Part 1 â Donât say good bye, just say good nightâŠ
John Wayne looked at his friend Ward Bond and asked him if he would mind driving them in the Dukeâs car to take Diana Maitland home from Ward's beach house so he could spend a little more time just holding her. Ward said heâd be happy to do that, so they took her things out to the car, and Duke and Diana sat in the back seat while Ward drove them back to L.A. He noticed that they didnât say a word to each other the whole drive, but he would glance in the rearview mirror every once in a while and see them kissing softly; but mostly she was just leaning on him with her head on his chest and his arms around her, both of them looking sad and scared. Ward felt a lump form in his throat as he could almost feel their pain just from the looks on their faces.
Diana lived less than a mile from the studio; she didnât own a car so she walked to work or took the bus if the weather was bad. She relented to let the Duke walk her to the bottom of the stairs that went up to her apartment, but she told him she didnât want him to go inside with herâshe couldnât handle having any memories of him in her apartment. Ward stayed in the car and watched while they walked up the sidewalk to her apartment stairway and stopped at the bottom to talk. He felt the lump in his throat get bigger as he watched them.
When they stopped at the bottom of the stairs to her apartment, Diana stepped up on the first step and turned to face Wayne, and she took the box with the black dress, undergarments and shoes heâd bought for her and set it down on the steps behind her. He grabbed her and pulled her against him tightly, hugging her with his left arm at her waist and up her back and his right arm around her left shoulder with his hand on the back of her head; she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck. They just held each other as tightly as they could for a few moments.
Then he loosened his hold on her slightly and put his mouth next to her right ear and asked her quietly, âWhen will you know?â
âIn about a week or so,â she answered softly. Then she continued, âIâll get a message to you somehow, to let you know.â
He pulled his head back to look at her, moving his hands to her waist, and said, âNo. Iâll be at the studio again in a couple weeks and Iâll come to you. This is something that I want to hear from you personallyâŠdonât argue with me on this,â he commanded when he saw her start to protest. She nodded her understanding. He brought his hands up to the sides of her face and neck and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs, and stared into her eyes as he said huskily, âAnd donât you dare say âgood bye,â just say âgood night,ââ as he leaned in to kiss her deeply and tenderly.
She had moved her hands to his shoulders and then moved them up to grasp his neck as they kissed for long moments, and he finally ended it slowly when he heard her whimper in desperation that sounded both passionate and sad. She was trembling slightly and there was a shimmer of tears in her eyes as she opened them slowly; she licked her lips and swallowed hard, and then looked into his eyes and whispered, âGoodâŠnight,â as she turned to pick up the box and head upstairs.
He watched her as she walked up the stairs and paused at the door to get her spare key from where she kept it hidden, since her main keys were in her purse, which had been left in her office all weekend. She paused to look back at him before she went in and shut the door. He walked back to his car and got in the front seat with Ward, and asked Ward if he could stay the night at his houseâhe knew he was going to have to get good and drunk in order to be able to get any sleep tonight and he didnât want to do it alone. Ward said it was no problem and they made the drive back in silence.
As soon as Diana shut the door to her apartment, she felt like she was dead; like she had poured every ounce of her life force into loving John Wayne, and after being with him steadily for almost 58 hours straight, she was drained and her heart felt like it didnât want to beat any more. She felt empty; she already knew she wasnât pregnantâshe didnât know how, she just knew that if she was, she would feel it somehow and she wouldnât feel this empty. She would only have to wait a week or so to confirm it, but she already knew and she hadnât had the heart to tell himâŠhe wouldnât have believed her anyway.
She collapsed into bed that night and slept fitfully, between the haunting dreams that she was still with him. She made herself get up the next morning and go to work as usual, thinking that getting back to her normal routine would somewhat keep her mind from being completely occupied by thoughts of him. She was thrown slightly when her boss came in a little while later and stopped at her desk and asked, âWas Mr. Wayne pleased with you this weekend?â She jerked her head up to look at her boss and murmured a quick âwhat?â and her boss continued, âWas Mr. Wayne pleased with your work for him this weekend? I called his hotel concerned because you never returned after the tour with him, and he left me a message saying that he had asked you to check on the availability of some of the production crew for the movie from his office. Were you able to get the information he needed?â
She stammered nervously, âOh. Oh, yes, wellâŠsome of it anywayâheâŠjust needed some⊠informationâŠthat his own staff wasnât able to provide. IâŠguess he was pleased with me; he wasâŠvery kind and generous to me.â Her voice wavered as a lump started to form, so she swallowed it and cleared her throat as her boss frowned at her slightly.
She was sounding uncharacteristically nervous in front of her boss and he knew when she sounded like that, she was scared. Heâd found that out when heâd asked her to do the studio recorded singing for some movies, and she had been flustered and stammered as she had politely tried to tell him no because she said she would be too nervous.
Her boss looked at her, and asked, âAre you all right? You donât sound all right. Did something else happen this weekend?â She shook her head no and said that nothing had happened, she was just tired, that was all, and sheâd be fine. Her boss still frowned slightly at herâlike he wasnât buying her story, but he let it go.
At the end of that first day, she was surprised when a delivery person showed up in her office and informed her that he had several packages of frozen halibut steaks to give to her, and said she should get them home and into her freezer as soon as possible. Sheâd completely forgotten that theyâd caught all those fish just yesterday, and she smiled to herself as she realized he was sharing them with her. She would have more fish to eat for a while than sheâd had since sheâd moved to L.A. over 8 years ago. Oh, God! How sheâd missed the taste of fish! The rest of the week passed by in a blur as she just tried to get through each day without seeing his face every time she closed her eyes, hearing his voice every time it was quiet and recalling some vivid image from their weekend together when she didnât have anything else to occupy her thoughts.
The first weekend after their encounter was hard for her. She couldnât go out and drink with her girlfriends like theyâd asked her toâif by chance she was wrong and she was pregnant, she didnât think it would be a good idea to drink heavily. She went out with them for a little while to a dance club and had one drink, then ended up going home early because a couple men asked her to dance, and she knew she couldnât because sheâd feel like she was cheating on him. Her girlfriends had asked her what was wrong and where sheâd disappeared to the previous weekend, and she told them nothing was wrong and that it had been just âwork stuffâ last weekend.
She got her confirmation of what she already knew that following Monday, and she broke down and cried in the ladies room near her office at the studio. She tried to wash her face to hide the evidence before she went back to her desk, but if anyone looked closely, they would be able to tell sheâd been crying. When she walked in the door to her office, she was taken aback to see Ward standing in front of her desk, and as soon as he looked at her, she burst out crying again. Ward came to her and put his arms around her and asked her what was wrong.
She started to sob, âIâm notâŠIâm notâŠ,â then she stopped. She couldnât tell Ward that sheâd just confirmed that she wasnât pregnant! She just leaned against him for a couple more minutes as she stopped sobbing and calmed down. Ward handed her a tissue and led her over to a chair to sit down, and he sat next to her and held her hand while she composed herself. When she was calm, she looked at Ward and asked him why he was there.
Ward explained that he had a meeting with one of the casting people regarding the movie to see if there was going to be a part in it that was right for him, and that Duke knew he was going to be at the studio and had asked him to check in on her if he had a chance. She looked at Ward and told him that sheâd been doing fine, for the most part, until today because sheâd just gotten a little bad news and that was why she was upsetâshe assured Ward it had nothing to do with Duke.
Ward didnât believe her; he looked closely at her and asked quietly, âAre you upset because you are or arenât pregnant?â