Searching for Pemberley (8 page)

Please write and let us hear of what goes on in town.

Happy Christmas,
Beth

P.S. As a child, my parents took their four children up to London to Harrods during the holidays to do our Christmas shopping so that we could ride the escalator. I remember my mother hesitating because, at that time, women still wore ankle-length dresses. Nervous customers were provided with brandy at the top! Of course, my brothers decided it would be even more fun for them to walk up the down escalator.

I eagerly opened the envelope Beth had enclosed and recognized the stationery and handwriting from Will Lacey's earlier letter to his cousin.

9 April 1792

Dear Anne,

As mentioned in my last post, Charles Bingham is much taken with Miss Jane Garrison of Bennets End, Hertfordshire. I consider his preference for the lady to be very marked, but as you know, Bingham has often been in love. I am unable to judge how Miss Garrison receives his attentions,
as she is a passive creature. However, her sister, Elizabeth, is Miss Garrison's opposite in every way. The elder sister is fair, with flaxen hair and blue eyes, while Miss Elizabeth has dark brown hair and dark, expressive eyes that show a hint of mischief.

I accompanied Bingham to the home of Miss Garrison's aunt for an evening of cards. I was sitting next to Miss Elizabeth when she said I was very fortunate in that her aunt's house was too small to permit dancing. However, she enquired as to what stratagems I would use in order to avoid conversation, an obvious reference to my remarks, which she had overheard at the assembly. When I told her I chose carefully the people whom I sat next to, she responded by saying I had chosen unwisely, as she loved a good conversation. I noted that she also liked to tease people. 'But never with malice,' she said. I believe my remarks at the assembly wounded her. In my defence, my words were not malicious but were the result of fatigue after a difficult journey.

After a rubber of whist, Miss Elizabeth and I continued our conversation. I found her to be well informed as to national political debates and the events taking place on the continent with particular attention being paid to the anti-monarchial actions of the French National Assembly. Jane Garrison talked with Bingham for most of the evening, choosing not to play cards. There are three other Garrison sisters. The two youngest laughed and talked loudly the whole of the night without correction.

Bingham will remain in Hertfordshire and, no doubt, will continue his attentions to Miss Garrison. He has shown
a greater interest in this woman than any other I have witnessed. I look forward to visiting with you in London.

As always,
Will

I loved this letter! Will was falling in love with Elizabeth, but he didn't know it yet. On the other hand, Lucy and Celia's behavior was obviously an irritant for him.

After finishing Will's letter, I reread Beth's letter where she had mentioned that her family had “contributed more than their share for King and Country,” and I wondered what she meant.

I had planned to spend Christmas Eve listening to the BBC radio broadcast of Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol
with the Dawkins's family but was rescued by Leo, my Polish friend, who had been invited to a party by Americans who lived in his building. Because of rationing, Americans were the only ones who could get their hands on scarce food items, and they had always had access to what seemed to be a bottomless supply of booze.

As a rule, I tried to dress simply because many Britons were wearing the same clothes they had worn since the war began in 1939. But this was Christmas, and I wanted to wear the red silk blouse, which complemented my dark hair and blue eyes, that my mother and sisters had sent to me for Christmas. I compromised and wore the blouse with a practical navy blue skirt I had brought from home. I was hoping to meet a nice guy at the party. A
handsome man would be just the thing to take the sting out of being alone during the holidays.

Leo was having no trouble attracting a bevy of attractive young women who found his Polish good looks and accent to be irresistible. Up to that point, I hadn't been so lucky until I saw a handsome man across the room. Even though he had a scar on his right cheek, he was very attractive. I was embarrassed when he caught me looking at him, but when he raised his glass to me, I went over and introduced myself after apologizing for staring.

“The scar is actually helpful when you are trying to meet pretty girls.” He introduced himself as Rob McAllister from Flagstaff, Arizona. “I was a navigator on a B-17 bomber. When the plane was hit by flak, the Plexiglas on the nose of the plane shattered, and shards went flying. I'm lucky it wasn't worse.” He gave that short laugh people use when they are uncomfortable, and after that—nothing.

I'm one of those people who can't stand lulls in a conversation, so I started talking and told him about my job with AES in Germany. I had been able to do some sightseeing since train travel in Europe was so easy once the bombed tracks had been repaired. One of the most accessible destinations was the Black Forest. It was a breathtakingly beautiful ride through mountain passes with postcard villages and thatched, three-story farmhouses paralleling the tracks. On the surface, the villages of the Black Forest appeared to be untouched by the war, but even here, you could not avoid stories about the horrors of war. Troops from North Africa, who had fought with the French army, had gone on a rampage of rape, looting, and murder in those picturesque mountain towns.

After I realized how inappropriate it was to discuss rape and murder with someone I had just met, I tried to cover up my gaffe
by asking Rob if he had ever been to Germany, and he said that he had been “over” it many times, but he had never been “to” it.

“Oh, of course, you flew on a bomber,” I said. “Well, I lived in Frankfurt for a year, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that you guys did a thorough job.”

This was not going well. I had just complimented Rob on bombing a city into rubble.

“Sorry. That came out all wrong.” I started to walk away before I could do any more damage, but Rob pulled me back and said, “Don't apologize. We did what had to be done to end the war, but I'm obviously making you nervous. Why?”

He
was
making me nervous. I hadn't felt like this since high school, when I had to sneak around to see my boyfriend, who was Italian and, therefore, unacceptable to my Irish-centric family.

Looking across the room, Rob asked if Leo was my date, and I assured him he was just a friend.

“I'm glad to hear it because I think he's about to leave with the leggy blonde.”

As if on cue, Leo looked at me and gestured that he was leaving and was it all right. I gave him the okay sign. I was confident in that large of a group I could find someone to see me to the Underground station, and Rob said he could guarantee it.

Rob and I had our first date at an Italian restaurant near the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square. It was your typical Italian restaurant: red and white checkered tablecloths, candle wax dripping down the sides of Chianti bottles, and a waiter in a starched white apron. It could just as easily have been South Scranton as London.

Rob had left England in March 1945 as a captain in the Air Corps and had returned in the spring of '47 as a civilian working for an American corporation based in Atlanta. Smiling, he said, “My second tour of England has been much more pleasant than my first.

“After I returned to the States, I was retrained to teach radar navigation on B-29s at Victorville, California, which was quite a change from England because Victorville is in the Mojave Desert. After I got out of the Air Corps, I applied for a job with TRC, Inc., a company that makes hardware for just about everything. The personnel manager was a veteran of the 8th Air Force and was known to hire Air Corps vets. After six months at the Atlanta headquarters, my roommate and I were transferred to London so we could gain international management experience. Ken and I have been here about nine months, but we don't know how long we'll have the jobs, because they really do want to hire as many British nationals as possible. I'll run with it until they tell me I have to go home.”

Rob asked about my two years in Washington. It had been an exciting place to work. I met people from every region of the country, whose customs were so different from mine. My sisters, who had moved to Washington even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, had told me that early in the war, when there was such a demand for clerk typists, they knew of young women who were hired at the train station and taken directly to their jobs. With every desk in every office occupied, temporary buildings had been built all over the city, even on the mall between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial. They were ugly but necessary.

The apartment I shared with my sisters had only one bedroom with twin beds and a mattress under each bed. Once
word got out from our brother, who was in the Navy, that the Joyce sisters would let anyone from Minooka sleep on their living room floor, it was a rare morning when we didn't have to step over a comatose soldier, sailor, marine, or airman sacked out in our tiny living room. As much as I enjoyed seeing familiar faces, I did not want to date anyone from home. I wasn't willing to risk getting involved with someone who might want to return to Minooka once the war was over. Instead, I went dancing or out to dinner with guys from all over the United States. They were just passing through on their way to Europe or the Pacific, and we had some fun together before they boarded a train that would take them to their next post.

Rob and I had a table at the back of the restaurant, and the owner continued to refill our glasses long after the dishes had been cleared. We sat there for two hours talking about anything and everything. It was the most enjoyable evening I had experienced since I had left the United States, and I did not want it to end. We finally left Lucca's after agreeing that we would see each other again.

ALTHOUGH ROB AND I lived in different parts of London, he always took me home to Mrs. Dawkins's house. After I started dating Rob, my landlady told me straight out that if I ever had a man above stairs, I would be out on the street on my bum. “I only rent to good girls.”

The only place where Rob and I could talk was in the kitchen because the children listened to the radio in the living room, and the front parlor was off-limits. Mrs. Dawkins and her husband, who was rarely seen because he worked the night shift, had two very well-behaved boys, Teddy and Tommy, but they were often in the kitchen looking for a snack or asking Rob a lot of questions about flying in a B-17. As a result, our conversations were constantly interrupted.

Neither Rob nor I had much spare change, so London was the perfect city for two people on a budget because a lot of the major attractions were free. A cheap date might be going to the movies to see
Great Expectations
or
The Big Sleep
followed by dinner at a Lyon's Corner Restaurant. Theater tickets were
reasonable, and although the crowds were thinning since the end of the war, dance halls were still popular with young couples swinging to big band music.

After a few weeks of dating, Rob splurged and gave me his own tour of the city as seen through the eyes of a Yank airman, and he hired a cabbie to take us all over London. Rob and three other airmen from his squadron had done the same thing when they first hit town in early 1944. For six shillings apiece, they got the cook's tour.

Rob had the cabbie start near Piccadilly Circus under the enormous Wrigley's gum sign and across from the “Guinness is Good for You” sign. The Rainbow Corner Red Cross Club was often the first stop for GIs on leave and had once welcomed thousands of American servicemen each day.

“In the lobby,” Rob began, “was a sign with an arrow pointing toward New York, 3,271 miles to the west, and another to Berlin, 600 miles to the east. It was open twenty-four hours a day with pool tables and pinball machines. It had hot showers, which was a real luxury for some of those guys, because all they ever got were 'cold-water ablutions,' as the Brits called them. A lot of the actresses from the theater district came over and danced with all of the lead foots, and the actors and stagehands served the food. Fred Astaire's sister 'Delly' was married to an English lord and volunteered at the Corner all the time.