One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  “How soon will these things be ready, Lanny?”

  “That I cannot tell. There is no secret more carefully guarded. It might be a month and it might be half a year. We can be sure only that these flying bombs will come in showers, perhaps by the hundreds, and they will continue to come until we land and capture that French coast. They may even be improved so that they can come from Belgium or Holland.”

  “They will be aimed at London?”

  “That is the biggest target; but no one can be sure how accurate they will be. Who can guess how wind and weather may divert them? I am told that before the German scientists get through, they will have a bomb that flies faster than sound; then there will be no warning whatever, only a terrific explosion.”

  Irma sat staring at this man to whom she had once been so close, and who was now a man of mystery to her. What did he really believe? What did he want now? And could he be trusted to keep his word? She had lain awake long hours, thinking about this, and had built several lines of defense. One of them was, “The children could be taken to Scotland, Lanny.”

  “Yes, but how many people will be fleeing to Scotland, and what will be the conditions there? You have a right to subject your own children to such risks, but you must remember that Frances is only half yours, and I am asking the right to take better care of my half.”

  He went on to tell of his talk with Robbie and Robbie’s wife; how eager they were to have the child, and what a happy environment they would provide for her. She would go to school with her half-dozen American cousins and have a life free from fear. When Irma mentioned her special phobia, American kidnapers, Lanny grinned and said they were all in Sicily now, kidnaping Germans and Italians to their hearts’ content. “Surely you don’t expect Frances to be an entirely English child; surely you know that she is really American, and that her American relatives have a right to know her.”

  There was no answering these arguments, and Irma fell back upon her own unhappiness and that of her mother. Lanny answered that this wasn’t fair; it was putting pressure on both him and the child. Of course Frances wouldn’t want to go if it would make her mother miserable; she wouldn’t enjoy the visit unless she could take it as a holiday. She would write a letter once a week and have plenty of news to tell. If she was given a fair chance to be contented, and then wasn’t, Lanny would agree to bring her back on his next trip.

  “You will swear to do that, Lanny?” Irma had tears in her eyes, something he had rarely seen, for she was a proud and self-contained woman.

  “I will give you my word of honor,” he answered gravely. “That is better than swearing. I want the child’s happiness, and I would like her to think of this as a wonderful adventure, and without any idea of anxiety.”

  V

  Lanny phoned his friend Fordyce that the deal was on, and he came up to London and got the child a passport at the American Embassy. Under American law Frances was an American because her father was, and the fact that she had been born in France and had lived most of her life in England made no difference. Since she was going by way of Canada, there had to be a Canadian visa. How long would it be before the world returned to the blessed state it had known prior to 1914, when it was possible to travel all over the world without filling out blanks and standing in line and paying sums large or small to have stamps put on documents?

  The newspapers that morning broke out with the tidings that Winston Churchill, who had been traveling between Hyde Park and Washington, was on his way to Quebec. Roosevelt was coming, and there was to be a full-dress military conference. So the secret of Operation Quadrant was dead before it was born, so to speak; Lanny chuckled when he mentioned the matter to Fordyce. The brass had fondly imagined they could repeat what they had done in Casablanca, where the population had been kept guessing as to who was hidden behind the barbed wire surrounding the Hotel Anfa and its cottages. But it just couldn’t be done in the capital of a Canadian province, so close to the border of America with its ten thousand newspapers and its “sleuths” hungry for tips and skilled at hinting secrets. No, there would be the usual fanfare, and the cameramen would have their half-hour’s free-for-all, taking close-ups and angle shots, and telling presidents and premiers and admirals and generals where to sit or stand and how to look pleasant.

  “But,” said the B4 man, “just you try to get by that double cordon of guards and find out what they are saying inside!”

  Lanny would have liked to say, “I’ll make you a wager,” but that wouldn’t have been cricket. Instead, he explained, “This makes a difference in my plans, because it makes the word Quebec taboo. I can’t tell Lady Wickthorpe I am going there, and I don’t want to tell even my relatives. Is there any way I could fly on to Montreal and then come back alone to Quebec? I would have my father send someone to meet the child in Montreal.”

  The B4 man said that could be easily arranged. It was possible that he got some pleasure out of playing the role of omnipotence. Anyhow, he was friendly in his quiet English way; he didn’t know where this American art expert had been and he scrupulously avoided any approach to the subject. It was enough that the son of Budd-Erling was helping to put down the Hun, and that the President of the United States wanted to see him quickly.

  Lanny cabled his father to have Cousin Jennie or some other trust-worthy lady motored to a hotel in Montreal, to bring Frances to Newcastle. He telephoned Irma about this, explaining that Cousin Jennie was an elderly spinster of the Budd tribe whom Irma had met on her honeymoon with Lanny but would hardly remember. She had come to Halifax in the spring of 1941 to read to Lanny while he lay in hospital with both legs broken. She was the most conscientious lady imaginable, and the child would have a motor trip through scenery not so different from that of Scotland. Irma could find no fault with any of these arrangements.

  VI

  One more duty and pleasure the P.A. had in London, a meeting with his friend Rick. For years now these meetings had taken place in an obscure hotel, for Rick was a Socialist writer, and Lanny was supposed to be a near-Fascist and had to be choosy about his company. Lanny would phone and say, “This is Bienvenu,” and Rick would say, “Will sixteen hundred be OK?” They would take off their coats and stretch out on the bed; Rick would remove the steel brace which supported the knee he had got smashed in the First World War. Thus made comfortable, they would settle the outcome of the present war and the destiny of the world for years to come.

  Just thirty years had passed since Lanny Budd had made a friendship with Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson and Kurt Meissner at the Dalcroze School in Hellerau; and what a lot of world history they had seen since then! The fates had divided them, and Rick remarked, “I wonder what has happened to Kurt.” Lanny replied, “I heard a report that he had been injured by a bomb and cannot play any more. Poor fellow!” Rick countered, “Poor fool!” for he had lived closer to Germany than Lanny and couldn’t afford as much tolerance.

  These two agreed in all their political ideas and hopes. Rick was working as hard as he knew how to build that movement of social protest which his neighbor the Earl of Wickthorpe so greatly dreaded. He had written several plays designed to undermine the prestige of the British privileged class, and he had written hundreds of articles and letters in support of the laboring masses. He had met many disappointments, but insisted that now the mind of Britain was really changing, and when this war was over it was going to be shown at the polls. Lanny told what Ceddy had just said on this subject, and remarked with a smile, “God must be puzzled to have two English gentlemen offering him such different prayers.”

  “Count me out of the list of gentlemen,” responded the other. “I am a Left-Wing journalist, very poorly paid.”

  “What are you going to do, renounce the title?” inquired Lanny. This question was in order, for Rick’s father, the baronet, was in failing health and not likely to last much longer.

  “I’m not sure,” said the son. “I’ll ask the party. They talk of having me stand for Parliament.”


  “Hurrah!” exclaimed Lanny. “I’m wagering they’ll tell you to become Sir Eric. It will get you a lot of votes by mistake, and it won’t lose you many by intention.”

  Lanny joked, but at the same time he was stirred by the idea that his friend from boyhood might obtain power to carry out his ideas. What a different England it would be if men of social vision had a chance not merely to speak but to legislate, and to abolish from that ancient land not merely the old aristocratic privileges, but the newer privileges of economic royalism. Roosevelt had coined that phrase, and how the economic royalists hated him for it—some enough to talk about killing him! They would hate Sir Eric in the same way, and call him a traitor to his class; but that wouldn’t worry him, because he had had it all his thinking life. He would quote from a public platform the lines of the English poet Mackay, answering the man who boasted of having no enemies:

  You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,

  You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,

  You’ve never turned the wrong to right,

  You’ve been a coward in the fight.

  VII

  Lanny didn’t go back to Wickthorpe to witness the shedding of tears; the little girl was brought to town by her music teacher. Two light bags held all the possessions she would take; the rest of her clothing would be given away because she was growing so fast. Her eyes still showed traces of red when she met her father, but even so she was agog with excitement; she was going to have her first plane flight—oh, wonderful! “Do you feel it when you first go up, Father?” and “Can you see out of the windows?” and “Will there be any Germans?” and so on.

  They were taking a night express to the village of Prestwick on the west coast of Scotland, which had become in a short time one of the great airports of the world. From there they stepped into a large comfortable plane. Its engines had been “revving” for some time, and when the passengers were safely strapped in, it moved onto a concrete strip, then put on speed and rose, so gently that Frances wouldn’t have known it had she not been looking out. She could look all she pleased, and see planes in the air and little fishing boats on the water, but no Germans.

  On board were military men and others, very important with large leather briefcases; good-looking young crewmen in the blue uniforms of “Pan-Am,” and a very agreeable young stewardess on whom Frances immediately developed a “crush.” Poor little rich girl, she had spent most of her life inside a great estate, and while she was supposed to have “everything” there, she had had little freedom, and the experience of meeting new sorts of people and saying what she pleased to them was all but unbelievable. From now on she would be plain Frances Barnes Budd and not “your little ladyship”; nobody would know that she was a great heiress, forbidden to walk on a street alone for fear of kidnapers.

  They were flying into a region where the sun set only for a couple of hours, and not that long if you were high in the air. Their first stop was Iceland, which seemed misnamed, for in August the ice was away back in the glaciers, and they saw only barren rocks, and steam now and then from what the stewardess said were boiling springs. They came down in the harbor of a small clean city, and paused only for new fuel and to exchange a few sacks of mail. This time, because the weather was reported good, they were not going to Greenland, but straight on to Newfoundland. Lanny had a weak feeling in his stomach, for it was somewhere over this cold sea that he had crashed and got his two legs broken. Frances knew about it, but he told no details, for she was supposed to have left fear behind on the tight little island of Britain.

  They slept peacefully during most of the eight-hour trip. Then they had breakfast, and watched the plane descend at an airport by a long lake called Gander, in Newfoundland. How amazingly it had grown since Lanny had last seen it! It now had ten million square feet of concrete runways, and the only trouble was the wild moose that insisted upon walking on them.

  The plane rose, and flew over the large wooded island, while Lanny told his daughter about the man who had refused to get into the plane with him two years and a half ago, because the man had had a premonitory dream about an accident; he had disappeared into these woods, and Lanny wondered what had become of him. Lanny was not permitted to tell Frances about his unorthodox views on politics and economics, but he could tell her about psychic phenomena and the strange things that happened, of which he hoped someday to learn the meaning. Perhaps when she grew up she would help him.

  VIII

  They came to the great city of Montreal, on an island in the St. Lawrence; and there at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel was the tall thin New England spinster, old-fashioned English in her manners and ideas; her features had many wrinkles, but they were wrinkles of benevolence. She was pleased with this lovely child, and kissed her warmly, thinking that she must be homesick and shy in a strange land; but Frances wasn’t like that, she was observant of a new world and interested in everything it had to show her. Her father had to go about some of his picture-buying affairs, so she was going to ride to Newcastle with this nice old lady, and there meet her grandfather and her step-grandmother—or would it be grand-stepmother? There would be a lot of cousins and uncles and aunts, great-uncles and great-aunts, and it sounded “topping.”

  Lanny saw them off in the car, and then called his wife in New York to tell her that he was safe and well and ask how she and the baby were. He said that he had business in Canada which might detain him a couple of days; he would keep her informed. He said “I love you” several times, and only after performing this marital duty did he ask her to call Robbie and inform him that Frances and Cousin Jennie were on their way to Newcastle. “We’ll go up and see them,” he said, and then hastened to ask more questions about Baby Lanny, for never must the idea start up in Laurel’s mind that he might be more interested in his first child than in his second.

  Arrangements at the airport had been made, and Lanny just had time to acquire a bundle of newspapers. What marvelous things, those Montreal and New York papers, with such a generous spread and a seemingly unlimited number of pages, with all the news of all the world! Lanny, in flight to Quebec, read that the Allies were closing in on Messina, and that the Americans had bombed Rome a second time, including the airport from which Lanny had taken off. They had bombed Milan and Turin, Genoa and Berlin, all in the same day. How Adi must have raved!

  IX

  Of more immediate concern was the account in the local papers of the opening of the Quebec Conference. Since the conferees could not keep it secret they had apparently decided to go the whole hog and make it a demonstration. Churchill had arrived by special train at the Wolfe’s Cove Station—where the British general had landed his army for the famous battle nearly two hundred years ago. Roosevelt had arrived in another train, and they had formed a motor cavalcade up the winding road which leads to the Plains of Abraham, some three hundred feet above the river, along which the greater part of the city is situated. There had been a public parade, led by the red-coated band of the Royal Mounted Police, past the old battlements and moats to the Citadel, the summer home of the Governor-General.

  The two chiefs were to be housed here, in comfort of an old-fashioned sort—with only one bathroom to each corridor. There on the “deck” they had sat, with chiefs-of-staff and marshals and admirals and generals standing in a row behind them, and let the photographers do their worst; there was a full-page spread, including the Prime Minister of Canada and the Governor-General, and all the big “brass” whose faces had become familiar to the Allied world.

  And after that, silence! Roosevelt, Churchill, and King were, as Churchill’s secretary said, “three oysters.” The hundred and fifty newspapermen who were housed at the Hotel Clarendon had nothing to do but bite their fingernails and make up “think pieces” with scattered bits of local color. The military men were established in the immense Château Frontenac, for which the Canadian government was paying the Canadian-Pacific Railroad the sum of ten thousand dollars per day. The place was so crowded th
at colonels were sleeping two to a bed. The space between the Chéteau and the Citadel was protected by a double line of guards, and you had to show your pass to each line.

  At the airport Lanny got the President’s man on the phone and was told to call back in an hour. That gave him time to be driven into town in an old-fashioned horse-drawn calèche, all that he could find. He was in no hurry, and was interested to look about and enjoy the bracing cool air—what a contrast with the climate of Rome! A great modern city had spread over this plateau, and below it was the usual “Old Town,” with crooked narrow streets; here everybody spoke a French patois, amusing to Lanny; one of the shop clerks said to him admiringly, “Oh, you speak French French!”

  Lanny telephoned at the time set and was told that a room had been reserved for him at one of the smaller hotels; his name was “Harrison,” the same which he had taken when he had set out from Newfoundland and had been wrecked on the way. “Meet me in front of the hotel at ten this evening,” Baker said.

  Lanny found the hotel, had a bath, and got his clothes pressed. He had time to go out and buy a few necessities, and then come back and have dinner and read the evening paper, full of gossip about the personalities at the Conference and guesses about what they were planning. Then he went for a stroll; the sun sets late in this northern climate, and he surveyed the monuments and showplaces of an historic city. The public square is called the Place d’Armes, but what really dominates the scene is the great hotel, built in imitation of a French chéteau, grim and gray, with numerous sharp-pointed turrets. It is taller than any chéteau ever seen in la patrie—this because it had ascenseurs, possible only in a machine age.