school. After that, Patterson envied him the war, envied him France, New York, the airplane business, the large, drunken gay young men who were his partners, and when he met Lucy, he envied him Lucy. If anyone had asked either Patterson or Crown about their relationship, they would both have said, unhesitatingly, that they were each other’s best friends. Crown, as far as Patterson could tell, envied no one anything.
Lucy at that time was about twenty years old, and from the moment Oliver introduced her, Patterson began to feel a vague and sorrowful sense of loss. She was a tall girl with soft blond hair and wide gray, speckled eyes. There was something curiously Oriental about her face. The nose was flat and very straight and the bridge blended smoothly into her broad, low forehead. There was the hint of a slant about her eyes, and her upper lip turned up strangely in a flat plane and seemed to be cut off squarely and abruptly at the corners. In trying to describe her long after he knew her, Patterson said that she looked as though she came from a family of blondes among whom had slipped, secretly, and perhaps only for one night, a Balinese dancing-girl grandmother. Lucy had a full, hesitant mouth and a breathy, low, slightly disconnected way of talking, as though she never was sure that people were willing to listen to what she had to say. Her clothes were never quite stylish, but since the style that year was so hideous, that was all to the good. She seemed to be aiming at immobility, especially with her hands, keeping them folded in her lap when she was seated, and straight at her sides, like a polite and well-schooled child, when she stood. Her father and mother were dead, and she had no family except for a shadowy aunt in Chicago, of whom Patterson never found out more than that she was the same size as Lucy and sent her disastrous clothes when she had finished with them. When he was considerably older and given more closely to reflection, Patterson realized that the slightly bizarre dowdiness that her aunt’s clothes lent to Lucy gave her an added attraction, by making her different from the other girls around her, none of whom were as beautiful as she, and by introducing a warm, protective note of pity for her poverty and her youthful awkwardness.
Lucy was working then as an assistant to a research biologist at Columbia University, who was, according to Oliver, deeply involved with single-celled marine plants. It was an unlikely thing for a girl who looked like that to be doing, and what was more unlikely, she had made it plain to Oliver that she intended to continue, marriage or no marriage, and take her Ph.D. and try to get a job as an instructor, with research projects of her own. Oliver had been tolerantly amused at the idea of having a wife who was so stubbornly scientific and who messed around all day long with what he insisted upon calling algae, but as long as she looked the way she did, and as long as it meant that she stayed in New York with him, for the moment he made no protest.
As far as Patterson could tell, they were very much in love with each other, although Lucy was modest and undemonstrative in public, again the polite child into whom it has been drilled that it is bad manners to draw attention to oneself. As for Oliver, he had always been humorously offhand and reserved, an attitude which had been intensified by the rituals of the pilots among whom he had been thrown, and it was only because Patterson knew him so well that he could see in the way he behaved toward Lucy a steady tenderness and delight.
All in all, they were tall, shining, innocent young people, and if, later on, looking back at it, it had turned out that they had not been as shining as all that, seeing them standing gravely together at the altar (in New York—Oliver said he didn’t want to blight his marriage by starting it off in Hartford) made Patterson feel that of all the marriages taking place on that June day in the
Lucy at that time was about twenty years old, and from the moment Oliver introduced her, Patterson began to feel a vague and sorrowful sense of loss. She was a tall girl with soft blond hair and wide gray, speckled eyes. There was something curiously Oriental about her face. The nose was flat and very straight and the bridge blended smoothly into her broad, low forehead. There was the hint of a slant about her eyes, and her upper lip turned up strangely in a flat plane and seemed to be cut off squarely and abruptly at the corners. In trying to describe her long after he knew her, Patterson said that she looked as though she came from a family of blondes among whom had slipped, secretly, and perhaps only for one night, a Balinese dancing-girl grandmother. Lucy had a full, hesitant mouth and a breathy, low, slightly disconnected way of talking, as though she never was sure that people were willing to listen to what she had to say. Her clothes were never quite stylish, but since the style that year was so hideous, that was all to the good. She seemed to be aiming at immobility, especially with her hands, keeping them folded in her lap when she was seated, and straight at her sides, like a polite and well-schooled child, when she stood. Her father and mother were dead, and she had no family except for a shadowy aunt in Chicago, of whom Patterson never found out more than that she was the same size as Lucy and sent her disastrous clothes when she had finished with them. When he was considerably older and given more closely to reflection, Patterson realized that the slightly bizarre dowdiness that her aunt’s clothes lent to Lucy gave her an added attraction, by making her different from the other girls around her, none of whom were as beautiful as she, and by introducing a warm, protective note of pity for her poverty and her youthful awkwardness.
Lucy was working then as an assistant to a research biologist at Columbia University, who was, according to Oliver, deeply involved with single-celled marine plants. It was an unlikely thing for a girl who looked like that to be doing, and what was more unlikely, she had made it plain to Oliver that she intended to continue, marriage or no marriage, and take her Ph.D. and try to get a job as an instructor, with research projects of her own. Oliver had been tolerantly amused at the idea of having a wife who was so stubbornly scientific and who messed around all day long with what he insisted upon calling algae, but as long as she looked the way she did, and as long as it meant that she stayed in New York with him, for the moment he made no protest.
As far as Patterson could tell, they were very much in love with each other, although Lucy was modest and undemonstrative in public, again the polite child into whom it has been drilled that it is bad manners to draw attention to oneself. As for Oliver, he had always been humorously offhand and reserved, an attitude which had been intensified by the rituals of the pilots among whom he had been thrown, and it was only because Patterson knew him so well that he could see in the way he behaved toward Lucy a steady tenderness and delight.
All in all, they were tall, shining, innocent young people, and if, later on, looking back at it, it had turned out that they had not been as shining as all that, seeing them standing gravely together at the altar (in New York—Oliver said he didn’t want to blight his marriage by starting it off in Hartford) made Patterson feel that of all the marriages taking place on that June day in the
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