German line here, and we’d hate to leave you behind.”
Pyle and everyone listening laughed—of course they did. Liv had that way about her that left men wanting to feel charmed by her. She could read aloud nothing more than the orders calling off the strike each day, and if she meant to make them laugh, they would laugh. She could read the arrest-on-sight order with our names on it and men would laugh.
The same thing about her that drew their laughter caused them to allow her to win at the poker games we played to pass the time while we waited, although they let me win, too. We played for sticks of gum and for cigarettes, which we bet singly or in the three- or four- or nine-packs that came in the ration accessories: Lucky Strikes (“Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”), Chesterfields (“Milder—Cooler—Better Taste”), Camel (“Turkish & Domestic Blend”), and Chelsea (packaged inexplicably slogan-free). Even after the others started going down badly and began to play in earnest, we kept winning. Liv had to be reminded that three of a kind beat two pair, and she claimed “trips and a pair” once, not realizing that was a full house, but she won more than anyone. She was up four sticks of gum and thirty-six cigarettes, including two fancy French ones we all agreed could count as a ration three-pack each, when the men took to calling her Pitiless Livvie. The French cigarettes were thin and black, and Liv and I felt rather glamorous as we smoked them together, flaunting our success. I’d have thought that would be just the kind of thing to turn the others against Liv—her lighting those two fancy cigarettes and handing one to me even before the game was over, so thattheir owner had no chance to win them back. But it only made the men love Pitiless Livvie all the more.
W e harvested the few green beans and carrots and squash left in the farm’s garden for dinner after the others had returned to the press camp that night. I said a quick, silent prayer the way Mama and I did at home (“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts . . .”) and I made a tiny, surreptitious sign of the cross over my heart before brushing most of the dirt off the vegetables and eating them with an M tin of meat and beans. We slept, and when I woke in the darkness, I knew Fletcher had left us. His bedroll was there, though, and his gear was in the jeep still parked below.
Liv woke as I returned to the hayloft. “Can’t sleep?” she asked. Then, “Where’s Fletcher?”
She and I opened the doors in the gable and sat with our feet dangling over the edge, high above the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed into the moonless night. I wondered how long it would be before Fletcher had enough light to get whatever shots he was trying to get, and when he might return.
“Charles came to London to see me off even though we’d said our good-byes in New York,” Liv said. “That’s why we spent the night at Fletcher’s country home, why I know Fletcher. I’d still be back in New Hampshire, developing my film in a sink at night, if not for Charles.”
She reached up and pulled a piece of hay from my hair, rolled it between her fingers.
“‘You must be Olivia James. I guess you’re pretty good with a lens.’ Those were his first words to me.”
Her brother had enlisted by then, and she’d been livingalone in the home they’d grown up in. Charles had seen a photograph she’d taken of a friend of her father’s, and he’d arranged a train ticket to New York for an interview. When she’d presented her photos, Charles had studied the top one for a long moment before removing his glasses and cleaning them, replacing them for a second, closer look. She hadn’t known at the time what the gesture meant, but she’d learned soon enough that if she found some excuse to stop by his office with her shots, she could sink into the succor of Charles, in that small gesture of cleaning his glasses, delivering praise no words could
Pyle and everyone listening laughed—of course they did. Liv had that way about her that left men wanting to feel charmed by her. She could read aloud nothing more than the orders calling off the strike each day, and if she meant to make them laugh, they would laugh. She could read the arrest-on-sight order with our names on it and men would laugh.
The same thing about her that drew their laughter caused them to allow her to win at the poker games we played to pass the time while we waited, although they let me win, too. We played for sticks of gum and for cigarettes, which we bet singly or in the three- or four- or nine-packs that came in the ration accessories: Lucky Strikes (“Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”), Chesterfields (“Milder—Cooler—Better Taste”), Camel (“Turkish & Domestic Blend”), and Chelsea (packaged inexplicably slogan-free). Even after the others started going down badly and began to play in earnest, we kept winning. Liv had to be reminded that three of a kind beat two pair, and she claimed “trips and a pair” once, not realizing that was a full house, but she won more than anyone. She was up four sticks of gum and thirty-six cigarettes, including two fancy French ones we all agreed could count as a ration three-pack each, when the men took to calling her Pitiless Livvie. The French cigarettes were thin and black, and Liv and I felt rather glamorous as we smoked them together, flaunting our success. I’d have thought that would be just the kind of thing to turn the others against Liv—her lighting those two fancy cigarettes and handing one to me even before the game was over, so thattheir owner had no chance to win them back. But it only made the men love Pitiless Livvie all the more.
W e harvested the few green beans and carrots and squash left in the farm’s garden for dinner after the others had returned to the press camp that night. I said a quick, silent prayer the way Mama and I did at home (“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts . . .”) and I made a tiny, surreptitious sign of the cross over my heart before brushing most of the dirt off the vegetables and eating them with an M tin of meat and beans. We slept, and when I woke in the darkness, I knew Fletcher had left us. His bedroll was there, though, and his gear was in the jeep still parked below.
Liv woke as I returned to the hayloft. “Can’t sleep?” she asked. Then, “Where’s Fletcher?”
She and I opened the doors in the gable and sat with our feet dangling over the edge, high above the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed into the moonless night. I wondered how long it would be before Fletcher had enough light to get whatever shots he was trying to get, and when he might return.
“Charles came to London to see me off even though we’d said our good-byes in New York,” Liv said. “That’s why we spent the night at Fletcher’s country home, why I know Fletcher. I’d still be back in New Hampshire, developing my film in a sink at night, if not for Charles.”
She reached up and pulled a piece of hay from my hair, rolled it between her fingers.
“‘You must be Olivia James. I guess you’re pretty good with a lens.’ Those were his first words to me.”
Her brother had enlisted by then, and she’d been livingalone in the home they’d grown up in. Charles had seen a photograph she’d taken of a friend of her father’s, and he’d arranged a train ticket to New York for an interview. When she’d presented her photos, Charles had studied the top one for a long moment before removing his glasses and cleaning them, replacing them for a second, closer look. She hadn’t known at the time what the gesture meant, but she’d learned soon enough that if she found some excuse to stop by his office with her shots, she could sink into the succor of Charles, in that small gesture of cleaning his glasses, delivering praise no words could
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