6
THE day Pamela Tudsbury wrote her letter to Captain Henry — three weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack — a chill November fog had been darkening London for a week, seeping through windows and keyholes and past closed doors, penetrating every cranny. Doorknobs and banisters were sticky to the touch. Indoors or out one breathed fog; there was no escaping the damp. Bronchitis had her feverish, shivering, and coughing up phlegm as she sorted out her things for tropic travel.
The six o’clock news droning out of her bedside radio chilled like the fog. The threat of the Japanese to enter the war was becoming acute. Rejecting Roosevelt’s latest peace formula, they were massing troops and ships on the French Indo-China coast, a clear menace to Malaya and Singapore. Radio Moscow was denying that Rostov, the key to the Caucasus and its great oil fields, had fallen to the Germans, but every Nazi victory claim these days was lamely conceded by the Soviets within a week; by now they had confirmed that Leningrad was cut off and under siege, and that the Wehr-macht was surging toward Moscow. Moreover, a German submarine had in fact — as Radio Berlin had been claiming for days — sunk the carrier Ark Royal off Gibraltar. The announcer read out this budget of disaster with that BBC calm which was becoming so threadbare. She packed cheerfully, all the same, because she might see Victor Henry on the other side of the world. As for the news, she was numb to it. For months there had been only bad news.
The telephone rang. She turned off the radio to answer it.
“Pamela? It’s Philip Rule.”
A voice from the past; a deep, self-assured, unwelcome voice. Arresting an impulse to hang up, she said, “Yes?”
“That’s a dim yes Pam. How are you?”
“I have a filthy cold.”
“You do sound it. Sorry. What are you doing?”
“At the moment? Packing.”
“Oh? For that round-the-world thing Talky’s announced?”
“Yes.”
“Is Singapore on the itinerary?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m going there myself next week for the Express. Getting a ride direct in a Blenheim bomber.”
Pamela allowed a silence to lengthen.
“Pam, Leslie Slote’s in town from Moscow. He’s asking after you. I thought you might join us for dinner. He’s told me quite a bit about your friend, Captain Henry.”
“Oh? Is there any news about him?”
“Well, Pam, I don’t know how up-to-date you are on Captain Henry.”
“What’s Leslie doing here?”
“He’s on his way to the U.S. legation in Bern. That’s his new post.”
“Strange. He’d only been in Moscow a few months.”
“He got into trouble there.”
“Of what sort?”
“Something about the Jews, I gather. It’s a sore point. Don’t bring it up with him.”
“Where are you dining?”
“At the Savoy.”
“I can’t get to the Savoy in this blackout and fog.”
“Ill come for you, darling. Seven o’clock?”
At the attempted airy intimacy Pamela said, “How’s your wife?”
“God knows. Last I heard, she was working in a factory outside Moscow. Seven o’clock, then?”
Pamela hesitated. She was resolved to steer clear of Philip Rule, but she did want to find out what Slote knew about Pug Henry’s movements. Leslie Slote was an arid ambitious Foreign Service man, who had jilted Natalie Jastrow back in the old Paris days, after the four of them had had merry times together for about a year. He and Phil had seemed equally heartless then. She felt a bit more kindly to Slote now, because he regretted what he had done. It seemed extremely odd that he had had anything to do with Jewish matters; for he had dropped Natalie mainly to avoid the career problem of a Jewish wife.
“Are you there, Pamela?”
“Oh, all right. Seven o’clock.”
At first glance the crowded Savoy Grill appeared to be riding out the war well. But tarnished sconces, dusty draperies, tablecloths washed threadbare, elderly waiters moving slowly in black uniforms gone green at the cuffs and elbows, showed the pinch. The diners too, the most prosperous of Londoners, had a peaked and shabby look. Slote took a spoonful of gummy Scotch broth, for which he had waited twenty-five minutes. With a grimace, he dropped the spoon. “The Savoy’s gone downhill.”
“What hasn’t?” Pamela fingered the pearl choker around her thin throat. Slote guessed she must have a fever: red spots in her cheeks, glittering eyes, intermittent cough, gray cardigan buttoned up tight.
“Singapore hasn’t,” said Philip Rule. “Today I interviewed a general back on medical leave. They’ve got the place bristling with big guns and aircraft, and they’re quite ready for the Japanese. Their peckers are up, the stengahs are flowing free at the clubs, and even the old Raffles Hotel is very jammed and gay. So he said. He found London shockingly run down.”
Pamela said, coughing, “Like the inhabitants.”
Rule pulled at his thick red mustache, grinning. “You, darling? You’ve seldom looked more desirable.”
Long ago this crooked grin had affected her like alcohol. Rule’s squarish face was fatter, his once-heavy hair was going, but his intent blue eyes still stirred her. She had thought herself cured of him. Not quite!
Their Paris affair had never run smooth. She had made trouble about his waitresses and whores, low tastes which he had seen no reason to alter for her sake. She had turned seriously nasty over a handsome Yale boy, an Antinous out of Bridgeport, with whom he had gone off for three blissful weeks in Majorca. At public school Rule had acquired a taste for this sort of thing, though by and large he preferred women. On his return she had forced a wild scene, and he had knocked her flat on her face; whereupon, half-insane with humiliated fury, she had drunk a bottle of iodine, and he had driven her at three in the morning, writhing and retching, to a hospital. The episode had finished them. Rule had gone on with his life as though nothing had happened, and from his viewpoint very little had.
Like Slote he had been studying Russian in Paris; this was how they had come to room together. Once settled in the Soviet Union as a correspondent, he had met a Bolshoi ensemble girl, so beautiful that he had married her — so he had written Pamela — simply in order to have her, because she was extremely prim and would hear of nothing else. The ceremony in a communist “wedding palace” he had described as comical bosh: a fat stern lady in a tailored suit, briefly lecturing them on communist marriage, while Valehtina’s parents, relatives, and Bolshoi chums stood about smirking, and the bride, all blushes, clung with one arm to her handsome British catch, and with the other to a bunch of wilting yellow roses. So it was that Rule had a Russian wife. When he was out of Russia he paid no attention to the circumstance.
Avoiding his intimate stare, Pamela spoke hoarsely. “You believe all that about Singapore?”
“Why not? Our monopoly capitalists built themselves the hell of a strong air force and defense system right here in Blighty under our noses, through several pacifist ministries. Surprised our own people, as well as Jerry! The Empire pivots on Singapore, Pam. If we want to go on oppressing and sweating half a billion Asiatics, and stealing the wealth of Australia and New Zealand from the silly aborigines, Singapore has to be impregnable. So no doubt it is.”
“Oh, the Empire’s finished, no matter what,” said Slote.
“Don’t be too sure, Les. Winnie’s raised another alliance after all, to keep it gasping along. The Russians will beat the Germans for us. Sooner or later your sleepy countrymen will come in and thrash the Japanese. The whole monopoly capital system with its colonies is rotten, and has to go, but not just yet. The white exploiter is a tenacious world master. It will take a global revolution to get rid of him. At a guess that’s half a century off”
“What on earth makes you think the Russians will beat the Germans?” Pamela put in. “Didn’t you hear the evening news?”
Again the lopsided grin, the old laz
y shift of the big body in the chair, the broad gesture with two hairy hands. “Darling, you don’t know the Soviet Union.”
“I do,” Slote said. “I was in Moscow until last Thursday. I’ve never seen such a collapse of nerve. Everybody who could get wheels or a horse skedaddled.”
“They’re only human. They’ll recover.” Rule’s voice dropped to a mellifluous rumble. “Isn’t it disconcerting, dear boy, to have the main body of Hitler’s army coming at you, fifty miles away?”
“I’ve been through it twice. It’s hell. But I’m a damned coward. I expected more of the Russians.”
Pamela and Rule laughed. Pamela liked Slote the better for his honesty, though nothing could make him seem attractive. The skinny pale ex-Rhodes Scholar with his rimless glasses, well-gnawed tobacco pipe, and nervous ways had always struck her as a physical neuter. He had made passes at her in Moscow, which she had yawned off. She had never comprehended Natalie Jastrow’s old passion for him.
A shiver racked her. “Leslie, how long did Captain Henry stay on in Moscow?” To put this question she had come to the Savoy, ill as she was.
“Well, let’s see. You and Talky went on the sixteenth, didn’t you? At the height of the scare?”
“Yes.”
“He stayed another week, trying to nail down train tickets beyond Kuibyshev. I thought it would be impossible in that panic but finally he did, and he headed eastward, across Siberia, Hawaii bound.”
“Then he’ll have gotten there by now.”
“Should think so.”
“Wonderful.”
Rule said to Pamela, in the pleasantest way, “Were you lovers?”
Her tone was just as pleasant. “None of your bloody business.”
“Leslie says,” Rule persisted with a blink at the rebuff, “that la Jas-trow has gone and married this same chap’s son, a submarine officer much younger than she is. He also confides, in great secrecy, that his own heart still bleeds over Natalie. Why ever did she do such a grotesque thing? Did the lad get her pregnant?”
Pamela shrugged. “Ask Leslie.”
“They were isolated in a villa outside Siena,” Slote said gloomily. “I told you that. Month after month, before he joined the Navy. He was working for Aaron Jastrow as a researcher. I think they were the only two Americans under sixty left in Tuscany. No doubt nature took its course. I spent a whole night in Washington arguing with her about this mismatch. She was irrational. Turned to stone.”
“You mean she was in love with him,” Pamela said, “and out of love with you.”
“Actually, I do mean that,” Slote replied with a sudden sad grin that charmed Pamela. “She used to be damned sensible, but she’s gone harebrained. Married this youth, stayed on in Italy with Jastrow, and she’s still there, last I heard, with an infant on her hands.”
Rule chuckled in his chest. “You shouldn’t have spent that night in Washington arguing.”
“Anything else would have gotten me a black eye.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Pamela said, “Captain Henry also tried to break it up and couldn’t. It’s a very passionate business.”
“That’s the man I’d like to meet,” Rule said. “Captain Henry.”
“Nothing easier. Get yourself an assignment to interview the commanding officer of the U.S.S. California in Hawaii,” Pamela snapped.
“What do you like about him, Pam?”
“He’s decent to the bone.”
“I see. The charm of novelty.”
The meal went by. Their desserts stood uneaten, gelatinous puddings of tasteless pink goo. The waiter had been paid. Slote wished that Rule would leave. He meant to have another try at Pamela, fever or no; he had not had a woman in months, and unlike Rule he did not enjoy whores. Rule called himself a man of pleasure; Slote thought him rather an animal. He himself had mistreated Natalie, but never in the harsh ways that had driven Pamela to try suicide. Slote had muffed with Pamela in Moscow, he believed, because of Captain Henry. Henry was far away now. Pam was likable and pretty; also easygoing and free-spirited, or so Slote hoped.
“Well! Les is just in from Stockholm today, Pam,” Rule said. Obviously he nursed similar notions. “Probably we shouldn’t keep him up. Let me drive you to your flat.”
“As a matter of fact, I hear music,” Pam said. “I’d like to dance.”
“Dearest, since when? You haven’t danced a step since I’ve known you.”
“My American friends have been working on me. Pity you don’t dance. What about it, Leslie?”
“I’d be delighted.”
Rule stood up, grinning in defeat. “My best to Talky, then. I’m off to Singapore Monday. See you there, no doubt.”
Pamela stared at his departing back, the spots crimson on her gray cheeks.
Slote said, “Are you sure you want to dance?”
“What? Of course not. I feel horrible. I just wanted to get rid of that sod.”
“Come up to my room and have a drink.” The invitation was plain, but not leering.
A quick smile — knowing, amused, faintly giddy — illumined her face, lovely even in its sickliness. She put a clammy hand to his cheek. “Bless my soul, Leslie, you’re still harboring indecent thoughts about me, aren’t you? How sweet of you. Sorry, I’m in hopeless shape. I’m burning with fever, and anyway, no.”
Slote said, “Okay,” with a resigned shrug.
“You really should have married Natalie in Paris, dear. She was so insistent!”
“Oh, Pamela, go screw yourself.”
She burst out laughing, took his hand and placed it on her damp hot forehead. “Feel that? Honestly, I’d better find a cab and get on home, don’t you think? Good luck in Switzerland. Thanks for the news about Captain Henry.”
She wrote the ebullient letter when she got back to her flat.
In a flying boat circling over Singapore, Alistair Tudsbury pulled off his tie, threw open the white linen jacket strained over his paunch, and fanned his wet jowls with a straw hat. “This will be worse than Ceylon, Pam. We’re dropping into a bloody inferno.”
“Peaceful little inferno,” said Pamela, looking down through the tilting window. “Where are the vast fortress walls, the masses of cannon, the swarms of Spitfires and Hurricanes?”
“Nothing shows, naturally. But that small green scorpion down there packs the hell of a sting. I say, there’s the Prince of Wales! Can’t miss those turrets.”
Seen from the air Singapore was a broken-off tip of the craggy Malayan mountains; a green triangle in the wrinkled open sea, hanging to the mainland by a thread of causeway. Two gray warts blotched its jungle beauty: to the southeast a modern city sprinkled with red roofs, and up north, near the causeway, an expanse of sheds, cranes, barracks, streets, houses, and broad green playing fields: the Singapore naval base. The base looked oddly quiet. In its docks and wide anchorage not one vessel lay. On the other side of the island, warships and merchant vessels clustered by the city’s waterfront.
“Hello there!”
In the immigration shed, Philip Rule pushed through the crowd and plunged past the wooden rail. He wore army shorts and shirt, his face and arms were burned red-brown, and he held a purple orchid in a swollen bandaged hand. “Barely in time. You’re both invited to Admiral Phillips’s reception aboard the Prince of Wales.“
“Admiral’s reception!” Tudsbury limped up and shook hands. “Smashing.”
Rule handed Pamela the orchid. “Welcome to the bastion of Empire, love. These things grow by the roadside here. Come, I’ll whisk you through the formalities.”
“What’s wrong with your hand, Phil?”
“Oh, out on jungle maneuvers with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, I got bitten by a centipede. Nasty brute, a foot long. I hardly knew whether to step on him or shoot him! Charms of the tropics.” Rule spoke cheerily over his shoulder, leading them to a small office. Here a perspiring red-faced little man in a brass-buttoned coat stamped the passports.
“Well, well! Mr. Alistair Tudsbury! What an honor. Correspondents are fairly pouring in now, but you’re the most famous one yet.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Let me say, sir, that we’ve had these Jap scares before. They always blow over. The vultures are gathering in vain, so to speak. No offense, sir. Have a pleasant stay, sir.”
Rule collected their luggage, piled it in his car, and raced them to town, where he drove slowly through narrow stifling hot streets, thronged with Asiatics of all ages and skin shades: some in native dress, some dressed Western style, some rich-looking and fat, some bony and naked but for rags. Sweet, spicy, and disgusting smells drifted turn by turn into the car windows. Brightly colored shop signs in strange alphabets lined the streets.
When the car emerged on a boulevard, the scene metamorphosed: broad avenues, green palm-lined parks, signs in English, tall buildings; glimpses of a waterfront, and gusts of refreshing sea breeze; dark-faced, white-gloved Bobbies directing traffic; a British seaport city, burning in un-British heat, its pavements crowded with colored faces. At the big ramshackle Raffles Hotel Rule dropped their bags. A navy launch took them from a steel and concrete pier, roofed with high arches, out to a gaudily camouflaged battleship moored to a buoy. Helped by Rule, clutching her flimsy skirt, Pamela climbed the accommodation ladder. Behind her Tudsbury painfully grunted.
“Oho!” she said as she set foot on deck. “The British! I wondered where they were.”
“Everybody’s here that matters,” said Rule.
Under a brown awning the laughing, chattering guests were standing around drinking cocktails, or waiting in a reception line that stretched to the sunlit forecastle. The men wore white linen suits or bright-hued blazers, the women, flowery print dresses fluttering in the breeze. All the faces were white, unless the owner of the face carried a tray. Four long guns painted in garish patches like snakeskin projected beyond the awning.