The Young Lions (51 page)

"That's a cynical attitude," Louise said. "The OWI wouldn't like that."

"Maybe," said Michael. "I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it."

"What are you going to do?" Louise demanded. "Stay in that silly office, stroking chorus girls on the behind for the whole war?"

Michael grinned. "People have spent wars in worse ways," he said. But I don't think I'll only do that. Somehow," he said thoughtfully, "somehow the Army will move me somewhere, finally, where I will have to earn my keep, where I will have to kill, where I may be killed."

"How do you feel about it?" Louise demanded.

"Frightened."

"Why're you so sure it will happen?"

"I don't know," he said. "A premonition. A mystic sense that justice must be done by me and to me. Ever since 1936, ever since Spain, I have felt that one day I would be asked to pay. I ducked it year after year, and every day that sense grew stronger; the payment would be demanded of me, without fail."

"Do you think you've paid yet?"

"A little," Michael grinned. "The interest on the debt. The capital remains untouched. Some day they're going to collect the capital from me, and not in the USO office, either." They turned down into St James's Street, with the Palace looming dark and medieval at the other end, and the clock glistening palely, a soft grey blur, among the battlements.

"Maybe," Louise said, smiling, in the darkness, "maybe you're not the officer type after all."

"Maybe I'm not," Michael agreed gravely.

"Still," said Louise, "you could at least be a Sergeant."

Michael laughed. "How the times have slid downhill," he said. "Madame Pompadour in Paris gets a Marshal's baton for her favourite. Louise M'Kimber slips into the King's bed for three stripes for her PFC."

"Don't be ugly," Louise said with dignity. "You're not in Hollwood now."

The Canteen of the Allies, for all its imposing name, was merely three small basement rooms decked with dusty bunting, with a long plank nailed on a couple of barrels that did service for a bar. In it, from time to time, you could get venison chops and Scotch salmon and cold beer from a tin washtub that the proprietress kept full of ice in deference to American tastes. The Frenchmen who came there could usually find a bottle of Algerian wine at legal prices. Almost everyone could get credit if he needed it, and a girl whether he needed it or not. Four or five hard-eyed ladies, nearing middle-age, whose husbands all seemed to be serving in Italy in the Eighth Army, ran the place on a haphazard voluntary basis, and it conveniently and illegally served liquor after the closing hour.

When Michael and Louise entered, someone was playing the piano in the back room. Two English sergeant pilots were singing softly at the bar. An American WAC corporal was being helped, drunk, to the lavatory. An American Lieutenant-Colonel by the name of Pavone, who looked like a middle-aged burlesque comedian and who had been born in Brooklyn and had somehow run a circus in France in the 1930s, and had served in the French cavalry in the beginning of the war, and who continually smoked large expensive cigars, was making what sounded like a speech to four war correspondents at a large table. In a corner, almost unnoticed, a huge dark Frenchman, who, it was reputed, dropped by parachute into France two or three times a month for British Intelligence, was eating martini glasses, something he did when he got drunk and felt moody late at night. In the small kitchen off the back room, a tall, fat American Top Sergeant in the MPs, who had taken the fancy of one of the ladies who ran the place, was frying himself a panful of fish. A two-handed poker game was being played at a small table near the kitchen between a correspondent and a twenty-three-year-old Air Force Major who had that afternoon come back from bombing Kiel, and Michael heard the Major say, "I raise you a hundred and fifty pounds." Michael watched the Major gravely write out an IOU for a hundred and fifty pounds and put it in the middle of the table. "I see you and raise you a hundred and fifty," said his opponent, who wore an American correspondent's uniform, but who sounded like a Hungarian. Then he wrote out an IOU and dropped it on the small flimsy pile in the middle of the table.

"Two whiskies, please," said Michael to the British Lance-Corporal who served behind the bar when he was in London on leave.

"No more whisky, Colonel," said the Lance-Corporal, who had no teeth at all, and whose gums, Michael thought, must be in sad shape from British Army rations. "Sorry."

"Two gins."

The Lance-Corporal, who wore a wide, spotted greyish apron over his battledress, deftly and lovingly poured the two drinks.

From the piano in the other room, quivering male voices sang: My father's a black-market grocer, My mother makes illegal gin, My sister sells sin on the corner, Kee-rist, how the money rolls in!

Michael raised his glass to Louise. "Cheers," he said. They drank.

"Six bob, Colonel," said the Lance-Corporal.

"Put in on the book," said Michael. "I'm busted tonight. I expect a large draft from Australia. I have a kid brother who's a Major there in the Air Force, on flying pay and per them."

The Lance-Corporal laboriously scratched Michael's name down in a gravy-spotted ledger and opened two bottles of warm beer for the sergeant pilots, who, attracted by the melody from the next room, drifted back that way, holding their glasses.

"I wish to address you in the name of General Charles de Gaulle," said the Frenchman, who for the moment had given up chewing on martini glasses. "You will all kindly stand up for General Charles de Gaulle, leader of France and the French Army."

Everyone stood up absently for the General of the French Army.

"My good friends," said the Frenchman loudly and with a thick Russian accent, "I do not believe what the newspapers say. I hate newspapers and I hate all newspaper-men." He glared fiercely at the four correspondents around Colonel Pavone.

"General Charles de Gaulle is a democrat and a man of honour." He sat down and looked moodily at a half-chewed martini glass.

Everyone sat down again. From the back room, the voices of the RAF clattered into the bar. "There's a Lancaster leaving the Ruhr," they sang, "bound for old Blighty's shore, heavily laden with terrified men,… scared and prone on the floor…"

"Gentlemen," said the proprietress. She had been asleep on a chair along the wall, with her glasses hanging from one ear. She opened her eyes, grinned at the company, and said, pointing to the WAC, who was returning from the bathroom, "That woman has stolen my scarf." Then she fell asleep again. In a moment, she was snoring loudly.

"What I like about this place," Michael said, "is the atmosphere of sleepy old England that is so strong here. Cricket," said Michael, "tea being served in the vicar's garden, the music of Delius."

A stout Major-General in Services of Supply, who had just arrived in England that afternoon from Washington, entered the bar. A large young woman with long teeth and a flowing black veil was on his arm. A drunken Captain with a large moustache followed him carefully.

"Ah," the Major-General said, heading straight for Louise, with a wide, warm smile on his face, "my dear Mrs M'Kimber." He kissed Louise. The woman with the long teeth smiled seductively at everyone. She had something wrong with her eyes, and she blinked them, quickly, again and again, all the time. Later on, Michael found out that her name was Kearney and that her husband had been a pilot in the RAF and had been shot down over London in 1941.

"General Rockland," Louise said, "I want you to meet PFC Whitacre. He loves Generals."

The General shook Michael's hand heartily, nearly crushing it, and Michael was sure the General must have played football at West Point at one time. "Glad to meet you, Boy," said the General. "I saw you at the party, sneaking out with this handsome young woman."

"He insists on being a Private," said Louise, smiling. "What can we do about it?"

"I hate professional Privates," said the General, and the Captain behind him nodded gravely.

"So do I," said Michael. "I'd be delighted to be a Lieutenant."

"I hate professional Lieutenants, too," said the General.

"Very well, Sir," said Michael. "If you wish, you can make me a Lieutenant-Colonel."

"Maybe I will," said the General, "maybe I will. Jimmy, take that man's name."

The Captain who had come in with the General fumbled through his pockets and took out a card advertising a private taxi service. "Name, rank and serial number," he said automatically.

Michael gave him his name, rank and serial number and the Captain put the card back carefully in an inside pocket. He was wearing bright red braces, Michael saw, as the tunic flipped back.

The General had Louise over in a corner now, pinned against the wall, his face close to hers. Michael started towards them, but the long-toothed girl stepped into his path, smiling softly and blinking. "My card," she said. She handed Michael a small, stiff white card. Michael stared down at it. Mrs Ottilie Munsell Kearney, he read, Regent…7.

"Ring me up. I'm in every morning until eleven," Mrs Kearney said, smiling without ambiguity at him. Then she wheeled away, her veil blowing, and went from table to table, distributing cards.

Michael got another gin and went over to the table where Colonel Pavone was sitting with the correspondents, two of whom Michael knew.

"… after the war," Pavone was saying, "France is going to go left, and there is nothing we can do about it and nothing England can do about it and nothing Russia can do about it. Sit down, Whitacre, we have whisky."

Michael drained his glass, then sat down and watched one of the correspondents pour him four fingers of Scotch.

"I'm in Civil Affairs," Pavone said, "and I don't know where they're going to send me. But I'll tell you here and now, if they send me to France, it will be a big joke. The French have been governing themselves for a hundred and fifty years, and they'll just laugh at any American who tells them even where to put the plumbing in the city hall."

"I raise you five hundred pounds," said the Hungarian correspondent at the other table.

"I'll see you," said the Air Force Major. They both wrote out IOUs.

"What happened, Whitacre?" Pavone asked. "The General get your girl?"

"Only on a short lease," said Michael, glancing towards the bar, where the General was leaning heavily against Louise and laughing hoarsely.

"The Privilege of Rank," said Pavone.

"The General loves girls," said one of the correspondents. "He was in Cairo for two weeks and he had four Red Cross girls. They gave him the Legion of Merit when he returned to Washington."

"Did you get one of these?" Pavone waved one of Mrs Kearney's cards.

"One of my most treasured souvenirs," said Michael gravely, producing his card.

"That woman," said Pavone, "must have an enormous printing bill."

"Her father," said one of the correspondents, "is in beer. They have plenty of dough."

"I don't want to join the Air Force," sang the RAF in the back room, "I don't want to go to war. I'd rather hang around Piccadilly Underground, Living off the earnings of a high-born – ladeeee…"

The air-raid sirens blew outside.

"Jerry is getting very extravagant," said one of the correspondents. "Two raids in one night."

"I take it as a personal affront," said another of the correspondents. "Just yesterday I wrote an article proving conclusively that the Luftwaffe was through. I added up all the percentages of aircraft production reported destroyed by the Eighth Air Force, the Ninth Air Force, the RAF, and all the fighter planes knocked down in raids, and I found out that the Luftwaffe is operating on minus one hundred and sixty-eight per cent of its strength. Three thousand words."

"Are you frightened by air raids?" A short, fat correspondent by the name of Ahearn asked Michael. He had a very serious round face, mottled heavily with much drinking. "This is not a random question," said Ahearn. "I am collecting data. I am going to write a long piece for Collier's on fear. Fear is the great common denominator of every man in this war, on all sides, and it should be interesting to examine it in its pure state."

"Well," Michael began, "let me see how I…"

"Myself," Ahearn leaned seriously towards Michael, his breath as solid as a brewery wall, "I find that I sweat and see everything much more clearly and in more detail than when I am not afraid. I was on board a naval vessel, even now I cannot reveal its name, off Guadalcanal, and a Japanese plane came in at ten feet off the water, right at the gun station where I was standing. I turned my head away, and I saw the right shoulder of the man next to me, whom I'd known for three weeks and seen before in all stages of undress. I noticed at that moment something I had never noticed before. On his right shoulder he had a padlock tattooed in purple ink, with green vine leaves entwined in the bolt, and over that on a magenta scroll, Amor Omnia Vincit, in Roman script. I remember it with absolute clarity, and if anyone wished I could reproduce it line for line and colour for colour on this table cloth. Now, about you, are things more clear or less clear when you are in danger of your life?"

"Well," said Michael, "the truth is I haven't…"

"I also find difficulty breathing," said Ahearn, staring sternly at Michael. "It is as though I am very high in an aeroplane, speeding through very thin air, without an oxygen mask." He turned suddenly away from Michael. "Pass the whisky, please," he said.