“I have to go upstairs now and start working on the third act,” I said.
“Oh, I hope we didn’t keep you,” said Hackley.
“You did, and I’m very glad you did. The director and the manager have had an hour to disagree with each other. Now I’ll go in and no matter what I say, one of them will be on my side and the other will be left out in the cold. That’s why I prefer writing books, Mr. Hackley . . . Polly, it’s been very nice to’ve seen you again. Spread the good word when you go back. Tell everybody it’s a great play.”
“Not great, but it’s good,” said Polly. “When will you be back in New York?”
“Leaving tomorrow afternoon.”
“So am I. Maybe I’ll see you on the train.”
There was a situation in my play that plainly needed something to justify a long continuing affair, something other than an arbitrary statement of love. In the elevator it came to me: it was Polly’s compromise. In continuing her affair with Hackley, Polly—and the woman in my play—would be able to make a bad marriage appear to be a good one. The character in the play was a movie actress, and if Polly saw the play again she never would recognize herself. The director, the manager, and I agreed that we would leave the play as-is in Boston, and open with the new material in Philadelphia. Only three members of the cast were affected by the new material, and they were quick studies. One of them was Julianna Moore.
I had said to my wife: “Would you object if I had Julie read for the part?”
“No. You know what I’d object to,” she said.
“Well, it won’t happen. There won’t be any flare-up. Kenworthy is doing the sets, and they seem to be making a go of it.”
There was no flare-up. Julie worked hard and well and got good notices in Boston, and I got used to having her around. I suppose that if she had come to my room in the middle of the night, my good intentions would have vanished. But we had discussed that. “If people that have slept together can never again work together,” she said, “then the theatre might as well fold up. They’d never be able to cast a play on Broadway. And as to Hollywood . . .”
“Well, if you get too attractive, I’ll send for my wife,” I said.
“You won’t have to. Ken will be there most of the time,” she said. “Anyway, Jim, give me credit for some intelligence. I know you thought this all out and talked it over with your wife. Well, I talked it over with Ken, too. He hates you, but he respects you.”
“Then we’re in business,” I said, and that was really all there was to it. I made most of my comments to the actors through the director, and Julie was not the kind of woman or actress who would use acquaintance with the author to gain that little edge.
Polly Williamson was at the Back Bay station and we got a table for two in the diner. “Do you think Mr. Willkie has a chance?” she said.
“I think he did have, but not now. Roosevelt was so sure he was a shoo-in that he wasn’t going to campaign, and that was when Willkie had his chance. But luckily I was able to persuade the President to make some speeches.”
“You did?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I did have a talk with Tim Cochran in August, and I told him that Roosevelt was losing the election. I was very emphatic. And then one of the polls came out and showed I was right.”
“Are you a New Dealer? I suppose you are.”
“All the way.”
“Did you ever know Jack Preswell? I know you know Nancy, Nancy Ellis, but did you know her first husband?”
“I once went to a baseball game with him, that’s all.”
“That’s a tragic story. You know how he was killed and all that, I’m sure, but the real tragedy happened several years before. Jack was a brilliant student in Law School and something of an idealist. He had a job with Carson, Cass & Devereux, but he quit it to get into the New Deal. I probably shouldn’t be saying this . . .”
“You can say anything to me.”
“Well, I want to. Nancy is married to my cousin and I know you and he are very good friends, but all is far from well there, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. I haven’t seen them lately.”
“Nancy and her father hounded Jack Preswell. They were very contemptuous of his ideals, and when he went to Washington Nancy wouldn’t go with him. She said it would be a repudiation of everything she believed in and her father believed in and everything Jack’s family believed in. As a woman I think Nancy was just looking for an excuse. Nancy is so beautiful and has been told so so many times that she’d much rather be admired for her brains. Consequently she can be very intolerant of other people’s ideas, and she made Jack’s life a hell. Not that Jack was any rose. I didn’t agree with him, but he had a perfect right to count on Nancy’s support, and he never got it. Not even when he got out of the New Deal. She should have stuck by him, at least publicly.”
“Yes, as it turned out, Preswell became as anti-New Deal as she was, or Old Man McMinnies. I knew a little about this, Polly.”
“Well, did I tell it fairly? I don’t think you could have known much of it, because she was at her worst in front of his friends. She’s a very destructive girl, and now she’s up to the same old tricks with Charley. You don’t know that, do you?”
“No.”
“She’s gotten Charley into America First. You knew that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes. And even my husband, as conservative as he is, and his father, they’ve stayed out of it. What’s the use of isolationism now, when we’re practically in it already? I agree with you, I think Roosevelt’s going to win, although I just can’t vote for him. But he’ll get in and then it’s only a question of another Lusitania, and we’ll be in it too. So I don’t see the practical value of America First. We ought to be getting stronger and stronger and the main reason I won’t vote for Mr. Roosevelt is that he’s such a hypocrite. He won’t come out and honestly say that we’re headed toward war.”
“A little thing about neutrality and the head of the United States government.”
“Oh, come. Do you think Hitler and Mussolini are hoping for a last-minute change of heart? Roosevelt should be uniting the country instead of playing politics. This nonsense about helping the democracies is sheer hypocrisy. There is no France, there’s only England.”
“You’re very fiery, Polly.”
“Yes. We have two English children staying with us. Their father was drowned coming back from Dunkerque. Nancy has Charley convinced that their presence in our house is a violation of neutrality. She said it wouldn’t be fashionable to have two German children. When have I ever given a darn about fashion? That really burned me up.”
I became crafty. “How do they feel about this in Boston? What does Mr. Hackley think?”
“Ham? The disappointment of his life was being turned down by the American Field Service. He’d have been wonderful, too. Speaks French, German, and Italian, and has motored through all of Europe. He’d make a wonderful spy.”
“They’d soon catch on to him.”
“Why?”
“If he burnt his hand, he’d say ‘Son of a bitch,’ and they’d know right away he was an American.”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “He told me about that. He’s nice, don’t you think?”
She was so nearly convincingly matter-of-fact. “Yes. He and I’d never be friends, but of his type I like him. Solid Boston.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Charley’s almost that, and you and he have been friends quite a long time. Poor Charley. I don’t know what I hope. Oh, I do. I want him to be happy with Nancy. I just hate to see what I used to like in him being poisoned and ruined by that girl.”
“And you think it is?”
“The Charley Ellis I used to know would have two English children staying with him, and he’d probably be in the Field Service, if not actually in t
he British army.”
“Well, my wife and I haven’t taken any English children, and I’m not in the Field Service, so I can’t speak. However, I’m in agreement with you in theory about the war. And in sentiment.”
“Look up Charley after your play opens. Talk to him.”
“Do you think I’d get anywhere in opposition to Nancy?”
“Well, you can have a try at it,” she said.
I did have a try at it, after my play opened to restrained enthusiasm and several severe critical notices. Charley and I had lunch one Saturday and very nearly his opening remark was: “I hear you caught up with Polly and her bosom companion?”
I was shocked by the unmistakable intent of the phrase. “Yes, in Boston,” I said.
“Where else? He never leaves there. She nips up there every few weeks and comes home full of sweetness and light, fooling absolutely no one. Except herself. Thank God I didn’t go to Oxford.”
“Why?”
“Well, you saw Hackley. He went to Oxford—after Harvard, of course.”
“You sound as if you had a beef against Harvard, too.”
“There are plenty of things I don’t like about it, beginning with der Fuehrer, the one in the White House,” he said. “Polly fill you up with sweetness and light, and tell you how distressed she was over Nancy and me?”
“No, we had my play to talk about,” I said.
“Well, she’s been sounding off. She’s imported a couple of English kids and gives money to all the British causes. She’d have done better to have a kid by Hackley, but maybe they don’t do that.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Charley? If I or anyone else had said these things about Polly a few years ago, you’d have been at their throat.”
“That was before she began saying things about Nancy, things that were absolutely untrue, and for no reason except that Nancy has never gone in for all that phony Thoreau stuff. Nature-lover stuff. You know, I think Polly has had us all fooled from ’way back. You fell for it, and so did I, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been screwing Hackley all her life. One of those children that Junior thinks is his, could very well be Hackley’s. The boy.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’ve never seen their children. But what turned you against Polly? Not the possibility of her having had a child by Hackley.”
“I’ve already told you. She’s one of those outdoor-girl types that simply can’t tolerate a pretty woman. And she’s subtle, I’ll give her that. She puts on this act of long-suffering faithful wife, while Junior goes on the make, and of course meanwhile Polly is getting hers in Boston.”
“But you say not getting away with it.”
“She got away with it for a long time, but people aren’t that stupid. Even Junior Williamson isn’t that stupid. He told Nancy that he’s known about it for years, but as long as she didn’t interfere with his life, he might as well stay married to her. Considering the nice stories Polly spread about Preswell and Nancy, I think Nancy showed considerable restraint in not making any cracks about Hackley and Polly’s son. Nancy has her faults, but she wouldn’t hurt an innocent kid.”
The revised portraits of Junior Williamson, tolerating his wife’s infidelity for years, and of Nancy Ellis, withholding gossip to protect a blameless child, were hard to get accustomed to. I did not try very hard. I was so astonished to see what a chump Nancy had made of my old friend, and so aggrieved by its effect on him, that I cut short our meeting and went home. Three or four months later the war news was briefly interrupted to make room for the announcement that Mrs. Ethridge Williamson, Jr., had established residence in Reno, Nevada. “A good day’s work, Nancy,” I said aloud. Much less surprising, a few months later, was the news item that Mrs. Smithfield Williamson, former wife of Ethridge Williamson, Jr., millionaire sportsman and financier, had married Hamilton Hackley, prominent Boston art and music patron, in Beverly, Massachusetts. The inevitable third marriage did not take place until the summer of 1942, when Lieutenant Commander Williamson, USNR, married Ensign Cecilia G. Reifsnyder, of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, in Washington, D.C. It seemed appropriate that the best man was Lieutenant Charles Ellis, USNR. The bride’s only attendant was her sister, Miss Belinda Reifsnyder, of Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. I gave that six months, and it lasted twice that long.
• • •
My war record adds up to a big, fat nothing, but for a time I was a member of an Inverness-and-poniard organization, our elaborate nickname for cloak-and-dagger. In Washington I moved about from “Q” Building to the Brewery to South Agriculture and houses that were only street addresses. One day in 1943 I was on my way out of “Q” after an infuriatingly frustrating meeting with an advertising-man-turned-spy, a name-dropper who often got his names a little bit wrong. In the corridor a man fell in step with me and addressed me by my code nickname, which was Doc. “Do I know you?” I said.
“The name is Ham,” said Hackley.
“We can’t be too careful,” I said.
“Well, we can’t, as a matter of fact, but you can relax. I called you Doc, didn’t I?” He smiled and I noticed that he needed dental work on the lower incisors. He had grown a rather thick moustache, and he had let his hair go untrimmed. “Come have dinner with Polly and me.”
“I can think of nothing I’d rather do,” I said.
“Irritating bastard, isn’t he?” he said, tossing his head backward to indicate the office I had just left.
“The worst. The cheap, pompous worst,” I said.
“One wonders, one wonders,” said Hackley.
We got a taxi and went to a house in Georgetown. “Not ours,” said Hackley. “A short-term loan from some friends.”
Polly was a trifle thick through the middle and she had the beginnings of a double chin, but her eyes were clear and smiling and she was fitting into the description of happy matron.
“You’re not at all surprised to see me,” I said.
“No. I knew you were in the organization. Charley told me you’d turn up one of these days.”
“Charley Who?”
“Heavens, have you forgotten all your old friends? Charley Ellis. Your friend and my cousin.”
“I thought he was at CINCPAC.”
“He’s back and forth,” she said. She put her hand on her husband’s arm. “I wish this man got back as often. Would you like to see Charley? He’s not far from here.”
“Yes, but not just now. Later. I gather you’re living in Boston?”
“Yes. My son is at Noble’s and my daughter is still home with me. How is your lovely wife? I hear nothing but the most wonderful things about her. Aren’t we lucky? Really, aren’t we?”
“We are that,” I said. Hackley had not said a word. He smoked incessantly, his hand was continually raising or lowering his cigarette in a slow movement that reminded me of the royal wave. I remembered the first time I had seen him and Polly together, when he would tack on his own thought to everything she said. “Are you still with us?” I said.
“Oh, very much so,” he said.
“Can you tell Jim what you’ve been doing?”
“Well, now that’s very indiscreet, Polly. Naturally he infers that I’ve told you, and he could report me for that. And should,” said Hackley. “However, I think he can be trusted. He and I dislike the same man, and that’s a great bond.”
“And we like the same woman,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Polly.
“I’ve been in occupied territory,” said Hackley. “Hence the hirsute adornment, the neglected teeth. I can’t get my teeth fixed because I’m going back, and the Gestapo would take one look at the inside of my mouth and ask me where I’d happened to run across an American dentist. Hard question to answer. So I’ve been sitting here literally sucking on a hollow tooth. Yes, I’m still with you.”
r /> “I wish I were with you—not very much, but a little.”
“You almost were, but you failed the first requirement. I had to have someone that speaks nearly perfect French, and you took Spanish.”
“I’m highly complimented that you thought of me at all. I wish I did speak French.”
“Yes, the other stuff you could have learned, as I had to. But without the French it was no go. French French. Not New Orleans or New Hampshire.”
“Do you go in by parachute—excuse me, I shouldn’t ask that.”
“You wouldn’t have got an answer,” said Hackley. He rose. “I wonder if you two would excuse me for about an hour? I’d like to have a bath and five minutes’ shut-eye.”
As soon as he left us Polly ceased to be the happy matron. “He’s exhausted. I wish they wouldn’t send him back. He’s over fifty, you know. I wish they’d take me, but do you know why they won’t? The most complicated reasoning. The French would think I was a German agent, planted in France to spy on the Resistance. And the Germans would know I was English or American, because I don’t speak German. But imagine the French thinking I was a German. My coloring, of course, and I am getting a bit dumpy.”
“Where are your English children?”
“One died of leukemia, and their mother asked to have the other sent back, which was done. John Winant helped there. The child is better off with her mother, and the mother is too, I’m sure.”
“Ham wants to go back, of course,” I said.
“I wonder if he really does. Every time he goes back, his chances—and the Germans are desperate since we invaded Italy. It’s young men’s work, but a man of Ham’s age attracts less attention. Young men are getting scarcer in France. Oh, I’m worried and I can’t pretend I’m not. I can to Ham, but that’s because I have to. But you saw how exhausted he is, and he’s had—”