Chapter 10

It's a disaster. Cheers." "Cheers. Yes, and it's your disaster. This is a contest now between Germany and the United States. If you lose, God help you and all mankind. We were too slow, too stupid, and too late. But in the end we did our best. You're doing nothing, in the last running." He swallowed his drink and pulled himself to his feet. "We expected more from the United States Navy, anyhow. I'll tell you that." "The United States Navy is ready," Pug shot back. "I've been working like a bastard all day on a general operation order for convoy. When I saw those headlines, it was like my desk blowing up in my face." "Good God, man, can I say that? Can I say that the Navy, before this press conference, was preparing to start convoying?" "Are you crazy? I'll shoot you if you do." "I don't have to quote you. Please." Pug shook his head. "Can I say your Navy is ready to go over to convoy on a twenty-four hours' notice? Is that true?" 'y, of course it's true. We're out there now. We've got the depth charges on ready. All we have to do is uncover and train out the guns." Tudsbury's bulging eyes were alive now and agleam. "Pug, I want to say that." "Say what?" "That the United States Navy is ready to go over to convoy and expects to do it soon." Pug hesitated only a second or two. "Oh, what the hell. Sure, say it! You can hear that from anybody in the service from C.N.O down. Who doesn't know that?" "The British, that's who. You've saved me." Tudsbury rounded on his daughter. "And you told me not to telephone him, you stupid baggage! Blazes, I'm late." The fat man lumbered out. Pug said to Pamela, "That isn't news." "Oh, he has to work himself up. He'll make it sound like something. He's rather clutching at straws." She sat with her back to the window. The sun in her brown hair made an aureole around herpallid sad face. "Why did you tell him not to phone me?" She looked embarrassed. "I know how hard you're working." "Not that hard." "I meant to ring you before I left." She glanced down at her intertwined fingers, and reached him a mimeographed document from the coffee table. "Have you seen this?" It was the British War Office's instructions to civilians for dealing with German invaders. Pug said, leafing through it, 'I read a lot of this stuff last fall. It's pretty nightmarish, when you start picturing the Germans driving through Kent and marching up Trafalgar Square. It won't happen, though." "Are you sure? After that press conference?" Pug turned up both hands. Pamela said, "They've updated that manual since last year. It's calmer, and a lot more realistic. And therefore somehow more depressing. I can just see it all happening. After Crete, I really do think it may." "You're brave to go back, then." "Not in the least. I can't stand it here. I choke on your steaks and your ice cream. I feel so bloody guilty." Pamela wrung her fingers in her lap. "I just can't wait to go. There's this girl in the office-would you like another drink? no?-well, the fool's gone dotty over a married man. An American. And she has a fiance in the R.A.F. She has nobody to talk to. She pours it all out to me. I have to live with all this maudlin agonizing, day in, day out. It's wearing me down." "What does this American do?" "That would be telling." With a little twist of her mouth she added, "He's a civilian. I can't imagine what she sees in him. I once met him. A big thin flabby chap with glasses, a paunch, and a high giggle." They sat in silence. Pug rattled the ice in his glas,-, round and round. "Funny, there's this fellow I know," he spoke up. "Navy fellow. Take him, now. He's been married for a quarter of a century, fine grown family, all that. Well, over in Europe he ran into this girl. On the boat actually, and a few times after that. He can't get her out of his mind. He never does anything about it. His wife is all right, there's nothing wrong with her. Still, he keeps dreaming about this girl. All he does is dream. He wouldn't hurt His wife for the world.
He loves his grown kids. Look at him, and you'd call him the soberest of sober citizens. He has never had anything to do with another woman since he got married. He wouldn p t know how to go about it, and isn't about to try. And that's the story of this fellow. Just as silly as this girlfriend of yours, except that he doesn't talk about it. There are millions of such people." Pamela Tudsbury said, "A naval officer, you say?" "Yes, he's a naval officer." "Sounds like somebody I might like." The girl's voice was grainy and kind. Through the automobile noises outside, a vague sweeter sound drew nearer, and defined itself as a hand or an. "Oh listen!" Pam jumped up and went to the window. "When did you last hear one of those?" "A few of them wander around Washington all the time." He was at her side, looking down five stories to the organ grinder, who was almost hidden in a crowding circle of children. She slipped her hand in his and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Let's go down and watch the monkey. There must be one." "Sure." "First let me kiss you good-bye. On the street, I can't." She put her thin arms around him and kissed his mouth. Far below, the music of the hurdygurdy thumped and jangled. "What is that song?" she said, the breath of her mouth warm on his lips. "I don't recognize it. It's a little like Handel's Messiah." "It's called 'Yes, We Have No Bananas."' "How moving." "I love you," said Victor Henry, considerably surprising himself. She caressed his face, her eyes looking deep into his. "I love you. Come." On the street, in the hot late sunshine, the children were squealing and shouting as a monkey on the end of a light chain, with a red hat stuck fast on its head, turned somersaults. The hurdygurdy was still grinding the same song. The animal ran to Victor Henry, and balancing itself with its long curled tail, took off the hat and held it out. He dropped in a quarter. Taking the coin and biting it, the monkey tipped the hat, somersaulted back to his master, and dropped the coin in a box. It sat on the organ, grinning, chattering, and rapidly tipping the hat. "If that critter could be taught to salute," said Victor Henry, "he might have a hell of a naval career." Pamela looked up in his face and seized his hand. "You're doing as much as anybody I know-anybody, anybody-about this accursed war.""Well, Pam, have a safe trip home." He kissed her hand and walked rapidly off, leaving her among the laughing children. Belu'nd him the barrel organ wheezily started again on "Yes, We Have No Bananas." Acouple of days later, Victor Henry received an order to escort to the Memorial Day parade the oldest naval survivor of the Civil War. This struck him as strange, but he pushed aside a mound of work to obey. He picked the man up at a veterans' home, and drove with him to the reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue. The man wore a threadbare uniform like an old play costume, and the dim eyes in his bony, withered, caved-in face were cunningly alert. President Roosevelt's white linen suit and white straw hat glared in the bright sun, as he sat in his open car beside the stand. He gave the tottering ancient a strong handshake and bellowed at the box of his hearing aid, "Well, well! You look better than I do, old top. I bet you feel better." "I don't have your worries," quavered the veteran. The President threw his head back and laughed. "How would you like to watch the parade with me?" "Better than-bee bee-marching in it." "Come along. Come on, Pug, you sit with me too." The veteran soon fell asleep in the sunshine, and not even the booming and crashing of the brass bands could wake him. Roosevelt saluted, waved, put his straw hat over his heart when a flag went by, and smiled obligingly for the newsreel men and photographers crowding around the slumbering veteran beside the President. "The Navy's my favorite," he said to Victor Henry, as blue Annapolis ranks swung by with set young faces under the tall hats. "They march better than those West Point cadets. Don't ever tell any Army men I said so! Say, Pug, incidentally, whom can I send over to London to head up our convoy command?" Pug sat dumbstruck. Ever since the press conference, the President had been sticking firmly to his no-convoy stance. "Well? Don't you know of anybody? We'll call him a 'special naval observer," of course, or something, until we get things started." The President's voice did not carry over the blaring brasses to the chauffeur, nor to his naval aide in front, nor to the Secret Service men flanking the automobile. "Sir, are we going to convoy?" "You know perfectly well we will. We've got to."'When, Mr. President?" The President smiled wearily at Pug's bitter emphasis. He fumbled in his pocket. "I had an interesting chat with General Marshall this morning. This was the upshot." He showed Victor Henry a chit of paper scrawled with his own handwriting: Victor Henry read these frustrating figures while American flags streamed past him and the marine band blared out "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Meanwhile Roosevelt was searching through more chits, He handed another to Pug, while taking the salute of the marine formation as it stalked splendidly past. This was in another handwriting, in green ink, with the last line ringed in red: tv, 19-41 0 L7 170 "I'll take that," Roosevelt said, retrieving the chit. "Those are the figures, Pug, for the day after my speech." "Convoying would be a Navy job, sir. We're all ready." "If we get into war," said the President through a broad smile and a wave at schoolchildren cheering him "-and convoying might just do it -Hitler will at once walk into French West Africa. He'll have the Luftware at Dakar,"where they can jump over to Brazil. He'll put new sub marine pens there, too. The Azores will be in his palm. The people who are screaming for convoy now just ignore these things. Also the brute fact that eighty-two percent, eighty-two percent of our people don't want to go to war. Eighty-two percent." The Navy veteran was sitting up now, blinking, and working In", bony jaws and loose sunken mouth. "My, this is a fine parade. I still remember marching past President Lincoln," he said reedily. "There he stood, the President himself, all in black." The old man peered at the President. "And you're all in white. And you're sitting, bee bee." Victor Henry shrank with embarrassment. Roosevelt laughed gaily, "Well, there you are. Every President does things a little differently." He lit a cigarette in his long holder, and puffed. Boy Scouts in a brown mass Went stepping by, with heads and bright eyes turned toward the President. He waved his hat at them. "So far this year, Pug, we've produced twenty percent more automobiles than we made last year. And Congress wouldn't dream of giving me the power to stop it. Well? What about London? You didn't suggest anybody." Victor Henry diffidently named three well-known rear admirals. " "I know them," the President nodded. "The fact is, I was thinking of you. "It wouldn't work, Mr. President. Our man's opposite number in the Royal Navy will have flag rank.""Oh, that could be fixed up. We could make you an admiral temporarily." From the surprise, and perhaps a little from the beating sun overhead, Pug felt dizzy. "Mr. President, as you know, I just go where I'm ordered." 'Now, Pug, none of that. Frankly, I like you right where you are. Deciding who gets what weapons and supplies is a big job. I'm glad you're working on it, because you have sense. But think about London." "Aye aye, sir." Pug returned the veteran to his nursing home, and went back to a piled-up desk. He got through a high heap of work and walked home, to give himself a chance to think. The city lay in holiday quiet. Connecticut Avenue was almost empty, the evening air was sweet and clear. Think about Londont Young couples on the benches in Dupont Circle turned and laughed, looking after the stocky man in Navy whites, striding along and humming a tune that had been popular before some of them were born. "Hey, what the Sam Hill?" Pug exclaimed, as he entered the living room. "Champagne? And why are you gussied up like that? Whose birthday is it?" "Whose birthday, you old fool?" Rhoda stood, splendid in a pink silk frock, her eyes glittering with tears. "Don't you know? Can't you guess?" "I suppose I'm fouled up on my dates." "It's Victor Henry's birthday, that's whose birthday it is." "Are you potted? Mine's in March." "Oh, God, how dense the man is. Pug, at four o'clock this afternoon, Janice had a boy! You're a grandfather, you poor man, and his name is Victor Henry. And I'm a doddering old grandmother. And I love it. I love it! Oh, Pug!" Rhoda threw herself in his arms. They talked about the great event over the champagne, downing a whole bottle much too fast. Janice and her baby were in fine shape. The little elephant weighed nine and a half whole pounds! Rhoda had raced up to the naval hospital for a look at him in the glass cage. "He's the image of you, Pug," she said. "A small pink copy." "Poor kid," said Pug. "He'll have no luck with the women." "I like that!" exclaimed Rhoda, archly giggling. "Didn't you have Marvelous luck? Anyway, Janice and the baby are coming to stay with us. She doesn't want to take him back to Hawaiifor a while. SO that makes the house decision urgent. Now, Pug, just today I got that old latin, in Foxhall Road to come down another five thousand! I say let's grab it'. That glorious lawn, those fine old elms! Sweetie, let's enjoy these coming years, let's wither in style, side by side, Grandma and Grandpa Henry. And let's always have lots of spare room for the grandchildren. Don't you think so?" Victor Henry stared at his wife for such a long time that she began to feel odd. He heaved a deep sigh and made a curious upward gesture with both palms. "Well, I'll tell you, Grandma. I couldn't agree with you moreThe time has come. Let's go to Foxhall Road by all means. And there we'll wither, side by side. Well said." "Oh, how Marvelous! I love you. I'll call the Charleroi Agency in the morning. Now let me see what's happened to the dinner." She hurried out, slim silky hips swaying. Pug Henry upended the champagne bottle over his glass, but only a drop or two ran out, as he sang softly: But yes, we have no bananas, We have no bananas today. Three weeks later the Germans invaded the Soviet union.