Kay had heard that Churchill himself had squashed all criticism of her affair – and there was no other word for it – by responding to a suggestion that she be transferred to a new post, “Leave Kay alone, she’s helping Ike win the war.”
Those who sought to criticise were simply told to shut up and mind their own business. The fact that Winston Churchill accepted the arrangement without murmur gave Kay the perfect answer to her critics.
So yes, at one level, she told herself, it all made perfect sense. Her promotion and his commitment to her future met his professional requirements, those of an ambitious soldier in high command.
But at another level, it made no sense at all. He’d said he was never going to let her go. Those were his words, even if they were uttered as if they were no different in tone or meaning from the rest of his surprising statement about her newfound status.
So perhaps it was wishful thinking on her part that the man she had served for two years, the man who insisted that she remain at his side even when meeting leaders of the free world, the man with whom she had chastely shared the comforts of Telegraph Cottage, wherein she had partnered him at bridge, poured his drinks, lit his cigarettes, made his breakfast, spoiled the dog they both adored, was in love with her.
14
August-September 1944
The slaughter in the climactic battle for Normandy which had opened the gates of Paris to the Allies cast a long shadow over the grandeur and gaiety of the city. Kay and others on Eisenhower’s staff visited the battlefield in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
Kay had seen plenty of dead bodies before, but nothing prepared her for the sight of corpses of men and horses piled on top of one another along the roads of France. The dead were almost all young Germans. They had fought harder and resisted longer than the Allies had believed possible without the presence of their commander-in-chief, Erwin Rommel. Now their broken bodies lay in hedgerows, ditches, fields, in wrecked vehicles and tanks, faces frozen in expressions of pain and shock.
Eisenhower was silent as Kay drove his armoured vehicle through the carnage with escort vehicles front and rear. The spectacle was made worse by the birds that flocked to the carrion. Crows and occasionally larger kites would lift their bloated bodies from the corpses and flap slowly away to seek a nearby tree or ruined building from which to look down on the intruders who had so carelessly disturbed their feast; as the convoy passed they would return, their blood-red beaks stabbing into flesh, always the horses’ carcasses first, then the human flesh.
It was possible to walk for hundreds of yards over dead and decaying bodies, and in many cases, along the roadside and in small villages, it was impossible not to.
“These are scenes that could only be described by Dante,” Eisenhower said quietly. He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular but giving vent to feelings shared by them all. In her mirror Kay saw him staring intently at the birds as they lifted lazily in flocks.
“I’ve seen plenty of dead before, especially in London during the Blitz, but never like this,” she said. “So many young men, lying there like broken dolls – and what for? Nothing.”
She put the back of her hand to her eyes. Ike fished out a handkerchief, leant forward and handed it to her. She dabbed at her eyes and handed it back to him.
“Keep it,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
“Can’t we bury them at least?” she said.
“We haven’t got the time or the men,” he said.
Kay heard harsh words of recrimination hurled back and forth in the car as she drove away. The inquest continued in closed meetings in which she could imagine Ike thumping the table, veins throbbing in frustration. No imagination was needed to understand his fury, written in the cold black ink of the teleprinter messages that clattered day and night into the command headquarters.
More than once Kay was summoned into a meeting to take notes as Eisenhower upbraided his commanders for letting the Germans escape in such large numbers to regroup and fight again.
During August and September Eisenhower moved between two different worlds: those of the Allied Commander and military mayor of Paris. The joy of liberation could not mask the violence of revenge wreaked on those who had collaborated.
Most days Kay would be forced to cross the road to avoid bodies sprawled on pavements or in the gutters, not in the back streets but on major roads where they could be seen. She and other passers-by would step over them without a downward glance, except perhaps a flick of the eyes to take in the blood-smeared notices pinned to the corpses bearing words such as traitre or collaborateur.
The Seine reaped its harvest of this murderous revenge; every week boatmen brought bodies of men young and old to the banks to be laid out, waiting for relatives to identify them, which they did quietly at night to avoid the taint of treachery.
It was far worse, thought Kay, to find the body of a young man with his hands tied behind his back, his throat cut or half his head missing in the shadow of Notre Dame or with the Eiffel Tower in the background than to view the dead on the battlefield of Falaise.
Ike had told her to keep her Beretta with her and loaded at all times. He need not have bothered. The gun was always in her handbag or concealed in a pocket.
At night, after a day of driving him from meeting to meeting in Paris, it was a relief to get back to Versailles where she would wash away the sweat of the city, the stench of blood, and then sit down at the desk to go through the correspondence that followed the boss around like a faithful dog.
Eisenhower had taken the largest room in the house for his office, and a partition had been built for Kay. Since the partition did not reach the high ceiling, she heard everything that took place in his office and knew exactly when he began clearing papers from his desk to leave.
A small hatch had been cut into the partition so that mail and documents could be passed through. She watched him working at his papers, bent over his desk, meeting his smile with a smile when he looked up, then quickly breaking her gaze.
She knew this was not where he wanted to be. She saw deep frowns crease the smooth skin of his forehead and nicotine-stained fingers lift cigarette after cigarette to his lips. He wanted to be on the front line with his troops pushing into Germany.
The images of a man pushed to the limit of endurance crowded through the partition hatch: frowning, muttering expletives, chain-smoking, sipping coffee, drumming bitten finger nails on the shiny desktop, tilting back on his chair until it seemed he must fall to the floor – this was Eisenhower under pressure as Kay had never seen him before.
One night he poked his head through the hatch to her office and said, “It’s late – time to knock off.”
Kay looked at her watch. It was 9 p.m. and just getting dark outside. She shook her head and pointed to the teleprinter, which was adding to the coils of paper gathered in a wire mesh basket, and to the pile of correspondence on her desk.
“Oh, come on – I’ve hardly seen you since we got here,” he said
“Boss, I’ve driven you every day since we set up base in Normandy – everywhere.”
“I know, I know, but that’s not what I mean. Come on, let’s have a drink.”
Kay hesitated, looking at the paperwork on her desk.
“That’s an executive order,” said Eisenhower and vanished with the dog. She could guess what he was going to do.
She went to her room. She would surprise him and change from her drab military uniform into ... well, what? She looked at her only two dresses hanging in the closet. One was dark red, made of clingy satin and fell well below the knee. The other, a classic little black dress and a little low-cut, was a more obvious choice.
She wore them only occasionally, for official cocktail parties, although Ike didn’t really approve. He liked her to remain in uniform. He had conceded, however, that when they were entertaining French g
uests she made a better impression in a cocktail dress, especially the black one.
She changed into it and went to the bathroom to apply a little make-up. She didn’t use too much or put on perfume. Ike didn’t say anything but she knew he didn’t really approve of that either. Charlotte had advised her to ignore the edict. “He fancies you whatever you look like, doll,” she’d said, “so don’t let him boss you about. Put as much slap on as you like.”
She had done so, and Ike had never complained. She was going to make sure she looked her best for him tonight. She flipped open her compact, adjusted her lipstick, and grimaced at the pale face careworn from the endless sixteen-hour days. She needed a large gin. She went downstairs.
Ike had summoned the night staff, a chef and two orderlies, and was talking to them in the marble-tiled hall. As Kay went down the stairs she heard him telling them to take the night off.
“Go and enjoy yourselves,” he said, “but first fix us something to eat, something light – what have you got?”
“How about thinly sliced ham laid in fresh baguettes on thick Normandy butter with mustard and a tomato salad on the side?” said the chef.
Ike smiled. “Just great,” he said, “Leave it in the kitchen.”
“You’ve certainly got them well trained,” she said as they walked into a big drawing room which was made to feel larger by a gilt-framed mirror hanging over a marble fireplace. A dark brown leather sofa faced the fireplace with two matching armchairs on either side. She glanced in the mirror. Yes, she looked tired.
Ike went to a side-table, poured a large whisky into a tall glass and added ice and soda. He turned and raised a gin bottle enquiringly.
“Yes please,” she said, “army size.”
She sat down and watched him mix the drink. She preferred the bitter-sweet taste of gin and the fizzy kick of the tonic. It was so much sweeter than the peat and smoke of whisky.
He handed her the drink, sat back on the sofa, unbuttoned his tunic and raised his glass. “Mud in your eye,” he said.
She raised her glass to his. “May you get to heaven ten minutes before the devil hears you’re dead.”
He laughed. ”I never heard that one before. Irish?”
“It is so,” she said with a suitable accent.
It was the first time they had been alone together for weeks. She knew he had planned this moment. He wanted to talk with her alone, even if only for the brief time it took before the phone rang or a despatch rider arrived with an urgent message.
“Come and sit here,” he said, patting the sofa beside him.
She got up and sat on the sofa. He stared at the empty fireplace. It was a warm August evening but even so she thought it would have been nice to see the glow of even a small coal fire. He began to talk, not looking at her.
“It has got to stop,” he said. “It’s going to stop right here and now.”
There was anger in his voice. She knew he had been fretting for days over the rising number of complaints about the indiscipline of Allied forces.
“I’m going to order a firing squad when we get an open-and-shut case of rape. That should stop it,” he said.
Kay said nothing. She had seen all the correspondence already, although the notion of a firing squad was new. He would never do it, though – never shoot one of those men he had bidden farewell to on the eve of D-Day. Too many had died already. She changed the subject.
“That officer you helped, the one you talked to ...” she said.
He looked at her with eyebrows arched.
“McMichael?”
“Yes. Did we ever hear ...?”
“He didn’t make it.”
The words were spoken without regret. An officer must never show any emotion about the death of those under his command. Those who do quickly lose control of themselves and their men. Ike had told her that.
“He was only a boy,” she said. “What a shame.”
Eisenhower ignored the implied rebuke. He got up, poured himself another drink and raised the bottle of gin, looking at her enquiringly. She shook her head. One large gin after a day in which she had eaten little was already making her dizzy.
She watched him sit down again at the far end of the sofa, careful not to spill the drink in his hand. He wasn’t with her yet, she could tell that. He was somewhere else, lost in the tumble of thoughts in his head.
“These V-bombs are going take a lot of lives,” he said suddenly. “The Brits are getting good at knocking them down, but we think the Krauts have a stockpile of ten thousand. They’re shooting them off like fireworks.”
Kay knew there was no point trying to change the conversation.
She let him talk the worries out of his head. That and the whisky usually did the trick. His main concern was not German rockets but the battle that had broken out between his main generals, Patton and Montgomery.
“The trouble with those two is that they believe their own publicity. They don’t understand the Germans are going to fight all the way to Berlin – and if the Russians get there first, frankly, so what,” said Eisenhower.
“Is that going to matter?”
“What?”
“Berlin?”
“It certainly will for the Germans.”
“Hitler?”
“Oh, he’ll kill himself; we’ll never take him alive.”
“And the rest? Rommel?”
“Rommel’s damn nearly dead. We’ll hang him when we get him. Unless the Russians nail him first.”
He sipped the whisky. She could see the veins beginning to throb in his temple. It was time for a change in the conversation.
“I hear interesting news that Congress is going to pass a bill authorising the creation of five-star generals.”
He laughed. “You hear too much.”
“It’s difficult not to in that office.”
“I know. Well, it’s true.”
She moved along the sofa and put her hand on the stars across the shoulder of his jacket.
“There’s room for another star.”
He took her hand and squeezed it gently.
“They won’t give it to me until after the war,” he said.
She put her finger to her lips, kissed it, and touched it to his mouth. He blinked at the gesture, then grinned.
“You tell people not to talk like that,” she said. “There’s a lot of fighting still to be done, remember?”
He wasn’t listening. “You’re going to be a WAC in the fall. I mean, officially.”
“I know, you told me. I’m just thrilled.”
“You know what I said.”
“Yes.”
“I meant it.”
She nodded. He had said he was never going to let her go. She leant forward, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder. He put his arm round her and pulled her into him. There they remained for what seemed to Kay like hours. The burdens of command and the worries of war seeped out of the room. She could feel him relax, his whole body soften.
Then without warning he turned and kissed her, twisting his body with such speed and surprise that she panicked and tried to push him away, but he resisted and pulled her into him, almost lifting her from the sofa, and then fell backwards with her on top.
He was smiling, a big lipstick-smeared smile now, his hands sliding beneath her jacket and up her back. She knelt over him, her hair falling into his face, and she kissed him back with a passion that she had long felt but never expressed.
They kissed again, hesitantly at first, two dim figures in a fog moving slowly towards each other, and then she unleashed an explosion of little kisses on his face and neck until he stopped her, breathing hard, and held her close, her head on his chest.
She hugged him as hard as she could, her head pressed against the rough serge of his uniform. His body was taut, a muscular
rider’s body. It was like hugging a tree: the bark was rough, the trunk was hard, and only a brilliant canopy of leaves above said that somewhere inside there was life, the sap was rising.
She unbuttoned his shirt and they began to undress, clumsily and without speaking. She pushed him gently back onto the sofa and began to massage the twisted muscles in his back. She could feel the muscles unclench.
He closed his eyes and sighed as her hands and mouth moved slowly over his body. She was making love to a man exhausted by high command and the endless slaughter that flowed from his battle orders. She wondered if there had been many women before. Perhaps life in the army precluded such pleasures outside marriage.
She did not count herself promiscuous but she could not remember how many lovers she had had. Married men had certainly been among them. Most had been surprised that a lady so elegant when dressed for the drawing room could become so uninhibited when undressed in the bedroom.
Charlotte of course never stopped talking about sex and treated Kay as a novice recently released from monastic orders.
“Kiss them where they’ve never been kissed before and you’ll put a smile as wide as a mile on their dear little faces” was Charlotte’s view on lovemaking. “The trick is the timing, doll, you don’t want them coming too quick. Keep them on the boil until you get up there too.”
They made love quietly and with passion. They paused while she broke away and walked to the drinks table. He watched as she lifted a bottle of Scotch, tilted it into her mouth and skipped back across the room. She kissed him, the whisky flowing from mouth to mouth, dribbling down his chest. She licked it off very slowly.
“I thought you didn’t like whisky,” he said.
“I don’t, but I do like kissing you.”
Hours later, or maybe it was minutes – she had lost touch with time – she lit a cigarette as they lay there and handed it to him.
He blew a smoke ring and watched it rise to the ceiling. It was perfect, a circle of vapour fading away as it drifted upwards. Some things were easier than others. He had never seen her naked before, never imagined her that way. He would remember the sight, the fragrance and the feel of every soft curve and cleft.
Ike and Kay Page 15
