Margot’S War: Not All Casualties Were on the Frontlines

By Ty Knoy

Nicholas Rohloffsen is ashamed of himself. Although he was doggedly loyal to his wife until her death nine weeks earlier, he cannot stop thinking about Margot Renard, the much older woman who possessed his heart when he was a younger man.

Nicholass quest to find her soon leads him to a retirement home where he proclaims he is the distant cousin of the recently deceased composer, Victor Rohloffsen, and is searching for more information about his past relationship with Margot. But his reason for visiting is barely true, if true at all. As he sets out to prove that a widowed resident, Katherine Anne Kendall, is really Margot, Nicholas is led down an unexpected path where he finally learns the fascinating truth about why she once suffered, how she somehow found refuge from her pain through furious play and study of classical piano, and why some casualties of the war were not on the front lines.

Margots War reveals a widowers journey back into the past as he searches for the woman who once captured his heart and, in the process, uncovers a complex chain of events that reveal the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480850941

Ty Knoy

Ty Knoy was raised and educated in Indiana. He subsequently spent most of his working years in Michigan with newspapers and news wire service for Advance Publications (commonly known as Cond Nast). Ty currently lives in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Margots War is his second book.

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Copyright © 2017 Tyrus R. Knoy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5095-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5093-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5094-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912108

Archway Publishing rev. date: 12/7/2017

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

For Patsy

Beautiful Steinway artist. No other resemblance to title character.

CHAPTER 1

FOR THE TEN- or fifteen-thousandth time, Nick was thinking of Margot as he awakened. He rubbed his eyes and shifted in the overstuffed chair in which he had nodded off. He was ashamed of himself. He had had a perfectly lovely wife to whom he had been doggedly loyal right up until her death. But Margot—or whatever her real name was and wherever she had come from—was in his thoughts time after time. He managed her out of his head during the day, and he had never spoken her name in his sleep at night. At least his late wife had never said he had.

The clatter of keys and thump of a purse landing on a desk aroused Nick to the sight of a woman standing behind glass. A ray of sun cut across the lounge and onto her.

Nick was in shadow, near a grand piano, apparently unseen.

Hello, he said softly, attempting not to startle her as he rose. I’m Nicholas Rohloffsen, and I’ve come to visit Mrs. Kendall—Katherine Anne Kendall. He pushed his card under the glass. As light came onto his face, the woman gasped and slapped her hand to her mouth.

Nick knew his eyes were red and puffy, but he had showered, shaved, and put on a fresh Oxford shirt with blue-and-white stripes, a red-blue-cream paisley tie—his late wife’s favorite—and a navy blazer. So he was sure there was no reason for her to fear that he was a Jack the Ripper or Richard Speck.

I’m sorry, Nick said with a smile, and he began repairing the situation using advice his father had given fifty years ago, when the blouses of his female schoolmates had begun filling out: Chat up a girl who is unfriendly to you. Compliment her hair or something. Win one of those girls over, and you will know you can count on her. His father had added, And you may be surprised that you like her after all. Nick had written the words in his journal and had always used the idea to deal with cranks, male or female.

So he offered, Maybe you thought you were seeing the ghost of Victor Rohloffsen. (Victor Rohloffsen, a conductor-composer, had died two weeks before, and it had been in the papers.) I’m a relative, a distant relative, Nick went on. He was one of the rich Rohloffsens, and I’m one of the poor Rohloffsens, but it is said that I look like him. I could never see it myself. That’s a very nice scarf you have—Italian silk, isn’t it? Nice colors. The Italians are so good with colors. Victor was my father’s third cousin, and that makes me Victor’s fourth cousin. I saw him only three or four times in my life though, and now it’s too late to see him again—obviously. Nick took a breath.

Thank you, the woman mumbled.

He was a student here right at the end of the war and—

I know, she said.

Yes, of course you would. Silly of me. I’m sorry. I’m having a silly day.

Visiting hours begin at nine.

It wasn’t quite eight.

Nick went on. Mrs. Kendall—she wasn’t Mrs. Kendall then, of course—also was at the university, also at the end of the war. Also in the Music School, and it’s possible—actually, it’s a certainty—she and Victor knew each other, and that’s one of the reasons I wish to talk to her.

That was barely true, if true at all. There was a far more compelling reason Nick wished to be with Mrs. Kendall, but he was keeping it to himself.

I thought I might catch her at breakfast, he said. "I’m sorry to have frightened you. I parked out past the porte cochère and came in across the lawn to the patio. It’s lovely with the umbrellas and all—school colors, aren’t they? I suppose I—well, I didn’t see her on the patio, so I came on into the dining hall, and I didn’t see her there either. So I came on in here and sat down and nodded off, perhaps. I’m sure I would know her even if her hair is silver now. Is her hair silver now? As Nick asked, his heart pounded in an uneven rhythm. He was talking too fast—from nervousness and lack of sleep, he was sure. Excuse me. May I sit down, please?"

His hostess, whose mouth had been agape during the entire monologue, quickly said, Yes. Certainly. Please do, Mr. Rohloffsen. And yes, her hair is silver.

Nick settled back into an overstuffed leather chair, imagining the woman he had once known with silver hair now around her face. He had first seen her face only in pieces—a piece or so at a time—and the pieces had come together beautifully.

The chair was like all chairs in all lounges in university towns and was next to a table with a telephone—all in the shadow from which Nick had arisen. Sorry, I think I’m exhausted. He saw that, as the morning progressed, the sunbeam would be moving toward his chair. As he was already warm, he made a plan for when the time came to move to another chair on the other side of the table, which by then would be out of the sunbeam. Also, he thought that later in the day he must call his mother—but she would ask where he was and why he was there, and he didn’t want her to know.

His wife, Gayle, had been dead only nine weeks. His mother wouldn’t approve of what he was doing.

The receptionist came around from the desk and stood before him. May I get you something, Mr. Rohloffsen? Coffee? Orange juice? Have you eaten? I can make you a meal ticket.

Nick thought he should accept something, if only to put her at ease and make her feel she was in control. That’s very kind of you. Orange juice would be good. I’m afraid I’ve had too much coffee already. He pointed to the piano. This isn’t Mrs. Kendall’s Steinway, by any chance? He had inspected it earlier and already knew that wasn’t possible.

The receptionist cocked her head. I don’t think so.

"She’s very, very good, you know. Could have been world class—if she is the person I’m thinking of, that is. Was world class, actually, but had some tough luck on the way up. With a little luck, she would have played all over the world."

Really? I didn’t know. I’ve never heard her play.

She had a Steinway very much like this, and I wondered if she could have donated it when she moved here, so she would have it at hand.

The piano was a medium-sized ebony grand with a matte finish, a Model M or Model O—Nick couldn’t tell for sure—probably from before the war. In any case, it was old enough that it had key tops of genuine ivory.

It’s been here a great deal longer than she has, the receptionist said. She’s been here only a few months. Occasionally they roll it over into the dining room for a concert—usually a faculty person or a grad student.

Probably not Margot’s, Nick said. She played outside, on her pool deck—at night—out in Colorado. That was where I first heard her. I was right next door. She got her Steinway out onto the deck just at dusk, and then suddenly—Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Mussorgsky. I especially remember her Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures’ out under the stars.

It must have been beautiful, the receptionist said, frowning, eyelids fluttering.

All from memory. No music. No music rack. She had a huge repertoire. Out there alone at night, she played with her head thrown back, looking up at the heavens, the moon, the stars, like she was sending music out to the other planets, the Milky Way—sending her music to all the souls out in the forever.

Nick paused, looking at the ceiling.

The receptionist waited then said, If you will just stay right here, I’ll bring your juice. She started off toward the dining room but then stopped and turned back in the middle of the hall. Wasn’t it strange to take a piano outside at night? Wouldn’t dew fall on the wires or something?

It wasn’t here. It was out West, in a dry climate. Not much dew at night.

I see, she said, as if she didn’t see at all. She nodded, smiled, and gave a little wave. If the phone rings, don’t answer it.

Okay, he said, wondering why she thought he would or what difference it would make if he did. She was in medium heels like those worn in court by female lawyers. Nick’s eyes followed her as she clicked off into the hall and on into the dining room, into the clinking of tableware and glassware, in among gray heads and bald heads that turned as she breezed through before he lost sight of her.

Out the French doors, beyond the red-and-white umbrellas on the patio, past the lawn, Nick’s car gleamed alone in the parking lot among red and gold maples. It had been in the sun when he had parked, but it was now mostly in the shade of those trees. Now only the hood ornament, the grill, and the front bumper gleamed.

He thought, Stupid of me, on the road yesterday, a Friday in October, without it occurring to me that I could be driving into a college football weekend. He had been paid a lot of money over many years in a job where he was to think of anything and everything that could happen. Except for one other time, he had never felt that his brain had gone out of order. In football early in high school, he’d had his bell rung, as it was called then. He had staggered to the sideline, and the coach had put his hands on his shoulder pads, shaking him and yelling, How many of me do you see?

Nick had picked up from juniors and seniors that any answer other than one was the wrong answer. One, Coach! Just one! he had lied. Two plays later, he was back in the game, once again seeing one of everything, one of everyone. Just in time, he later told his teammates. Having one’s bell rung was a rite of passage. If I’d gone back in sooner, I might have tackled a ghost instead of a real guy, he said as seniors patted him on the back, welcoming him to the fraternity.

The piano next to Nick was like his mother’s, except for the finish. But the key tops on this piano were like new. This piano, poor thing, must have spent most of its seventy-odd years in the home of a dilettante, and it probably never has heard its full voice, Nick mused. The ivory tops on his mother’s piano were worn nearly through, as had been the ivories on Margot’s piano.

The evening before, Nick had driven into the campus side of town and had become ensnared in traffic jams and barricades, blocking streets for bands marching through. He had found a parking place, albeit a way off on the far side of the courthouse square in front of a funeral home with greenish porch lights. He had walked about a mile back to the old piano bar, back near the campus, where Victor, while still a student, had famously composed a melody or two that had become popular.

Nick had been in the bar once before, forty-four years earlier, and nothing about it had changed. Pictures of Victor still hung on the walls, both inside and out. The same piano was in the same place, with the bar built around it. Nick stood and drank a Bombay Sapphire and tonic—lemon, not lime, please—by the stool where he imagined Margot had once sat, elbow over, sipping her drink while Victor was composing and Allied armies were pushing Germans backward across France. On one of those days so long ago, a plane carrying Glenn Miller had disappeared on a flight across the English Channel.

Nick walked back to his car and drove out to the retirement village and around the main building, looking up at windows and trying to feel which window Katherine Anne was behind. He stopped his car at one point and shut off the engine. Though feeling foolish, he stood on the car’s doorsill, hoping to pick up a vibration. For a moment, he thought he felt something, and he looked up at a certain window, dark, on the third floor.

Hoping he could will the light to come on, he stepped down, turned off the car’s lights, and quietly closed the car door. His eyes, however, had lost the window, and they could not or would not go back to it. The window and the moment were lost, but the sensation, fleeting as it was, was taken by Nick as proof that Katherine Kendall was indeed the Margot Renard he was trying to find and that she was indeed there, behind that window.

On the way out on the long driveway, Nick met a police car coming in slowly over the speed bumps—without flashing lights, without siren. He wondered if someone had called in about him, perhaps reporting a prowler. He watched the taillights in his mirrors, hoping the car would not abruptly turn around, and he quickly prepared a story: he had not been there since the new stadium was built; he knew the new stadium was in that area, and he wanted to find it before it was time to go to the game tomorrow. The story wasn’t needed, however; the patrol car did not turn around.

Just the way he had come in earlier in the day, Nick drove back out of town and drove for more than fifteen miles before finding a room, another consequence of failing to foresee the possibility of a football weekend.

Margot had loved Glenn Miller, and he wondered if this Katherine Kendall loved Glenn Miller and if he could find someone in the dining room, a music school retiree perhaps, who knew her to ask—

I beg your pardon? A glass of orange juice and a napkin were placed beside him, near the phone.

Sorry, I was talking to myself—talking in my sleep, perhaps. Hot—I felt like the world was on fire and that my brain was burning up. It didn’t ring. He pointed to the phone. And thank you very much.

My mother had Glenn Miller records, the receptionist said. And she once had a windup Victrola. With a crank. Before the war, during the war. From when she was a girl. Remember those?

Nick frowned. I don’t think so.

It was in our attic with old records. Some were really thick, with grooves only on one side. Maybe it had been my grandmother’s. I’m more of a Beatles-generation person myself, or Elvis generation, or Everly Brothers. Maybe you are also, Mr. Rohloffsen? Not that I cared for Elvis—or for the Everly Brothers, for that matter—but tunes we hear again and again when we are young do get stuck in our minds, don’t they?

Nick nodded, noticing that his hostess, who had been stiff earlier, had become chatty. Yes, that’s my time also, he said. She was younger than he thought.

She leaned over and looked into his eyes. May I? she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she placed one hand on the back of his head and the palm of the other on his forehead. Then she let go. No temp, she said, still peering into his eyes.

Nick said, as he had to the coach years before, I only see one of you.

She smiled and straightened. "That’s a good sign. I need to make a couple of phone calls and maybe run some papers upstairs. I’d like you to promise me