War and Remembrance (173 page)

Love, Rho

Pug rang for coffee, and told his Filipino steward that he would be dining in his quarters with one guest. He wrote a terse reply to Rhoda, sealed it up, and tossed it in his out-basket. The thickness of Pam’s envelope, perhaps because of the pall of Rhoda’s letter, now seemed ominous. He settled down with coffee in an armchair to read.

It was indeed a grave letter. It began, “Sorry, love, but I’m going to write about nothing but death.” Three shocks had struck her in two weeks, the first by far the worst, the others hitting her hard because of her low state. Burne-Wilke had died, swept away by a fulminating pneumonia. She had left Stoneford months ago, and the family had not notified her, so she had first learned about it at the Air Ministry, and had missed the funeral. Guilt was gnawing at her. Would he have sickened if she had stayed on with him, cared for him, and said nothing about the future until the end of the war? Had the hurt and the loneliness weakened him? She could never know, but she was having an unhappy time over it.

There’s something awful altogether about this September. It’s a brown wet ugly fall. The buzz bombs were bad enough, but these new horrors, huge rockets that arrive and fall without a sound, have thrown us into a funk. After all the wretched years of war, after the great Normandy landing and the sweep through France, with victory apparently days away, we’re back in the blitz! It’s just too damned much — the sirens, the all-night fires, the frightful explosions, the roped-off streets, the acres of smoking rubble, the civilian death lists, all over again — ghastly, ghastly, ghastly!

And Montgomery has had an atrocious fiasco in Holland, with an enormous commitment of airborne troops. It’s probably killed any chance of ending the war before mid-1945. The worst of it is that Monty keeps telling the papers it was a “partial victory.” Ugh!

It was a rocket that killed Phil Rule, poor wretch. It blew to smithereens the newsmen’s pub he haunted, leaving nothing but a crater for two blocks in all directions. Days went by before there even was a reliable death list. Phil has simply vanished. Of course he was killed. I had no feelings left about Philip Rule, as you well know, but too much of my youth was thrown away on him, and his death hurts.

As for Leslie, it’s conceivable that he’s still alive, but not likely. The French dentist who was in the team made his way to Bradley’s army, and I’ve read his report. The team was betrayed by an informer in Saint-Nazaire. They
got into the town hidden inside big wine casks, in a huge vanload of wine delivered to the German garrison. They managed to obtain and send out excellent intelligence about the defenses. In trying to organize an uprising, they got careless about the Frenchmen they took into their confidence, and the Germans trapped them. The dentist, before he escaped from the house where they were ambushed, saw Leslie fall, shot. Another pointless death! As you know the Brittany ports are no longer significant. Eisenhower is just letting the German garrisons wither there. Leslie’s death, if he died, was sheer waste.

Leslie Slote, Phil Rule, and Natalie Jastrow! Pug, you dear good upright man of arms, you can’t picture what it was like to be young in Paris with those three in the mid-thirties. What in God’s name has become of poor Natalie? Is
she
dead, too?

What has this gruesome war all been for? Can you tell me? Poor Duncan believed — and I’m sure he was right — that as soon as the war ends and we pull out of India, the Hindus and Moslems will butcher each other in the millions. He predicted, too, that a Chinese civil war “will turn the Yellow River red.” Certainly the Empire is finished. You saw Russia, a gutted slaughterhouse to the Volga. And what have we achieved? We have almost succeeded in murdering enough Germans and Japanese to convince them to quit trying to plunder the world. That’s all. We haven’t finished with that dirty business yet, after five long years.

Duncan said — it was on our last night together at Stoneford, actually, and he was of course melancholy, but unfailingly gentle and decent as always — that the worst part of this century would not be the war, but the aftermath. He said the young would be left with such utter contempt for their elders, after this stupid bath of world carnage, that there would be a general collapse of religion, morals, values, and politics. “Hitler will have his
Götterdâmmerung”
Duncan said. “He’s pulled it off. The West is done for. The Americans will seem all right for a while, but they’ll go too, at last, in a spectacular and probably sudden racial blowup.”

I wonder what you’d say to that! Duncan was rather down on Americans, for complicated reasons, not wholly excluding you and me. He saw the world going Buddhist in the end, after perhaps another half century of horror and impoverishment. I could never follow him into the
Bhagavad-Gita,
but he was morbidly persuasive that night, poor darling.

Well, now it’s a rainy morning.

Can you guess that I was pretty tipsy last night when I clattered out all those pages? I’m wondering whether to send such a depressing wail to you, out there in the Pacific, still with the job of fighting the war, and therefore still having to believe in it. Well, I’ll send it. It’s how I feel, and it’s the news. In a day or two I’ll write you another and more cheery one, I promise. I don’t expect to be knocked on the head by a V-2, and if I should be, it’s a quick painless exit from this crazed world. I only want to live to love you. Everything else is gone, but that’s enough to build on, for me. I swear I’ll be jolly in my next one,
especially if my resignation from the WAAFs is accepted, and I can start planning to join you. It’s in the works; very irregular, horridly unpatriotic, but I may just pull it off. I know people.

All my love,

Pamela

Pug took from a drawer and set on his desk the picture of Pamela, in the old silver frame from which Rhoda had smiled for almost thirty years, stowed away for the typhoon sortie. Pamela was in uniform, full-length, frowning. The picture was cropped from a news shot and blurrily blown up; far from flattering, but quite real, unlike Rhoda’s old softly lit studio portrait, so many years out of date. He got at his official mail.

The gangway messenger of the
Barracuda
knocked at Byron’s cabin door. “Captain, the admiral’s barge is coming alongside.”

“Thanks, Carson.” In jockey shorts, his body shining with sweat, Byron was taking down from a bulkhead the Red Cross photograph of Natalie and Louis. “Ask Mr. Philby to meet me topside.”

He came out on deck buttoning a faded gray shirt. The new exec was at the gangway; a foxy-faced Academy lieutenant who (Byron already surmised) did not much relish serving under a reserve skipper. The
Barracuda
was tied up port side to an ammunition ship. A working party aft was making a great profane noise around a torpedo swinging down on a crane.

“Tom, when all the fish are aboard, cast off, and take her alongside the
Bridge
for provisioning. I’ll be back by 1900.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

ComBatDiv Seven’s long barge, all gleaming white cordwork and white leather cushioning inside, purred away from the submarine. The luxury charmed Byron for what it said of his father’s new status, but his mind was mainly on the divorce. Madeline had written that she had “seen it coming for a long time.” Byron could not understand her. To him, until the arrival of the long sad sugary letter from Rhoda, his parents’ marriage had been a monolithic fact, literally the Bible’s “one flesh.” No doubt his flighty mother was at fault, yet one passage in a letter his father had written from London still puzzled him: “I hope your mother will be happy. Things have been happening in my life, too, better discussed face to face, when the occasion offers, than written about.”

Now they would come face to face. It would be awkward, possibly painful for his father, but at least the identity of the
Barracuda’s
captain should give him a nice surprise.

The watch book of the
Iowa’s
OOD noted,
At 1730 admiral’s guest will arrive. JOOD escort to flag quarters.
But at 1720 the admiral himself appeared, squinting toward the south anchorage. In the glittering weather after
the typhoon, the low sun blazed and the lagoon blindingly sparkled. The officer of the deck had seldom seen Rear Admiral Henry up close, this bloodless force called ComBatDiv Seven, a spruce squat grizzled man, a tongue-tying icy presence. The barge came alongside and a tall officer in dingy wrinkled grays leaped up the steps, jingling the guy chains.

“Request permission to come aboard.”

“Permission granted.”

“Good evening, Admiral.” A sharp unsmiling salute by the officer in gray.

“Hello there.” A casual return salute. ComBatDiv Seven said to the OOD, “Log my visitor aboard, please. Commanding officer of the
Barracuda,
SS 204. Lieutenant Commander Byron Henry, USNR.”

The OOD, glancing from father to son, ventured a grin. A brief cool smile was the admiral’s response.

“When did all this happen?” Pug asked as they left the quarterdeck.

“As a matter of fact, only three days ago.”

The father’s right hand momentarily gripped Byron’s shoulder. They mounted the ladders inside the citadel at a run. “You’re in pretty good condition,” the son panted.

“I may drop dead doing that,” said Pug, breathing hard. “But I’ll be the healthiest man ever buried at sea. Come out on my bridge for a minute.”

“Wow!” Byron shaded his eyes to look around.

“You don’t get this view from a submarine.”

“God, no. Doesn’t it beat anything in history?”

“Eisenhower had a bigger fleet for the crossing to Normandy. But for striking power, you’re right, the earth’s never seen its like before.”

“And the
size
of the
Iowa!”
Byron was looking aft. “What a beauty!”

“Ah, Briny, she’s put together like a Swiss watch. Maybe later we’ll mosey around.”

Pug was still digesting the surprise.
Commander of a submarine!
Byron was growing into an eerie resemblance to the lost Warren; too pale, though, too tense in his movements.

“I’m pretty tight for time, Dad.”

“Then let’s go in to dinner.”

“Snazzy setup,” Byron said, as they entered the flag quarters. Sunlight streamed through the portholes, brightening the impressive outer cabin.

“Comes with the job. Beats a desk in Washington.”

“I’ll say —” Byron halted, his eyes widening at the silver-framed photograph on the desk. “Who’s
that?”
Before Pug could answer he turned on his father. “Christ, isn’t that Pamela Tudsbury?”

“Yes. It’s a long story.” Pug had not intended to break it this way, but the thing was done now. “I’ll explain at dinner.”

Byron’s right hand shot up, palm and fingers stiff and flat. “It’s your life.” He yanked the snapshot of Natalie and Louis from a breast pocket. “I think I wrote you about this.”

“Ah! The Red Cross picture.” Pug scanned it avidly. “Why, Byron, they both look very well. How big the boy is!”

“It was taken in June. God knows what’s happened since.”

“They’re in a playground, aren’t they? Those children in the background look fine, too.”

“Yes, it’s encouraging, as far as it goes. But the Red Cross has ignored my letters ever since. The State Department remains a total zilch.”

Pug handed back the picture. “Thanks. Seeing it does my heart good. Sit you down.”

“Dad, maybe I’ll just have a cup of coffee and run on back. We sortie at 0500. I’ve got a new exec, and —”

“Byron, dinner takes fifteen minutes.” Pug gestured at his conference table, already set with two places at one end: white napery, silver and china, a vase of pink frangipani sprigs. “You’ve got to eat.”

“Well, if it’ll only take fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll see to that.”

Pug strode out. Sinking into the chair at his desk, Byron peered incredulously at the photograph in the old silver frame that, as far back as he could remember, had held his mother’s picture.

Sons find it uncomfortable to confront the reality of their fathers’ sexual lives. Psychologists can analyze the reasons till the cows come home, and they tend to, but it is a clear fact of human nature. Had the picture of a woman his mother’s age filled the frame, Byron could have absorbed the jolt. But
Pamela Tudsbury,
a girl who had helled around with Natalie in Paris! Byron had liked her well enough for the way she looked after her father. Even so, he had wondered, especially at Gibraltar, how such a hot dish — Pamela had been lightly clad on that Mediterranean midsummer day in a gauzy white sleeveless frock — could devote herself to following an old man about. She must have a lover, he had thought, if not several.