War and Remembrance (159 page)

“Jesus! You never know with a woman, Pug, do you? Sorry to hear that.”

“Good-night, Colonel.” It was a sharp cut-off tone.

“Pug, just one more question. Did Dr. Fred Kirby have anything to do with all this?”

There it was. The thing Rhoda had feared was coming to pass because of this forced intimacy. What Victor Henry said next could make or break the rest of Rhoda’s life; and he had to answer fast, for every second of hesitation was a slur on her, on him, and on their marriage.

“What the hell does that mean?” Pug hoped he put the right puzzlement, tinged with anger, in his tone.

“I’ve been getting letters, Pug, damnable anonymous letters, about Rhoda and Dr. Kirby. I’m ashamed of myself for paying them any attention, but —”

“You should be. Fred Kirby’s an old friend of mine. We met when I was stationed in Berlin. Rhoda had to come home when the war broke out. Fred was in Washington then, and he played tennis with her, and took her to shows and such, sort of the way you’ve been doing, but with no complications. I knew about it, and I appreciated it. I don’t like this conversation much, and I’d like to turn in.”

“Sorry, Pug.”

“Okay.”

Silence. Then Peters’s voice, low, troubled, and drunk. “It’s because I idolize Rhoda that I’m so upset. I’m more than upset, I’m tortured. Pug, I’ve known a hell of a lot of women, prettier than Rhoda, and sexier. But she’s
virtuous. That’s where her preciousness lies. That sounds strange coming from me, but that’s how I feel. Rhoda’s the first lady in every sense of the word that I’ve ever known, except for my own mother. She’s perfect. She’s elegant, modest, decent, and truthful. She never lies. Christ, most women lie the way they breathe. You know that. You can’t blame them. We keep trying to screw them, they play a desperate game, and all’s fair. Don’t you agree?”

Peters had drunk up the bottle, Pug thought, to nerve himself for this. The maundering could go on all night. He made no reply.

“I mean I’m not talking about these stodgy wives, Pug. I’m talking about stylish women. My mother was a knockout till she was eighty-two. Christ, she looked like a chorus girl in her coffin. Yet I want to tell you, she was a saint. Like Rhoda, she went to church every Sunday, rain or shine. Rhoda’s as stylish as a movie queen, yet there’s something saintly about her, too. That’s why this thing’s hit me like an earthquake, Pug, and if I’ve offended you I’m sorry, because I think the world of you.”

“We’ve got a busy day tomorrow, Colonel.”

“Right, Pug.”

In a few minutes Peters was snoring.

There were two admirals in King’s outer office, when Pug came there straight from Union Station. He prevailed on the flag lieutenant to send in a short note, and King at once summoned him inside. The CNO sat behind his large desk in the bleak room, smoking a cigarette in a holder. “You look better than you did in Tehran,” he said, not offering Pug a chair. “What’s this about uranium now? I’ve shredded your note into the burn basket.”

Pug sketched the situation at Oak Ridge in spare sentences. King’s bald long head and seamed face turned very pink. His severe mouth puckered strangely, and Pug surmised that he was trying not to smile. “Are you saying,” King broke in harshly, “that the Army, after commandeering all the nation’s scientists and factories, and spending billions, hasn’t got a bomb, while we’ve cooked one up in that tinpot Anacostia lab of ours?”

“Not quite, Admiral. There’s a technical gap in the Army’s method. The Navy process closes that gap. They want to take our system and blow it up on a huge industrial scale.”

“And that way they’ll get this weapon made? Not otherwise?”

“So I understand. Not in time for use in this war.”

“Hell, I’ll give ‘em anything they need, then. Why not? This should make us look pretty good in the history books, hey? Except the Army will write the history, so we’ll probably get left out. How did you become involved in it?”

King listened to the tale of the couplings, nodding and smoking, his face rigid again. “Colonel Peters has telephoned the Dresser company,” Pug concluded, “It’s all set. I’m flying to Pennsylvania to make sure that the stuff gets on the trucks and rolls out.”

“Good idea. Flying how?”

“Navy plane out of Andrews.”

“Got transportation?”

“Not yet.”

King picked up the telephone and ordered a car and driver for Captain Henry. “Now then. What do you want me to do, Henry?”

“Assure Colonel Peters of Navy cooperation, Admiral. Before pushing this idea of duplicating our plant, he wants to be sure of his ground.”

“Give his phone number to my flag lieutenant. I’ll call the man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve heard about your expediting of the landing craft program. The Secretary is pleased.” King got up and held out a long lean arm crusted with gold to the elbow. “On your way.”

As Pug was paying off the taxicab on his return from Pennsylvania, Madeline opened the front door. She looked almost as she had, going to her first dance: flushed, shiny-eyed, too painted-up. She said nothing, but gave him a hug and led him into the living room. There sat Rhoda, looking very dressy for a weekday at home, behind a coffee table on which champagne was cooling in a silver bucket. Sime Anderson stood beside her with a bewildered, foolishly pleased look on his face.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Well! Return of the warrior!” said Rhoda. “You remembered you had a
FAMILY
! How nice! Are you busy next Saturday?”

“Not that I can think of, no.”

“Oh, no! Well, fine. How about coming to Saint John’s Church, then, and giving Madeline away to this sailor boy?”

Mother, daughter, and suitor burst into joyous laughter. Pug seized Madeline in his arms. She clung to him, hugging him hard, her wet cheek to his. He shook hands with Sime Anderson and embraced him. The young man wore the shaving lotion Warren had used; the smell gave Pug a small shock. Rhoda jumped up, kissed Pug, and exclaimed,
“OKAY
! Surprise is over, now for the champagne.” Practical talk followed: wedding arrangements, trousseau, caterer, guest list, accommodations for Sime’s family, and so forth; Rhoda kept making neat notes in a stenographic pad. Then Pug took Anderson off into the library.

“Sime, how are your finances?”

The young man confessed to two expensive hobbies: hunting, which he
had learned from his father, and classical music. He had put more than a thousand dollars into records and a Capehart, and almost as much into a collection of rifles and shotguns. No doubt it hadn’t been sensible to clutter up his life that way; he could hardly turn around in his apartment; but then, he hadn’t bothered much with girls. Now he would store the stuff, and one day sell it off. Meantime he had saved only twelve hundred dollars.

“Well, that’s something. You can live on your salary. Madeline has savings, too. Also some stock in that damned radio show.”

Anderson looked very uncomfortable. “Yes. She’s better off than I am.”

“Don’t live higher on the hog than your own salary warrants. Let her do what she likes with her money, but not that.”

“That’s my intention.”

“Now, look, Sime, I’ve got fifteen thousand dollars put aside for her. It’s yours.”

“Ye gods, that’s marvelous!” An innocently greedy pleasure lit the young man’s face. “I didn’t expect that.”

“I’d suggest you buy a house around Washington with it, if you plan to stay in the Navy.”

“Sure, I’m staying in the Navy. We’ve talked that all out. R and D will be very big after the war.”

Pug put his hands on Anderson’s shoulders. “She’s said a thousand times, down the years, that she’d never marry a naval officer. Well done.”

The young couple went off in a happy flurry to celebrate. Pug and Rhoda sat in the living room, finishing the wine.

“So,” said Rhoda, “the last fledgling takes wing. At least she’s made it before the mother flew off.” Rhoda blinked archly over the rim of her wineglass at Pug.

“Shall I take you out to dinner?”

“Oh, no. I’ve got shad roe for the two of us. And there’s another bottle of champagne. How was your trip? Was Hack helpful?”

“Decidedly.”

“I’m so glad. He has got a big job, hasn’t he, Pug?”

“Couldn’t be bigger.”

Fresh-cut flowers from the garden on the candle-lit table; a tossed salad with Roquefort dressing; perfectly done large shad roe with dry crisp bacon; potatoes in their jackets, with sour cream and chives; a fresh-baked blueberry pie; obviously Rhoda had planned all this for his return. She cooked and served it herself, then sat and ate in a gray silk dress, with beautifully coiffed hair, looking like a chic guest at her own table. She was in a wonderful mood, telling Pug her ideas for the wedding, or else she was giving a superb performance. The champagne sparkled in her eyes.

This was the Rhoda who, for all her familiar failings — crabbiness,
flightiness, moodiness, shallowness — had made him a happy man, Pug was thinking, for twenty-five years; who had captivated Kirby and Peters, and could ensnare any man her age; beautiful, competent, energetic, attentive to a man’s comforts, intensely feminine, capable of exciting passion. What had happened? Why had he frozen her out? What had been so irreparable? Long, long ago he had faced the fact that the war had caused her affair with Kirby, that it was a personal mischance in a world upheaval; even Sime Anderson had shrugged off Madeline’s past, and made a happy start on a new life.

The answer never changed. He did not love Rhoda any more. He had no use for her. He could not help it. It had nothing to do with forgiveness. He had forgiven her. But a live nerve now bound Sime Anderson and Madeline, and Rhoda had severed the nerve of their marriage. It was withered and dead. Some marriages survived an infidelity, but this one had not. He had been ready to go on with it because of the memory of their lost son, but it was better for Rhoda to live with someone who loved her. That she was in trouble with Peters only made him pity her.

“Great pie,” said Pug.

“Thank you, kind sir, and you know what I propose next? I propose coffee and Armagnac in the garden, that’s what. All the iris have popped open, and the smell is sheer
HEAVEN.”

“You’re on.”

It had taken Rhoda a couple of years to weed out and replant the neglected quarter-acre. Now it was a charming brick-walled nook of varied colors and delicious fragrances, around a musically splashing little fountain she had installed at some cost. She carried the coffee service out to a wrought-iron table between cushioned lounge chairs, and Pug brought the Armagnac and glasses.

“By the bye,” she said as they settled down, “there’s a letter from Byron. In all the excitement, I clean forgot. He’s fine. It’s just a page.”

“Any real news?” Pug tried to keep relief out of his voice.

“Well, the first patrol was a success, and he’s been qualified for command. You know Byron. He never says much.”

“Did his Bronze Star come through?”

“Nothing on that. He worries and worries about Natalie. Begs us to cable any word we get.”

Pug sat staring at the flower beds. The colors were dimming in the fading light, and a breeze stirred a rich scent from the nodding purple iris. “We should call the State Department again.”

“I did, today. The Danish Red Cross is supposed to visit Theresienstadt, so maybe some word will come through.”

Pug was experiencing the sensation of a slipped cog in time, of reliving
an old scene. Rhoda’s
“By the bye, there’s a letter from Byron”
had triggered it, he realized. So they had sat drinking Armagnac in twilight before the war, the day Admiral Preble had offered him the attaché post in Berlin.
“By the bye, there’s a letter from Byron,”
Rhoda had said, and he had felt the same sort of relief, because they had not heard from him in months. It had been the first letter about Natalie. That day, Warren had announced he was putting in for flight training. That day, Madeline had tried to go to New York during the school week, and he had stopped her with difficulty. In hindsight, quite a turning point, that day.

“Rhoda, I said I’d report any personal talk I had with Peters.”

“Yes?” Rhoda sat up.

“There was some.”

She gulped brandy. “Go ahead.”

Pug narrated the conversation in the dark train compartment. Rhoda kept taking nervous sips of her brandy. She sighed when he described Peters’s subsiding into snores. “Well! You were very, very gallant,” she said. “It’s no more than I expected of you, Pug. Thank you, and God bless you.”

“That wasn’t the end of it, Rho.”

She stared at her husband, her face white and strained in the gloom. “He went to sleep, you said.”

“He did. I woke early, and slid out of there for some breakfast. The waiter was bringing me orange juice when your colonel showed up, all shaved and spruce, and sat down with me. We were the only two people in the diner. He asked for coffee, and right off he said — in a very sober and calm way — ‘I take it you preferred not to give me a straight answer last night about Dr. Kirby.’”

“Oh, God. What did you say?”

“Well, he caught me off guard, you realize. I said, ‘How could I have been any straighter?’ Something like that. Then here’s what he answered — and I’m trying for his exact words — ‘I’m not about to cross-examine you, Pug. And I’m not about to throw over Rhoda. But I think I should know the truth. A marriage shouldn’t start with a lie. If you get a chance to tell Rhoda that, please do. It may help clear the air.’”