I could have watched them forever. By this point many eyes besides my own were watching Hazel Windicott, a well-known commodity in the parish, as famous for shyness as for music, dancing with the tall young stranger. When the song ended, and she opened her eyes, she saw James’s face watching her closely, but over his shoulder there were other faces, whispering, wondering.
“I need to go,” she said, pulling away. “People will say . . .”
She flooded with shame. How could she betray this moment to fear of others?
He waited openly, calmly, without suspicion.
What did she owe to other people anyway?
“Thank you,” she said. “I had a lovely time.”
She looked up nervously into his dark brown eyes. You’re wonderful, they said.
So are you, her long-lashed eyes replied.
“Miss Windicott—” he began.
“Call me Hazel,” she said, then wondered if she ought.
The dimples returned. She might melt. Other people didn’t matter. Let them gossip.
“Miss Hazel Windicott,” he said, “I report for training in a week.”
She nodded. “I know.” He’d already told her. It was so unspeakably awful. Already lads she’d known had died in the trenches.
James took a step closer. “May I see you again before I go?”
She chewed on this shocking proposal. This was not the way of things. Introductions, chaperones, supervision. Parental permission at each step. Large ladies like naval battleships prowling the seas of church socials, scouting for improper hand-holding and clandestine kisses. The war had relaxed propriety’s stranglehold, but only somewhat.
James stewed. He’d said too much. Moved too fast. The thought made him sick. But what choice did he have? He had only one chance to get to know Hazel Windicott, the piano girl.
“May I?” he said again.
Hazel’s father appeared in the doorway.
“How soon?” she asked James.
He smiled. “As soon as possible.”
“How much?” asked Hazel.
The smile faded, leaving only that intent gaze in its place. “As much as I may.”
It was time for Hazel to demur politely, make her excuses, thank him for serving the Crown, and break away from this doomed solider boy. It was definitely time to say no.
“I’d like that.”
She smiled, the first time she’d smiled for this stranger. James’s poor heart might’ve stopped beating then and there if he weren’t young and healthy.
Hazel give James Alderidge her address. When she felt fairly certain the eyes in the room had moved on from gawking at her, and her father had fallen into chitchat with other arriving parents, she reached up onto her toes and gave James a kiss on the cheek.
James Alderidge didn’t know it was the second such kiss he’d received that night. He only knew he was in grave danger of heading off to the Front as a soldier in love.
The thought scared him more than all the German missiles combined. Should he pull back? Should he cut this fantasy short, and not seek out another encounter with the piano girl?
Music. Lashes. Lilac-scented hair. The light grip of her lips in a brief kiss upon his cheek.
And, once more, the music.
What he should do, James decided, and what he would do, had no bearing upon each other.
APHRODITE
The Kiss (Part I)—November 23, 1917
IF THAT KISS caused James a night of agonizing wonder, of delicious bafflement, he was not alone. For Hazel’s part, the bafflement was wondering what on earth had come over her, and the agony was dreading what James must think of her. She, Hazel Windicott, who never looked at boys! The respectable, serious-minded young lady who spent hours each day practicing piano, who kept her head while other girls did . . . whatever it was that other girls did. Would this James think she was the sort of girl who went about kissing young men upon first acquaintance?
She walked home with her father, buttoning her coat collar close around her neck. The night was unusually cold. Her left arm still remembered resting itself upon James’s arm, and her right hand remembered holding James’s hand. Her body remembered moving in time with his, and being pulled closer as the last song ended.
“Did some dancing, did we?” observed her father. Hazel was mortified to discover that she was acting it out, holding out her arms toward an imaginary James. So much for secrets.
“Mrs. Kibbey thought I ought to,” she said. Blame it on Mrs. Kibbey, will you? Weak!
Her father, a tall man with long arms and legs and fingers, and deep grooves carved into his cheeks, put an arm around Hazel’s shoulders.
“Mrs. Kibbey’s right,” he said. “You need to live a bit more, my girl, and have fun. Not just stay cooped up with old folks like your mother and me.”
She leaned her head against her father’s shoulder. “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “You aren’t ‘old folks.’”
“Tell that to Arthur,” her father said. “Arthur” was the arthritis that plagued his wrist and knuckle joints. “I mean it, Hazy. You should spend more time with people your age. Just promise me you won’t fall in love with a soldier boy. You don’t need your heart broken in two.”
She nodded. She couldn’t exactly look her dad in the eye just then. And she certainly wasn’t about to make any promises.
For pity’s sake, she scolded herself once more. You are not in love with that boy. You’ve only just met him tonight, and danced two dances. People who talk of falling in love after just one meeting have their heads full of pillow down.
Why, then, had she kissed him on the cheek?
APHRODITE
The Kiss (Part II)—November 23, 1917
WHY HAD HAZEL kissed James on the cheek?
This was the question tormenting James as he circled St. Matthias’s block. Up Woodstock Terrace, along East India Dock Road, down Hale Street, along High Street, and back. Breezes off the Thames brought the cry of seagulls and the clang of the dockyards. Up ahead, the lights of Poplar twinkled.
Was it a sisterly sort of thing? Surely that was all the kiss meant: Do not hope for more, you strange stranger. Here is where my view of you begins and ends: platonic goodwill. Patriotic gratitude. Here’s a quick little peck to prove it. Now goodbye.
He groaned. He’d heard of things like that. Girls who went about bestowing kisses on soldiers in their khakis on train platforms, and on new conscripts at recruiting stations.