A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [35]
Philip denied this.
“Come on—did they put you in isolation?”
Philip shook his head.
The only one of them who seemed to have any real understanding of it was Rosemary’s father. “There’s a syndrome,” he said, “where a prisoner starts to identify with his captors…”
Philip added, “Or associate with them and feels a certain amount of guilt about that.”
Sarah Porterville piped in, “I have an uncle who avoided capture by taking refuge in a brothel.”
“For a night?” asked Teddy.
“No, three months,” said Sarah. “My aunt had a terrible time with him when he came home…”
Everyone laughed except Philip who finished the brandy in his glass and poured himself another. “There were no brothels,” he said, “but the Germans had a lot of willing women.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Rosemary. “It doesn’t matter what it was—you’re home now.”
By the old Moulmein Pagoda,
lookin’ eastward to the sea…
It was Rosemary’s father’s favorite poem, Kipling’s “Mandalay” and, as he read it aloud to himself, it sounded almost melodic. They’d had a quiet dinner at home, Mr. Fell and Rosemary and Philip without outside interference. A rack of lamb, quince jelly, potatoes that had been roasted in their skins, and a twelve-year old St. Emilion that Mr. Fell had carefully selected from the wine cellar. Rosemary was bubbly, vivacious, seeming to almost flutter about the room, not letting Philip or her father assist in any of the serving and jumping up, much to Gertrude’s shock, to help clear the dishes.
After dinner, they’d retired to the living room and had a long, spirited discussion about Braque. At eleven, Philip was tired and Rosemary went up to bed with him.
As they climbed the stairs, they heard Mr. Fell reading to himself from Kipling’s “Mandalay.”
By the old Moulmein Pagoda,
lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’
an’ I know she thinks o’ me:
For the wind is in the palm-trees
an’ the temple bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier;
come you back to Mandalay!”
Rosemary smiled but the soft, hushed way he was reading made it sound almost like a prayer.
Upstairs, Rosemary shut the door to their bedroom. She turned to Philip. She seemed playful in a grownup kind of way. She slowly undid the buttons of her dress to her waist. She was, in that moment, completely open, uninhibited. She smiled and walked towards him. She put his hand on her breast and then he buried his face there. He began to kiss her…She would show him that she could be more than a society wife, that she was capable of real passion, that all the months of waiting for him had built into a longing, a pining that she could no longer contain. Kiss me there, Philip. She felt chills, a tremor of excitement that tingled down her spine.
And then his passion changed to something else and he broke down. She comforted him as best she could. She was thrown, her reactions were off, she was hurt. If she’d had the sense to talk to him about it or rather let him speak to her about what it was like to be out in the raw night with the stars overhead as they always were, curious, the placement of the stars never changed just shifted in the sky in relation to each other as the year marched on, cold, wet in the muddy trench, afraid to move, terrified that at any moment there would be a flash of light or the shrill aching sound of a shell as it pierced the air. Keep a stiff upper lip, a cool facade, your head about you. Can’t let the men know that you’re afraid. Keep a cool surface. Calm. Detached. As inside a part of you has been shattered.
The sun streamed in through the windows in filtered lines. There was buttered toast in a silver basket covered with an Irish linen napkin to keep it warm, strawberry preserves in a small ceramic jar with a tiny jam spoon, four-minute eggs hidden in handpainted eggcups, and a small vase of poseys in the center of the table looked almost like a still-life, back-lit by the morning sun.
Mr. Fell was examining a butterfly he had received in the mail. He held the butterfly up for Rosemary and Philip to inspect.