Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (15 page)

Another moment later he rolled her onto her back and covered her with his body. She welcomed the delicious sensation of his weight.

“What did you say about all talk and no action?”

Jane sighed as he drew his tongue across her collarbone, then pressed a kiss in the hollow of her throat. “I don’t remember.”

He chuckled low, then claimed his wife.

* * *

“I don’t believe it,” said Nancy the next morning at the train station. “You’re dressed.”

Jane looked down at her simple cotton skirt and sweater, then back at the incredulous face of her new neighbor and friend. “Of course, I’m dressed. How else would one venture outside?”

“You have a lot to learn, Jane.” Nancy flung open her oversize raincoat. “See what I mean?”

“You’re in your nightclothes,” Jane gasped. “Cover up, Nancy! Someone might see.”

Nancy drew Jane’s attention to her footwear. “Slippers, Jane. And if you’ll notice, I’m not wearing any lipstick.”

Jane laughed at the comical sight of her new friend in pajamas and raincoat. “Mac told me you had a wonderful sense of humor.”

Nancy grinned and her broad gesture took in a score of women in a score of cars in the parking lot. “Take a look, Jane. None of those other women is dressed, either.”

Nancy was right. It took Jane but an instant to realize most of the wives were garbed much like Nancy—in nightdresses or pajamas covered with raincoats or sweaters. Many still had their hair wound up on little pink curlers.

“Lipstick is a capital offense,” said Nancy.

“I’ll remember that.”
You don’t want to stand out, Jane. Be one of them. Blend in
. A horn blared behind her and she glanced over her shoulder to see an angry man in a white Cadillac glaring at her. “I’d better dash.”

“Me, too,” said Nancy, rebuttoning her raincoat and glaring back at the man in the Cadillac. “The baby has a checkup at the GP’s at nine. I’ll barely have time to get them fed and dressed.”

Jane couldn’t help laughing as she peeked into the window of Nancy’s station wagon. Nancy’s two little girls and her baby daughter were all in their pink-and-white pajamas, same as their mother. “If you have time later, please come by,” she said, summoning up her best English manners. “I’m not a wonderful cook, but I did get Edna’s recipe for lemonade.”

“Say no more.” Nancy swung open the door to her wagon and climbed in. “See you later, alligator!”

Jane was still smiling at Nancy’s parting phrase as she let herself back inside her house ten minutes later. Then she frowned.

This was the first time she and Mac had been apart since the fateful morning of the coronation, and Jane found herself missing him more than she could have imagined possible. The house was dark and cool and terribly quiet.

“Idiot!” she chided herself as she moved into the kitchen to boil water for tea. He’d be away only ten hours. Certainly she could find enough to do in this wonderful house to occupy her time.

Preparing tea and toast took at least five minutes. She’d never seen bread quite like that before: white and puffy as a marshmallow and nearly as sweet. She almost expected to see it ooze sugar as it toasted. Adding a layer of orange marmalade to it seemed almost unnecessary, but like most Englishwomen Jane had a well-developed sweet tooth and she spooned on the marmalade with a generous hand.

She carried her tea and toast into the den and switched on the television set built into the brick wall. It was seven-thirty and a show called
Today
was on. Jane sat down on the edge of the divan, balancing her plate on her knees while she sipped her cup of hot sweet tea and watched, fascinated, as a grown man named Dave Garroway talked to a fully dressed chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs. As if that wasn’t enough, the next show was about a man named Captain Kangaroo who talked to hares and a character called Mr. Greenjeans. “Remember it’s another Be-Good-to-Mother-Day,” said the rotund captain as the show drew to a close, and Jane couldn’t help but wonder that American children needed a television character to remind them to behave.

The captain and his crew waved goodbye, and Jane got up, brushed toast crumbs off her skirt and switched off the television. It was nine o’clock. Every other morning of her life, she’d been in a shop or an office at nine o’clock, ready to work. With the war on, school had seemed an exercise in futility. The first year her father had done as many other London fathers had done and sent Jane north to the country for safety. Jane, however, had been homesick, and before 1941 was two months old, she was back in their tiny house in a city under siege.

Jane had quickly gauged the situation. Her brother was away and money was in short supply. Her father’s meager paycheck couldn’t begin to cover their needs, and so she went to work. First she’d been a shop assistant, then a typist in an insurance office, then she’d secured a position as a clerk in a newspaper office. She was quick and smart and good with words, and that lowly position as a clerk soon opened the door to other things. With the men away fighting the war, there were opportunities for women to do things society had frowned upon. Jane found herself covering hospitals and fires, and once she’d been right there in the ballroom as Winston Churchill made a speech two days after the invasion of Normandy.

Not once had she ever imagined the time would come when she had a whole string of days stretched out before her with no one peering over her shoulder, no time card to punch, no deadlines to meet. The idea was as daunting as it was thrilling. She glanced at the clock again. It was quarter past nine.

“Get off your bum, Jane,” she said aloud, carrying her plate and cup into the kitchen and rinsing them off at the sink. The floor needed a good scrub; clothes needed to be put through the washing machine; and it was never too early to start worrying over what to make for dinner. She couldn’t imagine Nancy or the other neighborhood ladies sitting before the telly on a Monday morning.

Surely if she kept busy, the hours would fly by, and before she knew it, it would be time for Mac to come home.

* * *

By half-past noon Jane was all finished. The floors sparkled. The clothes were clean. The ingredients for dinner were lined up and waiting to be cooked, while lemonade chilled in the refrigerator. She considered preparing a nice lunch for herself, but that would only take care of another half hour—and probably add an extra pound or two in the bargain.

She poured herself a glass of tepid lemonade and stared moodily out the kitchen window at her portion of Robin Hood Lane. School was out and a trio of teenage girls stood in front of the house across the street, giggling over whatever it was American teenage girls giggled over. Their hair was pulled back into ponytails that bounced merrily between their shoulder blades. They all wore variations of the same outfit: a full skirt with a tight waistband and wide black cinch belt, sleeveless blouse of white cotton, ankle socks and saddle oxfords. She could hear the jingle of their charm bracelets from across the street and a wave of envy caught at her heart. They hadn’t a care in the world, those pretty girls, nothing beyond what frock to wear to the Friday-night sock hop or what shade of lipstick to put on.

She stepped out the front door, ostensibly to check for mail. The girls waved gaily in her direction and Jane heard the words “... from
England
! Isn’t that just the most?” float toward her. She smiled and pretended great interest in the circulars from Hal’s Department Store and the Levittown Public Library.

“We’re going to the sock hop on Friday,” said one of the girls in a high-pitched, excited voice. “Bud thinks he can borrow his dad’s Packard.”

“Don’t forget the pajama party at Tina’s house afterwards,” another voice chimed in, “I’m making the California onion dip and DeeDee’s bringing the potato chips.”

Jane slipped back inside her house, mind awhirl with images. Was this how it had been for Nancy when she was a teenager during the war? Jane and Nancy were the same height, the same build, the same age, but there all similarities ended. The war had been a romantic daydream for Nancy, a wonderful vehicle for all her fantasies about love and death. Where else but in America could a teenage girl fall in love with a handsome young GI through the mail and make the marriage work?

The difference between Nancy’s teenage years and her own were striking. Jane stood up, no longer seeing the three teenage girls giggling across the street. The difference was more than striking; it was marvelous copy for a story. If she was still working for Leo Donnelly, she’d be at her typewriter in a flash, turning out a wonderful piece for the women’s section of the paper.

She hesitated. Her typewriter was packed away in one of the crates lining the wall of the spare room. It would take ages to dig it out, and even longer to set it up and find paper and a new ribbon and—

“And what?” she said to the empty kitchen. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. She’d write up her thoughts and call them a letter to Leo and his wife.

The story flowed from her mind to her fingertips and before Jane knew it, she had ten double-spaced pages of her impressions of America. She poured another lemonade and took a sharp assessing look at the material. Her observations were keen; her comparisons between wartime America and wartime Britain were evocative. She penciled in a few minor changes, then retyped the whole thing on fresh white paper with an inky-black ribbon. “Sorry, Leo,” she said, rummaging through the kitchen cabinet for a telephone book. “I think I’m back in business.”

* * *

It wasn’t so much that Nancy liked to play bridge; she simply liked having company. Of course, if you wanted to split hairs, you might say your neighbors weren’t exactly “company,” not when you saw them every single day of your life, but beggars can’t be choosers. Like the other young Levittown mothers, Nancy’s life belonged to her kids and to her husband. There was cooking and cleaning, chauffeuring and comforting. It was hard to find and keep friends when your time wasn’t your own. All the women on Robin Hood Lane understood that.

And that was why this weekly bridge game was so important to them all. With the kids safely tucked away in the rumpus room, the women let down their hair and cast their inhibitions to the winds as they played a cutthroat game of cards.

“More sandwiches?” Nancy placed a second platter of finger sandwiches on the TV tray she’d set up next to the bridge table. “Chicken salad and ham.”

Margie, from the corner house, bit into the chicken sandwich and sighed with pleasure. “Is this Millie Coogan’s recipe?”

Nancy nodded. “She gave it to me before she moved. Swell, isn’t it?”

“Better than swell,” Pat said, reaching for another.

Ginger Higgins sampled both the chicken and ham, then settled back with a smug smile on her face. “
Good Housekeeping
,” she said, her voice thick with satisfaction. “Millie got these from
Good Housekeeping
.”

Nancy hated it when they got to talking about recipes and children. It seemed she lived with both items all day long, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. All she asked was that for two hours on Monday afternoon she could pretend she had nothing else on her mind but playing cards.

“Could we get on with the game?” she asked, glancing up at the clock. “It’s already after two....”

Everyone knew what that meant. Before you knew it, it would be time to get the kids home, start dinner, then pile into the car for the twice-a-day trip to the train station.

Nancy looked at her cards. Not very good. She doubted if they’d take more than a trick or two. She was intent upon sending a telepathic message to her partner to please lead spades when she heard a tentative knock at the front door.

“Back in a minute,” she said, laying her cards face down on the table and hurrying through the kitchen to the front of the house.

“Hello.” Jane Weaver stood on the doorstep in her slim skirt and starched blouse. A black ink stain smudged her aristocratic right cheekbone, but that was the only touch of disorder about her perfect self. If she weren’t English—and quite likable—Nancy could cheerfully hate her guts. “I shan’t keep you a minute, Nancy.”

“Good grief,” said Nancy, stepping aside to usher Jane into the living room. “You’ll think I was raised by wolves. Come in. Let me get you something to drink. The girls and I were playing cards and I—”

Jane’s expression lit up. “Your daughters play card games? How delightful.”

“No, no. Not my daughters. My—our neighbors.”

Jane took a step backward toward the door. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll come back another time.”

Nancy laughed and put an arm about Jane’s waist. “You’ll do no such thing. You’ve already met most of them. Come on in. Join us.”

Jane looked endearingly nervous, and Nancy felt quite the old pro as she ushered the young Englishwoman into her kitchen. Levittown was notoriously short on sophistication—you had only to read the scathing remarks in the
New York Times
and other fancy papers to know that the suburbs were looked down upon by the lofty big-city types. How delightful, Nancy thought, to have a chic British subject seek out her advice—right in front of the neighbors at that!

Pat and Margie looked up from their card game to wave a cheery hello to Jane, whom the two women had already met the day before. Nancy couldn’t help but notice the frank expression of surprise on their faces.
So there
, she thought, pouring Jane a glass of iced tea.
And you thought only the plumber came to visit me
.

“This is Ginger Higgins,” said Nancy, struggling not to look as smug as she felt. “Ginger lives on Sycamore Street around the corner.” She favored Ginger with her best smile. “Ginger, this is Jane Weaver. Jane moved into the Raskins’ house yesterday.”

Ginger nodded and smiled. Her eyes, however, remained wary. “Pleased to meet you.”

Jane extended her hand in greeting. “A pleasure.”

Ginger paused a split second before shaking Jane’s hand. Just long enough to bring a subtle rise of color into the Englishwoman’s cheeks. Nancy shifted her weight from her left foot to her right, battling the urge to hit Ginger over the head with a packet of Kool-Aid.