The Winds of War

relative, obviously, living at the White House and interested mainly in the food. Madeline was speaking first to the Undersecretary of State and then to the famous author, her face alive, flushed, and gay, her gestures quick. Maugham offered to come on Cleveland’s interview program, when she told him what she did. He said candidly that his mission was British propaganda, so why not? She was entranced.

Byron throughout the dinner sat silent, collected, withdrawn. Victor Henry saw Roosevelt looking quizzically at him. The President loved to charm everybody and to have only cheerful faces around him. Pug kept glancing at his son, hoping to catch his eye and signal him to perk up.

Over the ice cream, the President said in a moment’s lull, “We haven’t heard from our submariner here. Byron, you’re a natural for the silent service. Ha ha.” The young officer gave him a melancholy smile. “How’s the morale in your outfit?”

“Good, Mr. President.”

“Are you ready to go to war, as Mr. Maugham seems to desire?”

“Personally, sir, I’m more than ready.”

Well, that’s the spirit.”

Victor Henry interposed, “Byron was visiting a friend in Poland when the war began. He was strafed by a Luftwaffe plane and wounded.”

“I see,” said the President, giving Byron an attentive stare. “Well, you have a motive then for wanting to fight Germans.”

“That’s not it so much, Mr. President. The thing is that my wife is trapped in Italy.”

Franklin Roosevelt appeared startled. “Trapped? How, trapped?” The rich voice went flat.

Everybody at the table looked at Byron. The atmosphere was thick with curiosity.

“Her uncle is Dr. Aaron Jastrow, Mr. President, the author of A Jew’s Jesus. He’s had some trouble about his passport. He can’t come home. He’s old and not well, and she won’t abandon him.” Byron spoke as flatly as the President, getting out each word very distinctly.

Mrs. Roosevelt put in with a smile, “Why, Franklin, we both read A Jew’s Jesus. Don’t you remember? You liked it very much indeed.”

“Dr. Jastrow taught at Yale for years, Mrs. Roosevelt,” Byron said. “He’s lived here almost all his life. It’s just some crazy red tape. Meantime there they are.”

“A Jew’s Jesus is a good book,” said the President, bored and stern. “Sumner, couldn’t you have somebody look into this?”

“Certainly, Mr. President.”

“And let me know what you find out.”

“I will, sir.”

Franklin Roosevelt resumed eating his ice cream. Nobody spoke. Perhaps eight or ten seconds ticked by, but at that table, in that company, it was a long time. Everybody appeared bent on eating dessert, and the spoons clinked and scraped.

“Speaking of that book,” the President’s wife said with a bright smile, looking up, “I have just been reading the most extraordinary little volume -”

The door to the hallway opened, and a pale moustached Navy commander entered, carrying a brown envelope. “I beg your pardon, Mr. President.”

“Yes, yes. Let me have it.” The commander went out.

The tearing envelope made a noisy rasp. Yellow strips like telegram tape were pasted on the white sheet the President unfolded.

“Well!” Franklin Roosevelt looked around, his face all at once charged with teasing relish. “May I relay a bit of news?” He took a dramatic pause. “It seems they’ve got the Bismarck!”

“Ah!” The crown princess bounced in her chair, clapping like a girl, amid an excited babble.

The President raised his hand. “Wait, wait. I don’t want to be overoptimistic or premature. What it says is, airplanes from the Ark Royal have caught up with her and put several torpedoes in her. They must have hit her steering gear, because when night fell she was trailing thick oil and steaming slowly west — the wrong way. The entire fleet is closing in and some units now have her in sight.”

“Does it give a position, Mr. President?” said Victor Henry.

The President read off a latitude and longitude.

“Okay. That’s a thousand miles from Brest,” said Pug. “Well outside the Luftwaffe air umbrella. They’ve got her.”

President Roosevelt turned to a servant. “Fill the glasses, please.”

Several waiters sprang to obey him. Silence enveloped the table.

The President lifted his glass. “The British Navy,” he said.

“The British Navy,” the company said in chorus, and all drank.

Somerset Maugham blinked his lizard eyes many times.

* * *

Next morning, long after Victor Henry had gone to work, when the maid came to remove the breakfast things, Rhoda asked her for pen and paper. She wrote a short note in bed:

Palmer, dear-

You have a kindly heart that understands without explanations. I can’t do it. I realize we can’t see each other for a long while, but I hope we will be friends forever. My love and everlasting thanks for offering me more than I deserve and can accept. I’ll never forget.

Forgive me,

Rhoda

She sealed it up at once, dressed quickly, and went out in the rain and mailed it herself.

That same dark and muggy morning, shortly before noon, a buzzer sounded on the desk of Victor Henry’s office. He sat in his shirt-sleeves working by electric light.

“Yes?” he growled into the intercom. He had left word that he would take no calls. The head of War Plans wanted, by the end of the week, a study of merchant shipping requirements for the next four years.

“Excuse me, sir. The office of Mr. Sumner Welles is calling, sir.”

“Sumner Welles, hey? Okay, I’ll talk to Sumner Welles.”

Welles’s secretary had a sweet sexy Southern voice. “Oh, Captain Henry. Oh, suh, the Undersecretary is most anxious to see you today, if you happen to be free.”

Glancing at his desk clock and deciding to skip lunch, Pug said, “I can come over right now.”

“Oh, that will be fahn, suh, just fahn. In about fifteen minutes?”

When he arrived at Welles’s office, the warm sexy voice turned out to belong to a fat old fright, sixty or so, in a seersucker dress.

“Mah, you got here fast, Captain. Now, the Undersecretary is with Secretary Hull just now. He says do you mind talking to Mr. Whitman? Mr. Whitman has all the details.”

“Yes, I’ll talk to Mr. Whitman.”

She led him from the spacious and splendid offices of Sumner Welles to a much smaller and more ordinary office without a window. The projecting sign over the doorway indicated a minor official in European Affairs. Aloysius R. Whitman was a thick-haired man in his late forties, indistinguishable from ten thousand other denizens of Washington offices, except for his somewhat horsy clothes, an unusually florid face, and an unusually bright smile. Several prints of horses livened the walls of the small office. “The Undersecretary sends his thanks to you, Captain, for interrupting a busy schedule to come over.”

He gestured at a chair. “Cigarette?”

“Thanks.”

The two men smoked and regarded each other.

“Wretched weather,” said Whitman.

“The worst,” said Pug.

“Well, now. The business of Dr. Aaron Jastrow’s passport,” Whitman said genially. “It’s no problem