War and Remembrance (44 page)

“Lovely,” said Janice.

“Wrong war,” said Warren. “Biplane.”

The waiter poured out the last of the wine as Warren cut the cake.

Tudsbury seized his glass. “Well, in concluding this splendid feast,” he grandiloquently boomed, getting to his feet, “I propose our host, and his two sons. Gentlemen, your disguise of simple Yank sailors is convincing, but the Homeric marble shows through. You are three figures from the Iliad. I drink to your health, and to your victory.”

“Jehosephat, that’s some toast,” said Pug.

“Three figures from what?” Ursula said to Byron.

“Three figures from
The Idiot,”
he said. “It’s a Russian novel.”

Pamela burst into a shriek of laughter and spilled her champagne.

The room darkened for the floor show. A master of ceremonies trying to sound like Bob Hope told jokes about rationing, Hitler, Tojo, and the curfew. Two Hawaiian men played guitars and sang. Then half a dozen hula-hula girls came undulating barefoot into the pink spotlight, their grass skirts audibly swishing. They danced and sang, then broke their chorus line to move out along the cleared floor, inviting diners to dance with them. One by one men jumped up to face the girls and hula, some kicking off their shoes. Mostly they clowned. The most beautiful girl, who looked more Eurasian than Hawaiian, came weaving her hips toward the Henry table. Seeing the decorated cake at Warren’s place, she turned a brilliant smile at him, and extended beckoning hands.

“Go ahead, darling,” said Janice. “Show them how it’s done.”

With a serious expression Warren got to his feet and faced the grass-skirted girl. He did not take off his shoes. Moving with grace, maintaining the dignity of his gold-winged white uniform, he danced a cold correct hula-hula, bringing to Pug’s mind the naval officer in
Madame Butterfly,
the imperturbable and lordly young white man toying with an Asian beauty.

“I didn’t know men did this dance,” said Pamela to Pug.

“It seems he does.”

The fixed entertainer’s grin on the hula-hula girl’s face changed to a sweet smile of pleasure. She looked full into Warren’s eyes, and impulsively hung her lei around his neck. Her dancing became sexier. Guests at other tables watched and whispered. Glancing around the table, Victor Henry saw that Janice, Pamela, and Ursula had admiring eyes fixed on Warren, while Aster and Tudsbury were gazing with appetite at the dancing girl. Byron was not looking at her. His face frozen in a drunken expression, he was staring at his brother, and tears were trickling down his cheeks.

P
REDICTABLY
, Tudsbury occupied the presidential suite, with the predictable huge living room full of overstuffed modernist sofas and armchairs, but with an unpredictable wallpaper of large red stallions charging around the room. The best feature of the suite, Tudsbury told Pug, was shrouded by the blackout curtains: a wide balcony facing the sea and Diamond Head. “Smashing view in the moonlight,” he said, entering the suite with Pug as Pamela went off to her room down the hall. “What’ll it be, Victor? Brandy? Or a warm whiskey and soda? There’s a fridge, but it doesn’t work. Shades of Singapore.”

Since taking command of the
Northampton,
until this evening, Pug had drunk nothing. He asked for brandy. The first taste brought back a glimmer of his time of acute pain over Rhoda’s divorce letter. Tudsbury flopped in an armchair, gulping dark whiskey and water. “Charming dinner, Victor, truly. Frightfully keen on your sons. One seldom runs into such a sense of family nowadays. Well, what cheer, old cock? What’s the real news? Come on! There’s a great sea battle making up, isn’t there?”

“What was Aster’s shocking story?”

“You really don’t know? Why, my dear fellow, the second vessel the
Devilfish
sank was a hospital ship.”

Sitting up straight, Pug jabbed a forefinger at Tudsbury’s face. “He never told you that.”

“But he did, dear boy.”

“You misunderstood him.”

“Softly, softly. It turned out to be a disguised ammunition ship. He’s got photographs to prove it. Before it sank it popped off for half an hour like a pyrotechnics factory. And it was carrying tons of crude rubber. He retrieved samples.”

“Was Aster very drunk?”

“No. Possibly Pam made him feel expansive. She rather took to him, I thought.”

“Forget you ever heard that story.”

“Why? Camouflaging an ammunition ship with the red cross is a filthy trick. Typical Jap insensitivity to civilized rules of war. They’re barbarians, Pug.” A fat fist waved in the air. “Lieutenant Commander Aster is one white
fighting man who can be as ruthless as they are, an ingratiating young Yank with a killer’s heart. Superb copy.”

“Do you want him to go on killing?”

“Of course.”

“Then blot the thing from your mind. Alcoholic babble. What are your plans, Talky? Where do you go from here?”

“San Francisco. Washington. And so home to Old Blighty, and thence to the desert army in North Africa.” He leaned forward, his good eye popping, his paunch straining at the yellow silk, and dropped his voice to a hissing whisper. “See here, Pug Henry,
what’s up?
I ask you man to man,
what’s up?
Damn it all, I’m a friend of yours and a friend of your country.”

A pleasant brandy fog wisped in Pug’s brain. The battle was coming on, he thought, Tudsbury did happen to be here, and it would be a disservice to the Allies if he left. Ingrained total secrecy in this case could be modified. “Okay. You forget that hospital ship and I’ll tell you something.” He extended his hand. “Done?”

“But you’re offering a pig in a poke.”

“Yes.”

“Well, for once, I’ll trust a Yank.” Tudsbury clasped hands. “Done! Now talk.”

“Don’t leave Honolulu.”

“No? Good-o! Why not? Go on,
go on,
tell me all about it, dear fellow. I’m panting.” Tudsbury was indeed breathing heavily, somewhat like a leaky bellows, with considerable wheeze.

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

Henry reiterated, with the level droning emphasis of words issuing from a warship’s bullhorn,
“Dont
…
leave
…
Honolulu.”

“That’s
all?
But you’re a damnable swindler!” Tudsbury’s face contorted in a huge scowl. “I
know
I shouldn’t leave. Your Cincpac building is boiling like an anthill, I saw that! What in hell have you given me?”

“Confirmation,” Pug said.

Tudsbury’s one-eyed indignant glare slowly faded into a crafty capitulating leer. “All right, dear boy. But it’s
you
who’s been diddled, you know, not me. I gave my word of honor to Aster not to use his story, before he’d tell me a word of it. No Allied correspondent could touch that tale. Heh heh. You’re an easy mark.” He leaned over and patted Henry’s arm. “Tremendous battle cooking up, eh? Trafalgar of the Pacific, what? On their way already, the yellow beggars? Going to try to invade Hawaii?”

Pamela came in. Droplets of water clung to her hair at the forehead and temples. She looked very pale, almost ill. Pug stood up, and her father waved his glass.

“Ah, here’s my charmer, my right hand. Nobody will ever know, Victor, how much I owe this girl. I’ve dragged her through fire and water in these past six months. She’s never faltered or complained. Pour yourself a drink, Pam, and give me another stiff whiskey and soda.”

“Talky, go to bed.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve had a very long day. Go to bed.”

“But Pam, I want to talk to Victor.”

“So do I.”

Tudsbury peered at his daughter’s chill nervous face, and reluctantly pushed himself up out of his armchair. “You’re being hard on me, Pamela, very hard,” he whined.

“I must help him dress his eye,” she said briskly to Pug. “I shan’t be long. Take a look at our view.”

Victor Henry slipped through the swaying blackout curtains. The night was starry, and the low moon cast a golden path on the calm sea. Eight or nine days from full; the Japs’ battle plan called for full-moon nights, obviously. A deceitfully peaceful prospect here: the quiet plash and hiss of the phosphorescent surf, flower scents from the gardens below, the moonlit cone of Diamond Head beyond the blacked-out Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Under this same moon, lower in the sky thousands of miles to the west, the Japanese armada was even now plowing toward Midway, swells breaking and foaming on hundreds of iron bows — pagoda-masted battleships, crudely built carriers with flight decks propped by naked iron girders, tubby transports crowded with landing troops, and the vessels of the train swarming like waterbugs from horizon to horizon.

“I wondered where you’d got to.” A touch on his shoulder. Pamela’s voice, cool and low.

“Hi.” He turned toward her dark shape. “That was quick. Is his eye bad?”

“Your Navy doctors call it an ulcer. They say it’ll heal.” A pause. “Your wife’s demand for a divorce is shattering news.”

“Well, it was blurred at the time by other things, Pamela, such as losing the
California.
And seeing Pearl Harbor from the air, a smoking junkyard.”

“Something like my last glimpse of Singapore.”

“I heard you broadcast from there. About the Mills bomb.”

“Oh, did you?” Another awkward pause. Arms folded, she was staring out to sea.

“Last time we stood on a balcony like this the view was different,” he ventured.

“I should say. The Thames docks on fire, searchlights on a black sky, sirens, AA popping, German planes falling —” She turned her face to him. “And then you went off to ride a bomber over Berlin.”

“And that made you furious.”

“Indeed it did. Look, I’ve lost my taste for tropic nights. The Southern Cross now signifies for me — and probably always will — nothing but god awful sickness and fear. Let’s go in.” She led him through the french window and rustling blackout curtains. A streak of yellow light shone under the bedroom door.

A muffled call: “I say, Pam, is that you?”

“Yes, Talky. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Going over my notes. Where’s Victor?”

“He’s just leaving now.”

“Oh,
is
he? Well, good-night there, Victor.”

“Night, Talky, “ Pug called.

“Pamela, will you bring your pad and take just a little dictation?”

“No, I won’t. Turn out the light. You’re exhausted.”

“Well, since you’re so eager to go to bed, all right.” The streak of yellow disappeared. “Pleasant dreams, Pam,” Tudsbury called in a teasing tone.

“He’s a small boy,” Pamela muttered. “We’ll go to my room.”

The corridor smelled very hotel-like. The lights glared. As she took a key from a little gray purse, the elevator door slid open, and with a heart-thump Henry saw his son Warren step out. The discomfort lasted only a second or two. It wasn’t Warren, but a tall young man in a white uniform with gold wings, who gave Pamela an admiring glance as he passed.

She unlocked her door and in they went. The room was small and dingy, as Pug expected it to be on the hotel’s landward side: the gray paint faded and peeling, the red curtains in need of a dusting, the double brass bed hiding a threadbare carpet.

“I suspect it’s a chambermaid’s quarters,” Pamela said. “I couldn’t argue. The hotel was jammed and they did give him the royal suite. I wasn’t expecting to entertain, anyway.” She tossed aside key and purse, and held out her arms. “But I guess I am, at that.”

Pug seized her.

“Oh, God Almighty, high time,” Pamela gasped. She kissed him hard, sending sweet fire shooting all through him. Pug’s awareness of other things — battle conference, oncoming enemy, sons, wife — was blotted out by a sensation forgotten since his honeymoon: the unique and fiercely exalting thrill of a woman in his arms signalling with mouth and body her love and her first surrender.

The worn lonely wounded man returned her kisses, crushing her close. Their rush of endearment, an incoherent blaze of kisses and broken words, at last slowed. They caught their breaths. There was the squalid little room again, and the big bed.

“This is one hell of a surprise,” he muttered against her questing mouth.

“Surprise?” She leaned back in his arms, her eyes dancing with a joyous light. “How? Why? Didn’t I declare myself very crudely in Moscow?”

“I thought tonight it was all off, from your manner.”

“Dearest, your sons were
right there.
“

“I thought you liked young Aster.”

“Oh? He was handy.” She put caressing fingers to his face. “My problem was to keep my eyes off you. Now then. What’s all this about a conference tonight?”

“I have to leave in half an hour.”

“Half an hour! My God! Can we spend all day tomorrow together?”

“Pam, the fleet sails in the morning.”

“NO! Damn! Oh, damn, damn!” She pulled free, and made an agitated gesture at a small seedy armchair. “What a disaster! Sit down. Damn! In the morning! There’s
never
time, is there? Never! I should have hunted you up directly we got here.” She sat on the bed, and struck the brass frame with a clenched white fist. “I
thought
of it, but I wasn’t sure how you felt. It’s been half a year, you know, and I’d never heard from you. What was in the letter you sent me?”