False Gods (24 page)

At last I realized something about LSTs. The ship's company does not depend on the guts and skill of the commanding officer to anything like the degree it does on vessels of attack. These big naval marine trucks perform their semi-automatic tasks under the orders of a group or flotilla commander, who is apt to be a competent and almost certainly courageous regular navy officer. The skipper of the individual unit is important to his crew largely because of his power to make their lives uncomfortable. If they have the good fortune to have drawn a reasonably easygoing and pleasant captain, how much does it matter if he has a yellow streak? The vessel, anyway, is rarely under direct attack.

So my defection was overlooked if not forgotten. I even dared to draw a breath of something like relief at the idea that the worst was now over. When we returned to the States, after some months of uneventful Channel ferrying, for an overhaul in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I was generous in granting liberty to the crew and entertained the officers on several occasions at night clubs.

I was still afraid, however, that one of the officers might tell Amanda of the horrid incident. The exec had left us to take command of another LST, and I did not believe that any of the friendly junior officers would do so vile a thing consciously, but we drank a good deal at our parties, and I could not be sure what distorted joke might emerge from the lips of a young and intoxicated ensign. I decided at last it would be safer to give her my own version of what had happened.

She listened closely and without interrupting. She did not seem surprised. But also she did not minimize it.

"It could have been a good deal worse," was her first comment. "If the ship had been hit while you were away from the bridge, I suppose you might have been in some sort of official trouble. Anyhow, you're due now for shore duty. And with any luck the war should be over before you go back to sea."

I did not at all like her implication that the episode was apt to be repeated. "But even if I should go back to sea," I protested, "there's no reason to assume I'd have another attack of nerves. I have a funny gut feeling that this was the kind of thing that always
was
going to happen to me, but now it's happened, it may not come again."

"But why risk it? You're home, my darling, and you're safe, thank God. I'm sure Admiral Clarke will be tickled pink to have you back in your old slot. And he won't let you go again, either. Oh, Ally, don't tempt fate! You've done your bit. Let well enough alone."

But I felt trivialized. There was a distinct discomfort in her minimization of a lifetime's trial. If my ancient inner enemy had been merely something that could be kept at bay by a silly staff job in Church Street, what did the long agony of my resistance amount to?

"I wonder whether I shan't apply for an LST command in the Pacific," I said moodily. "The war there may go on for years."

"You might stop to consider what you owe me and the baby," she said in a sharper tone. But then her expression suddenly changed, and she struck a deeper note. She even stretched out her arms to me. "Oh, my dearest, do you think I don't
know?
"

"Know what?" I did not rush to her arms. Every part of me was throbbing with alarm.

"Know everything, of course. How could I not, loving you as I do? Don't you see, that's got to be the answer? Oh, my poor suffering sweet, if you could only relax and love and let yourself be loved, how easily things would work themselves out! All your bad dreams would fade away, and you and I would be afraid of nothing in the world."

So there it was, Jonathan. A woman's answer to everything. Open the floodgates and let the dammed-up sentiment come thundering out to obliterate all the ugly-bugly things in the big bad universe. And she may have been right, too. That's the sorry part. She may have been offering me my last clear chance. And I, like the ass I was doomed to be, or had doomed myself to be, had to turn away from her appeal. Perhaps I felt that otherwise I should be giving up my soul or my ego or even, silly as it sounds, my manhood. When all she was asking was that I give up the foolish little comedy that I had been making of my life! The absurd little piece that I had been desperately trying to turn into a noble tragedy! But lives that won't bow to a hurricane can bend to a gust of wind. Maybe what I couldn't bear was being called "my poor suffering sweet."

Anyway, I mixed her a cocktail and we changed the subject. That night we made love. The next day brought the news of the bombing of Hiroshima, and we knew that I should not have to go to sea again. I remember my gall in reminding myself, as a way of putting the whole matter behind me, of Gibbon's statement that the courage of a soldier is the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.

Alistair and I sat in silence for a minute in my office after he had finished. The room was darkening in the winter twilight. I switched on my desk lamp.

"But you and Amanda had another ten years of happy married life after that, did you not?"

"Oh, yes." He spoke in a tone of faint weariness. "She was never a nag. She didn't return to the subject. As you know, we had another daughter." He smiled wryly. "Born nine months after that discussion. We went on as before. Ours was what you might call a temperate union. Only, of course, because I made it that way. She would have been pleased with something a good deal hotter. But she was always a good sport."

"Until now?"

"Well, who could blame her for leaving me
now?
Hadn't she offered me a way out? Hadn't she given me fair warning?"

He rose and walked to the window. No longer facing him, I was able to be more personal.

"Were there other incidents of your old trouble in the last years?"

"No. It may have been just coincidence. Our life was a very safe one. And my suspicion that I might have finally licked my old demon grew almost to a conviction. We had prospered. The girls were fine girls. We had many friends. The years glided by gracefully enough. And then Amanda and I had to go and sign on for that fateful cruise."

"Did you have any apprehensions before the wreck?"

"I did." He turned back to me, flat of tone and positive again. "We gave a little going-away party in our cabin before the boat sailed. You remember, it was our anniversary, and half a dozen friends had come to see us off. I was feeling nothing but the pleasantness of the occasion when a sudden fit of blind panic struck me. As in the Dover Straits I was absolutely convinced that the ship was doomed to sink. I couldn't even speak. I simply stood there, a glass in my hand, my mouth gaping, until someone asked me whether I was all right. I muttered something about needing a breath of air and went out on deck. Amanda at once followed me. She had been watching me and had divined what was wrong. She told me, very firmly, that we would leave the ship as soon as our guests had gone. But I rejected her proposal. I did so sharply, testily. I insisted that I had simply had a moment of dizziness. There was nothing she could do. An hour later we sailed."

He sat down and we were silent for another minute.

"I'll spare you the horrors of the fire. I told Amanda to go to her lifeboat station and she did. I saw that there wouldn't be enough boats for all. Half couldn't be launched because of the listing. I had made up my mind to jump in the water and was hurrying down the deck when through the open door of an outside cabin I spied a woman's fur coat and hat hanging on a peg. The fit hit me again, and I went black."

He ran both hands through his hair and actually smiled.

"So there we are, Jonathan. There's a kind of peace in having touched bottom. I don't ever have to pretend again. At the cost of everything I valued in life—or should have valued—my family, my job, my friends, my reputation—I have been given back my life itself. And what's more, it's a life so poor and shabby that almost anything I do with it will be an improvement. I'll be alone in the world, but that may be better than to be the way I was."

"You won't be quite alone," I assured him.

"Well, I know I can count on you. And there'll be those who pity me and those who want to show their magnanimity by not dropping me altogether. But I don't think I'm really going to mind being more with myself. So many of my old friends were really friends of the
other
Alistair Dows."

"Perhaps I can tell you something about the new Alistair. I shouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be brave as a lion!"

"What a romantic you are, Jonathan. But the point, don't you see, is that that doesn't matter to me anymore. Whatever I am, I am. And whatever I was, I was. I've been dealt a hand, like everyone else. It happens to be a very bad one. In fact, I don't see any honor cards. But I have to play it out. That's all."

He rose now to take his leave.

"Amanda will come back to you."

"It's not impossible. She may find that she, too, has no face cards. But whichever way she decides, it's all right with me. As I say, I can't go any further down. And I think I can face anything now. Even forgiveness."