The Winds of War

In the small studio, decorated like a library with fake wood panelling and fake books, Cleveland said to the sharp-faced, white-haired authoress, “Here’s another admirer of the book, Miss Pelham. Commander Henry is the American naval attache in Berlin.”

“You don’t say! Hi there.” The woman waved her pince-nez at him. “Are we going to stay out of this idiotic war, Commander?”

“I hope so.”

“So do I. My hopes would be considerably higher if that man in the White House would drop dead.”

Pug sat to one side in an armchair while they read through the script. The authoress, passing vinegary judgments on current literature, said that one famous author was obscene, another sloppy, a third superficial. His mind wandered to his meeting yesterday with “that man in the White House.” It seemed to him that he had been summoned on a haphazard impulse; that he had spent a couple of thousand dollars of public money on a round trip from Germany for pointless small talk over scrambled eggs. The morning paper showed that yesterday had been a crowded, portentous day for the President. The leading story, spread over many columns, was Roosevelt Proclaims Limited National Emergency. Three other headlines on the front page began FDR or President; he had reorganized two major government boards; he had lifted the sugar quota; he had met with congressional leaders on revision of the Neutrality Act. All these things had been done by the ruddy man in shirt-sleeves who never moved from behind his desk, but whose manner was so bouncy you forgot he was helpless in his chair. Pug wanted to believe that he himself might have said one thing, made one comment, that by illuminating the President’s mind, had justified the whole trip. But he could not. His comments on Germany, like his original report, had rolled off the President, who mainly had sparked at details of Hitler’s oratorical technique and touches of local Berlin color. The President’s request for gossipy letters still struck him as devious, if not pointless. In the first few minutes Victor Henry had been attracted by President Roosevelt’s warmth and good humor, by his remarkable memory and his ready laughter. But thinking back on it all, Commander Henry wasn’t sure the President would have behaved much differently to a man who had come to the office to shine his shoes.

“Fourteen minutes and twenty seconds, Mr. Cleveland.” Madeline’s speaker-distorted voice roused him.

“That’s fine. Ready to record, Miss Pelham?”

“No. All this about Hemingway is far too kind. I’d like about half an hour with this script. And I’d like some strong tea, with lemon.”

“Yes, ma’am. Hear that, Madeline? Get it.”

Cleveland invited the naval officer to his office, where Pug accepted a cigar. The young broadcaster displeased him by hitching a leg over the arm of his chair. Pug had used considerable severity to cure Byron of that habit. “Sir, you can be proud of Madeline. She’s an unusual girl.”

“Unusual in what way?”

“Well, let’s see. She understands things the first time you tell them to her. Or if she doesn’t, she asks questions. If you send her to fetch something or do something, she fetches it or she does it. She never has a long story about it. I haven’t heard her whine yet. She isn’t afraid of people. She can talk straight to anybody without being fresh. She’s reliable. Are reliable people common in the Navy? In this business they’re about as common as giant pandas. Especially girls. I’ve had my share of lemons here. I understand that you want her to go back to school, and that she’ll have to quit next week. I’m very sorry about that.”

“The girl’s nineteen.”

“She’s better than women of twenty-five and thirty who’ve worked for me. Cleveland smiled. This easy mannered fellow had an infectious grin and an automatic warmth, Pug thought, that in a trivial way was like the President’s. Some people had it, some didn’t. He himself had none of it. In the Navy the quality was not overly admired. The name for it was “grease.” Men who possessed it had a way of climbing fast; they also had a way of relying upon it, till they got too greasy and slipped.

“I wish she’d show some of these 4.0 qualities at school. I don’t appreciate the idea of a nineteen-year-old girl loose in New York.”

“Well, sir, I don’t mean to argue with you, but Washington’s no convent either. It’s a question of upbringing and character. Madeline is a superior, trustworthy girl.”

Pug uttered a noncommittal grunt.

“Sir, how about coming on our show? We’d be honored to have you.”

“As a guest? You’re kidding. I’m nobody.”

“America’s naval attache in Nazi Germany is certainly somebody. You could strike a blow for preparedness, or a two-ocean Navy. We just had Admiral Preble on the show.”

“Yes, I know. That’s how I found out what my little girl’s doing these days.”

“Would you consider it, sir?”

“Not on your life.” The sudden frost in Pug’s tone rose not only from the desire to be final, but the suspicion that the praise of Madeline had been a way of greasing him.”

“No harm in asking, I hope,” Cleveland grinned, running a hand through his heavy blonde hair. He had a pink barbershop sunburn and looked well in a collegiate jacket and slacks, though Victor Henry thought his argyle socks were too much. He did not like Cleveland, but he could see that Madeline would relish working for such a Broadwayish fellow.

Later Madeline showed her father around the studios. Certain corridors were like passageways in the bowels of a ship, all jammed with electronic gear and thousands of bunched colored wires. These interested Pug. He would have enjoyed seeing the controlling diagrams and learning how radio amusement was pumped out of this nerve center all over the country. The performing studios, with their giant cardboard settings of aspirin bottles, toothpaste tubes, and gasoline pumps, their blinking red lights, posturing singers, giggling audiences, grimacing and prancing funny men, not only seemed tawdry and silly in themselves, but doubly so with Poland under attack. Here, at the heart of the American communications machine, the Hitler war seemed to mean little more than a skirmish among Zulus.

“Madeline, what attracts you in all this balderdash?” They were leaving the rehearsal of a comedy program, where the star, wearing a fireman’s hat, was spraying the bandleader, the girl singer, and the audience with seltzer bottles.

“That man may not amuse you, Dad, but millions of people are mad for him. He makes fifteen thousand dollars a week.”

“That’s kind of obscene right there. It’s more than a rear admiral makes in a year.”

“Dad, in two weeks I’ve met the most marvelous people. I met Gary Cooper. Just today I spent two hours with Miss Pelham. Do you know that I had lunch with the Chief of Naval Operations? Me?”

“So I heard. What’s this fellow Cleveland like?”

“He’s brilliant.”

“Is he married?”

“He has a wife and three children.”

“When does your school start?”

“Dad, do I have to go back?”

“When did we discuss any other plan?”

“I’ll be so miserable. I feel as though I’ve joined the Navy. I want to stay in.”

He cut her off with a cold look.

They went back to her little partitioned cubicle outside Cleveland’s office. Smoking one cigarette and then another, Pug silently sat in an armchair and watched her work. He noted her neat files, her checkoff lists, her crisp manner on the telephone, her little handmade wall chart of guests invited or scheduled in September, and of celebrities due in New York. He noted how absorbed she was. In their walk around CBS she had asked only perfunctory questions about the family and none on Germany; she hadn’t even asked him what Hitler was really like.

He cleared his throat. “Say, incidentally, Madeline, I’m going out to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to have dinner aboard the Colorado. Digger Brown’s the executive officer. You know, Freddy Brown’s father. Like to come along? What’s the matter? Why the face?”

Madeline sighed. “Oh, I’ll come, Dad. After all, I see you so seldom. I’ll meet you at five or so -”

“Got something else planned?”