The Girl in the Blue Beret by Bobbie Ann Mason Read Free Book Online Page B

did not say that the English girls were so desperate for sex that they would have braved machine-gun fire to get to the GIs.
Thought I’d forgotten your birthday, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t, so Happy Birthday, Darling! Wish I were there with you. I’d spank you on one end and kiss you on the other! You know, honey, sometimes I have the feeling that in one or two minor details I just might be falling short of the perfect man for you. One of those minor details is that even when I’m 80 years old and beginning to lose the bloom of youth, I’ll undoubtedly still get caught short on Christmases and your birthdays. So will you please forgive me for not giving you something for your birthday this year and get your present for you for me? (Should that be “for me for you”?) Preferably some of them swell black things with the black trimmings. When you put ’em on, think of me, and I’ll think of you putting ’em on .
And on your next birthday I will attend to all that there stuff myself .
    Marshall was stunned. He didn’t recall writing such lovey-dovey letters. When he looked back, it was mostly aviation stuff he thought about.
    But he remembered the English girls.
    “These girls are wild!” said Al Grainger. Grainger had been cornered by a big-boned cutie at the dance the weekend before Christmas, when busloads of English girls arrived. Marshall quickly selected the first pretty girl he saw and zoomed across the room toward her, with his wing flaps down. She saw him coming and opened her arms. It was as if they were long-lost lovers reuniting on a railway platform. She was Millie, with a brother in the RAF, and between dances, they chatted about bombers. Then the phantom of Millie’s sweetheart off in the infantry on the continent of Africa came between them, and he saw that she wished he were her Christopher and not a lanky Yank. If it had not been for such thoughts, Marshall and Millie might have had a spontaneous coupling right there on the dance floor, while the band was playing “Frenesi.” It astonished him that anyone would attempt to imitate Artie Shaw on the clarinet. Some of the girls jitterbugged to “Frenesi” in a frenzy, whirling their skirts with abandon, burning off the gin they gulped between dances, trying to forget their faraway sweethearts. Marshall and Millie danced to the end of a slow song, bodies pressed tightly together, and he said, “Thank you. He’ll come back. Trust me.” They parted, and a bit later he thought perhaps she would interpret his words as Yankee arrogance—now that Uncle Sam’s flyboys were there to win the war for the English, she could be sure her boy lover would return.
Ma chèrie ,
J’ai une femme et cinq fils!
How am I doing, honey, with my French lessons? My college French is coming back to me. I’ve got a couple of pamphlets that I’m going to spend some of my spare time on, hoping, of course, that my linguistic accomplishments will be merely cultural and not of practical value .
    *
Hello, honey ,
I just got back from the show here on the base. It was “Palm Beach Story,” with C. Colbert and J. McCrea. I thought it was pretty good, although a bit risqué for these ingenuous blue eyes of mine! This makes two nights in a row that I’ve patronized the post flickers .
    *
I took some swell pictures today, baby, and I hope to be able to send you some prints. Just got off work a little while ago and I am dog-tired, plum worn out and exhausted. I’m going to make a quick trip to the mess hall and come back and climb into bed, and I hope no one wakes me until noon tomorrow .
    He took his old camera on one of the missions. He remembered patching a couple of pinholes in the bellows and polishing the lens. He wanted to get some action shots, but there wasn’t much action that day. He snapped Webb at the controls, then Webb snapped him, cigarette dangling from his lips, his helmet flaps loose. Out the window other planes in the formation were visible, like