San Diego, California
EVERY MUSCLE IN GARETH’S BODY TENSED, every nerve tingled, as he stood among the crowd waiting for the great ship to dock. All around him people looked up at the passengers leaning against the railing above, shouting and waving excitedly and receiving shouts and waves in return. The compressed excitement was tangible. As the gangplank was lowered, secured, the throng surged forward. Who knew how long everyone there had prayed, yearned, longed, for this moment when they would be reunited with loved ones, not even knowing if they were alive or dead?
Gareth’s heart pounded heavily as the gate at the top of the gangplank was lifted back and passengers began to descend. He felt bodies pressing against him from behind. He moved involuntarily as people pushed forward. His eyes searched frantically the streams of passengers for the one face he had carried so long in his mind, in his heart’s memory. His pulse thrummed and his breath was coming in short gasps.
Then he saw her. His stomach wrenched painfully. In shock, in relief. She was coming slowly down the ramp. There was another woman beside her. They were arm in arm. Who was supporting whom? Was Brooke holding on to the woman, or was it the other way around? They moved haltingly. Gareth’s throat was dry and tight from anxiety. Was she ill? The pressure of the crowd behind him inched him toward the bottom of the gangplank. Soon he would be able to reach out and touch her. Now he saw her more clearly. Dear God, she was thin. Thinner than he ever remembered. But then, how could she not be, with all those months of deprivation? And her hair was threaded with silvery streaks waving back from her high forehead. What she must have endured. Gareth felt the horrors he’d imagined confirmed. But her eyes, now sweeping the crowd for him, were still lovely and violet blue in the pale oval of her face.
“Brooke!” he yelled. “Here I am!” He lifted one arm, waving wildly.
In another few minutes they were in each other’s arms. He felt her fragility through the flimsy material of the dress she was wearing and loosened his hold. “Oh, dearest, dearest Gareth,” he heard her husky whisper. “I was so afraid you might not have got my cable. There were so many being sent. I was terrified you wouldn’t be here.”
He could not answer for the enormous lump blocking all the words he wanted to say. Brooke was here, she was safe, the agony was over. That was enough for now.
His arm around her securely, he maneuvered her through the dense crowd, where other equally emotional, dramatic reunions were taking place. “My grandmother lent me her car,” he told her. “Where are your things?”
She held up the small valise she was carrying. “This is all. The few things the Red Cross supplied for us, hardly more than a toothbrush, some underclothes. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. What few supplies I nursed in the camps make this a luxury.” Brooke managed a laugh that sounded delightful to Gareth.
“We’ll get you whatever you need or want,” he promised.
They drove down the coast to the Riverside Inn. Gareth was never sure exactly how he managed the highway traffic to get there. He was so conscious of Brooke beside him, he might easily have been too distracted to drive safely. Somehow within hours they were there.
Lunching on the patio, they could hardly eat for gazing into each other’s eyes, breaking off in the middle of a sentence about something else to say wonderingly, “I can’t believe you’re really here” and “I prayed for this moment and now that it’s here, it seems unreal.”
They went to the little shopping center of Spanish-style architecture, its arched, vine-covered walkways between stores of every kind. There Brooke made a few purchases. Afterward they wandered hand in hand, stopping to browse and window-shop, still too aware of each other to be really present where they were.
On the way back to the hotel, they passed the ancient mission, now a tourist attraction rather than a place of worship. It seemed natural to slow to a stop. Gareth pulled into a parking space in front of the building. He turned to Brooke questioningly. She said quietly, “We have so much to be thankful for.”
Gareth nodded. “So many answered prayers.”
It seemed entirely appropriate that they go inside, even though it was not the parish church it had been long ago. They entered the dim old chapel with its adobe walls, tiled floor, worn benches, and knelt down, lifting grateful hearts to the God who had been so faithful.
“May the Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent from each other. Genesis 31:49,” whispered Brooke, slipping her hand into Gareth’s. “I said that over and over every day.” She remembered the small Bible she had carried into the Japanese internment camp with her, the one she still had.
They remained for a few more minutes in the quiet, then left, still caught up in the solemnity of the moment.
That evening they had dinner served on the balcony outside their room, which looked out onto the mountain, where a sunset began spreading its palette of glorious colors across the sky. They talked of many things, of that summer so long ago when they had fallen in love, of the things that had happened in the years since, and then of the future.
“I can’t wait to take you home, Brooke, home to Avalon,” Gareth said, raising her thin hands to his lips and kissing her fingertips. “Ever since I got out of the service, I’ve worked at getting the gardens back in shape after all the months of neglect. It’s going to be beautiful by the time we get there. And the house … well, I want you to do whatever you wish inside…. It will be yours now…. You can bring your own things….”
“Dear Gareth,” Brooke interrupted. “I have no things. Nothing is left of my beautiful screens or my porcelain or my Netsuke collection—all are gone, confiscated.” A smile touched her mouth briefly. “I’m afraid I’m coming as your bride empty-handed.”
“But not empty-hearted, my darling,” Gareth replied, thinking how hard it must have been for Brooke to lose all her precious belongings.
“It doesn’t matter. If there is one thing I’ve learned through all this, Gareth, it’s that our material possessions are of little worth in the overall scheme of things. Only one thing is important: our relationship with God.”
They were both silent a moment, letting the truth of her words seep in to them just as the beauty of the sunset filled them with awe and the majesty of its source. After a while Brooke asked, “Tell me again how it was your parents called your house Avalon.”
“Actually, it was my Grandmother Blythe who named it. She was totally enamored of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Avalon was part of that legend, the place to which Arthur returned and from which he would again rule. According to the Arthurian legends, it is a magical island hidden behind impenetrable mists. Unless you believe in its existence, the mists won’t part.” He paused. Brooke was listening attentively. “My father, Jeff Montrose, was named for the writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, who first chronicled the tales of Arthur.
“My parents inherited the estate, which actually is a small island, and perpetuated the myths of it being a special, secret place. They were completely in love with each other and the island, and they made it a magical one for us as children. My father needed the solitude to concentrate on his work, and my mother ensured that he had it. Meanwhile for us it became a closed but wonderful place, a kind of enchanted world-with-in-a-world.” He smiled in tender remembrance. “Tennyson’s Idylls of the King was the inspiration for many of my father’s paintings, his style fashioned after the Pre-Raphaelite artists. My mother, Faith, was often his model.” Gareth took Brooke’s hand in his, covered it with his other hand, gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I remember the day you took me over there. I never dreamed then that one day I would live there.”
“I knew,” Gareth said. “But it was hard holding on to that dream.”
Brooke gazed at him lovingly. To return to a dream required hope, a sense of childlike belief that dreams can come true, that prayers are answered. She thanked God that he had allowed her that dream, had given her the faith, the innocent hope she now saw as a miracle. That’s what a miracle really is, after all: the parting of mists of doubt, unbelief, despair, to a fulfillment of love.