sitting quietly on a wicker sofa near the door when Dr. Turnbull’s
nurse called them.
In a room at the end of the hall they found the spare, balding
physician who had been a research man on antibiotics at the Rockefeller
Institute before he accepted the post at Hopkins.
“Well, I’ve completed the examination,” Dr. Turnbull reported.
Arthur interrupted him. “I’m straight garden variety, not even
interesting material for the medical journals.” Complacently he puffed
a cigarette.
“Fortunately no unusual complications,” Turnbull continued. “But some
new things we’ll be able to try someday. Miss Baldwin spoke to me about
penicillin. I can’t see that penicillin notatum, the kind we work with
now, will do much good. I thought of suggesting streptomycin, but
that’s off the track.” He turned to Janice. “I may be wrong, of course.
There hasn’t been enough work done to exhaust the possibilities of any
of these newer drugs.”
“Antibiotics are your field. You’re the one person who _would_ know the
possibilities.” Janice’s active, bony fingers reached toward him.
He had been constrained at first, but now he unbent. “The longer you
work in a field, the less you are sure of anything. Every country
doctor today knows more than I do about penicillin. He’ll tell you just
what to use it for and how much to give----
“A year ago we were working on a mold that is close to streptomycin
in some of its effects but has one characteristic which makes it a
possibility-- I’m not saying it will work, but in multiple sclerosis
it’s certainly worth a trial,” the doctor continued. “The project has
stopped during the War, but as soon as personnel becomes available and
we can reorganize, I’ll have some material for experimental purposes.
If Mr. Bemrose will keep in touch with me----”
The doctor shook hands. “Try to be patient,” he admonished Bemrose.
“Give us six months from V-J Day. Until then we’ll have to be patient
and wait.”
Janice had said it a few minutes ago, and Dr. Turnbull was saying it
now, Larry realized. Wait. Patience. Until the War is over. Until the
War ends. It was like waiting for the millennium, or a small child on
the eve of his birthday expecting to be three inches taller the next
day. There was something wrong about believing that peace would bring
abrupt improvements, and the day the War ended, plans and projects
would get under way. That wasn’t the order of things. The chaos, the
restlessness, the shifting values of now would carry over. The seeds
for peace were already being sown. Peace would be a phase of war, not
a separate state, as convalescence is a continued phase of illness.
That’s why Larry disliked the postponements of the present time, the
almost universal reliance on “when the War is over” as a solution for
present problems. Peace would be no dead end, but a cross-country
thoroughfare marked by the same old anxieties.
Outside the hospital Larry said, “I know one thing we can do without
waiting for the War to be over. We can go to Reilly’s and have the
finest shore dinner in Baltimore.”
He sat in front of the car with Janice to direct her to the
restaurant. It was near the railway terminal, and had been recommended
to Larry years ago by Bessie’s brother who ran a chain of clothing
stores in Baltimore.
“I don’t think Turnbull would have promised to try the drug unless he
thought it was going to work, do you?” she asked quietly so as not to
disturb Bemrose who was stretched out on the back seat resting.
“Turnbull doesn’t know. How can he know until he tries it?”
“You could let me hope,” she said crossly.
“I thought Turnbull was very encouraging.” Larry patted her knee.
“After going over the case, he seemed to think that _with_ crutches
Arthur’s in good shape. He doesn’t have to be completely well, does he?
Who is completely well?”
She stroked the steering wheel thoughtfully. “I’m not.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I should have thought of that myself,” she said. “Look up there.”
She pointed to a star in the early evening sky, and Larry felt her
happiness rocket to meet it.
* * * * *
Reilly, the restaurant proprietor, remembered Larry and brought the
steamed clams to the table himself. They washed them down with a
pungent sea broth, and later drank a dry white table wine with their
lobster. The French bread was fresh and crusty, and as a special treat,
Reilly produced a good _fine_ with the coffee. Arthur who dissected
the lobster with a steady hand, swapped Irish stories with Reilly, and
while they ate they laughed, all three of them, not two paired against
the third. Larry thought of it later as the best dinner of his life,
and whenever friends took him to a favorite seafood restaurant, he
remembered the vividness of Janice in her red jacket and the pleasure
of Bemrose as he watched her from across the table.
After dinner Larry offered to drive the car back to Washington. The
painted white line of the highway had grown dim with the War, and Larry
became involved in the unfamiliar mechanics of steering and shifting.
As they stopped for a light near Washington, he turned around and saw
that Janice was asleep on Arthur’s shoulder.
“Pooped,” Bemrose said, cradling her head in his arm. “She dropped off
right away.”
“I suppose Turnbull was right,” he added later. “No use doing anything
in any department until the War is over. I have to make up my mind to
wait. Helluva nice guy, Turnbull. It must be great to work with stuff
like penicillin.”
“Turnbull was only talking about that new drug when he told you to
wait. He didn’t mean to wait for other things. Conditions aren’t going
to change that much with the end of the War. If you go ahead and make
plans now----”
“It’s easier not to look ahead,” Arthur said. “I thought HAYNES and
BEMROSE would go on forever. I thought when I married Lucy-- What’s the
good of planning?”
“You have to plan,” Larry insisted. “Things outside change and get
messed up. Inside you have to have a blueprint. Then something is left
when the outside falls to pieces.”
“I see what you’re driving at,” Arthur agreed. “The trouble is, I
guess, I’ve lost faith in some of my blueprints.”
Janice’s voice came through the darkened tonneau. “Who’s building a
house?”
“Arthur. I’m trying to talk him into building one,” Larry said.
“Is he going to ask us to live in it?” she inquired sleepily.
Blood and heart seemed to make more sense at the moment than a
meticulous ten-year plan, and Arthur, answering her in the dark,
demonstrated that he knew it.
_Chapter 28_
By June of ’43 when Larry went down to spend another weekend with
Arthur in Washington, the output of heavy bombers was beginning to
outnumber submarine sinkings; Eisenhower had met in Algiers with De
Gaulle; the military establishment at Pantelleria had been bombed
out, and Italy’s supply system in the South was cracking. Invasion
was expected any day, and people waited, content to read about B-17s
grounded by weather in England, tolerant of the coal strike at home,
sure that Jimmy Byrnes, head of the new O.W.M., and kingpin of
Washington production czars, would soon have materials rolling to the
invasion troops.
The night before Larry left New York, Bessie complained about his
going. “I hope you don’t have to make many more trips down there,” she
said petulantly.
Larry let it pass. Liz Brett had come in for a drink during the evening
to tell them about her new husband, a forty-five year old captain in
the Marines. Liz, imitating the kids, had met him one week when he
was home on leave and married him the next. She wanted to get out to
Pearl Harbor where he was stationed, and had almost talked a theatrical
producer into sending her. In return she promised him a set for a play
he was doing about the Pacific. There was so much trouble, though, in
clearing her papers and passport that the producer was forced finally
to rely on Navy photographs for his data. While she was telling this to
Larry and Bess, Liz looked around the living room and noticed a tear in
one of the slipcovers. She advised Bessie not to try and order new ones
until the War ended and some decent fabrics again became available.
After Liz went home, Bess’s spirits took a nosedive. She walked around
the room fingering rips, faulty zippers, missing snap fasteners, and
threadbare spots in the chintz covers as if each were a badge of
disgrace. Larry, jubilant because he had found a pair of black shoes
on his expiring Number Seventeen ration coupon, tried to cheer her by
saying that it might be his last trip to Washington to see Bemrose.
“I hope it is,” Bess said. “You can’t pick up and leave your practice
every time he’s lonesome and wants to see you.”
“But he referred most of the practice to me.”
Her purple lips puckered. “The clients like you for yourself. You know
they do.”
“They’ve really been coming in lately,” Larry admitted. “First thing
you know I won’t be able to stay one of those Little Shots you admire.”
“You’ve worked hard for it, Larry. He did his friends a favor,
recommending a good lawyer to them.” Her dark lips parted with
curiosity. “What makes you think it’s the last weekend you’ll have to
go down?”
“I have a hunch he’s going to start to get along without me. It took
him years to shake off the Old Man, but he finally managed it. Next,
I think he’s going to let Lucy go. That leaves me.” Larry stroked her
neck, under the dark curls in back. “You’ll have more of me on your
hands,” he threatened.
Bessie’s eyes petulantly refused to be glad. “Maybe he won’t need you,
but that doesn’t mean anything. He likes you. He’ll want to see you.”
“Sure, once in a while. But not because he has to have another crutch
to lean on. Once he stops depending on me----”
“Why don’t you wear your new tie, Larry?” she asked. “It goes much
better with that suit.”
He fingered the small patterned maroon tie which harmonized with the
dark red pin stripe in his sharkskin. “What’s the matter with this one?
It’s a perfect match.”
“I suppose he’s going to marry Miss Baldwin,” she said. “But how can
he if she’s overseas? Didn’t you say she went over for the invasion? I
suppose the invasion’s important, but why did she go away and leave him
by himself in that big house?”
“She left him with a good housekeeper. He’s getting along all right.”
“Maybe if he misses her enough, he’ll make up his mind. You’d think he
would know by now. Didn’t you say someone named Holmes, an artist, used
to be crazy about her?” Bessie asked. “I saved something from the paper
about him.” She searched in the drawer of her desk for a clipping. “If
it’s the same Holmes,” she said, handing it to him.
Apparently Steve had been out in Australia working on a series of
paintings for a drug manufacturer and had been hurt in a jeep accident.
He had been taken to a hospital with head injuries, Larry read, but
they were believed minor, and he was expected to recover.
“She might hear about the accident and go to see him,” Bessie suggested.
“Where did you dream up a romantic idea like that? From England to
Australia?”
“I don’t see why not. She could fly to Australia,” Bessie insisted.
“I’ve been trying to tell you she likes Bemrose. She’s not going to fly
out to see Holmes. It’s Bemrose she’s crazy about.”
“If she’s so crazy about him, why did she go overseas?” Bessie stared
stolidly ahead. “What’ll you do with the extra time, Larry? After
they’re married?”
“I can work hard and become one of those corporation lawyers.” He stuck
out his stomach.
“Silly.” She pushed it down. “How old was her aunt, the one who had the
baby?”
“Whose? Lucy’s?”
“The aunt with the husband.”
“I should hope so.”
She frowned. “No, how old?”
“Forty-one, maybe forty-two. I don’t know exactly.”
Her eyes questioned him.
“You mean us?” he asked.
“I’m not saying we have to, Larry. I guess you’ve never wanted to very
much, but you’re doing better now at the office and I thought-- You’re
taking a topcoat to Washington with you, aren’t you?”
He considered it on the train the next day. Maybe Bessie was right.
They had never given it enough thought. In the hand-to-mouth struggle
for a living since they were married, they hadn’t considered seriously
the idea of having a family. Did he want one? And if he didn’t want
children, what did he want? Not more clients. He had enough, the way
things were going, to keep him busy at the office. Not a more active
career in politics. He was sick and tired of the political scramble.
Maybe a family. Maybe he ought to make a few plans of his own. Maybe he
ought to take some of the advice that he had been busy dishing out to
Bemrose.
* * * * *
When Larry arrived in Georgetown the next day, he found Fred Maxwell,
an old beau of Janice’s, drinking brandy in the study with Arthur.
“Fred phoned around dinner time and said he was free tonight,” Bemrose
explained. “You haven’t seen Washington until you’ve met Fred. He’s a
landmark, like the Washington monument----”
“Old and dead,” Maxwell interrupted.
“Not according to Janice,” Arthur protested.
“She hasn’t been out with me for ten years. She wouldn’t know. By the
way, I spoke to her today. She phoned in a story from London.”
“How is she?” Arthur sat forward in his chair.
“That’s what she wants to know. How you are. She gave me hell because
I hadn’t been over to check up. Tell me a few details so I can square
myself tomorrow when I talk to her.” Maxwell’s skinny leg hung loosely
on his knee. The strong arch of his nose kept its slender tip from
faltering, but his cheeks fell away in unashamed gulleys. A pompadour
of graying hair offset his cadaverousness, and the humor lines around
his mouth looked as if they might have been put there by off-color
stories. Washington editor for _Everett’s_ since 1915, Maxwell had
hired Janice as a novice, taken her past the brass knockers into the
big houses, and introduced her to Congress, Senator by Senator, over a
series of whiskeys and sodas. For about a year she was “Fred’s girl.”
Then they stopped seeing each other until Arthur moved down. Maxwell
liked Bemrose the minute he met him and had hung around ever since.
“Fred is a bachelor, the lucky stiff,” Arthur told Larry. “They tell me
he’s hell with women, but he’s always been too smart----”
“Too smart is right. I thought I was better off single. But lately I’ve
found out there is a catch in this business of having your freedom. I
didn’t figure out some of the other ways a man can be tied down. Guess
how many nights a week I have off.” He held up a finger. “One.”
“Fred lives with his sister, and she hasn’t been well,” Arthur said.
“Cancer. It hit her a year ago,” Maxwell explained. “The doctor gives
her another eight months. I go out the one night, and they phone me
when she has pain and can’t stand it alone.”
Larry nodded his sympathy, and Arthur said, “I suppose there was a time
when you thought about getting married----”
“About ten years ago was the last time, when Janice and I went around
together. But I decided that I didn’t want to be tied down. I didn’t
marry any of the others for the same reason. With Janice, I knew it was
probably the last time I’d consider it. Getting too old.”
Larry found it difficult to tune in sharply on what Fred Maxwell was
saying. He kept thinking of Janice. Almost everything in the room
reminded him of her--the licks of shadow on the ceiling, the ink spot
on the leather top of her desk, a mess of papers under her Chinese
bronze weight, her uncovered typewriter, and the wall of ragged
bindings piled crazily to fill the bookshelves. He found himself
believing that she was out on a late assignment. She’d come in dead
beat any minute and ask for a cup of coffee or for some of the brandy.
“It’s fellows like me who get hooked,” Maxwell said. “The kind who know
all the answers. We feel good about ducking responsibility. Then, when
we’re too old, we wake up and find that everything else has passed us
by, too. That place of mine is a hospital, a morgue. Do you know the
fellows I envy? The plodding Joes who took responsibilities when I was
busy making fun of them and have some swell kids to show for it today.
I’m the big freedom guy. Only freedom’s caught up with me. It was an
illusion anyway, and it didn’t last. If I had it to do over again, I
would have married a dumb little girl when I was twenty-five, the kind
who believed me when I told her that I had to work a couple of nights a
week.”
“Wouldn’t Janice have let you out?” Bemrose asked.
“She was never that dumb.” Maxwell tapped the table with the bowl of
his meerschaum pipe. “After fifty-three years I know my limit with a
woman,” he said. “It’s six months. I’d have done fine with the right
kind of wife. I’d have had a home today, not a hospital, and on the
side I’d have had enough variety.”
“To six months with a woman!” Bemrose lifted his glass.
“To Janice.” Maxwell altered the toast. “Why don’t you stop kidding
around, Bemrose? Why don’t you get a divorce and marry her? By the way,
how are you feeling? If I know Janice, she’ll have me on the phone
first thing in the morning. Your symptoms are going to cost _Everett’s_
plenty.”
“He hasn’t any symptoms,” Larry said. “Have you?”
“You can tell her I have a cold feeling of anger when I fall over the
bedroom slippers she forgot to put in her closet.”
“You should hear Bess,” Larry said. “She’s furious that Janice left you
in the house alone. She thinks it’s an outrage----”
“Who’s Bess?” Maxwell asked.
“My wife.”
“Well, you tell Bess that the readers of _Everett’s_ would be outraged
if this fellow made a housekeeper of her.”
“How long before the invasion?” Bemrose asked suddenly.
“Six months to a year,” Maxwell said.
“But I thought----”
“Sure, I know. So does everyone else. That’s why all those
correspondents are sitting over there. There are enough of them in
England to sink the damned island. They could come over here and get
back again half a dozen times before anything happens.”
“Then she could come home and get back?” Larry said.
“Why don’t you hang around the office tomorrow morning and talk to her
when she phones?” Fred asked Arthur, his ghostly face coming to life.
“Tell her that you’ve thought about it and you don’t want her to go in
on the first wave. You don’t think it’s safe.”
“I’m not sure I want her to go in at all,” said Bemrose, his jaw set
obstinately.
“That’s no way to get her to say ‘yes,’” Maxwell advised. “How about
it? Do you want to come down tomorrow and talk to her on the phone?”
Silently Bemrose quizzed Larry.
“Maybe he’d rather cable her,” Larry suggested. “The connection might
not be good, and she might not be able to hear him over the phone.”
“Larry’s right. I think I’d rather cable,” Arthur said gratefully.
He found a lined yellow pad on Janice’s desk, and rolled a sheet of
paper into her typewriter. Deliberately his fingers tackled the keys.
“Take it down for me, will you?” He folded the message and handed it to
Larry. “When you get there, you can read it.”
At the corner of the dark, cool street, Larry disregarded the blackout
and struck a match. He held its flame close to the message.
MAXWELL SAYS YOU HAVE TIME COME HOME
MARRY ME WILL YOU TAKE RISK LOVE
ARTHUR BEMROSE
Although Larry knew it was one of the last errands he was going to do
for Bemrose, he didn’t feel any special regret. He wasn’t even sorry
about giving up an old habit. He saw the trolley coming, and stepped
briskly into the street to signal it.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Italization
and accent marks were standardized.
The name of the painter Brueghel was standardized.
Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:
Page 73: “er great-grandfather had” “Her great-grandfather had”
Page 94: “want and pro-Vichy talk” “want any pro-Vichy talk”