Dear Doctor Lily (3 page)

Sourly the passengers watched their Captain walking back from the plane.

‘Sorry, folks.' He came into the lounge, tanned, thickening, prematurely grey (with the uncertainty of flying the Atlantic?). ‘We're gonna get you outa here, but not yet. See the agent about cables or phone calls. On us, of course. Relax. Take it easy.'

‘We don't want to relax,' the bald businessman said. ‘We want to get to the United States.'

‘So do I,' said the Captain. ‘I have a brand new baby to see.'

Nobody cared about his rotten baby. They were offended by it, but he went away pleased with himself.

Back to the buses. Back to the Air Force base.

They sat apathetically in the mess hall, drinking eternal coffee and reading old newspapers. Children ran wild and their parents ignored them. An earthy girl with long, fine cobwebby hair and loose cotton clothes unbuttoned her man's shirt and fed her baby. No one looked, or looked away.

The agent came in, looking bruised. ‘We're getting a plane from France,' he said gloomily.

‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.'

Cries of anger. Wails of protest.

‘Listen here, Bud.' The bald man in the heavy black jacket moved forwards threateningly. ‘It's not good enough.'

‘Look,' Lily's blue-eyed man spoke up in a pleasant conciliatory way. ‘Apparently it's the best they can do.'

‘And I'd appreciate it,' the agent added with more spirit, ‘if you didn't call me Bud. My name is Mortimer.' He put back his shoulders and jutted his neat beard.

‘Fair enough. Okay, Mort.'

After that the agent was Mort to everyone, and the passengers began to be names and characters.

Ida and Lily. Ida the GI bride. Jokes and sentiment. The bald business man became Wally, who had a bottle in his bag. The coffee-machine man was Paul.

He worked for a big luggage and saddlery shop in Boston.

The bus drivers took them on a tour. Paul and Lily did not say much. Once when they were walking in a small grove of stunted birches behind the hot-spring greenhouses, he put his hand in her pocket and threaded his fingers into hers. Lily had the sensation of walking lightly upwards, as if her feet had left the earth.

Back at the base, the airmen were in the mess hall, so people wandered in and out of each other's rooms. Wally had another bottle of whisky and some paper cups. Paul brought doughnuts and hot chocolate up to Lily and Ida's room, and they sat on the beds because there were no chairs.

‘I like this,' Ida said. ‘In a funny way, I don't want it to end.'

‘But we've got to get you married,' Paul said. ‘You've got to be Mrs Bernard Legge.'

‘Ida Legge,' Lily said. ‘Can she stop being. Ida Lott and be Ida Legge? People will want to know, “What happened to it?”'

They laughed and were easy together, and Paul sat very close to Lily on the bed, with his jacket off and his skin magnetic under his shirt. His quiet, amused voice, close to her, was overwhelming. She could hardly breathe. The chocolate threatened to rise up from her stomach.

‘Ida Payne,' Ida giggled. ‘You know what? Perhaps my mother was right. She looked angry when my cousin came to take me to the airport and brought me that flower.' The white carnation was browning in a paper cup. ‘I thought she was going to say, “Don't go,” but she said, “You're a bigger fool than I thought.”'

‘Don't you want to get married?' Lily swallowed down the mutinous cocoa.

‘Well, I had to escape.'

‘What from?' Paul leaned towards Lily and rested his hand on the bed behind her, so that her arm was against his chest.

‘You wouldn't want to know. Jackson, who's coming out of prison. My family who hates me. Well–my mother does worse than my Dad, for obvious reasons. With incest, if you'll pardon the word, the mother always pretends it's the child's fault.'

‘My God, Eye.' Her heart competing with the cocoa in her throat, Lily leaned forwards away from Paul. ‘You poor–'

‘Don't give me no more case–worker talk. I've heard all that. Forget it anyway. It's only because I let Wally give me that whisky.'

‘He fancies you.' Lily managed to say it lightly, although her mind and body and spirit were fainting towards Paul.

‘Knock it off. Let's go to bed. We've got to get up early if that plane's really coming.'

When Ida went out to the bathroom, Paul turned Lily quickly, and before she could take off her glasses, kissed her long and searchingly, with his eyes open, watching hers.

She had never known this with anyone. Clumsy slobbers, bony adolescent bodies, grabs in the wrong places, drunken lunges. A sliver of her mind went wandering off with those memories while the rest was submerged, with her body, in Paul. How long could you go without taking a proper breath? Dear God, if you
let my stomach rumble first chance it gets with a grown-up man, I'll never… never what? She had never done anything worth mentioning for God yet, and now there was no future. Only this spinning swirl with thoughts flying off at the edge and her body dissolving at the centre. Time stopped.

She jumped up when Ida's heels hobbled along the passage outside, pushed back her glasses and stood by the window, looking agitatedly out at the colourless light night. When Ida came in, Paul got up and said goodnight to her and went out.

‘Think I'll use the bathroom too,' Lily said feebly. She took a towel, but she didn't really care what Ida thought.

Paul was waiting for her by the swing door at the end of the corridor. He pulled her through the door.

‘Take off your damn glasses.'

Even if there had been someone on the stairs, they would have gone on kissing and holding each other and fusing together, as close as people can be without actually–oh, what will happen to me now? This has never, I've never – Paul's murmurs to her were gentle and surprised and admiring. Hers were gasps, a sort of choking madness.

‘Oh, I love, I love you,' she had to say.

‘Ssh, quiet now. No, you don't.'

‘I do, I love you.'

Her youth's search was over. I've found you! she shouted inside.

When he lifted his head again, she felt so happy and sure of him that it was fun to ask, ‘Have you got a girl?', knowing it did not matter.

‘Do I have a
girl?'
He pulled back and held her away, his arms stiff. ‘Lily, I thought you knew. I have a wife.'

Fool. You've made a fool of yourself again. Heavy as lead. Wish I was dead. She put on the glasses which had been imperilled in the crushed pocket of her dress, and picked up the grey Air Force towel off the floor.

‘No, look, Lily. I'm married, sure, but we're in the middle of nowhere, not attached to anything we know.'

Lily turned away and put the towel up to her face.

‘Don't go back to your room.'

‘I must.' She was going to cry. She ran away from him and went into the bathroom and made faces at the plain child's face in the mirror, glasses blurring, skin reddening, the ill-bred nose splodging.

In the bedroom, she took off her dress and got into bed without looking at Ida. Lily willed her not to say anything, although she herself probably would have asked, ‘Want to tell me what happened?' or some such damn fool Lily question.

When Ida turned out the light and soon began her little snores, like a thin old snuffly dog, Lily lay with her arms wrapped round her disintegrating body and stared into the half darkness where furniture and bags and coats on hooks were still discernible in the monotonous twilight outside the window. Soon she got up, put on her poor creased dress that had started out so new and fresh to captivate Pam's brother at Boston airport, and went downstairs to the coffee machine.

He didn't say, ‘I knew you'd come,' so she didn't either. She had not known that anyway, only that she had to be there.

He was wearing the cornflower pullover that made his eyes intensely blue. He got their coffee and they leaned against the dull-green wall to drink it, looking at each other over the paper cups. One or two men came into the little corner space, said, ‘Hi', or didn't say, ‘Hi', and put their money into the slot and thumped a button.

How will I ever be able to bear the sound of coins rattling through the works of a machine? I will never forget the sticky red Coca-Cola dispenser with
WHERE'S SHIRLEY?
scrawled across it, and the
OUT OF ORDER
sign amended to
KICK ME.
The smell of the stewed coffee will break my heart.

Paul did not say anything. It was a self-assured trick he had, waiting for someone else to speak first. Not fair.

‘I suppose,' said Lily huffily, because she had decided to be huffy, ‘your wife bought that jersey for you?'

‘No.' He smiled at her as if he knew her right through and out at the back.

‘Do you know what it does to your eyes?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are you vain?'

‘Isn't everyone?'

‘If I was,' Lily said peevishly, ‘you cured that.'

‘I tell you I'm married, and you translate that into, “You're ugly.” Look, what the hell, it makes no difference now. We're on an island the size of Kentucky in the middle of the North Atlantic, helpless and frustrated because we can't get to Boston, and trying to make life easier for each other.'

Was that all?

‘I love you,' Lily said miserably.

He had strong shoulders and a small waist, worn higher up than English waists, long legs, rubber-soled shoes that didn't lace, trodden over at the sides, funny comfortable things to wear with that decent grey suit. His face was on the same design as his body: broad at the top and narrowing. His thick hair was the colour of wet sand, buff envelopes, dun horses, the dark side of blown barley. His nose was unremarkable, as noses should be. He smiled with his mouth closed, the corners going out and up, the wide cheeks pushing up the lower eyelids. His skin had a warm woody colour, as if he spent a lot of time out of doors, even in the winter. The lines at the outer end of his agonizingly blue eyes had been put there by smiling and the sun.

He moved easily and was naturally polite to people. He was lovely, thrilling, a man in a dream, the kind of man that other women had – and another woman did.

‘I love you.' Lily had never said that to any man, and now she could not stop.

‘Come up to my room.'

Oh my God, what am I doing? I know what I'm doing. I want to. He'll think I'm a child if I don't. The men in the hall know, although Paul says, ‘Hi there,' casually, as if I were his sister. I'll never get up the stairs. Thank God he's in front. He can't see me hanging on to the banister, with liquid knees. Faint with desire is what I am.

Outside his door, Lily put up a hand to push back her glasses, then took them off instead, and walked blindly into the bedroom. He took off her coat and stood looking at her, smiling.

What do I do now? He is so much older and more sophisticated. Why doesn't he tell me what to do?

‘What shall I do?' she had to ask.

‘Let's lie on the bed. Do you want to take off your dress?' he asked politely, not a bit sophisticated.

‘Yes.' She wanted to tear off everything and stand there, naked and lusting and too fat. She took off everything except her slip. He took off everything except his shorts. When his head emerged from the dangerous blue pullover, she saw that he was watching her and smiling.

In bed, Lily became wild, desperate. Her flaming body ached. She was a screaming void. She wanted to shout, ‘Do it! Do it!' But not in this rabbit warren of thin walls and many people; and he didn't want to do it anyway. He wanted to stroke and touch and lie together peacefully, and Lily didn't know whether to climb on top of him, or pull him on top of her, or what to do with her hands.

‘Please,'
she whispered, ‘I'm not a baby. I've never done it before, but I want to, with you. Please, you must.' It was not like with the bumbling, lunging boys, fighting them off. Paul was holding
her
off. ‘Don't you want to?'

‘Look, I'm ten years older than you. You're a virgin. I'm not going to –'

‘Someone's got to.'

‘Not me. We'll never see each other again after we get to Boston, and you'd hate me.'

‘No, I love you.'

‘Don't keep saying that. Let's just be close. Here, it's nice like this. Lie quiet. Let's hold each other. You're lovely.'

‘One day, then.'

‘There isn't going to be a one day. I'm sorry, Lily, I have to say that, if you're hoping I'm going to leave Barbara.'

‘I'm not.' She was.

‘You've got to understand. I have a small son.'

Oh, you can't have. You can't. You can't be caught up in all that. Hurrying home from work and bending over a cot, smiling and babbling and matching the blue of your eyes to the round, staring ones with their spotless whites. ‘He's the image of Paul,' everyone says.

‘I'd never do anything to hurt him… or Barbara. Hush now, quiet,' he whispered, as tears sprang out of Lily's eyes and flooded
both their faces. ‘It's lovely together. Don't spoil it.'

Lily wept a little more and shuddered, and looked bleakly at the pain of eternity without him, her body grown cold and empty of desire.

Still for now, he held her, and she slept.

When she woke in grey light, he was asleep on his face, his back a graceful landscape of bone and muscle and beautifully designed long curves that she did not dare to touch. Better not wake him anyway, if her face looked as it felt after crying puffily and sleeping.

At the door, with her coat over her hastily buttoned dress, she turned to look at the small transient room, green walls, metal cupboard and chair, hinged table flap with briefcase, a razor, the vague blue lump of the pullover, the sleeping man on the narrow rumpled bed. Other beds, other men – whatever was ahead of her, she would never forget anything about this.