That night, Reginald tells the fellows in the local pub how proud he is. He recounts the story of Beatrix leaving to everyone who comes in, telling the story again and again. They ask questions, they want to know the details. The ones whose children left before know this story, or a version of this story, already. How the morning was hot and sticky. How they stood in the ballroom at the Grosvenor Hotel and how he’d knelt on one knee when it had been time to go. How Beatrix had nodded at his last words, her face tilted to his, her chest held high. How she had been resolute and hadn’t cried, even though he could see the tears forming.
But a day later, he cannot quite remember what he said to her while he was kneeling on the floor. He worries, privately, that he forgot to say what was most important. But he tells everyone in the pub that night what a trooper she’d been. My brave eleven-year-old girl. He makes up the words that they said to each other. And he doesn’t explain that while he and Millie held it together for as long as possible, they turned away from Beatrix and moved through the crowds before he was truly ready to do so. He doesn’t imagine that he would ever be ready to leave.
In the dream he has again and again, he walks into the ocean, fully dressed, the wet fabric a weight. He pushes the waves aside as he goes deeper and finds himself back in that ballroom, leaving as others are arriving, his shoulders brushing against them, trying not to stare at the faces of the incoming parents, knowing that his eyes must mirror theirs, shocked to find themselves in this place, having made this decision, to send their children far away. Alone, across the sea. Only outside, on the street by the Grosvenor, the air thick, the gray clouds pushing down, did Millie begin to cry, pleading with him to go back and get their girl. He’d held her hand and pulled her away. In the dream he holds out his hands, reaching, wishing he could pick up the ship she’s now on and turn it around. Wishing he could reverse its course. He extends his arms again, trying to touch the land where she will now live.
But the story that he tells the boys is only half the truth. Beatrix was crying, holding on to him, her arms wrapped around his waist. She blamed Millie for sending her away, and she refused to say goodbye to her, was angry with her for the twenty-four hours between the time they told her and the moment she left. Reginald, in fact, was the one to insist she leave, knowing that the bombs were coming closer and closer, that there was no possible way to keep her, or any of them, safe. His older brother fought in the last war, and so he knew what was coming. That war cast a long shadow over his childhood. It was how he had learned the edges of fear. He and Millie were faced with an impossible choice. Better that she go to America, he thought, where the fingers of war were less likely to touch her. But he never told her that he’d forced Millie’s hand. He let her believe it was Millie’s choice.