Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘But why should either the British or the Japs go along with that, sir?’ someone asked.

  ‘Because we are going to make them, mister. Every man of us here in this room has a part to play in that. When you are chatting with your opposite number, you are going to convince each of them that our aim is peace, but not peace at any price. And if they won’t go along with us, then, by God, we are going to build the biggest and heaviest and best armed and armoured fleet modern technology can produce.’

  ‘What about the canal?’

  ‘We’ll build another Goddamned canal, if we have to.’

  ‘But that will all be a bluff.’

  Joe McGann grinned at them. ‘Sure. But by God I will have the stripes off the arm of any man who admits that, to anyone. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they chorused.

  ‘Okay. The first of the opposite teams arrives tomorrow. You all have your assignments. I’ll wish you good fortune. And remember, what we are going to be fighting here is more important than any battle with guns. Dismissed.’

  He saluted them as they filed out, waited for Lew to approach the desk. ‘You don’t look too happy,’ he remarked.

  ‘Can’t say that I am, sir,’ Lew agreed. ‘Seems to me there’s a lot of dirty work on the way.’

  ‘Sure there is, Lew. But as you move up the service you’ll understand that navies, and nations, are run on dirty work. A little bit of bluff and bullying is always one hell of a lot better than opening fire. Now here’s a piece of news will interest you. I’ve been looking through the lists of the various delegations, and in the Japanese party there’s a guy called Hashimoto Kurita. Ring a bell?’

  ‘Hash!’ Lew cried. He hadn’t seen his friend since the day of his wedding. ‘Why, that’s great. But...I have to lie to him as well, eh?’

  ‘He represents the opposition.’

  ‘Father,’ Lew said. ‘Would you tell me one thing?’

  ‘If I can.’

  The room had emptied. But Lew still lowered his voice. ‘You know, and I know, that all this talk about Great Britain ever declaring war on us is hogwash, right?’

  ‘Maybe you and I know it, Lew. But the Navy Office has contingency plans for it if should ever occur.’

  ‘And I guess it also has plans for taking on Japan, if we ever have to.’

  ‘That’s what it’s there for.’

  ‘So I would like you to assure me that this whole charade isn’t just a smokescreen for a designed isolation of Japan, followed by maybe a preventive war.’

  Joe frowned. ‘That’s one hell of a concept. I hope you haven’t been airing it to anybody else.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘But it’s on your mind.’

  ‘Sure it is. I read my newspapers, and I keep my ears open. I know the State Department is hopping mad with Japan for virtually establishing a protectorate over China while we were all looking at Europe. I know our people regard China as their own. And I sense a growing hostility towards the Japanese in almost everything we are doing.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, the new immigration laws, directed at them, just for a start. You can’t blame them for resenting having the door slammed in their face.’

  ‘It’s that or having the whole of California populated by them,’ Joe pointed out. Then he grinned, and stood up. ‘I can give you a categorical assurance that the United States has no intention of fighting a preventive war with anyone. But as I told you all just now, Japan is one of the only two nations in the world with whom we could ever have any friction. Our aim, and it has to be yours too, Lew, is to make sure that if that friction ever comes, we’re going to finish on top. Right?’

  Lew sighed. ‘Right.’

  ‘So you just be as charming as you can to your friend Hashimoto, and hope that things always stay that way.’

  This time Lew’s sigh was even heavier. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Okay. Now tell me, how is May liking Washington?’

  Lew shrugged. ‘About as much as she liked anywhere else, I guess.’

  Joe studied him. Presumably Lew had no idea of the rumours that were circulating about May’s drinking, and it was not a subject he quite knew how to tackle. ‘Do you reckon I could come over for dinner, tonight? Heck, it’s six months since I’ve see her. Or the kids.’

  Lew’s hesitation was almost imperceptible. ‘That’d be great.’

  ‘Thanks.’ But Joe knew his son too well to feel he was altogether welcome. ‘By the way,’ he added. ‘I’ve a bit of gossip may interest you: Brenda Grant has got married.’

  ‘Brenda? To whom?’

  ‘Danny Walsh. He’s still a lieutenant.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lew said. ‘Good old Danny. He always did have a yen for that girl.’

  He didn’t know whether to be happy or miserable about that.

  *

  But then, he didn’t know whether to be happy or miserable about a lot of things. He drove his car from the Navy Office and over the bridge into Arlington, where the rented apartment was, garaged it, and took the elevator to the fourth floor, let himself in with his key. It was just after five in the afternoon, and Clive was sitting in the middle of the lounge carpet, surrounded by lead soldiers and toy warships; at four and a half he was already a large boy. ‘Hi, Pop,’ he called.

  ‘Hi,’ Lew said. ‘Where’s Belle?’

  ‘I dunno. She was here just now.’

  ‘Well, where’s Joan?’

  ‘I dunno. She...’

  ‘Was here just now,’ Lew said. ‘I don’t suppose you know where Mommy is?’

  ‘In bed, I guess.’

  That figured. Lew hung his cap on the hook, went through the dining room into the kitchen, where, as he had suspected would be the case, two year old Joan McGann was hanging on to the icebox door trying to open it. He scooped her from the floor and gave her a big kiss. ‘Now just what are you up to, sweetheart? Where is Belle?’

  ‘Belle gone,’ Joan told him. She pointed. ‘Ice cream in deah.’

  ‘Sure there is. But not at five o’clock in the afternoon. You have to have a bath and get dressed. Because guess what, Grandpa is coming to dinner.’

  ‘Grandpa,’ she shouted. ‘Grandpa!’

  Lew carried her into the master bedroom, where May lay on her stomach reading the Saturday Evening Post. She was, predictably, naked, her legs spread and her hair loose on her shoulders and trailing down to either side, and was, as always so sexually attractive she took Lew’s breath away, even after three years of intermittent possession — and even if she had put on some weight during those three years as well. But the weight was so evenly divided that the slight widening of the hips, the pot of the belly, the sag of the heavy breasts only seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Grandpa,’ Joan shouted again, and May rose to her knees, turning as she did so.

  ‘Where?’ she demanded, more in irritation than alarm at possibly being found in the nude by her father-in-law.

  Lew sighed. Again predictably, his wife was sipping a martini. It was rare indeed for him to come home at any hour of the day or night and find her not sipping a martini — and she used vermouth strictly for flavouring. He could never remember finding her actually drunk, but it was also difficult not to tell she had been drinking, apart from the anti-social aspect of the situation — for if almost everyone drank despite the prohibition laws, they were not supposed to flaunt it — he also worried about her health: he had a good relationship with his bootlegger and was certain all the gin obtained from that source was quality stuff, but he also had more than a notion that May occasionally bought it from less reliable sources of supply, which could easily have mixed it in a bathtub a few hours before.

  ‘He’s coming to dinner,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Lewis.’ She swung her legs round and sat on the bed. ‘I was hoping we’d go out.’

  ‘Can’t Belle prepare something?’

  ‘Oh...I fired Belle, this afternoon,’ May said.

/>   ‘What for this time?’ Lew demanded. Belle was the fourth housemaid they had had since coming to Arlington, and they had only been here three weeks.

  ‘Oh...’ May made a moue. ‘She was rude. Joanie, darling, why don’t you run along and play with Clive?’

  ‘Clive don’ wanna,’ Joan declared.

  ‘Well, run along anyway, there’s a doll. Put her outside the door, Lewis.’

  Lew hesitated, then obeyed, closing the door on her frantic shouts. ‘She’s not a cat, you know.’ He took off his jacket, because, again predictably, he knew what his wife wanted. It was the only thing she seemed to prefer to drinking martinis. And it was something he continued to find irresistible.

  ‘A cat would be less trouble,’ May pointed out, and finished her drink before lying down again, arms and legs spread wide, breasts inflating and deflating as she breathed.

  ‘I can’t help but feel you should spend more time with those kids,’ Lew said, sitting down to take off his shoes. ‘If only to keep an eye on them, especially when there isn’t a maid around. I found Joan trying to get into the icebox.’

  ‘There’s some ice cream in there,’ May said, closing her eyes and moving her body, sinuously, on top of the coverlet.

  ‘So I gather. But if she had got the door open, and she will, one of these days, God knows what she could take out. Or pull down on top of her.’ At least the little girl had stopped screaming and banging on the door.

  ‘Lewis!’ May opened her eyes again. ‘I want you in me. God, I’ve been waiting all day to have you in me. Can’t we talk about the children some other time?’ He had finished undressing and she reached for him, stroking him and bringing him down on her. He needed no encouragement. Even after three years to hold May naked in his arms was the greatest thrill he had ever known; as they had spent a good half of that time apart he had never had the time to grow tired of her unquenchable desires — the three weeks in Washington, his first shore job since joining the Navy, had been like one long honeymoon.

  Yet he could not help but wonder, irrelevantly, what she did with herself when he was at sea. And for herself, too; there was no way she could exist without sex of some sort for a month at a time.

  She sighed, and subsided even before he did, but he was close behind her, and lay on her chest, rising and falling as she breathed, while he kissed her with post-intercourse softness. ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she said. ‘How long are we going to be here?’

  He rolled off her and sat up, rattled the cocktail shaker on the bedside table. There was just enough for a refill, and he took a sip himself before passing it to her. ‘Well, the conference could last a couple of months, at least. It really is important to get agreement on a number of points. Why, don’t you like it here?’

  ‘Well, it’s all right, but...’

  ‘There are no parties. Or at least what you would call parties.’

  ‘Oh, Lewis. You make me sound such a wanton.’

  ‘You are,’ he agreed. He rumpled her hair and bent to kiss her stomach. ‘My own most beautiful woman.’

  ‘I never have time to make friends,’ she complained. ‘Two months, and we’ll be away again.’

  ‘That’s a sailor’s lot, I guess. You can always go back to Long Island. You’ve friends there.’

  May had spent the first six months of their marriage on the Long Island farm with Uncle Bill’s family, while Lew had been at sea.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she said. ‘You know I was miserable there.’

  ‘They’re the kindest people on earth. And they adored you.’

  ‘I know. That’s what makes me feel so bad. But...they were so boring. And there was no liquor. I nearly went out of my mind.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve been making up for it, ever since, right?’ But he grinned as he spoke and took the glass from her hand for another sip himself. It was quite impossible ever to be angry with May, even if there were so many things he wanted to be angry about, from time to time; but she wore her vices with such an air of ingenuous, almost virginal pleasure in everything she did.

  ‘Go on, pick on me,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s talk about the children. I think the biggest mistake you made was in letting Rowena go.’

  ‘She began to criticise me,’ May pointed out. ‘Just like Belle. I can’t stand being criticised. Except by you. But I know you don’t mean it.’

  ‘I might, one of these days.’

  ‘Oh...’ she pouted. ‘Anyway, I don’t see what’s upsetting you. So I made you put Joan out, and she didn’t like it. My God, when I was a girl I wasn’t allowed in my parents’ bedroom at all. Good Lord, I only saw them once a day, at six o’clock after dinner, when I was taken in to say goodnight.’

  ‘And look how you turned out.’

  ‘Oh, Lewis!’

  He kissed her some more. ‘I’m not complaining. But you can’t claim you enjoyed having that abortion? And I would say it was just pure loneliness and lack of love at home made you take off after men like that.’ He slapped her bottom. ‘Now come along. We have to bathe those kids and get this place shipshape for Father.’

  ‘And then we’ll go out for a meal.’

  He stood up. ‘We can’t. You fired the babysitter, remember?’

  ‘Oh...the girl from downstairs will do it. I asked her.’

  ‘We’ll think about it,’ he said, and cocked his head as there came a crash from the kitchen. ‘If there’s anyone left to baby-sit,’ he added, running for the door. ‘There was ice cream everywhere,’ Lew told Joe. ‘God, what a mess. But it could’ve been a lot worse.’

  May, beautiful in pale blue, stuck out her tongue at him. ‘He’s picking on me again, Daddy. Yes, please,’ she told the hovering waiter. ‘I’ll have another orange juice.’ Her glass was refilled, and she took her flask from her handbag and popped in a dollop of gin. ‘Anyone joining me?’

  ‘I don’t think I will, actually,’ Joe McGann said. ‘And for God’s sake put that thing away.’ They had been given a discreet corner table, which contained a huge vase of flowers, and he was perfectly sure May wasn’t the only diner in the restaurant lacing her drink, but she was by far the most obvious.

  ‘I’m celebrating your being with us,’ she told him; she was not the least shy of him, although they had only met on half a dozen occasions. But then, she was not the least shy of anybody. ‘In fact, I think we should celebrate properly. Let’s go to a speakeasy when we leave here. I’ve heard there’s a great place just round the corner. All you do is to say you’ve come to buy some furniture, and they let you in.’ She looked from face to face, brightly. ‘How about it, boys?’

  ‘Ah...’ Lew looked at his father.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Joe McGann said. ‘And if you intend to go, Lew, I would like you to go home first and change into civilian clothes.’

  ‘But you’d prefer I didn’t at all.’

  ‘I don’t think a speakeasy is any place for serving officers.’

  Lew nodded. ‘You’re right, of course.’

  ‘Oh...you spoilsports.’ May got up. ‘I’m going to the toilet.’

  The two men watched her walk from the room. ‘Would I be speaking out of turn if I said that one gets the impression that you are having a hard time of it,’ Joe remarked.

  ‘She’s had a tough life,’ Lew said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, being orphaned, Dad.’

  ‘You were orphaned.’

  ‘Which is maybe why I can understand some of her moods. And I only lost one parent. She lost both. And there are other things.’

  ‘To account for her drinking?’

  ‘I think, probably yes.’

  ‘Nothing you’d care to discuss.’

  ‘With respect, Father, no.’

  ‘Sure. I accept that. But you should be aware that a lot of people know about it. And what’s a joke in some naval station is big gossip here in Washington. Hell, the women here have nothing else to do but tear each other to pieces.’

  �
��So let them gossip.’

  ‘Because you love her, warts and all.’

  Lew grinned. ‘May doesn’t have any warts, which is why she’s so easy to love. Yes, Dad, I love her. More than I could possibly convey to you.’

  Joe McGann returned the smile, but somewhat sadly. ‘Then you’re a real fortunate guy, Lew. I envy you.’ But his eyes, too, were sad.

  *

  ‘Lew!’ Hashimoto Kurita gave a quick bow, then came forward to shake hands, Western style, before embracing his old friend. ‘I heard you’d been promoted. Now we are equals in rank.’

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Lew said. ‘Christ, three years.’

  ‘More than three years. And how is May?’

  ‘May is fine, and looking forward to seeing you. This is some ship you’ve got here.’

  He had gone down to Norfolk to welcome the Japanese delegation, and had been invited to board the Yamashiro, the battleship which had brought them from Tokyo. She really was a magnificent ship, with one of the highest control turrets he had ever seen, rising above her two funnels and nearly as tall as her single mast, while he knew she was very nearly seven hundred feet long and a hundred in the beam, and her twelve fourteen-inch guns were as formidable as anything in the American fleet. He also knew that although her ‘normal’ displacement was thirty thousand tons she was considerably more than that when deep-loaded, as she was now.

  ‘Indeed, she is a dream to sail upon.’ The two officers walked the quarterdeck, and looked at the other warships moored around them, including two American battleships. ‘And she has never fired a shot in anger. It is unbelievable.’

  ‘Well, neither have too many of our big ones, either,’ Lew pointed out. ‘I doubt they ever shall.’

  ‘Then are we not in the wrong profession? No, no, my friend, I cannot agree with you.’