There was no real mystery to the visits. Gloria told me she wanted sex and she had chosen Billy Joe to supply it. She said he was good at it. I still didn’t understand what it was all about. When I asked her if I had to be in love before I let men take liberties with me, she lapsed into one of her mysterious silences, then said, “There’s love, Gwen, and then there’s sex. They don’t have to be the same. Especially not these days. Not while there’s a war on. Just try not to get them mixed up.” Then she smiled. “But it’s always nice to be a little bit in love.” After this, I was more confused than ever, but I let the subject drop.
Gloria also needed her Luckies, nylons, lipstick, rouge and scented soap. She drank too much, so she needed a source for whiskey, too, and she also took to chewing gum, which she insisted on chewing in church, just to annoy Betty Goodall. And PX, of course, would get her all these things at the flutter of an eyelash. Whether she ever granted him any favors in exchange, I can’t say for certain, but I doubt it. Whatever she was, Gloria was never a whore, and I couldn’t imagine PX actually being with a woman in that way. He looked even younger and seemed even shyer and more awkward than me. There was some health reason that prevented him from serving in a more active branch of the forces – after all, he looked young and strong enough for combat – but he never told anyone exactly what it was.
PX did little favors for us all – for me, Cynthia, Alice, even Mother – especially when it came to nylons and makeup. One thing I soon started to wonder about was why the American forces, undoubtedly male as they were for the most part, had storage rooms full of women’s underwear and cosmetics. It was either intended to endear them to the local women, or they had certain private proclivities that they managed to hide from the rest of the world.
Anyway, lucky for us, PX seemed willing and able to get hold of just about anything we needed. If we bemoaned the lack of decent meat, for example, he would mysteriously produce bacon, and on occasion, even a piece of beef. Once he even, miracle of miracles, came up with some oranges! I hadn’t seen an orange in years.
I don’t think his empire was limited to the contents of the Rowan Woods PX, either. Sometimes, when he got a weekend pass, he would disappear for the entire time. He never said where he went or why, but I suspected he had a few dealings with the Leeds black market. I think I rather liked him, even though he seemed so young, and I might have gone out with him if he had asked me. But he never did, and I was too shy to ask him. We were only together in a group. Besides, I know he preferred Gloria.
Billy Joe had other uses, too. He was essentially an airplane mechanic, but he could also fix anything on wheels. That came in useful when our little Morris van gave up the ghost. Billy Joe came down in the evening, with PX and a couple of others tagging along, fixed it in a jiffy, then the whole gang of us picked up Gloria and went to the Shoulder of Mutton for a drink. A curious incident occurred that night that colored my view of Billy Joe for some time to come.
They were the only Americans in the pub and we were the only women. In addition to getting us plenty of suspicious and disapproving glances, even from people I had known for years and served in the shop, this also drew a few loud and pointed comments. Most of the men there were either too old to go to war or were excused because of health reasons. Some were in reserved occupations.
“Just think about it, Bert,” said one local as we bought our first drinks. “Our lads are over there fighting the Nazis, and them damn Yanks are over here sniffing around our women like tomcats in heat.”
We ignored them, took a table in a quiet corner and kept to ourselves.
The next time we were ready for drinks, Billy Joe went to the bar. He was drinking pints of watery beer, and I had told him to hold on to his glass because there was a shortage. A lot of locals took their own, and some even used jam jars, but if you got one early in the evening you had to hold on to it for the night. As he was on his way back, one of the local strapping farm lads who hadn’t been called up – something to do with an allergy to tinned food, I think – called out after him:
“Hey, Yank. Tha’s ta’en me glass.”
Billy Joe tried to ignore him, but the man, Seth his name was, had drunk enough to make him feel brave. He lumbered over from the bar and stood right behind Billy Joe, back at the table. The place went quiet.
“I said that’s my glass tha’s got tha beer in, Yank.”
Billy Joe put the tray down on the table, glanced at the pint glass and shrugged. “Same one I’ve had all evening, sir,” he said in that lazy Southern drawl.
“‘Same one I’ve had all evening, sir,’” Seth tried to mock him, but it didn’t come out right. “Well it’s mine, sithee.”
Billy Joe picked up his glass of beer, turned to face Seth slowly and shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir.”
Seth thrust his chin forward. “Well, I bloody do. Gimme it back.”
“You sure, sir?”
“Aye, Yank.”
Billy Joe nodded in that slow way of his, then he poured the beer all over Seth’s feet and held out the glass to him. “You can take the glass,” he said. “But the beer was mine. I paid for it. And, by the way, sir, ah am not a Yankee.”
Even Seth’s friends had started to laugh by now. It was that sort of fulcrum moment, when so much hangs in the balance, just the lightest touch the wrong way sends it all tumbling down. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast.
Seth made the wrong move. He stepped back and raised his fist. But he was slow. Billy Joe might have had that exaggerated sort of lazy grace, but his speed amazed me. Before anyone knew what had happened, there was the sound of breaking glass and Seth was on his knees, screaming, hands over his face, blood gushing out between his fingers.
“Ah am not a Yankee, sir,” Billy Joe repeated, then turned his back and sat down. The mood had soured, nobody wanted anything more to drink, and we all left shortly afterward.
Vivian Elmsley got up at about one o’clock, turned on the bedside light and took a sleeping pill. She didn’t like them, didn’t like the way they made her feel woolly-minded the next morning, but this was getting ridiculous. They said old people didn’t need as much sleep, but lying tossing and turning all night imagining someone scratching at the window or tapping at the door was exhausting. It was probably the wind, she told herself as she turned off the light and settled back on the pillows.
But there was no wind.
Slowly, the chemical Morpheus insinuated its way into her system. She felt sluggish, her blood heavy as lead, pushing her down into the mattress. Soon she hovered on the threshold between sleep and waking, where thoughts take on the aspect of dreams, and an image you conjure up consciously is suddenly snatched away for unconscious improvisations, like variations on a musical theme.
At first, she pictured Gloria’s tilted head as she had appeared on the TV screen, the detail from Stanhope’s painting, looking like a cartoon-Gloria.
Then the cartoon-Gloria started talking about a night in Rio de Janeiro when Vivian had had too much to drink and – the only time – succumbed to sexual advances at a cocktail party in a big hotel, remembered a whispered room number, waited until Ronald was fast asleep and slipped out into the corridor.
The cartoon-Gloria’s monologue was cut with images of the night, which flicked past jerkily like the series of cards in an old “What the Butler Saw” machine.