must have been very close to the time America joined the war. I don’t remember on which side of the declaration it actually fell but there was war in the air, war on everybody’s lips.
More immediately, at least for our little household, the de Saulles divorce hearing had taken place the previous day. Little Jack was staying with his father, and so I had nothing to do. A message came down, very early, via Hademak, that Mrs de Saulles was not feeling well.
The hearing had not gone as she had hoped, Mr Hademak reported, though he refused to be drawn on the details. Mrs de Saulles wanted ‘isolation for her peace’, so she could reconcile herself to her new situation. She didn’t care what we did or where we went, but there were to be no servants in her eyesight until nightfall.
It was bitterly cold outside. Unseasonably cold. There was snow on the ground and what looked like the promise of more to come, but I had a free day. I contemplated spending it with Madeleine, at the movies – only she was busy with the car mechanic in Westbury, whose wife, Madeleine said . . .
Oh, Madeleine!
‘Oh, I know it!’ she cried.
You never mentioned a wife!
‘How could I?’ The only times I ever saw her weep, it was about the married car mechanic in Westbury. She adored him.
Mr Hademak offered to drive me to the station so I could spend the unexpected holiday with my father. Moved more by duty than enthusiasm, I accepted the offer. I had nothing better to do.
As I travelled into the city I searched the newspaper for details of the divorce hearing and was horrified to read that Rudy had played his part in it, after all. He had given his testimony, stood as a witness to Mr de Saulles’s adultery, and the reporter had gone to some lengths to mock him for it – mocked his dark appearance, his foreign accent, his profession, his decision to appear at all . . . It was painful to read.
I was mulling on all that, worrying for him, missing him, resenting him, dragging my feet through the busy crowd, that magnificent space at Penn Station, and feeling, for once, quite unmoved by it, when suddenly – I heard his voice! Was it possible? Was I dreaming? There were hundreds of people between us, rushing this way and that. And yet there he was, beneath the soaring arches, the giant columns, between all those hundreds and thousands of people – there he was. And in a few graceful, invisible steps, he was beside me, with his two arms wrapped around me.
‘Jennifer! . . . It is! It is you! I must be the luckiest man in New York! Where in heaven’s name have you been?’ He lifted me in the air, and he kissed me, one on each cheek, and it was so un-American; so careless – all I could do was to laugh. 1917, it still was; a lifetime ago. We had our hemlines still flapping just above our ankles! We were still so terribly correct! But Rudy’s warmth overrode all that. I could feel the people’s stares as they elbowed by. It couldn’t have mattered less.
‘Jennifer, wonderful Jennifer, where in God’s name have you been?’ he said again.
‘I should dearly love to tell you differently . . . ’ I laughed ‘ . . . only, Rudy, I think you know quite well where I’ve been!’
‘But I have left you so many messages – and nothing! Not a word! I wondered if I had done something to offend you . . . and so I thought and I thought – and I thought and I thought . . . and I could think of nothing!’
‘Nothing!’ I repeated. Like a fool. ‘Of course you’ve done nothing to offend me whatsoever . . . but you left messages where? At Roslyn? At The Box? Mr Hademak said you might have left them with my father.’
I had missed him and longed for him. Until that moment, with his arms still wrapped around me, I’d not the slightest comprehension how very much. I felt a rush of – relief, I suppose, flooding through me, and the most crazy, wild happiness . . . and then a lump in my throat, and my eyeballs stinging . . .
I longed for nothing more than to sink my head onto his shoulder and never ever to lift it again. He put me down, and gave me a moment to collect myself.
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