The Lonely by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online Page B

Prestwick and look up a school friend and classmate from Westbury, Eagles Wilson, an ATC pilot flying the Atlantic run with couriers.
    But it was not until they were cycling through the grubby outskirts of Glasgow, past the seemingly endless rows of ugly, identical brick houses enlivened only by an occasional corner pub, that either of them realized how close at hand was their hour of parting, how near to an end their journey together.
    And so they were once more in a railway station, this time St. Enoch’s, enduring the same smoke and grime and eternal railroad noises and rush of people and porters and soldiers with clanking accoutrements, the roll and rumble of baggage trucks and the senseless effeminate shrieking of the eternally hysterical locomotives.
    Jerry had bought everything for Patches he could possibly think of—lunch, and a bottle of wine and a precious half-bottle of brandy, a box of chocolates, three detective novels, magazines, four packets of Player’s cigarettes—and was still prowling around the central bookstall looking for other things to buy her.
    Now that the moment was almost at hand, it seemed queer to be saying good-bye to Patches, to be putting her aboard a train that would take her away. But it was not really saying good-bye. She was only going to Kenwoulton, and he would see her again there, at the dances, or in town, perhaps even . . .
    His thoughts stopped there, because he kept seeing the figure of Lester Harrison at the bar of the officers’ club and hearing him say: “Pals while you’re together, but when it’s finished, that’s that. Most of ’em are hundred per cent. No tears, no trouble. Boom, it’s over! . . .”
    He stole a look at Patches. She was burned brown, and her grey eyes looked light and luminous against the healthy tan of her cheeks. There was a new lustre to the off shade of her hair, now coiled at the back of her neck, hair that he knew was as soft as the finest silk and as fragrant as May flowers. She had changed in the room he had taken at the hotel, and was wearing the same skirt and dark silk blouse in which she had met him. There seemed to be a faraway look in her eyes, but for once her soft, restless, mobile mouth was expressionless. He could not tell what she might be thinking.
    Now he had found her a place in a first-class carriage, and he was standing on the platform, looking up at her as she leaned out of the window, and there were five minutes yet to wait until the train should depart, and they did not know what to say to each other.
    Patches fought valiantly and gallantly against the tears that lay so close to the surface and yet that must be suppressed until she was alone, because that was how Jerry had wanted it. She had erected, as barriers against shedding them, the unforgettable memories of the hours of beauty they had passed together, but she knew they could not stand against the longing and the loneliness that would come later.
    To help her, she called upon the sense of remembered reality of the gloomy station, the familiar sights and sounds and smells, things she had been used to all her life when she went away on trips.
    She looked down at this dark boy with the crumpled cap on the back of his glossy head, and the young blue eyes beneath the heavily marked brows, the cleft chin and the gay, careless mouth—this Jerry, who was a piece of her heart, whose heartbeat she had felt, whose being she had shared, whose body had been there to touch when she stirred and reached out in the night—and told herself that it was just someone she knew, almost a stranger, come down to see her off.
    They had kissed good-bye on the platform, but it had not hurt too much then, for it had been but a brushing kiss and a hurried hug in the crowd rushing for places in the carriages.
    Jerry smiled up. “See you when I get back to Kenwoulton . . .”
    Patches said: “Have a good time, Jerry.”
    “You’ve been wonderful, Patches . . .”
    Closing carriage doors