Marion dreamed, remembering herself somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere without Nazis...Somewhere.
Outside Lexington, Kentucky, USA-Marion has been in America long enough to spend an entire season on the American Equestrian Circuit. It is now winter, and she is stabling her horse (and herself) with friends she has made during the season, at the Bertrand-Otto Stables located on 350 acres just outside Lexington in the more rural Nicholasville, Kentucky.
She has learned to eat her grits with only salt and butter, and to not only eat, but also look forward to a good Hot Brown. She has found that the bonnet of a car is known as a hood, a dinner is more often than not a massive hot luncheon, and there is no such thing as posting when trotting in a Western saddle.
The language of the locals (originally an all-but-indecipherable-to-her drawl) has begun to sound more natural to her ears. She can even, as for a parlor game or a lark when in public, impressively mimic it, banishing her round English tones altogether.
In her time away she has won more than one competition, and appeared more than a few times on local Society pages [due to the cachet of having honestly come by the title, 'Lady'], which she dutifully clipped and sent to her mother in London, as she knew they would please her, and also make her laugh, her crme de la crme of a mother (a bit of a snob, actually, if her hauteur entirely earned by her bloodline) reading an American Society column. "Upstarts!" the former Mrs. Nighten would no doubt proclaim, but drolly, to the other storied ladies with whom she often took tea.
The snow is falling over the fields and runs of the farm, its painted black horse fences picturesque against the white covering.
Marion can be found in the barn, near the stall bearing the placard of her own horse: Saracen's Beau, a mahogany brown Thoroughbred jumper who is her every pride and joy, and the reason she felt compelled to travel to the States.
She begins to groom him now, double tied with quick-release knots, and out of the stall, his slender legs and feet where she is concentrating her attention at the moment.
She is in a quarter-length winter wool coat in a caramel plaid with a red stripe run through it, and warm trouser pants, not unlike ones Katherine Hepburn is often seen in, though the screen star's are rarely stuffed into a pair of Wellies in an effort to keep them out of horse manure and other barnyard perils. Marion has her hair secured back in a snood to keep it out of the way of her work, and her complexion shows the ruddiness of her happy exertion in her cheeks and bright eyes.
A radio, used for the barn, is on, playing big bands tunes that are all the rage; Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey.
'Beau is obediently eating his oats for the evening (it is early evening, the day's light not yet faded away), which is one of the few things he does obediently. Particularly if Marion is not the one requesting something of him.
Another human has entered the barn, one of many on the vast property. It is Fred Otto, the eldest son of the Otto family, who with his father and other family own and operate the farm, stables and its prestigious breeding operation.
He has settled himself on a bench across the way, nearby the tack and trophy rooms, where he is able to best watch Marion at her work. She is so involved in what she is doing, so in love with both rote task and animal that her brain has not fully registered his being there, nor the sound of his truck's engine as he pulled it up to the barn.
It would not take a mind reader to discern that he is utterly enamored of his English boarder. Either that or he just really, intensely, likes her horse.
The Ottos, though they closely run their own operation, and all have professions, are wealthier than many among the upper nobility back in Britain. Their ways are informal, although not without certain unbreakable social mores (many of which Marion is only just beginning to sort out), and their hearts exceptionally warm, and worn (as she thinks all Americans' must be) right on their sleeves.
She has found her time here interesting, stimulating-no topic out-of-bounds (yet), few thoughts had that are not immediately shared. As she is exceptionally well-liked by the family entire, such behaviors have done nothing but charm her.
"Marion," Fred spoke, and she noticed his presence. "I swear by all my mama taught me, you are the canniest horsewoman I know."
As always, the smells of the barn, the hay, the wood and even the animals coalesce inside Marion as if shorthand for peace and pleasure. She lets her cheek rest against Beau's side and smiles. "You flatter me, Fred. But I know you. Your acquaintance with the equestrian world is far too broad for you to pay me such a compliment in good faith."
He ignored her rejection of his assertion. He knew an intuitive rider when he saw one. And she was exceptional, even at that. Saracen's Beau had been the darling of the Circuit that year, and his rider an even greater sensation. "What do you say to going to see the Derby next year?" It was rather early to start making such plans.
"What, track racing?" She was used to his ways, to his being around, their conversations as always pleasant, relaxed, family-like.
"Well, not just any race."
"No," she agreed, having been in-country long enough to know there was no correct answer but this, "not just any race."
She looked away from Beau and over to Fred on the bench and smiled. She did not know how much longer she might stay in America. More than once it had occurred to her that she might stay indefinitely, especially with things in Europe looking the way they were. She worried about her family there, her father particularly. He had not moved past the divorce as might be best for an older man who had only an absentee son, a daughter abroad, and membership to his club in his life.
"Maybe we might go as something..." Fred was saying. "Something more than just colleagues?"
"Friends?" she suggested.
"No, Marion," a sort of edge came into his voice. It was not angry or violent, but more impatient, as though she was not grasping something he was trying to impart to her. "As the man who might hope to marry you? Who might, even now, here in this barn hope to have won something of your undying affection...your interest, at least?"
She stopped him well before he could drop to one knee and spoil his dungarees in the stable's muck. She stood away from Beau's side. She stood a little straighter, with the memory of what she was about to say. "I can't marry you, Freddy."
He took a moment, during which he actually seemed like he was turning over what she had just said. No wonder she liked him so much. He had actually been listening.
"Can I ask why?" he shrugged his shoulders in her direction and put out two up-turned palms. "Is it a class-thing? Would your family give you trouble about that? Or is it just me? Is the farm not tempting enough? You can't lie and tell me you've been unhappy staying with us here. You can't convince me that we haven't...had our moments."
"No! No. I am...already engaged."
His eyebrows almost shot off his forehead. Surely they disappeared well up into and under the bill of the cap he was wearing. But still, in all of it, he could not suppress some trace of a smile; of bewilderment, perhaps, but a smile. "How can that be? We two have been inseparable for...months, now, and you have certainly never mentioned a fianc." He gestured to her hand, holding a hoof pick. "You wear no ring. Have you a ring? I would have remembered a fianc," and then he added, "My mama would have remembered a fianc."
Her voice seemed very small to her when she spoke. "It is only...that we are having a spat."
His next question was a fair one. "And do they usually last so long?"
"I do not know. This one has proved somewhat...unprecedented."
"Is he here? Is he home? Do you hear from him?"
"He has not written."
"But he knows where you are?"
"He would have no trouble locating me, I think." Then she tricked herself into thinking that she had forgotten the next fact: "He has enlisted." She had not.
"Marion," Fred began, half-laughing with disbelief. "You are...some kind of woman. I don't even feel like I can be mad at you. You just-you-you take a man's breath clean away. I'm body and soul in love with you right now, and you stand there looking like a girl that needs a good, solid," he scratched at the late day stubble on his jaw, "kissing, telling me you're promised to some...mystery GI an ocean away. And I should be angry, I should feel used and I should even doubt you're telling me the truth, but hot-damn it if the whole mess of it don't makes me that more in love with you."
Relief washed over her. She would not want this to end up in a quarrel, or worse, a tear-stained moment.
She reached deep into Saracen's Beau's personal grooming kit bag (it was leather and stamp-monogrammed, a bon voyage gift from her brother) and withdrew a cloth from inside. Knotted there on it so that it could not be lost without the cloth being also lost, was a ring. A Cartier ring. A sapphire as blue as his eyes, (though at the time he had said as hers) its brilliant facets seemingly as unending as waves on the ocean that separated its giver from its recipient.
On either side of the platinum art deco setting two long-cut diamonds sat. Four, he had told her, one for each of our children, predicting their future as was so often his game.
Fred, though no expert on precious stones, with his family's upper class social standing still no stranger to them, was more than impressed. "So, but for this," he indicated the ring in its dusty, mottled state of having not been cleaned or cared for for some time. "You would accept me?"
Marion wadded the cloth up in her fist, disappearing the ring that told of a promise made a quarter of the world away. "I would accept the farm, Freddy," she teased him with the truth. "With a clear heart I can at least say that."
Moonlight Serenade played on behind them. The snow continued to fall outside. The sun withdrew its last ray, and they laughed.
"Marion. Marion! You must wake up!" Eva Heindl had set her up in the bed, was shaking her quite vigorously.
Marion whimpered, not wanting to leave the bed, the warm memories her dreams had been sharing with her-though they were conflicted memories.
"We have ten minutes, Cherie. Ten minutes only to get you decently sober to stand for the toasts. You must drink this coffee, and the cheese...Sacre!" Eva gave up expecting Marion to sit, and backed her up to the headboard, propping her there like an oversized rag doll (Marion at present just about as flopsy) as she attempted a repair to her best friend's hairstyle and lipstick.
Again, Marion fell into the dream, into the past.
She ran to the barns, ran without breath without thought without conscious direction. With the crisp paper in her hands. The telegram in her hands.
She had not even opened it. Her hands shook violently as she attempted to bridle Beau, but she gave up. She would take him without.
She would ride, she would jump, she would let him take what there was of her emotions: fear, loneliness, panic, and simply let him have them, to use as he would.
He ran, he jumped, he galloped like a giant storm was about to erupt from the heavens above them.
And then, he stumbled.
As they were in a paddock not frequently used, (having jumped innumerable fences and various hedges to get here) and therefore unchecked for rabbit holes, he stumbled. And though he hadn't wanted to let her down, hadn't wished to part her from him, he threw her.
Marion, her mind told her as she parted with his back and flew onto the ground, you horse's arse, you can hold on to nothing. Nothing! And a small voice in her cried, Robin! like an echo.
The paper was still in her hand. The telegram.
Saracen's Beau had halted, and he looked down at her, scolding her. 'Look at what you have done to me,' his eyes said to her, 'I am lamed on account of this foolish unopened missive?'
As he stood he babied his right foreleg, not putting weight on it. 'Why are you such a coward?' he asked her. He tried to nip at the paper she held. 'I could eat it for you, protect you from whatever so frightens you about it.'
She raised herself on one elbow and rolled/dragged herself over to check his ankle. His precious, jumper's ankle.
It was not encouraging news. A sprain, at the least, at the very least. She could not, in good conscience, walk him back to his stall, now. Not even should she yet be ready to return.
.+.+.
When Fred found them it was nearly sunset. She had seated herself with her back to a tree, and Beau was still tenderly favoring his leg as she fed him the occasional apple from said tree.
It was decided Fred would go and return with the trailer to ease Beau's journey back to his stall.
"Mama's awful worried about you. Said you tore out of the house like a fright. That you'd gotten a telegram."
Marion looked at the beauty of the rolling green hills and the clear, crepuscular sky preparing for nightfall. "Pose your question again, Freddy," she asked him.
"My question?" he asked, never pretending he did not know what she was referring to. "Naw, Marion," he shook his head. "I may be a betting man, but even I can't ask you that question again."
"Why not?" She was confused.
"Well, you kept something from all of us. Something important, for a long time. And I can't imagine that your GI fianc is such a bad guy. That you could have told us. At that you could have broken off your engagement. But you didn't. Which means there's something going on, there. And now you get some sort of news today and take off on Beau here like the Devil himself is chasing you, and you steeplechase the poor ole boy right into a sprained ankle? But here I come to find you and you're not even upset about it, not even wanting to talk about it. About Beau. Instead you ask for a renewal of my proposal. Which means: there's something going on, there." He gave her a long look, from which she did not turn away. He did not seem angry or frustrated. Only, almost, sad. As if for her. "What did your telegram say?"
She answered him honestly. "I don't know." She held it out, as yet unopened.
He did not ask permission, he simply took it from her, opened and read it.
She looked at him, expectantly.
"Read it?" he asked.
She nodded, her hand to Beau's face. The smell of small green apples and horse in her nose.
"Military plane crash STOP No survivors STOP Robin listed casualty STOP Sympathies Clem STOP"
She did not react at all to the reading of it. Her hand did not move, her mind did not turn, her lungs did not expand. She did not feel cold: she was not frozen. She did not feel hardened: she was not turned to stone. She was wax, she was a Tussaud: the perfect non-living representation of herself, without mind, without senses, without pain.
She knew now the reply she could send home, had this telegram required one: 'Love affair crash STOP No survivors STOP Heart listed casualty STOP Save condolences all my fault Marion STOP'
"It is from your brother?" Fred asked, recognizing the name.
Marion did not answer, but buried her face into Beau's nearby warm neck, the regular, strong beat of his beastly heart a comfort, as she could no longer feel her own.
Fred watched on, knowing he would have bought her three dozen Cartier rings and sprained his own ankle repeatedly to have her clutch at him (even in her grief) similarly.
"I have to get to New York," she said, raising her head, the tracks of her now-coming tears streaking down her grimy-from-her-fall-in-the-dirt face. "To the Consulate, there. They will have news."
He took a step toward her, and she did, then, agree to the comfort of his arms about her.
"We will find out, whatever there is to find out, Marion, together. And then we will bribe, bully and scheme to find a way to get you home."
Ah, but he wished, he wished in good conscience he could bring himself to ask that question again.
...TBC...