O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [87]
“It hurts in a way I can’t even start to explain.”
“I’m sure it does.”
“How can you know how I feel?”
“I suppose I can’t. You must be the first Marine in a hundred and twenty-two years who has felt the pain of a love lost.”
Zach was jolted.
“You join the Corps because you’re lonely and you’ve made yourself believe you can live without a woman’s love. Then you try love and get divided in half and . . . she’s gone,” Ben said.
“I’m sorry, Ben, I didn’t know.”
“Sure. So, go drink your pain under, then go into Newport and get yourself into a little trouble.”
“What happened, Ben?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“What happened?” Zach repeated.
Ben rocked his chair. Its familiar squeal helped his thoughts.
“I’m going to give it to you in one long sentence. Don’t mention it again, ever. It’s off-limits.”
The major opened his vault.
“After the Civil War, I commanded the Marine detail at the Boston Naval Yard.”
On first try, her name did not come out. “Yolanda,” he said at last. “Yolanda came from a Portogee fishing family out of Gloucester. We had a contract with one of their fishing co-ops. We bought large quantities for ships heading out on long cruises. She ran that show as our buyer . . .”
Ben looked out the window to the sea, as he always did, for solace.
“If she stood alongside Amanda Kerr, you couldn’t tell who would be the more beautiful. A Portogee and a one-armed hillbilly, but could we make music. I was a first luey and the Corps didn’t know quite what to do with me when that horse ate my arm. Anyhow, I was well respected for my service to Winfield Scott. The Corps was so small they couldn’t afford to lose me, so I was pegged and branded to remain a staff officer.”
Ben silenced his chair.
“The commandant, the one long before Ballard, refused us permission to marry. She had Negro blood in her and her skin was too dark. Some of the boys were permitted to marry Asian women; there was no way I could be stationed between Quantico and the capital. Officers’ wives, particularly navy wives, would make life unbearable.”
“What the hell are we?” Zach said. “The French Foreign Legion?”
“Corps was only half of the problem. She was a Portuguese Catholic. Fucking Portogees are like super-Spaniards, super-Sicilians with their blood feuds and blood libels and lust for vengeance. She fled to me and that had to be avenged. We were able to set up a cottage away from the base. The Corps looked the other way.”
And now, quiet.
“We had over two years together before her father and brothers found her and waited till I was gone . . . then took her life.”
• 26 •
ONDE LA MER
There was great consternation in Newport when it was learned that George Washington Barjac, a Catholic, had purchased five wooded and prized acres of cliffside land.
The mansions of Newport had been solid affirmations of the success of the Reformation. How to handle the invasion? It would do no good to ostracize Barjac, but he was building a family hamlet up there. The architecture was vulgar, low, and hugging the bluff lines. No grandeur. However, it was in keeping with the shore below it . . . rather graceful, actually.
Attitudes mellowed in time.
Hell, Newport was a tolerant place. Didn’t it have the first Hebrew synagogue in America? What of that?
On second thought, having George Washington Barjac as the Newport house Catholic had a certain enticement to it. The man was an entrepreneur, a tobacco king, and his wife, Josephine, could charm a lion out of a meat bone.
Fifi Barjac had a head start over Rhode Islanders in playing the arch game of court. Court had been in her blood for generations, centuries. The influx of their Parisian utterness soon had curious noses sniffing. From her accent to her scent to her opinions and tastes, she set an impeccable standard that made her the pied piper of Newport.
Their salon showed the shadowy, fuzzy art that was now gaining notice in Paris, and words were spoken at readings by the authors of the day, and music was performed by the composers and singers and players that no one