“And, Helen dear,” she said, “I have a long piece of Chinese embroidery with a blue border and purple dragons with gold tongues that I couldn’t resist buying once from a little man in Baguio. I want to send it to you, because I think it might cheer up the front hall. It would be perfect for that empty space under the stairs. I wish you’d hang it there to remember us by.”
I had a quick mental picture, not helped by the unseemly hour, of ornate purple silk stitching against the tropical green wallpaper. She had no taste, in the accepted sense, any more than Mel Goodwin, but, by God, if she did send it, we would hang it there, just to remember them by. It was like the Luger automatic and Adolf Hitler’s tea cloth and the kiss—another letter of commendation.
“No,” she was saying to Helen, “it isn’t too much at all, and besides, I don’t think we’ll have any place to hang it for quite a while, and we may be where we can pick out something else like it—at least if things work out.”
We were standing by the open door watching Williams drive away, and Helen was waving. It was bitter cold and raw at half past six in the morning, and I remember saying to Helen that I was out of the army now, and I remember her answer—that it was just about time.
XXXV
“Generals Are Human. I Know of None Immune To Error.” —Omar N. Bradley
Though I had thought seriously that my friendship with Melville Goodwin was buried deep in a Never-Never Land, I heard from him exactly six days later. This was surely a short enough lapse, but somehow it seemed like a space of years. In the meantime, the feature story on the General had appeared, a little late for the full news impact, but still it was a good story. His face on the cover of the weekly periodical was a decorative portrait that must have pleased Colonel Flax and everyone else in Public Relations, and I imagined its being passed avidly around the Pentagon. Melville Goodwin’s head and shoulders appeared against the background of an American flag, and in one corner was the crossed-rifle emblem of the Infantry. The lines about his eyes and mouth were exaggerated and they made him appear stern, heroic and watchful, but underneath the picture appeared one of those smartly cryptic titles which I was afraid would be painful to the army—The color of Martinis grows lighter every year. Phil Bentley had intended this somewhat disconcerting caption to refer to the acceleration of world events, as I saw when I read his Goodwin piece on the inside pages, but I instinctively dreaded its effect on serious-minded parents of draft-age boys at a time when universal military training was a subject for wide discussion. I even thought of calling up Phil Bentley to tell him his idea was unfortunate, but then, Phil had probably been told this already, and it was too late anyway, and besides, it was the Pentagon’s problem and not mine.
Actually I had plenty of problems right in the office, what with hirings and firings and reconstruction. On the docket, among other things, was an annual challenge which was just around the corner. Although it was only late November, Miss Jocelyn, my new secretary, had already taken up the subject of Christmas. She had reminded me that I had been asked to make the main speech at the office Christmas party, and she asked if I did not want to prepare a draft of it to get it out of the way, because the editors of the office house organ wanted it in type as soon as possible for the Christmas number. Then after touching on the speech, Miss Jocelyn brought up the subject of Christmas cards. When I reminded her that it was still November, she said, quite correctly, that the office would send them to the right people at the right time, but that we were close to the deadline for having Christmas cards personalized; it would also be wise very soon to make up a list of gifts. Christmas had been a difficult time of year ever since I had married Helen, who took Christmas seriously and emotionally, and it was beginning to appear that Miss Jocelyn had the same ideas.
I would have to make an unusual effort this year about presents. The Yuletide was always an occasion for the healing of old wounds, and it was also a time that bred new hurt feelings, if you were not very careful. It seemed to me that I ought to give some sort of a present to Dottie Peale, although I did not know on what basis we were at the moment. I would also have to give something adequate to George Burtheimer, possibly a case of Scotch. Miss Maynard was no longer working for me, which was all the more reason why I should give her something handsome, and the same was true with Art Hertz. Also, there would have to be something for all the boys in buttons and something particular for Gilbert Frary that would be a permanent monument to affection, something original and intimate, like a first edition of Dickens’s Christmas Carol. By and large, it had not been an easy day at the office, and besides thinking of the party speech, there was the regular broadcast. I had been writing most of it myself, because the new writer, Billy MacBeth, was not as good as Art Hertz—and I must remember to give him something handsome, too, because after the New Year I would have to make a change.
It was just ten minutes before I was to go on the air, and I was still struggling with all these questions when Miss Jocelyn told me that a General Melville A. Goodwin was on the telephone. She had typed the name on the proper memorandum blank. She knew it must be important, because he had the private number. I could not recall ever having given him that number, but then I remembered that I had given it to General Gooch.
“Tell him to call at seven-twenty,” I said.
Miss Jocelyn said she had suggested this already, but she had been told that it was a matter of extreme urgency. That was what he had said—extreme urgency.
I felt resentful, I remember, not only toward him but toward the whole system he represented. I thought of the time that Goochy had barged in unannounced with that summons to Washington, and then there had been the original telephone call from the Pentagon—and it seemed years ago—about helping Colonel Flax with my old friend General Melville Goodwin—the call that had started everything.
War always gave those people too much power. Its fumes still remained in their heads like old Burgundy from the night before. Even the best of them developed a Messiah complex, once they had the rank. If they gave the word, they still expected you to snap into it with pleasure, always secure in the belief that their own affairs were of paramount significance. Goodwin now had so little to do with anything around me that I even found it difficult to believe that I had seen him only a few days before at the airport in Washington. It was nine and a half minutes before I would go on the air, and even his voice seemed far away.
“Look here,” he was saying, and he was angry, “I don’t want any more of this run-around. I want to speak to Mr. Sidney Skelton.”
“You’re speaking to him,” I answered, “but I’ve only got a minute, Mel.”
“Well, well, Sid,” he said. “Say, Sid, where do you think I am?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Well, I’m right here at the Waldorf and I have a suite. The management gave it to me—no extra charge. Boy, that’s what comes of getting a piece about you in the magazines.”
Somehow his voice indicated that being at the Waldorf in a suite at no extra charge seemed both to have settled and to have explained everything.
“That sounds wonderful,” I said, “but I’ve only got a minute, Mel.”
“Well, drop everything and come up here, will you, Sid? Put this down—rooms fifteen eighty-three and four. It’s important.”
“I can’t,” I told him, “I’m going on the air in just eight minutes.”
“Oh, hell,” he said. “Can’t you get someone else to say your piece?”
“No,” I said, “of course I can’t, Mel.”
There was a brief incredulous pause.
“Well, how soon can you get up here?”
“Around half past seven,” I said.
“Well, see you make it and don’t keep me waiting,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and I accented the “sir” in a heavy way that was impertinent.
There was another pause that, told me he had caught my meaning.
“Now, now,” he
said, “what’s the matter, son? Are you mad at me about anything?”
“No, sir,” I said, and I elaborated the last word again in my sincerest tone, and then he laughed.
“Horsefeathers, boy,” he said. “Well, make it nineteen-thirty. Are you happy, boy?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, that’s too bad,” he said, “because I’m feeling God-damn happy.”
Almost everyone I knew in New York had first arrived there in a fairly adult state instead of having been born there. We had all reached that city because of legends as old as Horatio Alger. We had all come there to make good and to set the world on fire, and we had all been in a highly impressionable state. In spite of the abrasions and frustrations we might have suffered since, those first impressions of New York were inviolate. No matter how the city grew and changed, its traffic and its skylines and its subway always looked as you first remembered them, gilded by an old magnificence, and among those early visions the most vivid and lasting of them all was always your first hotel.
Mine had been the old Murray Hill. I had dined there with Dottie Peale, after buying marked-down theater tickets at Gray’s Drugstore for a show that was fast folding. I cannot remember anything about the play, but it might have been only yesterday that we entered the marble-floored lobby of the Murray Hill and gazed upon the potted palms set among the rococo decorations of a simpler age. It did not matter that the main dining room was already stodgy—it belonged to the Murray Hill, and it had always remained in my mind as a unit of measure, a perpetual standard for gaiety and perfection. I might know better, but my youth and my first wonder and my first brash attempts at sophistication and my first shock at prices on a menu all belonged to the ghost of the Murray Hill. Years afterward whenever there was something special in my life to be celebrated, my instincts turned me back there. The first time I ever invited Helen to dinner and the theater I took her to the Murray Hill, and when I returned from Paris the first time, I stayed at the Murray Hill.
You could not escape those early loyalties easily, so I could see exactly what the Waldorf meant to Melville Goodwin. He had first entered the Waldorf with his bride and he had returned there after World War I. The old building was gone and the immense new structure was nothing like it, but still there was the name.
The outer door was open a crack and he had shouted to me to come in. He was standing in the center of a small impersonal sitting room that looked as functional as he did, and there was no sign of anything about him there except himself, no hat or coat or open suitcase, only Melville Goodwin. He might have just stepped in from somewhere else. Something about his appearance puzzled me for a second—he was wearing one of his older uniforms and not the new one I had seen him in so often since he had returned from overseas. It might have been the same uniform that he had worn in Paris. It had the same used look and the same efficient neatness and even the ribbons had a faded quality. It was a uniform that had been in and out of post tailor shops many times. It looked very well, but the sight of it disturbed me vaguely. It was not what he would ordinarily have worn in New York.
Something had changed in his manner, too. He looked careless and easy, almost as I remembered him at Saint-Lô.
“Well, hello, son,” he said. “I’m damned glad to see you,” and he did look glad. He gripped my hand hard and slapped me on the shoulder. “I called you up the first time I had a free minute. God damn, you’ve really got yourself dug in up there. I had a hell of a time getting through to you. How’re Helen and Camilla?”
“They’re fine,” I said, and then I found myself hesitating, because I did not know where to go from there. I did not know whether the ice was thin or thick, and his face showed me nothing, except that he did look happy, but this might have been the service veneer, the officers’ club party manner.
“How’s Muriel?” I asked. Somehow I was impelled to ask it, and not a line of his smile changed.
“Muriel’s fine,” he said. “She’s busy as a bird dog. By the way, she had a swell time up at your house. She really needed to get away for a while, and that reminds me, she gave me a package to give you to give to Helen—a piece of Chinese embroidery.”
“That’s awfully kind of her to remember it,” I said.
“You know Muriel,” he answered. “She’s like me—she never forgets anything. I’ll get it for you in a minute, but first I want to give you a little call-down, Sid.”
“A call-down about what?” I asked.
His smile had gone but his expression was gently paternal, and his words were measured.
“When I try to get you on the telephone, son,” he said, “I want to get through to you without telling my life history. Get this arranged in the future when I call you, will you?”
“Yes, sir, I will, sir,” I answered. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “Have you eaten yet?”
“I’m sorry,” I began. “I had some food brought in at half past six.”
“That’s all right,” he said, “I’ve eaten, too, and now we’d better have a drink. Call up room service, will you, for some ice and glasses? I’ve got some Scotch. Bink Collamore gave me three bottles. Do you know Bink Collamore?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“You wouldn’t have to think, if you had ever met him,” he said. “I’ve been with him all morning. I hadn’t seen Bink since Manila. Call up room service, will you, Sid?”
“I really don’t need a drink,” I said.
“Call up room service,” he said. “This is a sort of celebration, son—partly. You telephone and I’ll get the bottle.”
I was alone in the sitting room while I was calling room service, and he seemed to have vanished so completely that I almost felt he had not been there at all, until he came back and put a fifth of Scotch on the table.
“There,” he said, “now the room looks lived in, doesn’t it? Say, Sid, it’s funny, isn’t it, how we’ve got to be friends—close friends, I mean?”
He had moved me up in the category, which seemed strange to me when I had been thinking of him as part of the past.
“It’s funny,” he said again, “because you don’t often make friends—I mean close friends—after you’ve got the rank. It’s funny but just as soon as I checked in here, I began saying to myself, I’ve got to see Sid before I push off. I’d have called you earlier today, but I’ve had a lot of things to clear up.”
He sat down opposite me on the edge of an easy chair with his feet drawn under him in that habitual pose that made him always seem ready for anything.
“I didn’t know you were pushing off, Mel,” I said. “Where are you pushing to?”
His forehead wrinkled and he rubbed his hand over the back of his closely cropped head.
“Why, son,” he said, “haven’t you heard the news?”
It was like Mel Goodwin and all the rest of them to think that everyone knew when orders had been cut, especially close friends. I had not heard the news, but I remembered Muriel Goodwin’s pronouncement—Melville would have to be sent somewhere.
“Of course you haven’t heard,” he said, “I just keep thinking everybody ought to know. Listen, boy, they’ve asked for me at SCAP, right from the horse’s mouth in Tokyo, and I hardly know anyone on the inside in SCAP. It’s a damned tight little crowd. I’m flying out in two days and it’s going to be with troops and Goochy’s coming over, too. Frizell is coming back. They’ve been riding the hell out of him over there, but that part’s confidential. You know who Frizell is, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Listen, Sid,” the General said, “it’s time you got in touch with the setup.… Well, we’ll skip it because it’s confidential. I’m taking over from Red Frizell. I had it yesterday. It’s going to be the beginning of a build-up and it’s going to be with troops. Maybe it’s going to be a corps command. It’s about time they figured on a strategic reserve. God, I’m as happy as a kid
. Congratulate the old man, will you, Sid? The only thing that gripes me is that you’re not coming, too.”
We both stood up and we shook hands formally, the way one should. “Well,” I said in my sincerest voice, “congratulations!” I did not know what any of it meant, because I did not know about future plans in the Orient, but I was thinking of Muriel Goodwin.
“Boy,” he said, “I’m still slap-happy. I still can’t believe I’d get anything like this. Boy, the only thing we need now is a war out there, and things don’t look so good in China, do they? I’ve got a hunch it might happen in Korea.”
He was never as dumb as you thought he was going to be. He knew his terrain and he had the prescience. It was the first time I had ever heard a serious mention of Korea.
A discreet knock cut off his flow of words sharply and there was an instant’s guilty pause, which was easy to understand. He had thought we were alone and he had been skirting the edges of indiscretion. In fact he had almost stuck his neck out.
“Yes,” he called, “who is it?” His voice had a new ring of authority. It was the room waiter with ice and glasses and soda, a timid-looking, middle-aged man, and I did not blame him for looking frightened.
“It’s only me, sir,” he said, “the room waiter, and the suite door was off the latch.”
Melville Goodwin glanced at him critically and reached clumsily for change in his right-hand trousers pocket. Uniform pockets were not designed for the graceful extraction of change.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Give me the check and a pencil. Thank you, waiter.”
“Do you wish me to open the soda bottles, sir?” the waiter said.
“All right, all right,” Melville Goodwin answered, “open them.”
We sat in a frosty silence while the waiter opened the bottles, and Melville Goodwin glanced meaningly toward the suite entry.
“God damn,” he said, “I’ve got to get over being careless. Sid, see that the outside door’s locked, will you? Close that entry door, too.” He was on his feet, removing the cap from the whisky bottle, when I returned from my mission, but I was sure he had taken a quick look in the bedroom. It was a simple little observation of military security. He had almost been indiscreet, but he was still as happy as a kid.
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 65
