Author's Note:
This early 20th-century romance is a work of fiction. Any semblance of any character to any person, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental. I've tried to make sure that words used are generally appropriate for the period, but if any modern words have slipped through, I apologize in advance.
This story focuses more on the characters than the eroticism, though that, too, comes into play as the story progresses after a long build-up. Still, if you're looking for encounters described in graphic detail, please look elsewhere.
For those who read on, please let me know your thoughts with your votes, favorites, and comments. Thanks!
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Prologue
When I was small, my big sister was my best friend and my protector. She always loved me, and despite my occasional jealousy and some little tiffs between us over time, I always loved her, too.
Mary was almost six years older than me and helped out much of the time with my care, so I considered her "Little Ma" until I was old enough to really understand. "Ma," our real mother, the daughter of Irish immigrants who'd arrived on these shores only months before her birth, spent much of her time making dresses for women in our tenement building when she wasn't cooking or cleaning, so Mary would drag me along on her adventures around our little apartment or up on the roof to play, and, as we both grew, we eventually made our way through the crowded streets of Philadelphia, our home town. Later, we ranged far and wide, from Fishtown to Fairmount Park, from North Philly to as far south as Downtown, with Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
"Mary, why would anyone want a bell with a big ugly crack in it?"
Mary loved me dearly, but, though she never admitted it, I'm sure she resented my constant silly questions, my dogged tenacity in chasing after or tracking her down at times when she wanted a few minutes of what might be considered quiet in our bustling city, and my incessant eavesdropping as I tried to overhear her conversations with Ma. Our mother said I was a precocious child, very advanced for my age, so I was always getting into things, causing my sister trouble to no end. If I'd been Mary, I'd have been screaming, "Clara! Stop it!" or "Leave me alone!" much of the time. Fortunately, Mary was Mary and I wasn't, so she didn't yell at me until I was much older and almost as big as she was.
When I was born in May 1903, we lived on the fifth floor of a six-story tenement building between the rail yards and the big Stetson hat factory, but shortly after I turned 9, Pa was promoted at the hat factory and we were able to move to a real house of our own. Ma could make prettier, more expensive dresses for our new neighbors, too, but I lost all of my friends from our building as a result and didn't have a roof to play on anymore. Our new neighborhood was nicer and quieter, but there weren't many kids so I didn't make many new friends at first.
The exception was Billy Briggs, the boy from two doors down, who sometimes played with Mary and me. He was 13 and seemed to have a pash on Mary, who was two years his elder, but she largely ignored him, leaving him to play ball and talk with me until I started school that fall. I liked my new school much better; there were new friends and I learned a lot more, with Sister Jana Katherine, the headmistress, challenging me and quickly moving me up levels in subjects as a result. Since Billy went to a different school, I didn't see him as often after that, but that didn't concern me since I quickly became one of the sister's star pupils.
Mary went to a different school and to a training school a couple of years later to become a nurse. When America entered the Great War in April 1917, the army people said Pa was too important making campaign hats for the soldiers, so he couldn't go to France, but Mary signed up as a nurse when she finished her coursework a few weeks later. The army men didn't want her to go to France either, though.
Instead, her first letter told us they'd shipped her off to England to help with the "long-term" wounded. Ma and Pa were glad, saying she was far from the fighting so we didn't have to worry about her, but they were just saying that so I wouldn't worry. I knew because I often sat on the stairs late at night listening to their conversations downstairs when I was supposed to be in bed asleep. Therefore, they worried together, and I worried about and prayed for her in silence, asking God to bring her home safely to me.
Maybe God heard my prayers for Mary stayed safe, but when the fighting stopped in November 1918, she didn't get to come home for a while. That was probably fortunate for her and for us since Philadelphia was hit hard by the Spanish Flu epidemic that crashed down upon us following the Liberty Loan Parade in late September. As many as 4,500 people died in the first ten days after the parade, said to be the deadliest in American history, and during the next six months, hundreds of thousands of people contracted the illness with over 15,000 dying. As a nurse, Mary would almost certainly have gotten it and probably brought it home to us.
Instead, she was very busy in a place called Hertfordshire north of London, taking care of the wounded soldiers who were convalescing in some ancient mansion they'd converted into a hospital. The flu didn't get too bad there; Mary said they had patients for weeks or even months at a time so they didn't see as many people coming in and out like a lot of hospitals where people were dying right and left. By the time it was mostly over in late 1919, approximately 50 million people worldwide had died.
Mary sent letters when she could, and I'd read them over and over. In hindsight, I was reading what she wrote rather than what she meant. She'd first mentioned a Captain Walsh, one of her patients who'd gotten an award for bravery and had the wounds to prove it, in late October 1918, but I wasn't interested in her patients (or perhaps I should say, patient, since he was the only one she ever mentioned), so I generally skimmed over that part of her letters. It went on like that for a while and I didn't give her captain a second thought until one letter we received just days before my 16th birthday in May 1919. She said Captain Walsh had recovered and been sent home and that she missed him very much. It was then that a light went on in my mind.
"Ma? Do you think it's possible Mary likes this Captain Walsh?"
Ma looked at me, shaking her head in disbelief, as she tried to keep from laughing. "Clara O'Grady, I declare, you don't have a romantic bone in your body! She's been head over heels for the poor man for months."
Rushing upstairs, I reread her stack of letters and could see it then, probably written in careful terms to avoid getting in trouble for fraternizing with her patients, one of the big prohibitions of her job. With her letters possibly being read by the army censors, she couldn't admit anything until after he was gone. I snuck back to the top of the stairs that evening to overhear Ma telling Pa about my discovery but had to smile when he admitted to having missed it too.
Her next three letters, received about a week apart, were mostly about missing him with a postscript on the last one that they were shutting her hospital down and that she'd be home soon.
I felt just a little bad for her about losing her captain, but I didn't give it much thought since I knew she really didn't care about boys anyway. I was more excited about having her home with me. Oh! How I looked forward to seeing my big sister!
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Chapter 1
Mary arrived on June 1st, just a few days after that final letter and almost three weeks after I turned 16. Ma and I had just enough time to make sure the house (which, in my opinion, was already quite clean enough) was spotless before she arrived. My hands and knees ached, but I gave her a big hug and a kiss when she arrived, and marveled as we held each other at how much smaller she was than I remembered.
Mary and I spent a lot of time together over the next two weeks, with me finally being the bigger, taller sister. Being a late bloomer, I'd started getting the last few inches of my height, my bosoms, and my monthlies shortly before she left for Europe, and now I had two inches and a good 8 to 10 pounds on her. I was saddled with freckles, my eyes were boring, green like grass, and my hair was longer, straighter, and blonder, while she had the beautiful alabaster skin, blue eyes, and strawberry tinge to her curly hair that I so wanted. I would like to say that she was the more beautiful sister, but that would imply some degree of beauty on my part, which would be a grievous insult to actual beauties everywhere.
It didn't take long to learn that Mary was much different than I remembered her from two years before. Whereas we'd always gone to Mass together and she'd never cared about boys, now it was reversed. She wasn't interested in going to Mass with me (though I still dragged her along) for all she cared about was her stupid Captain Walsh. I didn't know him but I knew I couldn't stand him because he'd messed up her mind so badly. Instead of being my big sister of former days, she was a little touched in the head, so I decided to help her one afternoon.
"Mary, he's not here so why don't you forget your Captain Wash? We could go get ice cream—"
"It's Walsh, Clara, and no, I'm not going to forget him!"
"But Mary! He's a boy! You've never cared anything about boys," I declared, thinking of our times together before she'd left for the war when she'd shunned them as much as I had and still did.
"Hmmm. I guess you're partly right. I never cared about boys, but Captain Walsh is a man, and I miss him and care about him," she replied, her eyes flashing at me. "You'll grow up and recognize the difference someday, and then you'll understand."
"Phfff! I doubt it. Boys? Men? Who cares! I just want things back the way they used to be."
Mary shook her head as she gave me a compassionate look. "Things change, Clara; we have more experiences every day, so our perceptions are influenced by those. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes a lot, but most things don't stay the same forever. You'll understand that someday, too."
I sighed, seeing that I wasn't going to change her mind. Unless...
"Maybe," I admitted before playing my trump card as we turned the corner and I spied the shop about a block away. "But ice cream doesn't change; it's always good and always will be."
Mary smiled before nodding. "True...but your favorite flavor may change over time."
"Not mine! I love vanilla!"
"I used to," she said, "but now I like chocolate. Maybe we should test it on you. Race you. Last one there buys!"
