could think of now was Paris and what awaited her there.
They arrived in Paris just after noon. As they approached the city she saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and assorted monuments she knew nothing about and then slowly the train drew into the Gare de Lyon, and as it rolled slowly the last feet into the station, Serena stood up and pressed her face against the window, peering into the distance to see if she could find B.J. waiting for the train. There were small clusters of people waiting, but nowhere could she see him, and she began to worry that she wouldn't find him at all. It was a big station and she felt suddenly very much alone. She picked up her suitcase as the train came to a full stop, and reached for the little basket Marcella had put her provisions in, and then slowly she filed out of the compartment with the others and stepped hesitantly off the train. Once again she looked around, her eyes combing the long platform and the unfamiliar faces as her heart pounded madly within her. She knew that he couldn't have forgotten her, and she knew where to find him if for some reason they missed each other at the station, but nonetheless now the full excitement of it was upon her. She was in Paris, and she had come to meet B.J., to get married. As she stood there she knew that a whole new life for her had begun.
“Think he forgot you?” A young GI she had talked to on the train the night before looked down at her with a friendly grin, and just as Serena shook her head she saw the young GI snap to attention and salute someone just behind her. And as though she sensed him near her, she wheeled to face B.J., her eyes wide, her face filled with excitement, her throat choked with a gurgle of laughter, and before she could say anything at all, Major Bradford Jarvis Fullerton had taken her in his arms and lifted her right off the ground. The young American disappeared behind them, with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile.
13
Paris had put on all her prettiest colors for Serena that morning, a bright blue sky overhead, crisp greens here and there as they drove past pine trees, the monuments were the same familiar streaky gray they had been for hundreds of years but here and there were facades of white marble and gold leaf, and rich patinas, and everywhere the people looked happy and excited in knit caps and red scarves, their faces pink with the chill air, their eyes bright. It was almost Christmas, and however much confusion there still was in Paris, it was the first Christmas in peacetime, the first time in six years that the Parisians could truly celebrate with joy.
Hand in hand, as they rode in B.J.'s staff car, they rolled down the broad boulevards and through narrow streets, they passed the Invalides and Notre-Dame, and the extraordinary spectacle of the Place Vendôme, and up the Champs-Elysées, around the Arc de Triomphe, into the maelstrom of traffic around L'étoile, the circular intersection where 12 main streets all met at the Arc de Triomphe and everyone raced madly for the boulevard, where they would exit again, hopefully without crashing into another car. Having safely left the Arc behind them, as Serena, wide-eyed, gazed around her, they drove sedately onto the Avenue Hoche where B.J. was quartered, in an elegant “hôtel particulier,” a town house that looked more like a mansion, which had belonged to the owner of one of France's better known vineyards before the war. In the anguish of the days just before the occupation of Paris, the vineyard owner had decided to join his sister in Geneva, and the house had been left in the care of his servants for the remainder of the war. Eventually the Germans had appropriated it during their stay there, but the officer who had lived there had been a civilized man and the house had suffered no damage during his tenure. And now the vineyard owner had fallen ill, and was not yet ready to return. In the meantime the Americans were renting it from him for a token fee for the year. And B.J. was happily ensconced there, living not quite as grandly as he had at the Palazzo Tibaldo, but very handsomely, with two kindly old French servants who attended