“It’s all right,” he said, “we’ve got more time now. The meeting will be at Grimshaw’s at twenty-one-thirty, and you have a room at the Mayflower.”
It required a moment of mental arithmetic to gather that twenty-one-thirty meant half past nine that evening. He seemed to take it for granted that I understood what everything was all about, and he poured himself another shot of bourbon.
“It’s been one hell of a day,” he said. “I didn’t know until around twelve hundred that Goodwin had blown his top.”
“All right,” I said, “but maybe you’d better tell me about it, Goochy.”
“That’s right,” he said. “By God, we’ve got to do something about Goodwin. Say, how much has Goodwin told you?”
For some reason he thought that I had understood the whole situation, and he seemed surprised when I told him that I did not understand anything.
“Oh,” General Gooch said, “I thought you were in on this whole picture. Goodwin told me you introduced him to the gal and that you were conversant with the circumstances.”
General Gooch scowled at his empty glass. I could see he did not want to tell me any more than was necessary.
“What gal?” I asked. I only asked the question to annoy him.
“God damn it,” he said. “This Mrs. Peale. He hasn’t got two of them, has he?”
“All right,” I said, “what’s happened about her now?”
“God damn it,” General Gooch said, “don’t you know he’s planning to marry this Mrs. Peale?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”
Of course the idea had been in the back of my mind for a long time, but until the words were snapped at me, without trimmings, I had never honestly believed that things would go so far. I must have always thought that Melville Goodwin would eventually avoid the issue.
“I didn’t know,” I said again. “I’ve heard him talk, but what makes you think he’s serious?”
I still did not want to believe that it was possible. I still wanted to feel it was preposterous.
“Listen,” General Gooch said, and he looked around to see that the door was closed, “when that bastard starts going, he keeps going. You’ve heard him speak of Lieutenant General Grimshaw, haven’t you?”
I thought of Major Foghorn Grimshaw at Bailey, pulling up his badly acting horse and speaking to a young lieutenant who stood in front of his quarters at officers’ row, and of Muriel Goodwin’s asking him to stay for supper and borrowing some chicken.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve heard him speak of General Grimshaw, but he’s retired now, isn’t he?”
“That’s right,” General Gooch answered, “but Mel’s very close to Grimshaw. Well, this morning he told Grimshaw he’s leaving the service and marrying this Mrs. Peale.”
Goochy had been speaking very gently and slowly, as though someone might overhear us at any moment. There was nothing more assiduously to be avoided, I was thinking, than plain, unadulterated fact.
“What I say is,” General Gooch said—“and I ought to know—he’s an emotional wound-up son of a bitch. God damn! Why did they put him into Plans?”
“Has he told Mrs. Goodwin?”
My own voice, when I asked, was as low as though we were in a funeral parlor. Then I knew that he could not have told her yet, or General Gooch would not be here.
“No,” General Gooch said, “not yet. The Old Man made Mel promise to keep still until they’ve talked further. Then Grimshaw called up the office. God damn it, it’s not too late to handle this some way. Mel has some good friends and they want to get the picture. You see the layout now.”
I could see parts of it, but I could not see it all.
“There are right ways and wrong ways of handling these things,” General Gooch was saying. “That’s why we want the picture. There’s a sort of a committee that wants to find out how they can handle this Mrs. Peale.”
“Where’s Goodwin now?” I asked.
General Gooch contracted the corners of his mouth.
“You know better than to ask that,” he said. “Where the hell do you think he would be? Right here in New York City shacked up with this skirt.” General Gooch laughed bitterly. “Hell, I don’t know why I love the son of a bitch.”
I had evidently been cleared for Operation Peale. It was not for me to reason why. It was not for me to argue that I could serve no good purpose by going to Washington.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll go.”
“You’re damned well right you’ll go,” he said.
His tone implied that I was personally responsible for the whole problem, but at the same time he looked more cheerful. The thing was in the works now, as they used to say in the army. Mel Goodwin was in the works and there would be some sort of final resolution. As Goochy had said, there was a right way and a wrong way of handling this sort of thing. He must have been sure that this would be handled in the right way, since the proper echelons had taken over. They understood about women and war from every angle in those echelons. General Gooch leaned back in his chair. His glance fell on the bourbon bottle, and he looked away from it reluctantly. It was not a time for too much bourbon, considering the mission, and he was thinking of women and war.
“Now I’ve never been any God hopper,” General Gooch was saying. “I’m an army brat, and ever since I was in diapers I’ve assumed no sanctimonious attitudes. Hell, these things happen, as I’ve had occasion to tell Mrs. Gooch. I tell Paula to have a little human charity. Nobody knows all about any individual. Now Mel and Muriel, I should say, always had a happy married life and they’ve got two fine, clean-cut kids, but I don’t know all about it. Paula says I’ve got one thing to be thankful for—she isn’t Muriel Goodwin. Maybe Paula drives me nuts sometimes, but she isn’t Muriel Goodwin, and you know how women are. They never take a broad-gauged view like a man. Personally, when it comes to a thing like this, and I’ve seen plenty, I like to take a broad-gauged regulation view.”
General Gooch half closed his eyes, as though he could take the view better by squinting, and he waved his right hand in a broad-gauged gesture and then let it slap down helplessly on his knee.
“Now take Mel,” he said. “He’s a tactical genius, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him make a corpse get up and walk. He’s a damn near perfect officer. I’m his junior and I’m talking out of school, but I’ll tell you one trouble with Mel. He doesn’t understand women like you and me.”
This was the assumption that two men always made when engaged in such a conversation. We both were sophisticates who understood about women.
“Mel got married too young,” General Gooch was saying. “That’s what happens to a lot of kids. There’s something about the Point that makes for early marriage. Hell, whenever you see a pretty girl at the Point, you always think of matrimony, and you want to make an honest woman of every girl you kiss. Now my second year at the Point I had a blind drag … oh, hell, never mind it now.”
I was sorry to let it go at that, because I should have liked to hear how Cadet Gooch had faced up to natural selection.
“Now you know and I know,” General Gooch went on, “that every man gets a label put on him by the crowd when it comes to sex. Mel was one of those boys, as they say around the club, who never looked at another woman. Any gal was always safe with Mel because he never looked at any woman except Muriel. Now maybe you ought to watch that type. They’re going to get it someday. I should have foreseen this when Mel cut up in Paris, but then you and I know Paris.”
Goochy nodded at me. We were both old roués who knew our Paris.
“Frankly, let’s lay it on the line,” General Gooch said. “Mel ought to have played around more at the proper age, but, hell, he still would have wanted to make an honest woman out of every gal—and now along comes this Peale. He’s an emotional conscientious bastard, if you get what I mean, and with a man, woman trouble starts from conscience. If he had busted loose when he was a captain or even a major, wh
y, hell, that sort of thing is readily handled, but when a man acts like a kid when he’s fifty … I don’t know how we’re going to handle this one—not that it hasn’t happened to others. Hell, everything happens.”
“Maybe no one ought to make an honest woman of anyone after he’s fifty,” I said. “Perhaps it ought to be a rule.”
General Gooch nodded.
“Mel knows that,” he said, “but ‘Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses and Power and War,’ … and you can’t stop him when he starts, and when he starts he never thinks about himself.… I don’t know why it is I love the son of a bitch!”
There was a discreet knock on the door. It was Art Hertz with the script, and the mood and the moment had vanished. General Gooch would never talk to me of women and war again.
“Leave it here with me, Art,” I said. “I’ll call you if I want any changes.”
As General Gooch had said, no one could know everything about any individual, but I was beginning to know more than was decent about Melville Goodwin. The forces that were converging on him now had begun their march in Hallowell years ago, when Muriel had seen to it that he did not look at another girl. Something in him had been unfulfilled, but if he could not stop, at least he was doing what he wanted. I picked up the script and read the old familiar salutation.
“Good evening, friends,” I read.
It was vapid and insincere. I was measured and I was safe. I would never throw my heart over a jump. I would never have the bravery or the splendid regardlessness of Melville Goodwin.
I was only asked to Washington to tell some high-ranking friends of Melville Goodwin’s, confidentially, what I knew of the character of Dottie Peale. Through it all I felt like a young officer appearing before a board, and I would have preferred to have stood up during the whole interview, although they asked me to sit down. I was simply giving information, and I could read nothing from their expressions as they received it. They listened to me with flattering attention, but I could not gather what they were going to do, if anything. I had not been asked there to discuss their future plans.
General Grimshaw had only been a name to me until then, but he fitted perfectly the portrait I had made of him—a tall, deliberate man whose eyes were ice gray like his hair. His years of complete authority echoed in every inflection of his voice. He would have stood out in any crowd, and not have been mistaken for a retired banker or lawyer. He could have been nothing but a commanding figure in the United States Army. Although he was gracious, I felt nervous whenever he addressed me.
“I’m sure I speak for everyone here,” he said, “when I say we are most grateful to you for taking so much time and trouble. You have shed some very real light on this situation, Mr. Skelton. Like you, we are all friends and admirers of Melville Goodwin. I think we can move on from here more confidently.”
He did not say where they would move, but there was no doubt that they were not going to sit still, and when they were through with me I was whisked away.
“General Gooch,” Foghorn Grimshaw said, “will you please find transportation to return Mr. Skelton to his hotel, and then join us here again?”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Good night.”
Out on the sidewalk General Gooch shook hands with me formally as we stood beside an army car.
“Rattisbone will call for you at eight hundred to take you to the airport,” he said. “Good night, Sid.”
An iron curtain had fallen and that was all. I was very glad to be leaving that conference. I still felt constrained and unnatural when I tried to get to sleep that night. Even in the morning I still felt that I had been a witness at an inquest. I had told them what they had asked me and if they were taking General Goodwin to pieces and putting him together again, I had nothing further to do with the process. As General Gooch had said, Melville Goodwin was in the works, and I was very glad that I was not in the works with him.
XXXIII
She Had to Say “Poor Sidney”
What with a legal conference and then a correspondents’ dinner in the evening, after returning from Chicago, I had not been able to get out to Savin Hill since that Washington broadcast, so there was a great deal I had to tell Helen about Gilbert Frary and the new arrangements when I finally did get home on Friday. Although Helen in her Fortuny gown and the living room with its log fire looked very natural, I felt as though I had returned from overseas and that there should be a lot of unpacked foot lockers and B-4 bags in the hall. I was feeling tired and it did not rest me to answer Helen’s questions, but it was reassuring to remember that there would be no broadcast on Saturday or Sunday. I needed time to think.
Helen wanted to know, of course, just what I had done in Chicago and what I had said to Gilbert.
“But I still don’t see,” she said, “why you had to fly down again to Washington.”
It was very hard to explain everything in order to Helen, who had been there quietly in the country.
“I went down to Washington again because Melville Goodwin’s going to leave the service and marry Dottie Peale,” I said.
After I had explained all about Gilbert Frary and the palace revolution, it did not seem fair to expect me to elaborate on Melville Goodwin. I was tired, but Helen was completely rested.
“Oh dear,” she said, “oh dear.”
“Let’s not discuss it now,” I said. “Let’s wait until tomorrow morning, Helen. I can do it a whole lot better after I’ve had some sleep.”
“Oh dear,” Helen said again. “What about Muriel Goodwin?”
I told her that she did not know it yet, or at least I did not think she did.
“That’s so dull of you,” Helen said. “Of course she must know something.”
Perhaps she might know something, but I did not want to discuss it then.
“Listen, Helen,” I said. “Why don’t we let this thing go for a little while? Tell me about Camilla. How is she doing at school?” but of course Helen did not want to let it go.
“Sid,” she said, “look … Dottie Peale called up this afternoon.”
“She did?” I answered. “What did she want?”
“She invited herself out here for lunch tomorrow,” Helen said. “There must be some connection.”
“I hope you told her she couldn’t come,” I said.
“Sid,” she answered, “I couldn’t do that—but the funny thing was, she never said a word about any of this. She didn’t even sound excited—but then, that’s like her, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s like her.”
Of course Dottie had to talk to someone, and I could think of us listening to the details blow by blow. Of course I would have had to see her eventually, but I had hoped to have a day or two or three completely free of Melville Goodwin.
“Poor Muriel,” Helen said. “After everything she’s done for him, and she’s just the right wife for him, too. She understands all the queer things that people like him have to do, and it is a queer existence, spending all your life learning how to kill people wholesale, when you think of it. After all the years she’s spent, making both ends meet and working her fingers to the bone”—it always turned out that the wronged wife had been working her fingers to the bone—“it isn’t fair. Somebody ought to tell her.”
“All right,” I said, “when he gets around to it, maybe Mel Goodwin will tell her.”
Helen clasped her hands tightly and stared fixedly at the fire, and her Fortuny dress made me think of the figure of Justice in some late Victorian mural.
“Do you know what I’d do if I were Muriel Goodwin?”
“Listen, Helen,” I said, “let’s not get theoretical.”
“I think I’d kill Dottie.”
“Now, Helen,” I said, “don’t be so conventional.”
“When I think of her sitting right here, so contented, crocheting those poor little washcloths for the new place where she was going to live,” Helen said, and I found her looking at me indignant
ly instead of at the fire, “well, if it were I, I’d step out with somebody else and find a new life for myself so fast you wouldn’t know it.”
“I don’t know why you bring us into it,” I said, “and besides, don’t you think that Mrs. Goodwin is too far along in years to start a new life?”
“Well, I’m not too far along,” Helen said. “You’d be surprised if I told you of all the chances I had when you were overseas. Yes, you’d be surprised.”
Our discussion had broken into fragments. We were no longer pinned down to anything definite, but then there was always a species of logic in Helen’s indefiniteness.
“Listen,” I said, “are we talking about you and me or about the Goodwins?”
“Darling,” Helen said, “I just want to talk. Here you’ve been, having an interesting time, and here I’ve been, shut up here with nobody to talk to except Camilla and Miss Otts.”
“But I thought you wanted to live here,” I told her, “and what about all the interesting people? What about our new friends, Mr. and Mrs. Tom and Maida Brickley?”
I congratulated myself on remembering the Brickleys’ names on top of everything else, and now they were stirred indiscriminately with the other personalities we were discussing.
“Darling,” Helen said, “I never said I didn’t like it here, and that reminds me that the Brickleys have asked us to dinner tomorrow night.” I did not answer. There seemed to be no peace or continuity. It would be quite a day tomorrow, what with Dottie Peale for lunch, and dinner with the Brickleys.
“Darling,” Helen said, “I suppose I’m provincial and old-fashioned, and that’s why I usually can’t seem to get into the spirit of Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, but she’s a bitch. I’ve always tried to be nice about her, but she really is a bitch.”
“Who?” I asked. “Mrs. Brickley or Miss Otts?”
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