She locked the door and turned to him. He took off his jacket, his eyes on her. She unzipped her dress and slipped it off. He kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.
He stretched out on the bed and she lay down beside him. She took his hand and finally spoke the first words since they had come into the room.
“Would you like to smoke?”
“Not now.”
They were silent again for a long moment. Then he said, “I thought of you today, Helga. I thought of you a great deal.”
“And I thought of you.”
“What did you think about me?”
She considered her words before she answered him. Then, “I’m terribly confused, Tom, and I... I don’t want to say the wrong things. Will you... will you help me?”
His hand tightened over hers. “There’s a shell around you, Helga, a protective shell and there’s steel inside of you.”
“It’s in you too, that steel.”
“I know. We’re very much alike. That’s why we find it so difficult to talk.”
“Couldn’t we just — love each other? Must we talk?”
“We’ve got to, Helga, because tomorrow...”
“You’re leaving!”
“My plane takes off at six o’clock.”
“So you only have until—”
“Five o’clock.”
“Then we mustn’t make any mistakes during these... these few hours.”
“Yes, Helga. There are things I have to tell you — things I have to ask you — and we mustn’t either of us resent anything the other says — or does.”
She turned to him. “It would help if you held me.”
“Not yet, Helga. We wouldn’t talk clearly enough. I can’t touch you — and keep a clear mind.”
“You’ve got to have a clear mind?”
“Tonight, yes. Last night, I told you about myself. I thought about it — all day, when the sun was very bright, when it was daylight and everything was real. And I know what I wasn’t sure about last night. It will be all right with me. Maybe I’ll have some bad moments once in a while, but in time it will be all right. I know it will, Helga. Linda will not haunt you.”
“No,” she said, “I thought of her too, and Linda will not be the problem.”
“You’re trying to say something?”
“Yes, Tom. You’re... you’re going to ask me questions. Please don’t.”
“But why not, Helga? It’ll only be this once and we can forget them then. I want to know you, that’s all. The questions — and the answers won’t change things between us.”
She was silent. After a moment, he turned his face toward her.
“There are questions you wouldn’t answer?”
“There are questions I will not answer.”
He released her hand and propped himself up on his left elbow and then he saw the bleakness of her face and he knew that it was terribly important. To her and to him.
He said, wonderingly, “If I called you darling and if I held you, you still wouldn’t answer the questions?”
A slow sigh escaped from her lips. Her eyes — her beautiful hazel eyes, showed anguish — but no tears.
She said, “It’s the wrong time for us, Tom, the wrong time and the wrong world. I would rather tear out my tongue than say it, but I have to... to stop you.”
He cried out softly, “Why do you have to stop me?”
“Please, my dear. Love me — love me, if you can. Do anything you want to do to me, but don’t, don’t talk, Tom. Don’t — ask — questions!”
She lay beside him in abject misery. He stared at her in utter disbelief. He took her in his arms. She clung to him as if her very life depended on it. She pressed herself to him, kissed him. But there were no tears in her eyes, no sobs shook her body.
“It is that bad, Helga?”
She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and for a long moment strained against him. Then she said, “Yes!”
Later, when she lay quietly beside him, her hand in his, she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I know that you are the only man I will ever want, and I think we could work it out in another world. But not in this one, Tom.”
“What you have done, Helga, the men you have known... would not matter.”
“You know that they have meant nothing. I lay here with you last night, darling. I watched you while you slept and held you in my arms and I knew that I loved you and that we were right for each other. But it is six years too late.”
“You will not tell me why?”
“I will tell you this, my dear, and if you wish, I will tell you again in the morning before you leave. You will meet another girl, Tom, and you will love her. You will marry her and she will be the luckiest woman alive. I will never see her face but I will think of her through the years, and perhaps, on the day I die, the God who knows what I cannot tell you, will let me cry. Then I will know why I lived.”
She was silent for a moment, then she went on. “It would help if I could cry, my dear. But I can’t. A thousand nights I sobbed myself to sleep and then at last there were no tears left in me. There are none now.”
He took her in his arms and held her very close. After a while she said, “You may die, Tom, on the next island, but I do not think so. You’ll have the scars to remember and there’ll always be the scars inside of you — one, for me.”
“Yes, Helga,” he said soberly, “one for you.”
“You’re a strong man, my darling,” she went on. “You will be whatever you want to be and I... I think I will hear of you through the years. But I will never see you after five o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“It has to be that way, Helga?”
She took his hand in both of hers, brought it to her face and laid it gently on her cheek.
In the morning he got dressed and at two minutes to five he turned to her.
She said, “Don’t say goodbye. Just hold me once more, kiss me — and go!”
He put his arms about her and held her close. Then they kissed and he went out. She stood, looking at the closed door for a long moment. Her lips moved.
“Goodbye, my dear,” she said softly.
This was Doris Delaney, in June of 1944.
Chapter 23
Gray dawn was breaking over Bismarck, North Dakota. Below were winking lights and beyond the lights a pattern of them — floodlights, lighting an air strip that seemed far too small to accept the airplane swooping down.
The plane made a bumpy landing. The pilot taxied it toward a flat building and cut off the motors.
“End of the line,” he announced. “Bismarck — General Custer’s old home town.”
“You are wrong, sir,” said Pleschette as he released his tight grip on the seat arms. “General Custer was an Ohioan by birth. He later called Monroe, Michigan, his home, but actually it was his wife’s place of birth.”
“Mister,” said the pilot, “if I didn’t need the two hundred Id give it back to you. You’re worth it. I never heard so much talk in all of my life — talk, talk, talk.”
“Each man to his last,” opined Pleschette, “and that is what you should be doing — sitting at a cobbler’s last, mending shoes. You’re no aviator, sir.”
Bent over, he moved ponderously toward the door. The pilot shook his head at Alder and made a circling movement at his temple.
“Thank you,” said Alder.
“I need the money. You get to Minneapolis again, look me up.”
It was a cold, gray dawn. The terminal building had a single occupant, the night dispatcher, watchman, and general custodian.