through Kent and marching up Trafalgar Square. It won’t happen though.”
“Are you sure? After that press conference?”
Pug turned up both hands.
Pamela said, “They’ve updated that manual since last year. It’s calmer, and a lot more realistic. And therefore somehow more depressing. I can just see it all happening. After Crete, I really do think it may.”
“You’re brave to go back, then.”
“Not in the least. I can’t stand it here. I choke on your steaks and your ice cream. I feel so bloody guilty.” Pamela wrung her fingers in her lap. “I just can’t wait to go. There’s this girl in the office — would you like another drink? no? — well, the fool’s gone dotty over a married man. An American. And she has a fiance in the RAF. She has nobody to talk to. She pours it all out to me. I have to live with all this maudlin agonizing, day in, day out. It’s wearing me down.”
“What does this American do?”
“That would be telling.” With a little twist of her mouth she added, “He’s a civilian. I can’t imagine what she sees in him. I once met him. A big thin flabby chap with glasses, a paunch, and a high giggle.”
They sat in silence. Pug rattled the ice in his glass, round and round.
“Funny, there’s this fellow I know,” he spoke up. “Navy fellow. Take him, now. He’s been married for a quarter of a century, fine grown family, all that. Well, over in Europe, he ran into this girl. On the boat actually, and a few times after that. He can’t get her out of his mind. He never does anything about it. His wife is all right, there’s nothing wrong with her. Still, he keeps dreaming about this girl. All he does is dream. He wouldn’t hurt his wife for the world. He loves his grown kids. Look at him, and you’d call him the soberest of sober citizens. He has never had anything to do with another woman since he got married. He wouldn’t know how to go about it, and isn’t about to try. And that’s the story of this fellow. Just as silly as this girlfriend of your, except that he doesn’t talk about it. There are millions of such people.”
Pamela Tudsbury said, “A naval officer, you say?”
“Yes, he’s a naval officer.”
“Sounds like somebody I might like.” The girl’s voice was grainy and kind.
Through the automobile noises outside, a vague sweeter sound drew nearer, and defined itself as a hand organ.
“Oh listen!” Pam jumped up and went to the window. “When did you last hear one of those?”
“A few of them wander around Washington all the time.” He was at her side, looking down five stories to the organ grinder, who was almost hidden in a crowding circle of children. She slipped her hand in his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Let’s go down and watch the monkey. There must be one.”
“Sure.”
“First let me kiss you good-bye. On the street, I can’t.”
She put her thin arms around him and kissed his mouth. Far below, the music of the hurdy-gurdy thumped and jangled. “What is that song?” she said, the breath of her mouth warm on his lips. “I don’t recognize it. It’s a little like Handel’s
“It’s called ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas.’”
“How moving.”
“I love you,” said Victor Henry, considerably surprising himself.
She caressed his face, her eyes looking deep into his. “I love you. Come.”
On the street, in the hot late sunshine the children were squealing and shouting as a monkey on the end of a light chain, with a red hat stuck fast on its head, turned somersaults. The hurdy-gurdy was still grinding the same song. The animal ran to Victor Henry, and balancing itself with its long curled tail, took off the hat and held it out. He dropped in a quarter. Taking the coin and biting it, the monkey tipped the hat, somersaulted back to his master, and dropped the coin in a box. It sat on the organ, grinning, chattering, and rapidly tipping the hat.
“If that critter could be taught to salute,” said Victor Henry, “he might have a hell of a naval career.”
Pamela looked up in his face and seized his hand. “You’re doing as much as anybody I know — anybody,
“Well, Pam, have a safe trip home.” He kissed her hand and walked rapidly off, leaving her among the laughing children. Behind him the barrel organ wheezily started again on “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
A couple of days later, Victor Henry received an order to escort to the Memorial Day parade the oldest naval survivor of the Civil War. This struck him as strange, but he pushed aside a mound of work to obey. He picked the man up at a veterans’ home, and drove with him to the reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue. The man wore a threadbare uniform like an old play costume, and the dim eyes in his bony, withered caved-in face were cunningly alert.
President Roosevelt’s white linen suit and white straw hat glared in the bright sun, as he sat in his open car beside the stand. He gave the tottering ancient a strong handshake and bellowed at the box of his hearing aid, “Well, well! You look better than I do, old top. I bet you feel better.”
“I don’t have your worries,” quavered the veteran. The President threw his head back and laughed.
“How would you like to watch the parade with me?”
“Better than — hee hee — marching in it.”
“Come along. Come on, Pug, you sit with me too.”
The veteran soon fell asleep in the sunshine, and not even the booming and crashing of the brass bands could wake him. Roosevelt saluted, waved, put his straw hat over his heart when a flag went by, and smiled obligingly for the newsreel men and photographers crowding around the slumbering veteran beside the President.
“The Navy’s my favorite,” he said to Victor Henry, as blue Annapolis ranks swung by with set young faces under the tall hats. “They march better than those West Point cadets. Don’t ever tell any Army men I said so! Say, Pug, incidentally, whom can I send over to London to head up our convoy command?” Pug sat dumbstruck. Ever since the press conference, the President had been sticking firmly to his no-convoy stance. “Well? Don’t you know of anybody? We’ll call him a ‘special naval observer,’ of course, or something, until we get things started.”
The President’s voice did not carry over the blaring brasses to the chauffeur, nor to his naval aide in front, nor to the Secret Service men flanking the automobile.
“Sir,
“You know perfectly well we will. We’ve got to.”
“
The President smiled wearily at Pug’s bitter emphasis. He fumbled in his pocket. “I had an interesting chat with General Marshall this morning. This was the upshot.”
He showed Victory Henry a chit of paper scrawled with his own handwriting:
Army Ground Forces — 13%
(Major shortages all types arms; rapid expansion; Incomplete training; Selective Service Act Expiring)
Army Air Corps — 0%
(All units involved in training and expansion)
Victor Henry read these frustrating figures while American flags streamed past him and the marine band blared out “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Meanwhile Roosevelt was searching through more chits. He handed another to Pug, while taking the salute of the marine formation as it stalked splendidly past. This was another handwriting, in green ink, with the last line ringed in red:
For getting in if no other way to win — 75%
Think we’ll eventually get in — 80%
Against our getting in now — 82%
“I’ll take that,” Roosevelt said, retrieving the chit. “Those are the figures, Pug for the day
