these soldiers are used to taking orders from him.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, though I wondered myself sometimes. Roosevelt had already won a third term. What was to stop him from running for a fourth? ‘Come and sit on the porch with me. It’ll be nice and cool once the rain starts.’
‘I’d rather stay inside,’ she said. ‘Have you seen my cigarettes?’
I went out onto the porch alone to watch the sky light up and blamed Ada’s nerves on the dropping barometer.
Once tucked into bed that night I had nothing to distract me from my fears for Rachel. I’d have given anything to know how she was.
‘We must do this,’ Gerald said.
‘I understand,’ Rachel answered.
‘I know what it means to you.’
‘It’s just a piece of furniture.’
Rachel couldn’t remember a time that her great-grandmother’s sideboard hadn’t stood in her home, crammed with a couple of generations of family treasures. The treasures were long gone. She’d sold the Germaine monogrammed silver, the antique Limoges china, and the rest of the family objets de valeur for a pittance to buy food and fuel.
Gerald slipped the crowbar under the edge of the sideboard lid and leaned his weight on it. Old glue and dovetailed joints split with a crack, and he pried the heavy mahogany top from its base.
They worked by candlelight. Claude slept soundly through the racket in the bedroom they all shared. They’d stripped the extra rooms in the flat of furniture to sell, besides, she rested better with Claude beside her. They’d have the new baby in its basket in their bedroom too, squeezed between the suitcases they kept packed and Claude’s cot.
Two nights ago a brick had sailed through their front window, and last night’s sniper fire sounded closer to their street than ever. ‘We have to find a way to bar the door,’ Gerald had said. He constructed notches for the bars from the thick stretchers of an Empire daybed. Only the sideboard was long enough to furnish the wood for bars.
Gerald laid the heavy sideboard across two chairs and Rachel held it steady while he sawed it lengthwise into three boards, one bar for the door and two for the front windows. The other windows had heavy shutters he’d nailed shut days ago. Rachel didn’t miss being unable to look out over the Old Port to the Mediterranean. Nazi gunships filled the harbor and blighted the view.
Monday morning, the office buzzed with talk about Bob Holman’s sudden death. The girls lingered longer than usual in the ladies’ restroom to gossip while the men stood around the halls in little groups, smoking, no doubt speculating about who would get Holman’s job. But there was a war on, so by mid-afternoon talk turned to the shocking news that had greeted us all in the morning newspapers – the arrest of a group of Nazi saboteurs at, of all places, the Mayflower Hotel.
My clerks had returned to work, thank goodness.
‘Would you believe,’ Betty said, throwing back her typewriter return with a clang, ‘the U-boat that dropped those Germans off, it was only three hundred yards off the Long Island coast. Makes me shiver to think about it.’ She stopped typing long enough to reapply bright-red lipstick and check her matching painted fingernails for chips. Betty was boy-crazy, or as they said these days, khaki-wacky, but I tolerated it because she was an excellent typist.
‘They’ll all be dead before Christmas,’ Ruth said. ‘Hanging, most likely.’ Ruth was a Mt. Holyoke girl who wore her pearls to work every day. Her typing wasn’t much, but she could file faster than any of us. I swear she could recite the alphabet backwards in thirty seconds.
Barbara didn’t join the conversation, as usual. She was a war widow on a mission. Each day she pored through the Washington newspapers, typing index cards for every person mentioned, her contribution to winning the war that had taken her young husband at Pearl Harbor and separated her from her child. She
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, though I wondered myself sometimes. Roosevelt had already won a third term. What was to stop him from running for a fourth? ‘Come and sit on the porch with me. It’ll be nice and cool once the rain starts.’
‘I’d rather stay inside,’ she said. ‘Have you seen my cigarettes?’
I went out onto the porch alone to watch the sky light up and blamed Ada’s nerves on the dropping barometer.
Once tucked into bed that night I had nothing to distract me from my fears for Rachel. I’d have given anything to know how she was.
‘We must do this,’ Gerald said.
‘I understand,’ Rachel answered.
‘I know what it means to you.’
‘It’s just a piece of furniture.’
Rachel couldn’t remember a time that her great-grandmother’s sideboard hadn’t stood in her home, crammed with a couple of generations of family treasures. The treasures were long gone. She’d sold the Germaine monogrammed silver, the antique Limoges china, and the rest of the family objets de valeur for a pittance to buy food and fuel.
Gerald slipped the crowbar under the edge of the sideboard lid and leaned his weight on it. Old glue and dovetailed joints split with a crack, and he pried the heavy mahogany top from its base.
They worked by candlelight. Claude slept soundly through the racket in the bedroom they all shared. They’d stripped the extra rooms in the flat of furniture to sell, besides, she rested better with Claude beside her. They’d have the new baby in its basket in their bedroom too, squeezed between the suitcases they kept packed and Claude’s cot.
Two nights ago a brick had sailed through their front window, and last night’s sniper fire sounded closer to their street than ever. ‘We have to find a way to bar the door,’ Gerald had said. He constructed notches for the bars from the thick stretchers of an Empire daybed. Only the sideboard was long enough to furnish the wood for bars.
Gerald laid the heavy sideboard across two chairs and Rachel held it steady while he sawed it lengthwise into three boards, one bar for the door and two for the front windows. The other windows had heavy shutters he’d nailed shut days ago. Rachel didn’t miss being unable to look out over the Old Port to the Mediterranean. Nazi gunships filled the harbor and blighted the view.
Monday morning, the office buzzed with talk about Bob Holman’s sudden death. The girls lingered longer than usual in the ladies’ restroom to gossip while the men stood around the halls in little groups, smoking, no doubt speculating about who would get Holman’s job. But there was a war on, so by mid-afternoon talk turned to the shocking news that had greeted us all in the morning newspapers – the arrest of a group of Nazi saboteurs at, of all places, the Mayflower Hotel.
My clerks had returned to work, thank goodness.
‘Would you believe,’ Betty said, throwing back her typewriter return with a clang, ‘the U-boat that dropped those Germans off, it was only three hundred yards off the Long Island coast. Makes me shiver to think about it.’ She stopped typing long enough to reapply bright-red lipstick and check her matching painted fingernails for chips. Betty was boy-crazy, or as they said these days, khaki-wacky, but I tolerated it because she was an excellent typist.
‘They’ll all be dead before Christmas,’ Ruth said. ‘Hanging, most likely.’ Ruth was a Mt. Holyoke girl who wore her pearls to work every day. Her typing wasn’t much, but she could file faster than any of us. I swear she could recite the alphabet backwards in thirty seconds.
Barbara didn’t join the conversation, as usual. She was a war widow on a mission. Each day she pored through the Washington newspapers, typing index cards for every person mentioned, her contribution to winning the war that had taken her young husband at Pearl Harbor and separated her from her child. She
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