Without Reservations (19 page)

Helen’s remark stunned me. Among other things, it meant Harry was not her husband. And now I knew who it was she’d lost in the war. I tried to process in my mind the information on which I’d based the assumption that she was married to Harry. But I was too flustered to do anything more than nod my head as Helen talked of her husband’s letter.

For some reason—I suppose to cover up my shock—I started telling Harry and Helen of my interview with a famous British neurologist
who’d grown up in London during the war years. I was writing a profile of him, pegged to the publication of his book about the fascinating, sometimes bizarre, patients he’d treated. About halfway through the interview, he told me of being sent at the age of three from London to the countryside to escape the Blitz. As he described the physical and emotional abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his “caretakers,” he grew sad, then angry. My sense was he’d never forgiven his parents, two prominent London physicians, for what he saw as their “abandonment” of him.

“Alas, such things did happen,” Helen said. “I suppose war upsets all the normal things, doesn’t it? Tears families apart and all that. Life is never quite the same after as it was before.”

“Yes,” Harry said, “I believe that for the lot of us who lived through it, we’ll likely always mark our lives by before the war and after.”

We talked some more and then rose to leave. When Harry went off to the coatroom to fetch his umbrella, I summoned up my reporter’s nerve and asked Helen how she met Harry.

“We met here at the museum a few years back,” she said. “Sat next to each other in the café and just started talking. It seems we had a lot in common—the war and growing up in Kent, that sort of thing.”

I wanted to ask more, but didn’t. It was none of my business really. Instead, we said our good-byes and left.

Well, that answered one question, I thought, watching Harry and Helen hug good-bye and walk off in separate directions. They were not a couple; just friends. And yet, in a way, they shared something that made them a couple. Not their lives before the war or after the war, but the experience of what went on during the in-between years. I suspected a lot of Brits, the ones who lived
through the war years, had the same invisible bonds. It struck me that it must be like the bonds that spring up between soldiers.

Once the long bony hand of War and Death touches you, I thought, its presence never leaves. War and Death. I understood that. Or I thought I did.

Before going back to my flat to change for dinner I set out to buy some shoes. The dinner with Shelby and his friends promised to be a rather grand affair and my wardrobe by this time was looking a bit forlorn. After going through my closet that morning, I decided a pale beige silk skirt, paired with a blouse of the same color, would do fine for the dinner. But the narrow skirt that stopped just above the ankles required a certain style of shoe, a style not in my closet.

I headed for Sloane Street and began browsing the shop windows. The sales were on in full force and the stores were jammed with bargain hunters. I was tired and about ready to give up when I spotted what I thought might work: a pair of beige silk espadrilles with high rope-soles and laces that tied round the ankles. Although such shoes were all the rage in London, I knew they were way too hip for me and I’d probably look ridiculous wearing them.

But what the heck, I thought. Why not? It was time to let go of worrying about such things as whether or not I looked foolish in a pair of trendy shoes. The shop had my size. I bought them.

As I walked back to my flat, I wondered if Freya Stark, whose book had become my bedtime companion, was ever lured into buying clothes when she traveled. Some garment in Turkey, perhaps, that seemed quite flattering at the time, but once out of its native
habitat looked ridiculous. The night before, to my surprise, I’d learned that Freya had an interest in and a theory about clothes: “Nothing is more useful to a woman traveller than a genuine interest in clothes; it is a key to unlock the hearts of women of all ages and races,” she wrote, describing a subject that had enabled her to connect with women from very different backgrounds. “The same feeling of intimacy is awakened, whether with Druse or Moslem or Canadian. I wonder if men have any such universal interest to fall back upon?”

Reading this made me like the intrepid, no-nonsense Freya all the more. It also made me ponder her question as it might relate to men. Were sports the male equivalent of a universal interest? It was the only thing I could think of that might be comparable, although I knew many men who had little or no interest in gamesmanship.

But right now another, more pressing question faced me: would I be able to walk in my new shoes? Or, for that matter, even stand in them for any length of time without falling flat on my face? I imagined my apprehension to be similar to what Freya must have felt when she mounted her first camel and set off to cross the desert atop that ridiculous-looking creature.

My brother and sister-in-law were staying at the posh Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner. Shelby is all the family I have left from my childhood. He is the last person who shares with me family secrets and the realities of who we were before we remade ourselves into the adults we are. Sometimes it was hard for me to connect the boy I knew—the skinny smart kid who collected lead soldiers and pursued Boy Scout merit badges—with the phenomenally
successful man he’d become. But sooner or later, when we were together, some remark would inevitably trigger childhood memories and then we’d be off, zipping down a path that existed now only for the two of us.

After all, who else remembered the ten-year-old boy who, trying to keep the battery from dying, regularly started up the car Mother never learned to drive? And who but Shelby could retrieve the memory of his three-year-old sister being rushed by ambulance to the hospital in the middle of the night when her appendix ruptured?

We were the repository, he and I, of our family’s history and its secrets. Together we held on to the memories of Father returning from a trip, loaded with surprise gifts; the taste of the plain, sometimes peculiar, Scottish food we ate as children; our exciting visits with an aunt and uncle to the exotic Algerian Room, a nightclub in the Baltimore hotel where they lived.

But mostly when we were together Shelby and I lived in the present and concentrated on having a good time. This visit was no different. For the next several days we talked over long, leisurely breakfasts, visited the sights, shopped, went to the theater, had late-night suppers, and always closed down the day by gathering with his friends in the cozy hotel bar for champagne. In between, there were massages and facials for the women; lunch at the club and business appointments for the men.

It was quite a departure from my usual routine and I welcomed its brief appearance. It was fun to have someone else do all the planning and, at a deeper level, to have someone looking after you. It would be easy, I thought, to grow used to having another person take care of you.

The truth is, I had lived alone for so long I sometimes forgot that the responsibility for running my life was solely mine. There
was no sharing of duties and decisions in the life I’d chosen. Whether it was taking the car to the repair shop or hanging the screen door, it was up to me. Most of the time I liked being in charge of my life, thrived on it, in fact. But occasionally, when I was tired or unhappy, I’d find myself thinking how nice it would be to let someone else run the show, at least for a while.

On the morning of our last day together in London, Shelby and I lingered over coffee, talking about our plans. He and his group were on their way to Scotland, where Shelby planned, among other things, to do some research on our family’s Scottish heritage. I was staying on in London, but within a week or so would leave for Oxford.

Toward the end of our talk, Shelby leaned forward and said, “You know, you look more and more like Mother.”

“And you look more and more like Father,” I said, laughing. “So that’s what it’s come down to, has it? We’ve become our parents.” This time we both laughed.

But beneath the laughter I was thinking something else. I was thinking that, despite what I’d told my brother, the truth was I didn’t have a clear memory of what my father looked like.

What I did remember were like errant pieces of a puzzle waiting to be fitted together into a whole. The way my father tilted his head. The amused expression in his eyes. The pith helmet and white summer suits he wore. His youthful manner and easy laugh. I think he was handsome. At least he looks that way in the tailored white officer’s uniform he is wearing in the photographs kept by
Mother in a leather album. Were the pictures taken before he went off to serve at sea in World War II? Or after? I had no idea.

I wondered: is what we remember more important than what we forget?

I could remember so little of that day when two men in uniform—or was it only one?—came to the house. They had with them a blue leather box that contained a medal of some kind. If I stirred the memory, small bits and pieces of that afternoon—or was it morning?—rose to the top:

I was in third grade and we were home sick with the flu, Shelby and I, when the men arrived. The two of us, wearing pajamas, stood in the living room with Mother and Grandmother, listening—but not understanding—the words being said: “His ship torpedoed … German submarine … only four survivors … we regret to tell you …” When the men left I went to my room, frightened, not sure of what it all meant: the way Mother put her hand to her throat as if to hold it together; the tears rolling down Grandmother’s cheeks; the brave look on Shelby’s face that threatened to dissolve before he could run out of the house and down the back steps.

At least that’s how I remember it.

What I do have a clear memory of, however, is going to my desk to retrieve a piece of paper. I see myself sitting down to trace some words from it:
Dear Children, Brazil is a beautiful country …

After saying good-bye to Shelby and Pat, I decided to walk through nearby St. James’s Park. It was lush and green and very pleasant, and when I reached the lake that divides the park in two, I walked along its banks.