The Crimson Shaw Page 4

  “What do you think, Lawrence?” I blinked.

  “About what?” Keane laughed, the strong sound of a trained baritone shaking through him like thunder in a summer’s storm.

  “Breakfast. I learned how to fry up a decent pan of eggs and rashers in the navy, and I did see some fresh oranges inside. After that we can go into the city and buy some proper clothes. How does that sound?” I nodded and was rewarded by another shower of sweet rain. The birds sang in glory, and all of life fell once more into the tellable joviality one must always believe to lay just around the next bend. For every pain, there is a drop of hope. For every pint of blood, a salvation. And, for every friend, a companion.

  Keane swung the towel over his shoulder, put a hand on my elbow, and together we trudged back up toward the house.

  “BY GOD, LAWRENCE,” Keane chuckled as he came out of the tailor’s. “You must be the one woman on earth who can finish her shopping before a man. Either you are truly a fine example of the female sex, or that tailor took far too long with his measurements.”

  “I think I rather like the first explanation.” I grinned. “At last you are admitting women can be more efficient than men.”

  “I beg your pardon? I said no such thing.”

  “Hm, well, you should. It would look far better to admit it now than be wrong later.” Keane’s shoulders shot back and his eyes hardened to silver.

  “Me? Wrong? Really, I—”

  “—Relax, Keane, I was only jesting. Your pride can be most insufferable at times.”

  “Says the most stubborn, prideful, and infuriating woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.” I really did not know what to say then, and my companion damn well knew it. A self satisfied grin quickly swept across his face at the very instant his eyes twinkled with amusement. In a flash he had stolen the wrapped parcel from beneath my arm and held it suspiciously with a scrutinous eye. “Are you sure you bought everything you need? No truso? No trunks? No ridiculous amounts of hats and curlers bubbling up to your ears? Or are you hiding a ridiculous amount of baggage nearby?” I snatched back the wrapped bundle, shaking my head with an exasperated sigh.

  “Really, Keane, you need to think more highly of yourself. After all, calling yourself baggage may be a sure sign of oncoming depression . . . or dementia.” He had not the chance to respond as a shrill voice warbled his name in such a careless way I had not thought it was his name at all.

  “Mr. Keane? Mr. Keeaaannneeeee?” She came at us like a mad woman, sashaying her hips with such exaggeration I could have swore she would topple over on those high heels of hers. I needn’t have looked at Keane to know every muscle in his body had stiffened into a stance looking every bit as depressing as an old Victorian banker.

  “Miss Smith,” He greeted simply, straining his face into the most excruciating of smiles. “You are looking well today.” In fact, the woman was most certainly not looking well. Rather she looked every bit as ugly as she did the day before when she had marched out of the theatre. Her dark hair was the color of sodden ash, burned by fire and soaked with styling products. (I was quite relieved Keane was not smoking at the time, else she go up in flames.) What I suspected to be a ruddy complexion was hidden behind buckets of makeup, just as her too-large lips were accentuated all the more by gaudy red lipstick. In addition to this, her nose was large and ill-shaped, her figure was rather lumpy, and her fingernails were painted such vulgar shades of blue I wished only to turn myself from her completely. A sickening knot in my stomach formed when her screeching giggles prodded at my ears with rusted needles.

  “Ohhhh, you are a charmer, aren’t you Mr. Keane. Or can I call you Brendan? I think I will. It’s a real nice name. Real British-like. You are British, aren’t you? You sure sound like you are.” The woman suddenly turned to me as though I had clawed my way up from the burning earth with a third eye glued to my forehead. “And who are you?” Keane cleared his throat and shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Miss Smith, may I introduce you to Miss Joanna Lawrence.” I offered my hand but, rather than finishing the greeting, the woman pulled her painted fingers away and glared at me with something very near to hatred.

  “Funny. She doesn’t look like a secretary.” I felt my fists clench at my sides. Surely America held some laxity toward pummeling women in the streets. It was, after all, for a good cause. My dignity. Keane was first to the tackle.

  “I should say not. Miss Lawrence is an educated young woman who is her own person.”

  “Educated isn’t the word I’d use.” The woman chirped. I ground my teeth. Of course it wouldn’t, the cow. She probably didn’t know any words longer than two syllables able to be said with any air of decorum. Keane finished the conversation—if it could be called a conversation—with a few gentlemanly words and—God save us—a cold, formal kiss to the wretched woman’s hand. I thought she would faint dead away onto the pavement.

  And I would have left it to Keane to pick up the shattered pieces.

  As it was, we walked another three blocks before either of us had the courage to speak up again. Keane sighed heavily, reached for his cigarette case, lit one, and blew a long puff of white haze. With one, fatal glance, he caught me.

  “Out with it, Lawrence.”

  “Keane, have you ever considered—may we walk through the park?” My companion’s dignified brow furrowed considerably. Rarely—if not never—had I ever suggested such a thing so utterly ridiculous and off handed. I abhorred the storybook romanticisms that even bordered leisure, and despised the likes of those who made a life within its pages. Keane; however, obliged my request and, clasping his hands nautically behind his back, chartered a new course toward Shaw’s Hell of pleasure.

  The park was like most any other park I had seen. Green grasses, screaming children with sticky fingers, decrepit men on benches, and a variety of trees spotting the worn paths. In the heat of the morning, men had shed their suit jacket and women wore their lightest blouses and skirts. To my pride and misfortune, I was still wearing my leather jacket as Keane half-heartedly paraded us up and down the dirt paths. His monologue began as some effortless forms of polite conversation before trickling into the dull dribble only the most desperate could supply. I listened to him ramble on about the improvements made to help the millions of soldiers suffering from shell-shock, the benefits of physical exercise, the hot weather, the ocean, the history of sailing ships, the Flying Dutchman, Irish folklore, male fashions, theological similarities in American culture, America in general, England, Ireland, France, the division of German, the threat of a possible third war in the future, the conspiracies that another such war would include nuclear bombs fired from space by green creatures with four eyes and—

  “Damn it, Keane, that’s absurd!”

  “Thank God for that.” My companion exclaimed, dropping dramatically onto a nearby bench. “Really, a man can only carry on a thread of conversation for so long before truly doing himself a mischief.”

  “Why do you feel it necessary to say anything at all. Haven’t you heard the phrase, If you haven’t anything nice to say—”

  “—Lawrence, you demean yourself.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, you. Do you realise we have been walking for the better part of an hour and you have said no more than two fragmented sentences that entire time?” I folded my arms and glared down at Keane.

  “And what would you prefer my reaction to be? Green creatures indeed. If you find my company that deplorable, I’ll go.”

  “Oh, Lawrence.” Keane chided, wagging his head slowly and motioning for me to sit beside him. Which I did.

  But at a respectable distance.

  “Blast it all, Keane. What is so all-fired important about what I haven’t told you? I keep a lot of things to myself. For instance, I have a distance cousin in Dover who is married to some fifth cousin, twice removed from Eisenhower. There, do you feel better knowing that? Or would you rather me tell you about this neighbor boy when I was litt
le who was so damn fat he once got stuck in his chair at school? Or perhaps I should provide the tale of Bobby Hensle Jack, who was such an ass I clobbered him over the head with a complete volume of Charles Dickens’ works. Or—” I did not stop out of lack of oddities speckled through my life, but something far more sinister. Keane was laughing.

  The damn man was laughing.

  “By God, Lawrence, you do know how to avoid a topic, don’t you. And just when I thought you had the nerve to ask me something serious.”

  “Oh?” I sat a little straighter. “And what, pray tell, would that question be?”

  “I expect you were going to suggest we be married.”

  I slapped him.

  It was nothing fancy or the blind swing of an emotional female, but a good, open-handed crack against his jaw.

  I slapped him once.

  Only once.

  Hard.

  Just as quickly as I had struck, I leapt to my feet with my fists ready to pummel the sod into the wooden bench.

  “How—How dare you!” I spat venomously. Keane had not so much as flinched at my strike, though I noticed the slightest dusting of red along his left cheek. His eyes remained that steady blue and—damn the man—even his voice still sounded reasonable.

  “Am I wrong? Tell me I am, and I shall apologise immediately.”

  “I—”

  “There, see, you can’t because it’s true. You think we should be married, though I can’t imagine why the thought occurred to you. Lawrence, I have met enough women in my time to know they hold the realms of matrimony on some idealistic throne. While it may have its social and moral advantages, and although I am by no means against such an arrangement—please sit down, Lawrence.”

  “No.” I would not ‘sit down’. I would not give him the satisfaction of winning so much as a pawn on the chess board. But when my refusal hit his ears, he rose to his feet. I had stood before him a thousand times, yet it never ceased to amaze me just how much he towered over me when he took my shoulders in his hands and forced my eyes to meet his.

  It was never safe to look into those watery blue eyes.

  When his voice came again, it had lost some of the sharp English clip I had known for so long. Or, perhaps it had not been lost, but overshadowed by the sing-song brogue of Cork. It was just a smattering upon certain vowels—a mere brush—but it was enough to just be noticable.

  “Lawrence, listen to me. I am fifty-five years old. I have long been accustomed to the freedom and seclusion of bachelor life. You would be wasting your life for something that could last only a few decades. I would not—could not—force you to endure such a fate.”

  “And you believe that you have the power in the world to speak for both of us? I never said I wanted to marry you.” I tried to tear myself away, to wrench my shoulders from his grasp, but he caught my arm and tugged me back. His fingers dug into my sleeve, but my flesh was unharmed. And my soul burned.

  “Think of it. No matter what, there will come a day when I will be dead, and you will have to live. What if we had wedded ourselves? What if—by some unread twist of fate—you would be my wife? When I die, you would be a young widow.” Keane’s voice, filled with an energy I feared to properly place, immediately dropped low about my ears. “And Lord knows there are far too many of those already.”

  “But I never said, or even suggested—”

  “God, Lawrence, do you think I care so little you must speak your mind at every given moment for me to know your heart? I may be a man. I may be—on exceptionally rare occasions—rather dim. But I am not a bumbling buffoon.”

  “Nor are your words logical. Why would I want to marry you? Why? To stop some old hag who attempts to dictate morals when she knows not the binds of ethics or the sorrows of forgotten dreams?” The grip on my arm lessened, strength giving way to a heavy warmth spreading along my flesh. A sign of hope and sorrow. I had crossed a barrier too wide for my young mind to comprehend. But an inability to understand does not mean that I could not recognise the abyss over which I balanced. I had taken a step too far. A leap too long. A hope that was hopeless.

  Keane’s fingers became feathers upon my sleeve; an angel’s breath of a door that should never again be open.

  “Do you really imagine I would succumb to the bond of matrimony to stop busibodies—like Miss Smith—from wagging their tongues anytime we are seen together in public? Do you?” I said nothing. Anyone who has ever been in such a position has been told to do so. I said nothing. Not even my name, rank, or serial number. I just ripped myself from his hands and strode quickly away.

  He did not follow.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Summer 1916—Palermo, Italy

  “ . . . And should the ship not take its place

  Upon the silvering tree

  Let not what was or would have been

  Become what’s yet to be.

  Oh, hark the angels that do sound

  Let trumpets they do play

  Announce that what I have found

  Upon this forein bay.”

  “Oh, Brendan, that was beautiful.” The young woman hummed as she buried herself further against his chest. How could he help but smile and tug her even closer to him when they sat on the front steps of her stucco house. Brendan Keane, seaman of His Majesty's Royal Navy, never ceased to wonder at the city’s enchantment. Vividly painted homes speckled the horizon until gradually fading into a churning ocean that sang as crisply as a music box for all who lived near its waves. There was nowhere quite like Palermo in his mind. Nowhere in the world. He would be content to grow old in the warmth of her arms, to sail the painted horizon and return to nights of wine and dancing. He could write his poetry, or perhaps take up some new hoby as its brother. Writing had always appealed to him as much, if not more, than returning to University in England after the war ended.

  If it would ever end.

  It had always been his dream—his passion—to pen words to pages in hopes that some foreign soul might read it and be reassured by its splendor. But when he returned to England, he would be just as content to study the mind as Dr. Sigmund Freud had written. Perhaps he could arrange to meet the Austrian. Of course, Freud was an unusual man at best, but wasn’t that true about most any genius that had walked upon the earth? Yes, once the war was over, his world could again fall into place.

  Just as the woman in his arms.

  He could have drowned in beauty of her. Thick, auburn curls hung well past her shoulders. Her eyes were the delightful shade of melted chocolate that splashed and rippled with every smile. And her laugh. Oh, what a laugh she had. It was the sweet twittering of birds in the warmth of the morning. There was nothing to fault in her. There was no sin to be forgiven by God or man. She was entirely perfect.

  And she was his.

  In thinking so, he pulled her tightly to himself in a firm embrace before wincing ever so slightly with the effort. She pushed back from him and ran a hand over his lapels with the weight of butterflies.

  “Is that shoulder still troubling you?” Oh how sweet her voice; how pure against the smog of life. She was the epitome of womanhood, the angel of femininity, and the goddess of Palermo. The young man hummed as he brushed a few stray curls from her ear.

  “How could anything trouble me when I’m with such charming company?”

  “You are an exasperating man; frustrating, aggravating, incorrigible—”

  “—And marvelous.” The young woman laughed. God, how he loved her laugh.

  “A marvelous fool. James told me how you dove off of the ship to save a man. In the middle of a storm, no less.” Brendan chuckled and wrapped his arm around her petite waist.

  “Natasha, have I told you lately how much I adore you?”

  “No, but you should, or I might be liable to forget.”

  “Forget?” Brendan pulled her face up to his and lightly brushed a kiss atop her lips. “There. You can’t very well forget that, now can you?” Natasha shook her head with a grin Bren
dan could not see as anything less than endearing.

  “How could I when you seem adamant to grow that infernal beard?” The young seaman raised his hand absentmindedly to stroke the trimmed hair along his jaw and lip.

  “I think it makes me look rather dignified.” He defended.

  “Well I think you look ridiculous. It’s too red. It makes you look Irish.”

  “Then I shall keep it.”

  “But I hate it.” Natasha argued. Brendan stood and offered her his hand.

  “Then I shall shave it off. Really, me dear, you’re far too much of a blasted female; telling me what and what not to do. Shouldn’t a man be able to wear his own hair if he likes?” She laughed, lifting a hand to his face that her thumb ran gently over his lips.

  “Do what you wish, Brendan Keane, but you won’t get another kiss out of me with that infernal thing in the way. And you certainly won’t receive any . . . other benefits?” The seaman nearly toppled off the steps.

  “Natasha!”

  “And I haven’t heard you asking anything that could make our little affair official.” Where the young woman appeared entirely unshaken by what she had just suggested, Brendan’s face would have proven a vivid red had his facial hair not have been the same eccentric color.

  “I won’t ask until I feel it’s time.” The woman rested her hands on the soft curves of her hips.

  “Oh, really, and when is that going to be?”

  “Natasha—”

  “Brendan, I see you once a year—twice, if we’re lucky—and each time we continue this proper courting as if we had all the time in the world.”

  “And have I not been a gentleman?” The beautiful woman sighed and ran her small hands from the buttons of his pea coat upwards until they were encircled around his neck.

  “That’s the problem. It’s as though you haven’t any feelings at all. Each time you return to Palermo, you come to my doorstep with sweets and flowers. A woman can only have so many of those without wanting something more. Something . . . memorable.”