The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Well, they weren’t, dammit, although to be perfectly frank, he wished they were. Patton bragged about his affair with his wife’s niece. Beetle slept with Ethel and never minded who knew it. Butch didn’t give a damn what people said about him and Molly. Even Mickey had his little girlfriend. And Patton and Beetle and Butch were as married as he was, with wives at home. Here was he, the good soldier who had followed other people’s rules his whole goddamned career, the staff officer who always did what his boss ordered, who tried to play the game the way his superiors thought it ought to be played. Yes, he’d been good. And good had gotten him where he was. Four stars and Supreme Commander.

  And now that he was here, by damn, he was going to do this little thing for this helpful young woman, no matter how it looked. And “some people” could stick their dirty jokes and their stupid conclusions where the sun didn’t shine.

  Feeling the anger pound in his temples, he stepped around the desk toward her. “You’re getting measured for those uniforms, Kay,” he growled. “You’re getting measured tomorrow. That’s an order. You’re going to have what you need and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks. If they ask, we’ll come up with a cover story. If they don’t believe it, they can go to hell.”

  She stared at him, her lips trembling, eyes wide and brimming over, the tears bright on her cheek. “I . . . I can’t—” Her voice broke.

  “Don’t.” He was moved by her vulnerability. His voice softened. “Don’t cry, Kay, please.” He put up his hand and with his thumb gently wiped the tears away.

  And then suddenly, without any intention, without a single conscious thought, he had swept her into his arms and was crushing her against him, kissing her hungrily, his mouth on hers searching, demanding, in an uncontrollable explosion of desire. Her arms were around his neck and she was meeting his demand, answering his desire with a feverish desire of her own that aroused an urgency in him he hadn’t felt in years, an urgency he had thought was long since dead. Another kiss and then another, and he was lost to himself in the scent of her, the closeness of her, lost in her unrestrained response.

  He took a breath. “Oh, God, I’m crazy about you, Irish.” The words, too, came without intention or conscious thought. They surprised him with their force, but they didn’t say all he meant. He took her face in his hands. “I love you, Kay.”

  There was a burst of male laughter in the hallway. Its reality stopped him like a splash of icy water in his face. He dropped his arms.

  She looked at him. Her hand went to her mouth, then dropped to her throat. Her fingers were trembling. She said something, but her words were blotted out by another raucous laugh in the hall.

  A second splash of cold water, and he was himself again. He straightened his shoulders and took a step back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Kissing this woman, telling her he loved her—it was nothing short of a loss of control, as unpardonable as Patton slapping those soldiers, and no doubt a result of his own battle fatigue.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated stiffly. “That shouldn’t have happened. I’m a goddamned fool. Forget what I said, Kay. And forget about the uniform. I can’t let you become the target of loose talk. It was a bad idea.”

  She stared at him for a moment. Then she shook her head with a sudden vehemence, her eyes flashing in a burst of Irish temper.

  “No!” she exclaimed fiercely. “No, I won’t forget it, and I won’t let you forget it, either. If you’re a damned fool, so am I. For over a year, we have spent more time with each other than with anyone else on earth. We have taken care of one another, we have cheered one another up, we have worked and worried and played together.” She clenched her fists. “Dammit, Eisenhower, I love you, too. And I don’t give a damn what people think.”

  Her words hung in the air between them like a brilliant light, and he was almost blinded by their power. He reached for her. “Kay, I—”

  She pulled out a handkerchief. “There’s more to say. But not now, General. You’re wearing my lipstick. And somebody might come in.” She put up the handkerchief and scrubbed his mouth. “There. Entirely presentable.”

  He felt as if the earth had shifted on its axis. Trying to compose himself, he turned and retreated behind the safety of the desk.

  “Helluva mess,” he muttered. “I want what I have no right to want. I want things to be different. I wish . . . I wish we didn’t live in a goddamned goldfish bowl.” He looked at her and his voice softened. “I wish I could offer you something more, Kay.”

  She smoothed her hair. “Thank you,” she said, very softly. Her lips quirked in a smile. “And now that we’ve got all that straightened out, I take back what I said. I accept your offer of the new uniforms, with pleasure. I’ll report to the tailor tomorrow.” There was a tap at the door and she pulled her shoulders back. “Will that be all, sir?” she asked crisply, as Tex came in with a folder in one hand and a cable in the other.

  “That’s it for now,” he said, and sat down, feeling that nothing at all had been straightened out. It was a helluva mess.

  But there wasn’t time to think about it. The cable was from London and required an answer. When he’d scratched it out and handed it to Tex, Beetle was at the door with a message. Patton had assembled the First Division—all eighteen thousand men of the Big Red One—on the bank of the Palma River and had given them a twenty-minute speech.

  “Supposed to be an apology for the slapping incidents,” Beetle said. He made a wry face. “But he apparently used so much profanity that nobody could figure out what the hell he was talking about. The men were ordered not to boo him, but they sat on their hands when he was done talking. Stony silence. No applause.”

  Ike frowned. “Tell Patton to keep his head down and his mouth shut until this is done. He’s the army’s best general. He has to be saved for the cross-Channel invasion.”

  It was a cover-up, top to bottom. Ike had to keep the press from printing the story until it was time to use it where he could make it count. But that wouldn’t be easy. Quentin Reynolds, the war correspondent for Collier’s magazine, had told him that there were fifty thousand American soldiers who would shoot Patton on sight if they had the slightest chance.

  “You know what the troops call him,” Reynolds had said. “It’s not ‘Old Blood and Guts.’ It’s ‘Our Blood, His Guts.’ There are sixty Anglo-American reporters in Sicily and North Africa, and they all want to write the story of the slapping incident. If you’ll fire Patton, we’ll keep it under our hats.”

  Eisenhower had turned up the charm and Reynolds had agreed to keep a lid on the story until he was told to release it. But if one of that sixty—just one, damn it—wrote about it now, the game would be up.

  “Everything I do, or see, or hear, or even think, is secret,” he had written not long ago to Mamie, and it was the truth. He spent half the damned time trying to keep the right people informed about what was going on with this war and the rest of his time keeping the wrong people in the dark.

  He sat there after Beetle left, thinking about cover-ups—but not about Patton. Now, he was thinking about Mamie. He had been married to her—and faithful, except for that brief flirtation in Manila—for twenty-five years. But she wasn’t the lively, curious, vivacious girl he had married. She suffered from claustrophobia and wouldn’t fly. She rarely walked more than a block or two, stayed in bed until noon, was prostrated by heat and cold, and had stomach problems. Her frailty and her disinclination to sex had diminished desire, and he thought of her not with passion but with a protective brotherly fondness. Mamie didn’t seem to mind; in fact, she liked to laugh about the two of them getting “too old for that kid stuff,” as if they had arrived at the natural and rather pleasant conclusion of a quarter-century of married life, when desire had run its course. When they were together, they slept in the same bed and never failed to share an affectionate goodnight kiss. But that was as far as it had gone for . . . how long? Six years? Seven?

  And now. . . . He took out
a cigarette and lit it. Until Kay, he had almost forgotten what physical desire felt like. Well, maybe it was kid stuff, but he felt it now, just as he could feel his gut tighten as he remembered that kiss and the feel of the yielding woman in his arms. He didn’t want to hurt Mamie, and he wouldn’t. He knew how greatly his wife depended on him, how firmly her identity was tied to his, how much he owed her for twenty-five years of marriage. At the end of the war, he would go back to her, to their affectionate, friendly comradeship. What he felt for Kay was different and separate and not a threat to Mamie. It was another thing that happened in wartime, one of the dozens of secrets around which his work revolved. As long as Kay understood that, they would be fine.

  He glanced at the clock. Time to shift gears. He had twenty minutes before his next appointment. He was in the habit of beginning a letter to his wife and adding to it as the opportunity arose. It was getting to be a chore to think of something to say to her, and he was afraid that his letters were beginning to seem stale and repetitive. Nevertheless, he picked up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper toward him and began to write:

  Dear Mamie,

  So much work, so many knots to unravel—and it’s making an old man of me! You cannot imagine how often I think of you and of what we’ll do after the war. Retire to some quiet place where we can be lazy and contented. I’ll fish every morning and you can sleep as long as you—

  On his desk, the phone rang. He put down his pen and picked it up.

  “Eisenhower,” he said. And he was back in the world of men and action once again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  Six to the Maximum Power

  North Africa

  October 1943

  “Very spiffy.” Butch cocked his head. “Turn around and let me get a good look.”

  Laughing, Kay struck an exaggerated model’s pose, turned and struck another. “Do I pass muster?” she asked playfully.

  Butch gave an approving whistle. “Ooh-la-la,” he said. “Très chic, mademoiselle. Farouk is a first-rate tailor. I’ll have to get him to make a new uniform for me. Navy blue, though. Olive drab just ain’t my color.” He picked up his drink and motioned with his head. “Let’s go out to the terrace.”

  The October twilight was falling over the green hills behind the General’s villa, spilling purple shadows across the city below. Kay settled into a chair facing the Mediterranean, drinks and a shared ashtray on a small table between her chair and Butch’s. Telek trotted after them and jumped into Kay’s lap.

  Butch fell into the other chair, took a last Lucky Strike out of a crumpled pack, and lit it. “Well, now that Naples and the rest of southern Italy is in Allied hands, it’s on to Rome.” He leaned back, contemplating the sunset over the sea. “I may be optimistic, but I’m thinking we’ll be there by Christmas.”

  Hoping would be a better word, he thought. Salerno had been bad, very bad. There had been blunders, mistakes, miscalculations, and so many casualties that the medics had to radio their commander, “On what beach shall we put our dead?” It had taken three weeks to push through to Naples, and they’d taken the city thanks to the help of the Neapolitans who had staged a bloody—and successful—uprising against Kesselring’s occupying troops. And now the Germans were digging in across the belly of Italy. It was likely to be a long, hard slog up the peninsula. Longer and harder, he thought, than any of them wanted to think.

  Somewhere upstairs, Caacie gave a short, sharp bark. Telek perked up his ears and jumped down from Kay’s lap, trotting off to look for his mate and their puppies. Butch lit his cigarette and stretched, savoring the respite from the crazy rush of the day’s work. He grinned ruefully, remembering a joke that was going the rounds. A platoon leader had learned that his battalion commander’s radio call sign was Big Six, which meant that to talk to the division commander, he should ask for “Big, Big, Big Six.” And to reach Eisenhower, it would have to be “Six to the Maximum Power.”

  “Six to the Max.” That cut both ways, of course. The man at the top had all the power. But he also took all the crap from everybody up and down the fucking chain. Today, the phone had never stopped ringing and the cables had never stopped coming. It had been one bloody calamity after another. Butch didn’t know how Ike stood the pressure. But he seemed to thrive on it. In fact, he’d been in a better-than-usual mood lately—and Butch knew why.

  Beside him, Kay took out her own cigarette and he reached over the table to light it for her. The evening was growing cooler. Overhead, a pair of black-headed gulls shrilled scolding cries in a lavender-tinted sky. Down in the harbor, a deep-throated ship’s horn sounded, low and mournful. In the kitchen, Moaney and Hunt rattled pans as they cooked dinner, the appetizing smell of merguez—the spicy lamb sausages that Butch liked—wafting through the open window. Almost time for dinner.

  But he had something else on his mind. Trying to think of a way into what he knew he needed to say, Butch cleared his throat. “This afternoon, Sue Sarafian asked me about your new uniform. She said she’d heard a rumor that the Boss had it made for you. She wanted to know if it was true.”

  Kay picked up her drink. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said I didn’t know.”

  Which wasn’t true, because Ike had told him how Kay had first turned down the offer of the uniforms and then, after what Ike called “a little gentle persuasion,” had agreed. In fact, he and the Boss had had quite a long and surprisingly candid conversation on the subject, man to man—which was why Butch understood about Eisenhower’s good mood. Mostly, it had been Ike talking and Butch listening, nodding at appropriate points and pouring another drink when the glasses were empty. Ike often used him as a sounding board when it came to military matters, not looking for advice, but simply laying out options, talking through possible outcomes. Butch was used to keeping the cigarettes coming and the whiskey flowing.

  This time, though, the subject had been deeply personal, a confession, really. Ike had spoken not only about his attraction to Kay (not a surprise: Butch had long since known that), but also about his frustrations with Mamie. Listening to Ike, Butch understood and deeply sympathized. Hell, he and Ruth had plenty of their own marital difficulties, but not that kind. He belonged to the use-it-or-lose-it school of thought. He couldn’t imagine being celibate for six months, let alone six years. Six to the maximum power, hell. The man must be made of titanium.

  The situation with Mamie wasn’t exactly news, either. Butch’s wife Ruth, who had gotten so fed up with Mamie’s manipulations that she’d decided to move out, had told him that Mrs. General Ike was completely self-engrossed and totally spoiled. She stayed in bed half the day. She played sick as a way of controlling people. Her refusal to eat—Ruth gave it a fancy name, anorexia or something like that—was another control thing. And so was her habit of keeping her husband on an allowance, which Butch already knew about. If Ike wanted a little extra money in his pockets, he won it at the poker table.

  In his humble opinion, Butch felt it was good for Eisenhower to have Kay in his life, as long as he was discreet about it. But that didn’t mean it was good for Kay. And while Butch’s natural allegiance was to his longtime friend, Kay was a very sweet girl. She didn’t deserve to be hurt. Hence this conversation.

  He blew out a stream of smoke and added, “I told Sue she’d have to ask you about that uniform. Did she?”

  “Not yet. But I’ve come up with an explanation.” Kay gave him a look he couldn’t read. “A lie.”

  “We don’t call it a lie, Irish.” Butch chuckled. “We call it a cover story. In war, you know, nothing is what it seems. Everything is secret, always from our enemies but often from our friends. We couldn’t run the war without cover stories.” He put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “What are you going to tell her?”

  “That the General didn’t want to waste whatever fabric was left on the bolt after his uniforms were cut, so he was happy to let me buy it. And that my mum saw a photo of me and was appalled by how shabby I looked, so
she sent me enough to pay the tailor.”

  “Sounds right.” Butch stretched again, getting the kinks out. It really had been a helluva day. “Tell you what. You give me a five franc note. I’ll drop it into the General’s petty cash box. Payment for that fabric.”

  “Thank you,” Kay said dryly. “Then I won’t be telling a whole lie—just half a lie.”

  “Half a cover story.” Butch dug in his pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of Luckies. “Look, Kay, I hope you don’t mind my butting in. But maybe you remember what I said to you, back in the Grosvenor Square office, after you and the Boss went riding in Richmond Park.”

  “Remind me.” Kay looked out over the sea, half-smiling, and Butch thought, not for the first time, how utterly lovely she was. And how utterly transparent—and, he thought, naive. No, not naive, exactly. She wasn’t trusting or innocent. Maybe she just didn’t care what people thought. In any event, it was clear to Butch (and probably everybody else at headquarters) that she was a woman in love. With the Boss. With Six to the Maximum Power.

  Wherein lay the problem—one of them, anyway. “I told you to keep it out of the newspapers, kid.” He stripped off the cellophane from the top of the pack. “It bears saying again.”

  Kay looked offended. “You think I’m shouting from the housetops?”

  “No. But your eyes give you away.” He paused. “He’s not exactly hiding it, either.” Which was true. He probably ought to have this conversation with Ike.

  She sighed. “Maybe we should start wearing dark glasses.”

  He tapped a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it in his mouth. “Look, Irish, I’m concerned about you. Whatever you and Ike are up to is your own private business. I won’t pry and I’ll always do my best to cover for the two of you. That’s my job. Beetle and Mickey, same thing.”

  She was taken aback. “Beetle . . . and Mickey?”

  “Sure.” He wanted to say You think they don’t know? You think they’re blind? Instead, he said, “Look. What I’m trying to say is that this relationship may not be good for you. And while it’s good for Ike in one way, it’s not good in another. Gossip, I mean. People talking.”