Ian Slater: World in Flames

It hadn’t taken Robert and Richard long, but it had shaken them both to realize that even after the official surrender, the two SPETS had pursued their mission, and they wondered how many around the world were still at large.’Both of them agreed to say nothing to anyone else. There was no point. Besides, for Robert, the diagnosis to be given him by the radiation lab at Oxford was a much more immediate and pressing concern.

On his third visit to what he’d told Rosemary was a “special submarine update” school at Oxford, Robert Brentwood was informed by the specialists at the radiation medicine lab that the initial diagnosis was confirmed — he had indeed received above-acceptable levels of radiation.

“Am I dying?” he asked the doctor simply.

“We’re all dying, old chap.”

“Come on, Doc.”

“Truth is, we never know for sure. In a case like yours, I’d say—” the doctor shrugged “—fifty-fifty. We can speculate, predict, all we want, but there are other factors: will to live, fitness, individual metabolism…”

“Even in a case of radioactive poisoning?”

“Oh yes, though it’s not generally recognized.” He gave a warm, cheeky smile. “Sounds a bit too mystical for most M.D.s, you see. Difficult stuff to measure.”

The day of the third visit, as he strolled back from the radiation lab through Oxford’s rain-polished streets, the golden spires of the ancient university caught the wintry sun with such brilliance that only nostalgia and hope seemed permissible at that moment. He was shocked to find Rosemary waiting at the station. One look told him she knew where he’d been — her lips aquiver, though she was trying to be brave. She was wearing a scarf, the same one she’d been wearing when they had first met — a light pastel green covered with the wildflowers of an English spring. They held one another before either spoke.

“How long?” she asked finally.

“They don’t know. No one does.”

She didn’t go on at him about why he hadn’t told her. She knew his motive, though she might not agree with it, came from all the old-fashioned virtues of a silent service.

“You’d have nothing to worry about anyway,” he told her. “You and the bairn.” As usual, his Scottish accent was atrocious to her ears, but she felt his love all around her like a warm embrace on a wintry day.

“Anyway,” he hurried on, “I’ll be here to see the boy—”

She was in tears, as they stood hand in hand on the platform.

“Oh—” she said bravely, “what makes you think it’s a boy?”

“Or a lassie,” he said, and he stopped, turning her to him. “Rose. Let’s not be sad. I see the glass half-full, not half-empty.” She sobbed uncontrollably, told him she loved him and that there’d never be another man for her, and he held her tightly and prayed there would be if he went before his time— whenever that might be.

On the train back, the peaceful winter countryside rocking gently outside, he went to the bar and ordered a double gin and tonic for her, the British Rail attendant astonished, proclaiming, “A double? You’d be bloody lucky, mate. Been a war on, you know.”

“Ah — yes,” said Robert. “Then — I’ll just have the single.” He left a hefty tip, not really thinking what he was doing.

“Oh, ta very much,” said the attendant, suddenly solicitous of the American’s well-being. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, sir.”

Rosemary refused the single gin and tonic, said she didn’t want to do anything that might harm the baby. “Have it yourself,” she said.

He did, and looking out at the land flashing by, the smell of frozen earth thawing, he felt so glad to be alive to feel and see and touch the world about him. It was like a longing fulfilled, and he was sure that what he was feeling at this very moment was what it must be like for Rosemary to feel the warmth of a life, his life, theirs, growing inside her.

“It’s going to be a boy,” he said.

“A girl,” she contradicted, snuggling into him.

“You’ve cheated,” he said, looking down at her with mock accusation. “You had a sonogram—”

“Ultrasound,” she said.

“Yes.”

“No. I don’t know, but my pulse is faster and—”

“Ah—” said Robert. “Superstitions. Anyway, I don’t care. As long as she, or he, joins the navy.”

“Or becomes a teacher,” she countered. “No — really, whatever they decide.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Robert—”

“Now, now,” he said. “No tears. Silent running.”

Outside Dutch Harbor’s Paradise Motel, it was twenty below. Inside, it was much hotter, Shirer already down to his T-shirt, Lana La Roche, nee Brentwood, letting him undress her. Soon he was getting out of control.

“Slowly,” she laughed. “You’re ripping my uniform.”

“I can’t wait,” he said frantically. “I don’t care about your uniform. I’m hornier than a toad.”

“Well— sit, toad!” she instructed him, laughing. “I’m not ready.”

“Not ready?” he challenged. “That isn’t what you said in your lettergram. It said, ‘Landing field ready’—”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Ready for landing — not attack. And Frank—”

“Yes?”

“Please take that awful eye patch off.”

“Why? Thought it would kind of remind you of old times?” He made a Groucho Marx expression, tapping an invisible cigar, rolling his good eye. “If you know what I mean.”

“I remember,” she said. “But that was before Jay. I want to forget those days. Please take it off.”

He did, though she didn’t know that this time he hadn’t meant it as a joke, that this time, while the electromagnetic impulse of the air burst over Detroit had not penetrated Kneecap’s sheathing, the light of the massive explosion, “brighter than a million suns,” as the experts were so fond of describing it, had damaged his “steering” eye as well as blinding the navigator. He had to fly the plane alone, reading the instruments with the eye that had been protected by the patch. If it hadn’t been for the soft light inside the Paradise Motel, Lana would no doubt have seen the faint, milky whiteness where the microwave radiation had penetrated the aqueous humor of the damaged eye, literally cooking its clear protein, turning it white as easily and quickly as a microwave cooks the clear protein of an egg. But right now, neither the laser operations that might help repair some, though not all, of the damage, the air bursts that had caused it and had injured so many others, nor the long wait he might have for any corrective surgery while America struggled to rebuild herself into something approaching prewar normalcy were on his mind as he turned the light’s dimmer switch to low.

“Lordy,” he said, “you look better than a carrier deck on a rainy night.”

“Oh, how romantic,” she said, smiling, her loose hair falling about her shoulders as she demurely slipped between the covers. “Do you always sweet-talk your lady friends like that?”

“I don’t have any other lady friends.”

“I believe you,” she said, her hand rustling the pillow on the other side of the small double bed.

In her arms, the war, Jay, everything was forgotten. Hopefully soon everyone would be at peace, but if it wasn’t to be, then for now at least the world was theirs, the promise of love so close, so urgent, they ached for each other. As they joined, the aching gave way, turning pain to pleasure that mounted and grew, enveloping them, pulling them faster and faster, harder, until they were free — over the cascading precipice, falling in timeless cool space where only rapture was certain.