"Yes, sir." I noticed he didn't say all of us. I thought about the Me110 bullet grazing my arm. How much longer would my Irish luck hold out?
"Now, you be sure to write your mother," he said, looking me in the eye with an uncle's admonition. "I sent a note telling her you were fine and how proud I was of you. The invasion news may alarm her, so be sure to write soon. That's an order, William."
"Yes, sir, I will," I said as I rose from the chair and looked Uncle Ike in the eye. He nodded, and walked me to the door.
"Come for dinner tonight with Miss Seaton. We 're putting on the feed bag for General Alexander and some of his group. Have some good food, enjoy yourself." He put his arm around my shoulder and smiled. I thanked him and walked down the hall, remembering how Kaz had looked when I put my arm around his shoulder to buck him up. I was glad there wasn't a mirror handy.
I saw Diana on the balcony, turned away from everyone, touching up her lipstick, her eyes focused on the mirror in a gold compact. She clicked it shut, slid it into her uniform pocket. She glanced around the group gathered on the veranda, but didn't notice me coming up the stairs. She looked incredible. Her light brown tropical-weight FANY uniform fitted her perfectly, which meant she'd regained some weight since I'd last seen her. Her face was tanned, giving her a healthy, robust look. The honey-colored hair tucked under her FANY cap had been tinted blond by the North African sun, which lit the people on the veranda now with a glowing, horizontal light, making them look like characters in a painting. She waved to someone and smiled, and at that point I couldn't wait a second longer. I went to her and she turned, her face lighting up with a smile.
"Billy," her lips said, without making a sound. We embraced, forgetting for a moment that the highest-ranking Allied generals in the Mediterranean were watching us. We forced ourselves apart, and she sheepishly looked at her shoes. We clung to each other's arms like dancers.
"You look great," I said, feeling like a shy schoolchild.
"You look like bloody hell," she said. "What's this?" She felt the bandage on my arm under the shirtsleeve.
"A few stitches, that's all." I touched my forehead, where a bruise had spread from my hairline. "And a bump, nothing much."
Diana ran her hands over my chest and arms. She bit her lip, tears leaking from her eyes.
"You're a terrible liar. Come with me," she said, linking her arm in mine. We walked down steps inlaid with colorful tiles to the beach. White sand and palm trees stretched along the curving shore, a cool evening breeze blowing at our backs. It felt clean and fresh after Sicily.
"I want to hear about it," she said.
"I don't know where to start."
"General Eisenhower told me what you managed to do. He's quite proud of you. But what I want to know is, what happened to you? You were injured and lost your memory, that's all I know."
Her grip tightened on my arm as she spoke. We stopped.
"I knew who you were. I remembered you. Not your name at first, but you came to me in my dreams. When I couldn't remember anything, you were there. I thought of you as the woman of my dreams. Then one night, I dreamed I couldn't find you."
We leaned into each other, foreheads touching, hands clenched together. I felt tears on my cheeks, and I was embarrassed.
"I had the same dream," she said. "I waited for you somewhere, and you didn't come back, from somewhere. You know how it is in dreams. I tried to find you, but I kept getting lost."
I put my arm around her waist, and we walked through the soft sand.
"When I was trying to figure out who I was, I ran into a Sicilian doctor. He told me about amnesia and said I was the most fortunate of men because I was about to discover who I was. He told me some philosopher once said the unexamined life is not worth living, and that I was being given the opportunity to examine mine."
"How did he know you'd get your memory back?"
"He had studied amnesia. He called mine psycho something and was sure I'd remember everything in time. The last thing to return, he said, would be the event that had caused it. He's a smart guy. I brought him back here with me."
"Why?"
"Listen," I said, "It's a long story. Right now I want to tell you something else."
"What, Billy?" She stopped and put one hand on my arm, the other to her breast, as if holding me back and protecting her heart.
"He was right. I did learn who I was. Some of it was a shock, mostly about how I treated you."
"What do you mean?"
"After Villard," I said.
Then I started over. "After Villard raped you, all I wanted was revenge. But it was for what he'd done to me, not to you. I thought going after him would help, but it didn't."
"I wanted him dead too," Diana said, her lips clenched.
"I know. And he deserved it. But I should have let you know that what he did, whether he was dead or alive, it made no difference. It wasn't about us."
We walked again, and she was silent for a while.
"Does it?"
"What?"
"Make no difference, about us?"
"No. What's done is done. It's real, it happened, and we can't forget about it, and I can't pretend killing Villard made it go away. But it's not who we are. I didn't tell you the truth about this," I said, touching the bandage on my arm. "It isn't serious, but it could have been. It was a shell from a German plane. One more inch and I would have lost my arm. Six more inches and it would have taken my head off."
"What's done is done. No use pretending it didn't happen."
"Right," I said. We walked some more, the sound of the surf enveloping us.
"But no sense dwelling on it. Either of us could be killed tomorrow."
"Right."
"All right, Billy, all right." She leaned her head into my shoulder and held onto my arm with both of her hands, uncovering her heart. "All right."
CHAPTER FORTY
We made it back to the party an hour later, after the sun had set and we'd shaken the sand out of our clothes. Everyone was still outside drinking cocktails. Candles lit the veranda, their flames reflected in all the polished brass.
I spotted Sciafani. Big Mike had organized a suit for him to wear. I'd alerted Sue that a local doctor would be attending, and she got him past the guards after they'd given him the once-over. It wasn't exactly a lie, since he was local, now that he was here. I figured we had at least a chance, among all the American and British muckety-mucks getting gassed on Uncle Ike's booze, of getting someone to intervene for him.
"Ah, so this is the Sicilian doctor who knows his Socrates," Diana said when I introduced them.
"An honor, Miss Seaton," he said, bowing and kissing her hand. If I'd known he was going to show off like that, I would have left him to play cribbage in the tent with Big Mike. I got us drinks and scanned the crowd for a likely candidate. I didn't want to bother Uncle Ike for a personal favor if I could work it out myself. He had enough of that all day long. It looked like Enrico and Diana were hitting it off, so I buttonholed a British major with medical insignia on his uniform. Turned out he was a dentist and was being transferred to Cairo, so I gave up on him after apologizing for not listening to yet another story about tooth extractions gone bad. Then on to an American colonel who was on the G-1 staff at HQ, which meant personnel. No dice with him either.
I found Diana and Sciafani as the group filed in for dinner, talking with none other than Uncle Ike. I had to hand it to Diana, she took matters right to the top.
"I was just telling Dr. Sciafani that civilian immigration is outside of my jurisdiction," Uncle Ike said. "I wish I could repay you for the help you've given William, but there's nothing I can do. Except, of course, to make certain you are well supplied for your duties in the POW facility."