Winds of War (96 page)

“What do you think, Dad? Will the Limeys get the
Bismarck
?”

Perched on the edge of the bathtub, Byron observed that Victor Henry still liked to rest one leg on the tub as he shaved. Nor had Pug’s shaving motions ever changed, the successive scrape of cheeks, shin, and neck then the scowl to stretch his upper lip. Byron had sat exactly so as a child countless times, talking to his dad.

“Well, Briny, they claim the
Prince of Wales
winged her off Greenland there. But those Germans have fine damage control. I’ve been aboard the
Bismarck
. She’s a floating steel honeycomb. If they were hit they probably just buttoned up the flooded compartments and lit out for home. The British are throwing everything into their search. To hell with convoys, to hell with the Mediterranean! They know where she’s heading - the French coast, as fast as she can skedaddle - and they know the speed she can make. Aircraft ought to find her. Unless” - he rinsed his razor and shook it – “unless the
Bismarck
is undamaged. In which case heaven keep any convoys she runs across. With that fire control she displayed, she’ll pick off forty ships in half an hour.”

“I wish I were out there,” said Byron, “in that search.”

“Do you?” Pug gave his son a pleased look. Where Byron saw much the same father, Victor Henry saw a pallid, melancholy, thin-faced little boy transformed into a spruce six-foot ensign in blue and gold. Pug wiped his face with a wet towel. “What time is it? Let’s make tracks.”

Byron followed him into his dressing room. “Say, Dad, you’re pretty close to the President, aren’t you?”

Buttoning his dress shirt, Pug said, “Close? Nobody’s really close to Mr. Roosevelt, that I can see. Except maybe this Harry Hopkins.”

Byron crouched on a stool, watching his father dress. “I got two more letters from Natalie yesterday. She’s stuck, after all.”

Pug frowned at the mirror over his bureau. “Now what?”

“Same thing, Dad, this balled-up foolishness about when her uncle’s father was naturalized. He just can’t get that passport renewed. One official makes promises, and the next one fudges on them. The thing goes round and round.”

“Tell your wife to come home, and let him sweat it out.”

“Let me finish, Dad.” Byron waved both hands. “It was all set, they’d even bought steamship tickets. Some formality of approval from Washington just never through. Natalie had to turn back the boat tickets. Dad, they’re ringed by Germans now. Germans in France, Yugoslavia, Greece, North Africa, and for that matter all through Italy. They’re a couple of Jews.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Victor Henry.

Rhoda’s voice called from the bedroom, “Pug, will you come here? I’m going out of my MIND.”

He found her glaring at the full-length closet mirror, in a tight blue silk dress, the back of which hung open, displaying underwear and an expanse of rosy skin. “Hook me up. Look how my stomach is bulging,” she said. “Now why is that? The stupid dress didn’t look the least bit like this in the store. It looked fine.”

“You’re not bulging,” said Victor Henry, trying to fix the snaps despite the poor light on her back. “You look very pretty.”

“Oh, Pug, for God’s sake. I’m bulging a FOOT. I look six months pregnant. I’m horrible. And I’m wearing my tightest girdle. Oh, what’ll I do?”

Her husband finished closing the snaps and left her. Rhoda looked much the same as always, and was making much the usual evening-dress noises. Her laments and queries were rhetorical, and best ignored.

Byron still crouched on the stool. “Dad, I thought you might mention this thing to the President.”

Victor Henry’s response was quick and curt. “That’s an unreasonable notion.”

Heavy silence. Byron slumped down, elbows on knees, hands clasped. Pug was jarred by the hostility, almost the hatred on his son’s face.

“Byron, I don’t think your wife’s uncle’s citizenship mess is a suitable problem to submit to the President of the United States. That’s all.”

“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t do it. You’re sore at me for marrying a Jew, you always have been, and you don’t care what happens to her.”

Rhoda marched in, pulling on gloves. “For heaven’s sake, what are you two jawing about? Pug, will you put on your jacket and come along?”

On the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the white House, the Henrys passed several dozen pickets, marching with antiwar signs in a ragged oval, and chanting, “
The Yanks are not coming!
” Near them a handful of men sauntered in sandwich boards that read: THE AMERICAN PEACE MOBILIZATION IS A COMMUNIST FRONT. Two yawning policemen kept watch on this tranquil agitation.

“Good evening.”

A tall Negro in a colorful uniform opened the door, sounding - at least to Rhoda - like the basso in
The Magic Flute
. The Henrys stepped from a warm May night, sweet with the scent of the White House lawns and flowers, into a broad dazzling marble-floored foyer. A middle-aged man in a dinner jacket stood by the Presidential seal inlaid in brass in the floor. He introduced himself as the chief usher. Mrs. Henry, you will be sitting on the President’s left,” he said, glancing at a large card. “You see, Crown Princess Marta of Norway is a houseguest. She will sit on his right.”

“Oh, yes, yes, oh my. Princess Marta? Well, she ranks me all right,” said Rhoda with a nervous giggle.

“I guess we’re early,” Victor Henry said.

“Not at all. Please come this way.” He left them in the large public room called the Red Room, saying they would go upstairs soon.

“Oh, dear, think of Warren missing all this!” Rhoda peered at the paintings of Presidents hung near the high ceilings, and the elegant red-upholstered furniture. “Him, with his love of American history.”

“That’s just it,” Madeline said, looking around with bright-snapping eyes. She wore a long-sleeved black silk dress buttoned to the throat, quite a contrast to her mother’s bared arms and bosom. “It’s like walking into a history book.”

“I wonder if it’s okay to smoke,” Byron said.

“No, no, don’t,” his mother said.

Pug said, “Why not? There are ashtrays all around. This is a house. You know what the White House is really like?” He too was nervous, and talking to cover it. “Commandants quarters on a base. The big fancy house with stewards that the boss man gets to live in. This one is the biggest and fanciest. Just the cumshaw of becoming Number One.”

“But the thought of actually keeping house here!” said Rhoda. Despite themselves they were all speaking in unnatural voices, hushed or too loud. Even with an army of servants, I’d go mad. I can’t imagine how she does it, especially traipsing around the country the way she does. Byron, watch those ashes, for heaven’s sake.”

“May I present Mr. Sumner Welles?” The chief usher led in a bald lean gloomy man. “And I believe we can go upstairs now,” he added, as the Undersecretary of State shook hands with the Henrys.

An elevator took them up. Behind his desk at one end of an enormous yellow room hung with sea paintings sat the President, rattling a cocktail shaker.

“Hello there, just in time for the first round!” he called, with a big grin lighting up the jowly pink face. His voice had a clear virile ring. He wore a black tie and dinner jacket with a soft white shirt; and when Pug leaned across the desk to take drinks, he noticed the brown trousers of a business suit. “I hope Mrs. Henry likes Orange Blossoms, Pug. That’s what I’m mixing. Good evening, Sumner.” Would you prefer something else? I make a fair martini, you know.

“Thank you, sir. That looks just right.”

In the center of the room at the mantel, Eleanor Roosevelt stood drinking cocktails with a tall black-haired woman and a sharp-faced, aged little man. On either side of them warm breezes stirred the lace curtains of open windows, bringing in a heavy sweet smell of flowers. The usher introduced the Henrys to Mrs. Roosevelt, to Princess Marta, and to Mr. Somerset Maugham. When Rhoda heard the author’s name, her stiff manner broke. “Oh my! Mr. Maugham! What a surprise. This may be very bad form, but I’ve read all your books and I love them.”

The author exhaled cigarette smoke and stammered, “That – that’s charming of you,” moving only his thin scowling lips, his aged filmy eyes remaining cold and steady.

“Well, we’re all here. Why don’t we sit?” The President’s wife moved a chair near the desk, and the men at once did the same, all except for Somerset Maugham, who sat in a chair Byron put down.

“Anything very new on the
Bismarck
, Sumner?” said the President.

“Not since about five o’clock, sir.”

“Oh, I’ve talked to Averell in London since then. The connection was abominable, but I gathered there was no real news. What do you say, Pug? Will they get her?”

“It’s a tough exercise, Mr. President. Mighty big ocean, mighty bad weather.”

“You should know,” said Franklin Roosevelt slyly.

“But if they winged her, as they claim,” Pug went on, “they ought to catch her.”

“Oh, they hit the
Bismarck
. Their cruisers followed a trail of oil far into the fog. That’s straight from Churchill. Harriman’s his houseguest.”

Rhoda was trying not to stare at Crown Princess Marta, who, she thought, held a cocktail glass like a scepter. Unconsciously imitating her posture, Rhoda decided that her skin was almost as good as Marta’s, though the princess was younger and had such rich black hair, done up in a funny way. Contemplating royalty, she lost track of the war talk, and was a little startled when everybody rose. They left the President and followed Mrs. Roosevelt to the elevator. When they arrived in the dining room, there sat Franklin Roosevelt, already whisked to his place at the head of the table. Here too, strong flower scent drifted through the open windows, mingling with the smell of a big silver bowl of carnations, the table centerpiece.

“Well, I had a good day!” the President exclaimed as they sat down, with the obvious intent of putting everybody at ease. “The Ford Company finally promised Bill Knudsen to make Liberators in their huge new plant. We’ve been sweating over that one. The business people seem to be waking up at last.” He started on his soup, and everyone else began to eat. “We want to put out five hundred heavy bombers a month by next fall, and this will do it. Mr. Maugham, there’s good news to pass on! By next fall, we’ll be making five hundred heavy bombers a month. That’s hard intelligence.”

“Mr. President, the – hard intelligence is” – Maugham’s stammer caught everybody’s attention, so they hung on his words – “that you s-say you’ll be making them.”

The President was smiling before the author got the words out; then he roared with laughter. This houseguest was privileged to make jokes, Pug saw.

“Mr. Maugham was a British spy in the last war, Pug,” Roosevelt said across the table. “Why, he even wrote a spy novel.
Ashenden.
Watch out what you say here. It’ll get right back to Churchill.”

“M-Mr. President, you know a houseguest would never do that. I am not a f-f-ferret now, I assure you, but a lower form of life. A-a-a sponge.”

Mrs. Roosevelt said cheerily, amid the laughter, “What else happened, Franklin, to make it a good day?”

“Why the fellows finally finished the umpteenth draft of my big speech. It looks pretty good, pretty good. So I let them have coffee and sandwiches, and now they’re locked up downstairs doing draft umpteen-plus-one. What’s the betting now, Sumner? Am I going to ask for war, or proclaim convoying, or what? Why, the suspense is even getting me.” The President laughed and added, “Mr. Maugham, as a great writer have you no ideas for my speech? War? Convoy? Or some real new inspiration?”

“Mr. President, you r-remember your Oliver Twist? ‘Please, sir, I w-want some more’?”

“Of course,” said the President, his close-set clever eyes twinkling in anticipation of a joke.

“Well, p-please, sir,” said the author with a dead serious face, “I w-want some w-war.”

The whole table broke into laughter. “Ha ha ha! Spoken like a true British agent!” said the President, gaining another general laugh.

Uniformed waiters cleared the table for the next course. Franklin Roosevelt took obvious pleasure in slicing the saddle of lamb. Rhoda Henry ventured to remark, “My goodness, I wish Pug could carve like that!”

“Oh, I’m sure he can.” Arching his thick grizzled eyebrows with self-satisfaction, the President swept the knife artistically through the meat. “I do like a
slice
of lamb, though, don’t you Rhoda? Not a steak, and not a shaving, either. The secret is a sharp knife and a firm hand.”

Victor Henry was answering Mrs. Roosevelt’s questions about Nazi Germany, raising his voice because she had said she was rather deaf.

“What’s that Pug?” the President said, cocking an ear as he sliced meat. “Am I missing something good?”

“I was saying, sir, that when I left Germany, their industrial effort was just getting into high gear.”

“You don’t say. They scored pretty well in low gear, then.”

“Well, Mr. President, as it turned out, the others had been doing even less.”

Roosevelt faced Maugham, on the other side of the crown princess. “Captain Henry was in the intelligence business too, Willie. He was naval attaché in Berlin. He predicted that pact between Hitler and Stalin before it happened. All the clever diplomats, generals, and columnists were caught flat-footed, but not Pug. What’s your prediction now, Pug? How about all that massing of troops in the east? Will Hitler attack Russia?” The President’s quick wily glance told Pug that he was thinking of the document they had discussed on the train.

“Mr. President, after that piece of luck, I hocked my crystal ball and threw away the ticket.”

Maugham wagged a knobby tobacco-stained finger. “C-captain, don’t ever admit to luck, in our r-racket.”

“What do you think, Sumner?” the President said.

“If one studies
Mein Kampf,
” said Welles in undertaker tones, “the attack is inevitable, sooner or later.”

“How long ago did he write that book? Twenty years ago?” said Franklin Roosevelt, his powerful voice reminding Rhoda very strongly of his radio manner. “I’d hate to be bound by anything I said or wrote way back then.”