Ike and Kay

by James MacManus

  The driver was an old woman with rheumy eyes that made her look as if she was crying. The woman stank, the car stank, in fact the whole filthy city stank. The stench of death, shit and unwashed bodies pervaded the streets and invaded every building. She hated the place and everybody in it. Soon it wouldn’t matter – she was going to get drunk.

  Within fifteen minutes she was in the bar of the Metropole Hotel. This had once been one of the city’s favourite meeting places, famous for its long marble bar and picture windows overlooking the river Main. Now the windows were boarded up and the marble bar had been replaced by plywood. The hotel was off limits to all Allied staff because, as Kay had been warned, it was a base for hustlers of every stripe, mostly black marketeers trading in US dollars and stolen medical supplies, usually morphine, and pimps trading in human flesh.

  But like the city itself, the Metropole was doing its best to forget the war and get back to business. A scruffy woman on the door was turning away people who seemed to be dressed no better than she was, but waved Kay inside without a glance. She walked into a babble of noise and a low cloud of smoke that hung over tables crowded with drinkers.

  To Kay’s surprise, most people were young and dressed in smart new clothes, mostly leather jackets. This didn’t look like the thieves’ kitchen she’d been warned about, not that she would have cared. She just wanted a drink. The tables were all taken, but she squeezed through the throng and took a seat at the bar. The second surprise were the shelves behind the bar. They contained every type of whisky, gin or vodka, all brand names in new bottles.

  An old woman with the crevassed faced of a drug addict who looked remarkably like the driver who had brought her here nodded wordlessly at her.

  “Scotch – Highland Park please, large one,” Kay said.

  The woman had no difficulty in understanding her English. She swivelled, reached for the bottle, swung round to the bar again, flipped the top off and poured a large measure into a glass which had somehow materialised in this balletic manoeuvre.

  “Wasser?” asked the woman.

  Kay nodded and a carafe of water appeared on the bar. She mixed her drink fifty-fifty and decided not to ask for ice. She told herself she would drink the first in a hurry and take time over the second. She wanted to talk to someone – anyone, really. She wished Charlotte was there and smiled to think of her friend in a place like this. Charlotte would have understood. She would have reminded Kay of her warning and then said, “Get back on your horse, doll. You’re not Humpty Dumpty. We can put you back together again.”

  Kay lit a cigarette and drank deeply. It was very good Scotch, probably stolen from a bonded army warehouse. The peat taste of the Highlands and the kick of grain spirits burnt her throat. Ike would have liked this whisky, she thought. He always said he preferred Scotch to bourbon. What a bastard he had been. Not even a handwritten letter but one typed up by some secretary. Kay wondered who she was. She would have another Scotch and she wouldn’t cry. The bastard wasn’t worth her tears.

  “Can I join you?” said a voice.

  Kay turned to see a woman not much older than her wearing horn-rim spectacles, a smart dark suit and hair tied tightly back in a bun. She recognised her from the office but couldn’t place the name or department.

  “Of course.”

  “It’s Marjorie. From the office.”

  “I thought you had all gone home.”

  “There are a few of us left. Special duties.”

  “Of course. I’m Kay Summersby.”

  “I know who you are, Kay.”

  The woman sat down and nodded to the bartender, who produced a tall glass of vodka, orange and ice without being asked.

  Kay looked at her in surprise. “You know this place?”

  “Sure. I come here sometimes – business.”

  “Business. Here?”

  “Best not to ask, Kay. Cheers.”

  They raised their drinks and Kay remembered that Marjorie was one of a small group of people at the headquarters with vague job titles who worked in a series of rooms that were off limits to all other staff.

  “Drowning your sorrows?” said Marjorie quietly.

  Kay looked at her sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s just say that I work in communications. My job is to know who and what goes in and out of that office and who’s talking to whom.”

  “Why would that mean I am drowning my sorrows?”

  “Because I know you got some bad news today and that you might need a little company tonight.”

  Kay looked at the women properly for the first time. The horn-rimmed spectacles and the suit looked strangely out of place in a black market bar.

  “Just who do you work for?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Have another drink.”

  The woman was right. It didn’t matter. Nothing except the next drink mattered right then. They drank and talked of Marjorie’s family back in Vermont, and how she had got a degree in modern languages from Richmond University in Virginia and angered her family by joining a new government department in Washington. Her father had wanted her to become a lawyer and her mother had wanted her to come home and get married.

  They talked of men, friends and their favourite pets, especially horses, and agreed that the latter were more loyal and loving than the former, and drank some more.

  Kay described her Irish childhood and her arrival in London in 1938 to become a model. She skipped quickly over the early marriage but described life as an ambulance driver in the Blitz, the relief at becoming a government driver and then her role with the American embassy. It was then, through the blur of alcohol, that Kay realised she was telling Marjorie what the woman already knew.

  Marjorie didn’t seem to mind, and nor did Kay. The numbing effect of the whisky and the relief of being able to talk to somebody who was prepared to sit and listen was deeply satisfying.

  They talked of the American commanders around Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and Clark, and how they had fought among themselves, fought the British and finally fought the Germans. They laughed at that joke, and then Marjorie said she had heard they had called Kay Ike’s shadow. That was a surprise. Marjorie seemed to know everything. Then the whole story of the final letter from the Pentagon came tumbling out in long incoherent sentences washed with tears.

  Marjorie put her arm around her, ordered more drinks and whispered kind words of consolation. “Most army men would have said a warmer goodbye to their horse than you got in that letter,” she said, and Kay laughed.

  Finally Kay found herself being unsteadily but gently ushered through the door of her apartment building.

  Marjorie gave her a hug goodbye and said, “We won’t meet again, but good luck. You have a strong heart. You will come through this, but a word of advice – don’t talk to the press. They’ll come for you when this gets out.” Kay nodded, fumbled the key in her front door and stumbled to bed.

  Kay didn’t go into work the following day. She drank copious quantities of water and took aspirin to dull a hangover that had settled in like a rainy day. It was a Friday. The long weekend stretched ahead like a desert that had to be crossed to get to the oasis of Monday morning, not that Monday would bring any relief. The week after that there would be no office to go to. The headquarters was being closed.

  Only Telek made any sense now, and he kept her sane. She decided that she and Telek would take long walks through the ruined city. They would snuggle up together in the evenings and she would read aloud to him from her book, a detective story by Agatha Christie. Together they would kill the weekend.

  Ike had adored that dog, probably more than her, and he would want to see him again. Well, he would. But she would be there too. She would see him again. She deserved an explanation. She wanted at least a conversation and an answer to the question: Why did you promise me so much? I wasn’t drea
ming, was I? I have citizenship and a stripe on my American army uniform to prove you loved me, haven’t I? That proves I didn’t make it all up, doesn’t it?

  21

  December 1945

  Within days of receiving Eisenhower’s letter, Kay was assigned to a new job working at the visitors’ centre for American VIPs in Berlin. There was no consultation: she was in the American army and under army orders. She was promoted to captain and found herself working for a pleasant middle-aged man called General Lucius Clay.

  The general greeted Kay when she reported for duty with a remark that he obviously thought would please her: General Eisenhower had personally recommended her in a note that said she was very good with people. He announced this as if conferring a great compliment on his new member of staff. He was puzzled by the look he got in return.

  The remark stung Kay, but not as much as the fact that she had been side-lined to a junior hospitality role as far from Washington as it was possible to arrange. She had just spent three years witnessing great decisions taken by men who were making history, men who treated her as a friend and ally: Roosevelt, Churchill, Patton, Bradley, Clark and Eisenhower. These men were giants. She had served them well and loved one with abandon.

  Now, at the age of thirty-seven and a captain in the US Army, she was required to meet and greet every Congressman, Senator and other supposedly important person from every walk of American life who wanted their photograph taken in the ruins of Berlin.

  These men thrust their cameras at Kay, wanting their pictures taken amid the rubble of what had once been the Adlon Hotel against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate. What they really wanted was a tour of Hitler’s bunker, but that lay in the Russian sector of a city now divided between the occupying powers.

  Kay numbly accepted her role. She watched the months pass in a state of narcosis as handshakes, dinners, drinks parties, photographs and potted history talks merged into a seamless garment with which she clothed herself against the bleak reality of betrayal.

  Telek, although barred from her office, was at her side every evening when she returned to her apartment and would bounce along beside her when she went riding at weekends. Apart from him, she was always alone. She saw nobody and turned down offers from the visiting dignitaries of dinner, drinks or sometimes just a walk among the ruins.

  Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she went over and over in her head what had happened. She knew why he had done it – for his career, for the power and glory that awaited. There was a brutal logic to such ambition that was at least understandable. But it was how he had done it, how he had behaved towards her that was so wounding. Why had a man who had loved her once consigned her to this lonely exile in the rubble of Berlin? Why had she believed him?

  There was no answer to that question unless it was to be found in the sad story that Berlin would tell those who walked through its ruins. She did this every day, sometimes wandering through the bomb-cratered Tiergarten Park, hearing the burnt and shattered trees whisper their regrets.

  The most famous zoo in Europe, beautiful buildings housing great offices of state, the opera house and art galleries had all crumbled under the bombs. Yet people in this city and across the country had believed only a few years ago that they were being presented with a golden future. They had had no reason beyond irrational optimism to believe the mad National Socialist party mythology and the demonic dreams woven by barbarians.

  Perhaps she had she been just as blinded by hope as had the people of this blighted country. Once again she wished Charlotte could be there with her. The dirty jokes, the indiscretions about the latest lover and the morning cocktails would cheer her up, but travel to Berlin was impossible. In any case her friend would find little of interest in the ruins of the Third Reich; except men, of course.

  Charlotte would find a man anywhere. And what would Charlotte have advised her to do? Kay could hear her voice: “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, doll. Find a man, give him a good time. It’s always the best revenge.”

  Charlotte moved through life like one of those characters in the cheap romance stories that filled women’s magazines. Aching hearts and throbbing loins, or was it the other way round, led to romps in four-poster beds, love, marriage, betrayal and revenge.

  Kay didn’t want revenge; what was the point? She had just been a bubble in his glass of champagne. She had stupidly allowed herself to dream of – believe in – a future that was never going to happen. A moment of caution would have told her that. The bubble had burst.

  “Stop being so bloody miserable, doll – so intro ... intro ...”

  It was Charlotte again, a voice in her head that would not go away.

  “Introspective?”

  “Exactly. Self-pity is so, well, selfish. You’re better than that. Look around you – people are starving, they’ve lost everything. So stop feeling sorry for yourself. Live a little.”

  He looked as if he was in his mid-forties and was wearing the uniform of an army major when she saw him at breakfast, forking scrambled eggs into his mouth. She had gone, as she did twice a week, to the same heavily guarded hotel to meet the visitors she was guiding around the city. That hotel and a few bars were the only places in the city where foreign visitors could meet.

  She liked the look of him. Major Charles E. Burrows. His teeth were white, his uniform smartly tailored. It wasn’t difficult to catch his eye on the tour that morning. He asked the most interesting questions. He didn’t want to know where Hitler’s bunker was or whether it was true that Goebbels had poisoned his wife Magda and four children before taking cyanide. He wanted to know what was being done for the women of the city, how to get them food, clean water and blankets.

  “Why just women?” she had asked.

  “Because if you hand out supplies to the men, they’ll sell the stuff on the black market. The women will get this city back on its feet if you give them a chance.”

  “You mean give them all the food and fuel?”

  “Why not? They’ve got children to feed. It’s happened throughout history. Did you know that women rebuilt Rome after the barbarians sacked it back in the sixth century?”

  “No,” she said, and laughed because he was being serious. Of course she didn’t know what had happened in ancient Rome after the barbarians left.

  At the end of the tour that evening he said in the straightforward American way, “You look like you could do with a drink. I know a place. The food’s not much but the wine is good. There’s music too.”

  She liked him immediately. No sidelong glances, mumbled compliments and vague enquiries as to whether she might be free. That was the English way. This was different.

  Kay had made a point of turning down all such offers. They usually only meant one thing, and she didn’t have the energy to slap down wandering hands. But Burrows was definitely different from the rest. She was also curious to see where he might take her in a city whose few restaurants served only tinned meat of dubious origin and ersatz coffee.

  They walked in silence for fifteen minutes, following the beam of his powerful torch through deserted streets until they arrived at an old three-storey schoolhouse in the Charlottenburg suburb. The building had been badly damaged, but the school crest and Latin motto hung over a makeshift front door of barbed wire and wooden slats. Inside, a dark passage lit by candles on the floor led into a large room which must once have been the assembly hall.

  She looked around in wonder – it was as if she’d walked into a witches’ grotto. Candles provided the only light. On one side, what looked like white bed sheets had been laid over a row of packing cases to make them into a bar. There were bottles and glasses on top. The brick walls glistened with damp. An assortment of bedclothes had been hung over the windows.

  Several people were eating at a dozen tables crudely fashioned from old school desks at the end of the room The straight-backed chairs had
lost their varnish to generations of school children. In the centre there was a small circular wooden dance floor, and next to it, on a low table, stood a wind-up gramophone.

  At the far end of the bar, where charcoal fires burnt beneath mesh grills, two women were tending pots, stirring the contents with long wooden spoons. They presented ghostly figures in the low light, wearing dresses made of what looked like stitched sacking. They only needed pointed hats to complete the effect of the entire room.

  “What is this place?” she whispered.

  Burrows nodded towards the women.

  “They’re Polish. They used to work in the kitchens of the Adlon Hotel. Slave labour,” he said. “When the hotel was bombed right at the end, they escaped, taking everything they could lay their hands on – bedding, food, kitchen stuff, including much of the wine cellar, and even that dance floor.”

  They were seated without a word by one of the women at a table on which were carved childish initials. There was no menu and without being asked they were served pasta with tinned tomatoes on fine china plates that carried the monogram AH entwined in gold letters.

  He had brought with him a bottle of red wine whose label showed an impressive turreted French chateau. “You know what they say?” he said. “The grander the chateau on the label, the lousier the wine in the bottle.”

  He didn’t ask the usual questions about her background and upbringing, nor did he tell her anything more about himself than that he was part of a delegation that would report to a Senate committee in Washington.

  That was the unspoken pact between them. They were going to remain strangers. Kay was relieved. He didn’t want to know more about her than the little she was prepared to say, and he, in turn, had no desire to spill out his life story to her. He talked instead of the authors he liked, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, both American writers who had fallen in love with Europe, he said – James with London, Hemingway with Paris.