smart-aleck kid had pushed him off a diving board into the lake. With
the sudden impact, his eardrum had burst. Larry had mulled over the
incident gratefully since Pearl Harbor. No Army doctor would pass him
with a defect like that. It was a helluva thing to be happy about, a
helluva thing when your best friend had been beating down doors to
get in, but when he thought of Bessie, it seemed all right to put a
reassuring finger in his left eardrum. If the world was going to blow
up anyway, he wanted to spend the little time left with Bessie. Call
him a heel. If there weren’t going to be Bess or Larry for much longer,
he wanted to live the little time left by twos.
Bemrose, he knew, had to put his weight somewhere, make time count, get
in on the big thing, perform like a big shot. Be one. And there was
nothing phoney about his compulsion to get in. He might dread going
home from the office at night and think his marriage was a mistake.
He might be sick of his practice and angry at himself for passing up
Janice, but he wouldn’t use the War as a cheap excuse to walk out. Some
fellows might look for bargain ways to be a hero, and exit on a string
of situations that had them tied in knots, but the description didn’t
fit Bemrose.
Some other fellows might join up _from the wrong side of the heart_,
but not Arthur H. The War counted with him, counted more than his
personal life. His decision was clear-headed and unselfish. No
ax-grinder, Bemrose. Axis-grinder. That was bad. Larry wrinkled his
nose. Awful.
The bar was crowded; so they sat at a small, unsteady table and ordered
double Martinis served in highball glasses. Larry raised his glass.
“Now Hitler can start peeing in his pants!”
“How about you coming in?” Bemrose asked. “Maybe when I learn the
ropes, I can find out about lining up a commission for you.”
So it was going to be a nice friendly war, like a club, with enough
friends around to have a poker game on Saturday nights. A war where
a fellow who had the rank pulled in his friends and made them second
lieutenants. Not for Larry, not even to be a first lieutenant. He had
finished the boy-meets-boy stuff at Columbia. He’d have to let the
Bemroses fight the Supermen.
“I’ll take my chances on the draft board.” Larry’s finger automatically
went to the left ear.
“If they’re going to get you anyway, you might as well be paid for it,”
Arthur said.
“I’ll talk it over with Bessie. I think she’d rather have me take my
chances on the draft board. I’d better stick around and take care of
the women.”
“I wish you’d look up Lucy once in a while,” Bemrose said. “It’s going
to be rough on her----”
Larry described a wide arc with his free hand. “I’ll take her out and
get her drunk. How about another?”
The waiter saw them and brought refills.
“Janice had something when she said you’d be wearing eagles,” Larry
said confidently.
“Not so fast. That isn’t how it works. They handed me this rank for
being a specialist, but they won’t keep on promoting me. Not unless I’m
in combat.” Arthur fastidiously wiped the rim of his glass with a paper
napkin.
The eagles were already pinned on, Larry knew. What Bemrose meant was
that it would take him a while, say about a month, to figure out how a
man his age could wangle combat duty.
“What the hell are you guys celebrating?” The voice belonged to Tom
Flannagan whom Larry hadn’t seen since law school.
Larry smiled up affectionately at Tom. “He just made Major.”
“No kiddin’!” Tom flung his blue serge bulk into an empty chair and
pushed a forelock out of his eye. “What branch?”
“What do you think?” Larry asked, maneuvering his hand like an airplane.
“I’ll be glad if they take me as an ensign,” Tom said. “I had my
physical and ought to be hearing.” He gulped a Bourbon and reached for
the chaser. “Well, give ’em hell! Give those Heinies--” Tom turned to
Larry. “The Air Force knows how to pick ’em.” He slapped the table.
“Had more on the ball than any guy at law school. Give ’em hell, Major.”
Larry warmed toward Flannagan, as he had years ago at
Columbia--soft-talking, blue-eyed Flannagan, all dumb cluck enthusiasm.
It felt good to celebrate with a guy like Tom. He ordered another round
of drinks.
“Where can I get in touch with you--in case this Navy deal falls
through?” Flannagan asked Arthur with a sudden shrewd naïveté. “I may
want to ask you to fix me up with a commission.”
“Haven’t you a bunch of kids?” Larry asked.
Flannagan held up his hand and spread his thumb and fingers. “Five
reasons for going to war where it’s peaceful.”
“Larry will always know how to reach me,” Bemrose said. “How is your
wife fixed if you go in?”
“She’ll have to get a job,” Tom said.
“You don’t want to leave her strapped.” Bemrose muffled his voice.
“I’ll be glad to help you out, Tom.”
“You’re a white man.” Flannagan leaned a hand on his shoulder. “You
don’t owe me a thing, Bemrose.” There was something wet in the corner
of Flannagan’s eye. Larry watched carefully, but it didn’t drop, and
decided it must have been the way the light was shining.
“Wait until I tell my wife-- She doesn’t want me to go,” Flannagan
said. “Wait until I tell her how some other guys feel about the War.”
They toasted Roosevelt. They drank rounds to the annihilation of
Hitler, of Goering, and of Goebbels. When Flannagan left them to
catch a train for Dobbs Ferry, Larry felt the floor slide under his
feet. Bemrose sprawled in the chair, his face bathed in a colossal
contentment. He didn’t look like a man who had been squared off in a
uniform a few hours before.
Larry thought of Arthur’s offer to loan Flannagan money. One more drink
and he’ll offer me some dough to take care of Bessie if I come in with
him.
The fool. The crazy, lonesome, patriotic fool. Larry felt sorry for
the loneliness of all men, for Arthur’s hankering to have a brother
with whom he could go to war, for his own fatal dependence on the
warmth of Bessie, for Tom’s loneliness in the child-cluttered house at
Dobbs Ferry. It was the loneliness of those who stayed and those who
went to war. He knew the ones who went would be lonely in the midst of
ten thousand others. Years after it was over they would feel bereft,
missing the special loneliness that had bound them to those other
lonely thousands.
“I told you she dreamed it out of her head,” Bemrose said irrelevantly.
“I followed through on it just to be sure, but I knew all the time----”
Larry read the telegram Bemrose handed him, signed by the F.B.I. in
Washington. The message read: RICHTER CASE CLOSED STOP UNABLE TO TURN
UP FURTHER EVIDENCE.
“Right out of her head,” Arthur repeated. “Some of them have the
damndest imaginations.” He tore up the telegram and scattered the bits
in a dirty green ash tray. “I thought she was different. I thought she
stuck to the facts.”
“I ran into Steve Holmes,” Larry said. “He told me she’s back from the
Coast. Holmes must be seeing a lot of her.”
“Old friend of hers from Kansas,” Bemrose said affably. “Are you going
to see her someday?” He seemed slap-happy satisfied to settle for
Major, glad to forget about his woman trouble and pretend the War was
an answer.
“Holmes mentioned getting together with them----”
Bemrose raised an important finger. “Tell her she dreamed it up. Tell
her you read the official telegram.” He let the finger join his hand
which dropped loosely beside the chair. “There’s not a thing wrong with
that fellow Richter. Not a thing. Female fantasy. Ask the F.B.I. They
say it’s fantasy. Remember that word when you see her,” he instructed
Larry. “How about a drink on getting into the Air Force? How about
celebrating?”
Arthur’s contentment with things as they had become expanded like
rising yeast. It was as though Larry could see the fleshy cells of
satisfaction multiply. The radius of Arthur’s delight ringed the next
table. Quietly he leaned toward a gray-haired man and, rocking on the
legs of his chair, toasted him. The stranger, seduced by Bemrose’s show
of fellowship, automatically responded. Arthur swung his mellow light
back to Larry and let it soften the air between them. “I want to do
right by her,” he said proudly.
“By Janice?”
Bemrose nodded. “I always meant to. Mistake, walking off. I should have
said why. She’s a good, smart girl. I should have had a talk with her.
Meant to the other day at the office. Slipped my mind.”
Larry nodded encouragement while Bemrose mowed through his pockets for
change.
“If you really think you bitched things up--I can find out where she is
from Holmes. You ought to have a talk. She wants to tell you something
about why she went to Sweden. It was a misunderstanding, Arthur. You
both went off half cocked.” Larry pointed to a pay telephone on the
wall. “Shall I try Holmes?”
“When I come up from Maxwell Field. Not now,” Bemrose said. “When I
find out what they’re going to do with me. I’m only going to be around
New York another twenty-four hours.”
Larry must have looked unhappy.
“When I come home on leave,” Bemrose promised.
Larry’s fingers followed the ridges in his forehead. “She may be in
China by then! If you _want_ to talk to her----”
“Let’s pay and get out of here,” Bemrose said soothingly. “When I get
back, we’ll have a long, long talk. She’s a smart girl, and she’ll
understand when I tell her--” He settled his hat deep over his eyes
with the extra caution of a man who had confined himself to double
Martinis. “Don’t you worry, Larry.” He soothed him with his voice.
“But she may do something screwball, like marrying Holmes.”
“Not a thing to that.” Arthur took his arm. “Just an old friend from
Kansas. Don’t you worry. Someday we’re going to have a good long talk,
and then it’ll be all right.”
Larry crowded into a compartment of the revolving door with Bemrose,
and they wheeled sideways into the dark rumble of the street.
_Chapter 13_
For the dinner he arranged with Lucy and Janice, Larry picked the
Orangerie at the Astor where the atmosphere would be weighted on Lucy’s
side. At a more exclusive spot like the Marguery, Janice would hold
the aces, and Lucy, who was likely to be self-conscious anyway around
Janice, might blur out.
The Astor was a slice of small-and-big town America, the crowded front
porch of Broadway. It was the city’s cracker barrel on the main stem
where all were welcome to gather round. They came by cab, on foot, in
trolleys and busses, through the ample doors into a murky plush lobby
where they waited. The timid shrank gratefully against camouflaging
columns. The bold kept a hawk’s eye on the door, alert to select their
prey from the damp, moving stream at the entrance.
The fickle March evening had alternated between rain and snow, and
Larry called for Lucy. She had been living at the Daughertys’ the past
six weeks. He hoped on the way over that the weather wouldn’t button
her into those ugly tweeds Bemrose had selected for her in the fall,
and was glad to see that she had the good sense to wear a well-cut
black coat instead. It formed a solid pedestal for her gray-blonde
softness.
Janice was too busy to be called for. He had tried to arrange for the
dinner two weeks ago, but Janice was in Washington, and until six
o’clock tonight, wasn’t sure of being able to make it. _Everett’s_
had assigned her to do a profile of a Major-General who shifted his
headquarters every few days. Yes, she’d love to meet Larry for dinner
if she could leave right afterward. If Arthur’s wife weren’t formal
and would understand. If--well, Steve Holmes might join them later and
see that she got to the General’s. If Larry were sure he didn’t mind
about Steve. If he understood that her evenings weren’t her own, and
she had to work. If she could come just as she was without going home
to change. If he really thought it was a good idea for her to meet Mrs.
Bemrose. If he’d buy her a couple of drinks before dinner because she
was going to need them, and if he didn’t mind her cough. She had caught
it on an air-conditioned train, and her voice sounded awful.
Larry told her he’d like to have her come.
With Lucy beside him he waited a damp twenty minutes in the Astor
lobby, bone chilled from a draft that blew through the doorway. Janice
arrived at last dripping ten dollars worth of Schiaparelli’s _Shocking_
and a new mink coat. Her blonde suède gloves were crushed at the
forearms. Her hair was fresh from Elizabeth Arden’s, and the scratchy
throat had evidently been restored by an otolaryngologist. Larry was
glad to see her. He forgot the crick in his neck from watching people
walk through the door, and patiently auditioned her excuses. Quite a
few other people waiting for late dates seemed glad to see her too.
Upstairs in the citrus lighted dining room Larry saw at once it was
the wrong tone for Janice’s mustard-colored dress but did nice things
for Lucy’s skin. The Orangerie transformed her from the slender,
inconspicuous woman who had followed Janice’s minks up the marble
stairway to her own soft blonde harmony. When she slipped out of her
coat, a simple black dress with draped neckline set off the pallor of
her gray eyes.
Janice, evading Lucy at first and hesitating to take a real look
at her, chatted to Larry of her troubles with the General’s public
relations officer and complained about the dullness as a rule of
military men. No first-class writer should be assigned to them, she
maintained. While Janice pecked her harmless complaints at Larry, a
clear, clean light seemed to emanate from Lucy. It was like viewing a
morning glory which had just opened.
Janice turned toward her. “How does Arthur like the Army? I’ve been
meaning to write and congratulate him on his commission.”
The quiet confidence growing in Lucy sent color to her cheeks. “He’s
going to Miami Beach to help organize an Air Force Training Center, one
of the biggest new schools in the country for officers.”
“What do you think of that?” Larry asked with the respect of a civilian
for someone who does well in the Army. “He’s only been in a few weeks.
How did he manage----?”
“He’s been promised a promotion so that they can make him director of
one of the schools,” Lucy added.
The skin tightened across the bridge of Janice’s nose, and the dark
eyes went cold.
“He says they can’t make him director of the school unless they do
promote him,” Lucy explained.
“The T.O. must call for a lieutenant colonel,” Janice said.
“T.O.?” Larry asked.
“Table of organization. It tells an outfit how many officers of each
rank it’s entitled to have,” Janice explained. “This officer I have
to interview got a second star because his new post calls for a
Major-General. If not for that, he would probably still be a one star
general.”
“It’s wonderful recognition for Bemrose,” Larry said. “Wonderful.”
“Order me a drink, will you, Larry?” Janice asked.
He called a waiter. “Did Arthur say when he will leave Maxwell Field
for Miami?” he asked Lucy.
“Tonight or tomorrow. Before the end of the week.”
“Not a bad spot, Miami. You can count on Arthur to pick the right
place.” He looked at Janice. “Sounds all right, doesn’t it?”
“It’s all right,” Janice conceded. “It’s certainly good for the
Air Force. They’re getting rid of the brass hats and that’s a good
sign. Arthur’s going to be good for the Air Force, all right.” Her
fingermarks showed on her water goblet where she had gripped it. “He’ll
earn every cent they pay him. He’d earn it if they decided to make him
a lieutenant _general_ instead of a lieutenant colonel.”
“What’s the matter then? Isn’t it going to be good for _him_?” Larry
asked.
Janice looked tentatively at Lucy. “I don’t know. What do you think,
Mrs. Bemrose? A lot of men couldn’t take all the success he’s had. Now
in six weeks a military success and all kinds of authority--it takes a
strong man to stand up to that.” She shrugged. “Maybe Arthur can swing
it.”
Lucy meticulously sipped her clear consommé, her eyelids steady.
A party brushed past their table and as Janice watched them cross the
room, she recognized someone with a birdlike forty-year-old face under
snowy hair. Excusing herself, she followed them. “That’s Ward Oliver
of the State Department,” she explained hastily. “He’s just back from
China after being away for years. I missed him in Washington. He’s one
of my oldest and best friends.” A look of affectionate warmth came into
her eyes.
Larry sent Janice’s soup to the kitchen until she returned, and kept
watch at the same time on Lucy. She lifted the dark eyebrows that made
her eyes look paler, and a question shadowed them. “Have they known
each other long?” she asked.
“Not very long.”
“But well.”
“She’s been around,” Larry agreed. “She knows how to hurry through the
preliminaries. Have some more soup while we’re waiting?”
Lucy shook her head. “Do _you_ think this new job--” The gray eyes
appealed to Larry.
“Janice always worries about people being able to handle power when
they get it,” Larry explained. “I don’t think she’s particularly
concerned about Arthur, but--well, she worries. She’s scared to death
that when this country has pitched in and won the War, we’ll come out
drunk with power and start throwing our weight around. We won’t be
satisfied to let other people go back and live their own way. That’s
the kind of thing she’s afraid of.”
Lucy listened audibly. It was her gift. “So is Arthur afraid of people
misusing power,” she said.
“Janice goes way beyond him,” Larry explained. “I don’t think she would
trust any man with power. Not unless he were elected to it, and could
have it voted away. She’s particularly against personal power, the kind
that doesn’t show.”
“They should have gotten along,” Lucy said. “If they think alike----”
“They’re both suspicious by nature. I’m not sure Arthur trusted her any
more than she would trust him.”
“She acted as if there were something wrong about Arthur being
promoted. He didn’t ask to be promoted.”
“Of course not. And he didn’t pull strings to get his commission.
Anyone else with his record on Lend-Lease-- I can’t see it hurting him
or inflating him too much. If I were you, I’d forget what she said.”
Janice slipped back into her chair. “Ward Oliver feels pretty black
about the picture out there. He says there’s no hope of saving Java.”
Her mouth was rigid. “The Indies are as good as gone, too, and the
Australians are scared to death of an invasion. Ward stopped in
Melbourne on his way home. There’s not much for us to do right now
except take it. We can’t fight Hitler and move an Army out there at
the same time. Ward says--” Janice stopped short, and her lips thinned
to a knife edge. “Sorry, it may have been confidential--I’d better not
repeat it.”
“Everybody’s pushing for us to pitch in,” Larry complained. “Strike
here. Strike there. That’s all they know.” He motioned the waiter to
serve Janice her dinner.
“Uncle Ed keeps saying we ought to take it easy and feel our way
gradually,” Lucy said.
“The only trouble with that is, it won’t win the War,” Janice replied.
“Someone high up in the State Department seems to be pushing for an
offensive on the Continent right away,” she added. “There’s one group
that thinks we’re prepared and could get away with it.”
“People are restless. They want to get into action,” Larry pointed out.
“It’s three months since Pearl Harbor, and we still don’t feel like
we’re at war. People want to get going. To do something. If they could
tighten their belts a notch, they’d feel better.”
“My friend, Oliver, is close to the Generalissimo,” Janice said.
Larry started at the mental jump from one war to another.
“The Generalissimo told him a month ago that he was going to appoint
Stilwell.”
“It was only in the paper yesterday,” Lucy said, smoothing a fluff of
hair from her cheek. “I miss Arthur. He used to tell me what was going
on. I don’t get as much out of the papers when I have to read them
alone and he isn’t around to answer questions for me.”
Inscrutably Janice studied her, and the skin seemed to tighten over her
cheekbones.
* * * * *
Larry walked with Janice as far as the elevator at the St. Regis and
tried to say goodnight. The evening had been somewhat of a strain.
During coffee he looked at his watch several times, hoping that Janice
would leave for her appointment with the General, or that Steve Holmes
would arrive and take over, but instead she phoned the General’s aide
and found they had put her off again.
Janice and Lucy seemed to bring out the worst in each other. It was
like a grainy enlargement of a photograph which magnified every
blemish. Larry knew something about photography, and had seen negatives
develop grain no matter what developer was used. The scratches, the
bits of dust that marred the film showed up worse than they should. The
emulsion began to swell and add defects of its own to the picture. A
similar chemical reaction seemed to take place between Janice and Lucy.
He began to think it was a bad idea to have brought them together. He
hoped Bemrose wouldn’t mind if Lucy wrote him about the evening. After
all, Bemrose had wanted Larry to keep in touch with both of them, and
if he had stayed in New York, he would have invited Janice to the house
sooner or later. It was just as well for Lucy to meet her casually this
way through him instead of through Arthur.
When they reached the lobby of the St. Regis where Janice was staying,
she pulled Larry into the gold elevator car with her. They had dropped
Lucy uptown.
In her hotel sitting room Janice poured two jiggers of Scotch and
downed hers before she took off her hat. “What made him do it? I
thought Steve Holmes was exaggerating. For Christ’s sake, what made him
do it?” Janice plucked at the amethyst brooch that glowed dully against
the brighter gold of her dress.
“She never says for Christ’s sake.” Larry sat down next to a table
littered with typewritten pages and reference books on China.
Janice paced the room, her shoulders tilted forward. “You think he
wanted someone he could depend on to have nice manners?”
Larry planted his stubby hands on her shoulders. “Take it easy. She’s
not as bad as all that.”
He poured her another drink from the cut glass decanter on her desk.
“If you want me to tell you why he married her, I can’t. I’m not smart
enough. Besides, I like her.”
“There’s nothing to dislike about her,” Janice agreed.
“I’m not sure Arthur thinks so. Does that make you feel better?”
She slumped in the tapestry wing chair. “He wasn’t happy before he was
married. I didn’t make him any happier.”
“Maybe he enjoyed his misery more.”
The tears rolled down her cheeks disconnected from her emotions like
water pouring from a mechanical doll.
She pointed to the books about China on the table next to him. “I’m
going out there to work. _Everett’s_ has an assignment for me.”
Larry didn’t say anything this time about her running away.
“He’s going to Florida. Didn’t you hear his wife say he was?” She moved
her shoulders hopelessly.
“Trains run to Miami. It’s not like trying to take a train back from
China,” Larry said. “This war is going to be tough enough. I wouldn’t
complicate things----”
“They’re simple now, aren’t they?” she asked bitterly. “What will I
tell him? That I think he made a mistake?”
“Why not give _him_ a chance to do the talking? You’re so used to
running the show your way. You don’t give other people a chance.”
“How do I know my agent won’t ring me tomorrow and tell me I’m on my
way out there?”
“Grow up, Jan! You’ve overworked that one.”
The steel-like structure of her chin gave way and her lips trembled.
“You’ll feel better after you see him,” Larry promised.
He was standing in front of her, and she took hold of her knees,
pressing her head against his legs. “When you have an address, let me
know. I’ll manage something,” she promised.
The muffled loneliness of her voice stayed with Larry all night and
came back in the muted rhythm of the train that took him to Florida
three weeks later.
_PART III_
_Chapter 14_
Arthur had been taken ill suddenly in Miami. All that Larry knew
about it was what Major Graystone, a reluctant Army doctor, had been
willing to tell him by long-distance telephone. The major said that
Colonel Bemrose had exhausted himself working long hours and was in the
hospital. It sounded like a heart attack to Larry. He decided to go
right down to Miami and promised to wire Lucy as soon as he learned the
details.