Lovely War Read online

  “I’m sorry,” the young man said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “That’s all right,” Hazel replied. “I mean, you didn’t.” A fib.

  The scent of bay rum aftershave and clean, ironed cloth reached Hazel’s face and made it tingle. His cheeks were lean and smooth, and they looked so soft that Hazel’s fingers twitched to stroke them. The dread possibility that she might act upon the impulse was so mortifying to Hazel that she very nearly bolted for the door.

  “I wanted to tell you,” the young man said, “how much I enjoyed your playing tonight.”

  Now, at least, Hazel had a script. Her parents had coached her over a lifetime of piano recitals in how to respond to compliments.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “It’s kind of you to say so.”

  It was a speech, from rote, and the young man knew it. A shadow passed across his face. Of course it did, the poor darling—he only had one chance to interact with her, only one thing he could decently say: that he loved her music, that it took him away from this place, from this night, one week before shipping overseas to the Western Front, where young men like him died in droves, and that she, she, had given him this indescribable gift of escape, all the while being so sincere and fascinating in her absorption in the music. Propriety allowed him only to tell her that he enjoyed her playing, when he wanted to say so much more, and the one thing he dared hope was that she would feel how desperately he meant it.

  And her eyes, he now discovered, were wide and deep, rimmed with long black lashes.

  Poor James.

  Hazel knew she’d gotten it wrong. She swallowed her fear and looked into his eyes.

  “Truly,” she said, “thank you.”

  The shadow passed. “My name is James.” He offered her his hand.

  She took it, warm and dry, in hers and wished she didn’t have a pianist’s wiry, muscular thumb and fingers. Incidentally, that is not at all how James perceived her hands.

  “And you?” He smiled. Never mind Hazel; I nearly swooned myself.

  She blushed. If she did any more blushing, her cheeks might spontaneously combust. “I’m Hazel,” she said. “Hazel Windicott.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Windicott.” James etched her name into permanent memory. Hazel Windicott. Hazel Windicott.

  “And you, Mr. James,” replied the piano girl.

  He smiled again, and this time dimples appeared in his cheeks. “Just James,” he said. “My last name is Alderidge.”

  The stout woman running the entertainment, one Lois Prentiss, came bustling over to see why the music had stopped. An older woman, a favorite of mine named Mabel Kibbey, popped up like a gopher in a hole.

  “Miss Windicott has worked hard all evening,” she said. “I’m sure she’d like a moment’s rest. I’ll play for a spell. I think I know some tunes the young folks will like.”

  Before Hazel could protest, Mabel Kibbey had pried her out from the piano and pushed her toward James. “Go dance,” she said. In a blink, James led Hazel to the edge of the dance floor and offered her his arm. Dazzled by the pink spots on James’s cheeks, just above the dimples, she placed her left hand upon James’s tweed shoulder and rested her right hand in his.

  Mabel Kibbey struck up a slow waltz. James pulled Hazel as close as he dared.

  “I’m afraid I don’t really know how to dance,” confessed Hazel. “There’s a reason I stay behind the piano.”

  James stopped immediately. “Would you rather not dance?”

  Hazel fixed her gaze on his necktie. “No, I’d like to. But you mustn’t laugh at me.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said seriously. He slid back into the music.

  “When I trip and fall, then?” She hoped this would come across as a bit of a joke.

  He pressed his hand a shade more firmly into her back. “I won’t let you fall.”

  Nor did he.

  James, in fact, was a fine dancer, not showy, but graceful. Hazel wasn’t, but she was musical enough to find the beat. James supplied the dancing. She only needed to follow along.

  I sat next to Mabel Kibbey on the bench and watched. This dance could be a beginning, or an end, depending on a thousand things. Could they speak? Would one speak too much? Or say something stupid? Should I do something?

  “They’ll be all right,” Mabel said, casting a glance my way.

  “Why, Mabel Kibbey,” I whispered, “can you see me?”

  She flipped the page of her music. “I’ve always seen you,” she said. “You’re looking especially well tonight.”

  I gave her a squeeze about the waist. “You’re a darling.”

  She twinkled. “It’s nice to know you’re still here for the young people,” she said. “This dreadful war. How they need you now.”

  “Not only the young.” I nodded in the direction of a spry older gentleman, seated across the room. “Would you like me to make you an introduction tonight?”

  Mabel laughed. “No, thank you.” She sighed. “I’ve had my day.”

  We both saw, then, a faded wedding photograph, an empty chair, and a gravestone.

  “Who’s to say you can’t have another day?” I asked her.

  She reached a repeat and flipped her page back. “You go see about Miss Hazel.” So I did.

  They had covered the basics: She was eighteen. He was nineteen. Hazel, only child, from Poplar, daughter of a music hall pianist and a seamstress. Done with school, practicing full-time and preparing to audition for music conservatories. James, from Chelmsford, older brother to Maggie and Bobby. Son of a mathematics instructor at a secondary school. He, himself, worked for a building firm. Or had, until now. He was in London, staying with an uncle. Here to see about his uniform and kit, before reporting for duty in a week, to be stationed in France.

  The war.

  You had to walk into the room then, Ares. A final ending, a permanent goodbye.

  Yet you were the reason everyone was there. The war was in every sermon, every street sign, every news report, every prayer over every bland and rationed meal.

  And so James went from stranger to patriot, hero, bravely shouldering his duty to God, King, and Country.

  Hazel went from stranger and pianist to reason why the war mattered at all, symbol of all that was pure and beautiful and worth dying for in a broken world.

  When I found them, their heads were nestled together like a pair of mourning doves.

  James, the soul of politeness, wouldn’t dream of drawing Hazel too close on a first dance. Which was not to say he wouldn’t like to. But Hazel, baffled by finding herself so safe and warm in the arms of this beautiful young man, realized, when the song ended, that she’d been resting her forehead against his cheek. That cheek, she had wanted to caress, and now, in a way, she’d done it. She began to be embarrassed, but as the other dancers applauded, James cradled her in his arms, and she knew she didn’t need to apologize.

  Lois Prentiss began to boom out her thanks for all who’d made the evening a success, but Mabel Kibbey, with a wink at me, cut her off by starting a new song, even more tender than the first. While other couples jockeyed to find partners, Hazel and James found each other wordlessly, having never broken apart, and danced the entire dance, their eyes closed.

  If I couldn’t knit these two together by the end of a second dance, Zeus might as well make Poseidon the god of love, and I’d go look after the fishes.

  I could have watched them forever. By this point many eyes besides my own were watching Hazel Windicott, a well-known commodity in the parish, as famous for shyness as for music, dancing with the tall young stranger. When the song ended, and she opened her eyes, she saw James’s face watching her closely, but over his shoulder there were other faces, whispering, wondering.

  “I need to go,” she said, pulling away. “People will say . . .”


  She flooded with shame. How could she betray this moment to fear of others?

  He waited openly, calmly, without suspicion.

  What did she owe to other people anyway?

  “Thank you,” she said. “I had a lovely time.”

  She looked up nervously into his dark brown eyes. You’re wonderful, they said.

  So are you, her long-lashed eyes replied.

  “Miss Windicott—” he began.

  “Call me Hazel,” she said, then wondered if she ought.

  The dimples returned. She might melt. Other people didn’t matter. Let them gossip.

  “Miss Hazel Windicott,” he said, “I report for training in a week.”

  She nodded. “I know.” He’d already told her. It was so unspeakably awful. Already lads she’d known had died in the trenches.

  James took a step closer. “May I see you again before I go?”

  She chewed on this shocking proposal. This was not the way of things. Introductions, chaperones, supervision. Parental permission at each step. Large ladies like naval battleships prowling the seas of church socials, scouting for improper hand-holding and clandestine kisses. The war had relaxed propriety’s stranglehold, but only somewhat.

  James stewed. He’d said too much. Moved too fast. The thought made him sick. But what choice did he have? He had only one chance to get to know Hazel Windicott, the piano girl.

  “May I?” he said again.

  Hazel’s father appeared in the doorway.

  “How soon?” she asked James.

  He smiled. “As soon as possible.”

  “How much?” asked Hazel.

  The smile faded, leaving only that intent gaze in its place. “As much as I may.”

  It was time for Hazel to demur politely, make her excuses, thank him for serving the Crown, and break away from this doomed solider boy. It was definitely time to say no.

  “I’d like that.”

  She smiled, the first time she’d smiled for this stranger. James’s poor heart might’ve stopped beating then and there if he weren’t young and healthy.

  Hazel give James Alderidge her address. When she felt fairly certain the eyes in the room had moved on from gawking at her, and her father had fallen into chitchat with other arriving parents, she reached up onto her toes and gave James a kiss on the cheek.

  James Alderidge didn’t know it was the second such kiss he’d received that night. He only knew he was in grave danger of heading off to the Front as a soldier in love.

  The thought scared him more than all the German missiles combined. Should he pull back? Should he cut this fantasy short, and not seek out another encounter with the piano girl?

  Music. Lashes. Lilac-scented hair. The light grip of her lips in a brief kiss upon his cheek.

  And, once more, the music.

  What he should do, James decided, and what he would do, had no bearing upon each other.

  APHRODITE

  The Kiss (Part I)—November 23, 1917

  IF THAT KISS caused James a night of agonizing wonder, of delicious bafflement, he was not alone. For Hazel’s part, the bafflement was wondering what on earth had come over her, and the agony was dreading what James must think of her. She, Hazel Windicott, who never looked at boys! The respectable, serious-minded young lady who spent hours each day practicing piano, who kept her head while other girls did . . . whatever it was that other girls did. Would this James think she was the sort of girl who went about kissing young men upon first acquaintance?

  She walked home with her father, buttoning her coat collar close around her neck. The night was unusually cold. Her left arm still remembered resting itself upon James’s arm, and her right hand remembered holding James’s hand. Her body remembered moving in time with his, and being pulled closer as the last song ended.

  “Did some dancing, did we?” observed her father. Hazel was mortified to discover that she was acting it out, holding out her arms toward an imaginary James. So much for secrets.

  “Mrs. Kibbey thought I ought to,” she said. Blame it on Mrs. Kibbey, will you? Weak!

  Her father, a tall man with long arms and legs and fingers, and deep grooves carved into his cheeks, put an arm around Hazel’s shoulders.

  “Mrs. Kibbey’s right,” he said. “You need to live a bit more, my girl, and have fun. Not just stay cooped up with old folks like your mother and me.”

  She leaned her head against her father’s shoulder. “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “You aren’t ‘old folks.’”

  “Tell that to Arthur,” her father said. “Arthur” was the arthritis that plagued his wrist and knuckle joints. “I mean it, Hazy. You should spend more time with people your age. Just promise me you won’t fall in love with a soldier boy. You don’t need your heart broken in two.”

  She nodded. She couldn’t exactly look her dad in the eye just then. And she certainly wasn’t about to make any promises.

  For pity’s sake, she scolded herself once more. You are not in love with that boy. You’ve only just met him tonight, and danced two dances. People who talk of falling in love after just one meeting have their heads full of pillow down.

  Why, then, had she kissed him on the cheek?

  APHRODITE

  The Kiss (Part II)—November 23, 1917

  WHY HAD HAZEL kissed James on the cheek?

  This was the question tormenting James as he circled St. Matthias’s block. Up Woodstock Terrace, along East India Dock Road, down Hale Street, along High Street, and back. Breezes off the Thames brought the cry of seagulls and the clang of the dockyards. Up ahead, the lights of Poplar twinkled.

  Was it a sisterly sort of thing? Surely that was all the kiss meant: Do not hope for more, you strange stranger. Here is where my view of you begins and ends: platonic goodwill. Patriotic gratitude. Here’s a quick little peck to prove it. Now goodbye.

  He groaned. He’d heard of things like that. Girls who went about bestowing kisses on soldiers in their khakis on train platforms, and on new conscripts at recruiting stations.

  There was the spot. Right there, upon his cheek. He ran a finger over it.

  He passed by a couple that had taken advantage of a deep, dark doorway for some kissing of the type Lois Prentiss would certainly veto. It reminded him of that one smile, lighting up Hazel’s lips, making him wonder how kissing them would feel.

  What was the matter with him?

  The war, he decided. The war had addled his senses. The war had driven the whole world to the brink of insanity. Hasty war weddings and fatherless war babies and last-minute love. The whole cheap, flimsy spectacle of it.

  But he closed his eyes and remembered, once more, the feeling of holding the piano girl in his arms.

  He could still see her father holding her coat for her, and steering her out through the throng. Wild horses couldn’t persuade James to shadow their footsteps home. It would be indecent.

  Her address. Would she have shared it if she thought of him in a strictly friendly way?

  When he’d passed the kissing couple three times, he headed home. He crossed East India Dock Road and came to Kerbey Street, which led to his uncle’s flat. He glanced at theatrical playbills and navy recruitment banners. When signposts revealed that Kerbey Street had met Grundy, he stopped.

  The corner of Grundy and Bygrove, Hazel had said. Second floor, above the barbershop.

  Surely she’d be home by now. Asleep in bed, no doubt. What harm was a little detour? He’d merely note the location. He ought to get a haircut anyway. Perhaps tomorrow he could return for a trim, and while he was there, he might . . . what? Knock on her door?

  The utter impossibility of it all hit him.

  He could take a look. His motives were pure. He wasn’t spying. He only wanted to see the kind of curtains behind which the piano girl lived her luminous life. He would innoc
ently imagine her asleep on a soft pillow, her lashes delicately tangled together, her long hair spread about her, her slim hands playing Chopin in her dreams.

  APHRODITE

  Sleepless—November 23, 1917

  HAZEL WAS FAR from asleep. She’d changed into her nightgown and unpinned her hair. She sat on a low divan beneath her bedroom window, wrapped her arms about her knees, and looked out upon the street. In the upstairs flat, the two spinster Misses Ford played their gramophone recording of “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice.” It was much too late for opera. Hazel didn’t mind.

  James Alderidge. A nice name. One could certainly do worse.

  Had she danced two dances with a stranger, and kissed him on the cheek?

  She pressed her own burning cheek against the cool, damp windowpane.

  Who would’ve thought, on this utterly normal day, that before bedtime her brain would be scrambled like an egg? She’d only gone to play as a reluctant favor to Mrs. Prentiss, just as she’d gone that afternoon to the Poplar Hospital for Accidents to play for the recuperating soldiers.

  James Alderidge. He was heading off to the war. Training, then trenches. That would be an end, not only of their acquaintance, but, very possibly, of his life.

  Or, the end of his life as he knew it. Already there were honorably discharged men to be seen, coming and going, in wheelchairs, missing legs. With sleeves tucked into jackets to hide missing hands. With hideous, disfiguring scars where shrapnel had torn their faces.

  She knew this, of course. All of Britain knew what a terrible price young men paid each day to stop the wretched Kaiser. That evil, stupid, horrid man who’d unleashed his army like a dark flood across Europe.

  The thought of that fearful price carved into the face of the boy with the dark brown eyes filled her own eyes with tears. So she failed to notice the figure on the street corner, gazing up at her bedroom window.

  APHRODITE