Flowers From Berlin

FOUR

"I promised you a summer," Barbara Worthington proclaimed soon after Laura's arrival from England. "And I will give you a summer!"

Barbara Worthington was true to her word. A tall, blond, pretty large-boned girl of twenty, she blithely prescribed a brisk, adventuresome summer romance for her English cousin. Laura, rebounding from her battered engagement to Edward Shawcross, was in every mood to oblige.

Evenings were spent at Lake Contontic, one of the better-heeled sections of the Poconos. On weekend evenings touring bands came through-the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Buddy Rogers-fresh from Atlantic City or Philadelphia, and played Contontic's Lakeside Ballroom. There congregated what the social columns of the day's big-city newspapers referred to as "the bright young people." They were the privileged offspring of the correct families in New York and Philadelphia. They had the right clothes, the perfect addresses back in the city, the fastest, most expensive new cars and the unimpeachable pedigrees. Most had been coming to the lake with their families for a generation or more. Peter Whiteside had done his homework well before providing Laura with more than five dozen family names. Many were on his list.

She dutifully reported to him, penning chatty letters at the big old-fashioned oak desk in the Worthington family's cabin. She wrote about the people she had met. This, she thought to herself in the midst of a third handwritten letter, is the strangest, lowest-key "spying" anyone in the world has ever been asked to do.

But she completed the letter and mailed it. She wrote at least one a week. But idly, she began to wonder whether Peter wasn't a trifle strange. What difference did it make what these new friends of Laura's thought? Why was Peter wasting government time on this? Or was it government time at all? Was a little Peeping Tom game? Or was it something she couldn't comprehend at all?

But, no. She considered Peter and how long she had known him. She thought of the very visible government office and the very clear instructions he had given her. For England, she recalled him saying. And then for some reason her mind drifted way, way back to her girlhood and another image was keyed: that of her father holding her in the bay window overlooking Kensington Gardens and explaining to a little girl who couldn't comprehend what war was and why he had gone to fight.

For England, he had said.

She drew a breath. It sounded frightfully specious, the whole thing. But she wrote a fourth letter and posted it to Whiteside's mailing address in London. Not long afterward she received a letter back.

"So glad you are enjoying yourself," Peter Whiteside wrote. "Everyone sounds fascinating. I never get to America anymore so you must tell me more! Facts. I want facts!"

She sighed. If she were a spy, she was a strange one. But so be it. For England.

*

Lakeside Ballroom was one of those vast, noisy summer auditoriums. It had gaudy crepe paper strung across the basketball backboards, from one to the next, was illuminated by a dangerous amount of colored candles plunked into the noses of cheap Chianti bottles, and was festooned with an explosion of red, yellow, and orange Chinese lanterns. It was also much more fun than it had any reasonable right to be.

Maybe it was the heavy aroma of leisure in the air. Maybe it was the mood of the summertime. Or maybe it was the excitement of the urbane young university crowd to whom Laura had been given entree by her cousin, who now doubled as her confidante and best friend. For whatever reason, Lakeside had long been a magical place for a summer romance. The girl who did not eventually lose her heart and everything else here at least once, Barbara explained cheerfully, had a hard, cold heart indeed.

"Of course, I don't have to explain such things to you, Laura," Barbara said one evening in July, combing out her hair in the front seat of the family Ford. "Husband hunting is permitted," she said with a wink, "as long as you're not hunting someone else's. And I don't know what it's like in England, but over here a girl never seals a deal without giving away a few free samples."

Laura and Barbara exchanged a conspiratorial laugh as the conversation ended. An orchestra in green coats and gold trim was thumping out jazz tunes from the twenties one evening in late June when Laura, Barbara, Barbara's boyfriend Victor, and several friends entered the ballroom. It was only a few minutes later when Stephen Fowler wandered into the ballroom by himself. Laura, seated with Barbara and Victor at their usual corner table, felt herself one of many females watching the young man.

"Who's that?" she asked her cousin, who knew everyone.

"Stay away," said Barbara.

Laura tugged excitedly on Barbara's sleeve. "I want to know," she insisted.

"That's Stephen Fowler," Barbara said. "Stay away unless you're prepared to be a very bad girl this summer."

"Introduce me immediately," answered Laura.

As Stephen scanned the ballroom, he saw Barbara beckon him to a seat at their table. Laura took a much closer look as the orchestra suddenly amused everyone with their version of Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy.

Stephen Fowler, tall and thin, with strong shoulders, and neatly trimmed brown hair, glanced at Barbara's cousin and smiled. He liked what he saw. Returning his gaze, then looking away, so did Laura. Her initial impression of him was one of an intelligent, athletic man, perhaps even one of those barbarian Americans who play their strange sort of football game at college. Barbara specialized in such men.

"Stephen," Barbara said coyly, "this is Laura Worthington. She's here for two months only and you're to keep your hands off."

"Impossible," said Stephen Fowler, taking Laura's hand and kissing it in an overly dramatic manner which amused everyone at the table, including Laura.

He is good-looking, Laura thought to herself. Too bad he's so aware of it.

"Stephen was Victor's residence counselor at Princeton," Barbara said, by way of furthering the introduction.

"I had no life whatsoever before this very moment," said Stephen, holding his gaze upon Laura.

"Oh, brother…" moaned Barbara.

"A man without a past, in other words," countered Laura. "How sorry I am for you,

Mr. Fowler," she said with mock formality.

"I'm hardly worthy of your pity," Stephen said, continuing the game. He hung his head in penitence.

"Oh, Curse you, Stephen!" Barbara chided merrily. "Would you stop flirting and just ask the poor girl to dance?"

"Would you like to dance?" Stephen Fowler asked.

"I would love to dance," is what Laura answered. He graciously took her by the hand and was aware of her accent for the first time. He had led her only a step or two toward the dance floor when they both heard Barbara calling after them with unwarranted glee.

"Oh, Stephie!" she sang out. Stephen turned and looked back to where Victor was lighting a cigarette from one of the candles. "Be kind to her," Barbara called. "She's coming off a broken engagement. No dancing out to the sun deck and no offers to show her the boathouse."

From somewhere a mischievous smile crossed Stephen's face. "I'll have her back in ten minutes," he promised. "Or not at all."

Then he took Laura in his arms and did not surprise her by being an excellent dancer. Laura, after a moment or two of small talk to the accompaniment of a tango beat, took Stephen to be handsome, wealthy, flagrantly intelligent, and exactly the type of self-possessed American male she had already learned to dislike. She quickly sensed, however, as he next eased her into a smooth foxtrot, that she would not learn to dislike Stephen Fowler.

He was also older-thirty-and he wore his maturity well. He had gone to Princeton as an undergraduate and had earned his bachelor's degree in the midst of the Depression. His father had lost about 80 percent of everything in the stock market in 1929 and the Fowler family of Bala Cynwyd had maintained the role that vanquished dukes played in Europe after the Great War-aristocracy without money.

Yet the family had recovered well in the latter years of the Depression, held onto their home and their social ranking, and were, in a small sense, forging something of a quiet multimillion-dollar comeback.

For his part, Stephen had done a little bit of a lot: some political study here, some economic study there; a job at Girard Trust for several months in Philadelphia; two summers with a Protestant missionary group in Nova Scotia; a strange stint as a merchant seaman to the Caribbean and back -- "So that I could afford to see the place," he explained -- and even a bit of travel to England and the Continent, of which he now spoke little. "I was sick from the water in England and from the cheese in France," he complained at the time, "and came home early."

Thereafter, Tigertown had taken him back. His stock at Old Nassau had remained high and Princeton offered him a job in 1935 as an instructor of political science and residence counselor at $1,150 a year, plus meals and board. All of which was how he knew Victor and Barbara. And how he met Laura. That, and the fact that in the tight, cozy summer society at Lake Contontic, every "good" family knew every other "good" family.

"You were engaged?" he finally asked. "I didn't see a ring."

"I sent it back."

"Where's the shattered young man? Or did he shoot himself?"

"Back in England," she answered, as members of the band sang the chorus of Chicago, Chicago! "And I'm certain that he's doing well, thank you."

"What made him let you out of his sight?" he asked. "I doubt if I would have under the circumstances."

"You are an excessive flatterer, Stephen," she reproached him. "Barbara should have warned me."

"I'm not flattering. I'm telling you the truth. If I were engaged to you, I'd never let you out of my sight."

"He didn't, either," Laura answered. "That's why I broke it off."

For the first time, she had outpointed him. Stephen Fowler was not certain of how next to proceed.

Laura was no stranger to men who made the bold approach. She was quite capable of discouraging them or putting them completely off. But only when she cared to, which was not this evening. There was something about the way Stephen Fowler held her as they danced, something about the way he glided her around the hardwood dance floor, something even just right about the American jazz, the trumpets, the saxophones, the ersatz Hawaiian wall hangings and the breezes which wafted through the screened window onto the dance floor. Yes, Barbara had warned her about this place. But there was even something about the way Stephen lightly cuffed his palm at the small of her back as they danced. This was, Laura knew quickly, the type of thing that she might even like to see get a little out of hand.

"It was my idea to break the engagement," she answered. "At first, I thought it would be a good idea to get away from each other. To see if the relationship was…"

"Real," he said.

"Yes."

"Were you in love with him?"

"That's actually none of your-"

"In other words, you weren't."

"You're very sure of yourself," she retorted.

"It's not hard to figure out," he said. "If you went away and aren't desperate to go back and see him, you weren't in love. There! It's that simple."

Suddenly she felt a surge of sympathy for Edward Shawcross and wanted to defend him. "He meant a lot to me," she said indignantly. "I liked him very much. And-"

"And you tried to be in love with him, but couldn't," Stephen said. "Happens all the time, you know."

"I guess you're an expert," Laura said as the music stopped. There was polite applause from around the ballroom.

"Not an expert," he said, retreating in tone. "I made a few lucky guesses."

"We should be going back to Barbara's table." Laura began to move, but Stephen firmly held her hand.

"One more dance. Please?" She agreed and it turned into a slow waltz. Now Barbara was on the dance floor, too, with Victor, and once when Laura looked over Stephen's shoulder she saw Barbara giving her a naughty smile. She could also see, by the way Victor held her, that Barbara and her boyfriend were lovers.

Stephen Fowler led their waltz beautifully and the ballroom itself was soon swimming with reflected lights off the mirrored ball at its center. Stephen possessed her very capably in his strong arms, and Laura, for the first time that evening, began to wonder if she was a goner.

"You taught Victor at Princeton?" she asked.

"I hope so," he answered within Victor's earshot.

"I've never been to Princeton," she said. "I hear it's very pretty."

"Would you like to see it?"

"Someday, of course."

"What about next weekend?"

She drew an extra inch apart from him and gazed steadily into his eyes. "What?"

"As long as you're no longer engaged… and as long as you were never in love to start with, we can drive down next Saturday. I'll show you the town and the university. The whole area, in fact."

"For the day?"

"For the weekend." Stephen smiled.

"Mr. Fowler," she reproached with undue formality, "I met you two minutes ago."

"But I think we like each other."

"Do we? That much? I know all about weekend invitations." Fleetingly, she thought of Edward and wondered how her declaration had sounded.

"I'm sure you do," he said. When her eyes narrowed, he grinned again.

"I don't know the first thing about you," she said as they continued to dance. "Aside from your name and that Barbara once mentioned you to me."

"What would you like to know?" he challenged.

"Do you have a job?"

"No."

"What do you do?"

"I play tennis, swim, and sail," he answered.

"In the fall, then?" she asked. "What will you do for a living?"

"You won't believe me."

"Try me, then."

"I'm accepted into divinity school," he said. "I'm entering Yale University this fall."

She missed a step and her feet tangled slightly. "Divinity school? You? To become a parson?"

"A Lutheran minister, actually."

She took another look at him, tall, strong, and handsome, owning a face that should have been in movies and a self-assurance that she knew had probably broken many hearts. She stepped away from him one pace and in her incredulity began to laugh.

"A minister!" she exclaimed. "You're joking!"

"No," he said, standing before her as those who waltzed past them watched the intrigue. "I'm not joking." And he wasn't smiling now, either. So she knew. He was serious. He held his hand out to lead her back into the waltz.

"You don't act much like a minister," she said.

"You don't act much like a woman shattered by a broken engagement," he answered.

"Who said I was 'shattered'?"

"Barbara."

"Barbara doesn't know."

"Then you're not shattered?" They picked up the cadence of the waltz again.

“No. I most certainly am not.”

"Then come down to Princeton this weekend. I have the nicest Nash convertible you've ever seen. We can have lunch at my club and if you want we can spend Sunday at the shore."

"What shore?"

"My family has an oceanfront home in Sea Girt, New Jersey," he said.

This all sounded terribly familiar. "And your aunt is normally there, but she may be away this weekend, right?"

"Wrong," he said. She waited.

"My parents are normally there. But they'll definitely be away this weekend."

The music stopped and Stephen applauded the band, who rose, bowed, acknowledged the ovation, and began to lay down their instruments for a break. Laura stood with her arms akimbo, assessing Stephen Fowler.

"Well," he said, looking back at her. "It's only an invitation. No one's forcing you. And you can think about it."

"I'd love to go," is what Laura surprised both of them by saying.

"You're sure?"

"I'm very sure," she said.

They walked back to the table holding hands and even Barbara Worthington looked askance.

"See, Barbara," said Stephen. "Back within ten minutes. No damage done and we never left the room."

"Uh-huh," said Barbara, who was scrutinizing her cousin carefully now, as if searching for paw prints.

Stephen Fowler held a chair for Laura and seated her. Then he drew a long sigh and exhaled with too much drama. "I think I'm in love," he announced.

"Oh, no-o-o…" Laura, Barbara, and Victor said in unison, and turned their heads away from him in harmlessly overdone contempt. But when Laura turned back to him, it suddenly struck her that, once again, he was not joking. Laura pinched herself and discovered that, yes, this was really happening.

The final touch: the Fowler family of Bala Cynwyd, particularly Stephen, was on Peter Whiteside's far-flung list. Then again, wasn't everyone she met these days? All right, Peter, she thought to herself. This time I will give you a highly detailed report.

*

It was later that evening, when Barbara and Laura returned to their family's cabin, that Barbara filled in a few of the initial biographical notes on Stephen Fowler.

He had been third in his class at Princeton, a spring track star, not football, as Laura had erringly guessed, an extraordinarily gifted captain of the swimming team, treasurer of the Class of 1928, president of the Debating Society, editor of The Princeton Literary Quarterly -- "He writes well enough to become a professional novelist or essayist," Barbara insisted as she undressed completely and stepped into the shower -- and had in fact been accepted for theological study at Yale.

"Him?" Laura asked again, watching Barbara through the open door to the bathroom. Laura lay on her bed, wearing only her slip and bra, one shoe off, the other dangling perilously from a toe as she held her leg out straight.

"Him," confirmed Barbara. "He's unusual."

"I know."

Barbara added the final detail as she washed her hair. The Fowler family was old money from the Main Line. Someone named Amos Fowler, two generations back, had owned the tracks upon which the Reading Railroad had carried its freight. The Fowlers were millionaires more times over than anyone could count.

"And with all his fortune," Laura asked, "he's chosen to become a minister?"

"Honey," answered Barbara, rinsing off, "with his money, he can afford to become a minister."

Laura grew very quiet. Barbara finished her shower, draped a robe over her shoulders, and toweled off. Then, sensing Laura's mood, Barbara continued in cautious tones.

"I should tell you, I suppose. Stephen's had quite a few girlfriends in his time. Girls from good families, I mean. Girls who don't normally go to bed with men."

"I'm sure," Laura said.

"So you like him?"

Laura returned Barbara's knowing gaze. "He asked me to go away with him next weekend. To Princeton and then to Sea Girt. Can you imagine that? I barely know him."

"And?"

Laura mused upon it. "I might need a new dress or two," she said. "And I definitely need a new bathing suit."

At twenty-three, Laura Worthington was daring, and wise enough to know exactly how to conduct the whirlwind love affair that she now sensed before her. Only, it became more than a whirlwind. Soon after the weekend in Princeton and Sea Girt, Laura knew she was onto the real thing. She was indeed, as she liked to phrase it, “a goner.”

*

Laura wrote a final letter to Edward Shawcross. She felt she owed him that much. In it, she actually said little, only that she would always recall him with kindness no matter how he felt about her. She mentioned that she had met someone new but she spared him the details. She was certain, she wrote, that he would soon find a younger, prettier, altogether better girl than she had been. In no time they would be operating his dreamed-of inn in Bath, complete with household "staff of five." When she sealed the letter, she felt both saddened and relieved.

Then Laura drew another piece of stationery. For the first time, she wrote to Peter Whiteside and revealed the depth of her involvement with Stephen. Always before, she had discreetly mingled word about him into the news of other people she knew at Contontic. And yet Whiteside must have sensed something.

"More about this wonderful young man," he had written back once. "What about the divinity student?" Whiteside had asked on another occasion after Laura had purged any mention of her romance from her correspondence.

What did Whiteside know about love between a young man and a younger woman?

Laura thought huffily. This is none of his business.

"What about the young Fowler fellow?" Peter had written a third time.

So now she told him everything. If he did not like it, she concluded, he could bloody well find another pen pal. She mailed this letter at the same time as the note to Edward and enjoyed a robust sense of accomplishment.

A response from Peter Whiteside came back like a yo-yo.

"Laura," he wrote. "You are very young and very impressionable. I daresay you've had only one other serious romance. Are you certain that this is in your best interests?”

She read the letter twice and took it to be smug and condescending. She crumpled and burned it. Then Laura burned the rest of Peter Whiteside's letters. She felt free of him. Emancipated. But she continued to simmer.

At length, she penned one final correspondence to him, complete with a tone which she took to be the match of his.

"In response to your question," she wrote, "am I certain this is in my best interests?

My response, sir, is yes. Very definitely. Laura."

Then she cut off communication with Peter Whiteside. Completely.

Laura Worthington and Stephen Dobbs Fowler were married on August 28, 1937, by the Reverend Adrian McFarlane at the Lawrenceville chapel. Dr. Nigel Worthington came from England for the occasion, was a houseguest of the Fowlers in Bala Cynwyd, and was more than suitably impressed with both Stephen and his family. For their part, Stephen's parents were absolutely enraptured by the noble English physician and his mild eccentricities.

The wedding was small upon the insistence of Stephen and Laura. Only the immediate families. Stephen's younger brother was the best man and Barbara Worthington was the maid of honor. There were only thirty guests, but Laura was not spared the usual inane remarks which make any wedding complete.

Stephen's brother, in an odd moment to Laura: "You don't have a younger sister back home, do you?"

One of Stephen's aunts: "There's nothing wrong with having a romance with a religious man. I'm sure he didn't make the physical demands upon you before marriage that most men make."

And, of course, from Barbara, with a twinkle in her eye: "Some summer romance! You pick off the most eligible bachelor at Lakeside, then marry him so no other girl can borrow him next summer!"

"Sorry," answered Laura. They exchanged a hug.

"Who says I can't be borrowed?" asked Stephen, overhearing their chatter. He embraced his wife from the back, kissed her on the side of the neck, and, when no one was looking, brushed his hand across her backside.

"I thought you were a gentleman," she chided sotto voce.

"Only before marriage," he answered. "An animal ever after." There was champagne on his breath.

"Fabulous," she replied.

"By the way," he asked, "who is Peter Whiteside?"

The name came to her as a surprise, particularly from her husband's lips. For a second she had no response. "Who's Peter Whiteside?" he repeated. "I want to know."

"Why do you want to know?"

"Ah, ah," he chided. "Husband's rights! And I asked you first." His voice was teasing, but she recognized its insistence.

"Peter Whiteside," she said, recovering carefully, "is a divinely charming man with radiant gray eyes who is urbane, handsome, talented, bears a frightfully stunning resemblance to a tall, athletic Noel Coward… and who also happens to be my father's age, and an old, old friend of the family."

"Oh," Stephen said. Half a grin crept across his face. "I see. Church, army, and club establishment, right?"

Laura let him easily off the hook. "He served with my father in the war. They've been like this"-two delicate fingers crossed, two polished pink fingernails meeting-"for years."

"I understand," he said.

"Why?"

"He sent flowers," Stephen told his bride of one hour. "And this note."

He handed her a small unopened envelope. Laura slid her finger into it and tore. From it, she drew Peter Whiteside's personal calling card, engraved only with his name. Upon it, in the handwriting Laura knew so well, Whiteside had neatly penned in blue ink:

To Lovely Laura, With all my affection and sincere wishes for your lasting happiness, Peter

Laura felt a sensation of warmth toward Peter, something she had never known she had entertained for him. She smiled. She looked up to show her husband the kind note from her father's oldest friend. But Stephen had discreetly disappeared to allow her to read the contents in privacy. Then she smiled again. Her husband, it occurred to her, had been jealous. Jealous of fey, middle-aged Peter! The thought greatly amused her and she tucked the card into her wedding gown. Later in the afternoon, she found the greatest, most gorgeous bouquet of flowers-four dozen magnificent long-stemmed red roses-that she had ever seen in her life. It had been confected in New York, upon wired directions from London. Naturally, it was Peter's.

After the ceremony, they left for Quebec in Stephen's red Nash convertible. They spent their first honeymoon night in a small white guesthouse two miles north of Brattleboro, Vermont, and were served breakfast the next morning by a blushing landlady at the inn's table of honor.

So that's what it would have been like to run an inn, Laura thought idly. Serving breakfast to obvious lovers, both married and illicit.

In Quebec City, they stayed in a suite in a west tower of the Chateau Frontenac and spent time walking the Plains of Abraham. Stephen was fascinated by military operations from other centuries and wanted to inspect the precise location where the French had lost North America.

They stood on the ramparts overlooking the St. Lawrence River and the vastness of the province, which spread northward. "The French lost because they underestimated the enemy," Stephen said. "They never believed that the English could attack by ship up a secure river, then successfully scale these cliffs and invade Quebec."

Laura nodded.

"Conclusion?" Stephen demanded, assuming a scholarly tone.

"Never underestimate the British Navy," she said. "The British Navy hasn't lost a decisive sea battle since 1453 at Castillon."

He raised his eyebrows and allowed her point. "A better conclusion," he demanded.

"With modern implications."

"I give up."

"The French are terrible military strategists," he said. "Always planning for the last war, not the next one. Like this Maginot Line they have now. All their fortifications stretched from Luxembourg to Switzerland. Know how you cross it?" he asked.

"How?"

"The same way you now get to England," he said, "You use airplanes."

They lunched and laughed at a splendid little country restaurant in Levis, a ferry ride across the St. Lawrence from Quebec, and toward dessert Laura felt an inexplicable pang of sadness.

Stephen had caused it inadvertently. As she examined her feelings she realized how smug one could be in America over the politics of Europe. Hitler, the hoarse fanatical little tyrant of the MGM newsreels, and his pals Mussolini and Franco, were all firmly in power and flagrantly rearming themselves. Central Europe seemed destined to be carved into pieces and the two major democracies of western Europe, France and England, seemed fragile and indecisive. Meanwhile, America slumbered.

Laura thought of England and thought of her father. Both were very distant. Then her thoughts rambled further as she grew very quiet over coffee. She was now thinking of Edward Shawcross.

Married as she was to a different, more exciting man, she began to see Edward in perspective for the first time. It was as if she had stumbled across some torn black and white photograph from an old scrapbook.

Edward had been a decent man, she decided. Thoroughly decent, but painfully predictable. She viewed a variety of images of him, things she had once seen: Edward neatly assembling his books, tightly knotting his tie, sharply combing the part in his hair, methodically planning their engagement and their life. Edward's orderliness had been his finest quality and his most serious undoing. Personal relationships were like that. Laura would opt for chaos and iconoclasm with a man like Stephen every time. Who ever heard, for example, of a divinity student with a red Nash convertible? Who, indeed? And that was just for starters.

Stephen reached across the table and took her hand. Much in the manner of a medieval courtier, he kissed the back of it and snapped her out of her reverie.

"A penny for your thoughts," he said.

"I was thinking," she answered, "of how much I love you."