War and Remembrance (156 page)

T
HROUGH
the closed bedroom door it sounded like crying, but Rhoda cried so seldom that Victor Henry shrugged and passed on to the guest room where he now slept. It was very late. He had sat up for hours in the library after dinner, working on landing craft documents for his meeting with Colonel Peters; something he was not looking forward to, but a priorities conflict was forcing it. He undressed, showered, drank off his nightcap of bourbon and water, and before turning in stopped to listen at Rhoda’s door. The sounds had become unmistakable: keening moans, broken by sobs.

“Rhoda?”

No answer. The sounds ceased as though switched off.

“Rho! Come on, what is it?”

Muffled sad voice: “Oh, I’m all right. Go to sleep.”

“Let me in.”

“The door’s not locked, Pug.”

The room was dark. When he turned on the light Rhoda sat up in an oyster-white satiny nightdress, blinking and dabbing a tissue at swollen red eyes. “Was I making a racket? I tried to keep it low.”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, Pug, I’m done for. Everything’s in ruins. You’re well rid of me.”

“I think you can use a drink.”

“I must look !
GRUESOME
. Don’t I?” She put her hands to her tumbled hair.

“Want to come down to the library and talk?”

“You’re an angel. Scotch and soda. Be right there.” She thrust shapely white legs and thighs out of bed. Pug went to the library and mixed drinks at the movable bar. She soon appeared in a peignoir over her nightgown, brushing her hair in familiar charming gestures he had not seen since moving to the guest room. She was lightly made-up and she had done something to her eyes, for they were bright and clear.

“I washed my face and
FLUNG
myself into bed hours and hours ago, then I couldn’t sleep.”

“But why? Because I have to see Colonel Peters? It’s just a business meeting, Rhoda. I told you that.” He handed her the drink. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but I won’t make any trouble for you.”

“Pug, I’m in such distress!” She took a deep gulp of her drink. “Somebody’s been writing Hack anonymous letters. He’s received, oh, five or six. He tore up the first ones, but he showed me two. With abject apologies, but he showed them. They’ve gotten under his skin.”

Rhoda gave her husband one of her most melting, appealing looks. He thought of mentioning the anonymous letters he too had received, but saw no purpose in that. Pamela might have told Rhoda about them; in any case, no use stirring up that mud. He did not comment.

She burst out, “It’s so unfair! I didn’t even
KNOW
Hack, then, did I? Talk about your double standard! Why, he’s slept with all
KINDS
of women, to hear him talk. Single, married, divorced, he makes no bones about it, even reminisces, and the point always is how different I am. And I am too, I
am!
There was only Palmer Kirby. I still don’t know how or why
THAT
happened. I’m not one of those cheap flirts he’s run around with all his life. But these letters are wrecking everything. He seems so unhappy, so
CRUSHED.
Of course I denied everything. I had to, for
HIS
sake. For such an experienced man, he’s strangely
NAIVE.”

What surprised Pug most was that this casual outright admission of her adultery — “There was only Palmer Kirby” — could give him pain; not the agony of the first shock, her letter asking for a divorce, but still, real pain. Rhoda had skirted a specific admission until this very moment. Her habit of silence had served her well, but the words had slipped out because Peters was now the man who mattered. This was the real end, thought Pug. He, like Kirby, was part of her past. She could be careless with him.

“The man loves you, Rhoda. Hell believe you, and forget about the letters.”

“Oh, will he? And suppose he asks
you
about them tomorrow?”

“That’s unthinkable.”

“Not so unthinkable. You’re meeting for the first time since all this happened.”

“Rhoda, we’ve got a very urgent priorities problem to thrash out. He won’t bring up personal matters. Certainly not those anonymous letters. Not to me. His skin would crawl at the idea.”

She looked both amused and miserable. “Male pride, you mean.”

“Call it that. Forget it. Go to sleep, and pleasant dreams.”

“May I have another drink?”

“Sure.”

“Will you tell me afterward what happened? I mean, what you talked about?”

“Not the business part.”

“I’m not interested in the business part.”

“If anything personal comes up, I’ll tell you, yes.” He handed her the drink. “Any idea who’s writing the letters?”

“No. It’s a woman. Some vicious bitch or other. Oh, they abound, Pug, they abound. She uses green ink, writes in a funny up-and-down hand on little tan sheets. Her facts are all cockeyed, but she does mention Palmer Kirby. Very nastily. Dates, places, all that. Disgusting.”

“Where’s Kirby now?”

“I don’t know. I last saw him in Chicago when I was coming back from California, right after — after Midway. I stopped there for a few hours to break it off once for all. Funnily enough, that’s how I met Hack.”

As she drank, Rhoda described the encounter in the Pump Room, and finding Colonel Peters afterward on the train to New York.

“I’ll never know why he took a fancy to me, Pug. I was
very
distant in the club car that night. Actually, I
FROZE
him. I was feeling wretched about Palmer, and you, and the whole mess, and I was by no means over Warren. I wouldn’t accept a drink. Wouldn’t get into conversation. I mean, he was so
OBVIOUSLY
fresh from a roll in the hay with that creature in green! He still had that glint in his eye, and I wasn’t about to give him
IDEAS.
Then next morning in the dining car the steward seated him at my table. It was crowded for breakfast, so I couldn’t object, although I don’t know, maybe he
SLIPPED
that steward something. Anyway, that was it. He said Palmer had told him about me, and he admired my brave spirit so much, and all that. I still kept my distance. I always have. He really
PURSUED
me, in a gentlemanly way, showing up at church, and Navy affairs, and Bundles for Britain, and so on. It was a very gradual business. It was
MONTHS
before I even agreed to go to the theatre with him. Maybe that’s what intrigued Hack, the sheer novelty of it all. It couldn’t have been my girlish charm. But when he thinks back to when we met, there I
WAS,
after all, visiting Palmer Kirby. It makes those horrid letters so
PLAUSIBLE.”

This was more than Rhoda had said about her romance in all the months that Pug had been back. She was being positively chatty. Pug said, “Feeling better now, aren’t you?”

“Heaps. You’re sweet to be so reassuring. I’m not a crybaby, Pug, you know that, but I am in a
STATE
about those letters. When you told me you were meeting him tomorrow, I panicked. I mean, Hack can’t possibly ever ask Palmer. That’s not done. Palmer wouldn’t tell, anyway. You’re the only other one who knows. You’re the aggrieved husband, and, well, I just got to thinking of all kinds of awful possibilities.” She had finished her drink and was slipping pink mules back on her bare feet.

“I really didn’t know anything, anyway, Rhoda. Not until tonight.”

She went rigid, staring at him, one mule in her hand, her mind obviously racing back over the conversation. “Oh, nuts.” She slammed the slipper down on the floor. “Of course you knew. Don’t be like that, Pug. How could you
NOT
know? What was it ever all about?”

Pug was sitting at the desk where the big leather-bound Warren album
still lay, beside a pile of his file folders. “I’m sort of waked up now,” he said, picking up a folder. “I’ll do a little more work.”

MANHATTAN ENGINEER DISTRICT

Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, U.S.A., Chief

Colonel Harrison Peters, Deputy Chief

The signs on the two adjoining doors, on an upper floor in the State Department building, were so inconspicuous that Pug walked by them and had to backtrack. Colonel Peters strode from behind his desk to shake hands. “Well! High time we met again.”

Pug had forgotten how tall the man was, perhaps six feet three, and how handsome: brilliant blue eyes, healthily colored long bony face, straight body in a sharply tailored uniform, no trace of a bulge at the middle. Despite the gray hair the general effect was youthful, manly, and altogether impressive, except for an uncertain quality in his broad smile. No doubt he was embarrassed. Yet Pug felt very little resentment toward the Army man. It helped a lot that the fellow had not cuckolded him. Pug did believe he hadn’t, mainly because that had been the only way for Rhoda to play this particular fish.

The small desk was bare. The only other furniture was an armchair. There were no pictures on the wall, no files, no window, no bookcase, no secretary; a low-level operation, one would think, assigned to a run-of-the-mill colonel. Pug declined coffee, and sat in the armchair.

“Before we get down to business,” said Peters, flushing a little, “let me say one thing. I have the greatest respect for you. Rhoda is what she is, a woman in a million, because of her years with you. I regret we haven’t yet talked about all that. We’re both busy as hell, I know, but one of these days we’ll have to.”

“By all means.”

“Do you smoke cigars?” Peters took a box of long Havanas from a desk drawer.

“Thanks.” Pug did not want a cigar, but accepting it might improve the atmosphere.

Peters took his time about lighting up. “Sorry I was slow getting back to you.”

“I guess the phone call from Harry Hopkins helped.”

“That would have made no difference, if your security clearance hadn’t checked out.”

“Just to shortcut this a bit,” Pug said, “when I was naval attaché in Berlin I supplied the S-1 committee, at their request, with dope on German industrial activity in graphite, heavy water, uranium, and thorium. I know
the Army’s working on a uranium bomb, with a blank-check triple-A priority power. That’s why I’m here. The landing craft program needs those couplings I mentioned over the telephone.”

“How do you know we’ve got them?” Peters leaned back, clasping his long arms behind his head. A harder professional tone came into his voice.

“You haven’t got them. They’re still warehoused in Pennsylvania. The Dresser firm wouldn’t say anything except that they’re on Army order. The prime contractor, Kellogg, wouldn’t talk at all. I ran into a blank wall at the War Production Board, too. The fellows there just clammed up. The landing craft program hasn’t conflicted with the uranium bomb before. I figured it couldn’t be anything else. So I called you.”

“What makes you think I’m in the uranium bomb business?”

“General Connolly told me in Tehran that you were working on something very big. I took a shot in the dark.”

“You mean,” Peters asked, tough and incredulous, “that you telephoned me on a guess?”

“Right. Do we get the couplings, Colonel?”

After a long pause, and a mutual staring contest, Peters replied, “Sorry, no.”

“Why not? What are you using them for?”

“Jesus Christ, Henry! For a manufacturing process of the highest national urgency.”

“I know that. But is this component irreplaceable? All it does is connect pipes. There are many ways to connect pipes.”

“Then use another way on your landing craft.”

“I’ll tell you my problem, if you’ll listen.”

“Sure you won’t have coffee?”

“Thanks. Black, no sugar. This is a fine cigar.”

“Best in the world.” Peters ordered coffee over the intercom. Pug was liking the man better as he toughened up. This rapid exchange over the desk was a little like a long point in tennis. Peters’s returns so far were hard but not sneaky or tricky.

“I’m listening.” Peters leaned back in his swivel chair, nursing a knee.

“Okay. Our shipyards have gotten so jammed that we’ve subcontracted some construction to Britain. We’re sending sections which can be put together by semiskilled help and launched in a few days. That is,
if
the right components are on hand. Now, these Dresser couplings go in faster than welded or bolted joints. They require little experience or strength to install. Also, uncoupling them to check faulty lines is simple. The
Queen Mary
sails Friday, Colonel, with fifteen thousand troops aboard, and I’ve reserved cargo space for shipping that stuff. I’ve got trucks standing by in Pennsylvania, ready to take the lot to New York. I’m talking about components for
forty vessels. If they’re launched on schedule, Eisenhower will hit the French beaches with more force than he’ll have otherwise.”

“We hear this kind of thing all the time,” Peters said. “The British will connect up those lines, one way or another.”

“Look, the decision to put these vessels together in England turned on hard specifications for speed of assembly. When we shipped the sections those couplings were available. Now you’ve overridden our priority. Why?”