Stage Door Canteen (42 page)

She came out of the front entrance of the Canteen and out into roaring rush-hour traffic. The city was enveloped in the somber beauty of the brownout, and a chill, sleety twilight. She took the subway rather than the bus; the packed crowds suited her mood. On Broadway she stopped in Gristede’s for ground coffee and some unrationed salami and potato salad.

The telephone was ringing as Jenny let herself into the apartment. She dropped her packages and ran, but it stopped ringing just as she reached it. Disappointed, thinking it might have been her agent, she put the groceries in the kitchen, turned on the radio for the six o’clock news, and fixed herself a cup of fresh coffee. William Murrow was broadcasting from London. His voice followed her as she took her coffee into the back bedroom and sat down on the bed and and regarded her handiwork, the freshly-painted pale yellow walls.

She was so satisfied with the job she’d done that she was considering painting the bathroom. It was something to do. Without Brad, without a part in a play, she had too much time on her hands.

She put down the coffee cup. The walls would look better, she told herself, when they were finished. She’d bought a yellow tufted bedspread from Bloomingdale’s for the double bed. The whole room would be sunny, brighter. Entirely different.

Jenny went into the master bedroom to change. She got out of her tweed suit, hanging it up in the closet, putting on the dungarees she’d bought for painting, and one of Brad’s old shirts. In the mirror she looked rather Bohemian, rather Greenwhich Village, she thought. She pulled back her hair and tied it with a ribbon.

She almost didn’t hear the voice on the intercom from the lobby. William Murrow and the evening news had become the Amos And Andy Show and all but drowned out whoever it was holding down the intercom button.

“Jen it’s me,” a voice said. “Are you there? You didn’t answer the phone. I wanted to give you a warning—I’m coming up.”

Brad?

She felt her knees give way. But only for a moment. She ran into the hallway and down the length of it, and skidded into the foyer. She couldn’t mistake that voice. Somehow, miraculously, Brad was downstairs.

She wrenched open the front door and threw herself out into the vestibule. She could hear the elevator running, the sound of the cage coming up. That much was real.

She laid her head up against the metal elevator door and told herself that it couldn’t be happening. Brad was in North Africa. He wouldn’t show up in the lobby of the apartment building with no advance notice and just ring the intercom buzzer. Things didn’t happen that way. It was some sort of horrible trick of her mind.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

He stood there, tanned, fit, quite a bit thinner, and very handsome in his Army Air Force officer’s uniform.

“Jenny,” he said, grinning.

He was real. She threw herself on him with a scream. “How did you get here? What happened? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He picked her up in his arms while she covered his face with kisses. He couldn’t stop laughing. “We had to put down at Mitchel Field in Hempstead because of the weather. Tooey Spaatz kicked me off the airplane saying, ‘What the hell, go find your wife.’”

He carried her into the apartment, dropped his small duffle in the foyer, and carried her down the long hall to the bedroom. “I have to take the train into Washington in the morning.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I don’t care, I don’t care—oh, this is wonderful!” She kept kissing him, idiotically. “Oh Brad, Brad, I love you so much!”

“Don’t cry.” He laid her on the bed carefully, and stood over her, loosening his tie.

“No, I’m not going to waste time crying.” She wiped at her eyes, then sat upright and began ripping off her clothes, the shirt and the dungarees, the canvas sneakers, finally her panties and bra. Throwing them out into the room.

“Hey, that’s one of my shirts! It’s all full of paint.”

“Don’t complain. I’m painting the back bedroom. I’m saving you a lot of money.”

She flung herself on him, helping him out of his uniform shirt and pants, then the khaki underwear, shoes, virtually stripping him. Suddenly they were naked, their warm, seeking bodies coming together. Hardly kissing, barely caressing, throwing themselves on each other greedily, laughing, then groaning, then making loud noises of release.

He lowered himself on her, sweaty, gasping for breath. “Jenny darling,” he managed, his mouth against her hair. “God, I’ve missed you. When I’m away from you I need you so much. You’re my star, my dream that I hold onto.”

He had never said things like that to her. My star. My dream. She gripped his naked shoulders with her hands as he moved within her, still hard and big, ready to begin again. He put his head down and kissed her long and ardently. He began to stroke and kiss her, nuzzling her breasts until she moaned. Then he put her under him and pulled her to her knees, and took her like that.

“This is for damned Silver Springs,” he growled in her ear.

She managed to laugh. It was wild. They were all over the bed, once nearly falling off onto the floor. Then she was on top and he was delighted. He held her hips in both hands and thrust her up and down until she screamed and climaxed. They had never made love with such delirious frenzy. After it was over they lay side by side, her head on his shoulder and the sheet pulled over them, while he smoked a cigarette.

“I don’t intend to get out of bed.” His voice was hoarse. “I promised myself if I ever saw you again I’d take you to bed and we’d stay there for three days. The bad news is, I’ve only got a twenty-four hour pass, so this will have to do.”

She rolled over on her elbow and pulled back her hair with one hand and looked down at him. “Oh, Brad, sweetheart, did you really think you wouldn’t see me again?”

He looked up at her. “Yes.” He reached up and stroked the side of her cheek with his fingers. “Actually, I was plucked out of the desert because the Supreme Commander missed me in a meeting one day and asked where I was. When he found out I’d been lent to Patton’s CCB and was wandering around with a tank corps speaking French and getting shot at, he was not pleased. Eisenhower can really blow off when he’s a mind to, they all run for cover when he does. He was apparently under the impression I was busy preparing for the Casablanca conference with Malcolm, and writing reams of position papers. Within hours I was taken from an olive grove outside of Bizerte by a pair of very annoyed Brit officers and put on a rickety B-17 to Algiers, then to Morocco, where ISPD had gathered along with a cast of thousands, as they say in Hollywood, of Allied brass for the summit meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt. After the conference I was ordered to accompany General Arnold to Washington. We picked up General Spaatz and other Air Force staff in London, had a shaky trip to Gander, and then had to put down on Long Island because of this lousy weather. General Arnold has gone on to Washington by train, and I,” he said, reaching for her, “have a twenty-four hour pass to do this. By orders of the general himself.”

She snuggled against him, sighing. “I can’t believe the Army has finally done something nice for you.”

He said, somberly, “Hell, it’s Hap Arnold and General George Marshall and Admiral Ernie King they should do something nice for. I can’t believe the week I’ve just spent. I’ve had a flunky’s-eye view of this summit, Jen, and it’s not hellishly reassuring. Roosevelt arrived incognito—nobody seemed to see the irony of sneaking in a man in a wheelchair and pretending he’s in disguise. Eisenhower flew in and finally got to explain why he had to leave the Vichy French government in place in North Africa so he could concentrate on fighting a war. Ike was in a helluva bind. That damned de Gaulle had been politicking all over London, and British public opinion was in an uproar. Worse, Ike hasn’t pulled the rabbit out of the hat yet. The Allies still can’t seem to bottle up Rommel.”

He sat up in bed and ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair. “Overnight I went from one of Patton’s units mopping up the desert to a summit meeting at a luxury hotel on the beach in Morocco. But I managed to scrape through it, Jen. General Marshall thinks ISPD is a good idea. And I seem to have the reputation now of being a pretty handy guy to have around. This whole thing has been so haphazard, so downright crazy. Churchill had apparently told the president that this would be a just a little meeting with ‘very small staffs.’ Churchill and Roosevelt hadn’t even worked up an agenda. When General Marshall and Admiral King landed they knew right away something was up. The British field marshal arrived with practically a brigade of Brit military planners. They anchored their damned communications ship, the HMS Bulolo in the harbor. That ship is a floating library of strategic studies, plans and maps. The Brits could forward all sorts of reports immediately on to their general staff in London. General Marshall and Admiral King had brought only two planners with them—remember, ‘small staffs’? Brigadier Wedemeyer and Rear Admiral Cooke. Malcolm and I labored mightily to match the Brits and that blasted ship of theirs with what we had. We couldn’t of course, but we got A marks for trying. Then there were the Abominable French. De Gaulle cleverly didn’t show up until after Eisenhower had left, and wanted Churchill and Roosevelt to declare him supreme commander of the Free French. Which they damned well weren’t going to do. The gossip around the hotel was that de Gaulle was the one who had Admiral Darlan assassinated on Christmas Eve. And of course the Brits were behind every potted palm, conniving to keep control of their war, and hold the bloody Empire together at all cost.”

He abruptly swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. “Hell, I’m going to go fix a drink. Can I bring you one?”

She nodded. She watched him, naked and tanned, make his way down the hall toward the kitchen. He moved differently, he was changed in some indefinable way. She heard him at the liquor cabinet, then the door of the refrigerator opening, getting ice.

He said from the kitchen, “Originally the summit was supposed to be the three Allied heads, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, but Stalin declined. The Soviets still have their backs to the wall, and have to make it through the Russian winter. My own feeling is that Stalin didn’t have many chips to play with, so he decided to stay home. Hell, I’d stay away from Churchill myself.”

He came into the bedroom and handed her a bourbon and ginger ale, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Patton had anti-aircraft guns all over the Anfa Hotel, and ringed the whole place with machine guns and bazookas, yet incredibly everything was supposed to be super-secret. Roosevelt held court in a cottage called Villa Number Two. I saw some of the US brass’s reaction to the party atmosphere. The joking, the tremendous amount of highballs, Churchill’s brandy and Roosevelt’s martinis, and talk by the hour. That left the combined Allied Chiefs of Staff in another part of the hotel to thrash their way through the real business. General Marshall was fit to be tied. That’s where Malcolm and I came in. We were there to fight our way through the Brit’s flood of position papers and generate one of our own if we could. Churchill and Roosevelt went down into town and took sightseeing trips. And oh, yes, the VIP families. Both Roosevelts showed up, FDR Junior from his destroyer in the Atlantic, and Captain Elliott from his unit in Algiers. Then Major Randolph Churchill came from the Brit Eighth Army in Tunisia. Have you seen what the newspapers are saying?” When Jenny shook her head he said, “They said that at least Roosevelt and Churchill could have gotten away from their hotel party long enough to go visit the troops in the field. Hell, visit the field hospitals, do something for their soldiers’ morale!”

“Brad—”

“Meanwhile, the Combined Allied Chiefs of Staff were in the other part of the hotel, and our own Ernie King was trying to hang onto our war with the Japs in the Pacific and not have any more money cut from it by our damned Allies. Do you want to hear a true story? At one point things were going so bad that British General Alan Brooke said to Field Marshall Dill that the jig was up, there was so much squabbling among the Allied staffs nobody would ever agree to anything. Dill told him he thought General Marshall was ready to make some concessions, and asked Brooke how far he would go to reach an agreement. Brooke told him, ‘I will not give one inch!’ They say Dill yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘Oh, yes you will. Because you can’t bring this to Roosevelt and Churchill, you know what a sorry mess they will make of it!’”

She put her hand on his arm. “But they reached an agreement, didn’t they? It was in all the papers.”

He snorted. “Our side caved in, is more like it. Marshall warned Roosevelt that opening a front in the Mediterranean was going to be a dark dangerous hole. Then somebody had to break the news to Stalin. Roosevelt cabled Stalin that General Marshall would fly to Moscow right away to explain the decision to open a front in the Mediterranean. Stalin blew up. He’s been holding out for an invasion of France or Belgium this year. He says that’s what Churchill and Roosevelt promised him initially.”

He turned to her. “Christ, Jen, through all this high level melodrama and the two giant egos chatting and partying down in Villa Number Two, I kept thinking of the kids with the tank corps I left in the desert. The ones who are dying out there while Roosevelt and Churchill piss around.”

He abruptly got up and went back to the kitchen to fix another drink. When he returned he sat down on the edge of the bed, holding his glass, and said, “Do you want to go out somewhere for supper?”