“Go ahead.” Victor Henry studied the blond officer as he attacked the letters. One could sometimes guess, by the way a young man went at papers or a book, the kind of officer he was. Aster traversed the pile fast, scribbling a note here and a checkmark there. He looked good. He pushed the basket aside and poured coffee for himself when Henry held up a hand to decline.
“Lieutenant, you were a witness at Briny’s wedding?”
“Yes, sir. She’s a wonderful girl.”
“How’s Briny doing?”
Aster’s jolly reminiscent smile disappeared. The mouth became a slash of tight lips. “In his work?”
“Yes, let me have it straight.”
“Well, we all like him. There’s something about Briny, I guess you know that. But for submarines… don’t get the idea that he can’t measure up. He can, but he won’t bother. Briny just slides along the bottom edge of tolerable performance.”
Victor Henry was not surprised; still, the words hurt. “People run true to form, I guess.”
“He’s way behind on his officer qualification book. Now he knows his way round the boat, sir, he know the engines, the compressed air system, the batteries, all that. He stands a good diving watch. He has a knack for trimming the boat and keeping her at the depth the captain wants. But when it comes to writing reports on time, or even logs, keeping track of records and dispatches and the crew’s training books — an officer’s main work — forget it.” Aster looked Byron’s father in the eye. “The skipper sometimes talks of beaching him.”
Victor Henry said sadly, “That bad?”
“In a way he’s kind of nuts, too.”
“How, nuts?”
“Well, like last week, we had this surprise inspector aboard. We fired this dummy torpedo and surfaced to recover it. We hadn’t tried a recovery for a long time. It was a rough sea, raining, cold as hell. The torpedo detail was out there trying to retrieve the thing. It was bobbing up and down, banging and crashing against the hull, and we were rolling like mad, and the sailors were slipping around with lifelines tied to them. It was awful. They messed about for an hour and couldn’t hook that fish. I was sure somebody would get drowned or crushed. The inspector got tired and went below. The skipper was exploding. The deck gang was soaked and frozen and falling all over itself. Well, as you know, a dummy warhead’s hollow, and the fish floats straight up and down. Briny was the officer on that detail. Suddenly he took the hook, stuck it in his lifeline, and by Christ if he didn’t go and jump on that torpedo! He timed it so right, it looked easy. He hung on, with these icy waves breaking over him, riding that yellow steel dummy head like a goddamn bronco. He secured the hook and then got knocked off. Well, we hauled him in half-dead and then we hoisted the fish aboard. The skipper filled him full of medicinal brandy. He slept eighteen hours and was fine.”
Victor Henry said, clearing his throat, “He took a stupid chance.”
“Sir, I’d like to have him on any boat I ever command. But I’d expect to wear out two pairs of heavy shoes, kicking his ass for him.”
“If the occasion arises, let me buy you the brogans, lieutenant,” said Pug.
“She’s pregnant!” Byron catapulted into the little wardroom, arresting himself by grabbing the doorway. “Natalie’s pregnant, Dad.” He brandished torn-open letters.
“How about that? Hey, Lady, how about that? Boy, I feel strange.”
“Fast work,” said Aster. “You better get that gal home for sure, now. Pleasure to meet you, Captain. Excuse me.”
The executive officer slid out from behind the table with his mail basket.
“Any news on her coming home?” Victor Henry asked.
“She says Leslie Slote really built a fire under the consuls this time. She and Jastrow should be on their way by — well, maybe by now! She’d better be, or I’ll desert and go fetch her, Dad. My kid’s going to be born in the United States.”
“That’s great news, Briny. Great.” Victor Henry stood, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’ve got a plane to catch. You’ll find out about the twenty-sixth, won’t you? And let me know.”
“The what? Oh, yes.” Byron was sitting with his chin on both fists, reading a closely written airmail sheet, his face lit up with happiness. “That dinner. Yes, sir, I’ll telephone you or something.”
“I’m sure you have a load of paperwork, after your maneuvers. Get at it, boy.”
“Oh, sure,” said Byron. “So long, Dad.”
“I’m happy about your wife, Byron.”
Again the veiled glance, again the amiable tone. “Thanks.”
Rhoda was in bad turmoil. Palmer Kirby had returned from England in April, while Pug was at sea. The cherry blossoms were early that year; and in Virginia and North Carolina, where they went on a four-day drive like a honeymoon, the countryside was flooded with fragrant blossoms. Rhoda came back to Washington committed in the strongest terms to leave her husband and to marry Kirby.
The decision seemed clear, simple, and natural to Rhoda in the bedrooms of wayside hotels, and on long walks amid the peach and plum blossoms of the southland. But when Kirby went happily off to Denver to put the big old house in order for a new life, leaving her in a home full of Henry photographs and mementos, the simplicity of the vision, and some of its charm, started to fade.
Rhoda’s inexperience was misleading her. An investment of more than twenty-five years of love and intimacy — even if it has gone slightly sour — usually should not be liquidated. Its equivalent in romance, in thrills, or even money, can seldom be recovered. So hardheaded bad women tend to decide. Rhoda’s trouble was that, in her own mind, she was still a good woman caught up in a grand passion which consumed all moral law. One misstep during her husband’s long absence in Germany — at an age when many men and women make missteps — had led to another and another. Her desire to keep her good opinion of herself had completed her confusion.
She still liked — perhaps loved — and also feared Pug, but his career was a growing disappointment. For a while she had hoped that his “in” with President Roosevelt might lead to big things, but that was not happening. Some of her friends were preening over their husbands’ new commands: battleships, destroyer flotillas, cruisers. The rivalry of Digger Brown, Paul Munson, and Harry Warendorf was exactly paralleled among their ladies. Rhoda Henry was becoming the wife of a man bogged in twilit shore jobs after more than twenty years of racing along with the front-runners. Evidently Pug didn’t have it. This was bitter medicine for Rhoda. She had always hoped that he would someday become at least a Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. After all, she had preferred him to fellows who had once gone on to careers like bank president, steel executive, army general. (These men had not necessarily proposed; if she had dated and kissed them, she considered them possibilities sacrificed for Pug.) Now it seemed he might not even make rear admiral. Certainly that limited goal was receding with every month he spent in a Navy Department cubicle while his competitors accumulated command time at sea. With such thoughts Rhoda Henry was working herself up to tell Pug that she had fallen in love with another man. But she did not look forward with dewy pleasure to this, and she teetered, ready to be pushed either way.
She missed his return from the convoy trip. He had not telephoned from Norfolk, for he knew that she liked to sleep late. Arriving by airplane in Washington, he found the house empty, cook off, Rhoda out, mail overflowing his desk, no coffee. He couldn’t blame anybody, but it was a cold homecoming
At the War Plans office, by chance, he encountered Pamela Tudsbury. She had not gone back to England with Burne-Wilke. Secretaries cleared for Very Secret were rare, so the British Purchasing Council had requisitioned her for a while. Spry, springy, refreshingly unmilitary in a yellow and green cotton frock, Pamela greeted him with the warmth he had not found at home. He asked her to lunch with him in the Navy cafeteria. During the quarter hour it took to bolt a sandwich, pie and coffee, Pamela spoke of her unhappiness at being left behind by Burne- Wilke. “I want to be there now,” she said, eyes somewhat moist. “Not that I really think the end is at hand, as some do. But in the wee hours, one does begin to picture how one accommodates to German military police and street signs. It’s a nightmare that now and then gets terribly real.” She shook her head and smiled. “Of course it’s darkest before the dawn. You poor man. You’ve got a splendid color. The sea so obviously agrees with you. You look ten years younger. I hope it lasts, or that you get back to sea.”
“Well, I’ve tried to walk a lot and play tennis. It isn’t the same.”
“Of course not.”
He asked her for further news of Ted Gallard, but there was none. They parted with a casual good-bye. All
