Into The Fog

Oleg Volk

Warm colors of the incipient spring sunset gave the old Ostend
hotel a picture postcard look. Thick brick walls, crawling
with ivy, radiated the warmth absorbed through the day. Tamar,
chilled by the constant sea breeze, sought the comfort of her
temporary home without being much cheered by the expectation
of gaining it shortly. Though a Saturday, the day had not been
restful for her. Her fingers ached from the ten hours of
typing she had to do to gain her release from Europe.

Tamar Grant was thirty, a petite woman whose face was pleasant
without being memorable. To friends, she was amiable, to
strangers, a mask. She found life generally agreeable and
drifted easily through it. Her parents raised her in Boston
but, being British, they imposed upon her the old country
accent and some of its sensibilities. Tamar's wish, after
graduating, was to learn from the world. She came to Italy
right after college, back in 1932. That country soon grew
inhospitable to the likes of her, and she moved to France. Her
services as an English tutor were not in particularly great
demand, but she made ends meet. Her gains from the seven years
spent in Paris and, later, Reims were native proficiency in
the language and a French lover. That man taught her much.

The war concerned her very little, but her parents worried
aplenty. In early May, she gave in to their cabled entreaties
and made her way to Ostend to sail for New York. Just then,
the city became a trap, as the German advance suspended the
regular passenger traffic across the Atlantic. Tamar found
herself in a bind, unable to leave and uncertain of the
future. Her money would hold for a while, but she got herself
employed promptly as a typist for the British Expeditionary
Force. She had surmised, correctly, that she would have a much
better chance of gaining passage out of Belgium if attached to
the BEF, than if by herself as a civilian lost in the turmoil
of the no longer phony war.

That day, the city absorbed more refugees from Antwerp, and
German planes strafed some of the roads. Ostend had not been
bombed much, but her hotel did get hit once. The damage was
not great, but it created a great deal of dust from the
loosened whitewash and broken brick over the facade. As she
opened the door to the lobby, a cloud of particles came
down. For a second, Tamar saw the sun dogs filtered through
the cloud, and then it settled upon her clothes and hair. Some
got into her mouth and nose, and she began to cough. When she
could open her eyes, the reflection in the lobby mirror showed
a pale ghost which resembled a young woman in its general
outlines. Besides the ghost, stood a middle-aged bearded man
in a gray overcoat. She did not notice from where he
appeared. Through she did not cut the most glamourous figure,
Tamar wasn't upset at the thought of being seen. Strangers
mattered little: they could not embarrass her.

Something about this stranger sparked a hope of faint
recognition. He spoke with a Canadian accent, but annunciating
each word with exaggerated care. Deaf people spoke thus, she
remembered.

"Are you all right, Madam?" asked the man, then turned his
head to look a little to the left of her.

As Tamar replied, she realized that he was turning his good
ear towards her. She spoke a little louder than usual and her
voice echoed in the dark hotel foyer.

"Quite fine, thank you," she said, lapsing into the precise
accent of her Boston childhood "It's only the dust."

"Please excuse me...but your name wouldn't have been Miss
Grant once?" asked the man, his eyes catching the light of the
sunset behind her. She could not place him in her memory, but
the gleam in his eye said that he could place her. She nodded
assent. She was still Miss Grant, for her own Frenchman and
she had no plans of that special kind.

"You haven't changed much, Tamar," said the bearded man with a
smile "I recognized you even with all this chalk hiding your
pretty skin."

At this expression, she knew who he was. The shock of the
chance meeting added to her fatigue and she nearly fell. The
man saw her knees start to buckle and moved to hold her
up. The weakness lasted only a second, then the spring steel
was back in her bearing. She looked at the man straight and
smiled back, her expression friendly and yet curiously formal.

"Scott," she said in a normal tone of voice.

He stiffened. She repeated his name in a tone which she
reserved for her French lover and, before him, for Scott
Metcaw. The man less heard than saw, in the rounding of her
lips and the emergence of the dimples, that tone. His face
began to relax into a wide grin of gratification. It looked
old and foreign to her, with the dark beard making his
normally thin, aristocratic visage seem more common and
peasant-like. But the manner in which he offered her his arm
was not of a peasant. Her eyes sought an explanation of his
status, but the overcoat he wore bore no insignia.

"Where are you staying?" she asked "Why are you here?" Upon
graduating from Peninsular College a year before she did, he
worked as a jack of all trades for some obscure picture
magazine in Mobile. That publication folded in '33 and, with
the cessation of the bylines, she lost track of him.

"I have a small flat upstairs," she said, leading him
upstairs. "But I go home tomorrow!"

The flat, a tiny dark studio, still held a trace of the
pre-war comfort. A gas jet provided hot water and kept the
damp out of the couch upholstery. A tiny bathroom even had
cold running water, by then a rarity in Ostend. They kept the
lights off. Traces of the twilight came through the window,
and tempting the Fate in the guise of the night bombers
would have been unwise.

"Have you a place to stay?"

"No, Tamar. I just got here. Was to take pictures but that
won't happen. Got strafed on the way, and farewell to the
camera!" He spoke in short sentences, reminiscent of newspaper
headlines. A professional habit, she thought. "Sorry about the
hearing," he said, making a sad face which almost made her
laugh but for the parental instruction in good manners. "Got
close to a six-pounder when it blasted. Should be better in a
few days."

"You can stay here," she said, without thinking. She looked at
the small room, and a look of concern came upon her. Pierre
was still her lover, and this room offered scant privacy for
two people. As her former lover, would Scott expect to bunk
with her, she wondered. As she considered him as a man, she
remembered of her own worn state with alarm. "Let me clean
up," she said, heading to the bathroom.

Washing the dust off with cold water took a long time. Damp
hair and cold water splashed on the blouse made Tamar shiver
as she returned to the main room. Scott had a bayonet in his
hand, and he was shaving a bar of dark laundry soap into a
saucepan full of hot water. He turned and saw the goose bumps
on her arms. He dried his hands on a rag, stood up and began
to empty the pockets of his overcoat.

With the warm, comforting wool of Scott's overcoat around her
shoulders, Tamar felt better. She was still shivering, but
felt comforted by the concern for her welfare. Being in
besieged Belgium on her own had by then disabused her of any
expectations of courtesy. She turned her attention to the
table surface. On it, a bottle of lemonade syrup stood next to
several paper boxes, small but bulging with heft. Next to it,
lay his wallet, a handful of Belgian and Swiss coins, two
pencils and a small British pistol. With that, Tamar was
familiar, having seeing similar in her mother's purse. On top
of a thick, cloth-bound notebook, lay three empty pistol clips
and two more with cartridges much too big for the diminutive
Webley & Scott. Her eyes followed to the pan, in which his
hands were washing something akin to a metallic jigsaw
puzzle. He wore a once-expensive suit, now much worse for the
wear. She could see a wooden case with leather fasteners
poking from under the three-button vest.

"Have you any oil?" he asked. She took a bottle of sunflower
oil from the pantry. He poured some into a shallow enameled
bowl.

"Have you eaten today?" He shook his head, indicating the
syrup bottle. "That's all I got with me. Mix with hot water."
She did so, setting out a crusty baguette and a wax paper wrap
with sliced cheese. He fished out the twenty-odd puzzle pieces
out of the hot, soapy water and dried them with another
rag. The water ran black from his fingers. After dipping each
piece in sunflower oil and removing the excess, Scott laid put
them together to form a large, awkward-looking pistol with a
thin, slightly tapered barrel. He racked the bolt back,
thumbed in ten rounds from one of the clips and stuck the
weapon into its wooden case.

"Pardon the mess -- I had to clean it before the rust set in."

They ate sparingly, despite the physical hunger. The fatigue
was a leaden weight upon them, despite the sugary drink and
the most welcome comfort of home. The room had finally warmed
up a little. He talked about his path, which was she had
surmised: magazine, another magazine, then providing pictures
to the State Department, looking around Europe for news of
interest. That was a queer turn of phrase, and she looked at
him closely when he said it. He nodded, confirming her
guess. Family? None, he said, his eyes looking past the walls
to something past, something painful.

Then it was her turn to talk. When she spoke of Pierre, he
looked at her as she had earlier looked at him. She also
nodded, though in her heart she was far from certain. She had
not heard from her man since she left Reims, and his persona
had already acquired a sense of unreality about it. She said
she wasn't free and was surprised at the look of relief on
Scott's features. The periodic fluttering of his eyelids
betrayed extreme fatigue.

"I ought to clean up," he said "my smell must scare the
muck-rats. Should shave, but my hand isn't be steady
enough. Don't think I have blades left, anyway."

The next morning, Tamar was due at the port for the trip to
Southend. To that end, she had toiled ever since her arrival
to Ostend. Scott's duties lay somewhere on the Continent,
where he would not say. He offered to escort her, even at the
price of sleeping in. She accepted, not without some guilt, as
the city had become unpredictable since the flood of the
various transients hit.

Tamar brought a safety razor, a towel and a cup of hot water
to the table. Slowly, cringing at the scraping sound made by
the blades against the thick bead, she shaved his face. She
ran her fingers over the face to verify the results and was
struck by the pleasure the suddenly younger face showed. Her
fingertips paused, then resumed their tracing movement. No
harm in this, she thought.

"Where may I rest?" he asked, his eyes still closed. She
considered. The chair was hardly comfortable, and besides it,
the futon was the only piece of furniture in the room. "We can
share the bed," she heard herself say, thinking how
scandalized her parents would have been could they but hear
her. She heard him exhale sharply, apparently not dozing after
all.

"I must clean up then." He reached into the right overcoat
pocket and pulled out a department store paper bag with a
folded union suit. "I have a spare, at least." She thought of
the cold water in the bathroom, brought the galvanized washtub
from the closet. The tank over the gas jets held just enough
piping hot water to fill it half-way, with cold water filling
the balance.

"Get in," she said. Scott looked up doubtfully. "I won't look at you,"
she added "Nothing I haven't seen before." He got into the tub,
folding aching limbs with difficulty to fit. He was asleep
instantly. He woke up only part-way as Tamar washed him, stumbling to
the futon with her arm steading his unsteady step.

He woke up with a start. Somewhere in the dark, he could hear a
muffler cooling, its baffles ticking rhythmically. He opened his
eyes but could see nothing until he turned. In front of him, was a
woman and beyond her, an outline of an alarm clock. That was the
source of the ticking. He could not see the hour. It was past
midnight when they crashed, and she was due at the port at six, no
later. Scott looked at the peaceful face next to him, framed by
brown hair falling to shoulders which were a hint of nakedness,
for no straps lay atop of them. He dozed again, though twilight
was already aglow.

Tamar wasn't asleep, though breathing slowly and barely
perceptibly. She felt him turn and guess what he saw. As his
breathing returned to regularity, she opened her eyes. By
straining a little, she could tell the time without turning her
head: five in the morning. She thought about the time they had
spent together, and about her man in France, comparing. She dozed
off still reminiscing.

When she awoke again, she was alone in the bed. Scott was already
dressed. He sat at the table, pushing cartridges info the metal
charging clips. The rest of his things had already returned to the
coat pockets. Tamar looked from the bed, wondering if she should
ask him to bring her the dress which hanged behind him. On some
reflection, she got out of bed as she was and tip-toed across the
chilly floor to the closet door. His eyes ran up her body once,
and then she was inside that dress. The locked stares momentarily
and both smiled. They had it still, after all these years, that
comfort of old lovers.

Ten minutes later, they were ready to leave. They would say
good-byes then, out of the seashore wind and curious
glances. Scott put his arms and his coat around her. Tamar longed
for the warm, manly embrace to last, but that was not to be. The
ticking of the seconds reminded them of the deadline at
hand. Before going out of the door, Scott took out this big pistol
and attached its handle to the holster, then let it swing back
under the coat-flap on the right. That habit wasn't in evidence
last time they met back in Boston, she thought. Of course, she
could account for a few habits of her own as newly-developed.

The streets leading to the harbor were foggy, with the occasional
car headlights showing as yellow glow long before the engines
could be heard. The milky clouds overhead were good news, for no
bombers would sortie today. Tamar had sensible shoes, and they
made good time walking across the worn cobblestones towards the
wharfs. She had only a small valise with her. Somewhere far off,
the earth shook with the dull reports of artillery. Once, they
heard a closer crackle of gunfire, its source confused by the
echoes of the ancient town. Scott stopped, crouching deeply, his
head scanning for danger. In a minute, he was satisfied that the
danger was not too close, and they pressed on.

At the gangplank, she showed her papers and was admitted
aboard. They hugged once, and then the steamship whistle issued,
so he pushed her away. She wanted to stay topside and wave, but
the chill of the saltwater spray drove her below. Her cabin was on
the pier side, and she stared out of the porthole. She saw Scott's
silhouette, receding into the chowder-thick fog. For another
minute, his outline was visible, his shoulders swaying in a brisk
walk, and then he was gone.

As he walked toward his grim work, Scott thought of the coming
sunshine. The famous Channel fog would be gone before Tamar's ship
would be even under way. Then it would be easy prey for the roving
Stukas. He thought of his own task, perilous and touchy. At least
he held his own destiny in his hands. Hers was in the hands of the
fickle Providence.

Tamar, nested comfortably within her tiny cabin, kept her eyes
closed. Before her eyes, stood the question which forever defied
an answer. She thought to her lovers and wished that she could
look a year ahead. As things went, she did not get back to the
Continent for five years. By then, no trace of Pierre or Scott remained.

================

This reminded me of The Lover which prompted a re-post.