Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Hey,” he said.

“Are you going, Matthew?” she asked sleepily.

“Yes,” he said.

“Please take care of yourself.”

“I will. You, too.”

“Matthew?”

“Yes?”

“It was nice, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Kitty,” he answered. “It was very nice.”

He was in London that night.

He thought of Amanda on and off all the while he was in England. He almost put in a transatlantic call to her the day he found out why he was in Europe, the day he learned the Allies were preparing a massive invasion of the French coast, an assault that had been code-named “Operation Overlord.” He realized then that even if he did call her, he wouldn’t be able to tell her about the invasion plans, and then he wondered why he’d wanted to tell her at all.

Well now, Matthew, he said to himself, it’s because you’re liable to get killed.

Yes, he admitted, getting killed was a distinct possibility, but he didn’t see what that had to do with the honey-blond girl Amanda, he didn’t see what that had to do with her at all. He supposed one of his aunts somewhere might be slightly perturbed if she received a War Department telegram, but he knew little Amanda Soames wouldn’t care one way or the other. So why did he feel it necessary to call her and tell her that he was soon going to be in the middle of a shooting war?

Or, for that matter, why was he constantly thinking about little Amanda Soames when she had made it quite clear that she could not stand the sight of him? Well, he didn’t constantly think of her, that was an exaggeration. But she did pop into his mind every now and then, a full-blown image, and the image of Amanda was always the one in Gillian’s bedroom. Why had he watched her so carefully that night, why had he known intuitively what the sailor was up to, why had he followed them down the corridor, why had he stopped the sailor, what had made him feel so protective toward a girl who despised him? There was the entire stupidity of the thing, the fact that Matthew Anson Bridges, who had known innumerable lovely and unlovely ladies since that first time on the hill overlooking the town with Sue Ellen — “Don’t tear them, Matthew Bridges! They cost me a dollar forty-rune!” — that Matthew Anson Bridges, who had known them all, was now unable to get Amanda Soames, whom he had not known at all, out of his mind. Now, why should such an idiotic thing be?

The promise, he thought.

Yes, the promise.

He knew intuitively what it would be like with Amanda, the innocent honeyed warmth of her, the big golden promise of what Amanda Soames could be, and would be when she gave herself willingly and knowingly and unashamedly. That was what plagued him, the promise. But the promise of more than a bed partner, somehow. This was not want he wanted from Amanda Soames, he wanted more from her. The promise extended beyond that into a remembered world of warmth and laughter.

He knew one thing for certain. He knew that if he survived the invasion of France and the march into Germany, if he came alive through all of what lay ahead, he would one day have Amanda Soames. She would one day give herself to him completely and willingly and fully aware of what she was doing. He wanted the war to be over soon. He wanted the invasion to start. He wanted to get back to her because, in a way he couldn’t quite understand, Amanda Soames had become his girl. He did not write to her, and he never discussed her with anyone, but she was his girl nonetheless, constantly on his mind — yes, damn it, constantly — the girl back home, waiting for him.

She was with him when he crossed the English Channel in early June and hit Omaha Beach, and hugged the sand, and heard his buddies scream in terror as they were pinned down by Rommel’s booby traps and obstacles, and the cross fire from the guns in the hills. She was with him in the hedgerows and with him when they took the town of Bayeux, and later when they fought across the flooded country into the Forest of Certoym and the town of Carentan, with him on the seemingly endless day-by-day straggle for yards of French earth, southward as town after town fell, La Haye-du-Puits, the muted fire of German Tiger tanks, Coutances, Avranches, August and the encirclement of Falaise, the triumphant liberation of Paris and then the steady drive toward the Rhine, “Kill every Nazi bastard you see,” the colonel said, Übach and the heaviest German artillery barrage he had ever been in, his boots were wet, his feet burned and stung and itched, wasn’t there anyplace a man could dry his feet, “Amanda, my feet are always wet, I think of you always, Amanda, love, Matthew,” the letters he never sent and never wrote, the ferocity of the sudden German offensive in the Ardennes, Christmas outside Bastogne, trying to relieve the besieged Seventh Airborne, “Silent night, ho-oly night,” he remembered last Christmas Eve and her golden body on the big brass bed, January, Amanda, the German towns dropping swiftly behind them now, France and Belgium only memories, the biting winter cold, “I hate the Nazis, Amanda, I hate them all,” Amanda, I want you, Amanda, spring and a blush on the air, a daisy growing in the mud, I would like to walk through Rockefeller Center with you, I would like to see the tulips, V-E Day! V-E Day! He toasted her in a grubby shattered tavern and thought, Amanda, I’m coming home, Amanda, goddamn you, I am coming home.

Now they were coming, now they weren’t coming, she wished they would make up their minds. Everything seemed in such a state of confusion. Everything seemed to have funneled down into the month of June and got caught there in the narrow end. Commencement, of course, was the big thing, and most of the problems seemed to stem from that, the yearbook, the school ring, the cap and gown, the invitations. Now, why couldn’t they make up their minds? She realized that Minnesota was a long way from Connecticut, but it wasn’t every day of the week your daughter graduated. She had explained a hundred times that she would have to reserve seats for them since commencement was being held outdoors and there were only so many available chairs. Many of the students had big families, she had told them, and it simply wasn’t fair to hold seats that wouldn’t be used. She could not understand her parents’ hesitancy. Nor Penny’s either, for that matter. Was it a question of leaving the baby with someone? She simply could not understand, and Penny’s last letter hadn’t helped to clarify the situation at all. If anything, it only made things more confusing. Penny had written:

MY DEAREST AMANDA,

How wonderful to be graduating, how wonderful to be twenty-two years old and stepping into a shining new world with no responsibilities.

I am sitting here on the lawn and Kate is running around on the grass. She has been eating mud, and her face is all covered with it, but at least she isn’t crying. I do wish I could come to your graduation exercises, do you realize that Kate will be three years old in November? How the time flies! I can remember you in your high chair. You would stand up, and I would say, “Siddown, Mandy,” being all of five years old myself, and you would shout back, “ Stannup Mandy!” Do you remember? I don’t suppose you do. I seem to be remembering a lot of silly things lately. I suppose Mother has written to you. It’s good to have sunshine again. This was such a long, tedious winter.

I was sorry to hear you won’t be coming home after graduation, but I’m sure the camp will be very nice. Where did you say it was? Torrington? Is that in Connecticut? And just exactly what does a music counselor do? Well, it doesn’t matter because the important thing is that you make something of your life, and this is a good start. You always played piano so beautifully. Do you remember the first time Frank came to call on me? You were playing piano in the living room, and I had discovered a run in my last pair of nylons! Oh, what a mess! I’m surprised he ever came back again. But of course he did. Will the graduation be outdoors?