Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [30]
Dinah thought, "It is serious, isn't it?" She answered, "I don't know, Nellie."
"I thought you might," the lovely girl in the soft nightgown replied.
"No, Nellie," the older woman explained. "You see, when I went with Bill, whether or not he was married was of no consequence. How could it possibly have interested me? I never deluded myself with even the faintest suspicion that we might fall in love." She paused and then added, "Of course, if you really want to know all you have to do is call his commanding officer."
"Oh, I couldn't do that!" Nellie gasped.
Dinah smiled and thought, "You couldn't do that! No! But you could take a chance on your whole life. That's all right! Girls, girls! No wonder I never got married. I guess God made a mistake and gave me a brain!"
Nellie persisted. "Dinah?" she asked. "What do you think?"
"Darling, I told you. I don't think anything. But I will tell you something that I thought a couple of months ago. You might not like it, but here it is. When Bill stopped taking me places he was in a foul mood. I said to myself, 'God help the next girl he goes with.' If I'm not mistaken, you're that next girl."
"What did you mean?" Nellie asked, half shuddering at Dinah's cold statements.
"I don't know, Nellie. I think it was something like this. Bill Harbison went with me only to fill a need in himself. It was unnatural, and I knew it. But it was fun. I now go with several older men whom I met through Bill. I bear him no grudges at all. But I never deceived myself for a moment that Bill was the handsome, winsome, gallant boy he played at being. He's just like you and me, Nellie, a huge bundle of neuroses which this climate makes worse."
"I know that, Dinah," Nellie said. "I feel it in myself, sometimes. But what did you mean about God helping me? That's what I've got to know."
"I meant that it was just as unnatural for Bill to go with you as it was for him to go with me. Bill is a snob. Nellie, you may not like this, but it would be as impossible for Bill to marry you as it would be for him to marry me. That's why it doesn't make any difference whether or not he's married. But if you want to know, I can make some discreet inquiries among my friends. Although, of course, it wouldn't be exactly easy for me to do so." She smiled.
"I know what you mean, Dinah. I think I know all of what you mean. Thanks for talking." The handsomely built young girl folded her nightgown about her thin waist and left. Dinah watched her go.
"She thinks I'm jealous of her," the older woman mused. "I wonder what happened tonight? Probably tried to rape her." She sighed, from what cause she did not know, and returned to War and Peace.
Next morning Bill was at the hospital. Before she went to sleep Nellie had decided not to see him if he called, but when she looked down from her window and saw him standing penitently by his jeep, she hurried down. They went for a drive and Bill apologized. "Seeing you so beautiful on the beach made me lose my head," he said.
She was on the point of asking him if he were married. But she didn't. All over the world at that moment men torn from their homes were meeting strange girls and falling in love with them. On every girl's tongue was the question she almost never asked: "Are you married?" At first she reasoned, "Well, we're not in love, so it doesn't matter." Later she reasoned, "We love one another, so it doesn't really matter." In strange ways they discovered that their lovers were married men, or in jubilation they found they were not. But rarely did they ask the simple question: "Are you married?" For they knew that most men would tell them the truth, and they did not wish to know the truth.
So Nellie did not ask. Instead, she did a very foolish thing. She told him about Charlie Benedict back home who worked in a store and wanted to marry her. He was 4-F and miserable about it. He wrote her the funniest letters. Poor Charlie! Instead of the plan's working as she thought it might, Bill said nothing about marriage. Instead he pulled her to him and almost crushed her with kisses.