“Just because I fall in love with women doesn’t mean I hate men,” Melody stumbled on. “Last night I had an amazing fuck with Alonso and he had a really good time too, that’s as complicated as this needs to be, okay?”
She lurched to her feet, threw away her bundled dress and petty coats and skittered blindly into the washroom.
Chapter 5
Sunday 12th March
Castle Dore, Shinnecock Hills, Long Island
It was serendipitous that Leonora Coolidge had never entertained any illusions about Alexander Fielding. What you saw was what you got. He was not one of those men a good woman could mold, mellow or in any way reform. Fortunately, had he been that sort of a man she would have left him to his fate after he had done his very best to get them both killed being a hero.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ She had posed, rhetorically to her best friend, Maud Daventry-Jones. ‘I’m stupid about the guy. I love him and there’s nothing I can do about it!’
Which pretty much explained why, presently, she was the proportions of an average-sized barn door and aching for the day when she could start drinking and smoking again. She was well over seven months pregnant and about to wave goodbye to her ‘hero’ for God only knew how long!
Sure, Alex felt a little bad about leaving her in the lurch.
They had laughed about that!
In her case ‘leaving her in the lurch’ amounted to leaving her in the bosom of her wealthy, landed family in the luxury of the Coolidge mansion with every other private medical practitioner on Long Island on twenty-four-hour call to rush to her aid at the first sign of ‘junior’ deciding to come into the world.
Right now, junior was kicking like a mule.
Her mother said that meant ‘it’ was a boy.
Leonora had never really thought about having children until she had let herself get knocked up by her hero.
That would have been the night after their first proper date…
Alex had been in prison, out of circulation for the best part of a year by then and heck, that man had been in a hurry to make up for lost time!
Maud had quizzed her about that night a couple of days later.
‘I have never been so fucked silly in my whole life,” she had admitted, afflicted by goose pimples all over as she recollected the experience.
Alex had proposed marriage first, of course.
That was what you got for dating an officer and a gentleman.
Leonora had not even attempted to stop her father trying to talk her out of it, he had wanted to organise the society wedding of the year, preferably sometime in 1979 or 1980; Alex was having none of that.
‘Father will cut me off!’ She had protested.
‘His loss,” her hero had retorted, smiling that smile of his which always made her tingle in all the places a respectable girl never talked about in public.
They had spent most of the week after their chaotic registry office wedding in Brooklyn locked up in a plush room at the Ritz Hotel in Manhattan◦– luckily, daddy had been slow cutting off her allowance◦– doing what newlyweds from time immemorial have done, except more so…
Once her father discovered he was going to be a grandfather he had bitten the bullet and taken Alex to his heart, so everything had worked out just swell in the end.
Now, her hero had just landed his plane on Daddy’s lawn!
How crazy was that?
Didn’t the Air Force cashier people for things like that?
Actually, now that she looked at Alex jumping down from the old dope and fabric biplane, she reconsidered her initial impression; this was some old, very slow flying machine. Not even Alex could have got down safely in one of the new low-wing monoplanes that his squadron were scheduled to take down to the Border sometime in the next month or so.
Alex had not even bothered to don his flying leathers, he was dressed in his grey-blue day uniform, capless. Presumably, he planned to pull a suit off the rack in their rooms upstairs.
“The guy’s got style!” Maud murmured distractedly.
Leonora frowned.
Her friend got dreamier about Alex every day, if she did not do something about it, Maud would be hopelessly out of it if and when a suitable beau ever came along.
If I wasn’t so fat, I’d get straight onto that little project!
The two women watched the scene playing out on the lawn below the big house.
Alex was glad-handing his way through the assembled retainers and staff, swapping banter with other guests at that afternoon’s ‘going away’ soiree. The party was Leonora’s mother’s idea and even though Alex was teetotal these days he was nothing if not a party animal. Leonora had thought she was incorrigible, but Alex… Well, he took things to a whole new level!
They said there was going to be another war down in the South West and a lot of people were already asking if it was going to be a big enough war for Major Alexander Fielding!
Among other things her hero had become the instant sensation of her old set. Leastways, the members of that circle she had not completely alienated in her ‘jailbird year’ campaigning to get Alex out of prison, and seeking justice for all the wrongly accused bystanders swept up in the dragnet after the Empire Day outrages. Refreshingly, Alex tended to invite a lot more ‘real people’ to these affairs: perhaps, that was the way to go with Maud’s love life?
To introduce her to mere ‘real people’.
It was worth a try.
Leonora was startled out of her wool-gathering. In retrospect she had hardly known any ‘real people’ before her hero inadvertently enmeshed her in the Empire Day imbroglio…
Alex was hugging Maud.
“Put that woman down and start showering your wife with attention!” Leonora demanded with patrician severity.
Her husband did as he was instructed and with a dazzling smile put his arms as far around her as he could reach and held her close, pecking at her cheek preparatory to going mouth to mouth.
Leonora came up for air and realised, when she recovered her breath and her scattered wits that Alex was already shaking her father’s hand and making sweet with her mother.
How on earth does he do that?
Before she met her hero, she had been engaged twice◦– or was it three times◦– and not one of her beaus had ever got her mother smiling that way! As for her succession of failed future husband’s attempts to get on Daddy’s good side, well, those had all been hopeless causes.
But then none of the frogs she had kissed before her prince came along to sweep her off her feet◦– and knock her up in no time flat◦– were bone fide fighter aces.
Maybe, they had just not been made of the right stuff?
“Should you be standing up, princess?” Her husband inquired earnestly, his whole being shouting that for him she was the only woman in the room.
“I’m not ill, Alex,” she snapped irritably.
He knew it was just ‘baby testiness’ and smiled proudly.
Leonora instantly forgot why she was vexed in the first place.
“I’d much rather be alone with you, that’s all,” she admitted quietly. “Rather than with all these people!”
Her husband put his arm about her shoulder.
“Give me the word and I’ll start shooting the beggars,” he offered.
“Um… What on earth is that contraption you flew over here in?” She asked, changing the subject.
“We call them Fleabags,” Alex chortled. “They’re slow old things that the Army uses as artillery spotters and so forth. You can land one of them on a sixpence and if you make a hash of it, you’re usually travelling so slowly that when you hit the ground you can dust yourself off and walk away.”