When I visited Manchester Square, I stopped to muse a while from a bench
just in front of Aunt Edith's house. It was, I noticed, available to let,
and I toyed momentarily with the idea of going to the travel agent that
very minute and cancelling my clipper passage back to New York. People
might think me mad, to abandon the life of a financier's widow for war-torn
London. To choose the rationing, the utility clothing, the shortages of
sugar, eggs, chocolate, coffee, tea, silk, tobacco, over the lands of
plenty – my Long Island mansion, Park Avenue brownstone, Floridan villa.
But it might be pleasant. I could so very easily remain here, in England, perhaps as a paying guest of some rural acquaintance. The war surely will not last for more than a further few years, and then I would be allowed to fade into obscurity, an elderly Englishwoman in an elderly English house, passing my days in austere respectability.
But I will not. I will return home, to America, to my parties and cars and money, and watch my friends die around me, one by one, until there is nobody left who remembers the old days.
From a radio, hidden on some windowsill high above the ruins of Manchester Square's garden, comes a song. It's that new one, played everywhere, like some queer disease, that infects everyone with its sad sorrow. I rise to leave, and the words drift down to me – "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
I stagger to my feet, haunted. The words are surely not applicable to me – they are too distant, too youthful – but they turn my heart to stone as I glance towards the pale grey skies and remember leaving Manchester Square, and the sun glinting off the ship. Mrs. Rosenberg, and Aunt Edith, and the servants, and Caroline and Robert, and Oxford Street, and Hyde Park. A world gone forever in a heartbeat flashes before my eyes as I return to my hotel, alone and chilled in the darkening twilight, a sorrowful, aging figure, self-pitying, far from home and yet so near.
"Hope keeps smiling through, just like you always do", sang the radio. I remember my husband, and my wedding day, and crush those thought quickly as I seat myself at my window to watch the setting sun sink beneath the park's horizon.
On Thursday evening, I watched the sunset alone from the boat deck before going down to dinner. The sky was clouded, the solar orb dimmed, and I abandoned the enterprise in search of sustenance.
But it might be pleasant. I could so very easily remain here, in England, perhaps as a paying guest of some rural acquaintance. The war surely will not last for more than a further few years, and then I would be allowed to fade into obscurity, an elderly Englishwoman in an elderly English house, passing my days in austere respectability.
But I will not. I will return home, to America, to my parties and cars and money, and watch my friends die around me, one by one, until there is nobody left who remembers the old days.
From a radio, hidden on some windowsill high above the ruins of Manchester Square's garden, comes a song. It's that new one, played everywhere, like some queer disease, that infects everyone with its sad sorrow. I rise to leave, and the words drift down to me – "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
I stagger to my feet, haunted. The words are surely not applicable to me – they are too distant, too youthful – but they turn my heart to stone as I glance towards the pale grey skies and remember leaving Manchester Square, and the sun glinting off the ship. Mrs. Rosenberg, and Aunt Edith, and the servants, and Caroline and Robert, and Oxford Street, and Hyde Park. A world gone forever in a heartbeat flashes before my eyes as I return to my hotel, alone and chilled in the darkening twilight, a sorrowful, aging figure, self-pitying, far from home and yet so near.
"Hope keeps smiling through, just like you always do", sang the radio. I remember my husband, and my wedding day, and crush those thought quickly as I seat myself at my window to watch the setting sun sink beneath the park's horizon.
On Thursday evening, I watched the sunset alone from the boat deck before going down to dinner. The sky was clouded, the solar orb dimmed, and I abandoned the enterprise in search of sustenance.