“Dear, we don’t know these people, I’m tired, I have no clothes —”
“Mama, you’re both coming. The Tudsburys will be sitting in your box. That’s why they’ve stayed on, they want to see you. They won’t be at the party, but you’ll meet all the film stars. It’s at Harry Tomlin’s home on Lookout Mountain, a fabulous place, he’s the biggest agent in the movie business. Wear anything! You must have a black suit.”
“Well, I wore it to death on the train, but —” Rhoda went out.
Byron pointed to the pile of circulars. “Mad, isn’t that a communist outfit?”
“Sweetie, not on your life. All Hollywood’s in on it. It’s a popular movement. With Soviet Russia doing all the real fighting and dying against Hitler, we need a second front now, and we’ve got to raise hell about it. Everybody knows Churchill hates the Bolsheviks, and wants to hold back and let the Soviet Union bleed itself white, fighting the Germans alone.”
“Everybody knows that? I don’t know it. How do you know it?”
“Oh, Lord, Byron, read your newspapers. Anyway, let’s not argue, sweetie, it’s not worth arguing about. I took this thing on because I thought it would be fun, and it has been fun in a bloodcurdling way. I’ve made some fantastic contacts. I don’t want to be Hugh Cleveland’s little sandwich-fetcher forever.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Madeline was making a long strident telephone call about the rally to a man she called “Lenny, darling,” when Rhoda marched in, buttoning her jacket. “Let’s go. Nobody will pay me the slightest attention. I’ll pass as someone’s poor aunt from Dubuque.”
The home of Harry Tomlin was an opulent sprawl of redwood and glass angled around a flagstone terrace with a huge blue-tiled pool. Perched at the end of a scarily steep concrete road up into a canyon, it commanded a spectacular view of Los Angeles, which at the moment looked like a drowned city shimmering at the bottom of a brown lake. Madeline vanished in the babbling throng of guests, after introducing her mother and brother at the door to a man named Leonard Spreregen, the rally chairman, who — so she told them — had won two Academy Awards for screenplays. Rhoda saw that her concern over clothes was needless; Spreregen wore no tie, and his orange shirt collar flowed over his black and white houndstooth jacket. Madeline whirled into sight again and introduced her mother and brother to one star after another, all of whom were most cordial. To the astonished Rhoda they appeared peculiarly shrunken, seen as human beings rather than blown-up moving shadows.
“How on earth have you gotten to know them all, dear?” she exclaimed, catching her breath after a kind word and a smile from Ronald Colman.
“Oh, you do, Mom, when you mix into a thing like this. You just do. That’s the fun of it. Ah, there we go.”
White-coated butlers were sliding tall Chinese panels into wall slots, disclosing a long dining room and a heavily laden buffet table, where two chefs were sharpening knives over steaming hams and turkeys. As the guests drifted in toward the food, several men in sharply tailored Army uniforms fell into the line behind Madeline. She whispered to Byron that these were Hollywood types making training films. Hugh Cleveland was looking into this angle, she said. He had received a draft notice; if things got sticky he wanted an out. She blurted this artlessly, then caught the look on her brother’s face. “Well, I realize how that must strike you, but —”
“How does it strike you, Madeline?”
“Briny, Hugh is totally unmechanical. He can’t sharpen a pencil properly. He’d be an utter washout carrying a gun.”
They brought their food to a little table on the terrace, where Leonard Spreregen joined them and talked with Madeline about the rally while she scratched notes on a pad. Spreregen’s manner was bright and edgy, his speech pure New York. Madeline exclaimed, jumping up, “Omigawd, the trumpeters for the mass chant, of course. Sorry, Lenny. I knew there was something. Be right back.”
“What a lovely party,” Rhoda said to Spreregen, glancing around at French impressionist paintings crusting the walls, “and what a gorgeous home!”
He pleasantly smiled. He was a short lean man with thick curly blond hair and a hawklike face. His voice was deep, almost bass. “Well, Mrs. Henry, ten percent of my heart’s blood is in it, but I don’t mind, Harry’s a terrific agent. Say, Lieutenant, how do you feel about the second front?”
“Well, I’m puzzled,” Byron said, eating away at a heaped plate, “there are four or five fronts right now, aren’t there?”
“Ah, the military precisionist speaks!” Spreregen nodded, with a keen glance at Byron that took in the ribbons and the dolphins. “ ‘The Committee for a Second Front against Germany in France Now’ would be more exact, I guess. People know what we mean. You’re for that, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know if it’s feasible now.”
“Why, any number of military authorities are clamoring for it.”
“But the Allied chiefs of staff are the military authorities that matter.”
“Exactly so,” said Spreregen, as though to a clever pupil, “and the chiefs of staff can’t buck their political bosses. Economic and political motives can cause stupid military decisions, Lieutenant. Then you fighting men have to pay the price. The reactionaries want to let Hitler destroy the Soviet Union, before they finish him off. The reactionaries have a strong voice, but the voice of the people is stronger. That’s why rallies like this are vital.”
Byron shook his head, saying mildly, “I doubt they can affect strategic policy. Why not put on a rally for the Jews in Europe? Such big propaganda shows might do them some real good.”
Rhoda blinked at her son. At the word “Jews,” Leonard Spreregen’s eyes clouded, his mouth tightened, and he sat up straight, putting down the knife and fork on a slab of hot ham. “If you’re serious —”
“I’m deadly serious.”
Spreregen spoke fast, in a rattled way. “Well, I’m not sure what’s happening over there, my friend, I don’t think anybody here really knows, but the way to end all that misery is by smashing Hitler with a second front now.”
“I see,” Byron said.
“Excuse me. Nice meeting you,” Spreregen said to Rhoda, and he departed, leaving his food behind.
Soon Madeline appeared, frowning at Byron. “Look, Briny, let’s drop you off at the hotel on the way to the rally.”
“What on earth!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Why suggest that?”
“He made an anti-Semitic remark to Lenny Spreregen.”
Rhoda blinked in surprise. “What? Why, the man’s a fool, all he said —”
“Forget it, Mom,” Byron said. “I’ll come along.”
A gigantic yellow banner printed in red swayed above the main entrance to the Hollywood Bowl:
THE YANKS ARE NOT COMING TOO LATE.
Cars were streaming inside, and from nearby streets hordes of people on foot were converging toward the Bowl. But, although the entrance appeared mobbed, the audience in the big amphitheatre was sparsely clustering near the stage shell, below the tier of boxes. On the upper slope, slanting sunlight reddened rows upon rows of empty seats. Over the shell, which was draped with three large flags — the British ensign, the Stars and Stripes, and the red flag with its yellow hammer and sickle — huge cutout letters arched:
Alistair Tudsbury, in a bulging seersucker suit and an eye patch, awkwardly got to his feet and kissed Rhoda when she came to the box. Pamela’s smile was agreeable, but her eyes were puffy, her face was sagging and unpainted, and she was almost unkempt; she looked, Rhoda thought, as though she did not much care whether she lived or died. Madeline came dashing into the box. Grand panic backstage! Two stars had pulled out of the show, a third had laryngitis, and a frantic rearrangement of the program had placed Tudsbury in the closing spot, after the mass chant. Was that all right? Tudsbury agreed, remarking only that his talk would not be a high note.
“Oh, it will, it will. You have authority,” Madeline said. “Sorry we didn’t pull in more of an a
udience. Charging admission was a mistake.” She scampered off.
It was a tedious patchy program, part singing and dancing to two pianos, part speech-making, with some labored comedy. The hit of the evening was a song, “The Reactionary Rag,” in which actors dressed as paunchy nabobs in high hats and cutaways, with dollar signs on their white-waisted bellies, capered about expressing their sympathy with the Soviet Union, but finding funny reasons not to send military help. The mass chant was a business of many voices speaking up from all over the amphitheatre — a steel worker, a farm laborer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a Negro, and so forth — each demanding a second front now; these solo declamations were punctuated with solemn unison readings from mimeographed sheets by the entire audience of quotes from Pericles, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Tom Paine, Lenin, Stalin, and Carl Sandburg, while the orchestra softly played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The climax was a wildly syncopated audience shout, repeated in crescendo to the accompaniment of trumpets:
Open up that second FRONT
Open up that second FRONT
Open up that second FRONT
NOW! NOW! NOW!
It all ended in great applause and cheers.
Introduced by Leonard Spreregen, Tudsbury limped onstage to a standing ovation.
“On June 22nd, 1941, as you no doubt recall,” his voice boomed on the loudspeaker over the great half-empty amphitheatre, now in twilight under a pale moon, “Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
“On June 23rd, 1941, my column in the London Observer bore the heading, ’Open Up a Second Front Now.’”
This brought the crowd to its feet again. But the Bowl grew very quiet as he talked. Military realities, he began, were not easy to grasp or to face. He had had to spend several months in Moscow during the worst of the German onslaught, a month in falling Singapore, and a week in Hawaii before and after the battle for Midway atoll, before he had gotten a grip on this global war.
A major assault on the French coast in 1942 was, he now knew, utterly out of the question. Only a trickle of green American forces had as yet arrived in England. The U-boats remained a formidable and merciless barrier to a rapid buildup of these forces. Mastering that menace was a long-range struggle. A cross-Channel attack now would have to be all-British. Britain was already spread far too thin. Singapore had proved that! Any British action in France would so weaken the China-Burma-India theatre that the United States would have to take over there — at once, and massively — with whatever forces it could get past the Japanese fleet. For if India or Australia fell to Japan, the defeat of Nazi Germany would not win the war, nor assure the survival of the Soviet Union.
“Eastern Asia is the center of gravity of the war, my friends,” Tudsbury declared in weary firm tones. “World War Two started there at the Marco Polo Bridge, not in Poland. China has been fighting the war longer than anybody. If Japan wins there, Russia faces catastrophe. Japan will mobilize the incredible resources of India, China, and the East Indies against the Soviet Union. A new Golden Horde will storm across the Siberian border, armed with tanks, with Zeroes, and with manpower and natural resources outweighing the West ten to one. The China-Burma-India theatre is the true, the forgotten second front. We must hold it if civilization is to survive.”
Several catcalls rose from the audience at this point.
“The long-range prospects are good,” Tudsbury defiantly boomed. “Our soldiers who died in Singapore, and yours in the Philippines, did not die in vain. They upset the Japanese timetable for seizing India and Australia. The crux of the war now is a fight for time. Your country’s productive power is awesome, but slow to gear up. I’m surprised to find so little interest here in your victory at Midway. Had your Navy lost that battle, you might be fleeing California this evening. Your fliers and sailors who died there gave their lives for all mankind.”
Coughing was spreading in the amphitheatre, and people were yawning and looking at their watches.
“A second front in France? Yes, I’m warmly for it, too. The plight of the Soviet Union grows worse and worse. But the Russians are strong. They will hold on. It’s delightful to visualize millions of stalwart Anglo-American troops storming across the English Channel now. But it’s a pipe dream. We will overwhelm the Axis in good time with a cataract of men and firepower. Till then, we fight for time, and for the turn of the tide on many fronts, including the home front. My final word to this home front is, Believe in the honor of your leaders, and trust them. They are great men, and they are fighting a great war. ”
As he limped off the stage, feeble brief handclapping ensued, with more catcalls. The crowd began dispersing, in a muttering mood. A loud bald man in a loud jacket was saying to a pretty girl as they left the box beside Byron’s, “Still trying to hang on to their Empire, aren’t they? Just pathetic.”
Returning to the box with Madeline, Tudsbury said cheerfully, “Well, wasn’t that a resounding flop!”
“Well done,” Byron said.
Rhoda jumped up, kissed him, and said tremulously, “I’ll never forget your words about Midway. Never.”
“You made good sense,” Madeline fumed. “This crowd doesn’t change, and never will. Maybe it penetrated a thick skull here and there. I must go and pick up the pieces.”
Pamela stood up as Madeline scurried off. “Was it fun, Talky?”
“It was, actually, watching them gradually realize that I wasn’t one of them, but just another Limey snake in the grass. I quite enjoyed it.”
“So courageous,” said Rhoda. “Pug would have talked like that — without your lovely command of language, of course.”
“Pug would have stayed away, and so should I have done,” said Tudsbury. “However, we wanted to see you, Mrs. Henry, so let’s have a drink now at our hotel, shall we? Pamela and I fly on to New York tomorrow.”
As they walked out, the press of the crowd thrust Rhoda alongside Pamela, who spoke low fast words. “Mrs. Henry, may I have breakfast with you tomorrow — just the two of us?”
They faced each other next morning on the lawn beside the pool over melons, toast, and coffee on a wheeled linen-covered table. It was a perfect California day: hot sun, pellucid blue sky, scents of grass and palms, a cool breeze stirring the gaudy red flowers of the hibiscus hedges. Two youths and three girls dove and swam and laughed in the pool, their brown skins gleaming, their jokes as merry and simple as the mating calls of birds. Pamela looked better today, her face carefully made up, her hair falling behind her ears in long glossy waves. The sleeveless gray dress showed the cleft in her pale bosom. Rhoda recalled that this odd young woman, who fluttered in her father’s wake like a gull behind an ocean liner, had a way of shifting between mousiness and allure. Perhaps, Rhoda thought, she was on her way this morning to meet a man. She gave the impression of very taut nerves.
As they idly chatted, Rhoda said she wished she had a copy of Tudsbury’s speech to send to Pug.
“Nothing easier. I’ll see that you get one.” Pamela quickly replied in her educated British accent that so impressed and charmed Rhoda. “I wrote it.”
“Why, it was his style to the life.”
“Oh, yes, I fake for him when he’s indisposed or lazy.”
“Why the eye patch, Pamela?”
“That eye is ulcerating. He needs an operation. We’d be in London by now, but Madeline did mention that you were coming west, so we stayed. I desperately wanted to talk to you.”
“Really? What about?”
“About your husband. I love him.”
Rhoda yanked off her sunglasses and stared at the English girl, who sat up straight, her head high, her eyes wide and combatively shiny. Rhoda’s first coherent thought, through the fog of amazement, was that Pamela was a formidable rival if Pug really liked her. Let her have her say, she thought, reveal what she would reveal. Rhoda played with the glasses and drank coffee, just eyeing her.
“I know that you wanted a divorce,” Pamela said, “and that he’s ask
ed you to reconsider.”
“I have reconsidered!” Rhoda leaped at the opening. “Long since. That’s all over with. He’s confided in you, it seems.”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Henry,” Pamela replied gloomily. “He’s confided in me.”
“Have you had an affair with my husband?”
“No.” Their glances met in mutual search. ”No, Mrs. Henry. He’s remained faithful to you, worse luck.”
Rhoda saw truth in Pamela’s eyes. “Indeed? You’re terribly PRETTY.”
“He’s been an ass.” Pamela turned off the compliment with a hitch of her shoulder. “It would have been heaven. What’s more, honors would now be even between you two.”
The tone and the words stung. Rhoda said acidly, “But isn’t my husband much too OLD for you?”
“Mrs. Henry, your husband’s the most attractive man I’ve ever met in every way, including his loyalty to you, which has defeated me.”
The passion in her voice alarmed Rhoda. She could see the difference between Pamela’s young skin and hers, admire the sweet slim form of Pamela’s upper arms — Rhoda now had to conceal her own because of a growing, revolting limp bagginess — and could envy that bosom. A small voice within her said that Pug had indeed been an ass, though she blessed him for it. “Did you see him after — after Midway?”
“Yes, I saw a lot of him. Through all his agony he kept worrying about you, about how you were taking it, about what he could do to console you. He even considered asking for emergency leave. He packed me off, though I tried to stay. He’s a family man to the bone. If you can get to Hawaii, do it. He needs you. If there ever was a chance for me, the death of your son has ended it.”