Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [12]
It was hard to realize that Nan Milford didn’t have control of herself at every moment. Sean should have known. He should have known by the way she exploded, first in the darkness, and then here, in the dimmed lights of the living room.
“The children and I lived in the cellar every night for almost a year during the heavy bombing. I was finally forced to send them off to their grandmother. During the day I was that wonderful brave Mrs. Milford. A glorious example of stout British stuff. But when the bombs came at night I was alone ... alone in the gray world where you are not a person but a vegetable. It becomes so when you live in that gray world; for the want of feeling another human being you are jealous of every soldier and his girl in the street, even of the damned mating birds. Sean, you didn’t have a chance from the instant I met you.”
“Nor did I bargain for how I’d feel.”
“Nor did I. Should I be disgusted with myself because I’m not steeped in remorse or guilt? You know how you make me behave ... in there. I’ve never been that way before.”
Sean arose slowly and walked about the richly handsome room. Nan was neither nervous nor arrogant. She was just plain tired. “Sean, I am afraid of being alone again. You, me, Donnie ... I don’t know. I do know if you leave me I’ll have to have another man and God help me because I wouldn’t even care for him.”
“I guess we’re not supposed to be saints,” Sean said. “I’ve got to get going now. My brother Tim is down in London for the weekend.”
“Very well.”
Sean put on his topcoat slowly and walked to the door.
“Sean.”
“Yes?”
She was acid and angry. “You need not come back tonight. I shall be leaving in the morning to spend several days with the children.”
“Okay.”
“Will you be calling when I return?”
“Not if I can find the strength,” he said and he left.
The hall porter ushered him out into a billow of cold fog. He flicked his flashlight toward the pavement to find a path through the abysmal darkness. In a second the fog had swallowed him up.
“Sean!” a frantic voice pierced the black. “Sean ...”
He listened to directionless footsteps, leaned against a building trying to hide himself ... trying not to answer. “Sean!” her voice cried. “Sean!”
“I’m over here.”
Nan fell against him gasping for breath, wet and shivering and broken.
“You damned fool running outside without a coat ... you damned little fool.”
Nan trembled and cried. “Sean ... I know there must be a good-by ... but not now. I love you, Sean. I’ll pay any price for having you. I swear I shan’t care what shame or pain or risk will come from it. When you must go ... we will both find the courage, somehow.”
His coat was around her and he kissed her wet cheeks and pressed her into the strength of his arms. “I love you, Nan ...”
Chapter Six
SEAN CAME IN OUT of the fog at Henry Pringle’s Blue Hawk Inn. The Blue Hawk, named after Pringle’s World War I fighter squadron was the fighter pilots’ hangout. Henry Pringle himself was a mechanic and had yet to make his first flight. The pub was a shrine to the heroes he never ceased to worship.
The big room was cluttered with photographs of over two hundred British, American, Canadian, French, Polish, New Zealand, and Aussie aces and as many model airplanes hung from the black beams and rafters. The walls were studded with denuded bomb casings, squadron insignia, leather helmets, framed records of kills, machine guns and pistols, bits of wings and wheels. It was a whiskey and ale aviation museum.
Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury, an American correspondent gave Pringle’s Blue Hawk renewed prominence after a hibernation between wars. Bradbury reported the war from London long before Pearl Harbor. When the American volunteer Eagle Squadron flew with the RAF they discovered Pringle’s place. Bradbury wrote about it, and was held in reverence by the English only slightly less than the King. He built his shrine to the fighter pilots with words. One column each week was certain to be written from “Big Nellie’s” personal booth. The