When Hemingway eventually managed to get Pelkey and the rest of his irregulars out of his hotel room he took Mary in his arms.

” God I’ve missed you, darling.”

” I’ve missed you too. Am I no longer your daughter?”

” That’s for the others, the outside world. Here, in here, you are my darling, my only darling. The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, if you think that life is worth having?”

” Oh, darling, I do, oh how I do.”

With that Hemingway picked Mary up in his bear like arms and carried her through to the bedroom.

In the early hours of the morning as Mary lay sleeping like a contented purring kitten, Hemingway dressed in his uniform, and, after writing a short note to Mary asking her to meet him for breakfast, made his way downstairs to the lobby of the Ritz and then outside into the Place Vendome, where he turned left.

A pink beautiful dawn was just breaking above the rooftops as Hemingway made his way south-westward along the rue de Castiglione, then across the rue de Rivoli, where dozens of French tanks were parked with their exhausted troops bivouacked around them. He then strode across the Jardin des Tuileries – where more troops were sleeping – before emerging onto the Quai des Tuileries. Here Hemingway turned right and walked westward along the Right Bank of the Seine before crossing over to the Left Bank, via the Pont de la Concorde, to the Quai D’Orsay where, sitting on a bench he and Hadley had used often in the 1920s, he watched a fisherman try, without luck, to catch something, anything. In the distance could be heard the occasional sound of gunfire.

A trillion thoughts went through Hemingway’s sore and troubled mind. Why in God’s name was he here? Why was he putting on this dreadful show of being the soldier when he knew in his heart of hearts he should be writing, writing about the people, the GIs, the terrified, yet grateful French people he’d come across, instead of pretending to be Grant before the battle of Shiloh? Hemingway couldn’t answer the question – well that wasn’t entirely true – he could, but things had gone too far. One particular side of Hemingway’s many sided nature had decided to go along a certain path, and the rest had to follow even if they did keep on questioning him without pity, without mercy – digging away at the facade that, by late 1944, Hemingway was finding hard to keep together. Having chosen his path Hemingway felt he had to go on, that to turn back would
be cowardly, and cowardice was out of the question. This feeling of being split into many parts – with one part seemingly in control – was creating so much tension that at times Hemingway felt completely out of control. It was like being sick but without the compensation of knowing which part of the body needed treatment. Every inch felt acutely ill, yet not. Only when he was with Mary did all the warring parts come together for a short time, making him feel whole again. It had been that way last night.