George Washington's Ghost

He had taken his gurgling, barely three-week old son Alexander Lincoln Fielding from his wife’s arms to allow her to get out of the car – an old sportster he had borrowed from an old CAF friend for the duration of his brief leave – and was loathe to hand him back.

“I always knew you were just an old softie!” Leonora declared triumphantly.

“Guilty as charged!”

Leonora viewed the old house, boarded up since the time of the Empire Day atrocities, the garden in front of it overgrown, something of an eyesore.

“Weird,” she sighed. “That I’ve never been here until now.”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen the old place in years,” Alex admitted. In other circumstances it might have been a good place to bring up a family.” He hesitated. “This is the sort of size of place the Navy provides for Commanders and their families…”

“Are you trying to say that you want me to move down to Norfolk?”

“No,” Alex chuckled, flashing a smile, rocking his baby son in his arms.

“Oh,” Leonora was stupid about her husband but she was not, per se, dumb about anything in particular and guessed that he had brought her out here because he had something on his mind. “Come on! Out with it, Mister!”

“I will be going back to Norfolk, this time. But in a couple of months, maybe sooner, I’m likely to be headed for the West Coast. Vancouver probably. Then, probably to the Sandwich Islands. The Navy is building a base the size of Norfolk out there.” It all came out with a guilty rush. “The war with the Spanish isn’t going to be over any time soon, or maybe not this year or next. We weren’t ready and it will take a while to get up to speed, re-arm and all that stuff. Besides, looking ahead, it seems that the Government back in England is as worried about the Japanese, and the Russians, I suppose, in the Far East almost as much as they are about the Spaniards right now. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’ve been asked to work up a new air group on the West Coast.”

“And you said ‘yes’,” Leonora decided, not really needing him to spell out any of the reasons why. She had had her eyes wide open marrying Alex Lincoln Fielding. “What about me and your son?”

Alex was feeling anxious; an odd sensation.

“I rather hoped you’d come with me, actually.”

Leonora nodded noncommittally and wandered up the path to the porch of the house, the knee and waist high vegetation brushing her skirt.

“Who owns this place nowadays?” She asked.

Her husband followed in her footsteps.

“My Pa never made a will. I’m the oldest, I guess I own it.”

Ever practical, Leonora asked: “Why haven’t you sold it?”

“Never got around to it. Or even really thought about it…”

“What are the Sandwich Islands like?” Leonora thought they were talking about tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean but it paid to check.

“Paradise.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“I reckon I’m in paradise every time I’m with you, my love,” Leonora’s husband declaimed gallantly.

She scoffed at this: “Men!”

Until then she had been thinking more about moving into an apartment in Manhattan, on the West Side within walking distance of Maud’s place. Of course, at the moment Maud was a little preoccupied with her own, personal hero. She guessed her friend would dive head first into domestic bliss, a thing Leonora had never seriously contemplated for herself. And yet now she was being asked to be a ‘proper’ Navy wife.

It was a funny old world.

“Vancouver? You said Vancouver? That’s cold and rainy and winter goes on half the year up there?”

“Well, the base is actually some way to the south. A place called Tacoma, in the northern Oregon Territory.” Alex hoped he was not sounding too vague or evasive, knowing that his wife was not the sort of girl to allow him to get away with fobbing her off with a lot of ‘need to know’ excuses.

With this to the forefront of his mind, even though Admiral Lord Collingwood had, strictly speaking, dismissed him by that stage of their conversation in the huge graving dock at Portsmouth; Alex had stood his ground, taken his courage in his hands and respectfully asked the great man what exactly he had in mind for him.

The C-in-C Atlantic Fleet had thought about it, probably contemplated keeping him on tenterhooks but then, with a mildly amused, harrumphing sigh, gestured for him to walk with him as he continued his inspection of the wounded Ulysses.

‘Yes,’ Admiral Collingwood had grimaced. ‘Fair enough…’

The second most senior flag officer on the Navy List had confided to Alex how he meant to give the Spanish a ‘really sharp kick in the backside at the earliest opportunity’ within the month. Longer-term, with ships drawn from the Pacific Fleet and the Squadron already based at Vancouver, he planned to definitively tip the strategic balance before the end of the year.