“All right, Admiral.”
To begin with, Victor Henry said, the British had made better use than the French of the time between the wars. He described their scientific advances, the strength and disposition of the battle fleet, the fighter control system he had seen at Uxbridge, the figures of German and British plane losses, the morale of the fliers, the preparations along the invasion beaches, the Chain Home stations, the production of aircraft. Fitzgerald listened with his eyes closed, his head flung back, his fingers dancing. Benton stared gravely at Pug, pulling at an ear as he had done in a hundred War Plans meetings. Train Anderson, wreathing himself in smoke, also looked hard at Pug, though the glare was fading to a frigid calculating expression.
Pug gave as sober and clear an account as he could, but it was an effort. As he plodded through his military facts, Pamela Tudsbury shimmered in his mind’s eye, shifting with afterimages of the flight over Berlin. He felt in an undisciplined mood and was hard put to it to keep a respectful tone.
“Now wait, Pug, this RDF you’re so hot on,” Benton interposed, “that’s nothing but radar, isn’t it? We’ve got radar. You were with me aboard the New York for the tests.”
“We haven’t got this kind of radar, sir.” Victor Henry described in detail the cavity magnetron. The senior officers began glancing at each other. He added, “And they’ve even started installing the stuff in their night fighters.”
General Fitzgerald sat straight up. “Airborne radar? What about the weight problem?”
“They’ve licked it.”
“Then they’ve developed something new.”
“They have, General.”
Fitzgerald turned a serious gaze on Train Anderson, who stubbed out his cigar, observing to the admiral, “Well, I’ll say this, your man makes out a case, at least. We’ve got to come across anyhow, since that’s what Mr. Big wants. What we can do is exercise tight control item by item, and that by God we will do. And get trade-offs like that cavity thing, wherever possible.” He regarded Henry through half-shut eyes. “Very well. Suppose they do hold out? Suppose Hitler doesn’t invade? What’s their future? What’s their plan? What can they do against a man who controls all Europe?”
“Well, I can give you the official line,” Victor Henry said. “I’ve heard it often enough. Hold him back in 1940. Pass him in air power in 1941, with British and American production. Shoot the Luftwaffe out of the skies in 1942 and 1943. Bomb their cities and factories to bits if they don’t surrender. Invade and conquer in 1944.”
“With what? Ten or fifteen divisions against two hundred?”
“Actually, General, I think the idea is simpler. Hang on till we get in.”
“Now you’re talking. But then what?”
General Fitzgerald said very quietly, “Why, then we pound Germany from the air, Train, with the bomber fleet we’re building. A few months of that, and we land to accept the surrender, if anyone’s alive to crawl out of the rubble.”
Raising an eyebrow at Victor Henry, Admiral Benton said, “How’s that sound, Pug?”
Victor Henry hesitated to answer.
“You’re dubious?” General Fitzgerald observed amiably.
“General, I’ve just been out pounding Germany from the air. Twenty-four bombers went on the mission. Fifteen returned. Of those, four didn’t bomb the right target. Navigation was off, they had operational troubles, there were German decoy fires, and so forth. Two didn’t bomb any target. They got lost, wandered around in the dark, then dropped their bombs in the ocean and homed back on the BBC. In one mission they lost a third of the attacking force.”
“This business is in its infancy,” smiled Fitzgerald. “Twenty-four bombers. Suppose there’d been a thousand, with much heavier payloads? And at that, they did get the gasworks.”
“Yes, sir. They got the gasworks.”
“How do you think it’s going to go?” General Anderson said brusquely to Henry.
“Sir, I think sooner or later a couple of million men will have to land in France and fight the German army.”
With an unpleasant grunt, Train Anderson touched his left shoulder. “Land in France, hey? I landed in France in 1918. I got a German bullet through my shoulder in the Argonne. I don’t know what that accomplished. Do you?”
Victor Henry did not answer.
“Okay.” Train Anderson rose. “Let’s be on our way, gentlemen. Our British cousins await us.”
“I’ll be right along,” Benton said. When the Army men were gone he slapped Victor Henry’s shoulder. “Well done. These Limeys are holding the fort for us. We’ve got to help ’em. But Jesus God, they’re not bashful in their requests! The big crunch comes when they run out of dollars. They can’t even pay for this list of stuff, without selling their last holdings in America. What comes next? It beats me. The boss man will have to figure a way to give ’em the stuff. He’s a slippery customer and I guess he will. Say, that reminds me—” He reached into a breast pocket and brought out a letter. Victor Henry, in his wife’s small handwriting, was the only address on the envelope, which was much thicker than usual.
“Thank you, Admiral.”
The admiral was fumbling in his pockets. “No, there’s something else. Damn, I couldn’t have—no, here we are. Whew! That’s a relief.”
It was a White House envelope. Pug slipped both letters into his pocket.
“Say, Pug, for a gunnery officer you’ve painted yourself into a peculiar corner. That screwball socialist in the White House thinks a lot of you, which may or may not be a good thing. I’d better mosey along. Rhoda sounded fine when I talked to her, only a little sad.” Benton sighed and stood. “They have to put up with a lot, the gals. Good thing she didn’t know about that bomber ride. Now that you’re back I sort of envy you. But me, I’m absurdly fond of my ass, Pug. I’m not getting it shot off except in the line of duty. I commend that thought to you hereafter.”
Blinker Vance took off big black-rimmed glasses and stepped out from behind his desk to throw an arm around Pug. “Say, I want to hear all about that joyride one of these days. How did it go with the big brass?”
“All right.”
“Good. There’s a dispatch here for you from BuPers.” He peeled a tissue off a clipboard hung on the wall, and handed it to Pug.
VICTOR HENRY DETACHED TEMPORARY DUTY LONDON X RETURN BERLIN UNTIL RELIEVED ON OR ABOUT 1 NOVEMBER X THEREUPON DETACHED TO PROCEED WASHINGTON HIGHEST AIR PRIORITY X REPORT BUPERS FOR FURTHER REASSIGNMENT X
Vance said, “Glad you’ll be getting out of Berlin?”
“Overjoyed.”
“Thought you’d be. Transportation tells me they’ve got a priority to Lisbon available on the fourteenth.”
“Grab it.”
“Right.” With a knowing little smile, Vance added, “Say, maybe you and that nice little Tudsbury girl can have a farewell dinner with me and Lady Maude tomorrow night.”
Several times Blinker had asked Victor Henry to join them for dinner. Pug knew and liked Blinker’s wife and their six children. Avoiding a censorious tone, he had declined the invitations. Victor Henry knew how commonplace these things were—“Wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion”— but he had not felt like endorsing Blinker’s shack-up. Vance now was renewing the bid, and his smile was reminding Pug that on telephoning the flat, he had found Pamela there.
“I’ll let you know, Blinker. I’ll call you later.”
“Fine!” Vance’s grin broadened at not being turned down. “Lady Maude will be charmed, and my God, Pug, she has a fabulous wine cellar.”
Victor Henry returned to the bench in Grosvenor Square. The sun still shone, the flag still waved. But it was just a sticky London evening like any other. The strange brightness was out of the air.
The President’s hasty pencilled scrawl was on a yellow legal sheet this time.
Pug—
Your bracing reports have been a grand tonic that I needed. The war news has been so bad, and now the Republicans have gone and p
ut up a fine candidate in Wendell Willkie! Come November, you just might be working for a new boss. Then you can slip the chain and get out to sea! Ha ha!
Thank you especially for alerting us on their advanced radar. The British are sending over a scientific mission in September, with all their “wizard war” stuff, as Churchill calls it. We’ll be very sure to follow that up! There’s something heartwarming about Churchill’s interest in landing craft, isn’t there? Actually he’s right, and I’ve asked for a report from CNO. Get as much of their material as you can.
FDR
Pug stuffed the vigorous scrawl in his pocket like any other note, and opened his wife’s letter. It was a strange one.
She had just turned on the radio, she wrote, heard an old record of “Three O’Clock in the Morning,” and burst out crying. She reminisced about their honeymoon, when they had danced so often to that song; about his long absence in 1918; about their good times in Manila and in Panama. With Palmer Kirby, who now kept a small office in New York, she had just driven up to New London to visit Byron—a glorious two-day trip through the early autumn foliage of Connecticut. Red Tully had told her that Byron was lazy in his written work, but very good in the simulator and in submarine drills. She had asked Byron about the Jewish girl.
The way he changed the subject, I think maybe all that is over. He got a peculiar look on his face, but said nary a word. Wouldn’t that be a relief!
You know that Janice is pregnant, don’t you? You must have heard from them. Those kids didn’t waste much time, hey? Like father like son, is all I can say! But the thought of being a GRANDMOTHER!!! In a way I’m happy, but in another way it seems like the end of the world! It would have helped a lot if you’d been here when I first got the news. It sure threw me into a spin. I’m not sure I’ve pulled out of it yet, but I’m trying.
Let me give you a piece of advice. The sooner you can come home, the better. I’m all right, but at the moment I could really use a HUSBAND around.
He walked to his flat and telephoned Pamela.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “I’m so glad you called. In another quarter of an hour I’d have been gone. I talked to Uxbridge. They’re being very broad-minded. If I come back tonight, all is forgiven. They’re shorthanded and they expect heavy raids. I must, I really must go back right away.”
“Of course you must. You’re lucky you’re not getting shot for desertion,” Pug said, as lightly as he could.
“I’m not the first offender at Uxbridge,” she laughed. “A WAAF has a certain emotional rope to use up, you know. But this time I’ve really done it.”
He said, “I’m ever so grateful to you.”
“You’re grateful?” she said. “Oh, God, don’t you know that you’ve pulled me through a very bad time? I shall get another special pass in a week, at most. Can we see each other then?”
“Pam, I’m leaving day after tomorrow. Going back to Berlin for about a month or six weeks, and then home…. Hello? Pamela?”
“I’m still here. You’re going day after tomorrow?”
“My orders were waiting at the embassy.”
After a long pause, in which he heard her breathing, she said, “You wouldn’t want me to desert for two more days and take what comes. Would you? I’ll do it.”
“It’s no way to win a war, Pam.”
“No, it isn’t, Captain. Well. This is an unexpected good-bye, then. But good-bye it is.”
“Our paths will cross again.”
“Oh, no doubt. But I firmly believe that Ted’s alive and is coming back. I may well be a wife next time we meet. And that will be far more proper and easy all around. All the same, today was one of the happiest of my life, and that’s unchangeable now.”
Victor Henry was finding it difficult to go on talking. The sad, kind tones of this young voice he loved were choking his throat; and there were no words available to his rusty tongue to tell Pamela what he felt. “I’ll never forget, Pamela,” he said awkwardly, clearing his throat. “I’ll never forget one minute of it.”
“Won’t you? Good. Neither will I. Some hours weigh against a whole lifetime, don’t they? I think they do. Well! Good-bye, Captain Henry, and safe journeyings. I hope you find all well at home.”
“Good-bye, Pam. I hope Ted makes it.”
Her voice broke a little. “Somebody’s coming for me. Good-bye.”
Fatigued but tensely awake, Victor Henry changed to civilian clothes and drifted to Fred Fearing’s noisy airless hot apartment. A bomb bursting close by earlier in the week had blown in all the windows, which were blocked now with brown plywood. Fearing’s broadcast, describing his feelings under a shower of glass, had been a great success.
“Where’s la Tudsbury?” said Fearing, handing Victor Henry a cupful of punch made of gin and some purple canned juice.
“Fighting Germans.”
“Good show!” The broadcaster did a vaudeville burlesque of the British accent.
Pug sat in a corner of a dusty plush sofa under a plywood panel, watching the drinking and dancing, and wondering why he had come here. He saw a tall young girl in a tailored red suit, with long black hair combed behind her ears, give him one glance, then another. With an uncertain smile, at once bold and wistful, the girl approached. “Hello there. Would you like more punch? You look important and lonesome.”
“I couldn’t be less important. I’d like company more than punch. Please join me.”
The girl promptly sat and crossed magnificent silk-shod legs. She was prettier than Pamela, and no more than twenty. “Let me guess. You’re a general. Air Corps. They tend to be younger.”
“I’m just a Navy captain, a long, long way from home.”
“I’m Lucy Somerville. My mother would spank me for speaking first to a strange man. But everything’s different in the war, isn’t it?”
“I’m Captain Victor Henry.”
“Captain Victor Henry. Sounds so American.” She looked at him with impudent eyes. “I like Americans.”
“I guess you’re meeting quite a few.”
“Oh, heaps. One nicer than the other.” She laughed. “The bombing’s perfectly horrible, but it is exciting, isn’t it? Life’s never been so exciting. One never knows whether one will be able to get home at night. It makes things interesting. I know girls who take their makeup and pajamas along when they go out in the evening. And dear old Mums can’t say a word!”
The girl’s roguish, inviting glance told him that here probably was a random flare of passion for the taking. Wartime London was the place, he thought; “nothing else holds fashion!” But this girl was Madeline’s age, and meant nothing to him; and he had just said a stodgy, cold, miserable good-bye to Pamela Tudsbury. He avoided her dancing eyes, and said something dull about the evening news. In a minute or so a strapping Army lieutenant approached and offered Lucy Somerville a drink, and she jumped up and was gone. Soon after, Pug left.
Alone in the flat, he listened to a Churchill speech and went to bed. The last thing he did before turning out the light was to reread Rhoda’s nostalgic, sentimental, and troubled letter. Something shadowy and unpleasant was there between the lines. He guessed she might be having difficulties with Madeline, though the letter did not mention the daughter’s name. There was no point in dwelling on it, he thought. He would be home in a couple of months. He fell asleep.
Rhoda had slept with Dr. Kirby on the trip to Connecticut. That was the shadowy and unpleasant thing Pug half discerned. Proverbially the cuckold is the last to know his disgrace; no suspicion crossed his mind, though Rhoda’s words were incautious and revealing.
War not only forces intense new relationships; it puts old ones to the breaking stress. On the very day this paragon of faithfulness—as his Navy friends regarded him—had received his wife’s letter, he had not made love to Pamela Tudsbury, mainly because the girl had decided not to bring him to it. Rhoda had fallen on the way back from New London. It had been unplanned and unforeseen. She would have recoiled from a c
old-blooded copulation. The back windows of the little tourist house, where she and Kirby had stopped for tea, looked out on a charming pond where swans moved among pink lily pads in a gray drizzle. Except for the old lady who served them, they were alone in this quiet relaxing place. The visit to Byron had gone well and the countryside was beautiful. They intended to halt for an hour, then drive on to New York. They talked of their first lunch outside Berlin, of the farewell at Tempelhof Airport, of their mutual delight at seeing each other in the Waldorf. The time flowed by, their tone grew more intimate. Then Palmer Kirby said, “How wonderfully cosy this place is! Too bad we can’t stay here.”
And Rhoda Henry murmured, hardly believing that she was releasing the words from her mouth, “Maybe we could.”
Maybe we could! Three words, and a life pattern and a character dissolved. The old lady gave them a bedroom, asking no questions. Everything followed: undressing with a stranger, casting aside with her underclothes her modesty and her much-treasured rectitude, yielding to a torrent of novel sensations. To be taken by this large demanding man left her throbbing with animal pleasure. All her thoughts since then went back to that point in time, and there halted. Like a declaration of war, it drew a line across the past and started another era. The oddest aspect of this new life was that it was so much like the old one. Rhoda felt she had not really changed. She even still loved Pug. She was trying to digest all this puzzlement when she wrote to her husband. She did have twinges of conscience, but she was surprised to find how bearable these were.
In New York, Rhoda and Kirby heard in bright afternoon sunshine the Churchill broadcast which Pug had listened to late at night. Rhoda had chosen well the apartment for Madeline and herself. It faced south, across low brownstones. Sunshine poured in all day through white-draped windows, into a broad living room furnished and decorated in white, peach, and apple green. Photographs of Victor Henry and the boys stood in green frames on a white piano. Few visitors failed to comment on the genteel cheerfulness of the place.