enough day, coming right down here from the sleeper this morning. I
don’t suppose you’ve told Lucy yet?”
“When I called up to say we were back, I hinted about it.”
“You’ll have to tell her all the details. Let’s get going.”
On the way uptown, Arthur outlined some of the ideas he had for Newton.
Exhilarated, his thoughts turning with propeller speed, he was already
at work on the indictments. Larry realized that it would take more
than Shore’s offer of a big case to keep Bemrose in New York for the
duration.
Their cab stopped for a WAAC parade that was crossing Thirty-fourth
Street. The dumpy first lieutenant who barked the marching orders
looked more like a tough sergeant from World War I than the dewy-eyed
model silhouetted against a flag in the current WAAC recruiting poster.
Oblivious to the slush underfoot, the girls stepped out smartly.
Their seriousness filtered through the sidewalk crowd, and two men
straightened, a woman heavily burdened with packages stopped to watch,
and an old man uncovered his head.
“Give ’em hell, girls!” Bemrose touched his fingers to his forehead.
“It’s a fine thing, isn’t it, when women have to do your fighting?” he
said to Larry.
A month or a week ago he wouldn’t have joked about it, Larry knew. He
was too busy licking his wounds a month ago. It wouldn’t have been
funny.
“If they draft me, I wouldn’t mind a job next to the little redhead on
the end,” Larry observed.
“She’s not in the chorus, she’s a soldier.”
Larry shrugged. “I can’t take a good-looking woman seriously.”
“They take them seriously in Russia.”
“Maybe they’re not as good-looking.”
“To the Russians they are.”
“I can’t help it. When a woman’s good-looking----”
“I know, I know. You want to go to bed with her,” Arthur said.
The last WAAC cleared the Avenue, and an angry honking from behind
jolted their driver into action. Larry took a last mournful look at the
neatly covered buttocks moving in disciplined rows. “Helluva waste of
women,” he sighed.
“Them women ain’t wasted,” Arthur said. “Ask any G.I. if you think so.”
The remains of last night’s heavy snowfall clogged traffic, and
pedestrians waiting at bus stops stood back gingerly to avoid being
splashed. The piles of soiled snow melting in the gutters furnished
dirty contrast to a window at the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and
Fifth Avenue which sparkled with clean-lined modern glassware.
They rode silently past the stone transverse which divided Central
Park. Bemrose turned abruptly toward Larry. “Does Lucy know she lives
in Washington?”
“Not from me. I took them both out to dinner when you were at Maxwell
Field, but she hasn’t talked to me about her since. Did she write you
about going out with me that night?”
“The longest letter I ever had from her,” Arthur said. “She was wound
up. You didn’t tell her anything that night?”
“Hell no.”
“No, of course not,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “I haven’t anything to
worry about. She’s never been jealous.”
“What did she write you about the night we all had dinner?”
“I remember how she put it in the letter. She wrote ‘Miss Baldwin is
still in love with you.’”
Larry nodded. “I wasn’t sure how she’d react. It’s hard to tell about
her. I don’t suppose you’ll say anything about running into Jan
yesterday.”
“I don’t know. I may.”
“Well, I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Larry promised.
Arthur let them in with his house key, and Larry called upstairs to
Lucy. She emerged, flushed and breathless, from the kitchen on the
ground floor and embraced Arthur warmly. “Was the sleeper awful? Are
you dead?”
“I had a tough trip, too.” Larry offered his cheek.
When she promptly responded, he had the pleasant guilty sense of
perhaps having done her an injustice for months.
Larry straightened his tie, a new one of geometric daring. “Some taste,
isn’t it?”
“Your ties are always--” she hesitated--“different.”
“A euphemistic remark,” Arthur guffawed.
She drew her cool, amber brow together. “What does euphemistic mean,
Larry?”
Larry put his arm around her. “He doesn’t know either. He’s showing
off. He was afraid he’d come home and find you in the WAAC.”
She disengaged herself from Larry. The kitchen door, which she had
carefully shut behind her, swung open and Phil Kenyon, his mustache
pert and bristling, greeted them from behind a trayful of Martinis.
Arthur waved to him affably. “Hello. You must have read my mind. How
about bringing them upstairs?”
“Get the olives I left on the table, Lucy,” Phil directed. “I heard
you’d be back this afternoon,” he told Bemrose. “I ducked out of the
office early to be on hand.”
“I’m glad you did,” Arthur said.
“Remember Randolph?” he asked Larry when they had all settled in front
of a fire upstairs. “He belonged to one of the big shops downtown.”
“Don Randolph. Winchester and Seymour,” Larry prompted.
“That’s the fellow. The State Department called him in to do a
hush-hush job, made him a full colonel, and sent him to England last
spring on a secret mission. That was more than nine months ago, and his
wife just had a baby----”
Lucy blushed. “Did you see someone in the State Department who told
you?”
“I ran into a friend.”
“I forgot to tell you about the O.P.A.,” Larry broke in. “My client is
going to have to make two or three holers instead of four if he wants
to crack the ceiling price.”
“Buttons,” Arthur explained to Phil Kenyon.
“He’ll need a new mold, and molds use war material,” Larry continued.
“It’s a waste of time, material and labor to make new molds, but he
has to do it to get around the O.P.A. In the end he charges his high
price on the new line. The ceiling price only holds on old merchandise.”
“That’s one of the bad features of O.P.A.,” Bemrose acknowledged. “Just
the same it’s doing a job.” He stretched lazily and poured himself
another Martini.
“I think Larry has a point,” Phil Kenyon started to argue, but Lucy’s
silence headed him off.
The pale eyes were on Bemrose waiting for him to say something about
Newton’s offer.
“I met a Senator down there--” he started to say.
“Arthur!” Her tone reproached him. “Phil’s interested, too. You can
talk about your job in front of him.”
Silently he sipped his cocktail.
“You three talk, I’ll run along,” Kenyon offered.
“Lucy’s right. We haven’t any secrets you can’t hear. Stick around.”
“Newton offered me just what you’d expect,” he continued. “He wants me
to come down and fight the Battle of the Department of Justice.”
Lucy walked away from the fire, her slender fingers trailing below the
tailored cuffs of a gray-blue woolen dress. The closely woven fabric
concealed her fragility. She looked remarkably durable.
“How would you like to move to Washington?” Arthur talked to her back
as she crossed the room.
She stopped alongside Phil Kenyon’s chair and picked up a box of
matches from the table. He took it out of her hand and struck a match
for her. For an instant, their glances met.
Larry bent to tie his shoelace.
“How do you think you would like to move down?” Arthur asked.
She returned slowly to her chair opposite him. “I won’t be able to
leave New York. Marge is going to have a baby.”
“Why, that’s great! Maybe there’s hope for Bess and me,” Larry raised
his glass. “Good for Ed, the son-of-a-gun.”
Lucy tried to smile, but didn’t make it.
“When is she expecting the baby?” Arthur inquired dully.
“Not for several months.”
“I promised to let Tom know next week.”
Lucy brushed some wisps of hair from her cheek.
“Is Marge having a tough time?” Larry asked.
“It isn’t easy for a woman of forty-two to have her first baby!” Lucy’s
careful diction failed to conceal the agitation she felt.
“Ed carrying on and upsetting her?” Larry asked.
“He’s jumpy,” she admitted.
“Maybe he’s having the baby,” Arthur injected bitterly.
“Oh, Arthur--” Lucy’s eyes were wet, and Larry realized that it was
she, not Ed, who was having the baby for Marge. As long as she was
married to Arthur, the chances were that she wouldn’t have any of her
own. She probably felt a desperate necessity to stick with Marge.
Uneasily Phil Kenyon said something about having to keep an
appointment, and Lucy went downstairs with him to the door.
“That’s that, I guess.” Arthur fingered the stem of his glass, but his
hand trembled. He slumped deeper in his chair.
“I’d take the job anyway,” Larry said. “She’ll follow you in a couple
of months when Marge is out of the woods.”
“She wants a baby. She can’t have a baby with me,” Arthur’s shoulder
jerked. “It isn’t a good feeling for a man to know that----”
Larry made no comment. A few minutes later he said, “Let her move down
with you and come back to New York weekends. Tell her she can stay up
here with Marge the last few weeks. Marge wouldn’t want you to give up
an interesting job.”
“Well, I can’t settle it this afternoon. I’m pooped.” Bemrose pulled
himself out of the chair, and his body hung a dead weight on the
crutches. “Tell Lucy I’m going to grab some sleep before dinner.”
* * * * *
He found her at the head of the red-carpeted stairs, and they sat at
the top of the landing, her fingers limply trailing the step below.
“It isn’t fair to you, either, Larry,” she complained. “Not after you
gave up your practice. He shouldn’t walk out on you like this.”
“He absolutely must cut himself a piece of war,” Larry pointed out.
“When a guy like Bemrose stops doing the big thing, he stops.”
“I guess if that’s what he wants to do, he should go to Washington.”
There was the strength of element-proof chromium in her cool appraisal.
“But you have other plans?”
She nodded. “I can’t leave, and to tell you the truth, Larry, I don’t
want to leave. I’ve been happy the last few months. I’ve felt--well,
younger.”
Larry sensed the quality of the unstrained, carefree friendship with
Phil Kenyon. He realized how it contrasted with the more mature burdens
of her marriage. It was the difference between childhood and a grown-up
world. Lucy may never have known a real childhood. She perhaps was
catching up on what she had missed.
“If you like, I’ll go down to Washington with Arthur and stay with him
for a few months to get him settled,” Larry offered.
She stared ahead miserably: “You’ve done enough, Larry. You have to
think about yourself and Bessie----”
“I could only stay for a few months,” he admitted. “Bessie wouldn’t
like me to be away any longer. But if it will help you out----”
Competently she straightened the round, schoolboy collar of her dress.
“I’ll find a place for him down there if he likes, then come back. Once
he’s busy at Newton’s office, he’ll be all right.”
“You mean you’ll come back to New York alone?”
“He has friends in Washington, and it’s his kind of place. He needs
room to think in, and I can’t give it to him. I know he feels cramped
around me. I’ve about decided that he always will. I’ve just been
waiting for him to get well enough to look around for what he needs.”
Larry covered her hand which lay on the step next to his. “I used to
wonder if you’d grow up,” he said.
“Have I?”
“You’re willing to give up what belongs to you, even though you have a
mortgage. You helped put Arthur back on his feet. You have rights. It
takes guts and some pretty grown-up feelings to surrender a valuable
property.”
“You don’t make people happy by owning them,” Lucy said. “And you
can’t really own them unless they want to belong.”
He asked her to come downstairs with him while he looked for his coat.
On the way out he smiled and said, “I like your friend Kenyon. He’s
okay.”
_PART IV_
_Chapter 24_
Six weeks later Larry spent a Saturday in Georgetown at Janice’s house
where Bemrose had been living for more than a month. Arthur’s painful
probing of the hotel and apartment situation had ended as it almost
always ended these days, with no room and no apartment, and Janice
insisted that he move into her guest room until he found something else
of his own. She registered the room with the O.P.A. and he paid her the
approved rental.
During the grim winter of ’43 when more planes were put into
the English skies than returned to landing strips bedded in the
Oxford-Cambridge villages, in the winter the Red Army, freed by the
Stalingrad victory, advanced against Rostov in a drive to reopen the
Caucasus and the Crimea, in the winter that MacArthur’s men, mopping
up in Papua and the Solomons, awaited tensely “a Jap move of utmost
importance,” and Montgomery, triumphant after El Alamein, stubbornly
battled Rommel’s last outpost in Tunis, in the winter the home front
retched at Hull’s choice of Vichyite Peyrouton for governor of Algiers,
in that grim winter Janice bloomed. Larry figured that the times
were hers. She seemed to understand and belong to the times, and they
rewarded her.
It was the winter, Larry predicted, that Janice would look her most
beautiful, just as there seems to be a year when almost every woman
becomes life-ripened and achieves her fullest flavor, fragrance,
color, and texture. With Janice this ripening must have been curiously
delayed. In her twenties she was too scrawny and intense, with eyes
that grabbed on too quickly. In her early thirties, the flesh retreated
to her bones where it clung tight and dry. Now in her middle thirties,
a radiance took hold. The black chips of eyes, which had burned
defiantly and stubbornly, threw back opalescent lights of green, rose,
and gold. The dull boy’s hair acquired brilliance, as if stroked fifty
times a night, and the parched flesh satisfied its thirst, suffused by
the racing fluid of vein and capillaries.
In the high-ceilinged drawing room of Janice’s house this afternoon in
early February, Bemrose sat at the edge of the crowd and followed her
pattern of light as it illuminated the guests. Larry, from a corner
next to the damask-hung window, reflected that the significant moments
of Bemrose’s life, and perhaps of many a modern man’s, were lived in
crowds. Larry thought of the crowded evening at Professor Storey’s when
Arthur had first begun to know Janice, of the crowded drawing room at
home when he had become engaged to Lucy----
Larry thought he understood why many contemporary painters selected
crowds to show the face of America. More and more the individual was
judged by an impression snatched in a group. The crowd had become
measure of the man, and the interest a man commanded in a crowd often
mirrored his position in the social framework. Formerly a portrait by
Rembrandt, Copley, or Gilbert Stuart told the story of a society, but
today the crowd seemed to have replaced the individual as sitter.
About seventy-five cards spilled from a silver dish on the table of
Janice’s entrance hall. She had invited some friends from the Russian
embassy, and although she could not compete with the caviar and
champagne they served at official functions, Janice had paid them a
subtle tribute. Behind the drawing room in her study, she had used
an empty magnum salvaged from the last embassy party to decorate the
hearth. A Russian with shiny skull bent to examine the bottle, and as
he wiped the dusty neck with his finger, he smiled approvingly.
Janice brought over a Senator to meet him, and immediately the Russian
stiffened. Knowing they belonged to different planets politically,
Janice steered them toward Arthur, apparently hoping that he could
establish the two on amiable ground--whatever that area might be.
Larry tried to imagine a mutually agreeable subject and ended with
Donald Duck. Disney, in a future world government, would be a logical
Secretary of Communications.
The other guests, including cabinet assistants, newspapermen,
congressmen, and two Supreme Court wives, also gravitated to the
cluster of quiet around Bemrose, as if he assured them respite from
the crowd chatter. They had come to expect a quiet strength, a sound
opinion from Arthur. Guests who met him, often for the first time,
intuitively felt this quality. That’s what Janice told Larry. Larry,
himself, had seen it happen in New York recently. With the dependable
crowd instinct which used to sidestep his blustering, people now sought
him out, attracted by his deep quiet, and seeming to find in it solace
for their own worries or the world’s worries.
A Washington hostess, whose Friday night suppers sowed items regularly
in the gossip columns, approached Larry on miserly ankles. “You’re his
best friend, aren’t you?” she asked sharply.
Larry backed toward the window away from her bulk of bosom.
“I hear the President is delighted he came to Washington. I hear the
President regards him as one of the most brilliant lawyers we have.
Wonderful how he manages to get around on those crutches--” She used
her malnourished hands to emphasize the words.
“Wonderful how the President manages,” Larry said evasively.
The woman moved closer and watched Janice spar with one of the
_Everett’s_ editors, her legs astride and chest high. “Nice for both of
them, his staying here,” she observed.
Larry lit her cigarette. “It’s a lucky thing she took him in with the
hotels jammed.”
“Man in his condition doesn’t belong in a hotel! Plenty of room here.
Good for her to have a man in the house. Good for everyone. I need
someone in my barn.” Hawkishly she eyed Larry, but he unhooked himself.
“You must let Janice bring you up some Friday night----”
He sat on the windowsill to recover, and felt immense relief.
Washington paid attention to the woman. She’d stop the gossips. It was
a real break, having her on their side. She’d make it seem patriotic
for Janice to have taken him in.
“Caroline thinks you’re a lamb,” Janice said a few minutes later. “She
claims you’re the best dressed man in the room.”
Larry glanced curiously at the sleeves of his blue coat.
“She talks too much. She’s a hyperthyroid. Come on and meet some of the
nice people.”
Janice took his hand, but he said, “I’ll see how Arthur is.”
“You’ll never get near him. You’d think he was giving away red points.”
The radiance dimmed for a moment. “I hope he’s having a good time.
They’re all in love with him.”
She sighed. “You were right. He has changed. He’s stopped trying to be
important.”
“He’s important to us,” Larry said.
“I think it’s the War,” Janice speculated. “At first I thought it was
his illness, but now I don’t know. I think the War may have helped to
pull him out of himself----”
“Your friend Caroline approves of his staying here,” Larry said.
“I try to invite people he likes, try to make it comfortable----”
“You do all right when you try,” Larry reassured her. “Go on back to
your guests. I’m fine.”
The tomato face of Davis Shore gleamed under his white cap of hair.
He motioned affably to Larry who, remembering Shore’s recent snub at
the office, figured it must be the good liquor at work. “Here’s Mr.
Bemrose’s associate,” Shore said to a lawyer Larry recognized from the
Treasury. “He’ll tell us the catch in it. That preposterous scheme of
Ruml’s to forgive nineteen forty-two taxes--” he explained. “I don’t
see how the Treasury can afford to----”
“But forty-three is going to be an even bigger tax year,” the lawyer
expounded patiently. “I’m trying to convince Mr. Shore that the
Treasury won’t lose anything. It’s just a matter of bookkeeping.”
“Forgiving taxes! When we have a war to pay for! It takes genius to
dream up such a scheme. I’d like to ask our friend, Bemrose----”
“I discussed it with Bemrose last night at the Morgenthaus’,” the
lawyer reported. “He thinks it’s sound.”
Shore’s ruddy countenance turned an exasperated white. “Worst time in
history for Bemrose to bury himself down here,” he confided to Larry.
“We need him at our end of things in New York. We’ve tried to make it
interesting. I wouldn’t want you to repeat this, Mr.--” He twitched
uncomfortably.
“Frank.”
“Oh, yes, Frank. Well, our Board authorized me to invite Bemrose to
become General Counsel of the company. Adams, who has been with us for
thirty years, had an embolism. Fine fellow, Adams, but we don’t expect
him back.”
“I suppose Arthur felt he couldn’t leave Newton,” Larry sympathized.
“Newton could fill the job with a dozen other men.”
“I don’t know. Arthur seems to think the work down here is important.”
Larry rehearsed his most cordial manner. Someday Bemrose might be glad
to be General Counsel to a utility.
“Thought I might tackle Newton to release him,” Shore said. “Didn’t I
see Newton come in a few minutes ago?”
“He’s over there with Arthur.” Larry started toward the study.
“By the way, Frank, what are you doing now that Bemrose’s office is
closed?”
“I’m back at my practice.”
“Downtown?”
“Midtown.”
Shore winced. “Too bad you couldn’t stay with him. Fine training for a
lawyer to work around Bemrose.”
“My old roommate is putting up with me.”
“Then you’re tied up--” Shore added vaguely.
Arthur was telling an Englishman where he could buy ladies’ girdles to
take back with him to London when Shore and Larry walked into the room.
“Just moved to Washington and he knows where to shop for girdles,” Tom
Newton kidded.
“I hope you’re not going to keep him down here,” Shore said.
Newton tossed a cigarette into the fire. “He signed up for the duration
plus six months.”
“I don’t want to lose my job,” Arthur said. “I like my boss.”
Affectionately Newton stroked his shoulder. “You’re pretty good at your
job for a youngster just out of law school.”
“Why _don’t_ you put in a youngster?” Shore asked. “We need him for
that Reynolds case. Isn’t another lawyer who understands our problems
and can try the damn case. How about giving him six months’ leave?”
Newton pretended sympathy. “We’d like to oblige, but in Europe there’s
shooting going on.”
“He’s only chairborne infantry,” Shore remarked, and Larry waited for
Bemrose to wince.
“Why shouldn’t I stay here and have the privilege of wasting some of
the taxpayers’ money?” Arthur chuckled. “Everyone else does. How about
it, Tom?”
“I have orders from the White House to keep him on the payroll,” Newton
said. “If you don’t want to upset the Commander-in-Chief, you’ll stop
trying to seduce him with your retainers.”
Shore flattened his babyfine hair across his forehead. Apparently
resigned, he said, “I don’t suppose you can recommend a lawyer.”
“What’s the matter with--” Arthur started to say.
A lady columnist jostled Shore and spilled the Martini he had in his
hand. She plopped on the arm of Bemrose’s chair. “Is it true you
have the goods on that Yorkville reptile? Come on, give. I hear you
have enough to hang him.” She wiped her face with a soiled chiffon
handkerchief. Turning her back on the others, she fingered Arthur’s
lapel.
Janice streaked across the room. “Your friend, Vorosoff.” She
interrupted the girl. “I theenk he would like to make with you circle
around park.” Janice bowed, impersonating the Russian. “At the door he
is waiting in black cloak. Very dremetikal.”
When the columnist had gone, Janice sat down, exhausted. “You’d
have been misquoted in every Morris paper,” she told Bemrose. “All
seventy-nine of them. I meant to warn you----”
“My press secretary,” Arthur said, pointing to Janice. “She has the
best legs in Washington.”
“Fool!” Janice grabbed Tom Newton and shouldered her way to the drawing
room.
“They are,” Larry said. “I never noticed. Anything I can get you?”
“I _have_ everything,” Arthur said cryptically. “You’re staying over
tonight, aren’t you?”
“You’ll be dead by the time this crowd leaves. You won’t want to stay
up and talk. You’ll be worn out.”
“I want to talk to you about that case of Shore’s. Maybe we can get him
to turn it over----”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it if he did,” Larry protested. “It’s
way over my head.”
“I’d help you with it. That part is easy. But I have to figure out an
angle with Shore. We’ll have to sell you to him. Subtlely, of course.”
“He wouldn’t want me,” Larry said.
“Who gives a damn what he wants? There’s a good fee in it----”
“You never charged him.”
Arthur laughed. “This time he’ll pay through the nose.” He changed the
subject abruptly. “Is it true old Caroline wanted to rape you?”
Larry fingered the buttons on his double-breasted coat. “She didn’t
waste much time on me. She was too busy giving you and Janice the green
light. It’ll be okay on both sides of the Mason and Dixon line. They
listen to Caroline.”
“Didn’t you tell her I was a married man?”
“I don’t think she cares.”
Solemnly Bemrose fingered the strands of his mustache.