sentence stung her to say in a loud voice, “I was in Warsaw during the siege.”
Lacouture calmly said, “That’s right, so you were. You and Byron. Pretty bad, was it?”
“The Germans bombed a defenseless city for three weeks. They knocked out all the hospitals but one, the one I worked in. The wounded were piled up in our entrance hall like logs. In one hospital a lot of pregnant women burned up.”
The table became a hole of quiet in the boisterous party. The congressman spun an empty champagne glass between two fingers. “That sort of thing has been going on in Europe for centuries, my dear. It’s exactly what I want to spare the American people.”
“Say, I heard a good one yesterday,” spoke up a jolly-faced man in steel-rimmed glasses, laughing. “Abey and his family, see, are driving down to Miami, and about Tampa they run out of gasoline. Well, they drive into this filling station, and this attendant says, ‘Juice?’ And old Abey he says, ‘Vell, vot if we are? Dunt ve get no gess?’”
The jolly man laughed again, and so did the others. Natalie could see he meant no harm; he was trying to ease the sober turn of the talk. Still she was very glad that Byron came up now and took her off to dance.
“How long does this go on?” she said. “Can we go outside? I don’t want to dance.”
“Good. I have to talk to you.”
They sat on the low wall of the terrace in blazing sun, by stairs leading to the white sand, not far from the picture window, behind which Lacouture was still holding forth, shaking his white-thatched head and waving an arm.
Byron leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers clasped together. “Darling, I think I’m getting organized here. I may as well fly up to New London today or tomorrow and take that physical, so that — what’s the matter?”
A spasm had crossed her face. “Nothing, go on. You’re flying to New London.”
“Only if you agree. I’ll do nothing that we don’t both concur on, from now on and forever.”
“All right.”
“Well, I take the physical. I also check the situation, and make very sure that a married applicant has a chance, and that if he’s admitted he gets to spend time with his wife. That takes care of our first few months, maybe our first year. I’ll eventually go to one submarine base or another, if I get through, and you’ll come along, the way Janice is doing. We all might end up a Pearl Harbor together. There’s a university in Hawaii. You might even teach there.”
“Goodness, you’ve been thinking with might and main, haven’t you?”
Victor Henry came through the doors to the terrace. Byron glanced up, and said coolly and distantly, “Hi, looking for me?”
“Hi. I understand you’re driving Madeline to the airport. Don’t leave without me. I just talked to Washington and I’ve got to scoot back. Your mother’s staying on.
“When’s the plane?” Natalie said.
“One-forty.”
“Can you lend me some money?” she said to Byron. “I think I’ll go to Washington on that plane.”
Pug said, “Oh? Glad to have your company,” and went back into the club.
“You’re going to Washington!” Byron said. “Why there, for crying out loud?”
She put a cupped palm to Byron’s face. “Something about Uncle Aaron’s citizenship. While you’re in New London, I can take care of it. My God, what’s the matter? You look as though you’ve been shot.”
“You’re mistaken. I’ll give you the fare.”
“Byron, listen, I do have to go there, and it would be plain silly to fly down to Miami and then right back up to Washington. Can’t you see that? It’s for a day or two at most.”
“I said I’d give you the fare.”
Natalie sighed heavily. “Darling, listen, I’ll show you Aaron’s letter. He asked me to talk to Leslie Slote about his passport problem, it’s beginning to worry him.” She opened her purse.
“What’s the point?” Byron stiffly stood up. “I believe you.”
Warren insisted on coming to the airport, though Pug tried to protest that the bridegroom surely had better things to do with his scanty time. “How do I know when I’ll see all of you again?” Warren kept saying. Rhoda and Janice got into the argument, and the upshot was that the Henrys plus the bride and Natalie all piled into Lacouture’s Cadillac.
Rhoda on the way out had snatched a bottle of champagne and some glasses. “This family has been GYPPED by this miserable, stupid war,” she declared, handing the glasses around as Byron started up the car. “The first time we’re all together in how many years? And we can’t even stay together for twelve hours! Well, I say, if it’s going to be a short reunion it’s damn well going to be a merry one. Somebody sing something!”
So they sang “Bell Bottom Trousers” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “I’ve Got Sixpence” and “Auld Lang Syne” as the Cadillac rolled toward the airport. Natalie, crowded between Rhoda and Madeline, tried to join in, but “Auld Lang Syne” was the only song she knew. Rhoda pressed a glass on her, and filled it until wine foamed over the girl’s fingers. “Oops, sorry, dear. Well, it’s a mercy your suit’s black,” she said, mopping at Natalie’s lap with her handkerchief. When the car drove through the airport entrance they were singing one Natalie had never even heard, a family favorite that Pug had brought from California:
And Rhoda Henry was crying into her champagne-soaked handkerchief, stating that there were tears of happiness over Warren’s wonderful marriage.
PART TWO — Pamela
Chapter 27
As France was caving in, people began at last to perceive that a main turn of mankind’s destiny now hung on flying machines. Of these there were only a few thousand on the planet. The propeller warplanes of 1940 were modestly destructive, compared to aircraft men have built since. But they could shoot each other down, and unopposed, they could set fire to cities far behind battle lines. Massive bombing of cities from the air had, for some years after the First World War, been considered war’s ultimate and unthinkable horror. But by 1940, the Germans had not only thought of it, but had twice done it: in the Spanish Civil War and in Poland. The Japanese, too, had bombed China’s cities from the air. Evidently the ultimate horror was quite thinkable, though the civilized term for it, strategic bombing, was not yet in vogue. The leaders of England therefore had to face a bitter decision: whether to send their few precious planes to fight over France against the Germans, or hold them back to defend the homeland’s cities and shores.
The French had even fewer planes. In the years before the war, instead of constructing an air fleet, the French had built their Maginot Line. Their military thinkers had argued that aircraft were the scouts and stinging insects of war, useful, annoying, hurtful, but incapable of forcing a decision. As the French state, under the punch of German dive bombers, flew to pieces like a Limoges vase hit by a bullet, its premier issued a sudden frantic public appeal to President Roosevelt to send “clouds of airplanes.” But there were no clouds to send. Maybe the French premier did not know what a paltry air force America had, or that even then, no fighter plane in existence could
