“Oh, Sid,” Helen said, “of course it isn’t about Paris. It’s about now, and of course she didn’t say anything. How could she?”
“You ought to put something over you with the window open or you’ll catch cold,” I said. “If she didn’t say anything, how do you know she knows anything?”
“Oh, Sid,” Helen said, “really.”
At least Mrs. Goodwin had not been there when Dottie Peale had telephoned.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying ‘Oh, Sid,’” I told her.
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “anyone can see she knows. You only have to look at Goodwin, Sid. I’d know if it were you.”
“Well, it isn’t me,” I said.
“I know it,” Helen said, “but it would be nicer if you said, ‘It isn’t I,’ and besides, it used to be you.”
There was no reason whatsoever for her to bring up the subject, and I had told her everything about Dottie Peale and me.
“That was before I ever saw you, Helen,” I said. “How many times have I told you that it was all over as soon as I went to the Paris Bureau?”
“Oh, Sid,” Helen said, “of course I know. Dottie’s never worried me.”
“Then why did you bring her up?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” she said, “but now we’re on the subject, she made a pass at you this afternoon at lunch, didn’t she? Not much of one but a sort of one, didn’t she?”
We looked at each other for a moment. She was smiling. She had never been worried about Dottie.
“What makes you think so?” I asked.
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “it’s so easy to tell about those things—the way you looked before dinner when you said you had lunch in her study. Why else would she have you in her study?”
“Suppose we get back to Goodwin,” I said.
Helen laughed, although I could not see what she thought was funny.
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “you only had to see the way he looked after she called him up this afternoon. Sometimes I don’t think you know anything about sex or about the subconscious mind or anything. It was like something in the Song of Solomon. Now kiss me good night and say you love me, darling, and then open the window wider. You never like fresh air.”
It was always colder in the country than in the city when the window was open.
After the light was out, Helen spoke again. “Darling,” she said, “he’s such a nice old thing. He’s just like Colonel Newcome.”
“Goodwin’s not in a wheel chair yet,” I told her, “and he isn’t a bit like Colonel Newcome.”
“Well, I wish there were something we could do about it,” she said. “Do you know what I think? I think she wants to marry him.”
“Now, Helen,” I said, “what should make you think anything like that?”
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “anyone can see she’s looking for a man.”
“All right, she’s looking for a man,” I said.
When she spoke again, I was half asleep.
“Sid,” she said, “another thing.”
“What other thing?” I asked.
“Gilbert Frary sent me a big box of orchids this afternoon—not purple ones, yellow ones.”
“Well, he was here the other night,” I said, “and Gilbert always likes to send things.”
“But he’s never sent so many,” Helen said. “There are twice as many as he’s ever sent before. You can look at them tomorrow. They’re in the icebox. Good night, darling.”
“Good night,” I said.
Gilbert Frary and the orchids and Julius Caesar Goodwin and Cleopatra Delilah Peale tangled restively in my thoughts, while I was falling asleep.
Women were usually more realistic than men in their analyses of other women, especially certain women. I had not taken a number of aspects of my luncheon with Dottie Peale seriously until after those remarks of Helen’s. They had opened a new and curious vista of odd little possibilities. Of course Dottie Peale was one of those people who were always being talked about in the chromium New York Latin Quarter that had its center near the night clubs and the restaurants of the Fifties. I had never cared much for this area, but I did know something of it professionally, since professionally I had become one of those figures whom headwaiters and captains recognized, and Gilbert Frary frequently said that it was a part of my day’s work to appear with Helen sometimes and to allow myself to be seen by what he called my “public.” I did not like these expensive hot spots, but I was well acquainted with them because, one might as well face it, we were all of us hustlers in our different ways, and at least I was a piece of property who always got a table up front.
Everyone in this area had been wondering for a long while when and whether Dottie Peale would get married again. She was the sort of person, everyone said, who certainly ought to get married, and there were plenty of prospects with whom her name had been connected. There was Alfred Binghill, who had that big place at Manhasset and that winter place at Palm Beach, and if Alfred Binghill was too extrovert there was also a foreign composer who frankly was very anxious to marry a beautiful rich American girl. If he was too exotic, there was Mortimer Felcher, the British novelist, published in America by Peale House, a writer whom Dottie had always called another Galsworthy. I had not thought about Dottie’s private life for a long while, and Helen’s theory that Dottie had selected Mel Goodwin as a prospective husband did not seem wholly convincing. Still, I could not help remembering Dottie’s wistful remarks about missing the boat and now not having anyone—not even me. If Dottie had been thinking along these lines about Melville Goodwin, at least I had come first, and somehow the idea made me quite cheerful.
These reflections returned to me as soon as I awoke the next morning. The army had taught me to set my mind like an alarm clock, and the General would be down for breakfast at eight sharp, prepared for his final session in the library. I immediately awakened Helen. She could not believe it when I told her it was half past seven.
“And what if it is?” she asked. “I’ve just got to sleep.”
“It’s his last breakfast,” I said, “and we both ought to be down.”
“How do you mean?” Helen asked. “He isn’t going to be executed or anything, is he?”
“The last officers’ mess,” I said, “and I think you’re all wrong, Helen. I don’t think Dottie has any idea of marrying him. Why should she?”
“Oh, you’re thinking about that, are you?” Helen said.
“It just crossed my mind,” I said. “Of course she doesn’t want to marry anyone.”
“Well, why are you looking so cheerful?” Helen asked. “You’re usually cross at this time of the morning.”
“I was just thinking about you and your shape of things to come,” I said.
“Darling,” Helen said, “don’t you see the General’s new? He’s different from all you other boys. Can’t you put yourself in Dottie’s place?”
“No, I can’t,” I told her.
“Well, I can,” Helen said.
The General and Colonel Flax were already in the living room waiting for breakfast, and Melville Goodwin also looked cheerful. He must have been telling Colonel Flax some anecdote because I heard them both laughing before Helen and I arrived.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said. “Did Sid make you come down here on account of me?”
“Oh, no,” Helen said, “I love to get up early.”
“So does Muriel,” the General said. “It’s nice we’re getting Helen in the groove, Sid … and, Sid, we’ve really got to get activated this morning. I want to leave for New York this afternoon. Where are Bentley and Fineholt? Can’t they ever wake up?”
“I’ll send Oscar upstairs after them,” I said.
“That’s all right,” the General said. “Flax has been up after them already. They answered you, didn’t they, Flax?”
“They’re rising and shining, sir,” the colonel said. “They ought to be right down.”
“Oh, Mel,” Helen said
, and she was right in the groove that morning, “Sid showed me your photograph and what you wrote on it. I love it.” I had meant to remind her to speak of the photograph, but she had done it all herself.
“I meant every word of it, my dear,” the General said. “I’m proud to think I’ll be somewhere in this house.”
“I’m proud, too,” Helen said. “It’s all been lovely, and sometime soon you and Muriel must come again without all this interviewing. It hasn’t really been a visit, has it, Sid?”
Helen looked at me and smiled in a meaning way.
“No,” I said, “of course it hasn’t.”
Helen smiled at me for another second before she turned again to Mel Goodwin.
“Muriel and I had such a nice time comparing notes,” she said. “I love Muriel.”
“That goes both ways,” the General said. “You ought to hear what Muriel said about you, dear. She said she wished you had married someone in the service. You know what she means, Sid. Muriel couldn’t say anything more than that.”
“That reminds me,” Helen said, and she glanced at me again. “I have a little present for you to take to Muriel—some orchids. They are in the icebox now but they’ll keep until you get to Washington tonight.”
At last I could see the way things were going. Helen was right in the groove that morning.
“Why, that’s very kind of you, my dear,” the General said. “Imagine your thinking of anything like that, but frankly I don’t know how I can handle orchids.”
“They won’t be any trouble,” Helen said, “as long as you don’t bounce them around. They’re all packed in a box.”
The General had estimated the situation, and now he was taking action.
“I can’t think of anything Muriel would like more,” he said. “There’s only one little hitch.” He frowned and clasped his hands behind his back.
“What little hitch?” Helen asked.
“Well, it may just be,” the General said, “that I won’t be able to get to Washington tonight, and I wouldn’t want to have those orchids spoil on me. I know what Muriel would say.”
“Oh dear,” Helen said, “they’re yellow orchids. As soon as I saw them I thought of Muriel.”
“The difficulty is, dear,” the General said, “I have a few duty calls to make in New York. I ought to drop in at First Army Headquarters as a matter of courtesy and see Bud Hodgkins there. We were at the Point together, and Bud may ask me to spend the night. That’s why I can’t be sure about the orchids.”
“Oh dear,” Helen said, “but perhaps you could put them in the refrigerator. Colonel Hodgkins will have a refrigerator.”
“General Hodgkins,” Colonel Flax said.
“Oh,” Helen said, “I’m sorry—General Hodgkins.”
The ranks were forming already, and loyalty was starting in a military manner.
“I’ll be going down to Washington tonight, sir,” Colonel Flax said. “It will be a pleasure to leave the flowers for Mrs. Goodwin.”
The General smiled. “Good,” he said, “thanks, Flax. That’s the best way out of everything.”
I knew that Helen was looking at me, but I did not want to look at her.
“Let’s go in and get breakfast,” I said. “There’s no use waiting.”
“No use at all,” the General said. “We’ve got to get moving. Say, Flax, you were in the landings at North Africa, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Flax said, “I went in with ‘Bolster Two.’”
“‘Bolster Two,’” the General said. “‘Pinky’ Perkwell was with ‘Bolster Two.’”
“Yes, he was, sir,” Colonel Flax said.
“Pink and I served at Benning once,” the General said, “but we missed connections in North Africa. I was with ‘Heinzy’ near Tunis in ‘Bullpup’ and I never did see anything of ‘Bolster Two.’…”
Once I heard someone say in France that any general above the one-star rank carried his headquarters around with him mentally, even if he was not attached to anything. General Goodwin had developed an instinct, of course, for imposing order wherever he went, for “tidying things up a bit,” as General Montgomery had put it in the Battle of the Bulge, and Phil Bentley and all the rest of us had instinctively fallen into our proper echelons. Breakfast at the stroke of eight was part of the system, and following breakfast came the brisk ten-minute walk in the open air. The General had started by suggesting the walk, but by the third day it had become routine. He simply said, Come on, Flax, or Come on, Sid, according to his desire. When he finished breakfast, Phil Bentley and Miss Fineholt now knew that they would have just ten minutes to organize things in the library or the General would be displeased. This last morning, after technical dialogue with Colonel Flax about the mission of “Bolster Two” around Oran and various personalities in “Bolster Two,” Melville Goodwin pushed back his chair and thanked Helen, dear, for a delightful breakfast. Then he did not even say, Come on, Sid. He simply said, Sid. Everything was running like clockwork at headquarters, and in thirty seconds we were outdoors in the fresh October morning. He had set a course for himself down the drive to the main road, then diagonally across the field to the deserted stables, which still seemed to attract his attention because of their lack of horses. We started down the drive in close-order cadence.
“There was a wind last night,” he said, “but no rain. This is damn good maneuvering weather.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “The ground’s solid underfoot.”
When he looked at me I felt like a young officer who had made a flip remark.
“Don’t kid me, son,” he said. “I’m not in a kidding mood. Those God-damned orchids! What made Helen ever think of sending me down to Washington with a bunch of orchids?”
“Well, you see,” I said, “Gilbert Frary—he’s the one who runs the program, you know—sent them to Helen. They’re a very rare variety. It’s what Gilbert would call a gracious gesture, and I suppose Helen wanted to make a gracious gesture.”
“Well, God damn!” the General said. “If anyone sent Muriel a lot of orchids, I’d put an interpretation on it.”
“Maybe I should,” I said, “but Gilbert’s always making gracious gestures.”
“Now there was a colonel when Muriel was at Baguio …” the General said, “‘Slink’ Somerby, ought-seven at the Point.… Some people always have woman trouble. It’s like liquor. You can always pick the Fancy Dans.” I waited expectantly for Melville Goodwin to go on about Slink Somerby, but he was silent, and we walked for a while in cadence. “Muriel was really a sharp-looking gal in Baguio,” the General said, “but she never did have man trouble. There’s only one thing wrong with Muriel.”
The General was thinking out loud, but I wished he would not think out loud quite so confidentially.
“I wouldn’t say this to many people, boy,” he said, “but there comes a time when a man has to talk to a friend who has a broad-gauge, tolerant view. I don’t know how to lay it on the line exactly, but you’re about the only one I know as an intimate friend who is both on the inside and the outside.”
“On the inside and the outside of what?” I asked.
“The service,” the General said. “You have a service-type instinct and a service-type loyalty. I observed it the first time I saw you. You’re like me; you’re loyal from the top down and from the bottom up, and believe me, there aren’t many who have the right team loyalty. There are a lot of pink-pants boys who have their knives out for guys like me. Now don’t interrupt me. Let me make my point.”
I had not the slightest intention of interrupting him, but I did wish he would do his thinking aloud along more conventional lines.
“Now let me make my point,” he said again. “There’s only one thing wrong with Muriel. She’s always taking over. You know, sometimes Muriel reminds me of the British. Did you ever collaborate with the British?”
“No,” I said.
“When you get around a table with them,” the General said, “
you shake hands with Sir Gordon Fewks, KCB. Then you shake hands with Field Marshal Sir Guy Douglas Jones-Smyth-Jones, KCB, CBS. Then before you know it, there they are, right in control, telling you what to do exactly. You must do this and you cawn’t do that, really, old thing. You may have a few simple ideas of your own, but they always get lost somewhere, and you mustn’t hurt the feelings of the British. Now up there near Antwerp there was a Limey division on my left flank, and oh my God, you wouldn’t have known we had won the Revolution. I might have been a Canadian or an Aussie. Oh my God!”
We reached the main road and turned right oblique across the field to the stables, dropping into route step because the ground was rougher, and I wanted to ask him some more about the British, but I remembered he had not made his point.
“Now Muriel’s like those Limeys,” the General said. “She instinctively assumes control, if you know what I mean, and she always does it for the best. It may be—I don’t know—that I’m not quite as adjusted to Muriel as I was, because I’ve been overseas for quite a while and sort of on my own. You know—compelled by circumstances to work out a few ideas by myself. I know Muriel can’t help it. She assumed control just as soon as I stepped off that C–54. She’s got it in her mind to get me a desk somewhere at the Joint Chiefs. God damn! I don’t seem to be adjusted any more. You see what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said, “I see what you mean. Now take Helen …” but I stopped. There was no need for bringing Helen into it, and besides, Helen’s problems and mine formed no suitable basis for comparison. After all, a lot of other men had found they were not adjusted to their wives when they came back from overseas.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” the General said, “everybody has personality problems. I’ve had to go over plenty of them with a lot of the kids in France, and it’s usually the same damn problem essentially—but I haven’t really any problem.”
I felt as removed as a doctor or a priest. His face brightened now that he had talked himself out of his problem.
“But there’s one thing I’d like to get straight,” he said. “I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that you had a sort of stricken look when I said I was going to have dinner with your friend and my friend, Dottie Peale, tonight. Now what the hell is the matter with it? You didn’t have any stricken look in Paris. Why did you give me all that talk about my record just because I’m having dinner with Dottie Peale?”
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 41
