The Girl in the Blue Beret Page 3

  For several days he reviewed the war. In the mornings, he dashed through the Times crossword and went for brisk walks in the neighborhood, or he jogged around the track. On his birthday he ordered a pizza, and when it was delivered he was surprised to see that the sun was setting. He hadn’t opened the drapes all day. He had been absorbed in a history of the Mighty Eighth Air Force and was especially engrossed in the section on the Hell’s Angels, his bomb group.

  He ate the pizza while watching a TV special about Hollywood’s early days. Nothing else was on.

  During the next few days he plunged into his aviation library—the flight magazines and books, the videotapes, the clippings. He would get lost in the forties. He found Loretta’s big-band albums and played several of them straight through. As he listened to Artie Shaw’s ecstatic “Frenesi,” he realized that he knew every note by heart. He recalled days when he was waiting to ship out, when he and Loretta were sharing Cokes on silly, frenetic dates, or jitterbugging to the music of Blue Barron and his orchestra at the Castle Farms ballroom in Cincinnati. The yearning notes of Doris Day singing “Sentimental Journey” brought to mind the end of the war, when he married Loretta.

  He kept the music going while he pored over maps of Occupied Europe and books about the air campaign against Hitler. He traced the route of his B-17’s last mission. He traced his route from Belgium to Paris.

  He remembered an afternoon in Paris in 1944 when bunches of daffodils arrived in a bicycle basket from the country. Coming out of his long hiding, he saw flowering bushes in the park, and even though he had rarely given thought to flowers except for knowing that women liked them, he knew at once that the dancing floral displays amidst the sickly swastikas and dull green uniforms were a defiant sign of hope. He remembered seeing the girl rest her nose in the trumpet of a daffodil.

  HIS DAUGHTER, MARY, had called on his birthday, and now she was calling again, checking on how the retirement was going. He had not mentioned his plans.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “What?”

  “Is there anything you need?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Well, Albert and I are both worried.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if you don’t have flying—”

  “Afraid I’ll go off the deep end?”

  “Listen to me,” she said sternly. He could hear her talking to her dolls—a scene from twenty years ago. “If you don’t have flying, what will you do?”

  “I’m brushing up on my French,” he said.

  “Say something to me in French.”

  “Tu es une bonne fille.”

  “A good girl?” She sighed.

  “A good daughter.”

  He waited for her to say he was a good father. He told himself she was trying to think of the French word and had drawn a blank.

  Marshall regarded his children with mingled awe, amusement, respect, and alarm. He knew young people were headstrong, and he had intentionally granted his children the freedom to go their own ways. He had been an arrogant youth himself—stubborn, always butting heads with authority. Mary worked on a newspaper in Boise, Idaho, and Albert was still unsettled, working part-time in Manhattan while studying for his second master’s degree—first math, now design. They never told him much.

  He never told them much either, but now he told Mary about his visit to the crash site and his notion of going to live in Europe for a while.

  “I’d like to retrace the trail I took through France in ’44,” he said.

  “That’s neat, Dad. A little trip to the past. That could be fun.”

  The conversation came to a standstill. Marshall realized he was kicking at the doorstop between the kitchen and the dining room—a weighted, fabric pioneer girl with a churn. He said to Mary, “Your mom would kick me across the room if she could see what sad shape her churn-girl is in.”

  Mary laughed. “Throw that thing out, Dad. It’s probably breeding germs.”

  ALBERT AGREED IMMEDIATELY to house-sit. He could come the first of June, when his rent was due, he said when Marshall telephoned. Marshall hadn’t been able to figure out how else to find an occupant, and he knew Albert had little money. As an inducement, he threw in use of the car as part of the deal. But when Marshall stressed the need to look after the place and make any necessary repairs, Albert hesitated.

  “I’ll pay the expenses,” Marshall said.

  Albert had a contrary streak. He always resisted if Marshall made any demands. Albert had been a rebellious kid, and by his college years he was, in Marshall’s view, a hippie protester. Marshall was always thankful that Albert had gotten a deferment during the Vietnam War. But it separated him further from his son. Their experiences had been so different.

  “You O.K., Dad? Are you O.K. with the retirement?”

  “I’m dandy,” Marshall said.

  After they hung up, Marshall reflected that both Albert and Mary had expressed concern for him. He was annoyed but also grateful. They were good kids, really. Maybe he and Loretta hadn’t done such a bad job.

  His mind zipped back to the year when Loretta was first pregnant. She had done up her hair in a wavy mass that was supposed to imitate Hedy Lamarr’s rolling tresses in White Cargo.

  Loretta said, “You can name the boy, and I get to name the girl.”

  That was the plan. A boy and a girl. And it worked out. Albert was first. Loretta liked the name Marshall chose.

  “Is Albert a name in your family?” she asked.

  “No. It’s just a name I’m fond of,” Marshall said. He added, “It’s a name for courage.”

  When the girl came along, Loretta announced that the name would be Mary. “I’m naming her for you,” she said.

  “I don’t know how you twisted Mary out of Marshall,” he said.

  IN A PLACE NORTH OF PARIS, a man and his wife dressed in dark, loose clothing were hovering over a radio, listening for a coded message from the BBC. In a corner, the boy was reading his lessons.

  The message came, and the boy translated it for him. Blue tit birds will be nesting at twilight. Marshall could not make sense of it.

  But the couple raised their heads, triumphant and tense. There was a bottle of wine on a worn wooden table, and a cat curled indifferently by the fire.

  The boy’s father, Pierre Albert, disappeared into the night. A long two hours later, a muffled boom sounded in the north, and from the dark backyard Marshall could see in the distance a blaze erupting bright enough to show its angry smoke.

  5.

  IN A SHOE BOX (LADIES’ PUMPS) TAGGED “FRANCE,” IN LORETTA’S curlicue handwriting, Marshall found several letters and photographs, some French coins, a map, and some memorabilia from the war years. In the bottom were the letters he was looking for—two from Pierre Albert, one in English, one in French.

  ALBERT, PIERRE

  PAINTER

  CHAUNY (AISNE) FRANCE

  6 FEBRUARY 1947

  Dear friend,

  I am sending you a little word to ask you what are you doing and to tell you that we are going very well and hope that you are the same since we see you. Here, everything is going very well. I am always in the peinture and my boy works with me. He is now a young gentleman and I am very glad to have him. My wife go very well too.

  I hope that you are now with all your family and all the hard days that you passed are now finished.

  Here in France, the situation is always very hard. We always have the ration but it’s going a little better than the time the Germs were here, but it’s not tomorrow that we will have like before the war. I think that we will have to waite 2 or 3 year before that everything go all right.

  My wife and I would be very glad to have some of your news. I join here some photographs. I am your friend, and I send you all my best wishes from my wife and Nicolas.

  Pierre Albert

  Marshall remembered answering Pierre’s letter in French, laborio
usly, freeing the Frenchman to respond in his own language, which Marshall could read more easily now.

  CHAUNY 3 APRIL 1947

  Dear friends,

  I received your letter with joy. I know that your return was not known without difficulty, but at last we are very happy that you have returned, in sum for you the war has ended.

  We would be very happy to receive your visit and also your wife and your little son Albert and for us to count you among us again sometime, in order to speak of our old memories. At home you know we often speak of you. I will give you some explanations about my work with the Résistance, after you left. I made connection with the escape networks in Paris.

  I profit some at the same time to make you know that Nicolas, my wife, and I wait in order to receive each the distinction “Medal of Freedom” by the American authorities.

  In response to your questions I would tell you that the coffee, sugar, ham, soap, butter, rice, tobacco, are very rare, also the clothes and shoes. On the other page, we give you the dimensions for Nicolas, who is very large.

  In the expectation of reading you and of seeing you, receive dear friends our good kisses to your little Albert from all our family.

  Best wishes to you and your family and le petit Albert.

  Pierre Albert

  P.S. I beg you to pay attention for there are some thieves in course of the parcel’s route. Don’t forget to write how much money it will cost for all you will send.

  Marshall was dismayed. He had answered Pierre’s first letter, but had he bothered to answer this second letter? He had been so eager to get on with his sun-kissed American life—new wife, baby, airline job—that he had neglected his French friends. He had never returned to Chauny. He didn’t even know if he had sent the goods Pierre had requested. Yet how well he remembered Pierre and Gisèle! And their son, Nicolas.

  Nicolas: “Gary Cooper!”

  Marshall: “Je ne suis pas Gary Cooper!”

  Nicolas: “Tireur, tirez!” Shooter, shoot!

  The child’s gestures had made Marshall homesick for western movies. With his revolver—something he should have ditched when he began his trek into hiding—Marshall had attempted a fast draw and a twirl, to sensational acclaim and pleas for repeats.

  Nicolas: “Howdy, pard-ner.”

  Marshall remembered secret bustlings, hurried dinners, and nighttime tappings on the door. Pierre went out to fight a war, while Marshall glumly played cards and tried to read Maupassant in French.

  “The neighbor says she saw you peek out beside the curtain this afternoon. That neighbor is good, but I don’t know if all the neighbors are good. You can’t trust. Stay away from the windows.” Pierre’s voice had been severe, Marshall remembered.

  Le petit Albert. It dawned on him that news of Marshall’s son signaled a great achievement for the Frenchman. Pierre had risked his life to help Marshall survive the war and start a family. Marshall’s own son knew nothing about the source of his name—the Albert family, Pierre and Gisèle and Nicolas, who had been so important to Marshall for a few weeks long ago. He had given them his aunt’s Cincinnati address, and they had written it in a ledger. He remembered that little book now. Pierre had squirreled it away behind a small cupboard that had loose slats.

  Marshall lectured himself, You weren’t that ignorant and unfeeling. You knew enough to name your son Albert, and evidently to write at least one letter to a family who took care of you.

  He remembered Loretta saying, You can name the boy, and I’ll name the girl. Marshall wondered now if he had chosen the girl’s name, what would he have chosen? Gisèle?

  If he went to Chauny again, he might find the house where he had hidden. Maybe it would be immediately familiar, like the field where the Dirty Lily had crashed. He could imagine Pierre and Gisèle still in their same house, their son living down the block.

  Le petit Albert: the words shimmered.

  Restless, he found some ice cream in the freezer and scraped the ice crystals off. It tasted old. In wartime France, ice cream was scarce, he remembered. No one had ice. The same word worked for both. La glace.

  “In the war he couldn’t get ice cream,” he had heard Loretta explain to someone about his love for ice cream.

  They used to have a hand-crank freezer, and when he first tried it, in his attempt to be efficient, he turned the crank as fast as he could and then let it rest a moment, then cranked it again at full gallop.

  “That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” Loretta said several times. He paid no attention. When the cream began leaking out, he learned that he had made whipped cream, which had swelled quickly.

  “I tried to tell you,” Loretta said, laughing. “But you always have to haul off and get the job done. Sometimes I think about offering you a hammer.”

  The twenty-three-year-old kid disguised in a Frenchman’s peasant outfit invaded his mind again now, like a pop-up cartoon character. It was the fatuous youth he had seen when catching his reflection in windows.

  That night, he dreamed he saw the girl in the blue beret strolling up the Champs-Elysées with a book satchel slung over her shoulder. When he awoke, the dream puzzled him, but then he remembered eating ice cream with her—a small cardboard container of black-market ice cream, smuggled in newspapers and straw.

  What had happened to her? Did he have any chance of finding her and her family again? And Robert, who had brought the ice cream on his bicycle. He remembered Robert speaking in hushed tones with Marshall’s host family in Paris. He teased some papers from his coat lining, and the husband and wife studied them for a long time, whispering exclamations. The woman crumpled the papers and tucked them in the stove. Marshall remembered Robert’s bright young face, the meaningful laughter that punctuated what seemed to be a serious discussion. Marshall longed to go out with him, to be of help. Anything. He envied Robert, who went off on hazardous missions, while Marshall was fastened up like a fattening calf.

  6.

  MARSHALL, WAITING FOR JUNE, LIVED ON TV DINNERS—A slab of meat loaf, mashed potatoes with a stagnant pool of dirt-brown gravy, peas, carrot cubelets, and a cubbyhole of apricot cobbler. Airline food, one of life’s staples. He recalled the scarcity of food in France during the war, the way a family shared its meager rations. He remembered a large carrot, baked in ashes and sliced into five pieces, each piece enlivened with several dusky flakes of an herb.

  Sometimes in the evening when he watched an old forties movie, he drank a beer, but his pilot’s discipline still restrained him. Twelve hours from bottle to throttle. He didn’t like to cloud his mind. His brain bag was gathering dust, and his uniform was drooping in the closet. He imagined it hanging there a hundred years in the future. Numbly, he stared at the global map on his wall, Paris gleaming like the North Star.

  He still wore his wrist chronometer, set to Greenwich mean time. He was reviewing his French books.

  He slept on the studio bed in his den, where he had escaped so many hours over the years—reading books, writing on a portable typewriter, studying French. The kids’ bedrooms, down the corridor in line with the den, were like abandoned stores, still full of merchandise. Like someone studying for exams, Marshall spent his days and nights with the war—books, tapes, and the movies and documentaries on TV. One night he stayed up until two to watch Twelve O’Clock High again, and he couldn’t sleep after the movie ended. It was set at an air base in England like Marshall’s. When he closed his eyes, he was flying over the English countryside, low over the patchwork of fields and the white scar along the Channel. Winter-brown fields and hedgerows and clusters of trees enclosed the base, peacefully, as stoic as the English people. When the airmen traveled into Kettering, the quiet village seemed safe and snug until they saw the ration lines and the blank shelves of a grocery.

  During a layover in London a few years before, Marshall had returned to the airfield at Molesworth. He took a train to Kettering, then a bus to Thrapston. The train was blue, more modern than the dusty green war
time coach that he recalled. He found the base deserted, with weeds growing through the tarmac, and he recognized the scene—Dean Jagger in Twelve O’Clock High returning to his old base and hearing the B-17s roar to life in his memory. So much in the world was predictable, a celluloid cliché, Marshall thought. Like Jagger, he could feel the throbbing of the B-17s, their bodies sexed up and loaded with their bombs. The crews had decorated the noses of their planes with alluring women, cartoon characters, snappy quips. Dirty Lily was scantily garbed in black, with raven hair and red puckered lips. She was their figurehead, their cheerleader, their whore and mama all in one. All the guys were ready to fly, bomb the Jerries, be heroes.

  The old base was bare and neglected, surrounded by barbed wire, with warning signs. As he stood gazing through the fence, he could make out a distant cluster of trees next to several rows of Nissen huts that had formed the hospital. They appeared derelict. Beyond them, through the trees, he could see one of the stately homes of England, Lilford Hall, a seventeenth-century manor. He remembered how from the air its stonework, with ornate chimneys and split-level roofing, gleamed white, and the sheep in the surrounding fields seemed like connect-the-dots.

  THE BASEMENT WAS STUFFED. Marshall burrowed deep into the closets, sniffing out ancient relics, and pulled out some boxes of letters. A postcard tumbled out. It was a kriegie card—Kriegsgefangenenpost, a POW postcard.

  Dear Marshall, Well, it is not easy to find something to write about. Just wanted to tell you I haven’t forgotten you. I am getting along alright. No news that I can tell. Hope to see you soon. Tell all the folks hello for me. Always, Tony

  The card was dated March 2, 1944, only a month after they went down, but it had not been postmarked until March 24, 1945. Tony Campanello was the navigator. He and Al Grainger, the bombardier, and Bobby Redburn, the ball-turret gunner, had been captured by the Germans and were MIA for a year longer than Marshall was.

  Loretta had saved all his letters in a box tied with a green velvet ribbon. Marshall thumbed through the early letters from the Texas air base where he trained, now and then losing himself in a description of the barracks or some practical joke the guys had pulled. In a separate packet he found the V-mail letters he had been looking for, letters he had written her from England, and he set those aside, intending to read them at the right time.