Byron came in view, carrying a large brown envelope and leading a girl. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Mr. Tudsbury. This is Ursula Thigpen. Remember Ursula, Mr. Tudsbury? You gave her your autograph. Don’t you think Ursula’s a pretty name?”
Ursula plumped down in the chair beside the correspondent before he could reply. “Now, that’s Thigpen, Mr. Alistair Tudsbury.” She tapped his arm with a stiff little pink finger, spelling, “T-ft-t-g-p-e-n! Thigpen! Not ‘Pigpen,’ see? Just in case you do broadcast about me. Hee hee!”
“Well, well, Briny, so you surfaced,” said Aster, returning with Pamela. “Where the hell did you get off to?”
Warren and Janice came back to the table. “Like dancing in a subway rush,” Warren said.
“Hut-Sut rawlson on the riller-ah…” Ursula inquired whether either Janice or Pamela cared to press their shoelaces. Byron had been driving her all over the island, she said. He had even brought her aboard the Devilfish, but there was no little girls’ room on submarines. “My back teeth are floating,” she elaborated.
Janice took her off, wondering why Byron had this imbecile in tow. While fixing her makeup in the powder room Ursula spilled a condòm from her vanity case and unblinkingly put it back, tittering that in Hawaii you never knew when it was going to rain, did you? “Although frankly, your brother-in-law doesn’t seem exactly the type,” she said. “He’s cute, but strange.”
“What were you doing in the submarine?”
“Oh, he went to fetch a big wooden box. It’s out in the jeep. Getting it up those ladders was a problem, but nothing like my problem, honey. Why, those awful submarine sailors! They could see everything. And they sure looked! I’ll bet they’ve got eyestrain, the lot of them.” Ursula chortled about this all the way back to the table, where a waiter was serving drinks.
Out on the floor Byron was now doing a Lindy Hop with Pamela, who, keeping him at arm’s length, was observing his elegant antics with a half-dismayed, half-amused look.
Warren said to Janice, “Briny’s flying to San Francisco tonight. He’s brought his footlocker. At nine thirty we take him to the NATS terminal, he says, and pour him on board the plane.”
Janice said to Aster, “But have you detached him?”
“There are his orders.” Aster made a limp resigned gesture at the envelope on the table. “I’ve just signed them.”
“What about air priorities?”
“He got himself an air priority. Byron does these things.”
“Byron has two gaits,” remarked his father, “a snail’s crawl, and the speed of light in a vacuum.” He was watching Byron dance, doing the best jitterbugging in sight, shaping the faddish angular prances and wild twirls of the Lindy Hop into fluid motions charming to watch. Pamela Tudsbury’s sedate careful stepping-about, with her outstretched hand barely touching his, made a ludicrous contrast.
“Ursie Thigpen!” A fat perspiring lieutenant whose dolphins were green with sea tarnish wrapped a thick arm around her waist. “Good old Ursie! How about a dance, Urs? Will you excuse her, folks?” And away they gyrated.
Holding out a hand to Janice, Warren jumped up. “Well, let’s go, anniversary girl. Tonight’s your night.”
“These damned Lindys!” bubbled Janice. “Don’t they play anything for old married folks?”
“It’s hopeless,” Pamela said to Pug, dropping into a seat beside him, patting at her forehead with a wisp of gray handkerchief. She smiled up at Byron. “You were a darling to put up with me.”
“I’m sorry you quit.” Byron went back to his place, drank off a tall rum Collins like a glass of water, and signalled at the waiter for another.
Aster and Tudsbury were in a low earnest colloquy quite drowned out by the music. Here was Pug’s chance to talk to Pamela. How to start? She was looking away from him toward the dance floor. He had thought so much about her that here at his side, in the flesh, she had an unreal quality that disconcerted him; a minor actress, as it were, not quite filling the stupendous Pamela role of his yearnings and visions. Her face seen this close was strained and older; her cheeks were darkly hollow, her lipstick was carelessly applied, and on her upper lip there was a trace of moist down. He touched her bare white forearm.
“I’m sorry to hear you’ve been ill, Pam.”
She faced him. Her tone was as low as his. “I do look it, don’t I?”
“I didn’t mean that. You look grand.” Bad beginning! He lurched awkwardly on. “You didn’t by chance get a letter I sent you from here, months ago?”
“A letter? No. I’ve never had a letter from you.”
“I received one from you.”
“Oh, did that missive actually reach you? Written in another epoch, wasn’t it?”
“I was very glad to get it.”
“How’s your wife?”
“She asked me for a divorce.”
Pamela stiffened, clenched her hands, and thrust her bare pale arms forward on the table, hectic eyes flaring at him. “How could she? You couldn’t have given her any cause.”
“Claimed she’d fallen in love with someone else.”
“How ghastly for you.”
“Well, she’s since expressed regret about it, in a fashion. It’s all up in the air.”
Looking straight at Byron, whose eyes were on them, she murmured, “Do your sons know?”
“They haven’t a notion.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear this. And you lost your battleship, too.”
Victor Henry wanted to reply, Now that you’re here it’s okay; but her cool casual manner forbade it.
“How long will you and your father stay in Honolulu?”
“I’m not sure.”
Janice and Warren glided by, a straight-backed pair in the crowd of flailing prancing couples. “Didn’t you propose, on the Bremen, to match me up with a son of yours?”
“Oh, you recall that?”
“Warren, no doubt?”
“Yes. But meantime, Janice hogtied him.”
Pamela’s mouth wrinkled, and she shook her head. “Never. Byron, possibly. Though when you first told me about him and Natalie Jastrow, I confess I was surprised. I thought wow, Natalie, my contemporary, and a son of yours — a son—”
“I still think that.”
She contemplated Byron, slumped low in his chair over a second rum Collins, his dark red hair falling in his eyes. “Oh, I understand her now. Devastating charm. Quiet, effortless, lethal. As for Warren, he’s fine, but formidable. Are Natalie and her baby in real danger?”
“I suppose they’ll get out all right.”
“Why’s Byron going to the Atlantic? What can he do for them?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Waiters arrived with champagne bottles and shrimp cocktails. Ursula, holding down her skirt close by in an animated twirl, left her partner with a twiddle of her fingers. “Ooh, champagne, yum, yum! Bye-bye, Bootsie!” Byron ordered the champagne opened at once.
“Well, founder of the feast,” he said to Pug, “how’s for the first toast?”
“Okay. Raise your glasses. Janice, many happy returns. Of the day, and of your man. Warren, good hunting.”
Next Byron held up his glass. It happened that the music just then stopped. “Mom,” he said. The sharp clear word caught Victor Henry unaware.
Warren raised his glass. “And Madeline.”
Janice said, “Natalie and her baby, and their safe return.”
Byron gave her a dark glance, raised his glass to her, and drank.
Over the shrimp cocktails Pug lost Pamela to Aster. The submariner made some joke he didn’t hear, Pamela threw her head back in hearty laughter, and soon they got up to dance again. So did the others. He was left at the table with Tudsbury, who leaned over and jogged his elbow. “I say, Pug, how well do you know this submarine man? Does he enjoy leading one up the garden path?”
“Pamela can take care of herself.”
“Pamela? What the devil has she got to do with it? He’s just told me t
he most astounding story about his last patrol.”
“To what effect?”
Tudsbury shook his head. “Come up to our suite after dinner, won’t you? Some things can’t be bawled over music.”
Thinking of the Cincpac conference, Pug said, “I will, if there’s time.”
More champagne arrived with the roast chicken. Pug wondered by what legerdemain Byron had lined up these scarce bottles of California wine. A frenetic spirit was animating and jamming the dance floor as nine o’clock approached. The waiter had trouble getting through to their table with the cake. In the white icing, a blurry blue aircraft trailed red skywriting: Janice and Warren.
“Lovely,” said Janice.
“Wrong war,” said Warren. “Biplane.”
The waiter poured out the last of the wine as Warren cut the cake.
Tudsbury seized his glass. “Well, in concluding this splendid feast,” he grandiloquently boomed, getting to his feet, “I propose our host, and his two sons. Gentlemen, your disguise of simple Yank sailors is convincing, but the Homeric marble shows through. You are three figures from the Iliad. I drink to your health, and to your victory.”
“Jehosephat, that’s some toast,” said Pug.
“Three figures from what?” Ursula said to Byron.
“Three figures from The Idiot,” he said. “It’s a Russian novel.”
Pamela burst into a shriek of laughter and spilled her champagne.
The room darkened for the floor show. A master of ceremonies trying to sound like Bob Hope told jokes about rationing, Hitler, Tojo, and the curfew. Two Hawaiian men played guitars and sang. Then half a dozen hula-hula girls came undulating barefoot into the pink spotlight, their grass skirts audibly swishing. They danced and sang, then broke their chorus line to move out along the cleared floor, inviting diners to dance with them. One by one men jumped up to face the girls and hula, some kicking off their shoes. Mostly they clowned. The most beautiful girl, who looked more Eurasian than Hawaiian, came weaving her hips toward the Henry table. Seeing the decorated cake at Warren’s place, she turned a brilliant smile at him, and extended beckoning hands.
“Go ahead, darling,” said Janice. “Show them how it’s done.”
With a serious expression Warren got to his feet and faced the grass-skirted girl. He did not take off his shoes. Moving with grace, maintaining the dignity of his gold-winged white uniform, he danced a cold correct hula-hula, bringing to Pug’s mind the naval officer in Madame Butterfly, the imperturbable and lordly young white man toying with an Asian beauty.
“I didn’t know men did this dance,” said Pamela to Pug.
“It seems he does.”
The fixed entertainer’s grin on the hula-hula girl’s face changed to a sweet smile of pleasure. She looked full into Warren’s eyes, and impulsively hung her lei around his neck. Her dancing became sexier. Guests at other tables watched and whispered. Glancing around the table, Victor Henry saw that Janice, Pamela, and Ursula had admiring eyes fixed on Warren, while Aster and Tudsbury were gazing with appetite at the dancing girl. Byron was not looking at her. His face frozen in a drunken expression, he was staring at his brother, and tears were trickling down his cheeks.
24
PREDICTABLY, Tudsbury occupied the presidential suite, with the predictable huge living room full of overstuffed modernist sofas and armchairs, but with an unpredictable wallpaper of large red stallions charging around the room. The best feature of the suite, Tudsbury told Pug, was shrouded by the blackout curtains: a wide balcony facing the sea and Diamond Head. “Smashing view in the moonlight,” he said, entering the suite with Pug as Pamela went off to her room down the hall. “What’ll it be, Victor? Brandy? Or a warm whiskey and soda? There’s a fridge, but it doesn’t work. Shades of Singapore.”
Since taking command of the Northampton, until this evening, Pug had drunk nothing. He asked for brandy. The first taste brought back a glimmer of his time of acute pain over Rhoda’s divorce letter. Tudsbury flopped in an armchair, gulping dark whiskey and water. “Charming dinner, Victor, truly. Frightfully keen on your sons. One seldom runs into such a sense of family nowadays. Well, what cheer, old cock? What’s the real news? Come on! There’s a great sea battle making up, isn’t there?”
“What was Aster’s shocking story?”
“You really don’t know? Why, my dear fellow, the second vessel the Devilfish sank was a hospital ship.”
Sitting up straight, Pug jabbed a forefinger at Tudsbury’s face. “He never told you that.”
“But he did, dear boy.”
“You misunderstood him.”
“Softly, softly. It turned out to be a disguised ammunition ship. He’s got photographs to prove it. Before it sank it popped off for half an hour like a pyrotechnics factory. And it was carrying tons of crude rubber. He retrieved samples.”
“Was Aster very drunk?”
“No. Possibly Pam made him feel expansive. She rather took to him, I thought.”
“Forget you ever heard that story.”
“Why? Camouflaging an ammunition ship with the red cross is a filthy trick. Typical Jap insensitivity to civilized rules of war. They’re barbarians, Pug.” A fat fist waved in the air. “Lieutenant Commander Aster is one white fighting man who can be as ruthless as they are, an ingratiating young Yank with a killer’s heart. Superb copy.”
“Do you want him to go on killing?”
“Of course.”
“Then blot the thing from your mind. Alcoholic babble. What are your plans, Talky? Where do you go from here?”
“San Francisco. Washington. And so home to Old Blighty, and thence to the desert army in North Africa.” He leaned forward, his good eye popping, his paunch straining at the yellow silk, and dropped his voice to a hissing whisper. “See here, Pug Henry, what’s up? I ask you man to man, what’s up? Damn it all, I’m a friend of yours and a friend of your country.”
A pleasant brandy fog wisped in Pug’s brain. The battle was coming on, he thought, Tudsbury did happen to be here, and it would be a disservice to the Allies if he left. Ingrained total secrecy in this case could be modified. “Okay. You forget that hospital ship and I’ll tell you something.” He extended his hand. “Done?”
“But you’re offering a pig in a poke.”
“Yes.”
“Well, for once, I’ll trust a Yank.” Tudsbury clasped hands. “Done! Now talk.”
“Don’t leave Honolulu.”
“No? Good-o! Why not? Go on, go on, tell me all about it, dear fellow. I’m panting.” Tudsbury was indeed breathing heavily, somewhat like a leaky bellows, with considerable wheeze.
“That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
Henry reiterated, with the level droning emphasis of words issuing from a warship’s bullhorn, “Dont…leave…Honolulu.”
“That’s all? But you’re a damnable swindler!” Tudsbury’s face contorted in a huge scowl. “I know I shouldn’t leave. Your Cincpac building is boiling like an anthill, I saw that! What in hell have you given me?”
“Confirmation,” Pug said.
Tudsbury’s one-eyed indignant glare slowly faded into a crafty capitulating leer. “All right, dear boy. But it’s you who’s been diddled, you know, not me. I gave my word of honor to Aster not to use his story, before he’d tell me a word of it. No Allied correspondent could touch that tale. Heh heh. You’re an easy mark.” He leaned over and patted Henry’s arm. “Tremendous battle cooking up, eh? Trafalgar of the Pacific, what? On their way already, the yellow beggars? Going to try to invade Hawaii?”
Pamela came in. Droplets of water clung to her hair at the forehead and temples. She looked very pale, almost ill. Pug stood up, and her father waved his glass.
“Ah, here’s my charmer, my right hand. Nobody will ever know, Victor, how much I owe this girl. I’ve dragged her through fire and water in these past six months. She’s never faltered or complained. Pour yourself a drink, Pam, and give me another stiff whiskey and soda.”
“Talky, go to bed.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve had a very long day. Go to bed.”
“But Pam, I want to talk to Victor.”
“So do I.”
Tudsbury peered at his daughter’s chill nervous face, and reluctantly pushed himself up out of his armchair. “You’re being hard on me, Pamela, very hard,” he whined.
“I must help him dress his eye,” she said briskly to Pug. “I shan’t be long. Take a look at our view.”
Victor Henry slipped through the swaying blackout curtains. The night was starry, and the low moon cast a golden path on the calm sea. Eight or nine days from full; the Japs’ battle plan called for full-moon nights, obviously. A deceitfully peaceful prospect here: the quiet plash and hiss of the phosphorescent surf, flower scents from the gardens below, the moonlit cone of Diamond Head beyond the blacked-out Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Under this same moon, lower in the sky thousands of miles to the west, the Japanese armada was even now plowing toward Midway, swells breaking and foaming on hundreds of iron bows — pagoda-masted battleships, crudely built carriers with flight decks propped by naked iron girders, tubby transports crowded with landing troops, and the vessels of the train swarming like waterbugs from horizon to horizon.
“I wondered where you’d got to.” A touch on his shoulder. Pamela’s voice, cool and low.
“Hi.” He turned toward her dark shape. “That was quick. Is his eye bad?”
“Your Navy doctors call it an ulcer. They say it’ll heal.” A pause. “Your wife’s demand for a divorce is shattering news.”
“Well, it was blurred at the time by other things, Pamela, such as losing the California. And seeing Pearl Harbor from the air, a smoking junkyard.”