Elaine Sage was a striking, trim, silver-haired woman in her middle forties. She was wearing a pleated plaid skirt, a simple white blouse, and a pink sweater. There was an antique gold watch hanging from a gold chain around her neck, and a three-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring next to her wedding ring. She crossed the room to Pickering, surprising but not startling him, and kissed him on the cheek.
"Good morning, Pick," she said, and then she put her arm around his waist and leaned her head against his arm.
It was a motherly gesture. Elaine Sage had known "Pick" Pickering all his life; she had been at Sarah Lawrence with his mother; and she had taken the Twentieth-Century Limited to California and waited in Doctor's Hospital with his father for Patricia Foster Pickering to deliver her first and only child.
Just over a year later, Patricia Pickering had come to Elaine's room at Presbyterian Hospital and cooed and oohed over precious little Ernestine.
"Well," Patricia had said then, "the next thing we have to do is get the two of them together." That had been a running joke over the years, but not wholly a joke or a preposterous idea. It would have been nice, but it wasn't going to happen.
What Pick Pickering had been looking at from the bay window of the breakfast room was Ernestine Sage standing by the duck pond at the far side of the wide lawn. She was standing with another Marine officer, and he had his arm around her. Twice, they had kissed.
"What rouses you from bed at this obscene hour?" Pick Pickering asked Ernie Sage's mother.
"You could say I am just being a gracious hostess," she replied.
Pick Pickering snorted.
"When I went to bed last night," Elaine Sage said, "I went to Ernie's room. I was going to tell her… following the hoary adage that the best way to get rid of your daughter's undesirable suitor is to praise him to the skies… how much I liked your friend out there." She bent her head in the direction of the Marine who was holding her daughter.
Pickering looked down at her, his eyebrows raised.
"She wasn't in her bed," Elaine Sage said.
"If she wasn't, Aunt Elaine," Pick Pickering said, "it was her idea, not his."
"Ken McCoy frightens me, Pick," Elaine Sage said. "He's not like us."
"That may be part of his attraction," Pickering said.
"I'm not sure he's good for Ernie," Elaine Sage said.
"/ think he's very good for her," Pickering said. When she looked at him, he added: "Anyway, I think it's a moot point. She thinks he's good for her. She thinks the sun comes up because he wants it to."
Ernestine Pickering and Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy had turned from the duck pond and were walking back to the house. He had unbuttoned his overcoat and she was half inside it, resting her face on his chest.
"You will forgive me for not being able to forgive you for introducing them at your party," Elaine Sage said.
"I didn't introduce them," Pickering said. "Ernie picked him up. She saw in him someone who was as bored with my party as she was. She walked up to him, introduced herself, and shortly thereafter they disappeared. I found out the next morning that he'd taken her to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Where, apparently, he dazzled her by speaking to the proprietor in Chinese, and then won her heart with his skill with chopsticks."
Elaine Sage chuckled.
"For what it's worth, Aunt Elaine," Pickering went on, "he didn't know she had a dime."
"Love at first sight?" she said. "Don't tell me you believe mat's possible?"
"Take a look," he said. "You have a choice between love at first sight or irresistible lust. I'm willing to accept love at first sight."
"They have nothing in common," she protested.
"I don't have a hell of a lot in common with him, either," Pickering said. "But I realized some time ago he's the best friend I've ever had. If you've come looking for an ally in some Machiavellian plot of yours to separate the two of them, you're out of luck. / think they're good for each other. My basic reaction is jealousy. I wish someone like Ernie would look at me the way she looks at McCoy."
"I wish Ernie would look at you the way she looks at McCoy," Elaine Sage said.
There was a rattling sound behind them. They turned and saw a middle-aged, plump woman in a maid's uniform rolling a serving cart into the breakfast room.
"Do you suppose that she was looking out the window, too, for the return of Romeo and Juliet?" Pickering asked dryly. "Will it be safe for him to eat the scrambled eggs?"
"I am placing what hope I have left in the 'praise him to the skies' theory," Elaine Sage said. "Poison will be a last desperate resort."
Ernestine Sage and Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, walked onto the broad veranda of the house, disappeared from sight, and a moment later came into the breakfast room. Their faces were red from the cold. McCoy was not quite as large as Pickering, nor as heavily built. He had light brown hair, and intelligent eyes.
Ernie Sage was wearing a sweater and a skirt, and she wore her black hair in a pageboy. She was, both her mother and Pick Pickering thought, a truly beautiful young woman, healthy, and wholesome.
"Mother," Ernie Sage said, "you didn't have to get up."
"All I have to do is the and pay taxes," Elaine Sage said. "I'm up because I want to be up. Good morning, Ken. Sleep well?"
"Just fine, thank you," McCoy said. His intelligent eyes searched her face for a moment, as if seeking a reason behind the "sleep well?" question.
"I'm starved," Ernie Sage said. "What are we having?"
"The cold air'll do that to you every time," Pickering said dryly.
"We'd better start eating," Elaine Sage said. "I asked Tony to have the car ready at half-past six. The roads may be icy."
Ernestine Sage looked at McCoy.
"If we're really ahead of time at Newark," she said, "you can ride into Manhattan with us and catch the train there."
"What time is your plane?" Elaine Sage asked Pickering.
"Half- past eleven," he said. "I've plenty of time."
"He said he'll catch the bus at the airlines terminal," Ernie Sage said.
"Don't be silly," Elaine Sage said. "You might as well use the Bentley."
"The bus is easier," Pickering said, as he went to the serving cart and started lifting silver covers. "Thanks anyway." He lifted his eyes to Elaine Sage. "Take a look at these scrambled eggs," he said. "Don't they have a funny color?"
Both mother and daughter went to examine the eggs.
"There's nothing wrong with the eggs," Elaine Sage said.
"Well, if you're sure," Pickering said. "There's supposed to be lot of poisoned eggs around."
"Honey," Ernie Sage said. "You just sit, and I'll serve you."
"'Honey'?" her mother parroted. McCoy flushed.
"It's a sticky substance one spreads on bread," Pickering said.
"It's also what I call him," Ernie Sage said. "It's what they call a 'term of endearment."'
"Gee, Aunt Elaine," Pickering said. "Ain't love grand?"
"Ginger- peachy," Elaine Sage said. "I understand it makes the world go round." She smiled at Ken McCoy. "We get the sausage from a farmer down the road," she said. "I hope you'll try it."
McCoy looked at her; their eyes met.
"Thank you," he said.
Intelligent eyes, she thought. And then she amended that: Intelligent and wary, like an abused dog's.
(Two)
Pennsylvania Station
New York City
0925 Hours, 6 January 1942
When the buses from the Navy Yard reached Penn Station, the recruits had been formed into two platoon-sized groups and marched into the station and down to the platform by the corporals. Koznowski and Zimmerman walked to one side. Commuters coming off trains from the suburbs had watched the little procession with interest. Some had smiled. The nation was at war; these were the then who would fight the war.
Two coach cars had been attached to the Congressional Limited, immediately behind the blue-painted electric locomotive and in front of the baggage car and railway post office, so that they were effectively separated from the rest of the train.