War and Remembrance (109 page)

Before Byron could say anything, a deep rich male voice rumbled from inside, “What is it, honey?” Hugh Cleveland came in sight, nude to the waist, and below that clad in a flopping flowery lava-lava, scratching his hairy chest.

“It’s
Byron,”
Madeline gasped. “How are you, Byron? My God, when did you get back?”

Fully as disconcerted as she was, Byron asked, “Didn’t you get my message?”

“What message? No, nothing. Well, Jesus Christ, now that you’re here, come in.”

“Hi, Byron,” said Hugh Cleveland, with the charming smile that showed all his big white teeth.

“Say, are you two married already?” Byron said, walking into a well-furnished living room where an ice bucket, a bottle of Scotch, and soda bottles stood on a table.

Cleveland and Madeline exchanged a look, and Madeline said, “Sweetie, how long will you be here, anyway? Where are you staying? Jesus Christ, why didn’t you write or telephone or something?”

A door was open to a bedroom, and Byron could see a big rumpled double bed. Though abstractly he accepted the possibility that his sister was misbehaving, he literally did not believe his eyes. He said to Madeline, with clumsy blundering bluntness, “Madeline, come on, are you married, or what?”

Hugh Cleveland might have been well-advised to keep quiet at this point. But he smiled a big white smile, spread his hands, and rumbled warmly, “Look, Byron, we’re all adults, and this is the twentieth century. So if you’ll —”

Byron swiftly drew back his arm despite the bulk of his bridge coat, and crashed a fist into Cleveland’s smiling face.

Madeline gave another
“EEK!”
louder and shriller than before. Cleveland went down like a poled ox, but he was not really knocked out, because he landed on his hands and knees, crawled about, and got up. As he did so his lava-lava fell off, and he was standing stark naked, with a sizable white paunch protruding over his spindly legs and private parts. This unprepossessing sight was quite eclipsed by the astounding transformation of his face. He looked like Dracula. All his upper front teeth were filed to sharp little points, with slightly longer fangs at either end.

“Jesus
CHRIST,
Hugh,” Madeline cried out, “your teeth! Look at your
teeth!”

Hugh Cleveland stumbled to a wall mirror, grinned at himself, and uttered an eerie wail. “Jethuth Chritht, my bridge! My porthelain bridge. It cotht me fifteen hundred flicking dollarth! Where the hell ith it?” He glanced wildly around the floor, turned on Byron and lisped in great indignation, “Why the hell did you thock me? How ridiculouth can you get? Let’th find that bridge, and damned fatht!”

“Oh, Hugh,” Madeline said nervously, “put something on, for Heaven’s sake, will you? You’re prancing around naked as a jaybird.”

Cleveland blinked down at his bare body, snatched the lava-lava, and fastened it on as he strode around searching the floor for his bridgework. Byron saw a white thing lying on the carpet under a chair. “Is this it?” he said, picking up the object and offering it to Cleveland. “Sorry I did that.” Byron wasn’t really very sorry, but the man was a pitifully idiotic sight with his sharpened-down tooth stumps, and the lava-lava carelessly dragging on his bulging belly.

“That’th it!” Cleveland went back to the mirror, and with two thumbs
pressed the thing into his mouth. He turned around. “How’s that, now?” He looked normal again, flashing the celebrated smile that Byron had seen in so many magazine advertisements of Cleveland’s radio sponsor, a toothpaste company.

“Oh, heavens, that’s better,” said Madeline, “and Byron, you
apologize
to Hugh.”

“I did,” Byron said.

After grimacing at himself in the mirror and gnashing his teeth to test the fixity of the bridge, Cleveland turned to them. “Well, it’s just a damned good thing it didn’t break. I’ve got that U.S. Chamber of Commerce banquet tonight to toastmaster, and that reminds me, Mad, Arnold never did give me my thcript. What am I thuppothed to do if— oh, Chritht, there it goeth. It’th thlipping! I’m loothing it!” As he talked, Byron could indeed see the bridge come loose and drop out of his mouth. Cleveland lunged to catch it, stepped on the hem of the lava-lava, and fell on his face naked again, the flowery cloth pulling off and crumpling under him.

Madeline clapped her hand to her mouth and glanced at Byron, her wide eyes sparkling with their sense of fun shared since childhood. Hurrying to Cleveland, she spoke in tones of tender concern, “Are you hurt, honey?”

“Hurt? Thit, no.” Cleveland got to his feet, the bridge clutched in his fingers, and strode to the bedroom, his plump white bottom waggling. “Thith ith damned theriouth, Mad. I’m calling my dentitht, and he better be in! I’m getting paid a thouthand buckth to be toathtmathter tonight. Thon of a bith!”

He slammed the door.

Picking up the lava-lava, Madeline snapped at Byron, “Oh,
YOU! HOW
could you be such an
ANIMAL!”

Byron glanced around the room. “Honestly, what is this setup, Madeline? Does he live here with you?”

“What? How can he? He’s got a family, stupid.”

“Well, what are you doing then?” Pouting, she did not answer. “Mad, are you just having a toss now and then with this fat old guy? How is that possible?”

“Oh, you don’t understand anything. Hugh is a friend, a dear good friend. You’ll never know how good he’s been to me, and what’s more —”

“You’re committing adultery, Mad.”

A fleeting miserable look came and went on her face. Madeline flipped a hand, shook her head, and smiled a super-wise female smile. “Oh, you’re so naive. His marriage is better now than it was,
MUCH
better. And I’m a much better person. There’s more than one way to live, Briny. You and I come from a family of fossils. I know Hugh would marry me if I pushed him, he’s daffy about me, but —”

Half-dressed, Cleveland looked out of the bedroom and lisped loudly at Madeline that his dentist was driving in from Thcarthdale. “Call Tham right away. Tell him to get hith ath over here in ten minuteth. Chritht, what a meth!”

“Tham?” Byron said as Cleveland closed the door.

“Sam’s his chauffeur,” Madeline said, hurrying to a telephone and dialling. “Oh, Byron, are you disowning me? Can I cook you a dinner? Shall we get blind drunk tonight? Want to stay here? There’s a spare room. When are you leaving? What’s the news of Natalie? — Hello, hello, let me talk to Sam… Well,
find
him, Carol. Yes, yes, I
KNOW
my brother Byron’s in town. Jesus Christ; do I know it… Never mind, just find Sam, and tell him to get the Cadillac over here in ten minutes flat.”

She said as she hung up, “Byron, I’ve worked for Hugh for four years, and I didn’t know he had bridgework.”

“Live and learn, Mad.”

“If the whole thing weren’t so awful,” she said, “and if you weren’t such a disgusting neanderthal, it would be the funniest goddamned thing I’ve been through in my life.” Her mouth was wrinkling, suppressing laughter. “I’ve nagged him for years to get rid of that horrible stomach. Look at you, now! Flat as a boy, just like Dad. Will, you give your adulterous sister a kiss?”

“Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion,
“
rails the sour Thersites.
“A
burning devil take them!”

Janice had some warning, so she was able to receive Byron in poised innocence; as Madeline could have done too, given half a chance.

When her father-in-law had passed through Honolulu, dissembling to him about her affair with Carter Aster had given her not a qualm. It was none of his business. No man could think like a woman about these things, least of all Captain Victor Henry, who wouldn’t even play cards on Sunday. Frankness would have led only to embarrassment, and no possible useful purpose would have been served. But Byron’s cable posed a problem to Janice.

Aster had told her that her brother-in-law would be reporting to the
Moray.
Byron was altogether a peculiar sort, fully as dashing as Warren, but with a sweetly idealistic attitude toward women which could prove a nuisance. His moral views seemed as narrow as his father’s. His tale about the girl in Australia had been all but incredible, but Janice had believed it. What would have been the point of a lie that made him out a prudish simpleton?

Yet, when a war was on, when men were far from home and lonely, when everywhere there was great activity in what Aster robustly called
“unauthorized ass” — a phrase that much amused Janice, though she pretended to bridle at it — why should Byron have denied himself a natural and beautiful relationship? The Aster affair had sprung up more or less accidentally. After Midway an attack of dengue fever had laid her low, and Carter Aster had visited her every day and had seen to her needs of food and medicine, and one thing had led to another.

She knew that Byron would be scandalized if he found out. Janice didn’t understand that side of Byron; he was damned different from his brother. She regarded his prudishness as a quaint minor foible, and she certainly did not want to disillusion or estrange him. She considered herself a Henry, she liked that family better than her own, and she had always found Byron a very attractive man. It was wonderful to have him around.

So as Aster was getting dressed to return to the submarine late one night, Janice decided to take things in hand. She was smoking a cigarette in bed, nude under a sheet.

“Byron’s due in the morning, honey.”

“He is?” Aster paused in pulling on khaki trousers. “So soon? How do you know that?”

“He cabled me from San Francisco. He’s getting a ride on NATS.”

“Well, great! It’s high time. We need him aboard.”

It was past midnight. Aster never stayed till morning. He liked to be up and about on the submarine at reveille; also, he was tender of Janice’s reputation, living as she did in a row of houses with early-rising neighbors. Janice loved Aster, or at least loved her hours with him, but she wanted nothing permanent with him. He had nothing like Warren’s breadth, he read trash, and his talk was pure Navy. He reminded her of the many Pensacola pilots who had bored her before Warren had come along. Aster was an able naval engineer, with an urge to excel and to kill, born for submarining. And he was a considerate and satisfying lover; the perfect partner for unauthorized ass, so to say, but not much more. If Aster sensed her qualified regard for him, he wasn’t complaining.

“The point is, dear,” Janice said, “that hanky-panky has to be out for a while.” He gave her a cool inquiring look, tucking in his shirt. “I mean, you know Byron. I love him dearly. I don’t want him getting all upset and disapproving. I can’t have it.”

“Now let me understand you. Are you calling it off?”

“Oh, would you mind, all that much?”

“Hell, yes, I’d mind, Janice.”

“Well, don’t look so tragic. Smile.”

“Why does Byron have to know?”

“When you’re in port, he’ll be spending nights here.”

“He’ll have the duty every other night.”

“Yes, I suppose he will. All the same —”

Aster came to the bed, sat down, and gathered her in his arms.

After a breathless few kisses she murmured, “Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. One thing, Carter. Byron must never,
never
find out. Understand?”

“Sure,” Aster said. “No need for it.”

The morning he arrived Byron stayed only long enough to have breakfast, then went on to the submarine; but in that short time he unburdened with frank and deep bitterness of heart the gist of what had happened in Marseilles. The news that Natalie and her baby were caught in Germany horrified Janice. Automatically she defended what her sister-in-law had done, and tried to reassure Byron that it would all turn out well. But she feared Natalie was doomed. Watching him play with Vic in the garden before he left, she had to exert willpower not to cry. The instant mutual magnetism between the uncle and the child was poignant to behold. When Byron said he had to go, Victor clung to him with arms and legs as he had never done with Warren.

The
Moray
stayed around Pearl Harbor for several more weeks, most of the time out at sea in the training areas. When the submarine came into port Byron spent every other night at Janice’s cottage. The first time he remained aboard, Aster telephoned. Janice did not know what to do. She told him to come over, but not until after little Vic was asleep in bed. His visit was a failure. She was uneasy, Aster quickly discerned it, and after a couple of drinks he left without touching her. She saw him only once after that before the
Moray
left on patrol. When Byron told her that they were sailing in the morning, she said, “Oh! Well, why don’t you ask Carter to come to dinner, then? He’s been awfully kind to me and Vic.”

“That’s nice of you, Jan. Can he bring a girl?”

“If he wants to, sure.”

Aster brought no girl. The three of them dined by candlelight, drinking a lot of wine and working up to a jolly mood. Byron’s spirits were improving with his return to submarine duty. Aster’s correct mixture of informality and aloofness won Janice’s gratitude. At one point they turned on the radio for the war news, and heard that the Germans had at last surrendered at Stalingrad. They opened another bottle of wine on that.

“There go the Krauts,” Byron said, lifting his glass, “and none too soon.” To his wine-flushed mind, this news signalled the early deliverance of his family.