Abbra had never been happier. Lewis was given a special two-day pass and they were married in the military chapel at Fort Bragg. The only thing marring the day was the absence of Scott. He was at football training camp and was unable to be best man though he had sent his congratulations and his apologies. A friend of Lewis’s, who had been his classmate at West Point, was best man.
After the wedding her parents returned to San Francisco, and after her one-night honeymoon Abbra had followed them by train.
It was a strange feeling, becoming a married woman with so little warning. A married woman whose husband was, in twenty-four hours’ time, going overseas to fight in Vietnam.
Once she was back home the feeling of strangeness increased. Outwardly her life was the same. She still lived with her parents in Pacific Heights; she still attended college. Yet inwardly she’d changed. She no longer had any interest in parties or dances. They were for girls who were on the lookout for men, and she was no longer looking; she was married to Lewis and she had no desire to behave as if she were still single.
She began to see less and less of her close friends. After the first heady pleasure of showing off her wedding ring and receiving her friends’ squeals of congratulations, she found that she had very little to say to them. The endless talk about who was dating whom was no longer fascinating, and they were not interested in the things that preoccupied her: the military situation in Southeast Asia and her fears for Lewis’s safety.
As September merged into October, she wondered if returning to San Francisco had been a mistake. If she had moved into quarters on an army base, then at least she would have had other married women to talk to, women who would understand her position and who perhaps also had husbands serving overseas. As it was, she felt oddly isolated and increasingly lonely. After six months in Vietnam, Lewis would have five days leave. He had already written to her and suggested they spend his leave together in Hawaii. There was hardly a waking moment when she wasn’t thinking about it, looking forward to it, but there was another three months before the dream would become reality, and the three months stretched ahead of her as if they were three hundred.
On the second Thursday in October a ring at the front door put an end to her growing worries. She was in her bedroom, writing the daily portion of her weekly letter to Lewis, when her mother knocked and entered, saying in a voice that indicated she wasn’t very pleased by the event, ‘You have a visitor, Abbra. Scott.’
Abbra put her pen down immediately, rising to her feet in happy anticipation.
‘I appreciate the fact that as he is now your brother-in-law a certain courtesy is due him, but I don’t approve of him, Abbra. He-is so unlike Lewis. Why any well-educated young man should opt out of his responsibilities in the way that Scott has done is completely beyond me. With all his opportunities he should have become a lawyer or a stockbroker. Or followed his father and Lewis into the army.’
‘Playing professional football isn’t opting out of responsibilities, Mom,’ Abbra said patiently, sliding the half-written letter into the top drawer of her desk. ‘It’s a career, just like any other career, and it’s a tough and competitive one.’
Her mother shook her head, unconvinced. ‘I’m sorry, Abbra, but I can’t possibly agree with you. Professional football players are not the sort of people that we would normally mix with.’
‘Well, we’re mixing with one now, so everyone had better start getting used to the idea!’ Abbra said with asperity. ‘Where is he? In the living room?’
Her mother nodded, her lips tightening. Even though she had approved of Lewis, she had not approved of the indecently quick wedding. It had not been at all the kind of wedding she had pictured for her daughter. And now this. A football player in her house. She didn’t like it, and she had no intention of allowing it to become a regular event.
Abbra ran quickly down the stairs, hoping that her father wasn’t being as cold to Scott as her mother had obviously been. When she went into the living room and found him standing by the window in an otherwise empty room, her reaction was one of relief.
‘Hello,’ she said with a welcoming smile. ‘I’m Abbra.’
Scott had been looking out over the bay and turned quickly, shocked amazement flaring in his eyes. He strode to meet her, suppressing his emotion almost immediately. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Abbra,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Sorry I wasn’t able to make the wedding. It was my first training camp and there was no way I could break loose, even for a day.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said truthfully, ‘I understood.’
He grinned down at her. ‘That’s good. My father certainly didn’t. When I was injured in the first game of the season, he said it was God’s punishment for my putting training before family commitments!’
Her eyes darkened with concern. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had been injured. What happened? What did you do?’ As she asked, she wondered why he’d looked shocked when she walked into the room. What had he been expecting? Someone far more glamorous and sophisticated? He had known she was still at college. Surely he couldn’t have expected her to be much older?
‘I made a seventy-five-yard touchdown interception which won the game, but I was hit after the whistle and the ligaments in my ankle were badly torn. I’ve been having physical therapy on them now for six weeks, and it will take another three or four weeks before I can play again.’
He was taller than Lewis, six feet three or perhaps six feet four, and he was as powerfully built as the genial giant she had been dancing with the night she had met Lewis. Scott’s hair was nearly as blond as the genial giant’s had been. It grew low into the nape of his neck, a rich barley-gold, and thick and curly.
‘So while I’m resting up and having treatment on it, I thought I’d catch up on my family obligations.’ He grinned again. ‘Which in this case means getting to know my new sister-in-law. I wondered if you’d have an early dinner with me, to help the process along?’
‘I’d love to!’ she said immediately. It was deeply important to Abbra that she get on well with Lewis’s family. Though she had met his father as a child, the wedding was their first real opportunity to talk. She’d liked him and been fairly sure that the feeling was mutual. Now she had a chance to get to know Scott and she would also, at long last, be able to talk to someone about Lewis.
‘I’ll just put some shoes on and let my mother know I’m going out,’ she said.
Incredibly, he hadn’t realized she was barefoot. He and Lewis were so dissimilar in taste and temperament that he had never in a million years imagined Lewis would have married any girl he, Scott, thought halfway passable. When Abbra had walked gaily into the room in jeans and an open-neck cotton shirt, glossy dark hair swinging silkily around a square-jawed, high-cheekboned face, he had been so stunned that he could hardly speak. He had known that she was still at college, but had never for a moment imagined she would be so young and glowingly vital.
He looked down at her feet. They were narrow and well-shaped, the nails painted a pale, pearly pink. He wanted to tell her not to put on anything too stylish in the hope that after they ate they would be able to go down to the beach and walk. Almost as soon as the thought entered his head he cursed himself for a fool. He was taking her out for a meal, but it wasn’t a date. It couldn’t end on the beach or anywhere even remotely similar. She was his sister-in-law, not a prospective girlfriend, and the sooner he realized it, the better.
Her mother was crossing the hall as they left the house. He said good-bye with friendly politeness, and she responded with chilly formality.
‘Was it something I said?’ he said half jokingly to Abbra as they walked across the gravel drive towards a gleaming new Ford Mustang.
When she had left the room for her shoes, she had also changed out of her jeans and cotton shirt, and was now wearing a turquoise skirt that swirled around her legs, a pale mauve silk shirt, and high-heeled, delicately strapped sandals. Her eyes, as they met his, were agonizingly apologetic.
‘I’m sorry, Scott. It’s just that my mother doesn’t approve of professional football players. She’s convinced that all they do is hang around bars and get into drunken fights.’
He opened the car door, the grin back on his face.
‘It could be your mother is right,’ he teased.
She gurgled with laughter, the sound carrying back to the house. In the luxuriously furnished living room, Mrs Daley sat down on a sofa, her back straight, her lips tight. When her husband came home she was going to have a very serious talk with him. Scott Ellis was nowhere near as socially acceptable as Lewis and, brother-in-law or not, she didn’t like his free and easy attitude toward Abbra. This initial excursion could not be allowed to develop into a habit. If it did, goodness only knew what the gossips would make of it.
It was early evening and the light was soft over the Bay and the bridge and the cliffs beyond. Scott drove down Broadway, leaving the opulence of Pacific Heights behind him, manoeuvring deftly through the Chinatown traffic and on to Columbus Avenue toward her favourite Italian restaurant.
‘Hi,’ one of Luigi’s chefs called out to her from the open-plan kitchen. ‘Long time no see!’
‘I’ve been busy getting married,’ Abbra responded as Scott ignored the formality of the booths and led the way to the counter, where they could sit and eat and watch the chefs as they worked. She held up the third finger of her left hand so the chef could see her gleaming new wedding ring.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, beaming at both of them, and then, to Scott, ‘you’re a lucky guy.’
Scott’s eyes danced in amusement and Abbra flushed rosily, saying quickly, ‘This isn’t my husband. My husband is serving overseas. This is Scott Ellis, my brother-in-law.’
The chef paused in what he was doing and looked at Scott with fresh interest. ‘Say, aren’t you the guy who was injured scoring during the Rams’ season opener?’
Scott nodded, and admitted modestly that he was.
The chef shook his head sympathetically. ‘That was pretty bad luck. I saw the game on TV. It was a pretty mean late tackle. The guy should have been suspended. I wish to God you were playing for the 49ers. We could use you!’
Scott accepted the compliment with easy grace and returned his attention to Abbra. ‘I’m glad to see that you don’t talk about football all the time,’ she said teasingly as they ate perfectly cooked fettuccine with a delicious white sauce, and talked about books and writers, discovering a shared passion for Dashiell Hammett.
‘Did Lewis tell you I did?’ he asked, topping up her glass of burgundy.
There was something in his voice that reminded her that Lewis had been disapproving of Scott’s choice of career. The flush that had touched her cheeks when the chef had mistaken him for her husband edged back. ‘No, of course not,’ she said, uncomfortably aware that if Lewis hadn’t actually said so, he had certainly hinted at it. ‘It’s just that I imagined professional football players would talk about football and nothing else.’
‘Well, this one doesn’t,’ he said good-naturedly, knowing that she was being tactful and that Lewis had most certainly been speaking disparagingly about him. ‘The problem is, when I’m with Lewis, I don’t know what the hell else to talk about!’
She stared at him, wondering if he was joking, and then realized with amazement that he wasn’t. ‘But how can you not have anything to talk to him about?’ she asked bewilderedly. ‘He’s your brother!’
He grinned. ‘And you’re an only child, right?’
She nodded.
‘Believe me, Abbra, being a sibling doesn’t automatically mean that you have everything in common. Most brothers that I know have very different interests. Where Lewis and I are concerned, the differences are pretty big. Dad has lived his life for the army. He loves it passionately and I don’t think it ever occurred to him that Lewis and I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. With Lewis he was lucky. As a child all Lewis wanted to do was play soldiers. Me? I was sick death of soldiers and army life. All I wanted to do was play football, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I don’t have any regrets, but it hasn’t exactly brought me and Lewis very close.’
‘You make it sound as if you’re not even friends.’ Her voice was heavy with disappointment.
He resisted the urge to cover her hand comfortingly with his. ‘In a lot of ways we’re not. We don’t hang around together and we never have. But what we have is deeper than friendship, so don’t worry about us, Abbra. We’re brothers. We annoy and infuriate each other, but when it comes to the bottom line, we care about each other more than we care about anyone else. And that’s all that matters.’
‘Doesn’t he write to you from Vietnam?’ she asked, her dismay ebbing.
‘I had a brief note from him at the end of July, shortly after he arrived. He sounded as if he was in his element, though how anyone could actually enjoy living out in the jungle and facing sniper fire twenty-four hours a day, I can’t imagine.’
As soon as he said it he regretted it. Her face had paled, her eyes darkening until they were a deep-drowned purple. ‘Did he tell you that he was under constant sniper fire?’
He shook his head. ‘No, don’t worry, Abbra. That’s just my own idea of what life out there must be like. He told me he was serving as an adviser to a Vietnamese infantry battalion, but to tell the truth, I don’t have an idea of what that means.’
Zabaglione had followed the pasta and wine, and coffee had followed the zabaglione.
‘He’s part of a five-man American advisory team,’ Abbra said, her voice warming as she was at last able to talk about the subject closest to her heart. ‘It’s composed of a captain, a first lieutenant, and three non-commissioned officers.’
‘And Lewis is the first lieutenant?’ Scott asked, already knowing the answer to his question.
‘Yes.’ There was such quiet pride in her voice that his heart felt as if it were being squeezed tight. ‘They are operating in the southernmost part of Vietnam, in the Ca Mau peninsula. Lewis says that the Vietnamese battalion commander has been fighting the Communists for over six years, and that several of the other Vietnamese officers have been fighting for just as long.’
‘And before that they were fighting the French,’ Scott said, sliding his coffee cup away from him and signalling for another. ‘It isn’t worth thinking about, is it?’
‘No,’ she agreed, bleakly trying to imagine what it must be like for Lewis, rarely seeing another American apart from the four in his team; spending days, sometimes weeks at a time hunting through the U Minh or Nam Can forests for reinforced Viet Cong regiments; never knowing when they would stumble into an ambush or meet with enemy fire.
He saw the troubled expression in her eyes, and this time he did reach out and comfortingly cover her hand with his. ‘Don’t worry about him, Abbra. Lewis is a professional soldier. This is what he’s been trained for; he’s looked forward to it his whole life.’
She stared at him, appalled. ‘He isn’t enjoying it out there! He couldn’t be! No one could!’
‘Well, perhaps enjoying is the wrong word,’ Scott said, not truly believing that it was. ‘I guess I should have said that he would be satisfied that he was doing the job he was trained for and doing it well.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘The area where he’s operating is one that the Viet Cong have been trying hard to control for several years. He told me that hundreds of teachers and village chiefs had been assassinated for refusing to cooperate with them. If the area is more stable now that he and his Vietnamese battalion are operating there, and if the people in the villages are suffering less, then he will be gaining satisfaction from what he’s doing.’
Scott wasn’t sure whether the area would be more stable or not, but obviously thinking that it would be was the only way Abbra could come to terms with Lewis being there. He wondered how she would get along with the wives of Lewis’s fellow officers, and remembering the wives of his father’s fellow officers felt a surge of pity for her. He couldn’t imagine her as a typical army wife, her only interest her husband’s career, living for him and through him, with no real interests or life of her own.
‘We’d better go,’ he said gently. ‘Your mother will think I’ve run off with you.’ It was nearly ten-thirty and they had been talking for over three hours.
She rose regretfully. It had been the nicest evening she could remember since parting from Lewis.
‘Are you going back to Los Angeles tonight?’ she asked, wondering when she would see him again.
He shook his head. ‘I’m not really supposed to be driving at all, not until the physical therapist gives me the all-clear. I’ve arranged to stay over at a friend’s house and then I’ll drive leisurely back to L.A. tomorrow morning ready for my afternoon appointment with the therapist.’
She nodded understandingly, saying nothing as they walked out into the street, but he noticed that her shoulders were drooping very slightly and it occurred to him that she had enjoyed the evening just as much as he had. None of Lewis’s friends or their wives were living in San Francisco, and he couldn’t imagine that her mother encouraged much conversation about Lewis, or about anything else that interested her.
‘I’m coming up again next weekend,’ he said casually. ‘It would be nice if you could take pity on me again and have dinner with me. Being a semi-cripple, I’m not exactly in great social demand at the moment.’
It was a lie. As an up-and-coming star with the Rams, his social life had never been more hectic and his injury had made not the slightest bit of difference to that part of his life.
Her face lit up, and he slid his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight. He had driven to San Francisco on a duty visit to meet a sister-in-law he had expected to have nothing in common with.
Instead, he had found a woman he knew was going to be a great friend and that he loved as family already.
Abbra happily accepted the crushing hug in the manner that it was given. She had never had any brothers or sisters, and she was overjoyed at the immediate closeness that had sprung up between her and Scott.
‘We nearly met once before, on the night that I first met Lewis.’ Her face softened, her eyes glowing as she remembered. ‘It was at a party given by a friend of mine in San Francisco at the end of May. Her brother had invited lots of his friends, and you were among them. I danced with another friend of yours. He pointed you out to me because he was telling me how he hoped to be drafted by the Rams, and of how you had already signed with them.’
They were at the car now, and he had released her shoulders, and was staring down at her. ‘You mean we were both in the same room and I didn’t notice you?’ he said incredulously. ‘It isn’t possible!’
She laughed affectionately. ‘Oh, but it is. You were surrounded by admiring females.’
He continued to look down at her, still puzzled. ‘I don’t remember Lewis being at any party that I was at. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t remember Lewis being at any party.’
He opened the door for her and she slid into the seat. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you. He was on leave and had had dinner with my parents. He came to pick me up.’
He quickly came around the car and eased himself behind the steering wheel. ‘And he never came in and joined the party?’
She shook her head and he could smell the faint lingering perfume of her shampoo. ‘No. We left together and went out for a hamburger and a Coke.’
He sat in the dark car, not moving as the enormity of her words sank in. Then he switched on the engine and slammed it into gear. Jesus. He’d been as near as that to meeting her first; to asking her out; to falling in love with her.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked in concern as he slewed out of Columbus Avenue and into Broadway, his brows drawn together in a savage frown. ‘Have I said something to upset you?’ She couldn’t, for the life of her, think what it could have been.
‘No.’ He looked towards her, forcing the frown away, giving her a lighthearted grin that was far from what he was feeling. ‘I was just thinking how the course of our lives can be altered by small acts. Entering or not entering a room being somewhere five minutes early or five minutes late. That sort of thing.’
She nodded. ‘I know. I go cold with fright when I think of how I might have refused to let my mother send Lewis instead of our driver, and how, if I had, I would never have met Lewis.’
It hadn’t been exactly what he was thinking, but he could scarcely tell her that. He drove her home, still appalled at his instant reaction to knowing that they had been in the same room together before she had met Lewis. If he had seen her, would he have noticed her? The answer was a thundering yes. And would he have asked her out on a date? He couldn’t imagine himself meeting her and not asking. But would he have fallen in love with her? That was a question he couldn’t answer.
He had never in his life been seriously in love, and he didn’t expect he ever would be. Long-standing commitments were not his style. Lewis was the one who was always serious about any emotional involvement he might enter into, and it was typical of Lewis that after meeting Abbra and falling in love with her, he had seen marriage as the next logical step. Scott had enough self-awareness to know that if it had been him, he would never in a million years have thought of anything other than having an intensely passionate and enjoyable love affair.
As he swung the car into her parents’ drive, he smiled ruefully. He hated to admit it, but Abbra had been far better off falling in love with Lewis than she would have been falling in love with him. The smile deepened into a self-deprecating grin. Hell, how had he the arrogance to even imagine that she would have fallen in love with him? He was a football player, and in world that Abbra and her parents inhabited, a football player came pretty low in the potential-husband stakes.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked curiously as he braked to a halt.
He laughed, wondering what on earth she would say if he told her. ‘I was just thinking how damned lucky Lewis is to have you as a wife,’ he said tactfully, ‘and of how damned lucky I am to have you as a sister-in-law.’
He walked around and opened the car door, resisting the urge to kiss her on the cheek. ‘I won’t come into the house with you. I have a feeling your mother has seen enough of me for one day.’
She stepped out of the car, the night breeze blowing her hair softly across her face. ‘And I’ll see you next week?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll pick you up about seven. We’ll go somewhere a little more upbeat than Luigi’s. The Golden Eagle or the Kichihei. Somewhere that Lewis will approve, of.’
As she walked away from him into the house, she wondered if, subconsciously, he often tried to do things that would gain Lewis’s approval. Perhaps, when Lewis’s tour of duty in Vietnam was over, they could go together and see Scott play. She was sure Lewis had never done so, and she knew that though he wouldn’t admit it, Scott would be as pleased as hell to know his elder brother was cheering him on.
Although it was after eleven by the time she reached her room, she didn’t immediately begin to get ready for bed. Instead, she sat down at her desk, taking her half-finished letter to Lewis out of the drawer. She wanted to tell him all about Scott’s visit and, as usual when a pen was in her hands, she became unaware of time, and it was well after midnight before she eased her chair away from the desk.
Talking to Scott about Lewis had somehow made Lewis seem much nearer. The three months until she’d see him again no longer seemed like three hundred, but more like thirty. She undressed and slipped on her nightdress. The following week, when she’d see Scott again, would make the time seem even closer. With a happy smile she climbed into bed and turned off the light, closing her eyes, imagining that Lewis was with her, holding her, loving her.
‘But you can’t possibly intend to go out with him again!’ her mother said, horrified. ‘You’re a married woman, Abbra! You can’t still go out with young men as if you were single!’
‘I’m not, Mom,’ Abbra said, quickly losing her patience’s ‘Scott is my brother-in-law, not a date. There’s a whole world of difference.’
Mrs Daley was not sure that there was, but she could hardly say so without sounding crude. Her husband had not agreed that Abbra’s friendship with Scott Ellis was undesirable, and to her dismay Abbra had gone out with him again. The following week he had driven up to San Francisco and they had gone to the zoo and on a ferry ride, and for a fish supper at Sausalito.
‘I really don’t like it,’ she had said to her husband. ‘How do we know that Lewis will approve of all the time Abbra is spending with his brother? I was under the distinct impression that Lewis did not think very highly of Scott!’
‘He doesn’t think very highly of Scott’s choice of career,’ her husband corrected her. ‘Their father told me that. But I’m sure it’s just Scott’s age. I’m sure he’ll come around.’
Mrs Daley pursed her lips. There was nothing for her to do but make sure that Abbra continued to be aware of her disapproval, and to hope that the day would never come when her nameless fears would take on substance.
In November, Scott was pronounced fit and was in the roster to play in a home game against the Cleveland Browns.
‘Why don’t you drive down and watch the game?’ he suggested to Abbra. ‘You could be the first member of my family to see me play.’
‘I’ll be there,’ she promised. Lewis had written to her, telling her how pleased he was that she and Scott had become friends, and in his last letter he had teasingly asked if she was now a fan and attended games.
Her mother had shaken her head in disbelief when Abbra had told her of her plans. ‘You are going to get yourself a reputation for being one of those girls who follow football players from city to city!’
‘Oh, Mom! You’re being ridiculous,’ Abbra said in affectionate irritation. ‘Everyone knows that Scott is my brother-in-law. No one is going to think that I’m a fan who has latched on to him!’
‘They will,’ her mother insisted. ‘And almost as bad is the amount of time you’re spending away from your school work. You have exams to think about and you should be home studying, not driving down to Los Angeles to watch the Rams play the Browns!’
Abbra sighed, feeling a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t told her parents yet, but she had already made up her mind to leave college at the end of the semester. She would be leaving when Lewis returned anyway, and college was no longer what she wanted. She wanted to write, and she had already begun, showing Scott her first tentative stories, encouraged by his enthusiasm.
‘You should send them off to one of the women’s magazines,’ he had said when he had read them. ‘They’re much better than most of the stuff they publish.’
She had laughed. ‘And when was the last time you read any stories in a woman’s magazine, Scott Ellis?’ she asked teasingly.
He had grinned, his wide-set eyes and thick curly hair reminding her of a painting she had seen of a medieval Medici princeling. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t very recently,’ he admitted unabashed, ‘but I’m damned sure that what you’ve written is worthy of publication, and they certainly won’t be published if all you do is put them away in a drawer. The British Special Air Service has a motto, “Who dares, wins”. Remember that and send them off. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that jazz.’
She had laughed again and told him that he was an idiot, but a few weeks later, when she had gone over the stories for the twentieth time, she plucked up her nerve and sent one of them to the fiction editor of a leading women’s magazine.
Despite her mother’s continued disapproval, she drove down to Los Angeles to watch the Rams play the Browns and enjoyed herself thoroughly. It was the first time she had seen Scott in his own environment, and she was surprised by the amount of attention he attracted from fans and the media.
‘You’ve been playing for the Rams only a few weeks. How come you’re such a big star?’ she asked teasingly.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied with his easy, self-mocking grin.
‘It must be the way I comb my hair!’
She had laughed, but the time that she spent with him when he was Scott Ellis, professional football player, only increased her deep affection for him. He had such an open and honest air that she knew no amount of flattery would corrupt him. Despite his media appeal and his veritable army of fans, there was a total lack of pretence or show about him. He was, quite simply, always himself. And even though he was far more of an extrovert than Lewis, underneath his easygoing affability there was the same kind of attractive solidity and inner strength.
At the end of the month, when the team was playing in Denver, he asked her if she would like to fly out and watch the game with the team wives and girlfriends. She had already met and made friends with quite a few of them, and when one the girls suggested, that she share a room with her, there seemed to be no reason why she shouldn’t go.
‘A weekend?’ her mother had shrieked. ‘It’s absolutely impossible! Totally unthinkable!’
This time even her father agreed.
‘I’m a married woman, Daddy,’ she said, knowing that her mistake had been in returning home after her marriage as if she were still a schoolgirl. ‘I’ll be with other women I know and with my brother-in-law. Morally and physically I shall be utterly safe, and there is no reason at all why I shouldn’t go.’
Her father was not swayed by her argument, and only a timely telephone call from her father-in-law prevented her from either having to cancel her plans or face an all-out fight with her parents.
‘It’s Colonel Ellis,’ her mother said, the telephone receiver in her hand, a hint of respect in her voice. ‘He wants to speak to you, Abbra.’
Ever since the wedding her father-in-law had courteously telephoned her once a month. Usually he merely asked her how she was; if she had heard from Lewis; and reminded her that she was welcome to spend a few days in New York at the family home whenever she felt like doing so. This time he was telephoning to say that he had business in Pueblo, so he was going to drive to nearby Denver to watch the Rams play the Broncos. He had spoken to Scott to tell him he would be there, and Scott had told him that she was also going. He was telephoning to tell her he was looking forward to seeing her.
From then on she knew that the battle was won. After she had finished speaking to him, he spoke with her father. Abbra heard her father agreeing with colonel that it was a pity he and her mother couldn’t accompany Abbra for the weekend and make a real reunion of it, but that they would, no doubt, meet up again next year to celebrate Lewis’s return home.
Her father-in-law’s attitude toward the President’s buildup of forces in Vietnam was predictably enthusiastic.
‘It’s the only way to show those bas—’ He corrected himself quickly. ‘– To show the Communists that we mean business,’ he said as they ate dinner in a small restaurant he had taken them to after the game. ‘Leave them to their own devices and they’ll be swarming up Waikiki Beach before we’ve had time to blink!’
‘Isn’t that a little bit of an exaggeration?’ Scott asked idly, spearing a forkful of broccoli. ‘The Communist aim is to unite North and South Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, not invade America.’
Abbra saw an angry flush stain her father-in-law’s neck and knew that he was controlling his temper only with difficulty. ‘The Communist aim is world domination!’ he said, forcefully, leaning across the table toward his son and stabbing his finger on the tablecloth to emphasize his point. ‘If Vietnam falls to the Communists, then the entire region, the whole of Southeast Asia, will collapse too, and when that happens, the United States will find itself surrendering the Pacific and having to defend our own shores!’
‘And if we continue to send in more troops, and the conflict continues to escalate, then the end of the road is going to be the direct intervention of China and nuclear war,’ Scott said, provoking his father even more.
The colonel’s nostrils flared, the red flush staining and spreading. ‘How the hell have you become such an expert on what will or will not happen?’ he bellowed, oblivious of Abbra and the other diners. ‘You haven’t been to West Point! You’re a ball player, not a general!’
‘I’m just giving my opinion,’ Scott said tightly.
His father was about to say that his opinion wasn’t worth a shit, when he became aware of Abbra’s agonized expression and of other diners turning their heads towards their table with prurient curiosity.
He clamped his mouth tight shut, took a deep, steadying breath, and then gave Abbra an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry, Abbra. I should have warned you that my opinions and Scott’s differ widely. But the lessons from the Second World War are too easily forgotten. If we and our allies had moved earlier than we did to stop the Nazis, then that war could have been averted. The same rules apply to the Communists. We need a strong display of muscle to make sure that they know we mean business. Then, and only then, will they back down and allow the South its freedom.’
He glared coldly at Scott as he spoke, daring him to contradict. Scott, tempted almost past endurance, resisted the urge for Abbra’s sake. He knew she had been thrilled that at last his father had attended a game and watched him play. And that the flare of disagreement which had erupted between them had distressed her.
‘Okay,’ he said, suppressing his irritation and forcing a smile. ‘Pax. Let’s talk about something a little less emotive. Let’s talk about the Rams’ chances next week when they play the Chicago Bears.’
The conversation turned to smoother waters, and the evening had ended amicably but from then on Abbra was aware of the great difference between Scott’s uneasy relationship with his father, and Lewis’s relationship with him.
In December, President Johnson announced that the bombing of North Vietnam would be halted on Christmas morning for an indefinite period. In the first week of January she received a letter from Lewis describing a Christmas Day dinner of locally caught duck embellished with nuoc mam sauce, and an afternoon spent treating the village children to candy from his SP rations, and in the same week Scott decked a fellow player in the dressing room for making off-colour remarks about his relationship with her.
It was an ugly incident and one she was not aware of. It had been a home game against the Chargers and the Rams had lost miserably. Tempers had been short in the locker room and someone had savagely made an accusation that there was too much partying going on between games and not enough hard training.
One of the veteran players on the team, who had been receiving bad coverage in the press with veiled hints that he had peaked and was now past his prime, had looked viciously across at Scott and said loudly, ‘That goes especially for guys who can only get it up with their brothers’ wives. What do the two of you do every night, Ellis? Pray that some accommodating Viet Cong puts a hole in big brother?’
Scott’s fist sent him flying backwards even before the word brother was out of his mouth. The brawl that followed was the worst to take place in a locker room that anyone could remember.
When they had finally been separated, and when furious coach had warned them that if there was a repetition of the incident, both of them would be suspended for a week without pay, Scott had stormed into the club bar, where Abbra was waiting for him, saying tersely to her, ‘Come on, we’re leaving.’
‘What on earth is the matter? What’s happened to your face? What …?’
‘Come on,’ he had repeated taking her by the arm and steering her towards the door. In another few seconds the club room would be full of differing reports of what had happened, but all the reports would be unanimous on what the remark was that had triggered the fight. It made him sick just to remember it, and the thought of her overhearing it made him feel murderous. ‘I had a disagreement with another player in the locker room,’ he said to her when they
were safely outside. ‘It was no big deal, but I don’t want to find myself drinking with him this evening. Let’s go to Yesterdays for a beer and a sandwich.’
He had been so obviously reluctant to talk about the incident that she hadn’t asked any further questions. At the end of the week she was flying out to Hawaii to join Lewis, and she could scarcely think of or talk about anything else.
‘Hawaii’s going to be a big change for him after Vietnam,’ Scott said, driving downtown, the filthy words of his fellow player ringing in his ears.
Abbra had begun to tell him that it wouldn’t be quite so bad as perhaps they imagined, because Lewis had already enjoyed a three-day rest and recuperation break at Vung Tau, an in-country beach resort, but Scott was no longer listening to her. In the three months since he had met her, he hadn’t looked up any of his old girlfriends, and he hadn’t once dated any new ones. In fact, incredibly, for the last four months he had been totally celibate. It was quite a thought, and so was the reason for it.
She was talking happily about the presents she had bought for Lewis and jealousy, hot and hard, twisted his gut. He hadn’t been dating because he had been happier with Abbra than he could possibly be with anyone else. He hadn’t been screwing around because the only girl he wanted to screw was Abbra. His brother’s wife. His hands tightened on the steering wheel until the knuckles were white. Jesus. Why hadn’t he seen the truth before? Why had it taken me ugly words of a teammate, jealous of his prowess on the field, to make him see the blindingly obvious? And now that he had seen, what in the name of all that was holy could he do about it?
‘I never thought the time would pass,’ she was saying to him, her eyes glowing, her face radiant. ‘In three days we’ll be together again. Have you ever had something happen to you that is so momentous you can hardly believe it’s true?’
‘Yeah,’ he said grimly, turning the car into Westwood Drive, feeling as if a knife were twisting in his heart. ‘I have, Abbra. I most certainly have.’