“It’s only a dream. My darling, it’s only a dream.” The words my darling sprang so naturally to my lips. I realized I had been thinking of him this way since the party when we met. That he was so frightened only made me think it more.
“Oh no,” he said when he finally realized what I was saying. “I’m so sorry. Some nights . . . it seems so real, like I’m there again. The water was on fire, the bombs dropping. We were covered in oil that might go up in flames, and I heard the shrieks around me, men dying, too many of them, and so many more below who never had a chance.”
I held him close. He was sweating. “There, there,” I said.
“They all wanted help. I tried to help them, but I couldn’t. There were so many, and . . . so many. I couldn’t help them all. I couldn’t do anything.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Of course you couldn’t.”
“I wanted to.” He was sobbing now.
“It’s all right.” I stroked his hair.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“I don’t. I know, I don’t.” I held him and rocked him from side to side. “But I know you’re a good man. You did all you could.”
“Did I?” he asked.
“I know you did.”
I held him and kissed him until he fell asleep in my arms. When I woke in the morning, he wasn’t there.
“Phillip?” I called. There was no answer. I looked around for him. When I walked over to the dresser, I saw he had left me a note. It said, “My darling, I had to go to work. Please make yourself comfortable in our home. The servants will help you find anything you need. I am especially proud of the music room and library. Love, Phillip.”
Servants?
At that moment, there was a knock on the door.
“Madam?” a voice said.
Madam? I was madam. Yesterday, I had been miss, if anything, but of course, I was generally just Grace.
“Come in,” I called.
The door opened, and a woman about my mother’s age was standing there. She wore a black uniform, and she curtsied. “Madam, I am Mary. Would you like me to bring up a tray, or do you wish to come to the dining room for breakfast?”
I realized I wanted to look around at what my husband had called “our home.”
“Oh, I’ll come down.”
But then, having said that, I didn’t know how to behave. We had never had servants before. Could I come to breakfast in my bathrobe, as I might have at my parents’ house? Or did I need to get dressed? And what should I wear?
“Shall I lay out something for you to wear, madam?” Mary was asking. “Or do you wish to have breakfast in your robe?”
I knew I was making a decision for the rest of my life. And yet I wanted a few moments alone, so I said, “Oh, I can get dressed, thank you. If you can bring me my suitcase.”
Where was Phillip? Why had he gone so early?
I dressed in a sensible skirt and jumper and left the bedroom. The sight that greeted me was shocking to my eyes.
I stood at the end of a hallway with gleaming marble floors. It led to an elegant living room with a grand piano. A music room! Oh, Esther would love that! I looked inside and saw a phonograph with stacks of records. The Andrews Sisters were on top. I flipped through them. Next was “You and I” and “He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings.” All the songs from the night we’d met. To the side, I saw another room with a tall door of shining dark wood. I opened it.
It was the library. On shelves of walnut that reached to the ceiling, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of books, almost like the lending library in town, except that here, every book I saw was something of interest to me.
On a table near the door was, Mam’zelle Guillotine, by Baroness Orczy, the latest of the Scarlet Pimpernel series. I picked it up, curled up on the sofa, and immediately became engrossed in the tale of Gabrielle, a girl near my own age whose father was to be hanged for a crime he didn’t commit. Every little minute or so, I looked around the room. So many books! I could read all of them. I couldn’t wait for Phillip to come home to discuss them. And maybe he would play the piano, and I would sing.
Phillip! I had found him without even trying. I had fallen asleep not in some stranger’s arms, but in Phillip’s. A day I’d thought would be a nightmare had become a dream.
Nightmare. Poor, dear man, to be so tormented. It must be because of what he’d suffered in the war. But now I would be there to comfort him, as his wife. I’d gone from being a girl to being a wife in minutes.
I didn’t even know what wives did, what they were expected to do. I knew what my mother did; she took care of the children. Someday, I would have children, little boys and girls with piercing blue eyes like their father’s. But, for now, I had little to do but read and listen to so many records!
I went back to Gabrielle’s story until Mary came to the library door to tell me that breakfast was ready.
I considered bringing the book with me, but I didn’t know if that would be rude, so I left it there and walked across the elegant room to the breakfast nook, where Mary was serving eggs and toast on fine china with sprays of roses on it.
“Thank you,” I said. “This is lovely.” I could not believe I had servants! I was a mistress! At seventeen! Should I offer to clear the table?