The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Kay’s eyes flashed. “Look, Butch, we have done nothing—”

  “That’s irrelevant.” He flicked his lighter. “You two are constantly together. Everybody can see he wants to have you with him. Everybody can see that you adore him. For most people looking on, this situation falls into the category ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ And where there’s fire, Irish, you can get burned. Ike, too.”

  Kay gave an ironic laugh. “Listen to the pot calling the kettle black. You and Molly—”

  “I’m not the Supreme Commander, Kay. I’m just a lowly naval aide. When this war is over, I’ll marry Molly and go back to being just a radio guy.”

  “Marry Molly?” She was startled.

  “Come on. You don’t think I’m a skirt-chaser out for a little fun, do you?”

  “Sorry,” she muttered, coloring. She gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re going to divorce your wife?”

  “It’s already in the works. Ruth’s decision as much as mine. She’s got other fish to fry.” He picked up his drink. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’m just a humble peon who can carry on as much as he likes and nobody notices. Ike, on the other hand, is the equivalent of royalty. In fact—” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Do you remember when the King was visiting, and you were upset when he pretended you didn’t exist?”

  Kay rolled her eyes. “Of course. I was terribly disappointed.”

  “Want to know why that happened?”

  She frowned. “Do you know?”

  “I can offer an educated guess. You’re a Brit. You probably know how the royal family feels about Wallis Simpson—the Duchess of Windsor, I mean.”

  “They hate her,” Kay replied promptly. “King George and Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother. They were appalled at the idea of abdication, and they blamed Mrs. Simpson when Edward left the throne. If he hadn’t fallen in love with her, he would have done his duty. Instead, he insisted on—” She stopped, staring. “Butch! You’re not saying that the King believes that I—”

  Butch shrugged. “I don’t know what the King believes. But if you ask me, it’s entirely likely that he’s heard all about you and Ike, probably from your PM. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s drawn the comparison.”

  Kay folded her arms, scowling. “It’s utter nonsense, that’s what it is. Ike isn’t Edward the Eighth and I’m not Mrs. Simpson. What’s more, we’ve done nothing—”

  “What you’ve done or haven’t done is beside the point, Irish. This is about what some people think you’ve done—and are doing.” Butch pulled on his cigarette. “And it’s about what other people are planning for Eisenhower.”

  She looked at him, frowning. “I don’t—”

  He held up his hand. “I heard it when I went back to Washington in March. After this war is over, Ike is going to be a hero. A huge hero—bigger than anybody can imagine right now. Why, they’re already saying they want him to run for president. They’re telling him that, too. A group of his old buddies from Camp Colt, for instance. Arthur Capper, the Republican senator from his home state of Kansas, for another. George Allen, on the Democratic side. There are others. And there will be more.”

  That got her attention. She turned to him, her blue eyes wide and disbelieving. “President?” she scoffed. “You’re joking! Of course he could do it—Ike can do anything he decides to do. But he hates politics—all those backroom schemes and intrigues. He calls it the work of the devil. He doesn’t even like the administrative work he’s doing here. He would much rather be out with the troops.”

  Butch paused, wondering how much he should tell her. In one sense, her life would be simpler and easier if she didn’t look too deeply into the man she loved, if she just lived through it day by day and took from it whatever comfort she could. On the other hand, the more she knew about Eisenhower, the better prepared she would be when it was over for her.

  “He won’t run next year,” Butch said thoughtfully. “The war likely won’t be over then—and the war is his job to finish. People are saying that FDR will run for a fourth term. But there’s forty-eight and fifty-two. My money’s on fifty-two.”

  She waved him off, as if he were a pesky fly. “He’s not a politician, Butch. He’s a soldier.”

  Butch shook his head. “There’s something you’re not seeing, Kay. Under that easygoing manner and that charming, disarming smile, Eisenhower is a hugely ambitious man. But not in the way you might think. He’s not out for glory or fame, personally, I mean. He’s simply driven to make things happen—the right things, in his judgment. Show him a job that has to be done, tell him it’s his duty to do it, and he’ll go after it, flat out. The harder the job, the more he’ll dig into it.” He paused. Now was the time to say this. “After this war, there’ll be no room in his life for you.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. “I simply can’t believe that the General would actually consider running for president. It’s out of the question.”

  He tried again. “Look, Kay, all I’m saying is, don’t bet on Ike for the long haul. I know he cares about you.” He winced at the way her face brightened, and hurried on. “But he’ll go back to the States when this is over. You’ll be the girl he left behind. Keep that in mind. Don’t burn your bridges.”

  He leaned closer and lowered his voice in his best Humphrey Bogart growl. “And keep it out of the newspapers. You got that, kid?”

  The silence was broken by the brassy clang of a bell from the direction of the kitchen. Mickey was letting them know that the cocktail hour was over. Dinner would be on the table in fifteen minutes.

  • • •

  Kay had heard the concern in Butch’s voice and appreciated it—and him. Butch had been a brother to her, and she knew that Ike spoke confidentially to him in a way that he spoke to no one else. She was glad that Butch felt comfortable speaking confidentially to her.

  But he seemed to assume what everyone else (even King George!) evidently did: that she and Ike were sleeping together. She supposed that was natural, especially when he and Beetle and Patton made no secret of their women. The irony, of course, was that it just wasn’t true: no matter how willingly she might have yielded, there had been no opportunity for more than a few sweet, stolen kisses. She didn’t even know how Ike felt about this, for while he was charmingly adept at small talk, he was slow to reveal the man inside.

  “It’s always been hard for me to talk about the things I feel most deeply,” he said to her one afternoon as they were riding their horses at a walk along the headland. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel them. It’s just . . . Well, I grew up with five brothers. I stayed out of trouble by keeping my mouth shut. I’ve lived in the military all my life, and military men don’t talk about what’s closest to them. But you know how I feel, and how I would show it, if I could.” He gave her a questioning glance. “Don’t you, Kay?”

  “I think so,” she said, guarded. But she guessed that his reticence wasn’t entirely a matter of having spent his life with men. It was a way of defending his inner self from the intrusions of others, especially when he felt conflicted. And surely he did. Surely he still loved his wife. It might be difficult for him to admit, even to himself, that he could love both of them.

  He shifted the reins from one hand to another. “I’ve lived this way for a long time, and I don’t think I’ll ever change. But I want you to know that I love you—and that I’ve loved you since the very beginning, back in England.” He grinned. “That first day, when I came out of the embassy and saw you running toward us, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And the day I learned that the Strathallan had been hit, I went through bloody hell. If you’d died, it would have been my fault.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Your fault?”

  “Hell, yes. If I’d flown you to Algiers with the rest of the staff, you wouldn’t have been on that ship. It was pretty damned simple: I wanted you here, but I knew that the minute you got off the plane, the photo
graphers would be shooting and you’d end up in the newspapers.” He chuckled wryly. “So I put you on the Strathallan. I didn’t count on Life magazine running your photo when the damn ship got torpedoed. What a stroke of fate. Made me wish that Peggy Bourke-White’s cameras had gone down with the ship.” He was silent for a moment. “And Mamie has given me holy hell ever since she saw it,” he muttered.

  Kay almost laughed. She had spent ten days on the ship and gotten torpedoed because Ike didn’t want his wife to know she was coming to North Africa? It would have been funny if it weren’t so . . . ironic.

  “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” she quoted, “gang aft agley.”

  Ike laughed, then sobered. “I never intended you to know, Kay. I expected you and Arnold to get married and that would be the end of it. But if there was ever any question in my mind about how I felt about you, that day—the day the Strathallan went down—gave me the answer.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I need to get back to the office. There are cables coming in this evening.”

  Kay lifted the reins and fell in behind him. It would always be like this, she thought. There would be moments when he could be open with her, could be himself. Then it was back to the desk, to the battle, to the war. She reminded herself of Butch’s warning: that when it was over, she would be the girl Ike left behind. Keep that in mind, Butch had said. Don’t burn your bridges.

  But she didn’t want to think of that now. She only thought What we have is today, and today is all I need, all I want. That knowledge was a talisman, a secret truth that she carried with her everywhere, hidden in her heart.

  It was her heart. Her whole heart. Today.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN:

  “Things I Could Say”

  North Africa—Egypt—Jerusalem

  October–December 1943

  Years later, when Kay recalled the autumn and early winter of 1943, it seemed to her that those were the sweetest of all the months that she and Ike had together. It was a time of veiled glances and quick, soft touches. His hand on her shoulder at her desk, her fingers brushing his when she handed him papers to sign, an urgent kiss in the stable after they’d ridden together. His handwritten notes on tiny slips of paper, like this one: How about lunch, tea & dinner today? If yes: Who else do you want, if any? At which time? How are you? Or this one: Thinking of you, hope you’re thinking of me.

  The August invasion of Sicily was followed by the September Italian campaign, and the days had been chaotic. But they managed to work out ways to be together outside of Allied headquarters. Yes, they were often alone in the car, but the driving was a challenge that required Kay’s attention, and the General was usually deep in thought. What’s more, his safety was paramount in everyone’s minds. Wherever they went, they were accompanied by three or four motorcycle guards and followed by a jeep carrying several armed MPs.

  It was easier to talk when they rode horseback at the farm and in the quiet cocktail hour at Ike’s villa, where they sat together on the high-backed French sofa in front of the fire, sipping drinks, smoking, listening to records, holding hands, even stealing a kiss or two while they listened warily for Mickey, who whistled as he came down the hall as if to let them know that he was there. Kay remembered what Butch had said about Mickey being in on their secret. But she kept it to herself, feeling that Ike might not appreciate the idea that she and Butch had spoken—or that Mickey knew. And she was aware that their desire was sharpened by the apprehension of discovery. It lent a shivery excitement to their relationship, their secret relationship, and pulled them closer. It was a bond they shared, just the two of them, with no one else in the world.

  At least, that’s how Kay felt. She was never sure about Ike. As articulate as he was when it came to giving commands, he fumbled for words to describe what he was feeling. Often, he would say, “I’m not very good at this sort of thing, but you know what I would like to tell you.” Or “You know what I can’t say, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know,” she would murmur, and she did. She could read his heart in his expression, in the softening of his mouth and the sudden warmth in his blue eyes when he looked at her. He had grown up within an austere Victorian moral code that valued vows and placed a premium on fidelity and trust. Discovering love outside of his marriage to Mamie must have stirred a storm of inner conflict in him.

  And in spite of her efforts to focus on today, always today and just today, a dark undercurrent tugged at her, too, for she was increasingly aware that their wartime world could soon be pulled apart. Operation Torch was over, Sicily had been retaken, and the Italian campaign was underway, although it wasn’t the cakewalk everyone had expected. The taking of Rome was still a likely eight or nine months away, and the Germans had twenty-four divisions south of the Alps.

  But Italy was now a secondary focus and attention was shifting to the invasion of Europe. The top-secret code name for the cross-Channel operation was Overlord, and Eisenhower had already been compelled to contribute seven divisions, three strategic bombing groups, and two of his best generals—Bradley and Patton—to the buildup in Britain. The operation would be managed from a base somewhere in the south of England. The question on everyone’s lips was, who would command it? And when would the commander be named?

  Tex had a ready answer. “It’s gotta be the Old Man,” he said. “He’s the only logical choice.”

  The staff agreed. Out of all the national agendas, the professional competition, and the petty personal jealousies, Eisenhower had created a unified Allied command. He had made it and babied it and pushed it through three Mediterranean campaigns. He could do the same thing in Europe. But in Washington, the smart money was on General Marshall, according to Beetle, who had just come back from the Pentagon. People in the know were saying that Marshall’s appointment would be announced sometime after the upcoming conferences in Cairo and Tehran. When that happened, Ike would be recalled to Washington to take Marshall’s job as Army Chief of Staff. As October slipped into November and November became December, the rumors of Ike’s imminent return to Washington were as thick as the cloud of black flies that hovered over roasting mechoui in the bazaar.

  It was the autumn of Ike’s discontent. He clearly hated the thought of going back to Washington and bristled whenever it was mentioned. One morning in the office, he exploded. “I’ve had a bellyful of this goddamned crap,” he stormed. “People coming in here to congratulate me for being shipped back to a desk at the Pentagon. If that’s all they’ve got to say, they can goddamn well keep it to themselves and leave me alone. I’ve got work to do.”

  For Kay, the thought sliced like a knife. If Ike went back to Washington, she would never see him again. His official family—Butch, Beetle, Tex, and the WACs—would be going with him. She was a British civilian. She would be left behind in Algeria, or shipped back to England.

  But there were bright spots in those weeks, too. The Prime Minister was a frequent visitor to Algiers, and Kay was always invited, with Ike, to the dinner parties. Guests came through Algiers regularly now, and Kay served as the General’s hostess. Lord Louis Mountbatten was always welcome; he and the General were “Dickie” and “Ike.” Averell Harriman, the new ambassador to the Soviet Union, stopped on his way to Moscow; he brought his daughter Kathy, whom Kay had known and liked in London. And a galaxy of popular Hollywood stars dropped in on North Africa to perform for the troops. Eisenhower always invited them to the villa for a buffet supper. One week it was Bob Hope and Vivien Leigh (who had been unforgettable as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind), the next it was Kay Francis and her USO troupe, and then Noël Coward. At an evening show for officers and enlisted men, Noël sang “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” for Ike, who roared with laughter all the way through and asked to hear it again.

  And then, for Kay, Noël sang “I’ll See You Again.” One of the lines—And what has been is past forgetting—reached into her heart.

  Yes, Kay thought. Past forgetting. This will all be gone, all of it, bu
t I will never forget.

  In the dark, while she struggled to blink away the tears, Ike reached for her hand.

  • • •

  For Kay, the highlight of those uneasy weeks was the picnic with the President of the United States.

  It happened in late November. Kay drove to El Aouina Field outside of Tunis, where the General was flying in from Oran with the President, who had arrived in North Africa on board the USS Iowa. As she always did, she drove around to the landing area to wait with the car for her passengers. But Mike Reilly, the head of the Secret Service detail, stopped the armored Cadillac and ordered her out of the car. In his Irish brogue, he barked, “No female is going to drive the President while I’m on the job.” He slapped the roof of the car with the flat of his hand. “Certainly no Limey female.”

  Kay was steaming—and even angrier when she had to show the American driver how to handle the gearshift on her car. But she followed Reilly’s orders. Later that evening, in Amilcar, she met the President in the library at Eisenhower’s villa, where FDR was spending the night. When Ike introduced her, Roosevelt shook hands, then frowned.

  “Why didn’t you drive me today?” he asked. “I’d heard about you and I was looking forward to it.”

  “Secret Service orders, sir,” Kay said, not daring to wonder just why the President of the United States might have heard about Eisenhower’s driver. She lowered her voice and in her own Irish brogue, growled roguishly, “No female is going to drive the President while I’m on the job.” She smiled. “Begorrah, by damn.”

  FDR threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “Well, child, lucky for both of us, I outrank Mike Reilly. I say you’re going to drive me tomorrow, on our tour of the battlefields. It’ll be just you and me and General Eisenhower.” He pulled down his mouth in theatrical disappointment. “Plus a couple of dozen armed guards. They never let me get away with a thing, damn it.”