“How long will you be gone?” I asked instead.
He shook his head, a curt negative. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t welcome the plastic surgery which surely must be the reason for his hospitalization. He couldn’t like looking this way. Why else had he come to such a remote place as this? He had been a very handsome man before his injury. Vanity, self-respect alone - unless his personality had unexpectedly warped - would demand that he take advantage of a facial restoration. It was incomprehensible why he was reluctant to go to Walter Reed. I wondered if he just didn’t want to leave Pull-in Point.
“When the snow stops,” he said heavily, “I’ll make arrangements for you in town. Or maybe over hi Chatham.” He gave a short mirthless laugh. “They have a movie house. Runs a show every weekend.”
“And church bingo on Thursdays. Big deal!”
We finished our coffee in rather a strained silence. The cold of the house was suddenly more preferable. I jumped to my feet, trying to act normal, and walked with unnaturally stiff legs to rinse my cup out in the sink.
“I’ll get dressed and wash these up,” I said in a falsely bright voice as I added the mug to the stacks on the drain-board.
“I’d appreciate it,” and his voice had a rueful sound. “It’s rather ahem beneath the dignity of a major,” he mocked his rank in an effort to lighten the atmosphere of the room, “to do KP.”
I gave him a grin that was not too off-center normal and plunged out into the cold hall.
CHAPTER THREE
The major had stoked up the fire in my bedroom so it was warm enough to dress. I dug out army issue longjohns and officer pinks I had had tailored for me when Dad got new uniforms just before going overseas. I forced myself not to dwell on that inadvertent association. I pulled on a green long-sleeved sweater and then a gray sweatshirt. It was too cold to be feminine. I dug out heavy socks and the mukluks Dad sent me from his Alaskan inspection trip. I even had a fur parka from that jaunt, exceedingly practical for crossing frigid Cambridge common.
I set up the pictures of Dad and Mother and a couple of little mementoes I always carry with me to make hotel and boarding rooms mine no matter how short a time I inhabited them. Dad, in an expansive mood, used to call me “Pussy” because I was able to make myself at home the minute I entered a new place. Turtle had taught me that flexibility and I was overwhelmed with a desire to see that old reprobate. Because he was part and parcel of my life with Dad, I crowded down that longing. Turtle was overseas anyway. I wouldn’t see him till after the war. If he survived this one.
Such gloomy thoughts were disastrous and I hastily scrambled under the bed for the clothes I had thrown there last night. I made the bed and, slamming the cover down on my suitcase, felt free to leave.
I decided to do a reconnaissance of the upper floor as an antidote to my nostalgia. The first door on the right opened into another period-perfect room, dominated by a spindle four-poster bed complete with muslin canopy. I’d’ve moved my things right in if my relations with the major had been better. I’d wanted a four-poster canopy bed since I was a little girl. There’d been one in a boardinghouse near Benning. I’d thought the canopy was to keep dreams in and obviously the bed was fit for a princess. For months afterwards I’d plagued Dad to get me a “princess bed.” Mother’d squashed that notion the first and every time I brought it up. She hated living on post and avoided it by not having any furnishings at all. We’d always lived in boardinghouses off base. There were advantages. Army wives used to say they never made a move without losing the one valuable piece they owned or having their best china pulverized. Misdirected personal belongings were s.o.p. so you were better off by far carrying what you owned with you, whenever possible.
Mother invariably managed to find temporary quarters which included my care. As a small child, I’d adored my mother - but always at a distance that wouldn’t muss her dress or smudge her makeup. Now I see her as a frivolous woman, unsuited for motherhood, self-centered and selfish. I never let my father know I had overheard the gossip that mother had been killed on her way to meet another man. It had made me love my father more, excuse him his tempers and his eccentricities. Perhaps if he had loved the army less, he would have kept his wife. There I was again, reminiscing.
I closed that door and went on, looking in briefly at the bathroom. It was larger than a conventional one so I assume it had been added much later in the house’s life. It might have originally been a nursery or a sewing room but it made a most luxurious bathroom.
The first room in the rear of the house was a catchall; cedar chests and a wardrobe I didn’t investigate. I was turning to go when I saw the army footlockers. There were three, one on top of the other. The camouflaged paint pattern of one of them was strangely familiar. I walked over. The middle one. The old stenciling had been masked out with a smear of army green and the new legend gave Major Regan Laird’s name, serial number, and this address. The other two were newer and obviously his but I could have sworn the middle one was my father’s.
Only one small box, tucked right now in the outside pocket of my bomber bag downstairs, had come back to me, containing his most personal effects. I had assumed Turtle had disposed of the uniforms and clothing. I certainly didn’t want to see them again. I’d better ask the major though. There were some things of Dad’s, his stamps, for instance, that had not come back yet. I’d been too ill when the first package came to pursue the matter. The major would know. I’d ask him.
There were two other bedrooms on the floor, frigid but furnished, dusty with long disuse. In the front bedroom I paused to look out the window, over the frozen drifts to the gun-green sea tossing whitecaps beyond the protecting dunes of Nauset strand. This would be a lovely spot, come spring and summer. The poles of a small wharf stuck up through the snow across the way so there must be a navigable cove for the neighbors further down the Point.
A movement, barely discernible through the veil of falling snow, caught my eye. I peered out but the angle was wrong and I couldn’t see far enough up the road to distinguish man, beast, or car. Just then Merlin barked.
I raced around the hall and thundered down the stairs, skidding on the bare treads in the slick-soled mukluks. Between my noise and Merlin’s, the major came whipping out of the study. Merlin, tail awag, came bounding in from the kitchen and propped his front feet on the windowsill, craning his head, barking furiously.
“Whoever it is, Merlin knows him,” I said in surprise, pointing to Merlin’s lashing tail.
The major, his face anxious, leaned around Merlin’s head to squint through the shifting snow.
“Whoever it is is coming here,” I exclaimed.
“You must be mistaken,” he said, half in anger.
“I’m not mistaken and furthermore, it’s an infantryman. You can’t mistake that gait,” I asserted, peering through the window beside him.
The figure swung clumsy arms up and down to warm himself as he trudged head down against the swirling snow. Suddenly the angle of the head, the attitude of the whole figure were incredibly familiar. Merlin barked twice, his voice carrying through the walls into the air outside. The man stopped, looked up at the house.
I dashed for the front door, flinging it open, heedless of the snow blown in on the freezing wind.
“Turtle! In here! On the double!” I shrieked.
“Gawd, that can’t be Little Bit!” Waving an arm in violent greeting, Turtle lumbered forward, floundering in the drifts, half staggering, half slipping up the incline. I would have leaped out to help him but the major grabbed my arm. Merlin leaped into the snow, raucously welcoming Sergeant Edward Turtle Bailey. I wrenched myself free of the major’s grip as Turtle waddled up to the door. Flinging myself at him, I was suddenly choking on tears of relief and nostalgia. The old familiar hulk of Turtle Bailey, so constantly my father’s companion, brought home at last the fact that Dad would not return from this tour of duty.