The Last Princess (54 page)

“Even Mom?” Drew asked incredulously.

“No … no, I do love Mom,” Randy had to admit. “But she was married to Dad, and that made it hard.”

The three fell silent as each sat with their separate memories.

Then Drew spoke heavily. “Well, be all that as it may, we’re adults now. We can’t keep moaning and groaning for their not being perfect parents. And it’s funny, they’ve seemed so different to me since they got back together and had Cadeau.”

Melissa stared at her brother’s face. Did he know? Had Lily or Harry told him?

Drew continued. “They may have waited a long time for their fifth child, but it was certainly worth it.”

Even Randy smiled. “She is a terrific baby, isn’t she?”

“And so smart,” Drew began eagerly.

Melissa was both curious and repulsed. The baby had seemed like an imaginary figure until now. But it turned out she was real, after all. Clearly Melissa’s brothers doted on her. But even so, no trace of maternal feeling sprang up in Melissa. It was Lily’s baby, after all, not hers. She listened sullenly as Drew rhapsodized about little Cadeau. If only they knew she was responsible for that charming, bright little baby, and here Mom was taking all the credit.

“Fine, fine. Let’s order, shall we?’ she finally interrupted. “I have a plane to catch.”

That was the only time she had come. Lily tried to make excuses to Harry, but probably neither one of them was deceived. Melissa was someone who would always avoid her responsibilities.

On the ship, Lily merely held Harry’s hand, waving with the other as the confetti flew. Then the whistle blew and the huge liner began backing ponderously away from the dock.

Would Harry ever see his sons again, or his parents? Through her tears, Lily glimpsed Ellis holding his arm aloft.

T
HE MEMORY OF THAT
farewell had quickly faded. Two weeks into the cruise it seemed that the life on board the Queen Mary was the only life they’d known. Harry’s health seemed improved, Lily thought with satisfaction. The sea air had taken away the grayish pallor from his complexion. Even his appetite had revived a bit.

She had booked them under the pseudonyms Mr. and Mrs. David Goode, so that Harry would not be harassed by fans. He had changed so much—even since the time of the Murrow show—that he was unlikely to be recognized.

He spent much of his time in a deck chair, reading for a while, then nodding off. When he awoke, it was often to see the face of Cadeau, leaning over him and cooing, “Dada.”

Cadeau was now an adorable, curly-headed toddler who ran all over the boat on her tiny legs, smiling and jabbering away unintelligibly to everyone from the captain to the deck boy. In mock desperation, Lily declared that they were going to have to put her on a leash, but the whole ship had fallen in love with her. But Dada was the one she always ran to first. “Pew! Pew, Dada,” she begged him this particular afternoon. Before her nap, Harry had taken her for a swim in the heated pool. She clearly wanted a repeat performance, but the effort had exhausted him. Reluctantly, he was forced to say, “No pool now, sweetheart. Dada’s tired. Come sit on my lap.” And the toddler happily clambered up onto his knees.

Later, as they sat at dinner, Lily could almost close her eyes and pretend that this was the wonderful vacation she had longed to take for twenty years, the vacation where she would have Harry all to herself without the unrelenting demands of q2his writing career; a vacation where all he wanted was to be with her … and the baby.

Why, oh why, couldn’t it have been like this before? she began to ask herself. But as she looked at Harry’s fine features highlighted by the dining room’s candlelight, she fiercely rejected all such recriminations. He was still alive. She would treasure the moments they had remaining.

“Shall we dance?” he asked. His blue eyes gleamed. “They’re playing our song.” As they circled the floor, she didn’t allow herself to think that it might be the last time they danced to that haunting tune.

That night, she made love to him tenderly. Their lovemaking held none of the wild passion of old, but it was touched with a sweetness and poignance that was as compelling. Afterward, they lay close, clinging to each other as though they were two people shipwrecked, whose only hope was in staying together.

And so the days drifted on. Lily wanted to catch each one and wring every moment of happiness possible from it, not so much for herself, but for Harry. But never had time passed so swiftly, she couldn’t help notice with chagrin.

She tried not to notice his increasing languor, the episodes when his breathing became harsh and his face twisted with pain, but as the weeks moved on, and the huge ship docked at various ports of call, it became apparent that he was no longer up even to a mild stroll around the different towns.

He seemed happiest when they were at sea. Best of all were the times when he and Lily and Cadeau curled up together under steamer blankets in the deck chairs. Their baby was growing up before their very eyes. They tickled her and played with her, expressed surprise and pleasure over her growing vocabulary, laughed about every funny little thing she did, and admired her shining red curls.

Harry never said anything about pain, but there came a day when Lily entered the cabin to find him doubled over in agony. “Harry, darling—what’s wrong?”

When he couldn’t speak, she ran and banged on the nurse’s stateroom door, then entered unceremoniously. “Miss McFarlane, my husband is in terrible pain. I think that he needs to start having the morphine.”

Jane McFarlane’s kind, plain face was troubled. “Mrs. Kohle, he’s been having it for several weeks now. It’s just getting to the point where it’s not enough to completely deaden the pain.”

Several weeks! Lily listened, stricken. Harry hadn’t said a word. And her hopes, which had been irrationally rising during these idyllic weeks, came crashing.

She cried that night, quietly, hopelessly, while Harry lay beside her, but by the next morning she was able to smile bravely when she sat across from him at breakfast.

“Darling, today I think I’d just like to lie in a deck chair and read. How about you?”

“Sounds like a wonderful program, sweetheart.”

Still, the decline was not precipitous. As the Eastern ports of call passed like a gently revolving kaleidoscope, they had another happy few weeks.

As the giant ship entered the Panama Canal, and the water began to pour in to raise it, hope began to rise in Lily as steadily as the water rising in the locks. Harry was going to make it all the way home. It was a triumph for both of them. Harry’s coughing fits had reached such a point that at his insistence she had reluctantly agreed to sleep in her own stateroom at night. What woke her that awful night was the terrible retching sound from the bathroom.

She raced to the door and knocked. “Harry? Harry, are you all right in there?”

Hearing no answer, she burst in, then stopped short. “Oh, no,” she said, almost under her breath. “No!”

Turning, she screamed, “Nurse! Nurse, come here!”

The basin was red with bloody sputum, while Harry lay still on the floor, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Jane McFarlane came in quickly, still pulling her dressing gown about her. She knelt over him while Lily watched helplessly, her heart pounding, tears streaming down her cheeks.

A moment later, she looked up with a frightened look in her eyes. “Call the ship’s doctor, Mrs. Kohle—stat!”

Together, Jane and the doctor worked intently as Lily looked on. Dread engulfed her. Was this it? Here, now, in this tiny bathroom?

But Harry’s time had not yet run out. Several minutes later, he was removed to the infirmary, where he was examined more thoroughly. Finally the doctor came out to where Lily sat tensely and spoke to her. “Mrs. Kohle?” He made no pretense of addressing her as Mrs. David Goode.

“Mrs. Kohle, your husband is very sick. Apparently the cancer has spread very rapidly. His liver is badly affected, and now his remaining lung is being literally suffocated by the metastases.”

“What should I do, Doctor?” Lily whispered hoarsely.

“The only thing you can do is get him off this ship and fly him to a big medical facility, where they can make his last days a lot less painful. It was foolhardy to bring him on this long cruise.”

Numbly, Lily nodded. She knew that reason and rationality were on the doctor’s side, but he didn’t understand.

“I’ve sent a message to the captain, and it’s been arranged for the ship to stop briefly off Panama City. From there, you should be able to arrange a flight back to the States.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He hesitated, looking down at the bowed head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kohle. The whole world admires Harry Kohle. I know how hard this must have been for you.”

With the help of the ship’s crew, she chartered a plane from Panama City and sent a telegram to Ellis in New York to alert the hospital and have an ambulance waiting at the airport.

Harry was conscious, but very sleepy from the increased doses of morphine. As they sped down the runway and took off, she held his hand very tightly. “Hang on, Harry,” she said, choking back tears. “We’ll be home soon, darling.”

His only answer was a feeble squeeze of her hand.

Soon the rugged mountains of Central America receded into the distance as they flew out over the blueness of the Gulf of Mexico. Its bleak expanse seemed to reflect the emptiness of Lily’s mental landscape as she prayed fervently, “Just let Harry make it home…. Please, God.”

But God didn’t heed her pleas. They had passed over the U.S. border and were somewhere over Mississippi when Harry convulsed, coughed one last time, and fell forward.

Jane McFarlane had just finished checking his vital signs. Now she sprang forward to catch him. She took out her stethoscope and pressed it to his chest. But after a minute or two she looked at Lily and shook her head.

Lily pushed her away and seized Harry, drawing his head down to cradle it against her breast. “Harry, Harry, darling … I love you. I love you!” she cried. “Harry, speak to me!”

But it was too late. Harry was gone, and as she cradled him his heart had already gone silent.

The plane suddenly seemed very still as Lily sat rocking back and forth, her husband’s body in her arms.

Cadeau slept peacefully in her seat, oblivious to what was happening, as Jane quietly told Françoise that Mr. Kohle had passed away. Then, without a glance at Lily, she went forward and asked the crew to radio ahead to New York. “Have them get in touch with Mr. Ellis Knox and tell him of Mr. Kohle’s death en route—he’ll make all the necessary arrangements.”

Meanwhile, Lily clung to her husband’s body.

She had thought about how she would react when the final moment came. Would she be prepared? Would she be calm and stoical? Hysterical? As it happened, she sat very still, without sobbing, the tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

Oh darling, I did love you so, she thought. I’m sorry that we wasted so many years, but what we had, in the end, was something that couldn’t be measured in time.

Ellis met the plane, and as Lily stepped off the stair, supported by Jane McFarlane, she saw that he was flanked on either side by Drew and Randy. At the sight of them, she almost broke down. Drew rushed forward and embraced her, holding her for a long moment in shared grief. In his arms, she felt very fragile. He remembered how, when he was a child, she had seemed so very strong. Now, he towered over her and was the one to give her strength and comfort. “I love you, Mom,” he murmured.

As he released her, she turned to Randy, and he put his arms around her. Even his usual undemonstrative mien seemed to have cracked. Lily saw a tear glisten in his eye as he said huskily, “I’m sorry, Mother, so sorry.”

Meanwhile, Ellis had supervised the removal of Harry’s body to the waiting hearse, and then gathered together Cadeau, Françoise and Jane McFarlane.

Lily saw him now as she hadn’t seen him before. The expression in his eyes somehow held the comfort and sympathy that Lily knew then had been her mainstay all these years.

“Are you ready to go, Lily?” he asked quietly.

Drawing a deep breath, she said, “Yes.”

Back at the apartment, they discussed funeral arrangements. They had all expected Lily to be so grief-stricken that matters would have to be placed in others’ hands. But Lily spoke calmly. Harry would have wanted to be buried in the Kohle family crypt, next to Jeremy.

Randy offered to go down to the Sinai Chapel and pick out a coffin, but Lily demurred. “No, I think I’d like to do that myself,” she said steadily.

As Ellis looked at her, he marveled at her composure. Where, in all the course of her miserable childhood and youth, had she gotten that inner strength which sustained her? Her courage was so remarkable that he almost feared for her. Could this calm be a thin façade? He prayed that it would not shatter, leaving her exposed and vulnerable.

Ellis knew Lily well enough to know she was devastated. Whatever Harry had been and whatever his shortcomings as a human being or husband were now irrelevant. Whether or not their rapprochement would have lasted, whether he would have remained a faithful, devoted husband were points that had been forever made moot by his passing.

For all the times he had felt intense anger against Harry the man, for all the times he had almost hated him for his cavalier treatment of Lily, now he too felt only a deep sadness, for the loss of Harry, his best friend.

T
HE DEATH OF HARRY
Kohle made the front page of every newspaper in the country. The editorials were grave, almost reverent in tone, as they lauded the contribution Harry had made not just to literature, but to humanity as well.

“He is gone, but his words will live forever….”

Cards, letters and floral arrangements of all sizes flooded in from all over the world. On the day of the funeral, the Temple Ben Israel was overflowing.

Lily, flanked by Drew and Randy, with Melissa to Randy’s left, sat through the services like a statue, letting the events swirl around her, barely hearing the eulogy the rabbi delivered. There were no tears to be shed today. Instead, she wrapped herself in the comforting veil of her memories: all the joy and happiness she and Harry had had together. That was what people were supposed to remember at the end—only the good.