“She loved you, Jordan. Very much. She wanted to live. It wasn’t possible. More death in this godforsaken world. Hers…” Dickie began but then stopped in defeat. “I’ll never understand it.”
Jordan looked up, tears rolling down his cheek. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I can’t take this.” He stood, looking about as if for answers. “Dickie? What am I going to do?” He walked away. What will I do? he asked again. He pushed the tears out of his eyes with the heels of his palms. Given and then taken, he thought, but nothing in those words was meant to comfort him or explain the death of a woman he was truly beginning to love. There was no rationale behind it. All Jordan Cole had was a sense of loss, a sure knowledge of abandonment, and the certainty of survival; he would have to bury, again, all human emotion. He returned to his friend.
“She didn’t tell me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Why didn’t she say something?”
“She pretended. She pretended that she was getting better. She probably convinced herself. She had me convinced.” Dickie shook his head and then looked up, as if he were about to curse God. “This bloody awful life.”
“When is the funeral?”
“Three days.”
Cole nodded. “I probably can’t… I mean I won’t be able…”
“I know, old friend,” Dickie said. “I’ll pass on your sentiments to the family,” he added quickly as he watched Cole struggle to find words.
“Would you tell her mother,” Cole said. “Tell her that I loved Rebecca. Tell her…” He shrugged; there was nothing more he could say.
“I’ll supply the message. Don’t worry about that.”
“Okay,” Cole whispered.
DeLong appeared behind Dickie Moore. “We got the word, Skipper. We’ve got to hustle.” He noticed Cole’s face. “You okay, Skip?”
Cole cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “What is it, Randy?”
“They need us right back out there, Skipper.”
“Okay,” Cole said, taking another breath. “Okay. Tell the guys to saddle up. I’ll be right with you.” Cole waited for DeLong to leave before turning to Dickie. He wanted to find the right words; he wanted to say something that would make everything all right, that would wipe away the pain. But he could think of nothing. Finally, he managed a troubled smile.
“You know, Dickie.…” He felt as if he had been abandoned. “I never got to tell her how much that she meant to me.”
“Jordan,” Dickie said softly. “She knew. She loved you. She’d want you to carry on. Sometimes… sometimes there aren’t any words.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Sometimes all you can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep on.”
Dickie nodded.
Cole straightened. “Time to shove off.” He swung aboard the PT boat and looked down at Dickie. “There wasn’t enough time, Dickie.”
“There never is, my friend,” Dickie said. “God bless you.”
Cole turned and spun his finger in the air. “Crank her up, Randy.”
Dickie watched as the crew cast off lines and the boat slowly backed away from the dock. He saw Cole make his way to the cockpit and watched as he took up station to one side, away from everyone. He would make himself alone, Dickie knew. He would seal himself up inside and never emerge again. He was a child, Dickie realized, as Rebecca said he was. He had never dared let himself grow emotionally for fear of being hurt. Once deeply hurt by someone he would only come slowly to trust again. The pain was too great, otherwise. A fragile man, Dickie reckoned, who found it safer to live in a cold world than seek the warmth of human companionship.
The PT boat moved slowly into the harbor and, joined by several others, headed out into the Channel. Dickie waited until they were nearly out of sight and then turned and walked back to his car.
Waldvogel nodded slowly as he listened to Oberleutnant zur zee Waymann. The young man’s account was delivered slowly, a calm detailed explanation of what had happened in the Channel. It seemed totally out of place in the pandemonium that had broken out in the hospital. Orderlies and nurses rushed about, trying to gather up those patients that were ambulatory, stuffing records in boxes, carefully packing the medicines that were left. Men were shouting orders down corridors that had once been avenues of faint whispers. It was offensive to Waldvogel, this lack of order and organization.
The Allies added to it with the constant bombardment of heavy artillery and the deep rumble of exploding bombs.
Waldvogel’s bandage had been removed, and now all that remained of his injury was a jagged line of stitches along his skull and an occasional headache.
“We tried to get past them,” Waymann continued. “The boats performed beautifully, but we lost Fregattenkapitan Reubold.”
“Lost?” Waldvogel said.
“Captured,” Waymann said. “Or dead. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I would have told you before but I couldn’t get away. There was simply too much going on, you understand. The invasion.”
“The others? The other boats?”
“We lost two, then. One was strafed and sunk on the way back. In the past three weeks,” Waymann continued — his face was drawn and his sunken eyes were those of a man who had seen far too much — “we lost three in combat. All of them are gone.”
“Oh,” Waldvogel said. “Then it’s over.”
Waymann shook his head. “They want you back in Germany. You and me. I received a dispatch this morning. They’re sending some of us out. A few of us.”
“But why?” Waldvogel said.
“Your boats, I think,” Waymann said. “They’re important to the war effort. You’re important, Korvettenkapitan. You must return to Germany.”
Waldvogel watched as a nurse rushed by, carrying a bundle of uniforms, crying. It was collapsing — the city would fall soon as the beaches fell, and the heights and villages beyond them.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Treinies had cried as the fighting neared the city and the crash of the cannons grew louder. “The Fuehrer won’t abandon us. Don’t you see that? Can’t you understand? It’s only a matter of time until he sends reenforcements and we push those Jews back into the sea.” He said it as if he intended to pick up a rifle and lead the assault — as if he were merely waiting on the phalanx of storm troopers that he knew would arrive soon. “Only a matter of time,” the surgeon insisted, but it was a desperate cry. Waldvogel realized that Treinies was a prophet.
It was only a matter of time before Cherbourg fell, before France was carried away in the Allied onslaught, before they arrived at the steps of Berlin demanding entry.
He had seen it in the sky — thousands of bombers that flew overhead, uncontested by German fighters. He had heard about the invasion fleet: thousands of ships that disgorged hundreds of thousands of men and then returned with more.
I am a scientist, Waldvogel told himself when the shock of the invasion and the panic that surrounded him had worn off. I gather facts and analyze them and from that information, present my conclusion. It is indeed only a matter of time.
“We are to go down to Lorient,” Waymann said. “Winter has a U-boat waiting to take us to Germany. We don’t have much time, Korvettenkapitan.”
“Yes,” Waldvogel said, broken from his thoughts. “Of course.” He hesitated a moment and then said: “Tell me, young man, were they fine boats? Were they as wonderful as I had hoped?”
Waymann looked shocked and then gave the question some thought. After a moment he smiled. “Korvettenkapitan. They were such wonderful boats.”