Chapter 12
The last of January, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Larry walked into a Rogers Peet clothing store on lower Broadway to pin gold leaves on Bemrose’s uniform. Arthur sounded like a kid over the phone, kicked up about getting a Major’s commission with orders to report for duty in forty-eight hours. Larry had heard somewhere that it was traditional for wives to pin on the insignia for the first time, and wondered why Arthur hadn’t invited Lucy to do it. He was flattered to be selected instead of Lucy for the ritual, and happy to hear Bemrose’s voice over the phone. It sounded as if he had dropped twenty years since the last time Larry had spoken to him.
As Larry entered the clothing store downtown, Bemrose was turning slowly in front of a triple mirror while a salesman admired the fit of his blouse.
Bemrose pointed to some fullness under the left sleeve. He saw Larry, grinned at him and straightened, looking two inches taller. The loose flabby look he had in tweeds gave way to a tidy compactness, and there was less lawyer’s stoop to his shoulders already, his frame broader and squared off.
“Pretty snappy, huh?” the salesman asked. “The Major just walked right into it. He was lucky to find it on such short notice.”
“Looks swell,” Larry said, not quite as familiar as the salesman with this new Bemrose.
“Don’t you think they ought to take it in for me here?” Arthur pointed to the left side.
“You always liked a loose coat.”
“But a blouse. A blouse should fit.”
He acted as if he had been wearing them all his life.
“Are you going to report for duty in it?” Larry asked.
“I called up Bill Turner. He’s a colonel at Governor’s Island. Bill asked me how the telegram was addressed, and when I said to Major Bemrose, he said, ‘You’re in! No if about it. Report in your uniform.’ I’m in a helluva hurry to get this one altered so I can wear it to Maxwell Field tomorrow night.”
“How did you find out about the telegram?” Larry asked, when the salesman had left them to look for a fitter.
“I was at a committee meeting at the University Club, and Miss Thompson got me on the phone. She said, ‘Congratulations, Major Bemrose! I have a telegram for you from Washington.’ I damn near dropped the phone.”
“What did you do? Call Lucy?”
“I grabbed a cab, and rushed down to the office to read the telegram myself. After I called you, I phoned Lucy, Marge, Ed, the Storeys, and Davis Shore. Then I got Newton and Harrison in Washington. I must have gone a little nuts, I guess, and called about twenty people.”
“Are you going to be able to wind up everything in time?” Larry sat down and rotated his hat on his kneecap.
“Miss Thompson will store the furniture and files. When I have a chance, I’ll get the building to do something about the lease.” Bemrose acted as if he were going to accept a Supreme Court appointment, not like someone who was about to turn the key on a six figure income.
“And the house?”
“Lucy will close the place and go to live with Marge and Ed. Unless I get orders near home, like Mitchell Field.”
“Then the Air Force took you?”
“What do you think?” Bemrose leaned down and shook Larry by the shoulders. “Do you think I’m going to try court-martial cases in the Judge Advocate’s office? It’s the Air Force. What do you think?”
“It’s great, boy.” What Larry meant was that it was great for Bemrose, great for a guy who always had to be on the ground floor of the big thing. The Air Force was going to draw the cream of the services. The Air Force had been invented for a fellow like Arthur H. Bemrose.
The salesman pointed out the fullness below the armhole to the fitter who got busy with chalk and pins. They promised to rush the job through and give it to Bemrose first thing in the morning.
“But Mr. Frank made a special trip down to pin on my leaves. I can’t ask him to come back again.”
“Then you want to purchase some insignia, Major?” The salesman moistened his lips in anticipation of military sales he would roll up if it were a long war.
“Sell me the works!” Bemrose said. “Only you may have to tell me where they go.” It was the first hint that he hadn’t graduated from West Point.
With stubby, fat fingers, the salesman affixed the U. S. insignia above the notch in both lapels, and pinned the finely wrought wings with central propeller below the notch.
“Now if you’ll just put these here.” The salesman handed Larry two bright gilt leaves and pointed to the cross stitching on the shoulder strap of the blouse.
Larry’s fingers felt stiff.
“Right in the center,” the salesman directed.
“That’s a little too near the collar, isn’t it?” Bemrose asked. “I thought I read in the Officers’ Guide that the rank insignia goes on the shoulder one-half inch from the seam of the sleeve.”
“A fellow from the Quartermaster’s was around, and he told us—” the salesman protested in a weak voice.
Larry inserted the pin at the place Bemrose indicated. He matched the second leaf to the position of the first and flipped the safety catch. “All the luck in the world!” He put out his hand.
“Now the missus’ll know where to put them for you,” the salesman said cheerfully.
Outdoors Larry looked sideways at the uniforms in the window and pictured himself in an ill-fitting G.I. version. Fear pinched and shriveled his heart. When he thought of waking-working-sleeping without the warmth of Bessie to give the days meaning, an icy fright cut off his breath. When he considered the return to a little boy’s world of doing-as-you-are-told and no Bessie around to talk things over with at night, his bone marrow solidified.
Larry recalled a summer in the Catskills when he was seven, and a smart-aleck kid had pushed him off a diving board into the lake. With the sudden impact, his eardrum had burst. Larry had mulled over the incident gratefully since Pearl Harbor. No Army doctor would pass him with a defect like that. It was a helluva thing to be happy about, a helluva thing when your best friend had been beating down doors to get in, but when he thought of Bessie, it seemed all right to put a reassuring finger in his left eardrum. If the world was going to blow up anyway, he wanted to spend the little time left with Bessie. Call him a heel. If there weren’t going to be Bess or Larry for much longer, he wanted to live the little time left by twos.
Bemrose, he knew, had to put his weight somewhere, make time count, get in on the big thing, perform like a big shot. Be one. And there was nothing phoney about his compulsion to get in. He might dread going home from the office at night and think his marriage was a mistake. He might be sick of his practice and angry at himself for passing up Janice, but he wouldn’t use the War as a cheap excuse to walk out. Some fellows might look for bargain ways to be a hero, and exit on a string of situations that had them tied in knots, but the description didn’t fit Bemrose.
Some other fellows might join up from the wrong side of the heart, but not Arthur H. The War counted with him, counted more than his personal life. His decision was clear-headed and unselfish. No ax-grinder, Bemrose. Axis-grinder. That was bad. Larry wrinkled his nose. Awful.
The bar was crowded; so they sat at a small, unsteady table and ordered double Martinis served in highball glasses. Larry raised his glass. “Now Hitler can start peeing in his pants!”
“How about you coming in?” Bemrose asked. “Maybe when I learn the ropes, I can find out about lining up a commission for you.”
So it was going to be a nice friendly war, like a club, with enough friends around to have a poker game on Saturday nights. A war where a fellow who had the rank pulled in his friends and made them second lieutenants. Not for Larry, not even to be a first lieutenant. He had finished the boy-meets-boy stuff at Columbia. He’d have to let the Bemroses fight the Supermen.
“I’ll take my chances on the draft board.” Larry’s finger automatically went to the left ear.
“If they’re going to get you anyway, you might as well be paid for it,” Arthur said.
“I’ll talk it over with Bessie. I think she’d rather have me take my chances on the draft board. I’d better stick around and take care of the women.”
“I wish you’d look up Lucy once in a while,” Bemrose said. “It’s going to be rough on her——”
Larry described a wide arc with his free hand. “I’ll take her out and get her drunk. How about another?”
The waiter saw them and brought refills.
“Janice had something when she said you’d be wearing eagles,” Larry said confidently.
“Not so fast. That isn’t how it works. They handed me this rank for being a specialist, but they won’t keep on promoting me. Not unless I’m in combat.” Arthur fastidiously wiped the rim of his glass with a paper napkin.
The eagles were already pinned on, Larry knew. What Bemrose meant was that it would take him a while, say about a month, to figure out how a man his age could wangle combat duty.
“What the hell are you guys celebrating?” The voice belonged to Tom Flannagan whom Larry hadn’t seen since law school.
Larry smiled up affectionately at Tom. “He just made Major.”
“No kiddin’!” Tom flung his blue serge bulk into an empty chair and pushed a forelock out of his eye. “What branch?”
“What do you think?” Larry asked, maneuvering his hand like an airplane.
“I’ll be glad if they take me as an ensign,” Tom said. “I had my physical and ought to be hearing.” He gulped a Bourbon and reached for the chaser. “Well, give ’em hell! Give those Heinies—” Tom turned to Larry. “The Air Force knows how to pick ’em.” He slapped the table. “Had more on the ball than any guy at law school. Give ’em hell, Major.”
Larry warmed toward Flannagan, as he had years ago at Columbia—soft-talking, blue-eyed Flannagan, all dumb cluck enthusiasm. It felt good to celebrate with a guy like Tom. He ordered another round of drinks.
“Where can I get in touch with you—in case this Navy deal falls through?” Flannagan asked Arthur with a sudden shrewd naïveté. “I may want to ask you to fix me up with a commission.”
“Haven’t you a bunch of kids?” Larry asked.
Flannagan held up his hand and spread his thumb and fingers. “Five reasons for going to war where it’s peaceful.”
“Larry will always know how to reach me,” Bemrose said. “How is your wife fixed if you go in?”
“She’ll have to get a job,” Tom said.
“You don’t want to leave her strapped.” Bemrose muffled his voice. “I’ll be glad to help you out, Tom.”
“You’re a white man.” Flannagan leaned a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t owe me a thing, Bemrose.” There was something wet in the corner of Flannagan’s eye. Larry watched carefully, but it didn’t drop, and decided it must have been the way the light was shining.
“Wait until I tell my wife— She doesn’t want me to go,” Flannagan said. “Wait until I tell her how some other guys feel about the War.”
They toasted Roosevelt. They drank rounds to the annihilation of Hitler, of Goering, and of Goebbels. When Flannagan left them to catch a train for Dobbs Ferry, Larry felt the floor slide under his feet. Bemrose sprawled in the chair, his face bathed in a colossal contentment. He didn’t look like a man who had been squared off in a uniform a few hours before.
Larry thought of Arthur’s offer to loan Flannagan money. One more drink and he’ll offer me some dough to take care of Bessie if I come in with him.
The fool. The crazy, lonesome, patriotic fool. Larry felt sorry for the loneliness of all men, for Arthur’s hankering to have a brother with whom he could go to war, for his own fatal dependence on the warmth of Bessie, for Tom’s loneliness in the child-cluttered house at Dobbs Ferry. It was the loneliness of those who stayed and those who went to war. He knew the ones who went would be lonely in the midst of ten thousand others. Years after it was over they would feel bereft, missing the special loneliness that had bound them to those other lonely thousands.
“I told you she dreamed it out of her head,” Bemrose said irrelevantly. “I followed through on it just to be sure, but I knew all the time——”
Larry read the telegram Bemrose handed him, signed by the F.B.I. in Washington. The message read: RICHTER CASE CLOSED STOP UNABLE TO TURN UP FURTHER EVIDENCE.
“Right out of her head,” Arthur repeated. “Some of them have the damndest imaginations.” He tore up the telegram and scattered the bits in a dirty green ash tray. “I thought she was different. I thought she stuck to the facts.”
“I ran into Steve Holmes,” Larry said. “He told me she’s back from the Coast. Holmes must be seeing a lot of her.”
“Old friend of hers from Kansas,” Bemrose said affably. “Are you going to see her someday?” He seemed slap-happy satisfied to settle for Major, glad to forget about his woman trouble and pretend the War was an answer.
“Holmes mentioned getting together with them——”
Bemrose raised an important finger. “Tell her she dreamed it up. Tell her you read the official telegram.” He let the finger join his hand which dropped loosely beside the chair. “There’s not a thing wrong with that fellow Richter. Not a thing. Female fantasy. Ask the F.B.I. They say it’s fantasy. Remember that word when you see her,” he instructed Larry. “How about a drink on getting into the Air Force? How about celebrating?”
Arthur’s contentment with things as they had become expanded like rising yeast. It was as though Larry could see the fleshy cells of satisfaction multiply. The radius of Arthur’s delight ringed the next table. Quietly he leaned toward a gray-haired man and, rocking on the legs of his chair, toasted him. The stranger, seduced by Bemrose’s show of fellowship, automatically responded. Arthur swung his mellow light back to Larry and let it soften the air between them. “I want to do right by her,” he said proudly.
“By Janice?”
Bemrose nodded. “I always meant to. Mistake, walking off. I should have said why. She’s a good, smart girl. I should have had a talk with her. Meant to the other day at the office. Slipped my mind.”
Larry nodded encouragement while Bemrose mowed through his pockets for change.
“If you really think you bitched things up—I can find out where she is from Holmes. You ought to have a talk. She wants to tell you something about why she went to Sweden. It was a misunderstanding, Arthur. You both went off half cocked.” Larry pointed to a pay telephone on the wall. “Shall I try Holmes?”
“When I come up from Maxwell Field. Not now,” Bemrose said. “When I find out what they’re going to do with me. I’m only going to be around New York another twenty-four hours.”
Larry must have looked unhappy.
“When I come home on leave,” Bemrose promised.
Larry’s fingers followed the ridges in his forehead. “She may be in China by then! If you want to talk to her——”
“Let’s pay and get out of here,” Bemrose said soothingly. “When I get back, we’ll have a long, long talk. She’s a smart girl, and she’ll understand when I tell her—” He settled his hat deep over his eyes with the extra caution of a man who had confined himself to double Martinis. “Don’t you worry, Larry.” He soothed him with his voice.
“But she may do something screwball, like marrying Holmes.”
“Not a thing to that.” Arthur took his arm. “Just an old friend from Kansas. Don’t you worry. Someday we’re going to have a good long talk, and then it’ll be all right.”
Larry crowded into a compartment of the revolving door with Bemrose, and they wheeled sideways into the dark rumble of the street.