Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Sailors poured out of bars and cathouses and saw Willard and Cash about to get taken apart by forty berserk diggers. Boats Homewood led a wave of defenders into the middle of the street. It did not matter to Homewood that the sailors were niggers he would probably be helping to lynch if he was home in Alabama. They were shipmates, and no one kicked the Jefferson City around any more. Not after three months in the Solomons. Who the fuck did these ungrateful digger bastards think they were?

  It was beautiful, Cash Johnson thought as bottles and rocks flew around his head and the biggest riot he had ever seen exploded in Woolloomooloo. It made him almost proud to be an American.

  In the moonlit darkness, the wrinkled. Chinese butler and his shuffling wife served the duck a l'orange with silent dignity. When you were rich in the Philippines, you proved it by hiring Chinese servants. There were subtle pleasures no American could appreciate in employing the Orient's once master race.

  Arthur McKay and Imelda Cruz Ortiz sat on a balcony overlooking Vaucluse Bay. Beyond this chaste oval, moonlight splashed across the rippling water of Sydney Harbor. More moonlight gleamed on Imelda's blue and white silk gown, on the tiara of emeralds in her lustrous black hair.

  For a while the semidarkness permitted them both to imagine themselves in another time. Imelda's voice had the same tremolo of sadness he had heard in 1923. McKay heard his own voice softening, reaching for the gentleness, the warmth, the sympathy he once thought was all a man had to offer a woman to win her love.

  But the present soon became a willful guest at their dinner party. Imelda could not resist pouring out her resentment — her people's resentment — at the way the Americans had failed so dismally to protect the Philippines against the Japanese. Arthur McKay could only agree with her.

  "I thank God for Win every night. Without him we might still be in Manila. He showed Manuel and me the report your Captain Rooks of the Houston sent to Washington about the overwhelming strength of the Japanese fleet," Imelda said. "Manuel immediately began transferring our funds overseas."

  Arthur McKay could only wonder why Win would reveal such a document — which the doomed Rooks no doubt shared with him confidentially — to corrupt vermin like Manuel Ortiz. He was a paradigm of everything the United States had done wrong in the Philippines. For forty years, American officials had timidly looked the other way while American businessmen and their Filipino political henchmen mulcted millions from the islands. Once more McKay was troubled by Win's readiness to accept what he called "the mammon of iniquity."

  Still, would anything significant have been achieved by leaving Manuel and Imelda to the mercy of the Japanese? Win was acting as a friend, on the assumption that there were times in life when sentiment was more important than a top-secret stamp on a document. It was also an example of another assumption — that a special few were permitted to ignore the regulations when it suited them.

  Over coffee, Imelda's tremolo returned. Manuel had had the effrontery to take his Chinese mistress with them to Australia. He had since discarded her for a twenty-year-old Australian. "He disgusts me so much I no longer allow him to touch me," she said.

  "Why don't you take a lover?" he said.

  "My conscience will no longer permit it. Or perhaps it is my loathing for men. I do not know a single wife in our social class who does not have the same kind of husband. They collect women like they collect houses and cars."

  "Does anyone in Manila marry for love?"

  "The rich don't love. They acquire, they amass, they devour.

  The butler poured brandy in huge snifters. Imelda put both hands around hers and raised it to her lips, like a priest raising the chalice in the Mass.

  "What I told you twenty years ago remains true, Arthur. I have only loved one man with my soul. He was Win. I have only loved one other man with my heart. You. In some ways I've come to treasure your love more. Win consumed me. I vanished into his spiritual depths. You didn't demand such a sacrifice. You were tender in a way that was beyond Win."

  "I loved you too, Imelda."

  "Are you still married to Rita?"

  "Yes.”

  "Win told me she has become a monster."

  "That's not quite true."

  "But not quite untrue?"

  "Truth is a very dangerous word. It's like a torpedo plane flown by a good pilot. It jinks all over the horizon. It's very hard to get a bead on it."

  "Win always said your kindness would undo you."

  "I've grown somewhat less kind with the passing years."

  "I find that hard to believe."

  "Take my word for it."

  Imelda sipped her brandy. "Could you love me again, Arthur, for a little while?"

  "Won't Manuel object?"

  "He doesn't need to know. My servants are loyal to me."

  Desire stirred in Arthur McKay's body. It had been four months since he thought about a woman in this way. Even in middle age the body had its own voice, its own agenda.

  Maybe Imelda was a good idea. Maybe she was a way of escaping the dream he kept having in which Lucy Kemble and Rita cheerfully sawed him in half.

  A rustle of silk. Imelda vanished into the living room. A moment later she returned and the strangled horns, the syncopated beat of a 1920s dance band whispered through the blackout curtains. The words returned with the long-forgotten music.

  Who stole my heart away

  Who makes me dream all day? No one but you!

  He took Imelda in his arms, and they began dancing to the lost rhythm. He was the American conqueror once more, she was the violated native girl, still yearning to believe in the heroism, the virtue of these arrogant white giants who had sailed across the immense ocean in their steel ships to seize her islands. Conqueror and consoler, yearning to believe in the virtue of his countrymen yet unable to deny their possibly fatal flaws.

  Deep in Arthur McKay's soul, a voice whispered, Beware. This was all illusion, and illusions break hearts. In the real world he was the captain of a battered ship that was being haphazardly patched up to be sent back to the war. That was the only reality, the war, a juggernaut abolishing the past as it rumbled into the future. But hands, voices, reached out from the past. It was easier to believe in them for a little while.

  Slumped in the back of Charles Benbow's Jaguar sedan, Montgomery West felt like an inmate being transferred to a new maximum security prison. In front, Claire Carraway chattered about how spectacular the moonlight would look on the Pacific.

  "It might look pretty to you," West said, "but it won't to me. Moonlight makes a cruiser a sitting duck for a Jap submarine."

  "Please, Monty, you're among friends," Benbow said. "No heroics are necessary, thank you."

  West was annoyed. Was he playing hero? He was drunk enough to say exactly what he thought. The goddamn moonlight would never look pretty to him again, he was sure of it. "Where's this place called Woolloomooloo?" Claire said.

  "You don't want to go there," Benbow said.

  "Why not? I hear it's the wildest part of town. I'm in a wild mood tonight. I'd like to see it, at least."

  "We'll drive through," Benbow said. "You'll get the idea in ten seconds. I hope I don't run over a drunken American sailor."

  Benbow launched into a lecture on the atrocious behavior of the American sailor ashore. The British Navy simply did not have the problem, he maintained. He blamed it on the puritanical American policy of banning liquor aboard ships. As a result, American sailors hit the beach, immediately got plastered and ran wild.

  West debated whether to tell Benbow how much liquor was consumed aboard the Jefferson City, which did not seem to prevent wildness ashore. Maybe it had more to do with the way the average British sailor was a beaten-down, obedient robot who wouldn't know how to get in trouble if he was ordered to.

  Jesus, what a vile mood he was in. He was going to fuck Claire Carraway's brains out, if that was possible. Instead of a brain, he suspected she had an extra gland up there.

  "What's all th
at noise?" Claire asked.

  They rounded a corner into Bourke Street, the heart of Woolloomooloo. A rock hit the hood of Benbow's Jaguar with a thump like a dud torpedo. Another splintered the windshield. Ahead through the striated glass West saw a blur of shapes, many in Navy whites, fighting in the middle of the street. Shouts, curses and the shrill whistles of the Shore Patrol mingled with the howl of police sirens.

  "Look what your bloody animals have done to my car," Ben-bow howled.

  He flung open the door to protest. He was instantly seized by two huge Australians. "I'm British," he screamed.

  "Here's one for Gallipoli," one of the Aussies roared and punched him in the stomach.

  "Here's another for Singapore," the other one said and clouted him in the jaw as he went down.

  They pulled open the back door to get at West. He dove out the other side and found himself face to face with Boats Homewood and a dozen other members of F Division. "Hey, Lieutenant, come to join the fun?" Homewood bellowed.

  "No," West snapped. "I want you to knock it off immediately."

  "Okay, but we better take care of these guys first," Homewood said.

  He was referring to the two oversized Australians who had rounded the rear of the car and were lumbering drunkenly toward them. Homewood and company swarmed around the two giants and stretched them both on the cobblestones in about ten seconds.

  A squad of Shore Patrolmen rushed up, clubs in hand and ready to use them. "Hold it," West said. "These men are under my command and are trying to stop this riot."

  "They sure as hell haven't acted that way," shouted the chief gunner's mate who was in charge of the SP's. "Especially this son of bitch." He pointed his club at Homewood, who grinned and thumbed his nose.

  An Australian policeman grabbed West's arm. "There's a man bleeding badly in Dunne's place," he shouted. "Someone's going to jail for this. We don't use knives in our fights."

  "Yeah, just bricks and broken beer bottles," someone from F Division hooted.

  "We got orders not to bust any civilian heads," the chief gunner's mate said. "How do we stop these diggers?"

  "That's your job," West said to the policeman. "You concentrate on your people and we'll get the sailors out of the way. Then we'll try to find who stabbed whom."

  Fifteen minutes of furious clubbing on the part of the Shore Patrol and the Aussie police produced results. The two mobs were separated, although insults and bottles continued to be flung across the dividing line. West waded into the melee, shouting orders, ducking missiles. Only after semi-peace had been restored did he remember Claire Carraway and Charles Benbow.

  He found Claire beside the car with Benbow's head in her lap. "You better get him to a doctor," West said. "I think he's okay, but it won't hurt to check things out."

  "Where are you going?" Claire cried.

  "I'm the only officer around," he said. "I've sort of put myself in charge of this situation. The police are mad as hell. I want to make sure they don't throw the wrong people in jail."

  "That's where they all belong!"

  “Not really," West said.

  He lugged the groaning Benbow around to the passenger side of the car and told Claire to get behind the wheel. "I'll see you around," he said.

  "Not if I can help it," she said. "Have fun with your men."

  He watched her back slowly up Bourke Street and swing north toward the hotel. "Holy shit, Lieutenant, that's some dame," Homewood said. "I hope we didn't spoil your evening."

  "As a matter of fact you did, Boats. I can't tell you how glad I am.”

  For a moment Homewood looked baffled. Then he figured it out on his terms. "Afraid she's got the clap?"

  Love In Exile

  "Are you as tired as you look?" Imelda said as Arthur McKay slumped in a chair on the terrace.

  "Almost. I spent the day in court persuading an Australian judge to dismiss charges against half my crew, including a mess steward who knifed a man in a barroom brawl. I promised to give them all court-martials."

  "Will you?"

  "Of course not. The judge knows it too. But he had to sound off for the newspapers. The Aussies don't really like us very much. I remember when I was here in 1925 on that fleet visit, they had a left-wing parade full of Communists shouting `Americans, go home.'"

  "They're a strange people. So happy at first glance. But I think they still wonder if they belong in this part of the world. They're so few and we Asians are so many."

  "Any news from Manila?"

  Imelda's lips trembled. "Some of our closest friends have joined the puppet government. What else can they do? I can't sleep, thinking of my father, my brothers. If I did not have you to ... to comfort me, Arthur, I don't know what I would do. Manuel doesn't care what happens to anyone or anything, as long as he can drink champagne with his whores."

  McKay sighed. Imelda's lamentations for her country and her family were genuine. She had married Manuel Ortiz to enrich her family. It was part of the sacrificial code drummed into the head of every Filipino woman by the Catholic Church. But he found it harder to sympathize with Imelda's complaints about her husband. She had made her bed with Manuel, and if it was not a very loving arrangement it was a damned comfortable one. Her Rolls Royce, her servants, her silk dresses and her diamonds and emeralds were a consolation, no matter how she professed to disdain them. There was too much Midwest populism in Arthur McKay's blood to feel terribly sorry for the rich.

  But he was grateful to Imelda for seducing him into the past — out of the depressing present. She had carried him back to those marvelous days when he and Win had discovered the liquid dark eyes, the creamy brown skin, the luxuriant black hair of Filipino women. Imelda was one of the loveliest examples. She still had her graceful neck, her softly rounded arms, with intriguing dimples in the elbows. In bed she forgot the Virgin Mary, the Pope and all the other frowning gods that haunted her. She reached into her native past, before Europe and its guilts descended on her people, and became as passionate as the primitive maidens of Melville's Samoa.

  Was he in love with her? No — his feelings were the same mixture of sympathy and sensuality that had attracted her to him in the first place. Now the sympathy had a broader range. In 1923, he had been consoling her because Win Kemble had stolen her virginity and broken her heart.

  They often talked about Win McKay had told her about Savo Island, Win's reckless letter to Secretary of the Navy Knox, his exile to Panama. Imelda had wept. For a moment McKay almost joined her.

  Tonight, they talked about the Jefferson City. Imelda showed a surprising interest in his problems with his cowardly executive officer, his crooked supply officer, his eccentric chaplain, his wayward crew.

  "Will you be returning to combat soon?"

  "In about two weeks. They've almost replaced the bow. But we're going to need at least a week to overhaul the engines and boilers."

  "And Win? You never even give him a thought? All you care about is the glory, the power of your ship? You won't try to help him?"

  Arthur McKay slowly set his coffee cup back in the saucer. "You've heard from Win?"

  "I ... I wrote to him. He ... he wrote back."

  "What did he say?"

  "He ... he said he was glad we were together again. This time he hoped you might get rid of Rita and marry me."

  "What else?"

  "Oh, Arthur, believe me, my affection for you is genuine. But—"

  But Win Kemble was still the dark captain of her soul.

  Imelda was weeping, trying to explain between sobs. "If he asked me to come to him anywhere, anytime, I would leave all this in an instant. For a day, a week, a month with him."

  "What else did he say?"

  "He said to give you his love, of course. And to remind you of a passage in a Chinese poem."

  "Recite it," Arthur McKay said. He was shocked at the cold empty clang of his own voice. "I'm sure he told you exactly how and when to do it."

  Imelda's eyes were dark pools of sorr
ow. Asia's voice spoke the ancient words.

  "This year there is war in An-hui,

  In every place soldiers are rushing to arms.

  Men of learning have been summoned to the Council Board; Men of action are marching to the battle-line.

  Only I, who have no talents at all,

  Am left in the mountains to play with the pebbles of the stream."

  The lines were from the poem "Visiting the Hsi-Lin Temple." They had been written by Po Chu-i when he was sent into exile for falling afoul of China's imperial bureacracy.

  There was nothing surprising about it, Arthur McKay told himself. Win had never stopped watching him. Allies aboard the Jefferson City may have been writing him regularly. The chaplain, perhaps. Win watched and waited. He learned that Arthur McKay had not gotten rid of his crooked, cowardly executive officer the day he arrived in Australia, as any captain in command of his own soul, not to mention his ship, would have done. Captain McKay was still undecided. Still a man divided between his duty to his ship and his love for his friend and his disillusion with the U.S. Navy.

  "Tell Win do it. I'll take a chance on messing up my ship for his sake."

  He stood up. The Chinese butler materialized through the blackout curtains with his hat.

  "Arthur, forgive me, please," Imelda sobbed.

  He kissed her on the forehead. "I do," he said.

  But he was beginning to wonder if he could forgive Win Kemble.

  Moonlight filled the master bedroom at Fairy Hill. Lieutenant Robert Mullenoe lay beside Christine Wallace. He had just finished telling her the Jefferson City's departure date had been changed without warning. They were sailing in two days. His next words had no rational connection with this dismaying news. "I want to marry you," he said. "I want you with me for the rest of my life."

  Insanity, whispered the voice that had been mocking him ever since he met this woman. The voice spoke for all the ghosts and goblins of the past. It warned him that she was bad luck, she had already killed one sailor-husband. She was upper-class Australian, which made her practically English, incapable of understanding earthy, classless Americans. She was refined, she appreciated painting, she quoted poetry; he was an uneducated lug, a gunnery officer who had graduated near the bottom of his class.