They would be better still down in Charleston, but Columbia was a lot closer. That made it more convenient both for her and for the battered Ford she drove. Keeping the motorcar alive would probably let the local mechanic send his children to college, but she had to let it keep nibbling her to death a bit at a time. She couldn't afford a new one, however much she wanted one.
Before the war-that phrase again! — and even into it, she'd driven a powerful, comfortable Vauxhall, imported from England. Confederate soldiers had confiscated it at gunpoint during the Red uprising of 1915. Almost ten years ago now, she thought with slow wonder. The Ford, now, the Ford was a boneshaker that couldn't get past thirty-five miles an hour unless it went over a cliff. And it was a Yankee machine. But it was what she had, and it ran… after a fashion.
She did like driving into Columbia. The town's gracious architecture spoke of the better days of the last century. When the Negroes rebelled here, some houses, some blocks, had gone up in flames, but most of the city remained intact-and the damage, at last, was largely repaired. She couldn't imagine a conflagration big enough to destroy the whole town. Columbia was too big for such disasters.
Charleston had better hotels than Columbia, but the Essex House, only a few blocks from the green bronze dome of the State Capitol, would do. The Essex House also boasted a first-rate switchboard. She had no trouble keeping up with her investments while away from home. And she could even study day-old copies of the New Orleans Financial Mercury and three-day-old editions of the Wall Street Journal. Since she kept most of her money in U.S. rather than C.S. markets, the latter did her more good.
But here she was more interested in men who might have investments of their own than in investments themselves. Dinner at the hotel restaurant the first night she got into town made her wonder if she'd waited several years too long to make this particular hunting expedition. Before the war, she couldn't possibly have eaten without shooing away anywhere from two to half a dozen men more interested in other pleasures than in those of the table. Here, she enjoyed-or didn't so much enjoy-some very tasty fried chicken without drawing so much as a single eye.
I might as well be eating crow, she thought as she rose, unhappy, from the table.
A visit to her assemblyman the next day was no more reassuring. Edgar Stow was younger than she was. He wore the ribbon for the Purple Heart in his lapel; the three missing fingers on his left hand explained why. Because of those missing digits, he had what she took to be a wedding band on the surviving index finger. He was polite to Anne, but polite to Anne as if she was an influential constituent (true) rather than a good-looking woman (false?). He also seemed maddeningly unaware of what she was trying to tell him.
'Parties? Banquets?' He shook his head. 'It's pretty quiet here these days, ma'am. The old-timers, the men who've held their seats since before the war, they complain all the time about how dead it is. But we get a lot more business done nowadays than they ever did.'
Stow sounded pleased with himself. He had an ashtray on his desk made from the brass base of a shell casing, with a couple of dimes bent into semicircles and welded to it to hold cigarettes. He'd surely made it, or had it made, while he was in the Army. Anne wanted to pick it up and brain him with it. His blindness stung. But that ma'am hurt worse. By the way he said it, he might have been talking to his grandmother.
'So what exactly can I help you with today, ma'am?' he asked, polite, efficient-and stupid.
Anne didn't tell him. Why waste my time? she thought as she left his office. But she had to wonder if she'd already wasted too much time.
V
Sam Carsten smeared zinc-oxide ointment on the bridge of his nose. It wouldn't do him any good. He was dolefully certain of that. When summer came, he got a sunburn. He'd got sunburned in San Francisco, which wasn't easy. Hell, he'd got sunburned in Seattle, which was damn near impossible.
The port of Brest, France, toward which the USS O'Brien was steaming, lay on the same parallel of latitude as Seattle. Somebody'd told that to Carsten, but he'd had to look it up for himself in an atlas before he would believe it. The bright sunshine dancing off the ocean-and off the green land ahead-seemed almost tropical in comparison to what Seattle usually got.
He patted the breech of the destroyer's forward four-inch gun. 'This here is one more place I figured I'd have to fight my way into,' he remarked.
'Yes, sir,' Nathan Hirskowitz agreed. The petty officer shrugged. 'But we've got one thing going for us, even on a little courtesy call like this.'
'You bet we do,' Sam said. 'We aren't Germans.'
Hirskowitz nodded. He scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his nails, though he'd shaved that morning. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'That's what I was thinking, all right.'
'They just don't like Germans here in France, same as they just don't like Englishmen in Ireland.' Carsten thought for a moment, then went on, 'And same as they just don't like us in the CSA-what do you want to bet a ship from the Kaiser's High Seas Fleet gets the same sort of big hello in Charleston as we do here?'
'I won't touch that one. You got to be right,' Hirskowitz said.
'Damn funny business, though,' Sam said. 'We were at war with the froggies, too, same as Kaiser Bill was at war with the Confederates.'
'But we didn't lick France, same as the Germans didn't lick the Confederate States. That makes all the difference.' Hirskowitz added something in French.
'What the hell's that mean?' Sam asked in surprise.
'Something like, the better you know somebody, the more reasons you can find to despise him,' the gunner's mate answered.
'Well, I've known you for a while, and this is the first I knew you spoke any French.'
Nathan Hirskowitz surprised Sam again, this time by looking and sounding faintly embarrassed: 'It's my old man's fault, sir. He came to the United States out of this little Romanian village in the middle of nowhere-that's what he has to say about it, anyway. But he'd taught himself French and German and English while he was still there.'
'That's pretty good,' Sam said. 'He taught you, too, eh?'
'Yeah, me and my brothers and my sister. German was easy, of course, because we already used Yiddish around the house, and they're pretty close. But he made us learn French, too.'
'So what does he do in New York City?' Sam asked. 'How come you aren't too rich to think about joining the Navy?'
'How come?' Hirskowitz snorted. 'I'll tell you how come, sir. Pop had a storing and hauling business. But he liked horses better than trucks, and so that went under. He's smart, but he's a stubborn bastard, my old man is. And since his business went under, he hasn't done much of anything. He sponges off the rest of my relatives, that's all. You listen to him talk, he's too smart to work.'
'Oh. One of those.' Carsten nodded; he'd met the type. 'Too bad. Any which way, though, I expect I'll stick with you when we get shore leave. Always handy to have somebody along who knows the lingo.'
'Sir, you're an officer, remember? You got to find one of your own who speaks French. You can't go drinking with a no-account gunner's mate.'
Sam cursed under his breath. Hirskowitz was right, no doubt about it. The trouble was, Carsten didn't like drinking with officers. That was the bad news about being a mustang. He'd spent close to twenty years as an able seaman and petty officer himself. His rank had changed, but his taste in companions hadn't. Officers still struck him as a snooty lot. But he would hear about it, and in great detail, if he fraternized-that was the word they'd use-with men of lower rank.
Up to the wharf came the O'Brien. The skipper handled that himself, disdaining the help of the tugboats hovering in the harbor. If he made a hash of it, he'd have nobody but himself to blame. But he didn't. With all the Frenchmen watching-and, no doubt, with some Germans keeping an eye on the destroyer, too-he came alongside as smoothly as if parking a car.
A French naval officer whose uniform, save for his kepi, didn't look a whole lot different from American styles, came aboard the O'Brien. 'Welcome to la belle France,' he said in accented English. 'We have been allies before,
