She had gone one weekend with the Maltese to Brighton and there she had won a talent competition in a pub, singing “Long Ago and Far Away,” and an agent in the audience had contacted her a few days later and offered her a six-month contract singing in the Lancashire clubs. The Maltese had immediately asked her to marry him; but even at eighteen she had wisdom and ambition enough to sign the contract.
The contract had been extended to a year and she was in constant demand. The pretty face, the beautiful body and the little-girl voice were just what they wanted. But the American contract had been her real step up the show-biz ladder. Both Guild and Equity rules had been relaxed because she was entertaining only American troops including active service zones. Several shows at overseas bases and scores of shows at army camps in the United States had made her a real professional. Sure of herself and capable of negotiating her own contracts. Well aware of the limitation of her talents but equally aware of how to use what she had to the full. She was billed as a singer and she no longer stripped, but her act started in a pale blue chiffon evening gown and ended in the pale blue bikini. She didn’t consider herself promiscuous, but she took it for granted that good bookings sometimes had to begin on a leather couch, and from time to time she slept with men just because she fancied them. But there were no emotional entanglements. Not on her side anyway.
In the officers’ mess after the show that night, dressed now in the blue gown, she was persuaded to sing one last song before she retired for the night. She pleaded that she couldn’t sing unaccompanied and a young officer was pushed from the crowd and forced to the piano. An old but in-tune Bechstein grand. She asked them what she should sing and they shouted out half a dozen different titles. She turned to the pianist and he grinned and winked as he played a slow introduction, and she smiled as she recognized the tune. As he came to the chorus she sang softly, “… and when two lovers woo, they still say I love you, on that you can rely … no matter what the future brings … as time goes by …” There was complete silence as she sang, and for a few moments after she had finished, and then the applause was real. Not soldiers’ applause for a pair of long legs and a bit of nostalgia, but genuine show-biz applause that made her blush and turn to look at the pianist. Ten minutes later, after one last drink, a US Marine colonel escorted her to her quarters, and half an hour later he was in bed with her. And he drove her himself to the airstrip the next morning.
It was two months later when she met the pianist again. He was a captain now and he took her out to dinner after the show at Fort Huachuca. It was one o’clock in the morning when he drove her back to the camp. He had stuck in her mind for two reasons. He wasn’t in any way handsome, but she found him attractive. Most men spent the meal-time gazing down her cleavage as they, arrogantly or diffidently, according to their natures, sold their virtues and importance; but the piano-playing captain asked her about herself and listened attentively as she gave him a strictly censored version of her life and career. He was sufficiently sympathetic for her to expand the details far beyond her usual bowdlerized scenario. The other thing that impressed her was that he didn’t proposition her, and even sitting in his car in the moonlight outside her hut he didn’t make a pass at her. Just a peck on the cheek as he left her on her porch and then walked back to his car.
She was twenty-six then, and she guessed that he was just turned thirty; but he had an almost fatherly attitude to her. Caring and concerned, and undemanding. She thought about him often.
Mrs. McVickar had the look on her face that her husband recognized all too well. As a busy consular official at the US Embassy in Moscow he often had to absent himself from cocktail parties and even their own private dinners. And his frequently delayed arrival at even normal meals was a constant source of friction. But being a professional diplomat he reacted patiently because he recognized the inconvenience and frustration that he caused.
As he pulled out the chair for his wife he said, “Well, I thought I’d seen it all but that little scene was absolutely …” he paused “… I can’t think of the right word … bizarre’s probably the only word to describe it.”
“The strawberries are the last we shall get in Moscow this year, John. And the tomatoes too.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll have the chicken if you’d prefer the turkey.”
“There’s plenty for both of us so don’t go all diplomatic and sacrificial.”
“Were there any phone calls for me?”
“Two. The details are on the pad.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t remember.”
John McVickar took the hint and got on with his salad.
“I can never understand why cold chicken tastes so much nicer than hot chicken.”
“Tell me about the bizarre scene,” she said, ignoring his comment.
“This lunatic comes bouncing into my office like the Demon King. Throwing his passport on my desk. Practically foaming
