And You Will Find Love

"I believe I know what you mean. We've talked about what we like or dislike in men before, many times."

"There's only one condition..."

Barbara wondered what that could be.

"If you marry, and I hope so much that one day you'll find a man worthy of you... Your husband has to love Timmy and want to adopt him, too. If he doesn't, Timmy goes to my mother."

Barbara was relieved. The condition was do-able.

"After my track record with men, I think the chances of me marrying are slim. But if you know of anyone... Hey, you look like you already do know of someone!"

Gail smiled, finishing her chicken. "How long are you going to be over here?"

"My fourteen months' contract with the ATA is over next January. Now who's the guy you can't wait to tell me about?

Is he for you, or me?"

"Oh, he's not for me. Not that anything's wrong with him, at least that I know of. But I'm not looking to marry again, and don't think I ever will. Paul will always be my man. He's why I became a stewardess... I couldn't find work flying... Women may never break down that male barrier. The next closest thing to flying for a living, so I can be up where Paul is, was to become a stewardess. And I do love the trans-Atlantic flights, even though they keep me away from Timmy so much."

"The man!" Barbara interrupted. "Who's the man you think ought to be in my future? Is he under seventy and honest, loving, and sincere? I'll marry him!"

Gail still kept her guessing. "I don't want to build you up about him, or him to you..."

"Oh, no, certainly not!"

"I'll just tell you this... When you're back in the States again and visit Timmy at Glenview Military Academy, knock on the door of one of the instructors there. Stephen Collier."

Before Barbara could ask Gail to tell her more about the mystery man she had introduced into their conversation, sirens blared in the Savoy dining room.

"Air raid!" the head waiter called out. As dinner guests rose calmly from their tables to walk to the hotel's shelter, the sound of British army anti-aircraft guns were heard not far away outside.

From a shelter in the Savoy basement, Barbara and Gail heard more bombs fall on the city than either of them ever heard before.

While they huddled together on a bench in the semidarkness and dead air of the damp basement, all but one of the metropolitan boroughs in the London area were bombed, 142 people were killed. Westminster Abbey and the National Portrait Gallery were among the buildings damaged.