“Do you think I should write London?” Arthur asked. “I was going down
to Bolling Field tomorrow, but if you think I’d do better writing that
party----” When he gets loud, nasal, and starts drinking, he’s thinking
of Janice. When he’s evil to Lucy, he’s taking it out on her because
of Jan. When he shouts down Little Shots, he’s trying to build up his
ego in order to square accounts with Janice. He wants her to know what
she gave up and regret it, Larry decided.
Maybe he shouldn’t have shown Arthur the letter from Jan. But it was
hard to know the best thing to do. Bemrose had read it and handed it
back without any special reaction. He seemed calm enough then. It took
three Martinis and Lucy----
She shoved aside her half-filled glass and sneaked a look at her lap
where a lavish new diamond watch, undoubtedly a present from Bemrose,
shone on her wrist. It was all right for him to give it to her, but
apparently not all right for her to look at it.
“I’ll have to run along.” Larry waved for the check. “I promised the
boys to stop in at the clubhouse on my way uptown, and Bess expects me
home tonight for dinner.”
He patted the top of Lucy’s hand. “Bess is like your Aunt,” he
explained. “She likes to sit down and eat right on time.”
_Chapter 10_
A month later Marge Daugherty, Lucy’s aunt, phoned and invited Larry to
dinner, saying that she had always wanted him to come up, ever since
he had been so nice about helping Lucy with her case, and that she and
Ed didn’t see nearly enough of Lucy and Arthur’s friends. She made it
sound casual. It was going to be just the family. They’d put on an
extra plate for him, as easy as that.
Larry accepted, and joined them in a round of drinks when he arrived.
Arthur complained about the old-fashioned Ed had mixed. “Still loading
them with sugar.” He held his squat glass up to the light. “Damned
stuff won’t even dissolve. It’s one way to kill good rye.”
“Is it too sweet again?” Marge reached for his glass. “I’ll fix you
another.” She glanced at Ed accusingly on her way to the kitchen. “Just
because _you_ like them sweet doesn’t mean other people want to get
diabetes.”
“I only put in half the usual,” Ed muttered.
Marge picked up a fresh glass, and spooning a tip of sugar from the
bowl, sprinkled a few crystals on top of an orange slice while Lucy
called to her, “Not _any_ in Arthur’s.”
Bemrose let them wrangle. It was obviously satisfactory to him if they
fussed over his cocktail. He sprawled in the armchair, and thanked
Marge curtly when she handed him the glass, not bothering to mention
the drink she had thrown away on his account.
They sat down to dinner at a table in a corner of the living room, and
Marge apologized for the simple meal, assuring Larry that they were
treating him just like home folks.
Ed took his place at the head of the table, although it bothered
Bemrose to sit alongside. He made a to-do about straddling the table
leg, and Larry understood for the first time why protocol was important
at state dinners. A man’s place at the head of the table gave him
authority, as though his opinions mattered. Ed’s seemed to need
bolstering, at least when Bemrose was around.
They might not have started on the War as quickly if Marge had been
there to appease them with small talk, but after the first course, she
left the room to bring in the roast. Lucy wanted to help her, but Marge
urged her to stay put, probably to keep Arthur and Ed from ruining each
other’s digestions.
At that point Larry guessed why he had been invited. Marge probably
hoped he would ease what must be the growing tension of these family
dinners. She and Lucy together couldn’t manage Bemrose and were
counting on Larry to give them a hand, or at least to show them how it
was done. Larry noticed that Lucy stopped eating whenever Ed began to
talk.
He was discussing the recent Nazi drive into Russia, commanded by von
Bock. Already the Germans had closed in on Leningrad, although the
Russian war was scarcely a hundred days old. The Nazis had about two
million men and five thousand tanks in the field. “The paper tonight
says they’re pretty close to Moscow,” Ed observed. “I wonder if the
Russians can hold out.”
Bemrose shook his head gravely. “I hope to God they can. It’s going to
take at least until spring for our stuff to get through.”
Ed meticulously buttered a roll. “We voted them some more Lend-Lease
the other day. That should hold them. About five million dollars worth,
wasn’t it?” he asked sharply.
“Right now it looks like another Dunkirk.”
“The Church would just as soon see them go down,” Ed remarked.
“I wouldn’t be dogmatic about it,” Bemrose pointed out. “Judge Murphy
made a statement in Washington, backing up the President on Russia, and
he’s a prominent Catholic.”
“You’ve got the whole Lindbergh crowd on the other side, too,” Ed
reminded him. “Lindbergh, Wheeler, General Wood. Did you hear that
broadcast from Rome? It said that Lindbergh had better do the talking
over here instead of Roosevelt----”
Bemrose hacked viciously at the lamb bone on his plate.
Lucy put her hand on his sleeve, warning him.
“I’m still in favor of sitting tight and not going in until we have
to,” Ed declared. “Once we do get in, we ought to be smart and pull out
fast. This time we don’t want to feed a bunch of starving Europeans
when the war is over.”
“Which would you rather see us do?” Bemrose asked bitterly. “Stay over
there and keep order until they get on their feet, or maintain the
biggest army in the world from now on? We’ll have to do one or the
other.”
“Let the English take care of them. Or Russia. When we finish up, we
ought to pull out,” Ed insisted.
Marge giggled nervously. “We aren’t even in the War, and they’re
deciding what we should do when it’s over.”
Larry pointed to the lamb on his plate. “Like butter. And tell Bessie
someday how you get the au gratin potatoes brown on top----”
“I don’t know what the hell we’re waiting for.” Bemrose’s voice was
squeezed and harsh. “Waiting for the British to go under, I guess,
so we’ll have to lick Hitler by ourselves.” He sipped his water, had
trouble swallowing, and choked.
Lucy thumped his back, but he twisted away from her and bumped his knee
against the table leg.
“Have you heard anything from the Army about your commission?” Marge
asked him.
Lucy shook her head at Marge, and Arthur continued to cough into his
napkin.
“Maybe the Army isn’t sure we’re going to get in it and isn’t handing
out anything,” Ed remarked.
“They know what they can do with their commission,” Bemrose said. “I’m
going to give them two more weeks. If nothing comes through, I’ll close
the office and enlist.”
He will, too, Larry reflected. While a lot of fellows were figuring how
they could stay out, Bemrose was going to give up a practice it had
taken him almost twenty years to build. Without a second thought he
would lock the office, close his house, and get into it. As a private,
if they wouldn’t have him any other way. Sure, Larry knew plenty of
men who were willing to go--his nephew, Bill, a farmer out in Iowa,
Joe Clarke, a college friend who owned timber near Seattle, Eddie
Goldbert, the kid who waited on Bessie at the vegetable store in the
middle of the block, Larry’s own younger brother, Dave, a physician for
the Central Chicle Company. A lot of kids just out of school couldn’t
wait to get in, but he wondered how many older men past forty were
willing to chuck their professions, men who could ask for safe jobs in
Washington, who had access to the White House and held I.O.U.s from
the party that was in, as Bemrose did. He might be an idealist, but he
deserved credit for acting on his convictions.
How many in the country besides the President himself had the foresight
to see what the defeat of Russia or of England might mean? If Bemrose
and Janice hadn’t been around and kept pointing it out to him, Larry
wondered whether he’d be hep yet, or like Ed, hoping for the best,
counting on our luck to get by and let other countries do our fighting.
Bemrose was a complex, mixed-up guy. But for all his queer kind of
snobbishness and his tactics to indebt those who were powerful and
entrenched, for all his drive to reach the top of his profession, to
handle the biggest and toughest cases and win them, to be kingpin at
home and to keep reminding Lucy of it, Bemrose had a deep-dyed honesty.
He was willing to face up to the big questions and to act. He thought
the country should be in there fighting this War, and was eager to
fight. Personally. Larry might not agree with him, but he admired
Bemrose’s guts.
He couldn’t help but respect a man who put what he believed ahead
of what was easy and comfortable, and who was willing to trade in
the working investment of a lifetime for a chance to stick by his
convictions. Larry could forget his flare-ups of temper, and be damned
glad Bemrose was his friend. This crowd here--Larry looked around the
table--they could feel good about being related to him.
Lucy mixed small pieces of her lamb with her potatoes, as if by
disguising them she would do away with the act of swallowing. She
fingered her bread into doughy balls and scattered them on her butter
plate. The scratched look came back to her eyes, as though someone
had carelessly drawn a fingernail across the eyeball. “You tell him,
Larry,” she urged. “Tell him there’s plenty of time after we get in--”
Her voice shook quietly.
“You ought to think of Lucy,” Marge said. “It isn’t going to be easy
for her. Not even if you wait. She’s still a bride----”
“She can get used to being an adult,” he said. “I’d hate to think of
myself bringing the bride her breakfast in bed while England and Russia
went under. How do you take your breakfast coffee? One sugar or two?”
“Oh, lay off,” Ed said.
Marge stopped to soothe Lucy’s shoulder on her way to the kitchen.
During dessert Larry complimented Marge extravagantly on her plum cake.
She puffed up with the flattery. “Do you really like it, Larry?” She
giggled and touched his hand suggestively. “You don’t mind if I call
you Larry? You’re like one of the family.”
“I never mind what a beautiful woman does,” Larry said, figuring
there was no harm in flattering her. If Bemrose would only sweeten
her with a compliment now and then-- He knew how, and could make it
sound convincing. The difference between them was that Arthur had to
_like_ someone to make an effort. It almost caused him physical pain
to pretend with people he didn’t care for. Handing out flattery didn’t
make Larry feel like a hypocrite. With Larry it rolled out, and when
someone grabbed the hook, he felt nothing but pleasure.
“Have you heard the one about the two cloak-and-suiters who met on
Sixth Avenue----”
Bemrose frowned, but Larry went on with the story. Marge laughed so
hard that the tears came. Her giggle turned into a shrill cackle. Ed
grinned behind the thick spectacles with high school shame at enjoying
a dirty story. Lucy’s sad smile seemed to be fulfilling an obligation.
“You never told us he could--” Marge pointed at him and continued to
laugh helplessly.
“Where did you pick up the accent?” Ed asked. “You sure have it down
pat. Did you ever hear Lou Holtz tell them back in the old days at the
Palace?”
But Bemrose didn’t smile.
“Sorry to put you through it again.” Larry turned toward him. “He’s
heard me tell that story twenty or thirty times.”
Marge insisted on doing the dishes alone. After Arthur and Ed had
pushed the dining table against the wall, they settled down in what
became the living room. Larry expected Ed to produce his shoe wax
and begin polishing the furniture, noticing him glance uneasily at
the wooden leg of a chair to make sure it hadn’t been kicked. But Ed
quietly fussed with his pipe. He reamed and refilled the bowl, cleaned
the stem, replaced an empty match box with a fresh one, and settled
back to a smoke.
“Pick up any liquor last week?” he asked Larry. A federal excise had
been placed on liquor October first, and buyers had battled in the
stores to lay in a tax-free supply. “I managed to get hold of a case of
Bourbon.”
Larry shrugged. “I always let Bessie do the buying for the house. She
said something about putting in a few bottles of Scotch. We don’t use
much of the stuff----”
Lucy, who hadn’t spoken since Bemrose’s outburst at dinner, timidly
said, “Arthur’s dealer on Madison Avenue saved us a case----”
Slouched in his chair and miles away, Bemrose suddenly sat up straight.
“Why didn’t you tell me so before?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“You might have thought of it,” he said. “It might have occurred to you
that I don’t believe in beating the government out of taxes. If we have
to levy taxes on liquor to pay for the War, and we consume liquor, then
I want to pay the taxes on what we consume.”
Larry had heard him sound like that in court.
“Furthermore, I don’t want Mr. Valencia on Madison Avenue telling the
neighborhood that Arthur H. Bemrose laid in enough Scotch to last him a
year. It doesn’t sound good, not even if _Mrs._ Bemrose----”
Lucy raised her hand, then let her wrist drop on the arm of the chair.
“It’s only a case, dear. It won’t last more than----”
His ears were stiff and red. “I suppose you told Mr. Valencia that we
use a case a _week_.”
“Let her alone,” Ed interrupted. “Everyone was putting in stuff last
week. The liquor stores were jammed. She only thought----”
“She doesn’t. That’s the trouble. I wish once in a while you’d _ask_
me----”
“You were in Washington.”
“You mean for a whole day I was in Washington.”
Larry closed his fingers sharply against his palm. “Arthur!”
Bemrose walked to the radio and looked at his watch as he fiddled
with the dial. He skimmed through a quiz program where the master of
ceremonies was saying, “Two ‘p’s’ and an ‘i.’ That’s _right_, Mrs.
Anderson, that is the way you spell Mississippi, and just for that you
get four clean, crisp dollar bills, count ’em, one-two-three-_four_.”
Some swing music faded in and out. The dial picked up the last sentence
of a shoe commercial promising that now _he_ can be taller than _she_
is, and finally the solid, academic voice of the _New York Times_
brought the nine o’clock news. Bemrose, visibly relieved, sat down to
hear the headline summary.
Larry turned to Ed. “How about a hand of gin rummy?”
“Never played it,” Ed replied. “I’ll play you regular rummy.”
“You don’t have to be Einstein to learn. I can teach you in ten
minutes.” He turned to Lucy and to Arthur. “Want to make it
four-handed?”
But before they had a chance to answer, Ed cut in. “Arthur doesn’t play
cards.”
Quizzically Larry looked at him. Why? Why didn’t he want to play cards
with Ed instead of discussing the War? One of the reasons a man played
cards was to while away hours that might seem interminable because he
had to spend them with people he couldn’t talk to.
Bemrose flushed. “I haven’t seen tonight’s paper,” he said. “You two
go ahead and play.” He went to the hall and brought back a copy of the
_New York Post_. “I want to see if the Supreme Court decided anything
in that anti-trust case----”
Larry motioned Lucy to watch the game, but Marge had finished the
dishes and brought over a tapestry footstool cover for Lucy to work on
with her. Ed clicked off the radio announcements of a sale on sunfast
cotton pinafores, and except for a sudden intermittent giggle from
Marge, the room settled down to an uneasy silence.
Larry saw that Bemrose was clutching the edge of the paper in his fist
and sinking his teeth into the newsprint like a starved man reading
a free-restaurant ad. His brow was pulled together, and his hair and
mustache defied combing.
Larry expected the quiet to explode, but in a half hour nothing
happened except that Ed had mastered gin rummy scoring, and Lucy and
Marge had filled a corner of their tapestry cloth with even stitches of
dark green wool. Larry began to draw an unrationed breath at last.
The phone rang and Marge jumped up to answer it at a table in the hall.
Disappointed, she called from the doorway, “It’s for you, Larry.”
Maybe she thought nostalgically of when Lucy was single and had
young men ringing her up. Larry moved toward the phone, sensing the
instrument was dangerous and might explode some of the dynamite that
was lying around the room. He hesitated before he lifted the receiver.
Bessie’s happy, excited voice came through.
“Can you get away from there? Miss Baldwin, you know--Janice Baldwin,
that friend of yours--is in town on her way to Hollywood. They’re
making a picture of her book, Larry. She told me all about it. She
sounds awfully nice.” Bessie chattered on. “She has to see you before
she leaves town tomorrow. She wants you to call her right away.”
Larry jotted down the exchange and number as Bessie slowly repeated it.
“I hope you can get away. Be sure to ask her who’s going to play the
lead in the picture. I forgot.”
Icy sweat dotted Larry’s forehead. There was no use trying to fake a
call to Janice with Bemrose sitting a few feet away. He walked over to
him. “That was Bess,” he explained. “Jan Baldwin is back and wants to
see me tonight. She’s on her way through to the Coast.”
Bemrose went on reading his paper.
“I’m going to give her a ring. Anything you’d like me to tell her?”
Bemrose shook his head. While Larry was phoning, he walked past him to
Marge and Ed’s bedroom.
Five minutes later Larry found him slumped on the edge of Marge’s bed,
the pink cotton bedspread wrinkled under him, his loose vest bulging.
“She sounded okay,” Larry said.
Bemrose nodded.
“I promised her I’d run over for a few minutes. Do you want me to ask
her for you about Lend-Lease?”
Bemrose shook his head.
“You sure you don’t want me to give her a message?”
“What is there to say?”
“She’ll ask about you.” Larry rubbed his palm against the green metal
footboard of Marge’s bed, figuring that maybe Bemrose should be seeing
her instead.
“You know about me. Tell her,” Bemrose said.
“I’ll have to say goodbye to Lucy and the folks.” Larry hated to leave
him in the dim bedroom, lighted only by a pink-fringed table lamp.
“Go ahead and say goodbye. I want to stay here.” Arthur’s mouth was set.
While Larry thanked Marge for the dinner, Ed brought his polishing wax
and cloth into the hall, examining the fingermarks Larry had left on
the telephone.
At the doorway Larry stood close to Lucy and searched her face. It was
clean as a rain-emptied sky, scrubbed of emotion. He felt sorry, damned
sorry, for her.
_Chapter 11_
The next day in a taxi on the way to Bemrose’s office, Larry warned
Janice not to provoke any arguments.
She withdrew to her corner of the cab and tossed a burned-out match on
the rubber mat, taking jerky puffs at her cigarette. The wide rouged
mouth made a nice contrast with the gray Persian of her coat and with
her Cossack-style fur turban. Janice’s long, straight hair, brushed
close to her cheek, looked darker next to the gray fur.
“What’s worrying him?” she asked. “If he’s going to upset easy, maybe
we’d better not----”
“Supposing Shore _is_ mixed up in this. That would be something for him
to worry about.”
“I don’t see why. What if he is?” she asked perversely, twisting the
end of her cigarette on the metal snuffer of an ash tray.
“Anything about Shore is Arthur’s business. I thought you agreed last
night----”
“You didn’t say he was going to be difficult,” she objected. “What’s
the matter with him?”
Larry began to regret that he had suggested the meeting. Aside from
Shore’s possible involvement in a suspicious deal that Janice had
turned up during her trip--he really did think Bemrose should know that
Janice planned to incriminate Shore--Larry had figured it might do him
good to see her once and get it out of his system.
“The same old thing is eating him. The War,” Larry said.
“I thought surely he’d be in uniform by now.” Janice fumbled in her
pouch-shaped handbag through a snarl of cigarettes, compact, lipstick,
gloves, notebooks, memos, letters and handkerchiefs, and brought out
a white card with scribbling on it. “Here, you better hang on to my
notes. I went back to the stateroom and jotted down what Richter said.
This is the dope.”
Larry slipped the card into his wallet. “He’s been breaking his neck to
get a commission, but no luck so far. He’s going to enlist soon if they
won’t take him. He says that he’s fed up hanging around.”
“It’s ridiculous for him to think of enlisting. Anyone with his
connections in Washington.”
“I don’t think he has any connections in the Army, but you’d imagine
if Tom Newton spoke to someone in the War Department-- Hell, I thought
this was what he was saving up for. All the favors he’s done Newton for
years----”
“I know a few spots where the State Department could use him if the
Army won’t take him,” Janice said. “They’re screaming for trained
people at the Embassy in London.” She turned her foot and studied the
platform sole of her shoe which made her taller by an inch or so.
“You probably could fix it for him,” Larry said.
“Maybe I could, but it’s like calling the boy scouts when the Empire
State building’s on fire. He knows more people who can help him than I
do. He ought to be able to produce action faster than I could.”
Larry kicked the small seat in front of him and it fell forward with
a thump. “I don’t think he likes to ask. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t
said a word to Newton.”
“He’d better stop fooling around. If he doesn’t watch out, they’ll
_take_ him as a private.”
“Sure they’ll take him.”
“Maybe he’ll feel more patriotic, being a private.”
“You don’t know many fellows his age who are willing to give up what
he’d be giving up,” Larry asked.
She looked at him incredulously, and he knew what she meant. The
millions of poor devils over there. Not only willing but already
sacrificing more than a job.
“All right, who?” Larry asked. “I mean here. Not in England, and not
the Poles or the Czechs. I said someone who wasn’t forced to go but who
_wanted_ to----”
“Don’t make him sound so damned noble.”
“All right, but you’re lucky just the same that he’s willing to see
you.”
“Why?”
“You walked out. After you promised me to hang around,” Larry reminded
her. “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he refused to see you.”
“I went away because he seemed to need time to think it over. I was
only giving him a chance to find out what was in his own heart, what he
really felt like doing about us,” Janice argued.
“What were you supposed to be doing while he was thinking it over?”
Larry asked.
“Finding out whether I was in love with him.”
“Are you?”
“There was a man in Sweden. He thought so,” Janice said. “After a few
weeks he decided I wasn’t even a _prospect_ for love. He seemed quite
disturbed by it.” Her profile was quiet, and the smoothly arched nose
remained rigid.
“That fellow in Sweden ought to get together with Arthur’s wife
someday.”
After a minute Larry asked, “Why don’t you talk to him about taking a
job in London? He needs to get away.”
“What about his wife? What would she do if he walked out? He can’t just
walk out because the going is tough.”
“Jan, let me go to see him and tell him what’s on your mind about
Shore,” Larry offered. “He’s been through hell. If you turn up and make
cracks about his marriage----”
“What’s the matter with his marriage? Can’t his wife keep him from
being upset?”
“He won’t let anyone help him,” Larry reminded her. “He hasn’t changed.”
“He lets you.”
“He talks himself out at me because I don’t see his friends, and I
don’t run into his clients,” Larry said. “I’m outside of his life, and
when he talks to me, it’s like telling it to this.” He thumped the
leather seat between them.
The taxi pulled up a few feet west of Forty Wall Street. Larry shoved
even change and a quarter tip into the driver’s hand. “I’m not asking
for miracles,” he told her. “Only go easy on him. Remember, he’s not in
good shape.”
“I don’t believe it.” Her grin had the glitter of winter sunshine.
“He’ll never be in bad shape while he has you for a friend.”
It took Janice only a few minutes to tell Bemrose about Richter. She
hurried her story as if she were anxious to have it over and get away.
Larry could see that the meeting had turned out to be an ordeal for
Janice, too. He could tell by the vertical blue vein which stood out on
her forehead, emphatically dividing it.
Outwardly Bemrose was controlled, a little quiet and reserved toward
her, but calm. Buttressed by his massive desk, he listened impersonally.