Mike had been courting Annie for the better part of a year.
Their courtship had begun with the exchanged glances and small talk whose true meaning was hidden at no depth at all. He was allowed, first on a night-by-night basis, then as a matter of course, to walk her to the trolley after work.
Mike had gone, first, to the shop, on business; and, his business concluded, returned to gaze at and to court the girl, who, as he knew in the first instant, was and would always be the love of his life.
And, so, throughout the summer and fall, he would walk her from work, most meetings taking place just around the corner from the shop and her family’s disapproving eyes. For he was not of their ilk, not a Catholic, and only, as they well knew, interested in the one thing, which, absent the sacrament of marriage, meant damnation and disgrace.
She left when the shop closed for business; her father and brothers stayed on to tend the flowers, to make the day’s last deliveries, and to shut the shop down for the night.
Annie was pursuing the secretarial course at the Armitage College of Business; and so was excused from the shop on school nights at five, where Mike, when not on a story, met her and walked her a slow six blocks down to the trolley stop.
Once, her brother had driven past, in the red van of The Beautiful. He had not noticed them, but Annie had seen him; and Mike, as a reporter, attuned to slight fluctuations in behavior, was impressed beyond measure to note that she altered not a jot, disdaining both concealment and assertiveness. He exchanged a look with her and her look said their courting had progressed to the point at which she could trust him with her deepest secret, which was that she knew and was proud of his love.
Rain, and, some months later, snow made it but prudent for them to wait for the car under shelter.
The awning of the Budapest Café protected them, and the café itself was just beyond the awning. Both were pleased with the unexceptionable choice of refuge. There were coffee, tea, cakes, Bohemian pastries, and light ethnic food.
The Budapest was a luncheon resort, sufficiently superior to a coffee shop or lunch counter to appeal to the genteel, the shabby-genteel, and those who enjoyed, or did not mind, their company.
The tablecloths were pale yellow; the tea and coffee cups were placed on paper doilies. The clientele was exclusively middle-aged women. Annie and Mike were content that the atmosphere effectively protected and restrained, and, so, advanced their infatuation.
Annie held, for him, the inviolable purity of the pregnant woman, the young mother, the young bride. He’d seen it in France, at the Front, in women whose only defense was their defenselessness and a reliance upon the understood inviolability of their state.
He’d thought it, likely, a function of a shared religiosity; for it needed no one to explain that those who touched the defenseless woman, virgin, mother, or bride, were damned to hell. The French and Belgians shared the Catholic adoration of the mother. The Germans did not.
Parlow suggested this might have been the impetus for their rape of Belgium, whose first victims, the myth ran, were the Belgian nuns. He, though a noncombatant, assumed the atrocity stories were myth, as he assumed most stories which inflamed or ratified the passions were myth, as indeed were most stories presenting themselves as news.
“If it were true tragedy,” he’d said, “we would avert the eyes. And we might kill or rage, but I believe we’d tell no one—and most certainly not for money.
“As we do. All newspapermen loathe themselves.”
Annie had asked Mike about the War. It seemed a safe topic: neither love, nor his work, and so he spoke of it simply, retelling or embellishing, though never inventing, the droll.
He took great care in his tone to have it understood that he felt his job was to amuse and to divert her, always lightly, for the time they spent together was the only meaning either desired.
As the weeks progressed, he saw that she took increasing care with her appearance. He was charmed, and thought that even the almost-deniable touch of rouge, and the merest touch of lipstick, could not diminish her shocking virginal beauty. Crouch and the City Room had noted his behavior, and had guessed its cause. But only Parlow knew the name. “There’s only one cure for it,” he had said, “but, unfortunately, no one knows what it is.”
The fat Hungarian owner of the Budapest was good enough at his trade to spare the couple knowing glances, and smiles, and fulsome performance; Mike appreciated his courtesy. He wondered if Annie noticed, and concluded she had no need to do so. She was a convent girl, to Mike’s eyes incapable of guile or sin. For good or ill, he would, if he could, mediate between her magnificent, sad reserve and a world by which, if he had his way, she would never find herself affronted.
It was unclear to Mike how their love might progress. He saw her gratitude for his restraint, and was delighted with himself for discovering how to make her happy.
One evening, having safely put her on the trolley, he found himself singing softly. He stopped, and thought, “Oh. I suppose this must be courting.”