Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [2]
She muttered something about the impossibility of getting domestic help. The rest of the meal was in silence. Sean rolled down his sleeves, buttoned them, and fixed his tie and slipped into his jacket. The quiet became uneasy. Every time they said good-by now there was an averting of eyes. The feel of the wet cold clouds from outside had come into the room and engulfed them.
Nan knew that the God who ruled Sean O’Sullivan was pushing him to the end of their affair. “There are so many unsaid things,” she whispered.
“Our whole relationship is unsaid, Nan. That photograph of your husband who cannot protest. Your children in the country who remain hidden. The words we never say when we are making love. Six beautiful months of unsaid things.”
“They’re going to be said now, aren’t they, Sean?”
“Kind of looks like it.”
A jeep horn sounded from the street below. Beep, be, beep, beep. Nan reacted. “Must he blow that horn and announce your departures to the entire West End of London?”
Sean buttoned his jacket and put on his cap. At this moment she always turned genteel, holding her cheek up for the departing bus as she did for G. Donald Milford. Instead she found herself tight against him. He let her go and she reeled back and watched him disappear down the hall.
Sean hopped into the jeep alongside Second Lieutenant Dante Arosa, who gunned the vehicle away on the fog-wettened pavement.
“Scored last night,” Dante said with pride of conquest
“Little show girl?”
“A living testimony that English women are not cold in bed. Who in the hell libeled them in the first place? Some Irishman?”
Sean was indulgent. Dante was his own age, twenty-eight, but England was his first real experience with life. He had gone from a truck farm in the Napa Valley to the University of San Francisco to an almost too brilliant law career. There was little doubt of Dante Arosa’s ability as a counter-intelligence officer on duty, or his somewhat juvenile behavior off duty. Tall, thin young men shouldn’t smoke cigars, Sean thought. Dante doesn’t clamp the cigar in one side of his mouth solidly. It sort of hangs limply from the front of his teeth.
As they ran alongside Kensington Gardens the traffic thickened. Dante continued his testimony to British womanhood.
“By the way, don’t blow the horn.”
“Huh?”
“When you pick me up. One, park jeep. Two, emerge. Three, walk to door. Four, ring bell.”
Dante shrugged. He didn’t like Nan Milford. It was broads like her who gave the English women their bad reputations. Where does she get this Virgin Mary routine? She’s just another married broad shacking up behind her husband’s back no matter what kind of icing Sean puts on it.
They sank into quietness. Everything was different about London, these days. Everything but the weather. The long, harrowing nights in the bomb shelters were over. The tension had eased. The bombers were going in the other direction these days. There was an air of victory everywhere. People were looking toward the end of the war and it was evident in everyone’s voice and step.
“Sean.”
“Yes?”
“How far has this thing gone with you and Nan?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I’ll ring the bell.”
Dante Arosa cut the jeep abruptly in the middle of the block. Cars before him screeched to a halt and pedestrians scattered. He beelined for a spike fence that blocked a short, dead-end street named Queen Mother’s Gate. Dante hit the brakes, bringing the tormented vehicle to a halt before the terrified sentry. The sentry saluted half-heartedly and waved them through past the sign on the gatepost which read: MISSION, MILITARY GOVERNMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY.
The abbreviated, enclosed