Brave Hearts (18 page)

They came into each other's arms; Catharine clung to him. She held him with all her strength; then roughly, raggedly, she began to cry, her shoulders shaking, her body trembling.

“It's all right, love,” he said gently. “It's all right. I'll always come, love. Believe in me. No matter what happens, I'll be there for you.”

She wanted to believe. She wanted to feel confident that Jack was invincible, but she knew that no one had immunity. The handsome captain who laughed while playing bridge one night would be dead the next. The smiling corporal with the carroty hair kidded the chaplain at breakfast and died before dinner. She clung to Jack all the harder.

He whispered to her, stroked her hair, and dried her cheeks with his handkerchief; then he held the damp handkerchief up in the moonlight. “This proves what I've been saying.”

She looked at him blankly.

Laughter bubbled in his voice. “I'm the only son of a bitch on Bataan with a handkerchief, so that means I'm fated to care for a damsel in distress. That's fate. You can't quarrel with fate.”

She choked back a sob. “Oh, Jack, it doesn't help to joke about it.” But she was almost laughing, too, and she loved him, loved his bravery, his gallantry, and his absolutely pigheaded conviction that he, Jack Maguire, would always come out on top. “Oh, Jack, you're a crazy fool.” But she wasn't crying any longer. “A crazy, wonderful fool—and I love you desperately.”

“I love you desperately, too.” There was no laughter in his voice now. He touched her cheek with his hand. “I think of you, and it makes everything all right. At night, I look up into the sky, and I see your face. Catharine, I love you and knowing that you care for me has been God's greatest gift.”

“Care for you? That's such a pale, lifeless way to say it. I love you. I love you more than anything in the world.”

“Catharine, Catharine.” He said her name with such a lilt that it was almost a song. His hands cupped her face, and his lips found hers. At first, it was such a gentle kiss. Then, like fire sweeping down a mountainside, the passion between them ignited, their tongues touched, and his hands slipped down her back. She strained to be close to him. He picked her up and carried her back into the sandy curve beneath the overhang.

When they lay together, he kissed her face and neck; his lips touched her softly, and his hands caressed her. Catharine murmured his name over and over again. They loved each other, delighted in each other. Catharine gloried in the feel of his skin beneath her hands. To be with him, to love him, to offer herself, to bring him pleasure, to reaffirm their love was a glory so great it transcended the war-torn night. As the enormous artillery shells screamed across the South Channel and exploded, she and Jack were lost in feelings so sweet and so deep that fear couldn't separate them. Their love had a pent-up energy, a desperate need too long denied, a sensuous response to their deepest desires. They loved joyously, coming together in a wild and glorious union as incandescent as the heat of a melting star.

Dust swirled through the women's lateral but the jarring thuds were over. The raid had ended for the moment. The planes would return. The shells would scream across the channel again, but, for the moment, they could move about, talk, poke their heads aboveground.

Catharine stood irresolutely at the entrance to the women's lateral, her hands jammed into her pockets, her face tight in thought. She had made up her mind. The world would say she was in the wrong. The world would call her an unfaithful wife. So she was. Yet, and the thoughts and emotions moved in her mind, she'd intended her actions for the best. She'd intended to stay in Manila for Spencer because it was important to his career. She owed him that even though there was nothing now between them—no spark, no love. She'd intended to see this assignment through. When they were en route to the United States and her presence was no longer essential, she was going to tell Spencer that she wanted a divorce. Hurtling bombs at Pearl Harbor on December 7 changed all that.

Now the hours were slipping away. Everyone knew what was coming; she wanted desperately to be honest, to spend with Jack what moments they could manage together. There was so little time left now. The lull had ended on Bataan, and the fighting began again with a ferocity that made the foreordained end clear to all. No matter what cheerful words unctuous radio announcers voiced, no help was coming. The battling bastards, sick, hurt, and starving, were keeping on without hope, without help, without anything but raw courage and desperation. It was a courage which saw the coming horror, yet continued to fight. Hollow-eyed and gaunt, American soldiers died by the hundreds now. On Corregidor, the bombing and shelling reached such magnitude that the mind couldn't assimilate it. The bombing raids had long since passed the hundred mark; the shells came without warning, day and night. Those belowground were filthy, exhausted, and hungry. Those aboveground existed in a nightmarish world of burnt, blistered ground, shriveled trees, and continuing explosions.

Catharine ducked through the opening into the hospital tunnel; then she stopped. Did she have the right to do what she planned? No. She had no rights. She knew that, felt it, but she was driven to speak; she could no longer continue without speaking. She couldn't love Jack on those rare and wonderful nights when he crossed to the island from Bataan if she didn't speak. Perhaps she didn't deserve to have peace in her soul, but she had to speak now because there was no more time.

She began to walk, then paused again to fight away the wave of dizziness. These recurring bouts of weakness made her impatient. They had so little to eat. Their bodies demanded food every waking moment and even in sleep. Catharine dreamed of steaks and fresh fruit. She could picture mounds of oranges and shiny, bright red Delicious apples. She shook her head impatiently and moved uncertainly up the hallway. She had to face the unpleasant task.

When she reached Spencer's desk, he wasn't there.

Woody Woodbury looked up and smiled. His eyes were dark with fatigue. He looked fine-drawn and worn but, as always, he was genial and kind.

“You just missed him, Catharine. He's gone over to the vault.”

Catharine chatted with Woody for a moment, then moved on down the hospital tunnel toward the main tunnel. She felt a burning impatience to see it through.

She walked out of the east entrance. She hadn't been to this entrance in several days, and she noted the changes—more jagged humps of debris, more burned and shriveled trees, more sheered-off slopes. One day a tree or rock was a landmark; the next day it was gone.

Catharine hesitated for a moment, then walked purposefully to a jeep pulled up next to the trolley tracks. A private slumped behind the wheel. When she walked up, he sat up straight and his eyes widened. So many of them hadn't seen an American woman in months. It always made her ache inside, that reverential look, that look of remembering another world.

She asked for a ride up the hill.

He looked eager but said reluctantly, “The shelling may start any time, ma'am.”

“I know. That's all right.”

She rode beside him in the bucketing jeep up the twisting, narrow road. The incredible devastation sickened her. Everything was pulverized, reduced to particles of dust, to heaps of blackened debris. She wondered how the gun crews continued to survive. Some of them didn't. There was Battery Geary and the enormous loss of life when a shell crashed directly through an embrasure and fell through to detonate the ammunition. They'd all died, and so horribly. Fragments of shell did terrible things to the human body. She'd helped that night as usual in the hospital, but there was nothing usual in the frenzied efforts to save lives.

The jeep turned off the main road and dropped down a dusty track into the gully where the vault building stood in the remains of a grove of trees.

Catharine thanked the private and told him she'd walk back. She turned toward the vault. An MP recognized her. Nodding, he held open the heavy door.

Catharine stepped inside, squinting to adjust her eyes to the dimness. Then, from the far room, she heard voices. Soft voices. One belonged to Spencer. She hadn't heard that tone in his voice for years. She moved slowly toward the second chamber, then stopped and stared when she reached the open door.

Spencer and Peggy stood locked in a tight embrace, oblivious to her arrival. Spencer's face was pressed against Peggy's shining red-gold hair; his eyes were shut.

Catharine whirled around, moved blindly to the door, pushed it open, and slipped through, her mind and heart in turmoil.

Spencer and Peggy?

All those nights he hadn't come home—and she'd been so sure he was working. She'd been so easy to fool. Oh, God, if only she'd suspected. But was that her fault, because she'd had so little empathy for Spencer, what he felt, what he needed. She hadn't even cared enough to wonder.

Still, she felt shock and betrayal. Oh, dear God, if Spencer loved Peggy, why hadn't he told her? If only he had spoken. There was anger and hurt but, for the first time, a lightening of the heavy load of guilt which she'd carried for so long.

The noise was always there, like a summer thunderstorm that wouldn't end: the heavy rumble of artillery fire on Bataan. Reddish streaks exploded in the night sky.

Catharine waited tensely at the outlet. Jack had said he would come. She stared at the uneven, jagged flashes of light over Bataan. The heavy, numbing rumble meant death was abroad, rounding up his new recruits. And there was no magic circle of safety around Jack. His correspondent's tabs didn't set him apart. No one was safe. Artillery shells splintered into thousands of deadly fragments; everyone behind the lines on Bataan was prey to the Japanese guns.

She clenched her hands. Would this be the night he wouldn't come, that she would wait, huddled beside the outlet, until dawn streaked the sky, knowing that her reason for being had ended in the blood and dust of Bataan? As always, being apart from Jack caused her pleasure and pain—pleasure in recalling him, in recreating in her mind his lean, hard body, his tough, sometimes angry, always sensitive face; pain in knowing how easily in this violent world he could be destroyed.

Tonight, if he came, she would tell him a submarine was coming. She had to tell him because she would not lie to Jack, but she had made up her mind. Nothing he could say would persuade her to leave him behind.

Blue-shaded flashlights winked up the path from the shore. Catharine pushed up from the ground, and sheer happiness surged through her. She was struck anew with awe that love could work such wonders.

They clasped hands and moved away from the outlet toward their path. They weren't the only dimly seen figures that moved quietly through the night, seeking space to be alone. They moved cautiously, but their own shallow scoop of sand was untenanted.

No moon shone this night. Catharine could see his face dimly in the star glow. They moved into each other's arms. She raised a hand and touched his face, his cheeks bristly with a beard. He was here now and hers, and she knew he wanted her as he always did. She could feel his desire in the pressure of his body.

He spoke her name softly. His lips brushed against her cheek. She moved her mouth to meet his; they kissed sweetly and deeply as if they had all the time in the world, as if there were nothing that could separate them, as if they had a lifetime to love. When they lay on the sand, it didn't matter that artillery fire rumbled like distant thunder over Bataan. They knew that the Japanese rarely changed their range, and tonight the shells crashed several hundred yards to the south. Nothing mattered at this moment but the two of them, the love they felt for each other, and the warmth and pleasure as they touched.

Jack smoothed her long black hair away from her face, traced the shape of her cheek and the line of her throat. His hands cupped her breasts.

Catharine felt the strength of the muscles in his back. She caressed him and knew he responded as his touch increased in urgency. His mouth left a trail of fire over her body, igniting a passion she couldn't contain. She called out to him, and they moved together. As always, their love was fiery and magnificent, melding their bodies so completely for that long, magic moment they were a single unit of delight.

When they lay quietly together, she could feel the shape of a smile as his mouth moved against her cheek, and she smiled, too.

The thought darted through her mind then, bright and quick as a meteor's brilliant progress: she had loved a man. Whatever the future held, nothing could destroy that reality. She had experienced that greatest human communion, the joining of bodies suffused with love; nothing that happened could alter that glory.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

His arm tightened around her shoulders, and Catharine knew their interlude was over. The barrage seemed louder, but she knew it was her perception that changed. Their magic circle of peace and love was gone. Catharine sighed, shivered, and reached for her clothes. They dressed in silence.

A sharply vivid streak of scarlet laced the night sky over Bataan. Catharine winced and reached for his hand.

“Do you have to go back?”

“Yes.”

“It's almost over, isn't it?”

He took a deep breath. “Catharine,” and his voice was grim, “I want you to promise me one thing.”

She waited.

“If you can get out,” he said gruffly, “and I don't care how—whether it's an outrigger or a seaplane or a sub—promise me you'll go.”

“Not without you.”

“Catharine, listen to me. I can't lose you.”

The tremor in his voice brought tears to her eyes. She understood. She felt the same. He was all that mattered to her. To have him, to love him, meant more to her than life itself. She knew she would never again love this way, commit herself so completely to another man.

“I can't lose you either,” she replied.

“Then listen to me.” His hands cupped her face. “I'm a survivor. I'll make it, Catharine, I promise you. I don't care what I have to do, what I have to endure, I'll survive, and I'll come home to you if I know you are safe. I have to know you are out of this hell.” His hands slipped to her shoulders; his grip tightened. “There's a sub coming for the gold, isn't there?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. She'd been determined not to tell him, but he was too intelligent to be fooled.

His hands relaxed. “You'll be safe. Go home to California. I'll come. I promise.”

Tears scalded her face. “Jack, I can't leave you. I know that if I do . . .”

His fingers touched her lips. “Don't say it, Catharine. You've got to believe in me.”

“I do. God, I do.”

But she didn't believe in life. Not since Charles.

“Then promise me you'll go. If you love me, promise me.”

“I love you.”

The next morning, as soon as she'd finished breakfast—rice and a cup of weak coffee—Catharine walked purposefully down the hospital lateral. Spencer was at his desk, hunched over a lined legal pad, checking entries against a typed list.