The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach

  “Maybe we should hold off.” He looked up, staring at me with disbelief. “I just think that with the launch coming, we might compromise something important.”

  “And Charlie?” Teddy asked sharply. I braced myself for the confrontation that I had been dreading. “What does he think?” He blinked and conflict registered on his face, the journalist trained to ask the hard questions, but who could not bear to know the truth. “Charlie...he’s more than just an old friend, isn’t he?”

  “No. That is, we dated briefly. But that was all over a long time ago.” I shifted, unable to lie to him. “Yes, we were together.” But it was so much more complicated than that. I told him everything then about Robbie and that fateful night.

  “Last night when we were dancing, I thought that maybe things were finally starting to happen between us,” Teddy ventured. He looked at me hopefully, wanting to hear that Charlie’s reappearance changed nothing. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about his brother. It’s tragic. But it’s in the past. This is personal, and it’s clouding your judgment.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave this alone for Charlie, but for the good of operations. You know that, don’t you?” He did not reply, tacitly admitting the truth of what I’d said. “Please.” Sensing a crack in his resolve I put my hand over his. “Do this one thing for me.” I watched him wrestle with his instinct to follow the story and how it clashed with his feelings for me. “So you’ll hold off?” I exhaled slightly. “Thank you, Teddy.” I kissed him short and full on the lips, in a way that should have been so much more. I tried not to think about how much of it was gratitude, and whether or not I was using him.

  “Don’t ever ask me again,” he said, and stormed away.

  Charlie was waiting for me out front of the Savoy that evening, breathtaking in his crisp dress uniform and freshly combed hair, framed against the eggshell-blue early-evening sky. He watched me somberly as I neared. “You look like you did the day I came home from training.” I smiled. In fact, the dress I wore now was reminiscent of the one I’d worn that Thanksgiving night in color only, the light fabric of this one so unlike the heavy velvet of the first. I’d put that one away for good, the memories it bore too painful to wear again.

  We walked into the club and stood awkwardly by the bar as a sea of partygoers swam around us on all sides. The evening dresses were a step up from what they’d been at the Swan the previous evening, lots of last season’s Schiaparelli and Chanel. Close beneath the festive atmosphere, though, there was an air of weariness. The festivities must go on—to stop would be to admit defeat. But the war had taken its toll and people with no reason to celebrate in their hearts were simply here because they were supposed to be. There were fewer soldiers than I might have imagined, their numbers thinned, and most of the men were civilians, tuxedo-clad.

  Charlie gestured toward the wide ballroom floor and the orchestra which played on the far side. “Would you like to dance?” Our brief relationship had been one of solitude, preciously few stolen moments and quiet nights alone on the bay. It felt strange to be out together in public, a harsh and unfamiliar light shined on us. We had, in fact, never danced.

  But as his arm circled my waist and his other hand took mine, we fell into an easy rhythm. We might have been anywhere, just the two of us. “I had the craziest dream last night,” the singer, a colored woman, crooned smoothly. “Yes, I did, I never dreamed it could be. Yet there you were in love with me.” I rested my head on his shoulder.

  As the song ended, Claire came up and cut between us. “Darling!” I stepped back reluctantly. She kissed me on both cheeks, European style. She looked impeccably chic in a maroon silk dress with cascading lace that suited her large frame.

  “May I introduce Claire Churchill.” I watched Charlie’s face as he processed the name.

  “You must be Charlie,” Claire said, as he took her hand. I had called around to Claire’s flat after work that afternoon to tell her about Charlie’s reappearance. “The one who broke Addie’s heart.” He dropped her hand abruptly as though it scalded him. “Do it again and I’ll kill you.” She laughed, as if to take a bit of the edge, but none of the meaning, off her words.

  Charlie’s mouth fell open. “Excuse me, I’ll go get us drinks,” he said, recovering a moment later before escaping.

  “He’s a handsome one!” Claire exclaimed when Charlie was barely out of earshot. She was a bit unsteady, I noticed then. It was not like Claire to drink to excess. I scanned the room, looking for Lord Raddingley, but did not see him. “Does this mean you’re together now?”

  “It’s not that simple, Claire.”

  “So you’re going to just keep running?” I did not answer. “If you want to be with him, then be with him. Poor Teddy,” Claire mused. Her face hardened unexpectedly. “What is it about you, Adelia?” She cocked her head. “You’re not so terribly good-looking.” There was a forthrightness to her words that made them blunt, but not unkind. “Yet every man seems ready to fall on his knees for you.”

  “It’s not like that,” I protested. Though I’d pined for Charlie for what seemed like a lifetime, I hadn’t asked Teddy to like me as well.

  “Don’t you know I’d give anything to have a man feel about me like either of those two do about you?” She had almost everything—money and purpose and connections, but not love.

  “I don’t see Lord Raddingley,” I offered, changing the subject.

  Claire’s expression fell. “Alastair has an early morning tomorrow so we said good-night.” Was that just another lie? My anger burned white-hot as I recalled Lord Raddingley and the girl in the bomb shelter the other night. Claire should know the truth about him. But I could not bear to tell her that her married lover was in fact cheating on her as well.

  I cleared my throat, changing the subject. “I’m going to go check on that boy I found tomorrow or the next day.” I had told Claire earlier about the Leo and the other children. “See what he and the others need. Maybe I can find them some secondhand clothes. You should come with me when you get back.”

  “Me?” Claire tossed her head. “I’m awful with children. I may actually be allergic.” She chuckled at her own joke. Then her face grew serious. “But I’m glad that you’ve found something useful to do. I just wouldn’t want you to become too attached.”

  “It’s just so sad, all of these children with no place to go.”

  “They have to have sponsors to come here,” she replied, with the distance of one who had become callous to the harsh realities brought on by war. “At least some have made it here. The Americans haven’t taken any.”

  Charlie was returning now, balancing three glasses of champagne. “Enjoy your evening,” Claire said before he could hand her one. She sailed off.

  Across the room, I glimpsed Teddy speaking with two women and trying hard not to stare at me. Was he still mad about not running the story? There was no anger on his face, just sadness. I did care for him, but my feelings were dwarfed by what could not be denied between Charlie and me. Having felt the difference, I could not be with Teddy now—but I didn’t have to be with another man in front of him. “Do you mind terribly if we go?”

  Charlie looked from me to the untouched drinks in his hand and then back again. We’d scarcely arrived. Surprise, then relief, crossed his face. “Of course. I only thought that you would want to, you know, do the ordinary things.” He handed me one of the glasses of champagne, then downed both of the other two. “No sense wasting it.” I took a sip, then set mine down on a table.

  We slipped from the club, walking as we had the previous night in the direction of the river. In the distance, a clock chimed nine. A group of young women in snug-fitting dresses rushed past in the opposite direction, giggling excitedly, leaving a cloud of perfume in their wake. As we neared Embankment, the cool night air washed over my face like fresh water. I lifted my chin to study the f
og-shrouded sky above the smokestacks of a factory on the far bank. Quiet, at least for now. The fog had cleared to reveal a blanket of stars.

  “Claire Churchill, huh? How did you meet her?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “She quite something.”

  “She’s swell.” Despite Claire’s cutting words a few minutes earlier, I was suddenly defensive of her. First my flat, then my friend: Who was Charlie to come in here and judge my life? “I’m worried about her, though. Last night, when the raid started and I had to go to the shelter, I saw the man Claire is involved with, only he was with someone else. It will hurt her terribly.”

  “Then don’t tell her.”

  “How can I not? She would be living a lie.”

  “Maybe she would prefer it that way.” There was a deeper note to his voice. “We can’t always help who we love, even if it’s the wrong person.” His words seemed a refrain of his mother’s so long ago.

  Was I that person to Charlie? I didn’t ask, fearing the answer. We walked in silence for several minutes in the fragrant spring evening air, our destination unclear. “Do you miss home?” I asked.

  “The old home, sure. I miss my family, even after everything. But it’s easier sometimes being away, you know?”

  I understood: here it was almost possible to imagine that none of it had happened. “Because of Robbie, you mean.”

  “Because of everything. I’ve never moved on or gotten over you,” he confessed, reaching for my hand. I hesitated, just for a fleeting second but long enough for him to notice. What were we doing here anyway? He stepped back. “I’m sorry. Old habits and all that. I know this isn’t what you want anymore. I won’t try to make it happen again. I understand you keeping your distance. You must blame me terribly.” His words came out staccato.

  “Blame you?”

  “For what happened with Liam.”

  “Not at all. We were just children ourselves. We couldn’t have known.” In truth, I blamed both of us, Charlie for not listening to me, myself for not trying harder to make him hear. But it wasn’t that simple: the night it all happened, I was the one who stopped Charlie from going after Robbie as he ran from the house to find Liam. No, none of us were innocent, but I wasn’t going to tell Charlie that now, as he raced off headstrong on a suicide mission to redeem himself. I reached for him.

  But he stepped back, leaving my arm floundering. “You tried to warn me.”

  “Yes, but even I had no idea how wrong it would all go.”

  “You told me Liam was in trouble. I was so caught up in my own world, college and then the army. If I’d slowed down even a little bit, things might have been different. But I didn’t—I never saw him.” Laid bare before me was the depth of the guilt to which he clung. “I could have done more to help him,” he continued. “But I was too wrapped up in my own life to do anything about it. It’s my fault.”

  “No.” I turned and took his hands. “You couldn’t have stopped him.” But the question nagged at me: What might have happened if Charlie had tried to help his brother? My mind reeled back to the night it all happened. “He asked me to go with him that night,” I confessed aloud. I saw Liam standing on the porch of the Connally house. In retrospect, it seemed more like a plea. My guilt rose. Surely it all would have turned out differently if I had agreed.

  “Liam?”

  “To the bar or wherever he was going. If I had, I could have brought him home.” I saw the night then as a movie with a different ending, coaxing Liam back to the family gathering, all of them together and safe. But I hadn’t gone—because I was waiting for Charlie.

  “You couldn’t have possibly known. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Isn’t that what you are doing?”

  He pulled away. “It’s different. I’m his older brother.”

  “He’s my brother, too. You know that.” Even now.

  “I was older, I was supposed to keep him safe. And God help me, part of me didn’t want him to come home that night drunk and angry,” he said, his voice hoarse with guilt. “I wanted everything to be perfect and I didn’t want him to mess it up.”

  “I know.” I had felt exactly the same. “Are we really going to spend tonight fighting over who can take the blame?” I asked, cutting off the refrain before it could begin anew. “It won’t change anything.”

  “No, but I’m trying to understand. If you aren’t angry at me about Liam, then what’s keeping us apart?”

  “You left,” I blurted, fully realizing the reason myself for the first time. “In Philadelphia, I mean.” There it was, out on the table between us.

  “I didn’t.”

  “The day after the funeral I came to the house and you were gone. All of you.”

  “No, Addie. It wasn’t like that. Mom was so devastated she couldn’t go back to the house. I helped Dad take her away, because he wasn’t much better off himself. I got them settled with my aunt down in Florida. But by then my leave was up and I had to report back to the base. I wrote to you and tried to tell you. Letters and letters.” I could tell from his expression that he was telling the truth. “You never got them?”

  “Not a one.” It might have been the war and the mail, of course. But had someone intercepted them, hoping to keep us apart? I found it hard to believe my aunt and uncle had intercepted them.

  “I assumed you never answered because you were angry. I came back in June on my next leave to make things right. But you were gone, and your aunt and uncle wouldn’t say where. I figured you didn’t want me to find you.”

  So he had come for me—too late. The realization threatened to overwhelm me. All of this time, I had told myself that he had not cared enough. But some part of me had never believed it. And now I knew the truth. “I had no idea.” I scuffed my foot against the pavement.

  “Now you do. There hasn’t been anyone else,” he added. “In case you were curious. Not for a single second.”

  Floodgates of relief opened within me. He held his arm out. I hesitated and then took it, burying my fingers against his side for warmth. Walking this way we might have been any couple, happy and unscarred. “Did you ever wonder what it might have been like if that night had never happened?” I asked.

  “All of the time. You and me together somewhere, living a normal life.”

  “Or maybe it wouldn’t have worked.”

  He squeezed my hand tighter. “Nah, it was always going to be the two of us.”

  Charlie stopped again, turning to me. “How long are we going to keep trying to do this, Addie, trying to outrun each other? Maybe for once we could run in the same direction.”

  “Being together again won’t change the past.” It had not just been Charlie, but his whole world I had fallen in love with. Could we still work together now that that world no longer existed? “I don’t want to be loved for a memory.”

  He touched my cheek. “Not a memory. It has always been you.”

  I raised my hands, a kind of surrender. I had fled halfway around the world to escape him and yet here he was standing in front of me with that same smile I’d known since the day we’d met. I simply couldn’t run anymore.

  I reached up and cupped his face in my hands, bringing his lips down to mine. There were no more protests inside me, or reasons it could not be. He kissed me and I stepped closer, allowing myself to feel the full force of his embrace. A moment later he pulled back, holding me close and breathing hard. “So what happens now?” I asked.

  A siren went off before he could answer. I looked around helplessly; we were by the wharf, exposed and far from any shelter. Charlie took my hand and we ran, him pulling me so hard I thought I would either fly or fall. The ground thundered beneath my feet, threatening to throw me down. Abandoning any hope of finding a shelter, he pulled me into a doorway as something exploded overhead. He buried
me in his arms, protecting me from the shower of hot rock and debris that pelted down on us. We are going to die right now, I thought, as we fell, his weight crushing me. Had it been like this for Robbie those final moments in the water?

  “In here!” a civil defense warden across the street called to us, holding open a door to a shelter we had not seen. But it was across the wide street. Taking my hand, Charlie decided for me and pulled me low across the road. We dove into the shelter, already packed to the door. He pressed close against me, opening his jacket to keep me safe. I wrapped my arms around his warm midsection. His heart beat hard against the side of my head.

  The bombs were dropping closer now, rattling the walls. Plaster fell from the ceiling above, choking my throat and nostrils. Reaching the shelter was no guarantee of safety—one had been hit not five blocks from here last week, killing all twenty-six people in it. The bombing was not directly overhead now but concentrated to the south. I thought of Leo and the other children on the other side of the river and prayed that they were safe.

  Time passed, forty minutes, maybe more. Finally the bombs grew fewer and fainter, like a distant thunderstorm waning on a summer evening. “All clear,” the warden said. Reluctantly I pulled away from Charlie, the air chilling between us unpleasantly. I straightened, my back aching and stiff.

  “Look,” Charlie said as we reached the street. A piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in the collar of his military jacket.

  I shivered, grasping the magnitude of what had just happened. “You could have died.” Of course we were all going to die; I’d understood that harsh truth since losing Robbie. But that didn’t make the imminent prospect any less terrifying.

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m lucky.” For all that had happened, some part of him seemed to believe fortune would keep him safe. “Anyway, I was with you, so I would have died happy.” Our eyes met. He brought his lips to mine, seeming to forget that we were in the middle of the city street with dozens of passersby climbing from the shelters, emergency crews running to fires the bombs had set off. I should have stopped him, but warmth and memory rushed over me, extinguishing any sense of propriety. I reached up and grasped his shoulders. His lips were a salty mix of the sea and the tears that had once been.