somewhere beyond the sea
(somewhere, waiting for me)
The room is all dark wood panels, an embrace of warm, dusky lighting and cigarette smoke. It is a room filled by beautiful people, by men in dinner jackets with polished shoes and polished smiles, by women with coiffed hair and sparkling eyes and elegant silhouettes. And the music, oh the music. It sweeps Peggy away as she enters, a melody like silk on a summer evening breeze that fills the room. It breaks her heart a little, lifts her heart a little.
"What d'ya think, English?"
Angie is almost bursting beside her, eyes expectant, smile almost a smirk. Peggy beams at her. "It's wonderful, Angie."
Angie finally allows herself to grin. "Yeah, I thought you'd like it." She takes Peggy's arm and leads her to the bar; they weave between swaying couples, between clusters of girlfriends whispering over cocktails and groups of men smoking around tables who glance at them as they pass.
"So, d'you dance?" Angie asks with glittering eyes once they've settled at a table near the corner. She sips her drink through a straw, smiling around it as she watches Peggy watching the dancefloor. There's a kind of longing in her eyes, Angie thinks. A sadness, but a sweetness too. A fondness for a memory.
"I used to," Peggy says quietly. "Sometimes. When I had the right partner."
Angie raises an eyebrow. Her lips relinquish the straw to smile wider. "The right partner, huh?"
Bringing her gaze back to her, Peggy smiles. She remembers similar words in a different voice, a different time. "Yes."
"Well now you gotta tell me more. Who was this right partner? Someone back home?"
Without realising, Angie has hopped to the edge of her seat, elbows on the table as she holds her drink and watches Peggy over the rim of the glass. They talk about a lot of things – work, films they've seen, cities they'd like to visit and the best places to buy stockings – but never the past, never childhood memories or lost loves. Somehow, it doesn't come up.
Peggy seems to consider, gaze following the wooden veins of the table, the small chip by her glass stained at the edges by polish. The warm light of the room softens her eyes, her smile, and in a fleeting instant Angie feels profoundly sorry for whoever the man is that lost her. She wonders who lost who, or if the war caused them to lose each other in that way it does, leaving memories and hearts, letters and missed dates, to wash up on abandoned shores in the aftermath. Always, always too late.
"No, he was from New York, from Brooklyn," Peggy says after a moment. She meets Angie's gaze and smiles. "His name was Steve."
"Oh yeah?"
Peggy nods and smiles wider, takes a sip of her drink. The words come surprisingly easily after that.
"His name was Steve," she says again, and she can see him. Skinny, only five-foot-something of pure daring. Blue eyes. A smile in cahoots with a secret. She goes on, heart swelling with a familiar affection. "He was a soldier. A good one. He was an even better man. The type to jump on a grenade to save his crew rather than run with them. He was smart, oh god he was smart…the reckless kind of smart, sometimes, but smart all the same. Well-mannered, considerate…brave. He was…" Her breath catches and Angie watches the melancholy touch her smile. "He was so brave. The bravest man I ever knew."
"What happened?"
Peggy takes a large mouthful of whisky. She winces a little at the alcohol and the memory. "There was a…a plane crash, I suppose. He went down over the Arctic and they…they never found him. I guess technically he's lost at sea, but… One minute he was talking over the radio, we had a date, to go dancing, and the next minute…"
Angie's brows knit together in sympathy as she reaches across the table for Peggy's hand. "My gosh, Peg, I'm so sorry. How come you never mentioned before? And to think I brought you here to cheer you up then made you tell me… I'm so sorry."
Shaking her head, Peggy smiles and squeezes her hand. "It's alright. It's…nice, actually, to talk about him with someone who didn't know him. It's nice to remember my Steve without having to accommodate everyone else's."
"Popular guy?"
She almost laughs. "You could say that."
"Well, he musta been pretty special for you to be all doe-eyed over him, this Steve. That's all I'm saying."
Peggy allows herself to laugh this time and squeezes Angie's hand harder. With her free hand, she drains her glass. "I wish you could have met him. I think he would have really liked you, Angie."
Smiling, Angie looks over at the dancefloor, at the couples enchanted by the music, stepping and gliding in time. There are husbands and wives, lovers, friends, young girls trying to learn the steps together and young men watching nervously from the sides, trying to puzzle the best time to approach. She looks back at Peggy. "I think he'd want you to go on dancing, English."
Peggy's glass finds its spot decisively back on the table. Still holding Angie's hand, she stands, pulling her up with her. She thinks of Steve, with all his kindness and all his courage. She thinks of his compass with her picture in, of their last kiss, of how he would have wanted her to go anyway, at eight o'clock that Saturday to the Stork Club. She smiles. "I think so too."
"Right well there's the gentleman over by that table on the right with the glasses, I guess they're helpin him because he can't stop staring, or – "
Laughing, Peggy is already tugging her toward the dancefloor.
"Oh lord, I should warn you, Peg, I hardly know the steps or how to not tread on your toes…"
Peggy beams at her, alive in the dusk of smoke and light and music that swells around them. "Neither did Steve. Come on, I'll show you."