Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  “You do it for the other men, don’t you? Only for them. Your’lads, “

  He stared at her, amazed at the perceptive mind that had hit squarely on a truth he had found hard to admit to himself. “I think you’re right. That might be all of it—the lot. King and country, the empire, could be rot.”

  Her voice was suddenly deep, not coming from her throat but from her soul. “You can’t be less of a man than they are or they less than you. So you kill and die and I will walk without you, drink my summer wine alone.”

  Wordlessly, he stared at her, unable to believe the depth of feeling in her voice, that she could truly love him so soon, with such force, such strength. The great blue eyes hardened like marble. Her words cut deep, “You came from the sky and the sky will claim you.”

  He felt helpless, could only say, “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ll lose you forever.”

  “You can’t love me—you hardly know me and I am older. . .”

  She interrupted him, “I’ve always loved you.” She pulled his head down and kissed him fiercely. He felt the urgency in her lips, held her close, and pressed her down into the sofa. She moaned and trembled like a leaf in a freshening wind. She kissed his cheeks, his eyes, ran the tip of her tongue over the small ridges at the corners of his eyes and mouth leaving warm trails of saliva. “My major—my major,” she whispered. “Stay with me, hold me for the whole night—if that’s all we can have.”

  He sat upright, turned away. “No, Elisa. I—I can’t do that. I can’t let that happen between us.”

  She kissed his neck and then turned his head by placing a palm on each cheek and found his lips. They held each other in a long embrace and he could feel her tiny hands pressing on his back, small hard breasts against his chest. He wanted her more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. He had found whores and easy women at the Imperial, the Palace, and a dozen other places. He had even picked them up off the streets in Piccadilly. It was sex on demand, no love required. Perhaps, a quid would be exchanged, but, usually, not even that. Just the demand, the relief, and the parting. “No. No, I can’t stay.”

  She would not release him. “Nothing can happen between us that should not happen between us.”

  She stood, pulled him to his feet. Her kiss was hot now, and she molded her pliable body to his as if she had been made to fit him. He groaned, drank of the wet heat of her mouth, and ran his hands down her back, clutching. He felt resolve, control melting, replaced by a primal fire deep in his groin that spread quickly like flames through a vale of dry mat-grass.

  She gasped through his kisses. “I want my arms around you for the whole night, feel the life within you and claim it for myself.”

  Never in his entire life had he heard words like these. He managed, “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Nothing could ever be so right.” She took his hand and led him to the curtained doorway.

  * * *

  When the Jaguar roared up to Fenwyck’s great porch at midmorning, Randolph was still dazed by Elisa and the night they had spent together. He had never known anything like it. The guileless, innocent blue eyes had not misled him. Yet, there was no tension, no restraint, no self-consciousness. She came to him as naturally as a bee seeks honey in a fresh bloom, a brook finds its way to the sea. Together they disrobed and she displayed herself eagerly, pulling him onto the bed and guiding his hands over her when at first he still held back. When he did touch her, she stretched and twisted, making small sounds of delight deep in her throat. He stiffened when she traced a finger over the ugly layered scars that began below his chest and covered his leg. She kissed them, ran her tongue over them like the tip of a small warm brush. She told him she loved him and everything he was and he believed her. Finally, he lowered himself onto her and she twined herself around him like a vine around an elm.

  Instead of the wild urgency he had found in his unions with other women, with Elisa it had been slow, stately, and deliberate. With his body deep in hers, mouth glued to hers, their breath became one, heartbeats pulsed together, and they even seemed to blend their blood, their thoughts. They were truly one as he had never known before, and he savored the moment, prolonged it. Then driven by a hunger as old as humanity, their movements hastened until she finally cried out incoherently, dug her fingers into his back, twisting and kissing him frantically. And then as the night wore on, and they found each other again and again, she cried out in passion and joy,” I love you! I love you!” And at those special moments, he heard himself use the same words.

  But now, as he left the motor-car and mounted the stairs, those words brought guilt. Did he mean them? Could he ever mean them? And he had used them again at the door when he left and she had held him and purred in his ear, “You’re mine, now, Major. My love.” And then she pulled back and held him with her eyes. “You’ll return for more summer wine?”

  “Nothing can keep me away,” he had answered sincerely.

  “Tomorrow and the day after and every day of your leave?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow and every day of my leave.” And when he left, it was like tearing himself away from part of his own body. Her last words were, “God go with you, my love.”

  He found Lloyd in the library. His brother was smoking and reading. The brigadier looked up as his brother sank into a chair. “Haven’t seen much of you for a couple days, old boy. The farm girl?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Randolph nodded. “Yes. Elisa Blue.”

  “You look a bit under it. A new toy?”

  Randolph bolted erect. “Mind your tongue!”

  “Easy, old man. Didn’t mean to offend.” Lloyd reached to a small table beside the desk and poured two stiff drinks of Haig and Haig. Randolph accepted his and sank back into the soft leather. “Got some encouraging news, Randolph.” The flyer raised an eyebrow. “Top secret and all that rot, but we’ll get more new tanks—Matildas and the American ‘Honey.’ “

  “The Honey is a light tank. What about the Grants and Shermans?”

  “Not until next year. But our artillery is being beefed up—more twenty-five-pounders, seventeen-pounders, and the new six-pounder antitank gun. It’ll gut the Panzer Three. There’ll be a major buildup and the Western Desert Force no longer exists, now it’s the Eighth Army.” He punched the desk. “In a few months we’ll take the offensive, punch Rommel with an iron fist he won’t forget.’’ The voice was jubilant.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Got it from Winnie himself.”

  Randolph raised his glass, “To Winston Churchill, the best PM the realm has ever known.”

  “Hear! Hear!” The brothers drank.

  Lloyd eyed his brother with a sly smile. “Got some other news for you, brother.” He took a drink. “A RAF mission is to be sent to the States—look over some new aircraft. The PM told me he personally submitted your name to the Ministry to head it.’’

  Stunned, Randolph felt a hot spring uncoil deep in his guts. “It’s that blasted Dowding,” Randolph snarled. ‘They all think I’m ‘round the bend.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “No, brother. You just happen to be the best qualified pilot in the RAF.”

  “And the oldest,” Randolph said bitterly.

  Lloyd lit a Lucky Strike and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You’ll still keep Number Fifty-four squadron. You’ll be temporarily detached.”

  “Who’ll command it?”

  Lloyd pulled on his cigarette. “I don’t know.”

  Randolph emptied his glass. Lloyd recharged it. “A lot of my lads could die without me,” the pilot said.

  Lloyd nodded knowingly. “I command, too, brother. I know how you feel.”

  The conversation was cut short as a breathless Bernice hurried into the room. “It’s happened! It’s happened!” she shouted excitedly. The men stared curiously. “It’s just come over the wireless.”

&nbs
p; The brothers looked at each other. “What came over the wireless, love?” Lloyd asked.

  “Germany has attacked Russia. Millions of German troops are pouring into Russia.” She poured herself a glass of Bordeaux and found a chair.

  “Well bugger all. They really did it,” Lloyd said to himself. “Stalin started this bloody war and now that swine is being led to the slaughter. Poetic justice.”

  “The ‘paper hanger’ made a mistake,” Randolph said, forgetting his anger.

  Lloyd shook his head. “They’ll strike for Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow—probably with three separate army groups. That’s the German way. Take them in a month or two and Russia will be finished and Hitler will have his lebensraum (living space), oil, and the greatest wheat-growing region on earth. He’ll be stronger than ever.”

  Randolph raised a hand to indicate disagreement. “Napoleon took Moscow and you know what happened to him.” He drank and then spoke thoughtfully, “Geography and weather will do in the Jerries. Mark me.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “Poppycock. By the time winter arrives it’ll all be over, brother.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Quite. We’ll see.”

  V

  New York

  July 8, 1941

  THE two weeks following the invasion—Operation Barbarossa to the Germans—the news from Europe was shocking and the repercussions struck the shores of every nation on earth like waves driven by a hurricane. The Germans destroyed whole Russian armies, taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Within a week, the Russian air force—the largest in the world—ceased to exist. German panzers took Lwow, Brest-Litovsk, and Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia over two hundred miles deep in Russia only six days after the invasion. Pogroms were rumored in Latvia and Lithuania and it was said thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent to camps. Finnish, Rumanian, Hungarian, and Italian forces joined in on the attack on the staggering Russian giant. The advance was so fast, the punishment so cataclysmic, it looked like nothing could stop the Juggernaut.

  Churchill reacted quickly, declaring, “Any man or State who fights against Naziism will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe.” Immediately, a British mission under Sir Stafford Cripps was dispatched to Moscow to discuss military and economic aid.

  President Roosevelt threw his support to the Russians, too. In order to keep Russian ports open for arms shipments, Roosevelt exempted Russia from the neutrality statute. He sent his personal aide, Harry Hopkins, to Russia to confer with Stalin and promised to aid the Soviet Union, releasing all Russian credits in the United States. U.S. Marines occupied Iceland, Trinidad, and British Guiana to relieve British troops who were recalled to England. The State Department explained the occupations: “To prevent the occupation by Germany of strategic outposts in the Atlantic to be used as air or naval bases for eventual attack against the Western Hemisphere.”

  In the last week of his leave, Rodney Higgins was stunned by the events just as all other Americans. Each morning at breakfast he scanned the Times and found nothing but reports of more German victories and Russian disasters. Usually, he saw his mother, grandmother and aunt at the breakfast table. Nathan had not been seen for over two weeks and Marsha had returned twice since moving into a dormitory at Columbia. Rodney had managed to avoid her on both occasions. On this Monday morning Rodney faced his aunt across the table while Travers and Nicole served them. Brenda had not yet finished dressing and Ellen was taking her breakfast in her room—a practice that was becoming more and more frequent.

  “More bad news from Russia,” Betty said, gesturing at the headlines.

  “Depends upon your viewpoint,” Rodney offered.

  “What do you mean?”

  Rodney sipped his coffee and thought with chagrin of his aunt’s mind that seemed so feeble when compared to his mother’s. How could two sisters be so unalike? He managed a smile and concealed his impatience, “If you’re an’America Firster’or a member of the German-American Bund you’re celebrating.”

  “You mean Fritz Kuhn and the rest of those vermin?” she said with rare insight.

  “There are thousands of them Auntie, and they’re Americans. They have a constitutional right to their podium—their voice.”

  Betty looked up from her poached eggs. “I’ll bet Nathan and his friends are upset.”

  “Upset?” Rodney laughed, almost choking on his cereal. “They’re hung in black crepe. The Communist Party has reversed itself one hundred eighty degrees. Now Lodge, Borah, Nye, Wheeler, Lindbergh, and Randolph Hearst are the villains. Roosevelt, Hopkins, Cordell Hull, Frank Knox, Henry Morganthau, and Henry Stimson are their heroes. Roosevelt can’t do enough. They’re screaming for intervention.”

  “It was such a surprise.”

  Rodney paused while Nicole refilled his cup. She had returned to her habit of leaning just a trifle too close to him, sometimes even brushing his back with a large pointed breast. The contact stirred a mixture of emotion, not all unpleasant. “Not really. Aunt Betty. Hitler set it all down years ago.” Betty raised an eyebrow. Travers and Nicole paused and stared at the young lieutenant. “He said it all in his book, Mein Kampf, which means ‘My Struggle.’ It was required reading at the Academy.”

  “If I may say so, sir,” Travers said in a rare moment of articulation, “Mein Kampf is the bible of the Nazi Party, required reading in German schools.”

  Rodney smiled at the butler. “Right.” He returned to his aunt, “In it he told of his plans to invade Russia to get the living space—lebensraum, he called it—that Germany needs.”

  “Just like that. Take it by force.”

  “Why of course, Aunt Betty. And don’t forget, to the Nazis, the Russians are of an inferior race, Slavs degenerated by centuries of mixing with Mongoloid stock. Why Hitler’s even referred to Russians as men with Slav-Tartar bodies set with Jewish heads. In Mein Kampf Hitler describes them as a mass of born slaves.”

  “Slaves for the Third Reich, Rodney?”

  “Why, of course.”

  All heads turned as Brenda entered, dressed in a perfectly tailored green business suit. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red and it appeared as if she had not slept. Before she reached her chair, Travers had filled her cup and Nicole had exited to the kitchen to fetch her grapefruit and single soft-boiled egg already prepared by Antoine. Sensing her grim mood, everyone remained silent while Brenda sipped her coffee. Brenda spoke to her cup, “Nothing can stop that madman.” She sipped her coffee. “Not a word from Regina—not a word.” Nicole placed a sliced grapefruit before her. Brenda ignored it.

  Rodney stared at his mother. “Rumors, Mother. And how in the world could a letter get through from Warsaw now? Communications are cut off. Even radio transmissions are being jammed. We’ll hear from her soon—when things return to normal.”

  “Normal! Normal!” Brenda cried. “What’s that? The lunatics have taken over the asylum! War! War! My life’s been cursed with it.”

  Silence seeped through the room like cold oil. There was only the clatter of bone china as coffee was drunk. Brenda turned to Rodney and placed a soft hand on his. “I’m sorry, son,” she said contritely. “Got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  The lieutenant stared into his mother’s eyes, “It’s all right, Mother. We’re all worried.” A tiny smile turned up the corners of his lips, “Truly, these are the times that try men’s souls.”

  She returned his smile with a sad little turn of her lips. “Thomas Paine knew what he was talking about, Rodney.”

  Betty looked at Nicole who returned a blank stare. Travers smiled.

  Brenda brightened with a new thought, “Have you heard from Kay Stockard?”

  Rodney felt his cheeks warm. “I got a letter yesterday. She’s staying in Hollywood for at least another month. In fact, she’s been offered a position at Paramount in their design depart
ment.”

  “Kay’s a clever girl,’’ Brenda said. “Very talented.”

  “Yes, Mother. She’s very talented.”

  “Do you think she’ll take the new position, Rodney?”

  “There’s a good chance. She was offered the position by the woman who heads the department, Gertrude Foot. And you know her family is from Pasadena and it’s only a few miles from Hollywood.”

  “Too bad. I’ll miss her.”

  “Not as much as I,” Rodney said before considering the impact of the words.

  His mother busied herself with her grapefruit and Nicole turned her back and hurried into the kitchen with a tray filled with dirty cups.

  Nathan returned that afternoon. Rodney was in the library reading when he heard loud, boisterous voices in the kitchen. Disturbed by the noise, the lieutenant lay aside the paper—he had been reading two of his favorite correspondents, Dorothy Thompson and H. V. Kaltenborn—rose and pushed his way through the swinging doors. The kitchen was a large room with a six-burner, hooded range at one end and two ovens stacked one on top of the other next to the range. A long salad table was placed in the middle of the room, laden with chopped lettuce, tomatoes, celery, herbs, bowls of half-prepared potato and macaroni salads, and jars of Antoine’s own special dressings. Two refrigerators were pushed against a far wall. Tabletops, counters, appliances, and hood all gleamed of stainless steel.

  Immediately Rodney saw Nathan and Margaret Hollister seated at a small table in the corner with chicken breasts and drumsticks in their hands, bowls of potato salad, macaroni salad, and a half-empty bottle of Haig and Haig Pinch in front of them. Nicole was busy at a small counter, polishing silver. Antoine pushed a huge ham roast into the top oven and then leaned over the stovetop seasoning a large pan of onion soup. Travers sat in front of the call board, smoking and reading The New York Times. For a moment no one noticed Rodney. Nathan looked up.

  “Hi, loving brother,’’ Nathan sneered, waving a drumstick. Obviously feeling his liquor, he slurred the words. Margaret snickered and dug her teeth into the meat. The servants glanced at the newcorner.