Everything She Ever Wanted (33 page)

holes in their dresses or panties.
 
He found no such charm in

rough-and-tumble little boys.
 
But Kent desperately wanted Clifford's

approval.
 
He was an intense boy.
 
Early on, he set impossible 'able

goals for himself.
 
And even as he set such high standards, he seemed

to know already he would never meet them.

The Second World War was a lonely time for Margureitte Radcliffe, but

not nearly as lonely as the years before she met Clifford.
 
While he

was in Germany, she knew he would come back to her-if he could.
 
She

believed in her heart that Clifford had been telling her the truth when

he said he had adored her from the very beginning, and that he always

would.
 
And she was grateful that it was so.

And then Clifford Radcliffe was listed as missing in action, and

Margureitte didn't know if he was alive or dead.
 
Word finally came

that he had been injured in Germany; he had suffered a facial wound.

She would love him no matter how he looked, of course, but Clifford had

been so handsome that it seemed especially tragic that he would be

disfigured.
 
Margureitte was told only that her husband had been sent

to a hospital in England.

His homecoming was as romantic as a love song.
 
One day, she heard a

cane rattling against her door.
 
She ran to open it and it was

Clifford.
 
Home safe!
 
He had grown a mustache and it completely hid

any remaining scars.
 
Everything was all right after all.

Margureitte had a place in the world.
 
She was a married woman, an

officer's wife, and she had her foot on a solid rung in the social

hierarchy of service wives.
 
Together, she and Clifford moved up

through the army ranks.
 
After the war, the family was transferred from

one duty station to another as Clifford's orders came through-to

Germany, Japan, Atlanta, Alabama, and back to Germany.
 
They had no

children together, but even though Margureitte never bore Clifford's

natural child, he always treated Patty and Kent as his very own.

Clifford would eventually become Colonel Radcliffe; he worked in

military intelligence, the most elite and mysterious specialty in the

army.
 
He was well suited for it, with his keen mind and a certain

natural distrust of the obvious.
 
When he strode the streets of

Frankfurt, Germany, in his trench coat, the wind slightly ruffling his

iron gray hair, Colonel Clifford RadCliffe looked as if he had stepped

from the screen of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
 
And woe be unto any

underling who couldn't adhere absolutely to his interpretation of army

regulations.

Margureitte was the ideal colonel's lady.
 
She never lost her southern

accent and her voice was dulcet-toned and graciously modulated.
 
When

Clifford and Margureitte stepped out for an army social function, they

looked like a million dollars.
 
Her figure was perfect for her

strapless chiffon evening gowns, her gorgeous legs looked even more so

in her ankle-strapped shoes with three-inch heels, and Clifford was

handsome in full dress blues.

Margureitte would recall later to her granddaughters that, wherever

they were stationed, men made passes at her.
 
"Your grandfather was

insanely jealous of me at the officers' club-if I danced with another

man, he would become quite upset.
 
It was 'i, just easier not to dance

with other men, even if they were friends of ours.
 
. . . I loved Papa

and I did not want to upset him-I had to lavish all the attention on

him."

Patty seemed to thrive on the peripatetic life-style of an army

family.

She was such an enchanting child that she was welcome wherever they

went.
 
People made a fuss over her just as her grandmother and aunts

back home in North Carolina had.
 
Margureitte couldn't bring herself to

cut Patty's golden brown hair and it grew past her waist.
 
Usually, she

wore it in tight, long braids looped up with ribbons and barrettes.

Sometimes she coaxed Margureitte to let it hang free in thick waves.

When they were stationed in Japan, the Japanese reached out shyly to

touch Patty's radiant hair with wonder.

The Colonel Radcliffes moved in rarefied circles in the Far East.
 
It

was in Japan where Patty became the tennis partner of the young crown

prince.
 
Margureitte and Cliff were thrilled to see their lovely

daughter accepted by royalty.
 
Patty herself took it for granted; she

had always been treated like a little princess.
 
She was not awed by

the young prince.
 
When the Radcliffes were reassigned , the royal

family presented Patty with a full ceremonial Japanese kimono, obi, and

sandals.
 
The heavy satin garments rested in tissue paper in her bureau

drawer wherever she lived.
 
Patty loved costumes.

When she reached puberty, she didn't get chubby or sprout pimples.
 
She

moved gracefully into her teens and became, if anything, more

flawless.

At thirteen, the planes of her face changed subtly from the roundness

of childhood to the classically defined cheekbones of a genuine

beauty.

She posed for a snapshot wearing a white organza gown and stole, the

fitted arty dress held up by two narrow spaghetti p i straps over

creamy white shoulders.

Patty's hair was cut, finally, and swept back from her face in

shimmering waves and then combed under in a pageboy.
 
She wore bright

red lipstick and her green eyes were arresting in their intensity.
 
She

had a slight overbite but it scarcely detracted from her beauty.

Rather, it gave her a pouting, sensuous look.

She was fully developed, a southern beauty blooming early.

She looked at least eighteen.

Patty was sweet and loving with adults, but she could sometimes be

artless, even cruel, with her peers.
 
She was far and away the

prettiest of the many girl cousins in the Siler clan, and she knew

it.

She had heard it often enough.
 
Once, when she noticed an ugly-duckling

cousin staring at her as she combed her hair, Patty turned and

whispered, "You might be as pretty as I am someday."
 
She pretended to

be shocked when the girl ran away crying.
 
But she seemed to be adroit

at finding the other girls' sore spots.
 
Early on, there was something

in Patty that went for the jugular, detecting weakness in an adversary

and moving in relentlessly.

Patty had never been much of a student, although she was smart

enough.

She loved sewing and crafts, and she was very talented artistically.

She preferred reading romantic stories and poems and, in her mind, she

became the heroine.
 
She was Scarlett O'Hara and she was Elizabeth

Barrett Browning.
 
She was the Highwayman's sweetheart waiting at her

window in the dark of the moon for her lover to come take her away.

Not surprisingly, Patty was fascinated with boys.
 
And they with her.

Most of the eighth-grade girls were flat chested and gawky, but Patty

Radcliffe looked like a movie star.
 
And, as always, Kent took a

backseat to his sister.
 
He was shy and hesitant about asserting

himself.
 
His hearing loss, although very well hidden, made him just a

little slower on the uptake than his peers.
 
Patty still detested

him.

Everything he said or did seemed to irritate his older sister.

When Patty was in her early teens, Colonel Radcliffe was ordered back

to Fort McPherson in Atlanta.
 
It was a happy move for the family; the

Atlanta area had become home.
 
And there, history would repeat

itself.

The Siler women all seemed to blossom early.
 
It was more usual than

not for them to bear their first children in their mid-teens.
 
When

Patty was fifteen, Margureitte was only thirty-three and nervously

aware of the dangers of having a beautiful teenage daughter who looked

years older than she was.
 
But what could Margureitte do?
 
Patty had

never had any rules to follow, no brakes at all to slow her impetuous

pursuit of whatever caught her fancy.

She met eighteen-year-old Gilbert Taylor at a party on the Fort Mac

base; he was an army brat too, a lanky, skinny young man whom Patty

found terribly handsome.
 
She put all her romantic fantasies into the

relationship and Gil fell hard for the lovely and seductive teenager.

Suddenly she stepped from childhood to womanhood.
 
She would not answer

to "Patty" any longer; she was Pat, or, when the moment called for it,

she asked to be called Patricia.

Pat became pregnant almost immediately.
 
She didn't mind; it meant she

could get married.
 
Gil was both proud and jealous.
 
He wanted to

believe this was his baby, but he knew Pat had been dating another

young man too, a soldier.
 
It was Gil's baby, but his insecurity with

Pat never quite went away.
 
As much as he wanted to believe in her, she

kept him slightly off-balance, letting him wonder.

Her parents would have preferred that she marry into an officer s

family.
 
A hearty, boisterous man, Gil's stepfather, Mike Downing, was

only a sergeant and his mother, Eunice, a buxom, flamboyant woman-not

the kind Margureitte would have picked as a friend.
 
Eunice dressed to

show off her hourglass figure.
 
She was pretty in a flashy way, a great

cook, and goodhearted, the very antithesis of the properly reserved

colonel's wife Margureitte had become.

The sergeant worshiped his wife.
 
"I thank God every night for Eunice,"

Mike often said.
 
He showered Eunice with presents, including diamonds