Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [100]
They stayed there a long time, Caroline and her mother. It s all right, it s all right, Mrs. Walker kept saying, and she kept herself from weeping by thinking of the sounds that Caroline made. It was strange and almost new to hear Caroline crying the same shudders and catches of breath, but in a firmer voice. That made it new, the firmer voice, the woman part. The little girl in woman s clothes, who never could put on girl s clothes again. What was it Pope said? Was it Pope? This dear, fine girl. A thing like this to happen to her. It was as though Julian had not existed. Only Caroline existed now, in pain and anguish. Poor girl. Her feet must be cold. They went upstairs together after a while, the mother prepared for a long vigil; but she was not used to vigils any more, and sleep won. All night Caroline did not sleep, until long after daylight she lay awake, hearing the heartless sounds of people going to work and going on with their lives regardless. The funny thing was, it was a nice day. Quite a nice day. That was what made her tired, and in the morning she did sleep, until near noon. She got awake and had a bath and some tea and toast and a cigarette. She felt a little better before she remembered that there was a day ahead of her no matter how much of it had been slept through. She wanted to go to Julian, but that was just it. Julian was more in this room, more in the street where he had walked so angrily from her car yesterday, much much more in the room downstairs where once upon a time she had become his girl than what was lying wherever he was lying was Julian. She looked out the window, down at the street, not one bit expecting to see that he had left footprints in the street. But if the footprints had been there she would not have been surprised. The street sounded as though it would send up the sound of his heels. He always had little metal v s put in his heels, and she never would hear that sound again, that collegiate sound, without well, she would hear it without crying, but she would always want to cry. For the rest of her life, which seemed a long time no matter if she died in an hour, she would always be ready to cry for Julian. Not for him. He was all right now; but because of him, because he had left her, and she would not hear the sound of the little metal v s on a hardwood floor again, nor smell him, the smell of clean white shirts and cigarettes and sometimes whiskey. They would say he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk. Yes he was. He was drunk, but he was Julian, drunk or not, and that was more than anyone else was. That was what everyone else was not. He was like someone who had died in the war, some young officer in an overseas cap and a Sam Browne belt and one of those tunics that button up to the neck but you can t see the buttons, and an aviator s wings on the breast where the pocket ought to be, and polished high lace boots with a little mud on the soles, and a cigarette in one hand and his arm around an American in a French uniform. For her Julian had that gallantry that had nothing to do with fighting but was attitude and manner; a gesture with a cigarette in his hand, his whistling, his humming while he played solitaire or swung a golf club back and forth and back and forth; slapping her behind a little too hard and saying, Why, Mrs. English, it is you, but all the same knowing he had hit too hard and a little afraid she would be angry. Oh, that was it. She never could be angry with him again. That took it