BARCELONA, SPAIN, Jan. 1, 1938. A few of us American correspondents got together tonight for a traditional New Year's Eve party at our favorite bistro.

It is now only a bombed-out hole in the ground littered with the rubble of war. Around us in this beleaguered city, the smell of death hangs heavy in the air.

But we brought a lantern, some cheese and a bottle of wine and sat on broken chairs and at midnight we sang "Auld Lang Syne." We wept for fallen friends on both sides of this bitter struggle and talked about home and family and friends we have not seen for a very long time.

As we sat there, escaping for the moment from this dreadful war I could not escape the realization that if Franco and his hordes succeed in winning this civil war, France will be trapped between Germany and a new Fascist stronghold. Thus Spain may have the nefarious distinction of being the final dress rehearsal for World War II. . . .

Francis Keegan stared at the book, no longer reading, his mind tumbling through time, when the doorbell rang. He tried to ignore it, hoping whoever it was would go away. But the bell was persistent and finally he got up and answered it.

Vanessa Bromley was standing in the doorway.

THIRTY-FIVE.

"Hi, Frankie Kee," she said softly, accompanied by a devastating smile.

He was so surprised at the sight of her, he faltered before he spoke. His mind suddenly leaped back to the Berlin train station, almost five years ago.

Vannie throwing him her beret. Walking back to the hotel alone in the rain, thinking not about her but about Jenny. Sending the flowers without any card.

She looked great, a black Chanel hat cocked over one eye, long legs sheathed in black silk, her magnificent figure flattering a gray silk suit, a black velvet choker with a single diamond in the center. She was dressed to kill and he knew he was the quarry.

Bad timing, he thought, until she said just the right thing.

"I'm truly sorry, Kee," she said. "I just heard about Bert."

"How'd you know I was here?"

"Oh . . . I knew," she said, almost wistfully. "May I come in?"

"Of course, what's the matter with me?" he said and stepped back, swinging the door wide for her.

The living room was the size of a loft with a massive picture window overlooking a balcony and beyond it, the East River. The French doors on either side of it were open and a cool breeze billowed through the drapes. The furniture, lamps, tables, were all rounded at the corners and had a soft, inviting quality, the latest in art deco. The room was painted in light shades of pastel-grays, yellows, blues. There were three Impressionist paintings in the room, one by the recent Spanish discovery, Picasso. An open brick fireplace dominated one side of the room and facing it were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, both of which offset the pale colors and gave the room a strong masculine quality. On a table in the corner was a picture of Jenny, Bert and Keegan at Longchamp. It was the only photograph in the room.

Vanessa saw the three glasses on the coffee table next to the open scrapbook.

"Oh," she stammered, suddenly embarrassed. "I didn't know you had company. What a brazen thing for me . . ."

"I don't have company," he said flatly.

She looked down at the glasses again and he wondered how it must look, a man sitting alone in an apartment with three glasses of champagne. How the hell does one explain that? he wondered.

"I was . . . I was drinking a good-bye toast to Bert. Why don't you join me?"

"I'm sorry, this was presumptuous . . ."

"I'm glad you came," he interrupted. "C'mon, I'll get you a glass of champagne."

"Why don't you just drop a lemon peel in one of those," she said with a smile.

"Still remember that, huh?"

"I remember every second of those two days," she said very directly. "I also know about your friend and what happened to her. You've had more than your share of grief. But you can't stay alone forever, Kee."

He smiled as he poured her glass. "That carved in stone?"

"No," she said, her shoulders sagging a bit. She took the glass and followed him out on the balcony. The soft summer breeze stirred her collar. She leaned on the balcony, staring at a tugboat put-put-putting up the river. "It's probably carved in desperation."

"Desperation?"

She took off the hat and shook out her hair. She had let it grow down to her shoulders.

"I'm absolutely shameless where you're concerned," she said. "For four years I've gone to every first-night, every gallery opening, every party, your favorite restaurants, hoping to accidentally bump into you. But you don't go to openings or parties. And I guess you eat at home."

"I've turned into a helluva cook, Vannie," he said. "I'm just not ready for the social swim yet."

"After four years! You have friends here who care about you and miss you." She turned to him, leaning her back against the balcony rail. "At least one, anyway."

She was still as splendid as she had been in Berlin but the bright-eyed look of innocence was gone, replaced by the first signs of cynicism, the first cruel lines of maturity.

"I heard you got married."

"So you do still talk to the living."

"I was never really a part of your society, Vannie. Your father made that clear to me."

"What do you mean?"

"That I'd only be accepted if I played by their rules."

"Which you didn't choose to do."

"Hell, I'm not an aristocrat. My blood is definitely not blue. The last party I went to was . . . I guess three years ago, after the Normandie's maiden voyage. Marilyn Martin filled me in on you."

"I know. I saw you for just a minute. Remember?"

He nodded slowly. "Sure I remember," he said. "You were the most stunning woman there . . ."

Sleek and proud, the Normandie steamed loftily into New York Harbor while thousands lined the waterfront, cheering her to her berth. Hundreds of tiny boats clustered around her like puppies around a Great Dane. She had just broken the world speed record on her maiden voyage, easily stealing the honor from Germany's Bremen, so the crowd was particularly gleeful. Horns honked. Whistles shrieked A storm of confetti fell on Wall Street as she passed lower Manhattan on her way up the Hudson. There had been a clatter of fireworks as she negotiated the wide turn into her berth at the foot of West 49th Street.

Keegan arrived just as the party, which had started on the broad, gaily lit first-class deck, spilled into the main salon. Benny Goodman's Trio kicked off and charged into "I Got Rhythm. " The uptown crowd, at least five hundred of them enjoying the hospitality of the French line, jammed against the stage, applauding Goodman's joyous playing, the thunderous beat of Gene Krupa's drums and Teddy Wilson's subtle counterpoint as his fingers barely brushed the keys. At the back of the dance floor, behind the crowd, the more adventurous guests jitterbugged frantically, spinning away from their partners and back, high-kicking, their feet a lively blur. Keegan got a drink and was sampling the hors d'oeuvres when a voice behind him said: "Francis?"

He turned and stared down at a diminutive redhead. Her hair was auburn, cut short .and close to the nape and covered with a sequined cloche. Her green eyes were saucer-round and ebullient. Energy radiated from her. Her white, sequined dress barely contained a spectacular figure, the small stones glittering in the light, twinkling as she walked and turning every step into a shimmy. A true sprite, Keegan thought. A dazzling imp.

"Marilyn, " he said. "It's good to see you. "

"You remembered!" she cried, obviously pleased. He was surprised himself. He had not seen her for years. Her brother was one of his gang at college and the last time he saw her was just before graduation-before the caterpillar had turned into a butterfly.

"Have you seen Vannie since you got back?" she asked abruptly. The question caught him totally off balance. Before he could answer, she said, "Oh, that was catty of me. I know you haven't seen her, she's my best friend."

"Vanessa Bromley?"

She nodded.

"How about that, " he said for lack of anything better.

They started strolling toward the front of the big room to get a better look at the Goodman Trio.

"Is she here?" he asked.

"She will be. She's at the th-e-ah-tah. "She closed her eyes and elongated the word with mock sophistication, then she stared up at him and quickly added, "But she'd walk out in a second if she knew you were here. "

"Stop that, " he said irritably.

The tall, bespectacled bandleader was like the calm in the center of a hurricane. Only his fingers seemed excited, fleeing across his clarinet as though the keys were on fire while the baby-faced Krupa was his antithesis, an entranced whirlwind, turning every drumbeat into a pistol shot.

"Please don't leave until she gets here, " Marilyn blurted out. "She's very unhappy. "

"Marilyn . . . "

"Anyway, this is fun. I haven't seen you for . . . ten years? Ten years! My dad loved you. Said you were the only crazy one in the whole gang. "

"He never met Freddie Armistead?"

"Freddie wasn't crazy, he was hopelessly insane. "

Keegan smiled at the memory, despite himself. "Remember when he dug that hole in the Quad and put the horse in it? Took them all day to dig it out. They never did figure out who did it. "

"Wonder what ever happened to old Armistead?" she said. "He vanished into thin air after graduation. And remember Lyle Thornton?"

"Old Turkey Thornton?"

"Oh God, how he hated that nickname. Were you responsible for that?"

"Nah," Keegan said unconvincingly. "But he did look like a turkey. "

She hunched up her shoulders and giggled. "Looked exactly like a turkey," she said. She squinched up her nose. "That little scrawny neck."

"How about that beak of his?"

"That's cruel, Francis."

"C'mon, he had a nose the size of a baseball bat. "

"Did you hear about his father? Got cleaned out in the crash, went out to Chicago and jumped out a window of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Old Turkey floundered around for a couple of years, then he married rich and his father-in-law bought him a seat on the stock exchange for a wedding present, probably so he wouldn't have to support him. "

"Lyle Llewellyn Thornton, the Third, "Keegan reflected. "You have to be rich with a name like that. Who'd he get to marry him?"

"Vannie, " Marilyn answered bluntly.

"Vannie!" he said. "Vannie married Turkey Thornton!?"

"Doesn't make a bit of sense, does it?" Marilyn said. "One of the true mysteries of the twentieth century. "

"Maybe he has some hidden talent we don't know about," Keegan suggested.

"I really don't think so, " Marilyn answered. "He got involved in the theater. Turkey got a couple of uptowners involved with a Broadway show. Lo and behold it turned out to be The Gay Divorcee, Now everybody thinks he can smell a hit a mile off. He's been dabbling in it ever since. They have a townhouse on East 83rd, half a block off the Park, and a summer house on Cape Cod. " She stopped for a moment and flicked a speck of confetti off her shoulder. "She's absolutely miserable. "

"Miserable?"

"Thornton turned into an absolute ogre. He knocks her around, stays out for days at a time. Once the little SOB got his hands on the money . . . " She let the sentence die, then added, "She talks about you all the time, has ever since that summer in Germany. "

"It was two days, Marilyn . . . "

"And she never forgot it, " she said, finishing the sentence.

"What are you, the Upper East Side matchmaker?"

"No. I just hate to see my friends unhappy. I have no complaints, I'm very lucky. Happily married, have two girls who'll knock your eyes out, a big house in Westport, and a husband who dotes on me. " She stared up at him with the big green saucers. "Whyn't you just stay long enough to say hello to her," she pleaded.

"We'll see," he said and quickly changed the subject. "Where's your husband? Do I know him?"

"I don't think so. He's from Pittsburgh. A surgeon. He's got an emergency operation at Governor's Hospital. I'm hoping he'll get here before the party's over. "

"From the look of things, this brawl will still be going on next Tuesday. "

"Look, we're all going to the French Casino on 50th and catch the midnight show of the Folies-Bergere," she said. "Why don't you come with us? It's supposed to be very risque."

"Not when you've seen the real thing. "

"That's very snobbish."

"I didn't mean it to be, " he said casually. "I just meant the French version is a lot bawdier. "

"Well, come with us anyhow. "

"Marilyn . . . "

"Or how about Sunday brunch? We're all going out to the Merry Go Round. It's on the Island, Atlantic Beach. Has a revolving bar, hobby horses, these fluffy, crazy-looking jungle animals. It's right on the ocean with an outside dance, floor . . . " She did a little shimmy.