IT BEGAN WITH A TRYST

Nottingham, England

May 14, 1944

High Street in Nottingham's Market Square during blackout felt desolate in spite of all the buildings, lit only by the moon and the many stars above. Wiser men would know better than to wander through this part of town alone and by night, but even watered down whiskey makes people braver than they sometimes should be. Tonight, Johnny Dodge was that man wandering down High Street, stumbling and blind drunk, past the butcher shop with meat hooks hanging from the overhang of the second floor. He wore his Class A uniform, and his shiny shoes were scuffed from tripping over the cobblestones of the streets in the English city.

Johnny Dodge was one of three million servicemen from the United States armed forces being hosted by The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Like most other men his age and in his circumstances, he knew he should be back at camp resting for morning calisthenics or whatever training program they would be put through next, but the problem was that Johnny knew — as did the three million men like him — that any day now they would be shipped off to France where they would face certain danger and probably death. If how one dies is at least as important as how one lives, well then one might as well live a life just as meaningful as the cause they die for.

Johnny Dodge's Class A uniform was stained and ruffled from an accidental collision with a smelly tommy that spilled piss-warm bitter on him before they knocked each other down. The vague memory of a solid left hook filtered through Johnny's brain as his jaw ached and he recalled how the evening got out of hand before he stormed out of The Bell Inn. Boy, that tommy could hit alright!

Like all the towns and cities across Britain, Nottingham was pitch black except for the moonlight due to the blackout in effect from sundown to sun-up. Though the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had not bombed England in three or four years, the threat remained. Because of the blackout, the stark contrast of flashlights shining down on ladies' shoes was quite evident all around the market square as Johnny stumbled on a rough course for the front of the Council House. Across the market square, in the alcoves where shop doors were, flashlights flickered on in the shadows. Johnny grinned and meandered toward the closest woman.

"Tell me something," Johnny asked as he pointed into the darkness at the source of the light. "Why do you limeys call flashlights 'torches' when flashlights have light bulbs and no fire on the end?"

"Because," came a woman's sultry voice with a high class, almost sarcastic, accent from the darkness. "You're in England, and here, we speak English."

Johnny stood up straight and chuckled. "Well, I don't like your answer ... and I don't like you."

A hand sprung from the shadows where the voice had come from, grabbing Johnny by the collar, and he was dragged from the street into the waiting arms of a woman with soft hair who kissed him passionately. She reached down and felt him up.

"You may not like my answer, Yank, but I can tell that you do like me," she said with her smile apparent in her voice.

He shrugged and slurred his speech. "You're a smarter girl than I am."

The woman giggled again as she unzipped his pants. "You're not a girl, silly boy!"

"You know what I mean," he said as he dug into his pockets and pulled out two handfuls of British coins. "Here." As he handed the coins over to her, they spilled out of her hands and clinked to the ground. He heard some shuffling and more clinking, he leaned down closer to her, and then he felt her breath on his neck. Her perfume was familiar, but the way she touched him was new and exciting. She was short, probably younger than him, and although she took the lead, she fumbled as if she hadn't had much experience with what was about to happen. It reminded him of his first time, which in turn added to her allure and spurred on his own arousal.

The lady of negotiable virtue and the not-so-innocent soldier were unaware of the wrinkled hand that held open a blackout curtain in the darkened window overlooking the street from the flat above the butcher's shop. The wrinkled hand pulled the blackout curtain closed, stopping the moon from lighting up a sliver of the wood plank floor. A match was struck in the darkness, and moved to a candle. In the soft yellow glow of that single candle, an elderly woman sat at her desk and pulled an old quill pen from the inkpot and began writing.

Several moments passed by and the old woman could hear hollering out in the street again. She sighed in exasperation and turned her gaze to her porcelain teapot, still carrying the scent of Darjeeling. Hand painted on the side of the teapot was a portrait of Horatio Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar. On the other side was a hand painted depiction of the triple-masted warship, H.M.S. Victory, with all three decks of cannons firing. Beneath the curved spout was another hand painted scene depicting a well-dressed and properly groomed Englishman accepting a gift from a smiling tribal chief in the West Indies. The wrinkled hands carefully hefted and tilted the empty teapot in the candle light. The bottom was inscribed by the maker, "By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen and Empress Victoria, Mammet and Beckwyth Manufacturers of Fine China, 1817" and with exception to the tiniest chip off the ornate handle, the heirloom was in perfect condition. The teapot, old and beautiful like England, was a symbol of a great nation brimming with rich history and shining majesty that in wartime faced the perils of moral decay.

The old woman set the teapot down on the desk and finished what she was writing....