by Herman Wouk
A shy touch on his face, and he opened his eyes to see her smiling down at him. “I don’t think coffee’ll help much, Pug.”
“No. Most discouraging.”
Getting ready for bed half-woke him. Coming from the bathroom, he found her, fully dressed, turning down his twin bed. He felt like a fool. He tried to embrace her. She fended him off with the laughing deftness of a coed. “Sweetie pie, I love you to little pieces, but I truly don’t believe you’d make it. One good night’s sleep, and the tiger will be back on the prowl.”
Pug sank into bed with a sleepy groan. Softly she kissed him on the mouth. “It’s good to have you back.”
“Sorry about this,” he murmured, as she turned out the light.
Not in the least put out, rather relieved than otherwise, Rhoda took off the red dress and donned an old housecoat. She went downstairs and cleaned up every trace of the dinner, and of the day gone by; emptied the living room ashtrays, shovelled the fireplace ashes into a scuttle, laid a new fire for the morning, and put out the ashes and the garbage. She enjoyed the moment’s breath of icy air in the alley, the glimpse of glittering stars, and the crunch of snow under her slippers.
In her dressing room, with a glass of brandy at hand, she ran a hot bath and set about the dismantling job under glaring lights between large mirrors. Off came the rouge, the lipstick, the mascara, and the skin makeup which she wore down to her collar bone. The naked woman stepping into the vaporous tub was lean, almost stringy, after months of resolute starving. Her ribs unattractively showed; but her belly was straight, her hips slim, her breasts small and passably shaped. About the face, alas, there was nothing girlish. Still, Colonel Harrison Peters, she thought, would find her desirable.
To Rhoda’s view desirability was nine-tenths in the man’s mind, anyway; the woman’s job was to foster the feeling, if she detected it and if it suited her purpose. Pug liked her thin, so she had damned well gotten thin for this reunion. Rhoda knew she was in trouble, but about her sexual allure for her husband she was not worried. Given Pug’s dour fidelity, this was the rock on which their marriage stood.
The warm water enveloped and deliciously relaxed her. Despite her outer calm she had been taut as a scared cat all evening. In his gentleness, his absence of reproach, his courteous manner, and his lack of ardor, Pug had said it all. His silences disclosed more than other men’s words. No doubt he had forgiven her (whatever that might mean) but he had not even begun to forget; though it seemed he was not going to bring up the anonymous letters. Adding it all up, she was not unhappy with this first day. It was over, and they were off the knife-edge, on a bearable footing. She had dreaded the first encounter in bed. It could so easily have gone wrong, and a few silly minutes might have exacerbated the estrangement. Sex as pleasure, at this point, mattered to her not at all. She had more serious concerns.
Rhoda was a woman of method, much given to lists, written and mental. The bath was her time for review. Item one tonight was nothing less than her marriage itself. Despite Pug’s kind letters, and the wave of reconciling emotion after Warren’s death — now that they had faced each other, was it salvageable? On the whole, she thought so. This had immediate practical consequences.
Colonel Harrison Peters was amazingly taken with her. He was coming to Saint John’s Church on Sundays just to see more of her. At first she had wondered what he wanted of her, when (so she had heard) plenty of round-heeled Washington girls were his at a push. Now she knew, because he had told her. She was the military man’s lady of his dreams: good-looking, true, decorous, churchgoing, elegant, and brave. He admired the way she was bearing the loss of her son. In their moments together — she was keeping them infrequent and public, having learned her lesson with Kirby — he had gotten her to talk about Warren, and sometimes had wiped away his own tears. The man was tough and important, doing some highly secret Army job; but when it came down to cases, he was just a lonesome bachelor in his mid-fifties, tired of fooling around, too old to start a family, but wistful to settle down. There the man was for the having.
But if she could hold on to Pug, that was what she wanted. He was her life. She had worked out with Palmer Kirby her romantic yearnings. Divorce and remarriage were messy at best. Her identity, her prestige, her self-respect, were bound up with remaining Mrs. Victor Henry. Moving to Hawaii had proven too difficult and complicated; but maybe it was just as well that time had passed before a reunion, and the newest wounds had somewhat healed. Pug was a real man. You could never count Pug Henry out. Why, here was the White House calling him again! He had had a rotten run of luck, including her own misconduct; but if ever a man had the stuff to weather it, he did. In her way Rhoda admired and even loved Pug. The death of Warren had enlarged her limited capacity for love. A broken heart sometimes stretches when it mends.
The way Rhoda now sized matters up, soaking in her tub, it appeared that after a touch-and-go reconciliation they would make it. After all, there was the Pamela Tudsbury business; she had something to forgive too, though she did not know just what. When they had talked of Tudsbury’s death at dinner she had carefully watched Pug’s face. “I wonder what Pamela will do now,” she had ventured. “I saw them when they passed through Hollywood, you know. Did you get my letter? The poor man gave a BRILLIANT speech at the Hollywood Bowl.”
“I know. You sent me the speech.”
“Actually, Pug, she wrote it. So she told me.”
“Yes, Pam was ghosting a lot for him toward the end. But he gave her the ideas.” No surprising the old fox, tired or not; his tone was perfectly casual.
Not that it mattered. Rhoda had digested Pamela Tudsbury’s astounding revelation in Hollywood more or less in this wise: if a passionate young beauty like that one — who by the look of her knew plenty about men — could not snag Pug right after poor Warren’s death, when he was far from home, vulnerable, estranged by the Kirby affair, and no doubt drunk every night, then the marriage was probably safe. Colonel Harrison Peters, all handsome six feet three of him, could go hang if she could keep Pug. Harrison’s admiration was like an accident insurance policy. She was glad she had it, and hoped she would never have to fall back on it.
In the dim glow of the bedroom nightlight, the grim lines of Pug’s face were smoothed by sleep. An unwonted impulse came to Rhoda’s mind: should she slip into his bed? She had seldom done this down the years; mostly a long time ago, after too much to drink or an evening of flirting with someone else’s husband. Pug took her rare advances as great compliments. He looked handsome and sweet. Many a breach between them had quickly closed with lovemaking.
Yet she hesitated. It was one thing for the modest spouse to yield to a yen for her man back from the war. For her — on probation, seeking forgiveness — wasn’t it something else; a bribing use of her body, a hint of coarsened appetite? None of this was articulated by Rhoda, naturally. It raced through her mind in a sort of female symbolic logic, and she got into her own bed.
Pug snapped awake, the alcohol wearing off and his nerves jangling an alarm. Rhoda, dead to the world, wore a wrinkly cap on her hair. No use turning over. He would have to drink more or take a pill. He found the warmest bathrobe in his closet, and went to the library where the movable bar was. On the antique desk lay a big leather-bound scrapbook, with Warren’s photograph worked into the cover over gold-stamped lettering:
Lieutenant Warren Henry, USN
He mixed a stiff bourbon and water, staring at the album as at a spectre. He walked out of the room, snapping off the light; then he went back, groped to the desk, and lit the reading lamp. Standing drink in hand, he went through the scrapbook leaf by leaf. On the inside front cover, bordered in black, was Warren’s baby picture; on the inside back cover, his obituary in the Washington Post, with a blurry photograph; and facing this, the citation for his posthumous Navy Cross, boldly signed in black ink by the Secretary of the Navy.
In this album Rhoda had marshalled their firstborn son’s whole short life: the first attem
pt at lettering — MERRY CHRISTMAS — in red and green crayon on coarse kindergarten paper; the first report card in Grade One of a school in Norfolk — Effort A, Work A+, Conduct C; pictures of children’s birthday parties, pictures at summer camps, honor certificates, athletic citations, programs of school plays, track meets, and graduations; sample letters, with penmanship and language improving from year to year; Academy documents and photographs, his commission, promotion letters, and transfer dispatches, interspersed with snapshots of him on ships and in the cockpits of airplanes; half a dozen pages devoted to pictures and mementos of his engagement and marriage to Janice Lacouture (an unexpected photograph of Natalie Jastrow in a black dress, standing beside the white-clad married pair in the sun, gave Pug a turn); and the last pages were full of war souvenirs — his squadron posing on the deck of the Enterprise, Warren in his cockpit on deck and in the air, a jocular cartoon of him in the ship’s newspaper reporting his lecture on the invasion of Russia; and finally, centered on two pages, also bordered in black, his last letter to his mother, typed on Enterprise stationery. It was dated in March, three months before his death.
Shaken at finding these fresh words from his dead son, Pug avidly read them. Warren had always hated to write letters. He had filled the first page by recounting Vic’s bright doings and sayings, and housekeeping problems in Hawaii. On the second page he had warmed up:
I fly dawn patrol, so I had better sign off, Mom. Sorry I haven’t written more often. I usually manage to see Dad when we’re in port. I assume he keeps you up to date. Also I can’t write much about what I do.
But I’ll say this. Every time I take off over the water, and every time I come in for a deck landing, I thank my stars that I made it through Pensacola. There are just a handful of naval aviators in this war. When Vic grows up and reads all about it, and he looks at the gray-headed old crock he calls Dad, I don’t think he’ll be ashamed of the part I played.
I certainly hope that by the time Vic’s a man the world will be getting rid of war. This exercise used to be fun, and maybe even profitable for the victor, I don’t know. But mine’s the last generation that can get a kick out of combat, Mom, it’s all getting too impersonal, and complicated, and costly, and deadly. People have to figure out a saner way to run this planet. Armed robbers like the Germans and the Japs create problems, but hereafter they’ll have to be snuffed out before they get rolling.
So I almost hate to confess how much fun it’s been. I hope my son never knows the fear and the glory of diving a plane into AA fire. It’s a hell of a stupid way to make a living. But now that I’m doing it, I have to tell you I wouldn’t have missed it for all the tea in China. I’d like to see Vic become a politician and work at straightening the world out. I may even have a shot at it myself when all this is over, and cut a trail for him. Meantime, dawn patrol.
Love,
Warren
Pug closed the album, tossed off his second drink, and passed his hand over the rough leather as over the cheek of a child. Turning off the lights, he trudged upstairs to the bedroom. Warren’s mother was asleep as before, on her back, the pretty profile cut off by the grotesque hair bag. He stared at her as though she were a stranger. How could she have endured putting that album together? It was a wonderful job, like everything she did. He could not yet trust himself to speak his son’s name aloud, and she had done all that: dug up the mementos, faced them, handled them, made a nice ornamental arrangement of them.
Pug got into bed, face buried in the pillow, to let the whiskey whirl him down into a few more hours of oblivion.
51
THE broad gold admiral’s stripe on Russell Carton’s sleeve was very shiny. His overheated little office in the west wing of the White House was crusted with many paint jobs, the latest oyster gray. This newly minted rear admiral was only two Academy classes senior to Pug. The face was jowlier, the body thicker than in the days when Carton had marched by on the Annapolis parade ground shouting orders to his battalion. He had been stiff then and he was stiff now. Seated at a metal desk under a large autographed picture of the President, he shook hands without rising, and made pointless chitchat, not mentioning the Nimitz request. So Pug decided to risk a probe. “Admiral, did BuPers notify you of a dispatch from Cincpac about me?”
“Well, yes.” Guarded and grudging answer.
“Then the President knows that Admiral Nimitz wants me for his staff?”
“Henry, my advice to you is simply to go in there and listen when summoned,” Carton said testily. “Admiral Standley is with the President now. Also Mr. Hopkins and Admiral Leahy.” He pulled a basket of correspondence forward. “Now until we’re buzzed, I do have these letters to get out.”
Pug had his answer; the President did not know. The wait went by without another word from Carton while Pug reviewed his situation and planned his tactics. In over a year he had received no comment on his battlefront report to Harry Hopkins from Moscow, nor a reply to his letter to the President about the evidence of a Jewish massacre in Minsk. He had long since concluded that that letter had finished him with the White House, showing him up as a sentimental meddler in matters not his concern. That had not bothered him much. He had never sought the role of a minor presidential emissary, and had not relished it. Evidently old Admiral Stand-ley was behind this White House summons. The countering tactic must be simple: disclose the Nimitz dispatch to nullify Standley, pull out and stay out of the President’s field of force, and return to the Pacific.
The buzzer sounded twice. “That’s us,” said Carton. The White House hallways and stairways appeared quiet and unchanged, the calm at the eye of the hurricane. Secretaries and uniformed orderlies moved softly at a peacetime pace. In the Oval Office the gadgets and ship models cluttering the big desk did not seem to have been moved in nearly two years. But Franklin Roosevelt was much altered: the gray hair thinner, the eyes filmy in purple pouches, the whole aspect strikingly aged. Harry Hopkins, slouching waxen-faced in an armchair, wearily waved at Pug. The two admirals emblazoned with gold and ribbons, sitting rigidly on a couch, barely glanced at him.
Roosevelt’s tired big-jawed face took on lively pleasure as Victor Henry came in with Carton. “Well, Pug, old top!” The voice was rich, lordly, Harvardish, like all the boring radio comedians’ imitations. “So the Japs made you swim for it, eh?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. President.”
“That’s my favorite exercise, you know, swimming,” Roosevelt said with a waggish grin. “It’s good for my health. However, I like to pick my own time and place.”
Nonplussed for a moment, Pug realized that the heavy pleasantry was intended as a kindness. Roosevelt’s eyebrows were expectantly raised for his answer. He forced the lightest riposte he could think of. “Mr. President, I agree it was an ill-timed swim, but it was pretty good for my own health.”
“Ha, ha!” Roosevelt threw back his head and laughed with gusto, whereupon the others also laughed a little. “Well put! Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you?” He delivered this as though it were another joke, and the others laughed again. Russell Carton withdrew. The President’s expressive face went grave. “Pug, I regret the loss of that grand ship, and of all those brave men. The Northampton gave a bully account of herself, I know that. I’m terribly glad you came away safe. You must know Admiral Leahy” — Roosevelt’s lean, dry-looking chief of staff gave Pug a wooden nod suited to his four stripes and sunken ship — “and of course Bill Stand-ley. Bill’s been singing your praises ever since you went with him to Moscow.”
“Hello, Henry,” said Admiral Standley. Leathery, wizened, a bulky hearing aid in his ear, his thin lipless lower jaw thrust out over a corded, wattled neck, he looked a bit like an angry tortoise.
“You know, Admiral Standley grew so fond of the Russians on that Harriman mission, Pug” — Roosevelt signalled another joke with arched eyebrows — “that I had to send him back to Moscow as ambassador, just to keep him happy! And though he’s been home on leave,
he misses them so much he’s hurrying back there tomorrow. Right, Bill?”
“Right as rain, Chief.” The tone was coarsely sarcastic.
“How did you like the Russians, Pug?”
“I was impressed by them, Mr. President.”
“Oh? Well, other people occasionally have been, too. What impressed you most about them?”
“Their numbers, sir, and their willingness to die.”
Glances darted among the four men. Harry Hopkins spoke up in a weak hoarse voice, “Well, Pug, I guess at this point the Germans at Stalingrad might agree with you.”
Standley gave Pug a peevish look. “The Russians are numerous and brave. Nobody disputes that. They’re also impossible. That’s the basic problem, and there’s a basic answer. Firmness and clarity.” Standley waved a bony finger at the tolerantly smiling President. “Words are wasted on them. It’s like dealing with beings from another planet. They understand only the language of deeds. Even that they can get wrong. I don’t think they understand Lend-Lease to this minute. It’s available, so they simply demand and demand, and grab and grab, like kids at a party where the ice cream and cake are free.”
Cocking his head, the President almost gaily replied, “Bill, did I ever tell you about my talk with Litvinov, way back in 1933? I was negotiating recognition of the Soviet Union with him. Well, I’d never dealt with such people before. Gracious, I got mad! It was over the issue of religious freedom for our nationals in Russia, as I recall. He was being slippery as an eel. I simply blew up at him. I’ve never forgotten his comeback, as cool as you please.