Ike and Kay

by James MacManus

She noted the lack of warmth in Ike’s comments about Roosevelt and not for the first time wondered at the cold, unknown interior of the man she had served and lived every day with during the long years of war.

  She knew that the unwritten code of conduct for officers was that they never showed emotion in front of their men or their staff, and had sometimes wondered if her boss had any emotion to show. The only time he revealed himself was at moments of hot temper when he would bawl out a member of his staff. That was rare, and there was always a smile and a handshake afterwards. He would never shout at her, but there had occasionally been a roll of eyes to the ceiling and a voice raised in irritation saying, “For Chrissake, Kay, I ordered that up an hour ago.”

  That was Eisenhower. He did not ask, he commanded, and his commands demanded immediate action no matter that the person concerned was busy implementing a previous order. But for Kay there would always be a quick smile, a hand on the shoulder and “Thanks, kid,” afterwards.

  But his ungenerous words about Roosevelt surprised even Patton, who said, “I think you should do better than that when the press asks you for a quote.”

  The day after the German surrender, Winston Churchill phoned Eisenhower eight times offering praise and congratulation in language that become more effusive as the day drew on. De Gaulle sent a long message of praise in florid French. But the one man for whose words Eisenhower waited patiently was his immediate superior and mentor.

  George Marshall did not disappoint him. The American chief of staff sent a message of congratulation that began, “You have completed your mission with the greatest victory in the history of warfare,” and ended, “You have made history, great history, for the good of mankind and you have stood for all we hope for and admire in an officer of the United States Army.”

  18

  June 1945

  London in June 1945 was waiting to garland Eisenhower with all the celebration that a city diminished by six years of bombing, rationing, terrible food, bathtub gin, rocket attacks, endless casualty lists and false dawns could muster. Grief and mourning had become so commonplace that those attending funeral and memorial services in cold churches and chapels felt they were trapped in a never-ending cycle of the same prayer-book words of regret and remembrance.

  The high human toll exacted in final battles across Europe that spring had shocked people on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, the first of the cemeteries that would hold tens of thousands of Allied dead were being prepared.

  In Britain and America there was a palpable hunger for a hero to emerge from the wreckage of war, someone who could offer reassurance that the suffering had not been in vain; that a new Europe would rise from the ashes of the old; that rationing would end, that food would become more plentiful and that, well, everything was now going to be all right again.

  There was no better person on whom these hopes for happiness could be projected than Dwight Eisenhower, no better person to satisfy the yearning for reassurance that the sacrifices had not been in vain.

  Eisenhower agreed to make a victory tour of major cities in Europe and America. He crafted the itinerary with care. His first stop was the Allied city which had suffered most and in which he had forged the strategy that had carried the Allies to Berlin. He wished to pay his tribute to the city that had been his second home during the war – London.

  As much as London wished to acclaim their new hero and rejoice in his victories, so Eisenhower wished to step aside from the horrors of war, especially those that were being uncovered in Germany, and have a good time. He had done his duty as a soldier.

  The celebrations began on the plane to London. Ike and Kay partnered against Omar Bradley and another aide at bridge. They won a hundred francs and divided the money between them.

  At the airport several cars were lined up to take the party to the Dorchester Hotel and then lunch at Number Ten Downing Street.

  Eisenhower had other ideas. He told Bradley and the rest of the group to go on to London, explaining that he would join them later.

  “Where are you going?” asked Bradley. “The whole of London is waiting for you.”

  “A little trip down memory lane – we’ll see you later.”

  Bradley noted the “we”. He watched them go, both sitting in the back seat of a Packard being driven by a woman chauffeur. He knew exactly where they were going.

  Telegraph Cottage looked a great deal more attractive on a summer’s day than when Eisenhower had last seen his woodland refuge in the dreary autumn of the previous year. The windows had been cleaned, the garden had been well kept and the small lawn had been mowed.

  Before he went in, he walked around to the back to find the vegetable patch had been tended and was bearing runner beans, peas and what looked like marrows. He snapped off a string of beans and gave Kay an enquiring look.

  “I asked them to look after the place,” she said. “I knew you’d want to come back.”

  They walked through the house together, Eisenhower displaying schoolboy excitement as each room and its possessions provoked memories. The decks of cards and score pads were laid out on a sitting table waiting a bridge four; his riding breeches had been cleaned, pressed and were hanging in a bedroom wardrobe; his golf clubs were in their bag in the hall next to polished riding boots.

  The nine months since he had been here might have been nine years. The D-Day landings, the battle for Normandy, the race across France and then the final climactic battles in Germany felt like events that spanned a lifetime.

  The planning for the liberation of Europe had taken place in endless meetings in panelled rooms choked with smoke and loud with argument in London and Washington, but it was here that Eisenhower had brought every problem, every plan, every idea. It was here that he had been able to relax and find release in bridge, evening cocktails and golf, here that he had stumbled on that rare commodity in a commander’s life – moments of personal private joy.

  They walked outside into the small front garden.

  “Goddamnit, I’d like to play that thirteenth hole again,” he said suddenly.

  “Go on, then. No one’s going to stop you.”

  He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her softly, and then again, and again, little kisses that quickened her heart.

  Kay pulled away and looked around. They were screened from the golf course by trees, but anyone could have been walking in the woods that summer’s day. Ike didn’t care.

  They walked out to the golf course, and to the surprise but willing agreement of the morning golfers, Ike was allowed to cut in and play his favourite hole, the 13th.

  It was mid-morning by the time they’d completed their visit to Telegraph Cottage. London and lunch were thirty minutes away and their chauffeur was waiting.

  As they went to the car, Eisenhower called Kay back, took her by the arm and walked with her to the wooden bench in a grassy grove hidden from the house by shrubbery.

  “Come on, let’s sit here for a moment,” he said.

  They had sat there many times before, talking about what he called the real things in anyone’s life: the passing of parents, the first love at college, the death of a friend.

  They sat in silence for a while, listening to the murmur of insects, the distant drone of a plane, an exclamation from the golf course, and feeling the growing warmth of the day. They had had never sat like this before, peacefully. There had never been enough time or freedom from other people. They hadn’t been alone even on those outings to the river pubs she had driven him to on his first visit. Mark Clark had always been there.

  He took her hand and then said something so pleasing yet so ambiguous that she later repeated the words to herself to try and understand what they meant.

  “Do you remember what I said when we talked here on this bench last summer, the day we got Telek back from the kennels?”

  “You said a lot of
things.”

  “I said that we made a great team – remember?”

  “Of course I remember. We had drunk some good wine and we were fooling around.”

  “Well, we’ve got to think about our future.”

  There was a silence. The old cliché was true, she thought – the human heart beats faster at moments like this. Ike stretched back and looked up at spears of sunlight filtering through the tracery of leaves above. She watched him. He looked better since the end of the war; his body was still lean, his face was less jowly and had lost the grey pallor of fatigue.

  She tried to work out what he meant. He had said “our future”. Did that mean he saw them as a couple now the war was over? Or was there something sinister in the suggestion that their lives together had to be considered and weighed in the balance? She wasn’t sure.

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek and whispered, “I love you.”

  He pushed her gently away and said, “That’s not a victory kiss.” Then he held her, hugged her and kissed her without stopping until she broke away for breath and laughed.

  “Come on, they’re waiting for you in London.”

  They said nothing on the drive back, but the chauffeur had noticed her passengers were holding hands. Kay caught the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and smiled at her. This had been her way into his world and now another driver was doing the same.

  Looking at him in the car, she could see the smile on his face and feel the pressure of his hand on hers. Perhaps he really did mean it. Perhaps now, in the glorious freedom from war, they could really find each other.

  One thing was for sure, she told herself. General Dwight Eisenhower was about to make a big decision about the new life that awaited him. If she had caught the true meaning of his words he was thinking of their shared future. Together. A couple, married maybe?

  She would be lying if she pretended she hadn’t thought about marriage. He would leave the army and move to England. The wedding would be somewhere in Mayfair close to the embassy. A grateful British government would give them Telegraph Cottage as a wedding present; they would have a house somewhere in London, maybe Chelsea.

  He would have his pension, but that would not be enough. Suitable directorships would be arranged with big companies in the defence industry. London society would open its heart to the conquering hero and his new English wife.

  Ike could do all this if he wanted to, and she knew he did. Or rather she thought she knew. He had the willpower, the strength of character, to put his previous life behind him. After all, he had put George Patton behind him – he had sacked his old and much admired friend when he’d opened that big mouth of his and talked out of turn yet again. Kay had forgotten what the issue was, but Ike had exploded and stripped Patton of his command.

  Ike was like that. The Eisenhower the world knew was a master of diplomacy, conciliating the warring generals around him, stroking the egos of Churchill, de Gaulle and Roosevelt, and listening carefully to those who served below him. But that had not stopped him having one of his own men shot for looting and rape in the final months of the war. Kay had seen him sign the papers. He had thrown the pen away right across the room afterwards.

  Now he was facing another tough decision. But he would follow through, she was sure of that. Once married, there would be a new world waiting for them both. He would write his memoirs, play golf in Richmond Park. They would give dinner and cocktail parties; they would be the toast of London, General Eisenhower with Kay by his side. There would be honours, too, an honorary knighthood for the Allied victor. She would become Lady Eisenhower.

  As for Mamie ... well, Mamie had had her marriage to this man. And the man had changed; he had fallen in love. Eisenhower would act respectfully and act properly. But he would get divorced, she knew he would. He had said he would never let her go. He had said he wanted time to think about their future. He was a man of his word.

  “Here we are,” said the driver as they drew up to the Dorchester Hotel. She opened the door, giving Kay a conspiratorial smirk as she got out.

  That night Eisenhower was granted the only request he made of the British government by way of a gift in gratitude for the Allied victory. The cabinet had been planning to offer lifetime membership of a famous golf club or a rent-free apartment in central London, but all he asked for was theatre tickets.

  At the Prince of Wales Theatre in London’s West End, Eisenhower settled into the royal box with his party that evening to see a light comedy called Strike a New Note. Theatregoers rose to their feet when they realised who had joined them and shouted “Speech! Speech!” Eisenhower bent over the rail of the box and said loud enough for almost everyone to hear, “It’s good to be back in a country where I can almost speak the language.”

  Photographers clustered around the door to the box. Eisenhower agreed that one cameraman should be allowed to take a quick picture. The next day, to the immense satisfaction of the theatre’s management, the papers carried the photograph of Eisenhower’s first night in post-war London.

  The flash-lit photo showed the Allied commander in the centre of the box, to his left General Omar Bradley and to his right Kay Summersby, with an unidentified elderly woman beside her. On enquiry the photographer was told that this was Kay Summersby’s mother, Mrs MacCarthy-Morrogh, who had been invited to join the party.

  Churchill was surprised to see the photograph in the morning papers. He had met Kay Summersby during his visits to North Africa and several times since when Eisenhower had brought her to dinner at Number Ten with other members of his staff. He liked her and admired her Anglo-Irish heritage.

  The prime minister was even more surprised to learn that on the first night of his visit to post-war London Eisenhower had taken both Summersby and her mother to watch a West End play. It was perhaps understandable in the circumstances to take Miss Summersby along – after all, she remained officially his personal assistant and was also a member of the American armed forces – but inviting her mother as well?

  “Are you sure?” he asked an aide.

  “Yes, prime minister, it was her mother,” was the reply.

  “Well, that’s Ike’s business,” he said, “but it’s going to cause trouble.”

  Churchill’s view was that a man might take his mistress to the theatre in London, but to take her mother as well implied a relationship rather more substantial than that involved in the business-like liaison between a man and his lover.

  The photograph did cause trouble. It was widely reprinted, especially in the American press. All the rumours that had been submerged by the final months of the war resurfaced in fresh innuendo and gossip.

  George Marshall, at his desk in the Pentagon, and Mamie Eisenhower, in her Washington apartment, were both in their separate ways dismayed, but neither uttered a word of reproach. Or rather, Marshall decided to say nothing at the time. The photograph angered him. His advice had not been taken. He would bide his time. Eisenhower was not just a national hero, he was the most famous American in the world; soon he would be coming home to a new life and a new career very different from the one on which he had embarked as a second lieutenant in the infantry. Then Marshall would act.

  The visit to the theatre was Eisenhower’s first public appearance in London since arriving three years earlier, and he intended to make the most of it. After the show, his party drove slowly through crowds of well-wishers to Ciros, a well-known supper and cabaret club where the band struck up “For he’s a jolly good fellow” as they took their table.

  Drinks were served, food was ordered and then couples took to the small dance floor to a slow jazz number. Eisenhower rose, offered his hand to Kay and took her onto the floor.

  For the first time in public she was in his arms, dancing. Other couples on the floor pretended not to notice the celebrity in their midst. Over his shoulder, Kay could see diners slipping menus onto their table for
Eisenhower to sign. He had already signed several for the waiters.

  Normally he would have hated the attention and snapped at the autograph hunters; this was a man who had shunned the luxury of living in one of London’s great hotels, turned his back on the limelight and had never sought to magnify his reputation with press interviews, unlike those showboaters Patton and MacArthur. Now he was basking in the admiration, indeed adulation, of journalists from around the world.

  What’s more, he was dancing, or rather hopping from foot to foot in time with some private rhythm of his own, and doing so quite openly with the woman widely regarded as his lover. Eisenhower didn’t care.

  At their table, the rest of his party finished the first bottle of champagne, ordered a second and seemed to find nothing odd in the attention that their host was paying to Miss Summersby.

  Kay briefly wondered whether there was a journalist in the room who might make something of such a display of affection, but the thought quickly passed. The man she loved had encircled her in his arms while dancing in front of an admiring crowd in one of London’s famous nightspots. Their photograph had been taken together in the theatre. He had insisted that her mother join them for this evening. This was her very own victory celebration and she was going to revel in it.

  Mrs MacCarthy-Morrogh was quieter than most at the table. Like every mother who suspects her daughter of an unsuitable love affair, she was worried. General Eisenhower was married with a grown-up son. He was eighteen years older than Kay and had emerged from the exhausting conduct of a successful war to become an instant hero.

  She had met him several times before, usually for tea with Kay at Telegraph Cottage and once at the Dorchester Hotel. She’d been proved right; he really had wanted to have an old-fashioned English tea with them and relished the break from the embassy.

  Yes, he was charming and polite, and she could see he cared deeply for her daughter. He hardly cared to disguise the fact; at the theatre, where every opera glass in the surrounding boxes was turned on them and not the stage, he had shifted his seat towards hers.