Cold is the Sea (35 page)

“Peggy,” Laura said as calmly as she could, although she could feel herself tensing and knew she could not keep her rising reaction totally under control, “both Rich and I have been trying to convince you that's not true. This assignment he's on now, whatever it is, is due to his reputation as one of the best skippers in the Navy. It's an honor for him.”

Laura's arm was still draped over the back of the sofa, not quite touching Peggy. Nevertheless, Peggy peevishly brushed it away. “No kidding!” The sarcasm in her voice was heavy. “They always send Keith off on the big risks! Don't tell me they don't! And I know why they pick him. Send one of our boys on those tough jobs? Oh, no! Send Keith Leone. He's not one of ours. He doesn't count.”

Laura could see Cindy's eyes narrow, then widen. Perhaps she had not heard this portion of the litany of complaints. “Don't be silly,” Laura said, still in the quiet tone. She was about to go on, say something more, but Peggy continued talking.

“You, of all people, ought to know what I'm talking about, Laura! Your first husband didn't go through the trade school either, did he?” Peggy accentuated the words “trade school.” “Have you ever thought about that?”

“Nobody cared where Jim Bledsoe's diploma came from! He was one of the best sub skippers we had!” Laura spoke sharply, with anger. She herself was surprised at the way her words came out. The mention of Jim had caught her unawares. She had not spoken of him for years, rarely thought of him these days. The memories flooded in on her. It was the first of the war years, and they had been married only five days, during which Jim worked fourteen hours a day on board the new
Walrus
, getting her ready for the trip to the Pacific from which neither returned. It was not long enough to build a marriage, although she had tried her amateurish, insufficient best.

The hurt came slowly, the days in succession dawning with hope, passing with a slight deepening of the growing disappointment. She wrote two long letters a week, setting aside the time necessary to do so even when the long silences and sparse replies
made continued cheerfulness a misery. Jim was at war. His ship was at sea, fighting. He rarely was in port long enough to answer letters. Then came the day when she met Cynthia Schultz, wife of the ship's engineer, happily carrying a handbag full of thick envelopes—when she had only two thin ones. The worst was when Jim took the
Walrus
to Australia, where he was lionized as a brilliant combat submariner. His exploits, camouflaged and censored though they were, filled the news. Friends called to congratulate her, strangers spoke of the pride she must feel, and she had been forced to smile gratefully through her shame, for there were no letters at all in her purse. Once, a mortifying memory, she had pretended in a desperate moment that a letter from someone else was from Jim.

But that was all long ago. Now, every time she thought of Jim, a deeper understanding drifted into her consciousness. Perhaps their marriage might have survived, might even have been good had it not faced the insuperable handicap of the war, and what war did to people. She was even able to recall without squirming the intimate, demeaning little artifices she had employed in some of her letters—how pathetic, how much in the realm of fantasy, yet all she had to work with, for the memories were so few—and how hopeless she felt when his short replies showed none of the spark she was trying so anxiously to keep alive. She knew, now, that her own inadequacies as a young war bride, for which she had blamed herself in the beginning, were not at fault. Neither was Jim's neglectful correspondence, nor his infidelities with Joan and with others. These she had managed to understand even at the time, even with the hurt she then felt. She had not blamed Joan. Joan, too, was a child of the war and, like any of the men, had her own private needs. But it was terribly painful, all the same, and there were days when she could hardly face the thought of yet another of the same empty nature. Finally, it was Rich, who came to seek her out after it was all over, who restored her self-respect, and (it seemed at the time) her sanity. She had been astonished how quickly the world turned right again and over the years had learned why that had been inevitable.

No. As to all this, she was now invulnerable. Her only vulnerability was for Jim himself. She was proud of him, proud of his record, and of his great sacrifice. Proud of her own offering too, if that was the right word, for the death of that marriage—
separate and distinct from Jim's own death (she recognized this now)—had been a sacrifice also demanded by the war. The pain and anguish were far in the past. Now there were only warm memories of Jim as he had been. She would defend him fiercely, almost as a mother might the child of her youth. For Jim would never grow old. Through the years he would become younger, until he would be almost as her own child. She was all he had. He had no family, had left no one behind but her. She would protect him, and his memory.

Laura's flash of anger left her as quickly as it came. For a few seconds no one said anything. Even Peggy was still. There was an oasis of stillness.

When Laura broke the silence, her voice was low and soft again, but it contained the faint vibration of an emotion she could remember at times hearing in Rich's when he spoke of the
Walrus
, or of some friend, like Stocker Kane, also lost in the war. The emotion was for far more than one man lost at sea, or a husband of a few days forever deprived of his right to the promises life had made to him. Jim had at least been able to taste of them. He at least had had that. She was glad she had helped, had been his wife, even if for only five days. Implicitly, she felt love, and sorrow, and limitless compassion for the countless young men who had marched to the altar of war through the ages, casting all their youth, and all their plans, and all their hopes, into that pitiless cauldron. Some had been maimed, like Rich, who carried an ineradicable scar on his soul, or devoured, like Jim. They had been so brave. All had been touched, somehow. None had escaped. “He's still out there, you know,” she said, her quiet, almost reflective voice like a solitary cloud drifting through an open sky. “He's forever there, with his ship and his crew, and forever young. Most of his crew were in their early twenties. Did you know that? He was the oldest man aboard, and he was only twenty-nine. Once a year there's a ceremony in Pearl Harbor for the boats still on patrol. That's what they call it. ‘Still on patrol.' For some, like Rich, it's a very sentimental occasion. The
Walrus
was his old boat too, you know.” Tremulously, she smiled a tiny smile. The memories were deep. Cindy, she saw, understood. Her eyes blinked away the tiny moisture that had gathered there.

But, again, it was a mistake to think of Peggy as a normal person, with normal perceptions. She saw her chance, leaped at it. “Jim was the same as Keith, only from Yale. So they took Rich off and gave the boat to Jim. They should have sent the
Walrus
home for a while, for an overhaul, which she needed, but instead they sent him off to the most dangerous area, and he got sunk!
Walrus
was due to come back to the States for a six-months overhaul, wasn't she? You'd have had six months together at Mare Island or Hunter's Point. But instead, the Navy sent him out again, and you never saw him again. That's why he's still on patrol! That's not going to happen to Keith, I can tell you!” She looked triumphant.

Cindy and Laura were both on their feet. The blow had been below the belt, and it was a telling one. Cindy spoke sharply. “That's not fair of you, Peggy! It's not true, either! Rich was in the hospital with a broken leg. The whole sub force knows the story of Jim Bledsoe and the great patrols he made before he was sent on that last one! It also knows how Rich and the
Eel
wiped out the Japanese ASW force that caught him!”

“That didn't help Jim much.”

“It showed what Rich thought of him!”

Laura tried to retain her carefully recaptured calm, but she knew the smooth articulation that came out of her held the edge of a barely contained fury. She hoped Peggy would not notice, for the thing to do was to get her into a more productive frame of mind. For this, she would have to exercise self-control, for Peggy was clearly in no condition to do so herself. “None of any of this concerns Keith,” she said. “If there's anything Cindy or I can do that will help you, or Keith, we want to do it. The first thing is to know what we can do. There's no use wasting time on things we can't influence, or being upset because the Navy isn't telling us everything it's planning or thinking.”

Cindy was nodding her head in agreement, her eyes fixed on Peggy, almost as though she were mentally sending a signal to her. Peggy, however, sensing her momentary advantage, paid no attention. Perhaps she really did not know what she was saying, perhaps didn't care. “I told you what I'm going to do! I'm not going to let anything like that happen to Keith if I can help it!”

“Peggy, you've got to stop thinking you can have any effect on
what happens to Keith! You're just driving yourself and your friends up the wall. That's all you're doing. The way you're acting right now does no one any good whatsoever.” Cindy spoke warmly and directly, but her eyes were flashing.

“Yes, it will! I know what I'm doing! He's been gone a month, and now maybe he's in danger! There's always some emergency. Nobody tells me anything, and I'm about to go crazy!” (I think you already have, thought Laura and Cindy simultaneously.) “The Russians are probably looking for him!” (Laura felt a tremor go through her body.) “I'm sick of being scared to death, and sick of nobody telling me anything, and sick of what the Navy puts you through in general! As soon as Keith gets back from this trip I'm asking him to put in his retirement papers!” Her hand trembling, Peggy downed the remaining half of her sherry, reached for the bottle uninvited, refilled her glass, took another deep gulp.

“You can do that, now that Keith has his twenty years. Of course.” Laura found the strength to keep her voice steady. “But please, don't set your mind in concrete until you can talk to him. You owe him that much.”

“I don't need to talk to him,” cried Peggy. “I tell you, I've had it. If Keith won't see it my way, Ruthie and I are leaving!”

Laura could feel Cindy's cool eyes focused on her. She glanced quickly at her, turned back to Peggy. “Peggy, dear,” she began, “we—that is, I—”

“Don't you or anyone ‘Peggy dear' me! I'm sick of being patted on the head and told not to worry, or that the Navy will do my worrying for me. What does the Navy think I am? I don't have to take this, you know.”

“We understand, believe me,” Laura began again. “This whole thing has been awfully hard on you, but you've got to lay your feelings aside, at least until Keith is back home with you. Things will look a great deal different by then.” Part of Laura's mind told her that Peggy had a right to be agitated, that it was her own duty to try to help at this difficult time, despite the exasperating nature of everything else about her. She was crying again, crying for help as much as from self-pity. What to do? How to help her? Laura had the sensation of diving headfirst into a pit of quicksand. She drew a deep, lung-expanding breath before she
went under. “Listen, there's one thing I can tell you that might make you feel a little better about everything . . .”

Another deep breath. She didn't really know anything for sure, but it was a good guess based on what she did know. If it made Peggy better able to face what she must face with a little more equanimity, it might be worth it. She hoped Rich would forgive her for what she was about to say. “This is confidential, now, but anyway the Navy isn't forgetting Keith up there in the Arctic. There's been all sorts of conferences on what to do.” (Peggy certainly knew about the conferences; so did the rest of the submarine base, most probably. And, yes, almost certainly the
Cushing
was in the Arctic. Saying so could not be a security breach. The newspapers had published it.) “They've sent Rich and Buck to join him. That's what Rich meant when he said you should keep faith in the Navy.” The quicksand closed over her. She felt herself suffocating.

A smile of relief on Peggy's face, or was it one of gratification? More worrisome, Cindy gave her a startled look. But there was no turning back.

“Our three men served together during the war. That's why Rich is out with Buck right now. This is all very secret information” (God forgive her!) “and I shouldn't be telling anyone, but you two are married to the two skippers involved, and if anyone has a right to know, you do. Anyway, that's why all the mystery. Please don't say a word about this to anyone. Anyone at all. You've got to keep it to yourselves, because I wasn't supposed to tell anyone either. Nobody knows what's really going on” (this, at least, was completely true) “but you can bet on one sure thing. Before long, Buck and Rich and the
Manta
will be there too!”

Cindy's expressive eyes were turned full on her. Laura could sense the disapproval issuing from them. No doubt Cindy, too, had her own ideas about her husband's latest mission. Perhaps Buck had told her more than Rich had told Laura. If he had, he must have sworn her to secrecy. In any case, she had kept silent. Now she would believe Laura had confirmed her surmises, or revealed what Buck had cautioned her not ever to speak of—whichever—and in the process, because Peggy would not keep quiet, had thereby increased the danger to be faced by her own husband.

No help for it. It had had to be done. Perhaps Laura could later explain it all to her privately. Cindy was saying something. Were her lips a shade more compressed than usual? Laura could not be sure. “Peggy,” Cindy said, “all of us have to be realistic. Now of all times. We've got to remember that our three husbands have gone through a lot together. Whatever's going on, if Rich and Buck are in it too, you can be sure Keith could have no better help anywhere. If he had his choice, this is exactly what he would want.”