Caroline

THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

Appointment in Samarra. December 27, 1930.

"All night Caroline did not sleep, until long after daylight she lay awake, hearing the heartless sounds of people going to work and going on with their lives regardless . . . He always had little metal v's put in his heels, and she would never hear that sound again, that collegiate sound . . . and she would not hear the sound of the little metal v's on a hardwood floor again. nor smell him, the smell of clean white shirts and cigarettes and sometime whiskey . . . He was like someone who had died in the war, some officer in an overseas cap and a Sam Browne belt and one of those tunics that button up to the neck but you can't see the buttons, and an aviator's wings on the breasts where the pocket ought to be, and polished high lace boots with a little mud on the soles, and a cigarette in one hand and his arm around an American in a French uniform. For her Jukian had that gallantry that had nothing to do with fighting but was attitude and manner; a gesture with a cigarette in his hand, his whistling, his humming while he played solitaire or swung a golf club back and forth; slapping her behind a little too hard and saying, "Why, Mrs. English, it is you, but all the same knowing he had hit too hard and a little afraid she would be angry."

From the Terrace. Caroline to Natalie:

"What am I now? What shall I ever be? I'm a girl who had good and just cause to walk out on her husband, and now for the rest of my life I can sit here with my good and just cause . . . He was nice, and God help me he was nice to me . . . I loved him, I loved him."