by Herman Wouk
The prospect of dining with him gave Pug no thrill. He had had enough of the war’s heavyweights. He was not sure how he would react to seeing Pamela again. Of one thing he was sure: that she would not inflict on him twice the pain of rejection; that by no word or gesture would he try to change her mind.
As she drove Burne-Wilke’s Bentley to Bushey Park Pamela was dreading, and at the same time yearning, to look on Pug Henry once more. A woman can handle almost anything but indifference, and the revelation that he was in England had all but shattered her.
Since returning to England, Pamela had been finding out the gritty aspects of her commitment to Duncan Burne-Wilke. His family, she now knew, included an abrasively vigorous mother of eighty-seven who talked to Pam, when she visited, as to a hired nurse; and a numerous train of brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, all of whom seemed unanimous in snobbish disapproval of her. By and large she and Burne-Wilke still enjoyed the old easy RAF intimacy, though illness and inactivity were making him querulous. In the stress of war she had become extremely fond of him; and bereft of any other future, she had accepted him. Pug’s abrupt proposal had come much too late. Still, Stoneford struck her as a big burden, however imposing; Duncan’s family was another burden; both bearable had she been deeply in love, but as things stood, gloomily disconcerting. The real trouble was that her letter of rejection to Pug had really settled nothing in her own mind. Not a word in reply for weeks! And then to learn from somebody else that he was here! Could he have turned stone-cold after that one letter, her only offending move, as he had with his wife? What a scary man! In this state of turmoil she drove’into Bushey Park and saw Victor Henry standing at the bus stop.
“You look smashing.” The schoolgirl words and tones gushed from her.
His smile was wry and reserved. “The big gold stripe helps.”
“Oh, it isn’t that, Admiral.” Her eyes searched his face. “Actually, you’re a bit war-worn, Victor. But so American. So totally American. They should carve you on Mount Rushmore.”
“Kind words, Pam. Isn’t that the suit you wore on the Bremen?”
“So! You remember.” Her face burned with a blush. “I’m out of uniform. I felt like being out of uniform. There it was in the closet. I wondered whether I could still get into it. How long will you be here?”
“I’m flying back tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow! So soon?”
“Overnight in Washington, and on to the Pacific. Tell me about Duncan.”
Thoroughly rattled (tomorrow!) she described Burne-Wilke’s puzzling symptoms as calmly as she could while they drove: the abdominal pains, the recurring low fevers, the spells of extreme fatigue alternating with days of seemingly restored health. At the moment he was low again, scarcely able to walk around the gardens. The doctors guessed that injury and shock had allowed some tropical infection to get going in his bloodstream. Months or a year could go by before he shook it off; then again, it might suddenly clear up. Meantime, an invalid regime was mandatory: curtailed activity, much sleep, long bed rest every day, and many pills.
“He must be going mad.”
“He was. Now he reads and reads, sitting in the sun. He’s taken to writing, too, rather mystical stuff à la Saint-Exupéry. Flying plus the Bhagavad-Gita. Aviation and Vishnu really don’t mix, not to my taste. I want him to write about the China-Burma-India theatre, it’s the great untold story of this war. But he says there are too many maggots under the rocks. Well, here’s Stoneford.”
“Pam, it’s magnificent.”
“Yes, isn’t the front lovely?” She was driving the car between brick pillars and open wrought-iron gates. Ahead, bisecting a broad green lawn, stretched a long straight gravel road lined with immense oaks, leading to a wide brick mansion glowing rose-red in the sun. “The first viscount bought the place and added the wings. Actually it’s a wreck inside, Pug. Lady Caroline took in masses of slum children during the blitz, and they quite laid waste to the place. Duncan’s had no chance to fix it up. We live in the guest wing. The little savages never got in there. I have a nice little suite. We’ll have tea there, then walk in the garden until Duncan wakes up.”
When they mounted to the second floor, Pamela casually pointed out that she and Burne-Wilke lived at opposite sides of the house; he looked out on the oaks, she on the gardens. “No need to tiptoe,” she said as they walked past his door. “He sleeps like a dormouse.”
An elderly woman in a maid’s costume served the tea very clumsily. Pug and Pamela sat by tall windows overlooking weed-choked flower beds. “It’s all going to jungle,” she said. “One can’t hire the men. They’re fighting all over the world. Mrs. Robinson and her husband look after the place. She’s the one who bungled the tea, she used to be the laundress. He’s a senile drunk. Duncan’s old cook has stayed on, so that’s good. I have a job in the ministry, and I manage to come out most nights. That’s my story, Pug. What’s yours?”
“Madeline married that young naval officer.”
“Wonderful!”
“They’re in New Mexico. Pleasantest turnabout in my life. Byron’s got his Bronze Star, and by all accounts he’s a good submariner. Janice is in law school. My grandson at three is a formidable genius. There’s some hope about Natalie. A neutral Red Cross delegation will visit her camp, or ghetto, or whatever it is, very soon, so maybe we’ll get some word. If the Germans are letting the Red Cross in, the place can’t be too bad. That’s my story.”
Pamela could not help it, though Pug’s tone was so final. “And Rhoda?”
“In Reno, getting her divorce. You said something about a walk in the gardens.”
Getting her divorce! But his manner was so estranged, cold, and discouraging, she could say no more about that.
They were outside before he spoke again. “This isn’t jungle.” The terraced rose garden was massed with well-tended bushes coming into bud.
“Roses are Duncan’s hobby. When he’s well he spends hours here. Tell me about your promotion.”
Pug Henry brightened. “Actually, that’s quite a yarn, Pam.”
The President, he said, had invited him to Hyde Park. He had not seen Roosevelt since Tehran, and had found him shockingly withered. They had dined at a long table with only one other person, his daughter. Afterward in a small study Roosevelt had talked about the landing craft program. A curious anxiety was haunting the haggard President. He feared enemy action in the first few days might damage or sink a large number of the craft. Weeks might pass before Cherbourg was captured and big supply ships could take over the logistics; meantime speedy salvage and relaunching of sunk or damaged landing craft would be imperative. He had asked for reports on such arrangements and had gotten nothing satisfactory. He would “sleep better” if Pug would go to England and inspect the facilities. In the morning as Pug took his leave, the President had said something jocose and puzzling about “fair sailing weather ahead.” Immediately on Pug’s return to Washington from Hyde Park, Admiral King had summoned him to tell him face to face that he was getting his two stars and a Pacific battleship division.
“A battleship division, Pug!” They were walking through a densely blossoming apple orchard. Pamela seized his arm. “But that’s absolutely marvelous! A division!”
“King said it was my reward for work well done, and he knew I could fight a BatDiv if I had to. It’s two ships, Pam. Two of our best, the Iowa and the New Jersey, and — what the devil is the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.” Pamela was putting a handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh, Pug!”
“Well, it’s the best I could hope for in my career. A monumental surprise.” Pug wearily shrugged. “Of course it’s a carrier war out there, Pam. The battlewagons mainly bombard beaches. I may just ride around in fancy flag quarters till the war ends, initialing papers and acting pompous. An admiral afloat can be a futile fellow.”
“It’s terrific,” Pamela said. “It’s absolutely, utterly, bloody flaming terrific.”
Pug gave her the bleak smile she had loved on the Bremen and loved now. “I agree. Won’t Duncan be waking up?”
“Good Lord, six o’clock. Where did the time go? Let’s run like deer.”
They had drinks before dinner on the terrace. Eisenhower arrived late, looking pale and acting edgy. He declined a highball, and when his driver, Mrs. Summersby, cheerfully accepted one, he gave her a grumpy glance. This was Pug’s first glimpse of the woman that all the gossip was about. Even in uniform Kay Summersby looked like the fashion model she had been before the war: tall, lissome, with a seductive high-cheekboned face and big eyes that glinted self-assurance; a professional beauty to her fingertips, with a faintly mischievous military veneer. Since the general wasn’t drinking, the others gulped their highballs and conversation lagged.
The small dining room opened out on the gardens, and through the french doors pleasant flower scents drifted in. For a while this was the only pleasant thing going on. Sunburned, scarred, spectral, Burne-Wilke talked with Mrs. Summersby while the laundress waddled about clumsily serving lamb, boiled potatoes, and brussels sprouts. Pamela, with Eisenhower on her right and Leigh-Mallory on her left, could not get a rise out of either. They just sat there eating glumly. The dinner seemed to Pug Henry a disaster. Leigh-Mallory, a stiff correct RAF sort, stocky and mustached, kept furtively shifting his eyes at Kay Summersby beside him, as though the woman were sitting there stark naked.
But Burne-Wilke’s good claret and Pug’s presence in time helped matters. Leigh-Mallory mentioned that the drive to relieve Imphal was picking up steam, and Burne-Wilke observed that perhaps only Leningrad had been besieged longer in this war. Pamela piped up, “Pug was in Leningrad during the siege.”
At that Eisenhower shook his head and rubbed his eyes like a man wakened from a doze. “You were, Henry? In Leningrad? Let’s hear about it.”
Pug talked. The imminent invasion was apparently weighing down the two high commanders, so a yarn was in order. His account of silent snowy Leningrad, the apartment of Yevlenko’s daughter-in-law, the horror tales of the siege, rolled out easily. Leigh-Mallory’s rigid face relaxed to lively attention. Eisenhower stared straight at Pug, chain-lighting cigarettes. He commented when Pug finished, “Most interesting. I was unaware that any of our fellows had gotten in there. I saw no intelligence on this.”
“Technically I was a Lend-Lease observer, General. I did send a supplement on combat aspects to ONI.”
“Kay, tell Lee tomorrow to get that stuff from the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
“Yes, General.”
“This chap, Yevlenko — he took you to Stalingrad too, you say?” asked Leigh-Mallory.
“Yes, but the fighting had already ended there.”
“Tell us about that,” said Eisenhower.
Burne-Wilke signalled the laundress to bring more claret. The atmosphere was clearing by the minute. When Eisenhower laughed at Pug’s description of the rough drinking party in the Stalingrad cellar, Leigh-Mallory too uttered a reluctant chortle.
Eisenhower said, his face hardening, “Henry, you know these people. Once we go, will they attack in the east? Harriman’s assured me that the attack is on, but there’s a lot of skepticism around here.”
Pug took a moment to think. “They’ll go, sir. That’s my guess. Politically, they’re unpredictable, and may strike us as treacherous. They truly don’t see the world, or use language, as we do. That may not change, ever. Still, I think they’ll keep this military commitment.”
The Supreme Commander emphatically nodded.
“Why?” asked Leigh-Mallory.
“Self-interest, of course,” Eisenhower almost snapped. “I agree, Henry. The time to hit the other fellow is when he has his hands full. They’re bound to go.”
“Also,” said Pug, “out of a sense of honor. That they’ve got.”
“If they’ve got that much in common with us,” Eisenhower said soberly, “we’ll eventually get along with them. We can build on that.”
“I wonder,” said Leigh-Mallory in a heavily jesting tone. “Look at the trouble we have getting along, General, and we have the English language in common.”
Kay Summersby remarked sweetly, in Mayfair accents, “It only seems we do.”
Turning on her, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory genuinely laughed, and raised his glass to her.
Eisenhower gave Mrs. Summersby a wide warm grin. “Well, Kay, now I have to talk for a while with these two RAF fellows — in sign language, of course.” A joke from the Supreme Commander naturally brought loud laughter. Everybody stood up. Eisenhower said to Burne-Wilke, “Maybe we can get in a rubber afterward.”
Pamela invited Pug and Mrs. Summersby to the terrace for brandy and coffee, but once outside Kay Summersby did not sit down. “See here, Pam,” she said with an ironic little glance from Henry to Pamela, “they’ll be talking for quite a while. I have simply masses of things to do at the cottage. You and the admiral will forgive me, won’t you, if I just pop over there and come back for the bridge?”
And she was gone. The general’s car rattled down the gravel road.
Pamela was perfectly aware that Mrs. Summersby, with sharp intuition, was giving her what might be her last chance at Victor Henry in this life. She went right on the attack. She had to provoke a scene to accomplish anything. “No doubt you deeply disapprove of Kay. Or do you bend your rules for great men?”
“I know no more about her than meets the eye.”
“I see. As a matter of fact, and I know them rather well, I’m sure that’s all there is to it.” Pug made no comment. “Pity you couldn’t be more broadminded about your wife.”
“I was ready to stick it out. You know that. Rhoda chose differently.”
“You froze her.”
Pug said nothing.
“Will she be happy with the fellow?”
“I don’t know. I’m worried, Pam.” He told her about the anonymous letters, and his talk with Peters on the train. “I’ve met him once since then, the day Rhoda left for Reno. He came to take her to the station, and while she primped we talked. He didn’t act happy. I think at this point he’s doing the honorable thing.”
“Poor Rhoda!” This was all Pamela could say, in the rush of emotion at what Pug Henry was now telling her. Here was the last bit of the jigsaw puzzle. Colonel Peters had looked to Pamela like a hard and clever man; and her instinct had been that he would see through Rhoda Henry before she got him to the altar, and would drop her. He had seen through her; yet the marriage was on. Victor Henry was really free.
The night was dark now. They sat in starlight. A bird nearby was pouring out rich song. “Isn’t that a nightingale?” Pug asked.
“Yes.”
“Last time I heard one was on the airfield, before I took off on the flight over Berlin.”
“Oh, yes. And didn’t you put me through the hell of an ordeal that time, too. Only it lasted twenty hours, not six weeks.”
He peered at her. “Six weeks? What are you talking about?”
“Six weeks and three days, exactly, since I wrote you. Why didn’t you ever answer my letter? Just a word, any word? And why did I have to find out by chance that you’ve been in England? Do you hate me that much?”
“I don’t hate you, Pam. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Yet all I deserved was to be cast into the outer darkness.”
“What could I have written you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s say, a gallant good-bye. Conceivably, even, a dashing refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. Any little sign that you didn’t loathe and despise me for an agonized decision. I told you I was blinded with tears when I wrote. Didn’t you believe me?”
“I wrote the gallant good-bye,” he said dully. “Can’t you imagine that much? I wrote the refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. I tore up many letters. There was no graceful way to answer. I don’t see begging a woman to change her mind, and I don’t imagine begging helps. Anyway, I’m no good at it.”
“Money’s important. A man should let a woman know what she may be getting into. Anyhow, what is all this about, Pamela?”
“Goddamn it, Victor, I’ll have my say! Your letter couldn’t have been more horribly mistimed. I’ve been wretched ever since I answered you. I’ve never been more shocked in my life than when Slote said you were here. I thought I’d expire of the pain. Seeing you is incredibly sweet, and it’s sheer torture.” Pamela stood up. Stepping to Pug, who remained in his chair, she held out her arms to him, dim white in the light of the rising moon. “I told you in Moscow, I told you in Tehran, I tell you for the last time that I love you and not Duncan. Now there it is, and now you talk. Speak up, Victor Henry, at long last! Will you have me, or won’t you?”
After a pause, he said blandly, “Well, I’ll tell you, Pamela. I’ll think about it.”
It was such an unexpected deflating response that it took Pam a second or two to suspect teasing. She pounced on him, seized his shoulders, and shook him.
“You’re shaking Mount Rushmore,” he said.
“I’ll shake it down! The damned stuffy banal Yankee monument!”
He gripped her hands, rose, and embraced her for a long hard kiss. Then he held her a little away from him, keenly scanning her face. “Okay, Pamela. Six weeks ago you refused me. What’s changed?”