The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Optimism! She stared at the word, dumbfounded. What a ridiculous thing to say! How could she be optimistic about anything when he had allowed them to cut her off in such a brutal way?

  And the postscript—was he trying to tell her that he was too damned sick to pick up a pen and write a proper letter? Or that he was being held captive in a hospital somewhere, his letters scrutinized by an evil-eyed censor determined to let nothing but the most brutal messages get through?

  She laughed bitterly. Yes, that was it. General Marshall had put his war hero to bed and locked the door so he couldn’t get out. Her mother had been right, damn it. He’s theirs, Kathleen, she had said. They’ll never let you have him.

  Clutching at one last fragile hope, she read the paragraphs over again, remembering that Ike was accustomed to working with deceptions—Darlan’s death and Fortitude were just two examples of the dozens of clandestine operations he’d been involved in during the war. Many of his messages to Washington and London had been written in code. Was there some secret meaning encrypted in this one?

  But if there was, she couldn’t decipher it. And even if it meant only what it said, what did it mean? “By reasons over which I have no control.” If the reasons weren’t his, whose were they? Who was in a position to make this man obey? Mamie? General Marshall? President Truman? Who? Who?

  Or perhaps it was something much simpler. Perhaps they—this nameless “they”—offered him something he wanted more than he wanted her. Still, he had already held the most powerful command in the world. What more could they offer him? The Chief of Staff job? No: he didn’t want that. What else could it be? The presidency? Surely they hadn’t offered him that—had they?

  But no matter how many questions she asked of the letter, it refused to answer any of them. Bland and inert, speechless, it lay like a dead thing on the desk in front of her. That evening, back in her room, she folded it into a small square and tucked it into the olivewood box Ike had given her in Jerusalem. In the box, she found the card he had also given her that day.

  There are lots of things I could say, he had written. You know them.

  Yes. He hadn’t had to speak, then: she had known what he meant to say. Now, she had no idea. Now, it was all a terrible mystery.

  Beside her, Telek was wagging his tail eagerly, begging to be taken for a walk. “Let’s,” she agreed. “It’ll be good for both of us.” The November air was chilly, so she buckled his plaid tartan coat around him.

  “Come along, funny little boy,” she said, and they went out on the street, out into the crisp, cold air. Berlin lay ahead of them, and the years.

  There are lots of things I could say. You know them.

  She held the words to her heart. They were truer than the words in his letter, she knew. They were the words she would keep with her always.

  PART FOUR

  America,

  1974–1979

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:

  Past Forgetting

  Southampton, Long Island

  Summer 1974–Winter 1975

  Kay was dying. The cancer had spread to her liver, the doctors told her after the surgery. Only a matter of time now. Weeks, months, half a year. By early 1975, at the latest.

  But she had a story to tell and she was determined to tell it before she died. Each morning when she sat down to work at the desk in her tiny rented cottage just off the beach, she studied the silver-framed photograph of Eisenhower—Ike the soldier, taken before D-Day. The image regarded her with a commanding gaze, as if he had given her an order and was waiting impatiently for her to carry it out. If you’re going to do it, Kay, he was saying, goddamn it, get on with it.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she said to the photo. “You’re not going to like it, anyway.”

  She felt quite sure about that. As a general (and as a bridge player), Eisenhower had always hidden his hand. As a president, he had practiced deception on a global scale—at stratospheric heights, considering the U-2 incident. As a lover, he had never been able to put words to his feelings, especially when he felt deeply. And both of them had gone to considerable lengths to conceal their relationship. Revealing it now, after all this time, felt like stripping naked in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. But she had promised herself that her second memoir would tell the true story, not the story Eisenhower wanted her to tell.

  She had begun writing her first memoir the year after she came to the States. Eisenhower Was My Boss, which was true as far as it went, told the story of their professional relationship. She had worked with a very good ghostwriter with exactly the right kind of military experience, and Colonel McAndrew had approved what they had written. Not Ike himself—Kay was sure he didn’t want to know anything about the process, or about the book, either. “Deniability” was what Butch called it.

  Instead, Colonel McAndrew, a plump, fiftyish bureaucrat with rimless spectacles and an utter lack of humor, had been delegated to manage her and her book. At their first meeting, the colonel had handed her a typed list of the ground rules. “If you want to write this book, you have to agree to this,” he had said firmly. Rule Number One was that she could make no claim whatever to “any personal intimacy, explicit or implied.”

  “We don’t have any problem with your telling what happened,” McAndrew had told her. “Just don’t tell everything that happened.” He had smiled blandly, the light winking off his glasses. “After all, it works both ways. I’m sure you don’t want to tarnish the General’s reputation. Or to suggest that, in any way, you were what the newspapers might call . . .” He coughed delicately. “A loose woman.”

  She didn’t. And she did want to write the book, because—not yet an American citizen—she had left the WACs and needed the money. So she had signed the document the colonel handed her, and she and her ghostwriter—Frank Kearns, a journalist she had met in London when he was part of the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps—had set to work. When the manuscript was finished, Colonel McAndrew only required a dozen small changes. She and Frank had made them, the colonel approved the manuscript, and the publisher rushed the book into print in the fall of 1948, when lots of people seemed to think the General would be running for president. (That didn’t happen until four years later.) Eisenhower Was My Boss had stayed on the bestseller lists for months, was serialized in a magazine and newspapers, and earned enough so that she hadn’t had to worry about money for a while. The hardcover edition had gone into four printings within three months and had sold over a hundred thousand copies. And then there was the paperback, and the British edition. No, money hadn’t been a problem.

  Ike, too, had written a book, Crusade in Europe, which came out the month after hers. Kay wasn’t surprised to see that he had mentioned her just once. Of course—he could hardly have told the truth, could he? And then they both simply went on with their lives. She had moved to New York, worked at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue, married, divorced, and then went back to work, this time as a fashion consultant for CBS Television.

  Ike served two years as Army Chief of Staff, resigned to become (astonishingly, she thought) the president of Columbia University, then (not so surprisingly) the Supreme Commander of NATO. And then, of course, what he must have been aiming for all the time: President of the United States. He had been in his second term when Telek died, and she had written to tell him about it. He didn’t answer. A president was likely too busy to remember a small black dog—and how much the little Scottie had meant to two lonely people.

  After eight years in the White House, the Eisenhowers had retired to a farm at Gettysburg, where Ike raised cows and pigs and chickens. But illness caught up with him. He’d had two heart attacks and a stroke and other illnesses while he was president, and more cardiac problems and other illnesses after he retired. He had seemed to shrink a little with each bout, Kay thought, and every time she saw a newspaper photograph of him, he looked a little older.

  She had cried when he died, but she’d been relieved, too. His wa
r was over at last.

  • • •

  Her own war would be over soon too, the doctors said. But that wasn’t the reason she had decided to write the second book—to change the story, to tell the truth.

  Over the years, she had occasionally heard rumors about a letter to General Marshall that Ike was supposed to have written sometime after V-E Day. She’d first become aware of it in 1952, when Eisenhower was running for president. Somebody had asked her about it then, but all she could say was that she didn’t know anything about a letter, and please go away and stop bothering her. The same thing happened again in 1956, when Ike was running for a second term against Adlai Stevenson. But it wasn’t until after the General’s death that the story made it into print.

  It came from President Truman. In Plain Speaking, a book published in 1973, Truman had told a biographer, Merle Miller, that Ike had written to Marshall, saying that he wanted to divorce Mamie and marry Kay. Marshall had replied that if he “even came close to doing such a thing” he would see to it that the rest of his life was (in Truman’s words) “a living hell.”

  Truman’s story broke in the newspapers in late 1973, when Kay was recovering from the surgery. She was stunned, at first scarcely able to believe it, and then swept by a joy that left her giddy and breathless. Ike had loved her! He had wanted to spend the rest of his life with her! That he had made another choice seemed not to matter, now that so many years had passed. And Truman’s report came at an important moment for her. The doctors told her she had only months to live. There was a mountain of medical bills and no way to pay them—unless she sold the one thing she had to sell: her story.

  The story of her love affair with Ike. The true story, the one that would set the record straight. Finding a publisher wouldn’t be difficult, for as soon as Plain Speaking hit the bookstores, she had begun getting calls. But there was still the matter of that document she had been required to sign when she was writing her first memoir. The true story would violate the terms of her agreement. What would happen then?

  As soon as she got out of the hospital, she took the document to her lawyer. He read it carefully, frowning, then put it down and took off his glasses. “Looks to me like this document covers only the first book,” he said. “I think you’re in the clear for a second book.” Then he had added, tapping his pencil on the desk, “However, that doesn’t mean that the Eisenhower family won’t object.”

  “What happens if they do?” she asked. “Will they sue me?”

  “Forgive me for being blunt, Kay,” he had said softly. “Will it matter to you?”

  She had chuckled at that. In a way, her death sentence set her free. She could tell her story—she could tell the truth—and they couldn’t hurt her. But the truth could hurt someone else.

  “Can I instruct the publisher to hold the book until Mamie dies?” she asked. Mamie—whose “fragile” health Ike had fretted about during the war—was still going strong. She might live for another decade. “There are things in the story . . .”

  “You can try,” the lawyer said. “But it’s been my experience that in a case like this, the publisher—” He broke off. “Who’s your publisher?”

  “Simon and Schuster.”

  “What’s the advance? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “They’re paying me half of twenty-five thousand when I sign the contract, and another twenty-five when I deliver the manuscript.” She frowned. “Of course, the ghostwriter has to be paid out of that. But Bantam is already interested in a paperback edition, so there will be another advance.”

  “Who’s your ghostwriter?”

  “Her name is Sigrid Hedin.”

  “Yes. Well, back to your question about Mamie. Unless you’re around to object, the publisher can do pretty much what he wants to do. The book will no doubt be a hot property, and Simon and Schuster will want to get it out quickly.” He slid her a sympathetic glance. “Do you think you’ll finish it before . . .”

  Before you die, he had wanted to say, Kay thought. “I honestly don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m doing my best, but there are days when I just don’t feel up to it. If I don’t get it done, there’s a clause in the contract that allows the publisher to finish it for me.” She made a face. “Should I be worried about that?”

  “Only if you think the editor will make important changes in the story.” He regarded her curiously. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose he might.” The changes Colonel McAndrew had made in her first book simply made the General look better. But this was much different. Unless the Eisenhower family somehow managed to suppress the whole book—

  “Yes, well.” The lawyer shifted uncomfortably. “There will also be serial rights, dramatic rights.” He looked at her. “Has anybody approached you about movie rights?”

  “No.” Kay was startled. A movie? Would anybody want to make a movie of her book? Wouldn’t it be too—

  “I’m sure that one of the studios will be interested,” the lawyer said. “Have your agent refer them to me. You just concentrate on finishing that book, before . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I will,” Kay said. “Thank you.”

  • • •

  So that’s what she had done, although it hadn’t been easy. She had liked working with Sigrid, but her editor hadn’t been especially pleased with their draft of the first dozen chapters and had brought in another writer, a woman named Barbara Wyden. Barbara had written several books and ghostwritten more. She seemed to know what she was doing, and the editor was comfortable with her.

  Kay had tape recorded parts of the book and written out others. She wanted to make sure that the love scenes—this was a romance, after all—would be handled tastefully, without sensationalizing them. Writing was hard, because while she had told the story once, she hadn’t told the most private and personal parts of it. Because she had never indulged in self-revelation. Because she had been silent for so long, and there were so many memories, and all of them bittersweet.

  Memories of plucky little Telek—she and Ike had loved him as dearly as if he’d been their child. Of evenings at the bridge table and afternoons on horseback, of early-morning breakfasts over coffee and Mickey’s scrambled eggs and bacon. Of eyes meeting in the rearview mirror, of covert smiles, of hands touching at the desk. Of their first attempt at lovemaking on the sofa at Hay’s Lodge, when Ike’s difficulty had been understandable, given the war’s terrible pressures and his problems with Mamie. Of the other times, when they were one and one, as he liked to say. To tell the truth, that was a part of their relationship that gave her great pleasure: knowing that he had desired her and that she had fulfilled his desire when Mamie couldn’t, or wouldn’t. That she had comforted him in the worst of times and given him the strength to go on when the night seemed darkest.

  That was what was important. That was what she wanted her book to show. That Ike had loved her and she had loved him and that they had found delight in one another, and comfort and release, and even joy.

  There are lots of things I could say. You know them.

  Yes, she knew.

  • • •

  Kay kept her tiny apartment on Park Avenue until after Christmas. Then, as the old year ended and the new year began, she went to stay at the little vacation cottage in Southampton, where she could taste the wild salt wind that blew across the beach, reminding her of Inish Beg and Ireland and that long-ago sea voyage on the doomed Strathallan. She worked on her book as much as she was able, but she knew she wouldn’t see the end of it. Barbara’s typescript—about three quarters of the book—lay on the table next to her bed. She was pleased with what they had done, and she had given Barbara a very clear outline of the rest. But something else was troubling her.

  Her editor had gotten a call from a lawyer representing John Eisenhower, whom Kay remembered as the deferential young man who had invited her to his mother’s party and then taken her to New York to see Oklahoma! The lawyer said that the Ei
senhower family had heard about the book. He wanted to get a look at it before it was published.

  “I said no, of course,” the editor had assured her over the telephone. “But I’d love to come out to Southampton for a visit. Are you feeling up to it?”

  The January day was too blustery to go out on the deck, so they sat at a window that looked out over a tiny corner of wild beach. The editor was a handsome, dark-haired man in his early forties, urbane and smartly dressed. As it turned out, he and Kay had something in common. Over tea, he told her that his stepmother had been a driver in London during the war—and that in the blackout she had actually struck the man who became his father with Lady Mountbatten’s car outside Claridge’s.

  Kay had to laugh at that. “The war made the world very small,” she said, remembering the times she had sat at the General’s dinner table with Lord Mountbatten. But she didn’t laugh at the suggestion the editor had come to make.

  “I’ve chatted with the Eisenhowers’ lawyer,” he said. “Of course, I haven’t shared your manuscript with him. From our conversation, however, I have the idea that the family would be a great deal more comfortable if the love scenes in your book were removed—or rewritten.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about this, and I have a suggestion—”