In his spare time he toyed with futuristic formulas to tackle the challenges of cross-rolling-where he imagined his ships firing ahead instead of broadside-and tried to take into account the ever-increasing ranges of big guns and the ever-flattening trajectories of high-velocity shells. Sometimes he had to turn himself upside down like a saltshaker to empty his brain.
Rock climbing offered such a break.
A day of rock climbing started with the train ride to Ridgefield, Connecticut, then a drive across the New York state line in a rented Ford auto to Johnson Park in the Westchester estate country, then a two-mile hike to a remote hill called Agar Mountain, all leading to a slow, hard climb up a rock wall to the top of a cliff. The train ride was a chance to just stare out the window for two hours and watch the land change from city to farm. Driving the auto required his full attention to the rutted roads. The hike filled his lungs with fresh air and got his blood going. The climb demanded complete concentration to avoid falling off the cliff and landing a long, long way down on his skull.
This unusually warm weekend for early spring had brought walkers to the park. Striding purposefully in his tweed jacket, knickers, and boots, Lakewood passed an old lady on her “constitutional,” exchanged hearty “Good morning!”s with several hikers, and observed, longingly, a couple holding hands.
Lakewood was quite good-looking, sturdily built, with a ready smile, but working six and seven days a week-often bunking on a cot at the lab-made it hard to meet girls. And for some reason, the nieces and daughters that the older engineers’ wives marched in to meet him were never that appealing. It usually didn’t bother him. He was too busy to be lonely, but now and then when he saw a young couple he thought, One day I’ll get lucky, too.
He hiked deeper into the park until he found himself alone on a narrow path through dense forest. When he saw movement ahead, he was disappointed because he was hoping to have the cliff to himself and concentrate on climbing in peace and quiet.
The person ahead stopped and sat on a fallen log. When he drew closer, he saw it was a girl-and a petite and very pretty girl at that-dressed for climbing in trousers and lace-up boots like his. Red hair spilled from her brimmed hat. As she turned her head abruptly toward him, her hair flashed in the sunlight, bright as a shell burst.
She looked Irish, with paper-white skin, a small, upturned nose, a jaunty smile, and flashing blue eyes, and he suddenly remembered meeting her before… Last summer… What was her name? Let’s see, where had they met… Yes! The “company picnic,” hosted by Captain Lowell Falconer, the Spanish-American War hero to whom Lakewood reported his range-finder developments.
What was her name?
He was close enough to wave and say hello now. She was watching him, with her jaunty smile, and her eyes were lighting up with recognition. Though she looked as puzzled as he felt.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she called, tentatively.
“Hello,” said Lakewood.
“Was last time at the shore?”
“Fire Island,” said Lakewood. “Captain Falconer’s clambake.”
“Of course,” she said, sounding relieved. “I knew I knew you from somewhere.”
Lakewood searched his memory, goading himself: Lakewood! If you can land a 12-inch, five-hundred-pound shell on a dreadnought steaming at sixteen knots from a ship rolling in ten-foot seas, you ought to be able to remember the name of this Gibson Girl lovely who is smiling at you.
“Miss Dee,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Katherine Dee.” And then, because his mother had raised him properly, Lakewood doffed his hat and extended his hand and said, “Grover Lakewood. How very nice to see you again.”
When her smile spread into one of delighted recognition, the sunlight of her brilliant hair seemed to migrate into her eyes. Lakewood thought he had died and gone to Heaven. “What a wonderful coincidence!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Climbing,” said Lakewood. “Climbing the rocks.”
She stared in what appeared to be disbelief. “Now, that is a coincidence.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. There’s a cliff up that path that I’m going to climb.” She cocked an eyebrow that was so pale as to be almost invisible. “Did you follow me here?”
“What?” Lakewood flushed and began to stammer. “No, I-”
Katherine Dee laughed. “I’m teasing you. I didn’t mean you followed me. How would you even have known where to find me? No, it’s a perfect coincidence.” Again she cocked her head. “But not really… Do you remember when we talked at the clambake?”
Lakewood nodded. They hadn’t talked as much as he would have liked to. She had seemed to know everybody on the captain’s yacht and had flitted from one person to another, chatting up a storm. But he remembered. “We decided we both liked to be out of doors.”
“Even though I have to wear a hat for the sun because my skin is so pale.”
More pale skin had been visible that summery day. Lakewood remembered round, firm arms bared almost to her shoulders, her shapely neck, her ankles.
“Shall we?” she asked.
“What?”
“Climb the rocks.”
“Yes! Yes. Yes, let’s.”
They started along the path, brushing shoulders where it narrowed. Every time they touched, he felt an electric shock, and he was thoroughly smitten by the time she asked, “Do you still work for the captain?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I seem to recall that you told me something about cannons.”
“They call them guns in the Navy. Not cannons.”
“Really? I didn’t know there was a difference. You said ‘they.’ Aren’t you in the Navy?”
“No, I work in a civilian position. But I report to Captain Falconer.”
“He seemed like a very nice man.”
Lakewood smiled. “ ‘Nice’ is not the first word that comes to mind for Captain Falconer.” Driven, demanding, and daunting came closer to the mark.
“Someone told me he was inspiring.”
“That, he is.”
She said, “I’m trying to remember who said that. He was very handsome, and older than you, I think.”
Lakewood felt a hot stab of jealousy. Katherine Dee was talking about Ron Wheeler, the star of the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport who all the girls fell over. “Most of them are older than me,” he answered, hoping to get off the subject of the handsome Wheeler.
Katherine put him at ease with a heartwarming smile. “Well, whoever he was, I remember that he called you the ‘boy genius.’ ”
Lakewood laughed.
“Why do you laugh? Captain Falconer said it, too, and he was a hero in the Spanish-American War. Are you a Boy Genius?”
“No! I just started young, is all. It’s such a new field. I got in at the beginning.”
“How could guns be new? Guns have been around forever.” Lakewood stopped walking and turned to face her. “That is very interesting. But, no, guns have not been around forever. Not like they are now. Rifled guns can fire tremendous ranges no one ever imagined before. Why, just the other day I was aboard a battleship off Sandy Hook and-”
“You were on a battleship?”
“Oh, sure. I go out on them all the time.”
“Really?”
“On the Atlantic Firing Range. Just last week the gunnery officer said to me, ‘The new dreadnoughts could hit Yonkers from here.’ ”
Katherine’s pretty eyes grew enormous. “Yonkers? I don’t know about that. I mean the last time I sailed into New York on the Lusitania it was a clear day, but I couldn’t see Yonkers from the ocean.”
The Lusitania? thought Lakewood. Not only is she pretty but she’s rich.