was afraid she would miss him if she left.
And finally he showed up. Except for the path the wipers had cleared on the windshield, the LaSalle convertible was filthy. The bumper and grill were covered with frozen grime, and slush had packed in the fender wells.
Ernie picked up her bags and ran outside; and she was standing at the curb when he skidded to a stop.
She pulled open the door and threw her bags into the car.
"If they won't let you wait, go around the block," Ernie ordered. Then she ran back inside the Thirtieth Street Station to the ladies' room.
He wasn't there when she went back outside, but he pulled to the curb a moment later, and she got in.
She had planned to kiss him, but he didn't give her a chance, The moment she was inside, he pulled away from the curb. She slid close to him, put her hand under his arm, and nestled her head against his shoulder.
"Hi," she said.
"What's with all the luggage?" McCoy asked, levelly.
"I thought you'd probably be going through Harrisburg," Ernie said. "I thought I would ride that far with you, and then catch a train."
He looked at her for a just a moment, but said nothing.
"I'm lying," Ernie Sage said. "I'm going with you. All the way."
"No you're not," he said flatly.
"I knew that was a mistake," Ernie said. "I should have
waited until we were in the middle of nowhere before I told you. Somewhere you couldn't put me out."
"You can't come with me," he said.
"Why not? 'Whither thou goest…" Book of Ruth."
When there was no reply to that, Ernie said, "I love you."
"You think you love me," he said. "You don't really know a damn thing about me."
"I thought we'd been through all this," Ernie said, trying to keep her voice light. "As I recall, the last conclusion you came to was that I was the best thing that ever happened to you."
"Oh, Jesus Christ!"
"Well, am I or ain't I?" Ernie challenged.